Personal Change

My recent productivity change and newfound free time

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I got up late today, showered, and went out for a walk and a coffee by the marina. After a few freezing and grey days, today is beautiful, sunny, and warm in Barcelona.

Sometime during the morning I also had breakfast, during which I listened to Andy Roddick’s tennis podcast.

Around 1pm, once I finish this email, I will go to the pool and swim for an hour (part of my new dedication, a few months old now, to getting an hour of exercise every day).

Pool done, I will pack and head to the airport for an unexpected and frankly unwelcome emergency trip back home to Croatia.

Point being:

I’ve had and will have lots of non-working time today, both for personal and for necessary reasons.

But I don’t feel guilty about the free time because I did something meaningful to move my goals forward today. And no, it’s not this email.

Instead, I followed a practical recommendation, packaged up and sold to me via an insightful analogy, which I heard from Igor Kheifets recently.

This practical recommendation is something I’ve been implementing every day since I heard it, and it has had the effect of changing my own behavior and improving my productivity this month, since I started using it.

This practical change allowed me to get more done, have more free time, and feel good rather than guilty when I’m not working.

(You might reasonably think I shouldn’t feel guilty if I have more free time when I’m getting more done as well. But I can tell you from personal experience, it’s easy to feel the need to fill up newfound free time with some sort of busywork, in order to keep the forms to which I am accustomed. Igor’s practical recommendation and analogy are helping me with that.)

Like I’ve been saying the past few days, today at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/ 9am PST, only about 4 hours from now, Igor will do a live call to talk about his productivity system in detail.

Igor’s productivity system has allowed him to go from working 12 hours a day to working 4 hours a day… from making $130k a year to making $4.3 million a year… from having zero free time to having time for family, friends, video games, vacations, pilot lessons, Netflix, composing songs, and writing kids comic books.

This is the last email will send about this free call before it happens.

I will also give you a little inducement to attend today’s call or at least watch the replay. If you do, you’ll find out what Igor’s insightful analogy was, what his practical recommendation is which I’ve taken up, and the particular something I did today based on these (and no, it’s not writing this email).

If you wanna sign up to join Igor’s call live or to get the replay:

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tactical info vs. info that gets results

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I saw an email today from an email marketer who was complaining about products that only contain stories and big ideas. He proudly contrasted himself to that, by saying how his courses contain really awesome tactical info.

I mean, what’s not to like?

Customers love getting tactical info because such info can be made to feel new and have a wow factor when they open up the box.

Plus tactical info is easy to sell, and at a markup, because it can be positioned in sexy and secretive ways with clever copywriting (I have an entire course on how to do that, called Copy Riddles, in case you’re interested).

The one thing that tactics won’t do, at least not for most of the people buying, is get you results, particularly for the long term.

For results, tried, true, and often very boring and familiar fundamentals are needed, which are much harder to sell. In the words of A-list copywriter Mark Ford, who pretty much invented the selling of secrets at direct marketing publisher Agora:

“There is an inverse relationship between the value of knowledge and what people are willing to pay for it. The most important things in life you’ve probably heard a hundred times before, but you’re not paying attention. When you’re in the right place and you hear it, you have that ‘aha’ moment and everything changes.”

These days I’m talking about Igor Kheifets’s productivity system, which allows Igor to go from working 12 hours a day to working 4 hours a day… from making $130k a year to making $4.3 million a year… from having zero free time to having time for family, friends, video games, vacations, pilot lessons, Netflix, composing songs, and writing kids comic books.

Igor’s system is based on fundamentals and proven principles — probably stuff you’ve heard before in some way or another — applied very thoroughly, as evidenced by Igor’s own results.

Even so, some forward-looking people, who are after results rather than the latest tactics, have already taken me up on this offer. One of them was guitar teacher René Kerkdyk, who wrote me right after going through Igor’s training:

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Having read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Workweek and internalizing the 80/20 mindset in my student years, I thought that this can get more than the $297 out of me.

