Personal Change

Hypno-wizards and their willing victims

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Imagine a small, dark cell. There’s a light bulb swinging overhead. One man is seated at a table under the light bulb. Two men are standing over the seated man, and a few more sit in the shadows along the wall, watching the proceedings.

“Who else was involved in planning the robbery?” asks one of the standing men.

“It was me…” stammers the man at the table. “Well, we had talked about it the night before…”

The other standing man leans in. “Who is this ‘we’?”

The seated man looks up into the light and blinks over and over. “It was just me. Bjørn… I…”

“Bjørn was also involved in planning the robbery?”

Suddenly, one of the men sitting in the shadows coughs. He makes a show of crossing his legs in an unusual way. The parts of his legs beneath the knee form a clear letter X.

The man under the light bulb straightens up. “Nobody else was involved. I acted alone. My goal was to support the revolution.”

In 1951, a man named Palle Hardrup robbed a bank in Copenhagen. The robbery wasn’t his first, but it was the first one that went bad, and Hardrup killed two people. Soon after, he was arrested and interrogated.

During the interrogations, it became clear Hardrup might have been acting under the direction of somebody else.

That somebody else turned out to be Bjørn Nielsen, a self-taught hypnotist.

Over the next 10 years, the story slowly unfolded across Danish courthouses, prisons, and hospitals. Eventually, it even made it to the European Court of Human Rights.

The question was who was responsible for the robbery and the murders. Hardrup, who had confessed to the the crimes… Nielsen, who dozens of witnesses claimed had hypnotized Hardrup over the course of two years, and who still seemed to have total control over his hypno-puppet, each time the symbol X appeared in some way… or Hardrup and Nielsen both.

What do you think? I’ll tell you what Dan Kennedy thinks:

Dan thinks if you want to get rich, then be the wizard… and beware other wizards.

What Dan is saying is we all crave to give up responsibility in our lives. It’s a dangerous thing to allow yourself to do… but there is lots of money to be made in providing that service to other people.

And that’s what I think those Copenhagen hypnosis murders illustrate.

Human beings are extremely programmable.

We also have individual agency.

And if you ask me, those are two magnetic poles that cannot be reduced down to one.

This is something you might want to keep in mind… if you too have decided to get rich, the way I’ve finally done recently, for the first time in my life.

And in case you want to get educated about persuasion, marketing, and copywriting to help you in your quest to get rich… you might like my daily email newsletter.

Proven: Change in perspective creates 900% improvement in thinking

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A few months ago, Edward de Bono died. He was somebody meaningful in my life because I read his Lateral Thinking book 15 years ago.

Lateral Thinking got into my head. It influenced how I do stuff like writing these emails. It made me generate more ideas before I commit to one… made me less critical of ideas as they pop up… made me integrate randomness and restrictions into my idea generation.

Anyways, I read an obit for de Bono in The Guardian today. And the following quote from de Bono came up:

“Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception.”

I was very excited when I read this. “Can this be true?” I thought. “If it is, then just imagine how valuable that would make a change of perspective!”

Now I’m no math wiz, but by my calculations it would mean that the right change of perspective would create something like a 900% increase in right thinking.

So for a split second, I thought about tracking down the studies that de Bono referred to. But those are probably as interesting as watching a slug try to cross a six-lane highway.

So instead, let me point you to another kind of proof… which de Bono approved of… which is much more convincing… and which might help you when you try to convince people of your own ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/chickensoup

Jerry Seinfeld’s harsh words of encouragement

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Today I read an interesting article by a guy named Sam Sussman, who might be Bob Dylan’s son.

Sussman’s article starts out by describing how Sussman’s mom and Bob Dylan got together, back in 1974.

Dylan asked the mom, then 20 years old, to host a party in her tiny New York apartment.

He then showed up in red cowboy boots, along with a bunch of other people.

The other people left around 2am.

Dylan stayed. And with a flick of his red cowboy boots, he closed the front door behind the last guest, and then turned to face Sussman’s mom. And so their relationship started.

I thought Sussman’s article was worth reading for that boot-flicking seduction move alone.

Of course, Sussman has more serious soul-searching to do, including this bit:

But perhaps more than seeking a literal father, I looked to Dylan for evidence that I could make it as a writer. Besides my mother and my tenth-grade literature teacher, nobody had ever given me a reason to believe I could.

