Reading

Curious George creates a course

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It’s been three days since I wrote an email about the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast of The Day After, which happened on November 20 1983.

​​A reader wrote in to ask about that:

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Beautiful story…but where do you find this kind of story?

Do you google the events for this day or something else? I’m really curious.

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The short answer is that, like Curious George, I’m a good little monkey, and always curious.

In the particular case of The Day After email, the sequence of events was as follows:

1. A few months ago, I was reading an email by Lawrence Bernstein. Lawrence was talking about how he managed to delete his entire email list. As he put it, “Sunday morning felt like one of my favorite dark films from 1983, ‘The Day After.'”

2. I had never heard of The Day After so I made a note of it in a list of “movies to watch” that I have been keeping for years.

3. Some time later, I watched The Day After, without knowing anything about it except that Lawrence likes it.

4. After watching the movie, I was curious to find out more. So I read up on it. I was impressed to find out all the stuff connecting The Day After to Ronald Reagan and the Soviets and nuclear war averted.

5. A few days later, the thought popped into my mind to check when exactly The Day After was first broadcast. It turned out the 40th anniversary was coming up in a few weeks’ time. I thought it might be cool to write about it on the actual anniversary. So I made a calendar entry telling me to write an email about it on the day of.

6. The calendar notification fired a few days ago. So I wrote down an outline of what I remembered about the movie. I plumped it up with some details taken from Wikipedia and ¡tachán!

The particulars of how I wrote that email are probably completely useless to you.

But there are a few underlying principles which you might profit from. Such as for example:

​​Keeping extensive notes and having lists of everything you might care about…

​Digging in when you come across an unfamiliar reference from somebody you respect…

O​​r using your calendar app to make your life easier and to make sure stuff gets done when it should.

Over the past few years, I’ve come up with a handful of such processes to make sure I never forget a good idea, never fail to draw a valuable connection, never miss out on a profitable opportunity.

Of course, it doesn’t work all the time. Or even much of the time.

​​Even so, these processes have been incredibly valuable to to me for daily email writing, previously for client work, futurely for new projects I am starting up.

This stuff has become such an integral part of how I work that I created a course, Insight Exposed, all about how I keep notes, and write journals, and process all of the ideas and information coming at me so I can turn them into something productive and profitable.

I released Insight Exposed back in February for a few days. But I haven’t been selling it since.

I will release it again soon, after I’ve polished it a bit. But more about that in its own email.

For now, let me just share something valuable that I’ve kept track of thanks to my Insight Exposed system.

It’s an article I came upon back in September. It was published in the lying New York Time, but in the opinion section, so maybe it’s true.

In any case, I found it insightful, so much so that i took note of it, processed the note, and put it into long-term storage, so I could share it with you today. In case you’re curious:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/opinion/sports-zen-mental-subtraction.html

How the mosquito built Rome

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In my email yesterday, I wrote about my home town’s curious plan to stop the coming mosquito hordes by importing a hundred thousand sterile mosquito males. To which I got a mosquito-themed reply from an Insights & More member named Jordan (not sure he wants me to share his last name):

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The talk about mosquitoes and books reminds me of the… mosquito book.

The Mosquito – Timothy Winegard

It’s actually very very interesting and showcases:

How the mosquito Built Rome
How the mosquito bested one of the greatest conquerors
How the mosquito ended slavery

(hows that for bullet point build out)

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I found this intriguing so I looked it up and yes — it turns out there’s a credible case to be made for the mosquito having built Rome.

​​In its early days, Rome was surrounded by hundreds of square miles of wetland, called the Pontine Marshes. Perfect for mosquitos. Perfect for malaria. Perfect for dying. Says Winegard:

“Armies coming to attack Rome — beginning with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and then the Visigoths, Attila and his Huns, and the Vandals — couldn’t essentially either take or hold Rome because of this malarial shield.”

Based on a quick search, it seems Winegard’s Mosquito book gives you:

1. Lots of surprising or even contrary ideas like the one above

2. A credible, well-researched reinterpretation of history

3. A new context for familiar things

… all of which means it might make a perfect choice for the Insights & More Book Club in the future.

Speaking of, the same Jordan who wrote me about the Mosquito book earlier wrote me about the last Insights & More book, the one we just finished. He said:

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The book was mind blowing (even thought I havent finished it yet)

Can’t wait for my first call experience and the next book

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It’s unfortunately too late to join for the next round of the Insights & More Book Club, because the doors have closed. But if you’d like to have the chance to join in the future, get on my email list. It’s the only place where I actually advertise and open up my book club.

