Personal Change

Hungry Hamza’s ISIS diet fail

by

A few weeks ago, news surfaced that British jihadi Hamza Parvez was being held in a Syrian prison.

Hamza was one of the first Britons to join ISIS — he ran away in 2014 to Syria, after convincing his UK family that he was going to study in Germany.

So what was Hamza doing in Syria?

Well, along with standard ISIS duties, he appeared in a recruiting video. He also tried to create a social media following back home in the UK, to convince other young Britons to come join him in the land of jihad.

But he failed in his social media quest.

The trouble seems to have been that Hamza, who was solidly built at the start of his ISIS career, lost almost 70 lbs. while in Syria.

He wasn’t happy about the distribution of food within ISIS.

And unfortunately, he decided to complain about this online. At one point, he even wrote on Twitter how he had a dream — ordering food from KFC, Nando’s, and even his fave Thai place.

As a result, his online followers started to mock him as “Hungry Hamza,” and his jihadi credibility went down the tubes.

There’s a lesson here for hungry marketers as well.

It’s from a throwaway comment I heard Ben Settle make in his now-dead podcast.

“Whatever you do,” Ben said, “you want to make it look easy.”

He was talking both about the content of your marketing (ie. don’t complain about being hungry)…

As well as about the form (ie. keep sending out an email each day, as though it costs you zero effort).

Of course, the reality might well be that you’re hungry…

Or that producing a constant stream of marketing content is costing you effort.

But your audience — jihadi or not — never needs to know that.

Hopefully this helps you in your own marketing.

And if you want more advice of how to write fresh daily emails that never sound hungry, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

An inspirational sermon on the world’s greatest art thief

by

In February of 1997, a man named Stephane Breitwieser walked into the Rubens House in Antwerp, Belgium.

It wasn’t his first visit to the museum.

In fact, he and his girlfriend, who helped him in many of his capers, had already staked it out multiple times.

You see, Breitwieser, only 25 at the time, was an expert in stealing art.

During his career, he stole over $1.4 billion worth of paintings, statues, jewelry, tapestries, chalices, weapons, musical instruments, and religious relics — all in broad daylight, without any violence, threats, or damage.

On this particular day, Breitwieser walked out with a small ivory figurine by a 17th-century master.

And he got away with it.

In fact, he kept getting away with it.

And as his successes mounted, he kept getting more brazen — and more addicted to stealing.

The amazing thing was he wasn’t doing any of it for money.

He never sold anything he stole.

Instead, he stashed it all in his room, on the top floor of his mother’s house, where he would lie around and admire all the beautiful things he now owned.

Of course, eventually Breitwieser’s extraordinary run came to an end.

He was arrested after returning to the Richard Wagner Museum in Switzerland, where he had stolen a little curled bugle several days earlier.

Once arrested, Breitwieser broke down at the police station, and wound up confessing to the theft of over 300 pieces, from over 200 museums.

Now here’s the instructional part.

Breitwieser eventually got out of jail.

And while he was legally forbidden from setting foot into the museums he had stolen from, he nonetheless made his way back to the Rubens House in Antwerp.

He looked at the statuette he had stolen twenty years earlier, which was reinstated in the exhibit.

And he realized that that day in February 1997 was probably the very high point of his life.

He had gotten such a rush from stealing.

He had amassed such a treasure trove of beautiful objects.

And he felt invincible — for a while.

But that was all long gone.

Now he was on the outside, and he would never be able to reclaim his former thieving glory.

Kind of a strange thought.

That a moment in your life, 20 years ago, was as good as it will ever get.

And that the rest of your life will only be one long anticlimax.

But here’s the thing.

Fortunately, you are probably not an art thief — real or aspiring.

And so, even if you look back in your past and realize that things used to be better than they are now…

There’s nothing stopping you from working towards a new goal, which will overshadow whatever pinnacle you had achieved in the past.

And the thing is, the very act of working towards that goal will give you more meaning and satisfaction than any past achievement could.

