Personal Change

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.

3 ways for freelancers to lose less

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A few days ago, I wrote a post about loser’s games:

Situations in life where the outcome is all about what the loser does… rather than what the winner does.

I wrapped up that post with advice given to amateur tennis players. “Lose less. Avoid trying too hard. And keep the ball in play.”

To which a freelance copywritress wrote in to ask:

“How do you lose less in freelancing? Not trying too hard and keeping the ball in the game is straightforward. But I wasn’t able to figure out how I could lose less. Any insights or tips would be much appreciated by this seasoned loser.”

My answer was that losing less is about all the stuff that’s really 100% within our control, but we muck up for reasons of our own. Like…

There’s a great job that you want to apply to, but you convince yourself not to do it, or you don’t do it in time.

Or…

Client comes to you and says, “Here’s what I need” and you say, “Yes boss” instead of saying, “What’s the ultimate goal you’re looking to achieve by doing this?”

Or…

You hear 50k times that you’re charging too little and yet you still don’t raise your rates.

Basically, losing is self-sabotage and mistakes that we really can’t blame on anybody else. And losing less is not doing that.

Of course, maybe that’s just deflecting the question. How exactly do you not make mistakes and avoid self-sabotage, whatever form it takes?

I’ve got three unsexy but true ideas for you:

1. Habit. Start small and low risk. Build from there.

2. Willpower. Sleep. Eat. Drink your orange juice. Grit your teeth.

3. Self-awareness.

Because those three losing behaviors above, those are all things I did and sometimes still do. But maybe they aren’t exactly your own.

Whatever yours are, identify them. In the spur of the moment those losing behaviors just happen. You shrug them off, either blaming circumstance or yourself.

But if you take time and identify them… that can sometimes be all you need to change when loserliness threatens next.

I’ve got my own homebrewed journaling system for this. In fact I’ve got close to 30 separate journals, for different aspects of my life.

In each journal, I ask myself, what happened? What did I do right? What could I have done better?

This doesn’t always mean I never act like a seasoned loser. But when I do act like a loser, that goes into a journal, and maybe reduces the chance of it happening again. And if you sometimes play loser’s games… this might be worth a try for you too.

By the way, one of the journals I keep is all about interesting and novel ideas for emails. Because I write a daily email newsletter. If you’d like to read some of the ideas I write about, you can sign up for it here.

Entrepreneurship: A loser’s game

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A couple nights ago, I stayed up two hours past my bedtime to watch TV and witness a miracle.

Well, a sports miracle:

Novak Djokovic beating Rafael Nadal at the French Open.

In case those names mean nothing to you, I’m talking tennis. And what Djokovic did is the hardest thing in that sport.

After all, Rafael Nadal has won the French Open 13 out of the past 15 years.

The only times he lost, it was in the early rounds, because he was crippled, hobbled, or hamstrung. Whenever he made it to the end stages, like this year, he was unbeatable. Until this past Friday.

It took an incredible effort. In fact, both Djokovic and Nadal played at the highest levels.

They made tennis look like ping pong, because of how they moved each other around, with crazy angled shots, delivered from far off the court and from seemingly impossible positions.

Other pros and commentators gushed afterwards that it was one of the greatest matches in history, and probably the greatest clay court match ever. Nadal and Djokovic are from another world, they said.

Well. Contrast that to my real-life experiences with tennis.

I started playing when I was a kid. If you saw me play, you might think I have skills. But I don’t.

In fact, I have such an extreme lack of skills that two years ago I vowed never to play again. It was just too painful.

I’d play a match against somebody who I should be able to easily beat. And I’d still end up losing.

Double faults… routine balls dumped into the net… attempts at winners that sailed a foot wide.
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Each mistake-filled loss would set off a binge of self-hate that lasted for days, until it was time to play (and usually lose) the next match. So I decided to give it up.

And that’s my point for you for today.

It turns out that the sport played on tennis courts is actually two entirely different games.

That’s according to a Dr. Simon Ramo, who analyzed the data. Ramo’s research can be summed up simply:

Professional tennis players win points. The rest of us lose points.

In the pro game, outcomes are determined by the actions of the winner, like in the Djokovic-Nadal match.

In the non-pro game, the amateur rarely beats his opponent. But he beats himself all the time.

It’s two opposite games. And Ramo’s data bear it out. Pros win 80% of points. Amateurs lose 80% of points.

Of course, tennis is not the only loser’s game.

So is campaigning for political office… warfare… and modern dating.

In all these fields, outcomes are determined more by our own mistakes and self-sabotage, rather than anything the other side did.

And from what I’ve seen, entrepreneurship fits into this mold too.

We look to the highest performers, like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. We see how they run laps around the competition and create daring offers that wow customers.

But that’s not the game the rest of us play.

For the rest of us, competition is largely irrelevant and potential customers usually never even see our offers.

