Personal Change

Curiosity considered harmful

by

“The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

— Dorothy Parker

I came across this quote on January 29, in a bout of idle clicking online.

I took note of it and wrote it down.

The article I was reading used this quote to make it sound like perpetual curiosity is a good thing.

But if you’ve spent any time in Internet Marketing land, where I live online, you know that perpetual curiosity can be harmful.

It’s Saturday morning as I write this. I’ve been awake for only a few hours but so far my media and content consumption has consisted of:

– A few paragraphs of an article on quantum physics (“mysteries finally resolved?”)

– A few minutes of a training by marketer Travis Sago (I was chuffed to hear my name mentioned right in the first few minutes)

– An excerpt of a tennis podcast hosted by former world no. 1 Andy Roddick (“Is Alcaraz the second coming of Roger Federer?”)

– Several articles on St. Valentine and the history of Valentine’s Day (a Roman holiday, rebranded)

– A summary of the book Million Dollar Consulting by Adam Weiss (“sell outcomes not deliverables”)

– Several visits to my Daily Email House community, to see what people have guessed so far in response to a marketing riddle I’ve posted (nobody’s got it yet)

– A half dozen trips to my email inbox, because, you know, maybe somebody’s written me something important? (no)

Point being, I am what you might generously call a curious person, and what you might less generously call a distractible and scatterbrained layabout.

I realized a long time ago that I would starve to death and die alone, by the side of the road, if I just kept following my curiosity wherever it led me.

I also realized a long time ago that people who end up successful in direct marketing are, like me, all opportunity seekers at heart, who have somehow figured out a way to survive in spite of their perpetual opportunity seeking.

Because while there is no cure for curiosity, there is a palliative, and it’s to do something with what you found out, to put it to use.

I wasted much of this morning in idle clicking around and reading stuff that interested me for the moment.

That’s how I spend much of my day, every day, even now, that I am reasonably successful and productive.

I’ve been able to afford myself this luxury because I pay the piper every day, and I do something with at least a tiny portion of all the information I’ve been exposed to.

Specifically, I write a daily email.

Writing a daily email has kept me from starving to death, alone, by the side of the road.

It’s even allowed me to live a comfortable and interesting life.

Interesting both because I’ve been allowed to keep idly following almost every fascinating story and sales page and link that draws my attention…

… and because actually implementing a bit of what I’ve learned, every day, has opened up incredible opportunities and hidden doors, which I never would have known about had I simply stayed in pure curiosity-land.

Writing every day is a great way to do something with all the info you’re seeking out every day.

If you’re not yet writing daily, I highly recommend it.

And if you want my help in putting some structure around your own perpetual curiosity, and getting an email out every day, consistently, in reasonable time, so you quickly can get back to clicking and reading and being fascinated, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery…

by

A long time reader and professional copywriter writes in to ask about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026, and which I’ve been promoting all week:

===

John, be honest… is the copy the system spits out for the advertorials any good?

Because compared to your advertorial copy, I don’t know, man.

I looked at the advertorial samples on the sales page, and one of them pretty much reads exactly like AI.

That second-to-last paragraph in the joint pain advertorial especially… it made absolutely no sense.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me being picky.

I just wanted to get your opinion before I consider pulling the trigger.

===

Is the copy any good?

I can’t say. I haven’t used the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system myself. But I think the proof is in the pudding.

Does it matter if professional copywriters say it reads like AI?

Or is it more important if it’s making sales to cold traffic, and both the business and the copywriter are making bank?

As for the results of the copy this system produces — the 30% boosts in conversions, the millions of dollars worth of resulting sales, the $49k paychecks — I trust Sam Bradbury-Butler and Thom Benny, the two guys who created this offer. That’s why I’m promoting this to you full-throat.

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery, I think that’s a noble goal to strive after.

All I will say is it’s much easier to get good as a copywriter if you have successful clients… if you are working on real projects… if you can see sales coming in hourly or minutely… if you have opportunities to test and get results on your tests every day.

Ultimately that’s what this opportunity is about:

Get clients, get results, get paid.

If that’s something that interests you, either so you can take your ample earnings and chill in your ample free time, or so you can take your client relationships and use them to turn yourself into the next Gene Schwartz, here’s where to get at this opportunity, before it closes in a few short days:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Time to wrap up my 2020 “NYE Party”

by

The time has come to bring my NYE Party, which kicked off earlier this week, to a close. This ain’t no usual NYE Party though.

In my world, “NYE” stands for “No-Guilt Year of Efficiency.”

With this goal in mind for for 2026, I’m promoting Igor Kheifets’s 8020 Productivity training.

Igor’s training shows you the productivity system Igor himself used to go from working 80+ hour weeks and getting paid roughly the wage of a bagger at a Whole Foods…. to working 20 hours a week and making $4.3 million last year.

I’m also offering several bonuses, totaling $300 in real-world, previously-sold-for value, if you decide to get Igor’s training before the party comes to an end.

That will happen tonight at 12 midnight PST. I will stop the music, turn on all the lights, and gently escort any stragglers to the door.

If you want to find out the full details of this offer, while the party is still live, and possibly make a real breakthrough for yourself in 2026:

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

My recent productivity change and newfound free time

by

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

by

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:

===

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.

===

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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.