At least, that’s how I see it.

And how I try to live my life.

Maybe you disagree.

And if you do — or you need some inspirational copy written for your email list — get in touch with me and let me know what’s up.

My growing respect for the beat-up Irish clown

by

A few weeks back, MMA fighter Conor McGregor announced he would retire.

At one point, McGregor was the UFC lightweight champion. Right now, he’s best known for trash-talking, street brawls, and taking any opportunity to promote his own brand of Irish whiskey.

For me personally, he’s an easy guy to hate.

How could you not?

McGregor talked a lot shit prior to his last fight. He then got his ass kicked convincingly over four rounds, and had to tap out. This didn’t keep him from talking shit — and he still keeps it up, even now that he is supposedly (but unconvincingly) retired.

​​To top it all off, he looks and acts like a clown — albeit a dangerous, aggressive clown.

That’s how I felt. Until recently.

Recently, as I watched various clips of Conor McGregor prior to his last fight, I got a strange impression.

I realized that in spite of all the boasting, here was a man who realized full-well that he would go into the cage and probably get beat up, and beat up badly.

He was willing to get punched and kicked and strangled by one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

And he was willing to make a fool of himself before and after the physical beatdown.

And for what?

For long-term success, that’s what. McGregor reportedly earned $100 million last year — only a few million of which came from his fight money. The rest came from endorsements, and increasingly, from his own business ventures.

Like that whiskey company, which is now selling more bottles than Jameson.

And that was my strange impression — that McGregor’s provocative fight persona is all done with an eye to the future. And it’s working for him.

Because of this, he reminds me of another sports figure who went on to have big success in business (and further).

I’m thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And so I wasn’t surprised to find that McGregor and Schwarzenegger hold each other in very high regard.

But anyhow, what’s the point of all this?

It’s simply to recommend a bit of Conor McGregor’s attitude.

Of course, you don’t have to allow yourself to literally get brutalized in pursuit of massive amounts of money.

But figuratively? Maybe learn to take a punch. And allow yourself to get laughed at, to be mocked, and to be humiliated.

After all, you’ve got a plan. And you will be a success one day, while everybody else will still be cackling at their keyboards and behind their TV’s.

At least that’s how I look at it. And if you want more of my thinking on the psychology behind success in marketing, you can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Where will you be in March 2091?

by

Right now, Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster is cruising through outer space, somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars. A dummy named Starman is sitting inside the car, wearing a pressure suit and listening to David Bowie.

Musk launched his car into space last year, Starman dummy and all, as part of a test launch of his SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Now, Elon Musk is clearly a smart guy.

But there are lots of other people in the world who are as smart as he is.

And yet, he’s the only one who has managed to make electric cars sexy…

And to then send them into space on a rocket built by his own private company.

In other words, there is something to be said for thinking big.

The more I learn about business, the more I realize many people do not think big enough.

Again, many people out there are smart. Many of them have honed valuable skills or expertise. And many are willing to work hard.

And yes, all of these ingredients are necessary.

But for making a big success, you also have to develop the habit of thinking bigger than you’ve been used to.

This can be surprisingly difficult.

And I feel that, past a certain point, it’s really the only thing that distinguishes people who have enormous success — like Elon Musk — from those who don’t achieve very much.

Now, I’m sure there are lots of psychological strategies you can use to get yourself to think bigger.

But ultimately, I think it comes down to a simple decision.

You can start to think bigger.

So why not start it now?

Anyways, that’s my pep talk for this Friday. In case you decide to start thinking bigger with your business, and you want help with marketing, you might get some good ideas from the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

And one final point before I take off:

The starbound Tesla Roadster is on an elliptical trajectory around the sun.

The next time it gets close to Earth, it will be 2091.

The question is, where are you going to be then?

St. Amy, the patron saint of imposters

by

About five years ago, the Internet lit up with a viral story.

It was based on a Ted talk given by one Amy Cuddy, a psychology professor at Harvard Business School.