1 mosquito summer lover ~ 3-4 books

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Yesterday, I was at the gym in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia — and for a brief moment, I was amused.

The gym is the daily break in my monk-like life, where I make a bit of contact with the outside world and find out what’s going on.

And so it was yesterday. The radio was blasting. In between the parade of 80s hits — Duran Duran, Guns N’ Roses — a newswoman came on the radio with the following announcement:

“NEWSFLASH: The city of Zagreb will be importing 100,000 mosquitos this summer. From Italy. All males. And all sterile.”

Apparently this is the best idea the local authorities have to control the rampant mosquito population in this crowded, marshy city.

And it’s not such a crazy idea:

The males mate several times throughout the season. The females mate only once. If a female happens to mate with a sterile male, she will still lay her evil mosquito eggs, but those won’t develop into buzzing, bloodsucking, sleep-destroying future monsters. Checkmate, mosquito bitches.

I remember a similar story some twenty years ago, after Neil Strauss published his book The Game.

The Game brought the secret world of pick up artists out of dark and sticky Internet bulletin boards and exposed it to the light of the mainstream.

I remember the outrage that many women expressed upon finding out that there’s a population of men who are gaming the signals of social status and sexual attractiveness.

And who can blame these women?

If you invest in something, and invest big, you want to make sure that investment will be fertile.

That applies to mates, human and mosquito… to business partners… to clients… to employers… to employees… and to teachers your learn from.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

I personally believe books are the best teachers in the world. Unfortunately, as James Altucher once calculated, we each have at most 1,000 books left to us for the rest of our lives.

Some of us, like me, read very slowly, and our number is significantly less than 1,000. That translates to 3-4 books each summer.

So you better make sure that each of those 3-4 interactions counts, and each of those learning opportunities is fertile, rather than sterile.

Which brings me to my Insights & More Book Club. The doors are currently open. They will close tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

The promise of the Insights & More Book Club is top-quality books, filled with surprising ideas. As for all the other details, well, you will have to sign up to my daily email newsletter to find those out. You can do so here.

Reader asks me how to read faster and retain the information

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I’ve been busy the last few days. Whenever I’m busy, I default to writing these emails in the easiest possible way. In my case, that’s emails about interesting or valuable ideas I’ve read somewhere.

Today, I have a bit more time, so I can indulge in writing an email that doesn’t come so easy to me, the Q&A email. A reader wrote in with a question last night, following my email yesterday:

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This was very insightful, you somehow always send an email related to something I’m trying to improve at the moment, thank you.

In the context of Reading, what strategy would YOU recommend to read faster and retain the information?

Will be trying the mentioned focus on the subtlety and easy to miss. details.

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My 100% serious answer:

If you want to read faster and retain the information, my best recommendation is to read slow.

​​It’s what I do. It helps that I read very slowly by nature, almost at a 5-year-old’s pace. But these days, I even encourage myself in it.

Reading slowly is how I always have lots of interesting ideas that I read somewhere that I can throw into an email if I’m rushed for time. Actually, it’s reading slowly, and taking lots of hand-written notes — of things that surprised me, made me smile, or reminded me of something else I had been reading.

Like the following, said once by a man often called the world’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga. Gary was talking about how he researches a book that he will then write a sales package for:

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You almost have to read a sentence, and think about it. Read another sentence. “Is there any possible drop of juice I could squeeze from this orange to turn it into marketing enticement in some way?” Don’t let a single paragraph go by without pausing. You don’t want to just race through it. Give it a lot of time, and think about each thing you’re looking at.

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Gary said that during his farewell seminar, which cost $5k to attend back in 2006, and the same large amount if you wanted to get the recordings.

Gary could charge that much money for a seminar because of his status — the results he had gotten, the endorsements from top people in the industry.

But there was another reason Gary could charge that much for his knowledge and experience. And that’s scarcity.

Gary never attended conferences. He never got up on stage to give talks. He almost never gave interviews.

In fact, I know of only two interviews Gary ever gave. One of those is with Ken McCarthy, and you have to join Ken’s System Club to get it. The other was a 6-part interview with A-list copywriter Clayton Makepeace, which was available for free on Clayton’s website until Clayton died and the website shut down.