Instead, the outcomes we get (typically not good) are really the result of our own mistakes and self-sabotage.

If that’s the case, then what’s the fix?

I don’t have a good answer for you. But I can leave you with the advice that Simon Ramo gave to tennis players:

Lose less. Avoid trying too hard. And keep the ball in play.

But let me take my own advice:

I have an email newsletter. I write an email about persuasion, marketing, copywriting, and occasionally business, every day. Keep the ball in play. In case you want to sign up, click here and fill out the form.

Why you’re not getting anything done

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“What do you want me to say?” I snapped.

My mom gave me a call yesterday. “What’s your plan for today?” she asked.

“I’m trying to work,” I said, “but I’m not being very productive.”

That was a mistake. Because it was really an invitation for my mom to ask me the worst possible question:

“Why do you think that is?”

I’ve written before about Tony Robbins. I’ve learned a lot from the guy. Perhaps the most valuable thing was the power of asking the right questions.

It really works.

By asking myself the right questions, I’ve made my way out of seemingly impossible situations, by doing less and by having more fun than I would ever have believed possible.

And vice versa.

By asking the wrong questions, I just agitate and muddle the mess I am already in. It starts to feel hopeless.

“Why do I think I’m not being productive? Let’s see… because I’m lazy? Because I’m frustrated with the project I’m working on? Because I feel the deadline looming… because I worry that I will miss it… and because I’m not strong enough to control my own brain, so this is turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy? What do you want me to say?”

Well. I didn’t say most of that stuff. But I was thinking it, while biting my lip. So I told my mom I would talk to her later, and I got back to staring at my half-complete, frustrating project, head in hands, wondering where it all went wrong.

Because asking WHY primes your brain to focus on failure and shortcomings. And while that might sound smart, it’s actually a bad way to spend your energy, and unlikely to do anything to move you forward. So don’t do it if you’re trying to be productive.

BUT!

Focusing on WHY is a great thing to get your prospect to do. Particularly if you have a new answer to that question.

As I’ve written before, a new answer to “WHY do I always fail” can allow you to “get one up” on jaded, hostile prospects who think they are too smart to fall for your marketing. And if you do it right, you can even become a star in your niche.

I won’t lay out the whole case for you here. That’s because I’ve written about this topic in detail already. You can find it as Commandment VII of my short book, The 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How Gary Bencivenga transforms his counterexamples

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A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once wrote an ad for an agency he worked for. The ad ran in the Wall Street Journal, and the headline read,

“Announcing a direct response advertising agency that will guarantee to outpull your best ad.”

As you might expect from Gary, this ad was packed with all kinds of proof. In fact, a quarter of the ad consisted of eight case studies of previous clients that hired Gary’s agency.

​​Seven of the clients got tremendous results. One did not, and they didn’t pay anything, as per the guarantee in the headline.

I thought of this ad today because of a book I just finished reading, called Transforming Your Self, by Steve Andreas. The book is about our self-concept — how we think about ourselves — and how to change that.

Right now I’ll only share one bit of this valuable book with you. It’s about the raw meat that your self-concept, at least according to Andreas.

​​(And bear with me me for just a bit. Because this does tie into Gary Bencivenga and sales and marketing.)

So say you think of yourself as “smart.” How do you know that? How do you know you’re smart?

Andreas’s answer is that you have a set of mental images, each representing an experience, which back up your claim to being “smart.”

Perhaps you see your parents praising you when you were 7… or some workplace triumph… or getting through a dense book and really grokking it.

Whatever. The point is you have examples that back up your claim to being smart. Probably lots of them.

But what about the counterexamples? What about that time the intimidating college professor asked you a question… and you just sat there squirming, like a sweaty turnip?

That’s the interesting bit.

According to Andreas, your self-concept becomes stronger when you include counterexamples in your mental database.

A counterexample makes your claim to a quality more real and believable. (I’ve tried it out personally… and I believe it.)

And by the way, that’s exactly what’s happening in Gary’s ad above. That one counterexample makes the ad more real and believable.

But what if you have more than one counterexample? What if they start to pile up? What if they rival, or even outnumber your good examples?

That’s what the rest of Andreas’s book is about.

But Gary, master psychologist that he is, figured it out intuitively. And if you read Gary’s ad, you can find the answer, both in the headline and in the offer itself. In case you want to crack the code, here is Gary’s original ad:

https://bejakovic.com/bencivenga-agency-ad

What gung-ho action takers don’t tell you

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This past weekend, a pro MMA fighter named Jeremy Stephens did something dumb.

During the ceremonial pre-fight staredown, Stephens pushed the other fighter, Drakkar Klose, hard. In fact, Stephens pushed Klose so hard that Klose got whiplash. So the fight was canceled, Klose got the win by default, and Stephens lost a paycheck.