I guess Sussman turned out ok as a writer, in spite of a lack of early encouragement. His article appeared in Harper’s, and I think he’s got a novel out.

Still, that quote above made me think of a bit of advice Jerry Seinfeld gave in the 1980s to would-be comedians who had signed up for a stand-up comedy class. Jerry’s advice might sound harsh. In any case, it’s all I want to say for today, so I’ll leave you with his words, and you decide:

The fact that you have even signed up for this class is a very bad sign for what you’re trying to do.

The fact that you think anyone can help you or there’s anything that you need to learn…you have gone off on a bad track.

Because nobody knows anything about any of this.

And if you want to do it, what I really should do is I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down, and on it the flag would just say two words:

Just work.

“That’s fine for today,” you might say, “but what about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow I’ll have something new for you. And if you’d like to read it, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

Last chance to send $1000, plus a free spot in my upcoming Write-Your-Advertorial workshop

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On April 30, 1961, Leonid Rogozov gave himself a jab of Novocaine. He struggled forward in his hospital bed and told one of his “assistants” to shift the mirror a little. He picked up the scalpel, and started cutting into his own side.

It took Rogozov about an hour or so. He had to take frequent breaks due to weakness and fainting spells.

But eventually, he managed to cut out his own inflamed appendix… sew himself up… and presumably, drink a bunch of vodka to celebrate.

Leonid Rogozov was the only doctor at the Soviet Antarctic station. He had to operate on himself, because nobody else at the station could. He survived, and a year later, when he got off Antarctica and his story became known, he became a national hero.

I’d like you to keep in mind this image of a doctor operating on himself… while I tell you about something I heard in Dan Kennedy’s Wealth Attraction Seminar.

“Don’t make decisions for other people,” says Dan.

The fact is, we are all full of what Dan calls secular religious beliefs. These are “facts” about our businesses we firmly believe without any proof. Things like, how much people in our market are willing to spend… what they are willing to buy… and how best to sell them.

Dan says those secular religious beliefs reflect more what’s going on internally in our (the marketers’) heads… rather than the true state of the market.

Dangerous stuff. You might even call it a poisonous inflammation. One that only you can surgically cut out from your own body, in a heroic operation, with the sharp scalpel of real-world testing.

And now that I’ve given myself a shot of Novocaine by sharing this valuable idea with you, let me get out my own scalpel and start cutting:

A few days ago, I got an email from the affiliate manager behind Steal Our Winners. She’s pushing people to promote the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners, because the price is going up.

“Nope,” I said. “I won’t do it.”

As you might know, I regularly promote Steal Our Winners. It’s Rich Schefren’s monthly video thing, where he interviews a bunch of successful marketers, and they each share one inside tip on what’s working for them right now.

I think it’s a great product. That’s why I’m happy to promote it each month.

Except, what I always promote is the $1, one-month trial of Steal Our Winners. I think it’s an easy sell, both because Steal Our Winners is a product I personally like… and because, come on, it’s $1.

But this lifetime subscription is not $1. It’s orders of $$$$ more. Plus it’s a lifetime subscription. It sounds so final, like marriage.

That’s why I said I wouldn’t promote this offer. And yet, here we are. So let me make a confession:

I myself have bought the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners.

For me, it was absolutely worth it, at the price I got it at. Not just because of the great monthly content… but because of the free bonuses you get, which you can’t get anywhere else.

Like Joe Schriefer’s Copyboarding Academy.

And the Agora Financial Media Buying Bootcamp.

And Rich Schefren’s Mystery Box. (What’s inside? You gotta open up and see.)

Plus about a dozen other bonuses… along with all the back issues of Steal Our Winners.

But if you have no interest in this offer, there’s no sense in me pushing it more on you.

And if you do have some interest, this post isn’t space enough to tell you all the many things you get in the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners… and why it might be worth grabbing before the price goes up.

For that, I recommend checking out the link at the end of this post.

Phew.

​​I guess I’ll manage to sew this up after all, after an hour of weakness and fainting spells. So here’s one final thing:

If you do decide to get the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners, forward me your confirmation email. Along with your mailing address.

As my own bonus, I’ll give you a free spot in my upcoming Write-Your-Advertorial Workshop. This workshop will happen later this year, and it will cost more than the lifetime Steal Our Winners subscription costs now. (More details about this workshop to follow.)