The gist of the talk was that striking a “power pose” — for example, standing like Wonder Woman, arms akimbo, legs apart — could have impressive effects on your body. It would lower your stress hormones, making you less anxious. It would also increase your testosterone levels, making you more confident and assertive.

Cuddy went on stage and explained what motivated this research.

She had suffered an injury earlier in life.

And for a long time, the consequences of this injury made her feel inadequate.

Even when she had made it to the post of Harvard professor, she still worried people would see through the fact that she is an imposter.

The power poses video made her a star and seemed to vindicate all her years of suffering and striving. Except for one thing:

Over the coming years, it turned out it all might be a big (if unwitting) lie.

The original study that the power pose research was based on was flawed. (The number of subjects was small, and there was some kind of statistical fuddling.) Other scientists couldn’t reproduce the results. And it might well be that the effects of power posing on hormones don’t even exist.

In other words, poor Amy Cuddy actually became a real-word though unintentional imposter.

Very sad.

And quite poetic.

But also a good lesson I think. You see, there’s only a very imperfect relationship between succeeding and deserving. That’s a sort of universal law I believe in.

The story of St. Amy illustrates this in both directions. She felt undeserving even when she was obviously qualified (a professor at Harvard, no less). And she wound up succeeding more than she deserved (through the power poses fiasco).

So what’s the lesson?

For me personally, it’s simple and it only goes in one direction:

Always look for more success than you think you deserve.

After all, if the connection between deserving and succeeding is imperfect, why not take advantage of this? (That’s not to say you shouldn’t also build up your “deservingness” at the same time.)

Anyways, this is something that definitely applies if you are a freelancer.

For example, if you’re starting out on an online platform like Upwork, you might think that all clients can see your lack of skill or experience.

And that nobody will hire you, and legitimately so.

Not so, legitimately or otherwise.

You can compete as a freelancer and be successful on Upwork, even at the very beginning.

I write about the exact steps to do this in my upcoming book on becoming a successful sales copywriter on Upwork. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

How not to get what you want

by

“Things are different now. First you have to be friends. You have to like each other. Then you neck. This could go on for years. Then you have tests, and then you get to do it with a condom. The good news is you split the check.”
— Rob Reiner’s character in Sleepless in Seattle

A while back, when I was living in Budapest, I decided to get more involved in the city’s startup scene.

So what to do? I thought of different options:

I could go to local meetups where people were giving talks…

I could start working at coworking spaces and try to make friends on my breaks…

Or I could simply find a list of startups, contact their founders, and introduce myself.

Which is what I did one Monday. By Wednesday, I was having beers with the American-born founder of an English-teaching startup.

The point being, many ways can lead you to a goal, but often, the direct path is the most effective. On the other hand, indirect, passive, or timid strategies are frequently how NOT to get what you want — because they leave you exhausted, distracted, and sitting in a ditch by the side of the road.

By the way, this doesn’t just apply to beers with startup founders.

It’s actually a broader life principle with me.

It underlies how I meet women (definitely not with Rob Reiner’s passive approach above). It’s also how I achieved freedom in my life, so I don’t have to sit in an office every day. This directness principle is even guiding my efforts at getting rich.

Speaking of the last two things:

One thing has been instrumental in my being able to get out of the office forever, and to start making solid money without having a boss.

That thing has been working as a freelance sales copywriter on the online platform Upwork.

Sure, when I got started, I had zero experience as a sales copywriter and I wasn’t getting paid a lot.

But I was able to raise my rates very quickly, work fewer hours, and have more time to devote to other projects.

I don’t think what I’ve been able to do is unique. In other words, anybody who wants to can do the same. In fact, I’m writing a short guide right now on exactly how to do this.

This guide is almost finished, and when it’s done, I’ll put it up on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. If you want to get notified when it’s out (there will be a short free promo period), sign up below:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Gary Halbert’s first and most important lesson

by

A long time ago, in a beautiful city far, far away…

I worked as an IT office drudge, and I decided I had had enough.