It’s not the first time Stephens did something dumb for publicity.

A few years ago, during a big press conference that featured a bunch of MMA fighters and starred Conor McGregor, Stephens was seated all the way in the back.

At one point, a journalist asked Conor, who was sitting front and center, “Who do you think would give you the toughest fight from everybody here on stage?”

Conor paused for a second to think of an appropriately cocky answer. And in that moment, Stephens saw his opportunity — and he seized it.

“Right here,” Stephens said, pointing to himself and speaking in the third person. “The hardest hitting 145-pounder in the world. This guy knocks people out.”

The whole room went silent for a second.

And then Conor looked over both of his shoulders. And he chuckled. “Who the fuck is that guy?”

My point is this:

A lot of people say you’ve got to take your shot.

They tell you stories of how they saw their opening… went for it… and how it worked out brilliantly.

Well, it didn’t work out for Jeremy Stephens. He will always be best-known as the guy who got pwned by Conor at a press conference.

So my point is that, rather than jumping at your opportunity, make sure you’re ready. Because you only get one chance at a first impression.

And if you’re clenching your fists right now because you think I’m such a downer:

I’m not saying you should be super cautious, inert, or frightened of ever making a mistake.

But as for the question whether success comes down to careful preparation… or to bold action… the answer is always yes.

As for me:

I’ve been preparing for this moment for a long time. I think I’m ready.

So I’d like to invite you to join my email newsletter. It’s mostly about marketing and copywriting. Sometimes about MMA fighters, and what we can learn from them about life. If you’re curious and you want to give my newsletter a try, you can sign up here.

How to get your worst customers or clients foaming with rage at you and impotent to do anything about it

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I was walking home down a dark street just now. It was empty and quiet and I was lost in thought when — screaming and scratching — a cat scrambled out of a dumpster right next to me and bolted away.

I won’t lie. The bitch startled me. I might have missed a step and my heart definitely missed two beats.

I cursed out the cat and collected myself. I turned around to make sure nobody saw me in my unmanly state. And I picked up my path home, still a little alarmed.

“But what about the cat?” I thought. “I bet I gave her a good scare, too. Must be why she bolted like that! But she deserved it.” And a sly smile spread across my face.

You might think I’m a miserable person to gloat over possibly scaring a cat. Perhaps you’re right. But I’m reporting the more shameful parts of my life to bring you an idea. A copywriting idea. A copywriting idea which I think might be powerful.

It goes like this:

1. Think of your prospect

2. Think of other people who are around your prospect, and who are causing your prospect fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc.

3. Write your headline: Here’s how to cause fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc. to those other people

You may this is deranged. Again, perhaps you’re right. But aren’t you at least curious to see this idea in action? If so, here are three successful examples:

1. Gary Halbert. Selling his own newsletter. His prospect? Anybody who’s trying to sell something… and is finding it frustrating or even humiliating. Gary’s headline:

How to make people line up and beg you to take their money!

2. A top Clickbank offer right now, called His Secret Obsession. It’s targeted at women. Who want to win a man’s “love, attention, and total devotion for LIFE.” But not just any man! There’s a very specific guy these women have in mind, because (my guess)… they are OBSESSED.

3. John Carlton. Like Gary, John also poked into dark places of the soul. It might be horrible… but it works. Even to sell golf instructional videos:

How Does An Out-Of-Shape 55-Year-Old Golfer, Crippled By Arthritis And 71 Lbs. Overweight, Still Consistently Humiliate PGA Pros In Head-To-Head Matches By Hitting Every Tee Shot Further And Straighter Down The Fairway?

“The answer will shock and delight you!” writes John.

​​I bet. After all, just imagine. You’re not as disadvantaged as this overweight, crippled golfer… and Tom, Dick, and Horace down at the country club definitely aren’t PGA pros… so the humiliation will be immense! But they deserve it.

By the way, if you’re curious about the “How to” promise in my headline today… you can find these special client management strategies inside my daily email newsletter. Here’s where to sign up.

This is it

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A fluff warning:

Today’s post is not about marketing or copywriting. It’s about vague life fluff. If that don’t interest you, I can understand.

But if it doesn’t turn you off, then let me set up the fluff with a poetic scene I saw this morning:

I was walking along a wooded path that runs through the middle of my home town.

A guy and his large dog were there. The guy let the dog off the leash, and the dog started gamboling about.

A second guy passed by on a bike, biking slowly up the gravel path.

The dog saw the biker, and he saw the chance for some fun. So he started running alongside the biker, barking loudly.

The biker was clearly not comfortable with this large dog’s attention. He kept on biking carefully and tried to stay away from the dog.

Of course, this meant the dog kept running along the bike happily and barking his warm dog heart out.

Meanwhile, the owner was yelling at the dog to come back. This was not working. So the owner started running after the biker and the dog.