But what about the mailing address? Why do I want that?

Because I will also mail you a bottle of Belvedere vodka. That way we can celebrate this successful and heroic operation, together, somewhere in virtual space. Na zdorovye.

Operation complete. So here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow-lifetime

A hare-brained idea for getting more done faster and better

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Since I was a kid, I’ve loved Looney Tunes cartoons. One I love in particular is The Rabbit of Seville, where Bugs Bunny plays a barber, and his victim is Elmer Fudd.

Bugs throws Elmer into a barber’s chair.

He makes a crown of shaving cream on Elmer’s bald head.

And he starts tossing fruit in there.

(By the way, that’s the way most of us solve problems. We complicate more and more, and toss pears and oranges and a pineapple on top of the mess that’s already there. And at the end, like Bugs, we examine our work… then add another round of shaving cream, and a cherry on top.)

I bring up The Rabbit of Seville because it’s one of the greatest cartoons of all time. And also because it has to do with the idea of cutting.

And that’s a quick but powerful idea I want to share with you. Often, when I am stuck on a project, the best thing I can do is to ask myself:

“What can I cut out and still have the end result come out better and stronger?”

I don’t just roll a few possible answers around my head.

Instead I force myself to write down 10 ideas, even if they are impractical. For example, I am currently building up a niche email newsletter to promote affiliate offers.

I’ve been lagging with it. So today I made a list of 10 things I could cut out. One of them was making sales.

Now that’s a terrible idea. But writing it down gets it out of my head, and makes space for other, maybe better ideas. And who knows, somewhere down the line, even this stupid idea might morph into something totally new and unexpected and great. Like the end of The Rabbit of Seville:

Elmer has an ax and is chasing Bugs.

Then Bugs has a bigger ax and is chasing Elmer.

Next Elmer has a revolver.

Then Bugs has a shotgun.

Elmer has a cannon.

Bugs has a bigger cannon.

Finally Elmer has a huge cannon. And then he screeches to a halt, befuddled.

Because Bugs gives him a bouquet of flowers.

Then a box of chocolates.

Then a diamond ring.

Suddenly, Elmer is wearing a wedding gown.

The two get married. And Bugs carries Elmer up to the rafters of the opera house… and drops him down into a wedding cake.

Bugs nibbles on his carrot. And to end, he says the same thing you can say when you cut down and finally ship your project…

“Nyaah… next!”

Next… is another idea about business, marketing, and copywriting. It arrives in my email newsletter tomorrow. If you’d like to read it, you can join my newsletter here.

Harmful coping behaviors for smart people

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Bear with me for just a moment while I try to write a bit of empathy copy. In fact, bear with me for just four personal and probing questions:

1. Do you often cover up what you really think and feel, and instead hde behind the ideas of people who are your superiors, or who have more authority than you do?

2. Do you regularly put in extra work on projects you care about, fiddling and futzing forever because you’re afraid to have a single mistake present when the work is delivered or made public?

3. Do you sometimes rely on charm and social sensitivity, listening with attention to important people… or feigning interest in their ideas and their lives… so you can win their approval?

(… and when that approval comes, do you find that it’s hollow? Either because you used charm and guile, rather than relying on your true self… or because people who are really worth a damn don’t have to seek others’ approval to begin with?)

And one final question:

4. Do you have some negative beliefs about the high cost of success? And do you find that that high cost of success is ultimately ok… because you yourself are NOT successful, not really, even in spite of what others might think of you?

If you answered yes to one of these questions… and in particular, if you answered yes to more than one of these questions… then I would like to offer you a diagnosis:

Imposter syndrome.

Because the four questions above describe coping behaviors I dug up in the original science paper that described imposter syndrome. Clance and Imes, 1978.

And here’s something else I got from that paper:

People who come down with a bad case of imposter syndrome tend to fall into two groups:

Group A, the sensitive group. These are people who had a sibling that the parents praised for being smart… while they themselves were praised for being sensitive or socially adept.

Group B, the smart group. People in this group heard from their parents that they can achieve anything they want in life… and that they can achieve it with ease and without effort.

“All right,” I hear you saying, “so what’s with the psychology lesson?””

For one, it’s because Google says there’s been explosion in interest in imposter syndrome. Almost exponential since 2000.

Which makes it possible that you suffer from imposter syndrome yourself. And maybe by reading what I’ve just written, you can understand what’s really going on in your head and in your life.