And I’m not disappointed. “You are always just one good decision away from being on track.” is a great quote I’ll be using in my teaching business from now on.

If over the next 10 years this sentence helps just one student stay one month longer I have a ROI > 1.

Also I have tons of ideas of spelling out the 80/20 of guitar learning. That means email fodder and at least one future issue for my print newsletter.

And I haven’t even opened any of the bonuses.

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Igor is doing a free call tomorrow at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST to go over his productivity system in more detail.

Maybe if you attend, you will hear something new?

Or maybe you will hear something you’ve heard before, which will finally click for you, and allow you to have your own breakthrough in 2026?

Like I said, tomorrow’s call is free. And yet it might produce some real results for you, whether or not you decide to take Igor up on his full, fundamentals-based productivity system.

If you’d like to reserve your spot for the free call tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tomorrow: Free call on the productivity system that works

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Tomorrow, Thursday Jan 8, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Igor Kheifets and I will get on a live call to go over the productivity system that allowed Igor to:

Go from working 12-hour days, 7 days a week, and making $130k a year (effective hourly wage: $29/hour)…

… to working 4-hour days, 5 days a week, and making $4.3 million a year (effective hourly wage: $4,479/hour)…

… while having enough time and energy for his family, friends, and his FIFA, Call of Duty, and Netflix addictions.

You’re invited to join us for this call.

If you’re working more than you would like, making less than you had hoped, and are feeling stressed and even a bit guilty about it all… then come hear Igor’s own experience, discover new ideas so you can work less and make more, and get inspired for 2026.

Here’s where to reserve your spot:

​https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Announcing: 2026 NYE Party

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Maybe you’ve noticed?

It’s 2026.

Maybe you’ve also noticed, New Year’s Eve has passed. (Anyhow, that was New Year’s Eve 2025.)

And yet here I am, running an event I’m calling the 2026 NYE Party.

The “NYE” in this case is special.

Yes, there will be streamers, a disco ball, and fireworks at midnight.

But among all the partying there’s also an opportunity to:

Make more in 20 hrs/week in 2026 than you did in 40+ hrs/week in 2025…

… without thinking about work 24/7, or feeling guilty when you’re not working.

The party has already kicked off. You are invited. I hope you’ll attend? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

I’m jealous of this lead gen funnel

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Last August, I promoted Igor Kheifets’s $3.99 book, Click Send Earn, as an affiliate.

$3.99? As an affiliate?

Yes. Because Igor pays out a $30 affiliate commission for each $3.99 sale.

The result was I sent two emails, and made Igor 69 sales, while making a little short of $2100 in commissions for myself.

Igor has got a super smart lead gen funnel here, and the offer he makes — $3.99 sale, $30 CPA — has gotten a buncha other list owners besides me interested in promoting.

Maliha Mannan of the Side Blogger promoted, as did Csaba Borzasi, as did Lawrence Bernstein of Ad Money Machine, with a promo that did so well last October that he is reprising it right now, just three months later.

The reason Igor can offer to pay all these folks $30 for each $3.99 sale is that he has a half dozen order form bumps and a long list of upsells once people buy the book.

Igor knows what a new customer in this funnel is worth to him, and I suspect it’s over $30. Of course, each new customer becomes worth much more when they get on Igor’s email list and are getting exposed to Igor’s back-end offers, many of them high-ticket, which Igor knows to convert.

I am frankly jealous of Igor for this funnel. I would love to have affiliates jostling and clamoring to promote either of my two books, or the new book I’m planning to publish this year.

But who’s got time and energy enough to create and dial in all these order bumps… and upsells… and copy… and funnels… and back-end offers?

Igor does, apparently.

And he does it while working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and having a family, and two kids, and writing and publishing comic books, and playing video games, and watching Netflix.

It wasn’t always like this.