And the whole threesome turned into a slowly moving procession, each keeping a perfect distance from the other two, as they made their way up the hill:

The biker, nervously trying to stay away from the dog… the dog, alongside the bike, barking and wagging his tail… and the owner, cursing and running at just enough pace to not lose the dog and the bike.

This made me think of another scene, one that happened a couple of months ago:

I was sitting on a bench at a Crossfit-style gym at the top of a fancy hotel in a cool city of a country halfway across the world. It was the middle of the morning, and the gym was empty, because besides me, most people have jobs to go to instead of being free to go for a workout.

I was taking a break between two exercises. And I was sitting on a bench, completely lost inside my head, thinking furiously about plans and projects I have for the mid-term future.

I was restless and unhappy. There’s so much to do, I thought, and I’m doing it so slowly. But once I manage to do it all, life will be sweet. Maybe in six months’ time.

And suddenly, I had an est-like realization.

“This is it,” I thought. “This is all there is. What exactly will be different in six months’ time?”

“The world around me will be more or less ok, depending on the moment, just as it is today. And I will still be lost in my head, thinking about the future and how much better things will be in another six months. Regardless of what I’ve accomplished in the meantime.”

You might think this sounds depressing, but for me it was good. I keep coming back to it, whenever I find myself getting anxious and wound up. Almost always, it’s because some part of me is barking at the future, and at all the stuff I haven’t done yet but want to do.

“This is it,” I repeat the line from Semi-Tough. “This is all there is.” And it makes me feel better.

The guy on the bike eventually stopped. This made the dog stop as well. The owner caught up to the two of them, leashed the dog, and then they were all off on their way again.

​​The barking disappeared. The biker and the owner both looked relieved. And the dog soon focused his enthusiasm and energy elsewhere.

The end. Except, if you want more content that’s less like this, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter. Usually it’s more cynical and exploitative, but I do occasionally write about “What am I doing with my life” moments like this.

In case you’d like to try my newsletter out, you can join here.

A followup to my Trump prediction from last year

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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an email for my email newsletter where I predicted that Trump would lose the election. My arguments were based on three persuasion “first principles”:

1. People vote against the other guy rather than for their guy

2. The only thing that disqualifies you from becoming president are looking annoying or having a fucked up name

3. People care more about getting out of hell than about getting into (or staying in) heaven

I remembered my prediction today because I read an article about a guy named Gerd Gigerenzer. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and he studies how simple rules of thumb often outperform complex data-driven predictions. There’s apparently a lot of interest in Gigerenzer’s work in the world of healthcare and finance and I suppose political modeling.

Makes sense to me. After all, I’m 1-for-1 with my political predictions based on simple rules of thumb.

Which got me thinking…

Perhaps you should write down a list of rules of thumb you yourself find useful. In your personal life… in your business life… for managing your own bad self. Perhaps force yourself to explicitly state how you make choices and predictions… because you might be able to rely on those same rules of thumb in other situations, too.

Perhaps I should do the same. In fact, I started writing down exactly such a list today. But then I remebered something else. Last summer, I had actually created this very thing.

Back then I called it, “My 10 direct response fundamentals that work almost any time.” You can find them at the link below.

There’s nothing very shocking here. But perhaps these rules can help you make a better marketing decision next time… or avoid a stupid mistake that you will hate yourself for. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/second-hand-news-my-10-direct-response-fundamentals-that-work-almost-any-time/

You’ve got everything it takes to motivate people

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“Come on, let’s play!”

“No you go ahead. It’s black magic to me.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to it. It’s only judgment and memory. Judgment you’ve got plenty of… and didn’t you once write an article about how to remember just about anything?”

“Memory and judgment, huh? All right, I guess I could give it a try.”

In How To Win Friends And Influence People, Dale Carnegie tells a story about being roped into playing bridge with some friends. “Bridge? Oh, no! No! Not me,” said Carnegie. “I knew nothing about it.” And yet he wound up playing.

The above little dialogue gives you a clue how. Because Carnegie’s friend used a standard way of motivating and inspiring people. Speaking of which, here’s a quick aside:

For a long time, I considered myself congenitally unable to motivate or inspire people. Perhaps it’s my own lack of enthusiasm, which I was projecting outwards.

But it turns out that, just as with the broader topic of persuasion, there are formulas for motivating people and stirring them to action.

Carnegie’s friend may have known that intuitively.

But if you can read (which you can), and if you’re willing to follow a few simple directions (and why wouldn’t you be)… then you can motivate people, whether it comes intuitively or not.

Anyways, once upon a time, I collected a list of 10 such formulas for motivating and inspiring.

The tactic from Carnegie’s anecdote above, telling people they already have everything they need to succeed, is no. 1.

If you’d like to read the rest… and maybe even apply them in your own dealings with customers, clients, and perhaps your sullen friends and family… then take a look below:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/