But this is also a newsletter abut cold-blooded persuasion and marketing. So let me tie it up:

It’s powerful to have your prospects believe that bad things in their life are not their fault. That’s why most every sales letter these days jams that phrase somewhere around the middle. “I’m here to tell you… it’s not your fault.”

But as marketer Rich Schefren says, that’s weak on its best day.

Because if the prospect is not to blame, then who is? Most marketers have no answer to that, or they have an unconvincing answer only.

But I just gave you one option, which is other people in your prospect’s environment or past. Parents, for example. But you probably knew that already.

So I gave you another option, too. I won’t spell it out, but you can find it in this post. And with almost no effort. Because I know you’re smart like that.

And whether you smart or merely very sensitive, I think the cure for imposter syndrome is simple. I reveal it in the pages of my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

“Why don’t you ever whip me?”

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“Why don’t you ever whip me?” the colonel’s wife asked. She had already slept with the colonel’s entire brigade, but she was still eager for a little attention from the colonel himself.

“Because I’m busy,” the colonel snapped back.

That’s from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. The colonel is busy because he is obsessed with putting on parades — parades that nobody watches, parades that the soldiers hate, parades that have no practical value.

Almost as little practical value as the time you waste, polishing and pondering a project that should have shipped in one-tenth the time.

Because, like sex, money loves speed.

I once tried to track down where this phrase comes from. I got as far back as copywriter Joe Vitale, but then the trail went cold.

I always assumed money loves speed because you get more time to keep working on other projects. More work, more money.

And I’m sure that can be a part of it.

But there can be a second part also.

And that’s that money, like sex, doesn’t like desperation.

And if you act busy, even if your other project is your own parade that nobody watches, money might come around and say, “Why don’t you ever pick me up?”

“Because I’m busy,” you can then snap back. “But we can schedule something for next Friday evening.”

Oh, and I once figured out a third way in which money loves speed. It’s something practical I heard in a conversation between marketers Rich Schefren and Kim Walsh Phillips. If you’d like to hear it also:

https://bejakovic.com/the-aggressive-other-meaning-of-money-loves-speed/

Boredom is a necessary nutrient

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Yesterday, I came across an article which compared media consumption to eating. The real problem, the article claimed, is that we are consuming the media equivalent of junk food. But I’m not buying it.

Because here’s another food-related claim I once heard:

Hunger is a necessary nutrient.

That was somebody’s clever way of summarizing what’s now a pretty accepted medical idea. When you don’t eat, your body does some housekeeping which ends up being good for you, and which you cannot get done otherwise.

In other words, hunger, occasional but regular hunger, is just as needed as salt or vitamin C.

And now let me extend that idea to media consumption:

Boredom is a necessary nutrient. Or rather, a necessary ingredient, for any kind of creative work or actual thinking.

For example, today I spent three hours in the car, driving from one town to another.

As soon as I got in the car, my hand reached out to turn on the radio.

“Get thee behind me, Satan” I said to my hand, and I stopped myself from turning on the radio. Because I had a feeling what would happen if I kept the radio off.

For a while after that, my mind roiled inside my skull. “This is so boring!” it said. “I’m getting nervous! Let’s put on some music, it doesn’t even have to have words!”

But eventually, the mind gave up. And some time later, without me doing anything, it happened:

An idea for a new book jumped out at me. The title, the concept, everything. I’m not sure I will ever write this book, but right now I think it’s pretty cool.

Then a few minutes after that, an outline formed in my head for a project I’m working on.

“That outline seems too linear,” I said. “Not integrated enough.”

So a few minutes later, while I braked and navigated some tricky curves high above the sea, a better outline formed in my head.

Eventually, I pulled over at a gas station. I took out my phone, and I wrote down the results of all this hard work I had done.

Maybe the same stuff would have happened in my head had the radio been playing. Or had I been listening to an audiobook. Or had I had somebody in the car to entertain me.

But I doubt it. And that’s why I’d like to suggest:

If you’re looking to get healthy, lean, and fit, creatively speaking, it might be worth turning off your TV. Hiding your phone under the couch. Even putting away that valuable book you are reading.

And then, just sitting there, hungry for stimulation and bored out of your mind…. until something cool happens.

Oh, and stop subscribing to so many email newsletters. Even the entertaining and valuable ones. Like mine.