Igor used to work 70+ hour weeks on his biz. He was grinding and hustling and making $130k a year. That might sound like a dream to you except it really wasn’t, considering how much he was working, and how little he was able to enjoy it. Plus he was making literally 3% of the $4.3 million he makes a year now.

Today, Igor works much less, gets much more done, makes much more money, and enjoys his free time without thinking about working or feeling guilty for not working.

I’m telling you this because this past November, Igor did a masterclass covering his system for getting more done in less time. He documented the exact productivity system that took him from A to B, from overworked and underpaid to having lots of free time and making a lot of money and publishing comic books.

I’ve been through Igor’s masterclass. I’m taking ideas from it. I’m applying them to what I do.

And starting tomorrow, since it’s the fresh start of a New Year, I will be promoting this system to you as well.

Of course, there will be a special deal.

Of course, there will be bonuses.

Of course, there will be a bit of a party theme, it being only a few days after New Year’s Eve. But party theme or not, the promise here is serious:

Work less, get more done, and feel zero guilt when you’re not working.

If that’s something that makes your subtle body tingle, then read my email tomorrow.

What Hysterical Hulks can teach you about procrastination

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See if you can spot the pattern:

1. On Feb 8 2006, a woman in a village at the northern reaches of Canada was watching her son and his friends play hockey.

This being close to the polar circle, a polar bear appeared, which was later found to weigh 320kg aka 507lbs.

The woman jumped in front of the bear to allow the kids to get away. She tried scaring the beast but that didn’t do much, and so the two of them got into a life-and-death wrestling match.

The bear seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the woman was holding her own.

Meanwhile the kids ran and got help from a local hunter. The hunter got his shotgun and “neutralized” the bear.

The woman got away with only light injuries. She was later awarded Canada’s Medal For Bravery and got a Gold Star for her bear-handling skills.

2. In 2012, a 22-year-old woman lifted a BMW off her father, who had been working under the car when the jack collapsed. The BMW weighed over 1500kg.

3. Back in the 1990s, a man pulled over on the highway when he saw a wrecked car with a man trapped inside. He ripped off the metal doors off with his bare hands to get the other guy out.

These a just a few examples of what is known as “hysterical strength.”

Hysterical strength can’t be reproduced in the lab, and doesn’t happen all that often in the wild either. But it does happen.

Michael Regnier, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, was the door-ripping Hulk in anecdote 3 above.

Based on his own experiences (the door ripping, and as a competitive weight lifter, and as professor of bioengineering) Regnier claims that most people can lift six or seven times their body weight, though most of us struggle to deadlift even a small fraction of that at the gym.

What changes in situations of hysterical strength?

It’s not adrenaline pumping through the body. Adrenaline supports better muscle use, yes, but it doesn’t increase the tetanic force, meaning how much a muscle can contract.

Rather, it’s believed hysterical strength is all down to the brain.

Our brains normally restrict maximum muscle exertion to maybe 60% of actual muscle capacity. Elite athletes can through training get that to around 80%. Hysterical Hulks apparently get pretty close to 100% of what their body is capable of for a few dramatic moments.

The brain hinders us like this to keep us safe.

The brain has many ways to keep us from going down dangerous and uncertain paths, even ones that we could survive or in theory even thrive in.

In my own brain, this connected to something I read long ago, which has had a big impact on me over the years. Cal Newport, the author of books like Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, once had an interesting theory about procrastination. He wrote:

“The evolutionary perspective on procrastination, by contrast, says we delay because our frontal lobe doesn’t see a convincing plan behind our aspiration. The solution, therefore, is not to muster the courage to blindly charge ahead, but to instead accept what our brain is telling us: our plans need more hard work invested before they’re ready.”

Yes, there are tactical ways to beat small-scale procrastination, to “blindly charge ahead,” and I will be talking about those in the coming days and teasing what’s worked for me personally.

But what Newport is advising above has been my best way of dealing with serious, long-term procrastination on any sizeable project that I knew needed doing.