Fortunately, I knew a guy who was doing freelance copywriting.

I thought I could do the same, so I took a week off my regular IT job to sit at home and try it out.

I wanted to see if I could do the writing, and what it would be like to work by myself.

The writing part was fine, and I decided that I would give the freelance life a shot.

However, there was one problem.

Two days after starting my stay-at-home work experiment, I started to get depressed.

Not sad.

Not hopeless.

Just my nervous system seemed to be slowly shutting down, and I found it hard to concentrate or feel very motivated about achieving anything.

And again, this happened just two days after trying to work from home by myself.

The good thing was, I had a suspicion of what the problem was.

And I had a quick fix for it.

In fact, it’s an idea I got from the Prince of Print, old Gary Halbert himself.

It’s something that Gary once called his first and most important lesson.

And it’s something I continue to apply to this day, and that I consider to be vital in making me a successful freelance copywriter.

The thing is, this has nothing to do with writing.

Nothing to do with persuasion.

And yet, without it, I could never have succeeded in making a comfortable career, working a couple of hours a day, usually in my pajamas.

Anyways, if you want to know what this important lesson is, you can rifle through the thousands of pages of content that Gary Halbert has left online as his legacy. It won’t be a waste of your time.

However, if for any reason you don’t want to go that route, there is a second option.

You can also consult my upcoming book,  which covers freelance copywriting on Upwork.

I’m making my way through all the sections I’ve planned out for this book, and I should be finished with it by the end of the month.

If you want to get notified once it’s out, simply sign up below, and I’ll send you an email to let you know when I finish. And then, you’ll have Gary’s secret lesson all to yourself. Here’s the link to get notified:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Freelancing incels on Upwork

by

Around April of this year, a polarizing new term entered everyday language.

The word is “incel,” short for involuntary celibate.

This is typically a man, one who meets three criteria:

First, he’s not getting laid, and he can’t see a way to get women into his life.

Second, he’s suffering for it.

Third (and possibly most important), he wants to feel like a victim.

These incel guys have had a lot of hate piled onto them once their secret Internet lairs became exposed. I’m not sure that’s wise or fair, considering that A) these guys are suffering and B) many other people in our society like to feel like victims.

Consider for example, a post I saw in a copywriting group on Facebook a few days ago. The text read,

“Well, then. Serves me right for trying Upwork again.”

… and below this was a screenshot of a message that this freelancer got from a potential Upwork client. The client was trying to clarify what the freelancer’s rates were: 0.15 cents per word (which seemed too low), or 15 cents per word (which the potential client said was way out of their budget).

Now, I’m not here to discuss these rates, but rather the attitude. You see, this post and the thread that followed seemed to be made up of unsuccessful freelancers wringing their hands and shaking their heads about how Upwork clients are terrible and how they don’t offer fair wages for fair work.

To me, this sounds a lot like those other incels. Their problems are different, but the victim mentality is the same.

The fact is, there are good clients on Upwork. I know, because I work with them, month after month, year after year. And yes, I know they are far outnumbered by people who cannot or will not pay you what you want. That doesn’t mean you cannot make Upwork work.

But the thing is, nobody owes you anything.

And so, rather than going on Facebook and complaining about how you can’t find good clients on Upwork (or going on Reddit and complaining about how you can’t get a girlfriend), I think it’s much better to take the attitude that this situation is your own fault and your own responsibility to improve.

So how to improve it?

As I mentioned a while back, I was interviewed about how I managed to become successful on Upwork. I’ve had that interview transcribed, and I’m going to expand it a bit and make it into a little Kindle ebook. For now though, if you want to read the raw transcript itself and see how to become a top-rated, well-paid copywriter on Upwork, write me an email, and I’ll send you a copy. Here’s how to get in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/contact/

Roger Federer offers a bit of negotiation wisdom

by

Last night, Roger Federer lost in the semifinals of the ATP year-closing tournament.

