Productivity

How business owners can stop chasing every shiny object like a dog chasing soap bubbles

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I have a new plan. I’m trying to get in shape. I’m walking walk two hours a day as part of my plan. I’m listening to podcasts and courses to keep myself occupied while I walk.

I want to share a good idea with you that I just heard while walking around Barcelona in the rain, getting in shape, and getting wise at the same time.

The idea came up in a discussion between Dean Jackson and Frank Kern.

Both Dean and Frank are successful, influential, long-tenured Internet marketers who have made, I’m guessing, tens of millions of dollars for themselves and prolly hundreds of millions for clients and partners.

The discussion I listened to today was about focusing on what you’re irreplaceable at, and getting others to do the rest. Familiar enough stuff.

(It’s the “who not how” distinction, which Dean originated, and which his partner Dan Sullivan then turned into a best-selling book.)

At some point, Frank Kern threw out the following, less familiar thought experiment.

Imagine, says Frank, that you are a typical small business owner who has gotten to a certain level of success by working hard, and who is trying to get to the next level by working even harder.

The classic “10 million irons in the fire.”

And then imagine, in Frank’s words, that:

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… you are personally enjoined — legal term there — you are personally enjoined from doing any of this stuff yourself, except coming up with ideas.

Which means now you have to pay for the “who.”

What that would bring — and I know the listener is probably like, “okay don’t tell me I have to do this, this is horrible” — what that would bring is incredible clarity and purpose in the execution of the ideas.

If you had to pay to execute on every idea, you would immediately get yourself out of the “I’ve got 10 million irons in the fire” thing. Because you’re paying for it, right? So it’s like, well crap, if I’m paying all that…

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Maybe I found this insightful because I’m actually in the process of hiring an assistant, and maybe I’ll even end up hiring two. Always insightful hearing what you want to believe.

In any case, if you’re running your own business, particularly if you’re a “solopreneur,” one-man band, one-woman show, this might be a worthwhile thought experiment to put to yourself the next time you come across a hot new opportunity you cannot wait to jump on.

“What if I were enjoined to not do any of this myself, and I could only pay somebody to implement this for me?”

If your answer is a shudder, then consider whether this hot new opportunity, which you don’t find worth paying money to implement, is worth paying for in a different, much scarcer currency, namely your own time and energy.

On the other hand, if you find that you are okay hiring, then you’ve got options. You can still do it yourself. Or you can hire. Or you can even hire two people.

Anyways, I gotta go make popcorn and drink a beer. That is not part of my getting in shape plan. But it is important.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear Dean and Frank’s full discussion — recommended if you are more busy and less productive than you like — here’s where to go:

https://www.morecheeselesswhiskers.com/podcast/147

How to get your list to pay you to create your own lead magnet

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A couple days ago, brand strategist Chavy Helfgott posted a little case study in my Daily Email House community. Maybe it’s something you can profit from.

Chavy wrote:

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I’ve been working with John on monetizing my list, and after several weeks of asking lots of questions to my readers, we realized the following:

1) Creating a lead magnet was something that would solve problems for many of my readers

2) I myself don’t have a proper lead magnet with which to steadily grow my list with high quality subscribers

So – John conceived of the idea of running a live cohort for a minimal price, in which I would build a lead magnet for myself while showing the cohort members my process, and giving them feedback as they create theirs.

Jan 29 – initial tease to my list and LinkedIn to gauge interest

Feb 4 – official “launch” with an email describing the live cohort

Feb 13 – registration closed

Total marketing: 12 emails to my small list & 10 LinkedIn posts

Zero ad spend.

15 days from concept creation to launch closing.

4 cohort members paying me $99 each.

Our first call is on Monday, and I’ve already built a template that is on its way to becoming my first sellable info-product.

And of course, I started creating my own lead magnet, which will probably be a summary of this lead magnet building process.

So – if you, too, are a barefoot shoemaker, perhaps you can also let your audience pay for the privilege of coming along for the ride as you make your own shoes.

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Like Chavy says, we all have important things we want to do, need to do, aren’t doing….

… so why not create an offer out of it?

You can do like Chavy is doing, and run a cohort program. Charge people some nontrivial but very easy price, and guide them through the same process you are following.

It makes sure you do what you need to do, plus it builds an offer for you, plus it gets you buyers you can sell other things to.

Pr you can do like I’m doing with my “Behind The Scenes” auction.

Fact is, for the past few months now, I’ve been creating “systems” docs for several things I do or want to do better, in which I put real-world data, make hypotheses based on that data, and create systems that get me better results over time.

I’ve created such “systems” docs for promos, for followup, and for auctions, among other things.

Except, I’m not as diligent as I should be at updating these docs and putting in the data and making hypotheses and creating ever better systems.

So I figured, why not turn my “auction systems” doc into an offer, take other people for the ride, get paid a bit of money to actually do what I should be doing?

That’s what’s happening tomorrow.

In case you missed my emails about it over the past few days… I’ll be running an auction.

Bidding starts at $1.

The offer on auction is the “Behind The Scenes” of the auctions I have run already and will be running (I currently have 8 auction partners who are at various stages, and all are still moving forward).

The “Behind The Scenes” I will share will include offers on auction (both public and private)… sales numbers… interesting marketing… sales DMs… “day after” conclusions… along with the “auction system” I am devising based on all this data.

I’m thinking to make bonuses available as well for tomorrow’s auctions, Such as, how I have and will be getting auction partners… a live ride-along with me on an auction, plus a share of the money made… and other bonuses that are suggested by auction participants in real time.

Maybe tomorrow’s auction will be a flop, and winning bid ends up at $13.

Maybe I will be able to do like Chavy, and make a bit of cash, a few hundred dollars or more, by taking people along for the ride with me.

In any case, I figure I will get something out of it, in the form of the “auction systems” doc I should be creating anyhow, plus data (from tomorrow’s auction) that I can put into that doc to make my auction systems better.

If you’d like to participate in the auction (I will have a prize for anyone bidding), here’s where the auction will go down, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 7pm CET/1pm EST/10am PST:

https://t.me/+_qLpIllO2IZlM2Q0

Time to wrap up my 2020 “NYE Party”

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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

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

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

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

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

Point being:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tactical info vs. info that gets results

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

I mean, what’s not to like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe if you attend, you will hear something new?

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tomorrow: Free call on the productivity system that works

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

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

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

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

You’re invited to join us for this call.

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

Here’s where to reserve your spot:

​https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Announcing: 2026 NYE Party

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Maybe you’ve noticed?

It’s 2026.

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

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

The “NYE” in this case is special.

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

I’m jealous of this lead gen funnel

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

$3.99? As an affiliate?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Igor does, apparently.

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

It wasn’t always like this.

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, there will be a special deal.

Of course, there will be bonuses.

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

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

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

What Hysterical Hulks can teach you about procrastination

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See if you can spot the pattern:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What changes in situations of hysterical strength?

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

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

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

The brain hinders us like this to keep us safe.

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

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

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

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

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

And it’s my advice to you tonight.

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

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

My auction is ALIVE

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

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

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

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

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

CHIRP

CHIRP

CHIRP

… breaking the silence?

I’ll be 100% honest with you:

I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can tell you this:

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

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

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

One thing is for sure:

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/house