Writing

“The best joke in the world”

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“Thanks very much. I just wanted to recommend a documentary to everyone, and then I’m gonna go.”

That’s the beginning of a six-minute comedy routine that standup comic Gary Gulman delivered on the Conan O’Brien show back in 2016.

That routine has since been called the “best joke in the world,” “beyond ballsy,” and “perfectly written.” That’s coming from other comedians.

The public liked Gulman’s routine too. The recording of it has racked up millions of views over the years across various platforms.

Gulman says this six-minute routine has became the biggest thing he’s ever done. At the end of his live standup comedy sets, he sometimes asks for requests. Inevitably, people ask for this joke.

Gulman’s joke is about a documentary on the men and one woman who were responsible for abbreviating all state names down to two letters.

I won’t try to retell the joke here. I will tell you that even if it’s one six-minute joke, it gets a laugh every 10-15 seconds. Even that opener, about just recommending a documentary and then going, gets the audience laughing.

Now here’s something extra I wanted to share with you:

In an interview, Gulman was asked about this “state abbreviations” routine. How long did it take him to write?

The answer is pretty shocking.

Gulman said he first wrote down the joke in 1994, about 6 months after he started doing standup. The Conan O’Brien spot was in 2016.

In other words, 20+ years passed before Gulman’s “state abbreviations” joke was ready for prime time, and not just because Gulman was polishing it.

“The entire world had to change,” says Gulman, “in order for me to convince people that there was a documentary about something as unusual as abbreviating the states.”

I’m not encouraging you to sit on your hands for 20 years because “the time for your idea” hasn’t come yet.

Gulman was very active from 1994 to 2015. He built out an entire career in the meantime… became a star among comedians… and managed to get on Conan and Letterman and wherever else.

All I’m really suggesting is the value of being both productive AND patient. Of putting lots of ideas out there… and of having the sense that some of those are promising but not quite good enough yet, and simply waiting while something else clicks, or conditions change just enough, or a new wrapper comes that you can wrap your solid but unpolished lump of coal in.

I realize my message today probably sounds wooly and not practical, so I won’t try to sell you anything on the back of it.

Like I said, I just wanted to recommend a comedy clip, and then I’m gonna go. Here it is:

Another customer I like

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Yesterday, I wrote about an ex-subscriber of my Daily Email Habit service.

Even though this guy decided to unsubscribe, he’s still the kind of customer I like, simply because he took something I was teaching and actually put it to use.

Of course, I have other customers I like too, including some who keep being subscribed to Daily Email Habit, and keep putting it to use.

A couple days ago, I heard from one such customer, business coach Steph Benedetto, who is subscribed to Daily Email habit.

I want to share Steph’s message with you both because it serves my purpose, and because it might be valuable to you. In Steph’s own words:

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I wanted to send you a little message to share an unexpected side effect of the daily emails.

Many of these daily emails are prompting me to think about things, like the one that said, “Share the coming attractions. What are you working on? What offers do you have coming up? Share them.”

When I do, I go, “Oh! I guess I have to know what I’m doing next then.” So I look and go, “Ok, this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing.”

And it creates it through the writing.

As I’m writing about something, whatever the prompt is, and then tying it into whatever offer I have, the offers themselves are evolving and becoming clearer.

And new things are showing up. And I had no freaking idea that was available.

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Most the Daily Email Habit puzzles are not “creative writing” prompts. Many of them are exercises that anyone with an online biz should be doing regularly, like figuring out who you want to work with… or what offers you’re putting out next… or what of business you actually want to run.

Now here’s the possibly valuable part I promised you:

You might not have the time and willpower to sit down and think about those things, and even less time and willpower to think about them regularly, over and over, as things adapt and change.

I know I don’t, not when it’s simply a todo item on my already-infinite todo list.

But like Steph says, with daily emails, you can two things at once. You can create content and make sales, on the one hand, and think about the big picture of your business and the next steps, on the other.

In other words, you can work IN the business… while at the same time working ON the business, just by taking the daily action of writing and sending a daily email.

And if you’d like to do that — to create offers, clarity, a plan — just by writing, then my Daily Email Habit might be a help for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Want to write a book?

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Last fall, marketer Sean Anthony launched a new offer that really took off.

For the few years prior, Sean was on the “sell coaching via Google Docs about how to sell coaching via Google Docs” bandwagon.

But now he had something new. He started selling “book writing” as a hot new bizniss opportunity. He called it the “1 Hour Book.”

I’m no longer on Sean’s email list, but it seems like this new bizopp was a big seller for him, because he went all in on it for a few months.

From what I could understand, the 1 Hour Book concept was 1) find client, 2) interview client on the phone for an hour, and 3) use that to produce a book for client.

I don’t know whether Sean’s customers were getting clients with this offer, or whether the clients were getting books that actually did anything good for them.

All I know is that books have unmatched impact and power. For example:

Last year, I read a book titled How To Make A Few Billion Dollars.

The book was written by Brad Jacobs, who had founded and then built up 5 separate billion-dollar businesses.

5!

In 5 different industries!

The curious thing is, in spite of Jacobs’s incredible track record, I had never heard of the man, not until he wrote his book and went around on podcasts to promote it.

This morning, I was walking around the beach near my house and thinking how many billionaires I could name.

I could definitely name 5. I couldn’t name 10.