Early success

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The gangly young man stepped inside the office and froze. He took a step to the side and pressed up against the wall.

His eyes darted from desk to desk. But nobody took notice of him.

Finally, he spotted somebody even younger than himself at one of the desks. He walked over.

“Hey buddy,” he said. “Maybe you can help me. My company has an account with you guys. They sent me down here because we just got some new business. I’m supposed to buy more ads. Can you tell me who I should talk to?”

The even younger man at the desk blinked a few times. “Actually,” he said, “that’s something I can help you with.”

The year was 1900. The place was the Lord & Thomas advertising agency in Chicago.

The young man who came looking to buy more ads worked for Collier’s Publishing. And the even younger man he approached was a 19-year-old Albert Lasker.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Lasker already. At 18, he started work as an office boy at Lord & Thomas. At 19, he became an accounts man. At 23, he became partner. At 32, he became CEO.

Under Lasker’s tenure, Lord & Thomas ran breakthrough campaigns, building brands like Palmolive, Pepsodent, Sunkist, Kotex, and Lucky Strike. And today, Lasker is known as one of the greatest advertising men of all time.

Lasker had natural talents that made him such a success in advertising, and at such a young age. But none of it would have happened — so Lasker claimed later — were it not for a few early successes. Like that Collier’s account, which landed in his lap thanks to his look of inexperience.

Early success.

I recently looked at the areas of my life where I’ve persevered and achieved something. This includes copywriting.

I made a list of common elements. There turned out to be three crucial things.

The first was an experience of early success. It gave me the belief to persevere when things got hard.

And vice versa. When I look at things where I failed… I find I didn’t have any early successes. Maybe I was following a process that was supposed to work. But without a signpost to tell me I was on the right path, it felt like wandering in the wilderness. So I gave up.

My point is that an experience of early success can be transformational.

Keep this in mind when you’re trying to retain customers or clients… or manage yourself.

An early success can come from blind luck and land right in your lap, like it did for Albert Lasker.

But with a bit of preparation, scheming, and maybe downright fakery, you don’t need luck. You can create an experience of early success with near certain probability. For your clients or customers or yourself. And once that happens… who knows how far you will go?

By the way, would you like to know about the other two crucial ingredients I found for long-term success in copywriting?

It’s something I haven’t written about before. But if and when I do, it will go into my email newsletter. You can sign up for that here.

Outrage in the inbox

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I apparently misled a bunch of people yesterday.

At the end of the email I sent out to my newsletter subscribers, I promised a copy of a free book on how to get rich as a repositioning consultant.

People wrote in to ask for their copy.

But unfortunately, there is no book. My offer was supposed to be a demonstration of the idea in the email (“If it’s not selling, reposition it as a business opportunity”).

But I wasn’t clear enough or tongue-in-cheek enough about it. So people took my offer at face value.

I wrote back to everybody who responded to explain what had happened.

Most people shrugged, and said that if I ever do write anything on this topic, they hope to get their promised copy. Which they will.

A few people said they had a kind of a-ha moment after re-reading the email. A guy named Nathan put it this way:

I sat there for around 5 minutes debating whether it was sarcastic or not.

Everything in me said, “there is no book”…

FOMO got the better of me though.

I’ve been there myself. And it’s kind of the point of what I wrote yesterday.

This direct response stuff works. And a cocktail of “opportunity” mixed with “FREE” is powerful and heady.

Anyways, the two types of reactions above cover all the responses I got…

Except one.

It came from a guy who’s responded a few times before to my offers and emails. And a few times before, he upset my evening equilibrium with his entitled and loaded comments.

This time, after I explained what had happened, he sent back a highlighted copy of my promised offer from yesterday, along with,

“So… you lied?”

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive.

But I don’t like to create outrage. And I don’t like outrage directed at me. Even passively. Even if it’s supposed to be good for business.

So this became the first time I proactively unsubscribed somebody from my list. It felt good.

Because my thinking is, if you’re planning to be at something for a long time, the way I do with these emails, you have to be happy to come into work every day.

So let me just say thank you. For reading. For being understanding. For not being outraged. And tomorrow, we will be back to our usual marketing topics… along with, who knows, maybe another hidden demonstration.

And by the way:

If you’d like to sign up to my email newsletter so you can read tomorrow’s email and not be outraged by it, here’s where to go.