If you take a bit of time and trouble, you can go on the Internet Archive and dig up all 6 parts of this interview. Or you can take me up on my offer today.

Because I’ve gone on the Internet Archive previously, and downloaded all 6 parts for my own files. If you’d like me to share them with you, write in, tell me which book or books you’re reading right now, and I’ll reply with the Gary B/Clayton MP interview.

I tried to make this email light and fluffy and still potentially valuable

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Two weeks ago, I got a check in the mail for $1,000. A real, physical check, landing in a real, physical mailbox, in Baltimore, MD, some 3,750 miles or 6,040 kilometers away from where I actually live now.

The backstory is t​hat last December, I wrote four articles for the Professional Writers Alliance.

​​It was great opportunity — write a few easy articles, promote myself to a list of copywriters, and even get paid for it. ​​​​$1,000 — that’s 42.5 movie nights for a couple, at an average ticket price of $11.75, if I can stay disciplined and not buy any popcorn.

But not just that.

​​I’m even supposed to get an extra $100 — that’s 4.25 more movie nights, no popcorn — after I do a kind of private podcast interview next week with Jen Adams from PWA. ​​Hopefully, it won’t be a check again because that first check is still languishing at a friend’s house in Baltimore, I imagine under a growing pile of magazines and takeout boxes.

I’m telling you all this because of the strange chain of events that led to this $1,000 check.

I wrote those PWA articles about my experience self-publishing my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters on Amazon.

I wrote that book, as I’ve shared many times before, based on James Altucher’s “I plagiarized” blog post, which I read the first time back in January 2020.

I discovered James’s blog a short time earlier because Mark Ford linked to it in his email newsletter.

I signed up Mark Ford’s newsletter maybe back in 2018, because Mark is a big name in the direct response world. I kept reading after I signed up because I in some way identified with Mark, or at least I identified the kind of person I might like to one day to be with Mark.

Maybe the point of the above chain of events is obvious to you. Maybe it’s not.

If not, you can find it explained in section 3.3 of my Insight Exposed training. You might potentially find that explanation valuable, and even enjoyable, at least in the long term. Insight Exposed is only available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to sign up to my list, you can do that here.

“How is being clever working out for you?”

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A few months ago, I went to a local old-school movie theater and queued in a line that stretched around the block. In the entire line, there were maybe three women. The rest were all guys, mostly young guys, under 25.

The movie being shown was Fight Club.

I got several valuable snapshots from that experience. The most valuable was an exchange from the actual movie, a scene in which the main character, “the Narrator,” played by Ed Norton, meets Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt.

The two are sitting next to each other on a plane. Tyler starts telling the Ed Norton character how you can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items. And then the following exchange goes down:

NARRATOR: Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I have ever met. [Pause.] See I have this thing, everything on a plane is single-serving—

TD: Oh, I get it. It’s very clever.

NARRATOR Thank you.

TD: How is that working out for you? Being clever?

NARRATOR [a little unnerved, shrugs his shoulders.] Great.

TD: Keep that up then. Keep it right up.

I read an article a few months ago, The Impotence of Being Clever. It’s one of a few related blips on my radar. Another was a second article, Beware What Sounds Insightful.

Both articles circle around the growing mass-realization that things that sound clever and insightful often aren’t — that “insightful” is a brand of shiny varnish that can be applied to any cheap furniture.

Last fall, I put on a live training called Age of Insight. It was all about exactly this brand of shiny varnish. About presentation techniques that take any idea and make it sound profound.

I’ve done a ton of thinking about this topic, and as a result, Age of Insight is the most in-depth treatment of it that anybody has created, at least to my knowledge.

Like I wrote back when I was putting on that training, I believe insightful presentation techniques will become mandatory in coming years. You will have to know them and use them, just like you have to know copywriting techniques to effectively sell a product, at least if you want to do it in writing.

There’s a deeper parallel there:

You can use copywriting techniques to sell a mediocre product. And you will sell some of it, definitely more than if you didn’t use proven copywriting techniques. But you are unlikely to sell a lot of it, or sell it for very long.

On the other hand, you can use copywriting techniques to sell a good or even great product. You can make a fortune doing that, feel good about it, and even enjoy the process for the long term.

The same with this insight stuff.

You can use insightful presentation techniques to sell a mediocre idea. And you will do better than if you didn’t use them at all.