And it’s my advice to you tonight.

If you find yourself procrastinating… get yourself a new plan you can believe in.

How do you do that? I will have more on that tomorrow.

2022 in review

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There’s a tradition around these parts:

Every January 1, I write an email reviewing my previous year, and publicly setting some new goals or themes for the coming year.

I will do that tomorrow. Today, though, I want to review 2022, and 2021, and maybe 2012.

Because in my life, I’ve noticed the following keeps happening over and over:

1. I set a new goal for myself

2. I work intensely on reaching that goal

3. I don’t reach the goal in any reasonable amount of time, and I gradually stop working to reach it

4. I forget all about the goal

5. Some time later, possibly years later, I realize that, somewhere along the way, through foggy or indirect means, I’ve actually reached my goal and got what I wanted so long ago.

This has happened over and over, starting in my 20s. It’s happening still today.

Maybe you want examples.

This very newsletter, which I believe I first dreamed about in 2012, is one.

There have been many more, a lot of them too personal to share even in this therapy-like email, including goals or “themes” I set in 2022 and 2021, some of which have come true over the past year or two.

But maybe you don’t want examples. Maybe you’re just wondering how this might possibly be relevant to you. So lemme tell ya.

The ultimate experience or breakthrough in Bejako’s Method for Producing Results is:

“It just happened! I don’t know what I did in the end, and most likely I did nothing, but the result is finally here!”

I’m a serious dabbler in self-help literature, and I’ve read from gurus who have experienced or witnessed the same. They extrapolate those kinds of experiences to conclude that:

1. Effort is not needed

2. Effort can in fact be counterproductive

After all, you weren’t trying and striving when you got the big result. Instead, you were relaxing and forgetting that you even had a goal. So you might as well relax and forget the goal, all the time, and “all these things shall be added unto you.”

I believe that’s a fundamental error. I have no proof for that, other than what I’ve experienced and achieved in my life, both personally and business-wise.

I believe all 5 steps of Bejako’s Method for Producing Results are necessary.

In particular, I believe that step 2, effort, often intense, dogged, frustrating effort, is necessary.

But that’s no kind of a conclusion to make, especially in a newsletter like this one, about direct marketing. Instead, let me tell you the more inspiring flip side.

If what I say above is true not just for me, but more generally, and I believe it is, then it applies to you too.

Right now, you might be in steps 1 and 2 above, working towards a goal but not yet seeing results.

Or you might be in steps 3 and 4, having given up on your goal and maybe even forgotten the goal altogether.

I’d like to propose that, if you see nothing happening, or you’ve concluded you never will, you have already done the work, or are doing work now, even if you’re not aware of it, to get to the goals you care about.

If you find yourself in 2026 getting to one of those goals, magically and seemingly without effort, write in and let me know. I’d love to hear about it. Because there is magic in the world, at least in my experience. It just doesn’t work on a 365-day schedule.

The sneaky Christmas legend of THE ONE

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Today being December 25, let me tell you a story that happened on today’s date, supposedly.

The year was some time long ago, or thereabouts.

The place was London, though whether at St. Paul’s or not the French book doesn’t say.

Merlin had told the Archbishop of Canterbury to summon all the barons to London, for a sign would appear, showing who should become king and bring the realm out of lawless jeopardy.

And sure enow, during morning mass, right around the time that I’m writing this, specifically 11:02am, a great stone appeared in the churchyard, and an anvil atop that stone, with a sword, naked to the point, stuck inside the anvil. On the sword was an inscription in gold letters, which read:

“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.”

Maybe you know this story.

Lots of great knights tried to pull out the stone. They all failed.

Then on New Year’s day, a young boy named Arthur pulled out the sword, kind of by accident, and the sign was shown and the prophecy was fulfilled:

HERE WAS KING ARTHUR, NEW RULER OF THE REALM, KING OF ALL ENGLAND.

Good story, right? Right???