This means that Federer, possibly the greatest player who has ever played tennis, still has just 99 titles under his belt.

Asked by a journalist whether he needs that elusive 100th title, Federer responded:

“I don’t NEED it. I will breathe air if not.”

It might sound as if Federer is simply debating semantics, or that he’s even a little testy after his loss.

That’s not what’s going on.

Here’s a bit from an interview earlier in the week when he was asked a similar question:

“Personally I’m still not thinking of the number 100. I won’t let that get in my head, make me go crazy because it should be something I’m excited about and not something I should feel extra pressure about.”

This exactly mirrors what negotiation coach Jim Camp says.

One of Camp’s main rules is not to get needy. In other words, don’t trick yourself into thinking you need something when you actually don’t, and when you have all the things (like air) that you actually do need.

There was a time when I didn’t fully get the importance of this.

“There’s no difference,” I used to think, “between really wanting something and needing it.”

If that’s how you feel now, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise.

All I can do is tell you that I noticed, personally, that needing something actually seems to take place in an entirely different part of the brain than wanting that same thing. It seems to be an entirely different chemical process, and an entirely different emotion.

In short, even though it might seem needing and wanting are closely related, in truth they couldn’t be further apart.

As Jim Camp himself wrote in his book Start with No:

“As a negotiator aspiring to excellence, you must, at all costs, avoid showing need. In order to avoid showing need, you must never feel it. You do not need this deal. But what happens if we simply substitute the word and the emotion ‘want’ for ‘need’? The dynamics change. […] ‘Need’ is death, ‘want’ is life.”

I doubt Federer read Camp’s Start with No, but he seems to have learned the same lesson on his own.

And even though he only has 99 titles to his name, it’s hard to say his focus on wanting instead of needing has left him with a lack of motivation or success.

Something to think about, whatever your chosen field is.

A special note if you happen to be in the health field and you want (not need) more effective marketing:

You might like my upcoming book on email marketing in  the health space.

Along with advice on actually writing emails and structuring email marketing sequences to sell supplements and health info courses, this book will also have a section on the mindset you should adopt to be successful in today’s marketing-saturated world — such as the Roger Federer/Jim Camp lesson above.

Anyways, if you’d like a free copy of this book when it comes out (I’m planning to sell it for $17 when it is out), put your red RF headband on, and sign up at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to lift the fog of procrastination

by

Cal Newport, a computer science professor who also writes about productivity, once had an interesting theory about procrastination. In Cal’s own words:

“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.”

(Put simply, we procrastinate when we don’t have a convincing plan.)

When I first read this theory, I thought it was flat-out stupid. I can’t remember why I disliked this idea at first. Nonetheless, it stuck in my mind, and it’s grown on me with time.

That’s because I’ve noticed it’s exactly what’s happening whenever I procrastinate. If I’m ever vague on my strategy for moving forward, I might be able to force myself to move for a while. Pretty soon though, I find I can’t get myself to move at all.

I’ve also noticed the inverse. That is, I’ve noticed that when I improve on my plan, when I clean it up and make it tighter, then suddenly I’m energized to get to work. Seemingly complex problems often resolve themselves simply by writing down what needs to be done, and then putting those tasks in some kind of sensible order.

It’s like a driver in a fog. With nothing to guide him, the driver will eventually slow down and stop, confused and disoriented about where he’s going. However, if there are nice white lines painted on the ground showing where the road goes, he can move forward — slower than in perfect weather, but forward, nonetheless.

Keep your eyes on the lines and you’re fine

Incidentally, this is how I managed to write a 15-page sales letter recently in just a few days. After about a week of research, I wrote an outline, broke it up into sections, arranged the sections into a list of alternately important and easy things to do, and chugged away down the list, without thinking too much along the way.

This is the difference between being fast and not ever finishing. If I had tried to simply sit and write, it wouldn’t have just taken me longer. Odds are, I would have gotten bogged down completely, and not moved past the first two or three pages.