But if you also find a genuinely novel, surprising, even mind-blowing idea, and then use insight techniques to sell that — well, the result can be explosive, and it can survive for the long term.

I’m not sure when will I re-release Age of Insight, which deals with the presentation side. But right now, I’m releasing Insight Exposed, which is about good or great “insight products” — meaning novel, surprising, even mind-blowing ideas.
Insight Exposed is only available to people who are on my email list. If you’d like to get on my list, click here and fill ou the form that appears.

My best recommendation for books that are sure to give you a change of perspective

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Back in 2019, I started reading an obscure non-fiction book called The Land Beyond the Forest. I got the idea to read it because I heard that it was a source for Bram Stoker, when he created the modern character of Count Dracula.

The Land Beyond the Forest was written by Emily Gerard, a Scottish woman who lived in Transylvania, modern Romania, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Gerard wrote up a kind of sociological character study of the Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, and Gypsies who lived around her.

At that time, Transylvania, with its deep forests and high mountains, still had pockets of medieval life in quickly modernizing, industrializing, urban Europe. The people Gerard wrote about truly lived with different traditions and beliefs to what’s become dogma in the past century or so. I guess that’s what Bram Stoker was latching on to when he used Gerard’s book for inspiration.

For example, Gypsies in Gerard’s time were a forest-dwelling, pot-mending, violin-playing elf people. This is how Gerard describes the three tenets of their half-pagan, half-Christian religion:

1. The Gypsy fears God without loving him

2. The Gypsy believes in the devil but thinks him silly and weak

3. The Gypsy scoffs at the idea of immortality: “We’re already wretched enough in this life. Why begin it anew?”

I read Gerard’s book and I really found myself experiencing a fresh change of perspective. I found the experience so enjoyable that I started going back, century by century, and reading a book for each century. If you’re looking for a change in perspective, or a moment of insight, that’s my best recommendation to you as well.

Also, here’s a notice you may or may not need. Tonight was the last night to join my Insights & More Book Club, at least for a while. At the stroke of midnight tonight, as wolves howled, and owls hooted, and an icy black shape moved in the shadows under the pine trees, I closed the doors to the Insights & More Book Club, to keep everyone inside safe, and to lock any werewolves, ghouls, and vampires out.

I will reopen the Insights & More Book Club in two month’s time. But in order to have the chance to get in, you have to be signed up to my email newsletter. If that’s something you aren’t willing to do, no problem. Otherwise, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Reader wants to join my Insights & More Book Club, but doesn’t want to read

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This morning, I woke up to find a hot inquiry from a potential buyer:

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Hey john!

I wanna ask you a question about this insights book club thing you’re selling.

I’m interested in it but since I basically have a 10+ “must read” book list that’s pending at all times, realistically, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to read the “insight book” along with you.

Do you think this “mastermind” is still worth a buy?

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How to respond? My natural instinct would be to smile, unpack my sample set of stainless steel pots and pans, and start my pitch, explaining how these pots and pans pay for themselves in just two months’ time, thanks to the energy savings and reduction in food wastage. “As an added bonus, they maximize taste thanks to the Silichromatic Ring™ and Redi-Temp® Valve!”

But I stopped myself from doing what comes naturally. Instead, I responded like this:

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Fair question. I’d like to answer it but how can I? What would a mastermind call be worth to you? What would you want to get out of it in order for it to be worth $15/month to you?

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The only reason I thought and responded like this is because I am now going through Jim Camp’s book Start With No, for maybe the fourth time in five years.

I’m going through Camp’s book for the fourth time because, as I’ve written before, I believe books are the most condensed and most useful sources of ideas and information. They give you the kind of depth you will not find in any other format. They stimulate thinking in a way that no other format can match. What’s more, they offer the best value for your money. You should hate books if you’re selling info, and love them if you’re buying info.

Of course, you have to put in some work to get that value out of a book. Reading it, taking notes, thinking a bit, maybe even rereading, once, twice, or four times, like I’m doing with Camp.

​​Which brings me back to my Insights & More Book Club, and to that inquiry I got this morning.

I’ve opened the doors to the Insights & More Book Club to new members for a few days. I will close the doors again tomorrow. We are starting a new book right now for March and April, and it doesn’t make sense to have people join mid-way.