I don’t know whether this legend taps into something fundamental in the human psyche, or if it’s just that we’ve all been told it a million times over, in various forms.

One way or another, it’s snuck into our subconscious, where it does its damage. Because it’s not how reality works.

A few weeks ago, a member of my Daily Email House community, DTC copywriter and brand strategist Chavy Helfgott, posted a question in the group:

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I recently put a new page on my website called “Client Love”, which features screenshots of feedback I’ve gotten from clients.

And I noticed that there was a lot of really, really enthusiastic feedback there. Like multiple “wows”, “I’m amazed,” and “blown away.”

Here’s my problem: despite this great feedback, there’s this niggling little worm in my brain constantly whispering, “You’re not really good enough.”

This is problematic because it’s difficult to sell myself as THE answer to my ideal client’s problem… if I myself doubt that it is true.

I guess my question is – anyone have any ideas how to get past this hump? Why is feedback from my own clients not convincing me? How do I convince myself that my work is valuable, so I can more successfully convince others of this, so that they hire me?

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Lotsa House members chimed in with great suggestions and ideas.

The one I want to highlight today came from speechwriter and trainer Alexander Westenberg. Alexander wrote:

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I agree with pretty much everything already said, but here’s an additional two cents: You say it’s difficult to sell yourself as THE answer, but to me I don’t see why you have to?

The way I like to look at it for myself (and pretty much everything else in life) is that you don’t have to be THE answer, just AN answer.

So for me, I’m a speechwriter and trainer. I have my way of doing things, and I honestly believe in it and in the value I bring. But a) there are other speechwriters out there, and b) some people prefer AI.

I provide AN answer to the problem of how to be a powerful and persuasive speaker. I’m even happy saying I’m one of the better answers — but I’m also happy saying that people can answer that problem in other ways.

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Arthur legend notwithstanding, you don’t need to be THE ONE.

You can be ONE OF and still live a heroic life — a life where you take on great challenges that excite you, and get rewarded handsomely for your effort.

There are lots of ways you can be announce to the world you are ONE OF the better answers to whatever problem you are solving.

I think that having an online personal brand is one of the better ways to do that, though there certainly are other options.

I also think that, for having an online personal brand, an email newsletter is particularly attractive, and much easier to succeed with, though other platforms and formats can certainly work.

And if you do write an email newsletter, then I think a daily, personal-sounding email like what you are reading right now is a great way to go about it, though dailyish or weekly or occasional emails can work, and are certainly better than nothing.

And if you do choose to write daily emails, then one of the better ways to stick with it and be effective is to use daily prompts or topic categories for yourself, which keep your emails fresh and your mind focused, though of course using no structure and relying on inspiration each day is also an option.

You see where I’m going with this?

It’s an old story, one that I’ve told hundreds of times in these emails. But maybe you still don’t know how it ends? For that, take a look here, and see if you are willing to start on the journey that you are being invited upon:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

My auction is ALIVE

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My “I endorse YOU” auction came ALIVE today, about 2 hours and 34 minutes ago, reckoning by the time this email gently slithered its way into your inbox.

As the prize and wager for this novel auction, I am offering to take one of my readers… to give him or her a NAME on the Internet along with my full endorsement… plus to co-create a working acquisition funnel the winner can use to build up an email list via newsletter ads or list swaps… plus I’m guaranteeing, with my two hands, the winner will make back 100% of his or her money before I’m done endorsing and promoting them.

How has the world reacted so far to this audacious offer?

Has the bidding already reached into the millions of dollars, as entire families pool their finances, mortgage their homes, and reach into their children’s college funds?

Or is it still and quiet over there inside Daily Email House, with me standing around the House living room, feeling naked, a bunch of House members looking at me but not saying anything, with only the occasional…

CHIRP

CHIRP

CHIRP

… breaking the silence?

I’ll be 100% honest with you:

I don’t know.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I am actually writing to you FROM THE PAST.