After my Camp-inspired response above, the potential new member of my book club thought for a bit. He decided it makes sense for him to join even if he has no time to read the actual books. I doubt that’s something I could have sold him on with my pots-and-pans sales shtick. And it’s not something I will try to sell you on either.

But if you are interested in the Insights & More Book Club, whether for the books themselves, for company to help you unlock value out of those books, or for other reasons of your own, you will have to sign up to my email newsletter as a first step. You can do that here. You have until tomorrow, February 27.

Jerry Seinfeld’s serious joke about the news

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Today I watched a clip of Jerry Seinfeld on the Johnny Carson Show. Jerry smiles his precocious-boy smile and says:

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To me the most amazing thing about the news is that whatever goes on in the world, it exactly fits the number of pages that they’re using in the paper that day. [Johnny Carson chuckles off screen. Jerry continues:]

They must stand around after each edition going, “I don’t believe we just made it again! If one more thing happens, we’re screwed. There’s no more room in this paper!”

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This is a joke if you hear Jerry Seinfeld tell it, or imagine him with his mannerisms, or if you include that exaggeration at the end.

It’s not a joke if you just read the first sentence of that quote. It really is amazing that the day’s news always just fit the newspaper.

Of course, who reads newspapers any more — but the underlying point still stands:

The news was and is just a constant drip of telling you what to think, how to feel, how to react.

The news is not what’s worth knowing. At least that’s the way I look at it.

If you’re still reading, you might wonder what I think is worth knowing. I call it anti-news.

I’ve written before of my policy of not reading books that were published in just the last year.

I’ve been informed this has a clever name, “the Lindy effect,” after some long-surviving deli in New York.

The idea is, if something is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now. More generally, the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to keep being around.

This simple but powerful idea impacts everything I do, from the books I read to the emails I write to the offers I create. And since it’s time to start promoting:

It also lies behind my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is built on examples of winning copywriting that have been around for three, four, five, six decades or more.

But I’d take it still further back:

I believe Copy Riddles is really about the principles of effective communication, going back thousands of years. That might sound high-heeled, but it’s really what direct response marketing is — a merciless distillation that purifies and concentrates the evergreen principles of effective communication.

These principles were relevant yesterday, last year, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

And if you are looking to influence or manipulate people, these principles are your best bet for what will continue to be relevant tomorrow.

As marketing consultant Khaled Maziad wrote me to say after going through Copy Riddles:

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Man, this’s the best course on bullets I have ever seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot. I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet. This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

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As you might know already:

This is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tomorrow, Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The secret to better pizza, better emails

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Back in 2020, I reported on a saucy story involving Jack Trout.

Trout is one half of the team that wrote Positioning, which I still think is one of the best and most interesting books on marketing.

Once upon a time, Trout was in meeting with John Schnatter, the “papa” in Papa John’s Pizza.

Schnatter’s chain already had 1,000 locations around the country. But I guess he wanted more, and so he was talking to Trout.

Schnatter explained how Papa John’s makes pizza. “… and then we put the tomato sauce, which we get from Dino Cortopassi…”

“Hold up,” said Trout. “I know Dino. He doesn’t sell to chains. He only sells to small mom-and-pop shops. His stuff is fresh-packed and there’s not enough for chains. You’re telling you get your sauce from Dino?”

Schnatter nodded. A call to Dino himself confirmed it.

And so was born Papa John’s positioning:

“Better ingredients, better pizza.”

Is Papa John’s Pizza truly better? I can’t say. I’ve never had it. But the company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change, and is worth some $3 billion today.

So let’s see how many billion I can make with the following positioning statement:

Better ingredients, better emails.

My claim is that, as for pizza, so for long-term marketing.

More interesting stories and more valuable ideas make for better emails. Independent of the copywriting pyrotechnics you invest in. Independent of the rest of your public persona, which builds you up into a legend worth listening to.

Maybe the fact that you are reading my email now, or have been reading my emails for a while, is proof of that.

But you gotta pay the piper somewhere.

Better ingredients for your emails are not free — free as in just sitting there in your head, right now, ready to be used.

The good news is, better ingredient are not hard to come by, and are not expensive.

They have been collected and sorted, organized and prepared for you, in low-cost receptacles known as books.

If you read the right books, you’re likely to find lots of interesting stories and lots of valuable ideas.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to my email newsletter. If you are able to read, including books, then you might like to join my email newsletter as well. Click here to do so.