It’s currently 9:26am my time as I write this. The auction will come ALIVE today at 6pm my time, while this email will only go out a couple hours after that.

What I do know is that people are curious about how this will go. For example, this morning I got a message from a reader that said:

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Will you let us know the results of the auction in a future email?

I’d like to know how well it works out. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

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I am making precisely zero promises about letting anybody know anything.

Frankly, I’m a bit promised out, with the auction and the audacious promises I’m making there — “I endorse you until you get 100% of your money back,” plus all the little micro promises I’m making in order to have a shot to deliver on that core promise — being just about all I can handle.

I can tell you this:

If the auction goes as well as I hope, I am sure to crow about it, turn it into a case study, and run more auctions, both for myself and in partnership with other people.

If the auction doesn’t go as well as I hope, maybe I’ll tell you how it did go, along with my conclusions, and my plans for what I might do different another time. That would be the matoor thing to do.

But maybe I won’t do any of that, and maybe I will secretly just go and take this experiment and bury it in the experiment sematary in my back yard. After all, I’m often not very matoor. And rather than bewailing that fact, and saying that I should do what I am not doing, I’ve learned to work with what I’ve got.

One thing is for sure:

If you are curious how this auction is performing and how it will end, the only way to find out, without fail and in full detail, is to join my Daily Email House community, and to do so now.

Come for the morbid curiosity. Stay for the pool party and the little auction party snacks. Here’s the location:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills

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A bit of Bejako background:

I went to high school in a rich suburb of Baltimore, Maryland (we weren’t rich, but ok).

All the other kids in my class were ambitious and smart (one girl’s dad later won the Nobel Prize in chemistry). They worked hard their entire high school days. They ended up going to schools like Princeton and Stanford, and became lawyers and doctors and architects.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Bejako had zero drive to go to college, and had no idea what kind of work he might ever want to do.

His best guess — the only option that kind of turned him on – was the idea of moving down to Annapolis, Maryland’s small, quaint, maritime capital, and becoming a reporter on some local newspaper that covered state politics.

Fast-forward to the present, and switch back to the first person:

While I never became a small-town reporter, the same lack of ambition and non-entrepreneurial nature I had in high school has stuck with me throughout life, now into middle age.

I am really not motivated by money, try as I have to change that. I’ve also never thought of myself as an entrepreneur or online business owner. And yet, that’s kind of what I’m doing now, and what’s more, I’m not really qualified to do anything else.

I’m telling you all this because a couple nights ago, I was reading a book about direct marketing. It said the following:

“Understanding your ultimate prospect has nothing to do with creativity. It requires relentless, investigative salesmanship. You need to become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills.”

“Hm,” I said to my pillow. “An investigative reporter on the salesmanship beat? That’s something I can imagine myself doing.”

And in fact, the very next day, I told myself to treat what I’m doing as investigative reporter. I started collecting data about offers I had made, successful or unsuccessful. I came up with theories about why things turned out as they did. I started trying to write up a story that makes sense that fits the data to the theory.

It’s been fun and it’s getting me to do things I should have been doing all along.

My point is not that you specifically should start treating your business as an investigative reporter.

My point is that, if “value-creating entrepreneur” or “small business owner” doesn’t really feel like a suit that fits you, there lots of other suits you can put on, including ones that you like the look of. And it will still be you inside the suit.

You gotta do certain things to see success if you have an email list and want to make money with it. Selling is one of them. Understanding your audience is another. Creating new offers is still another. But there are lots of ways to get yourself to do those things, including things that align with your own natural motivations and ambitions.

Or in the words of Internet marketer Rich Schefren, “Put your business goals of your self-development goals.” It’s much more likely you will see success if you work with your own psychology, rather than trying to change it.

So much for Monday Morning Mindset.

For some specific strategies on how to take your existing skills and interests and turn them into money, enough to pay for a house:

https://bejakovic.com/house