And yet, there are 815 or so billionaires in the U.S. alone.

These are people who have all the money in the world. They have enormous power too. They might have even incredible insights, knowledge, and perspectives that few others have.

And yet, who knows them?

My point is not to bemoan the hard life of the anonymous American billionaire.

My point is simply to give you a kind of extreme counterargument, if you think that your own accomplishments, expertise, and credentials are enough to get you known and appreciated.

It doesn’t work for billionaires. The billionaires who do want to get known find they have to teach what they know… or entertain an audience… or frankly make a spectacle of themselves.

You might think this is where I tell you to write daily emails, because that’s your shot at teaching, entertaining, and making a spectacle of yourself.

But no!

I’m telling you to write daily emails because you can reuse much or all of your daily email collection to write a book. And an interesting, worthwhile book, a book you won’t simply get by waffling for an hour on the phone and having somebody transcribe and edit that for you.

Plus, as you go do along and write those daily emails, which can then turn into an interesting and worthwhile book, you can build up an audience that will snap up your book when it comes out… and will likely give it 5-star reviews because they already like you and what you write… and will probably even recommend your book to others.

So if you want to write a book, my immodest and self-interested suggestion to you is to start writing daily emails.

And if you want my help with doing that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Faster typing = better writing?

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A few days ago, recently released Greek soldier GC Tsalamagkakis, who used to write code for CERN (the particle accelerator people) and now writes copy for ecom brands, posted an interesting question in my little Daily Email House community:

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A lot of times I find myself ready to write my daily email but not starting.

I have all these ideas in my head, I know how I wanna start and I have a brief idea on what it will look like on the middle and end.

But I don’t start immediately. Sometimes I catch myself thinking “I have to type aaaaall that now? It will take so much time 😒“

Or I might write a part of the email in a way that is more brief but also worse.

Now, it might be because I’m lazy or it might be because caffeine can hit me like a truck sometimes and thoughts are zooming too fast.

But either way, I believe that the faster I can type, the less friction will be between the thought and its materialization.

Have you ever thought about it?

What do you think?

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I never thought about typing speed — maybe because I’m a mediocre typist.

But I do agree with the underlying thought. I find it’s really important to write down ideas quickly. It’s a race against my own short-term memory to capture something that can turn out to be effective or useful before it disappears.

Over the years, I’ve hit upon a number of tricks to write down stuff quick, in spite of my mediocre typing speed:

1. absence of punctuation

2. absence of capitalization

– tricking myself with the “hyphen” trick, using a bunch of hyphens at the start of each line to make it feel like notes instead of proper sentences, so i just write it down instead of agonize over it

4. shorthand w/ lotsa abbrevs

5. placeholders for [sections that i’ll figure out later]

6. using abc in place of names i don’t know and xyz for figures that i’ll have to look up

7. stupid ideas that i will delete later

8. no editing if i make mistakes, i meant even if i make mistakes but whatever

9. phonetic spelling that’s good enuff

10. headings that i write down before i start writing to sketch out the general trend of what i want to say such as:

GC QUESTION

MY STRATEGIES FOR WRITING IDEAS DOWN FAST

OFFER

Speaking of offer:

My offer today would be Daily Email House, the lively community where the GC posted his question, and a number of other daily email writing marketers and business owners chimed in with their thoughts.

However, The House is not yet available as a “front-end” offer, but only as an upsell for those who sign up for my Daily Email Habit service.

Currently, I’m offering people a week’s trial on Daily Email house on me, but again, only if you sign up for Daily Email Habit.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

What now?

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Back when I used to watch TED talks — what happened to them? — I saw one by Elizabeth Gilbert, the Eat Pray Love woman.

Gilbert’s talk came soon after she had published the book, which immediately went on to became a raging, runaway, international bestseller-to-be-made-into-a-movie-starring-Julia-Roberts.

Gilbert’s TED talk was about what now. What does she do now that she’s gotten everything she ever worked for? She seemed nervous, and she admitted to being afraid.

Weird, right?

Gilbert was probably set with money for the rest of her life. She had achieved more than 99.9% of people who ever dream of being a writer will ever achieve. She had endless amounts of praise and recognition.

And yet, what now?

This is a common thing. It happens whatever you’re after, not just with writing but whatever achievements you’re working towards, even with small goals.

Trivial though it sounds, it happens to me whenever I end up concluding a launch.

What now?

Usually I’ve been working on this thing for a while, building the actual product, preselling it, then there’s the climax of the launch promo. If it all goes well, I feel elated. For a bit. And then, what now?

I’ll tell ya.

I learned a long time ago that the answer is, now you get to work on the next thing, which is really where the satisfaction lies. As business coach Rich Schefren says, goals are there to get you excited to take action. That’s really their only purpose.

So this email is for you if you have recently completed a project or achieved a goal, and you’re wondering, “What now?”

Since I help getting people started with writing a daily email, maybe your next project could be writing, building a personal brand, or simply seeing what happens if you consistently send an email out each day into the world.

Because in my experience, the process of writing and publishing something every day is a micro-goal in itself.

It takes some work to do it. It’s satisfying to have done it. And then it starts all over again tomorrow. But again, that’s really where the satisfaction lies.

In any case, if you’d like my help with daily emailing as your new project:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: Writer MBA

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Today, I’d like to skip the infotainment and get you thinking about attending a live, in-person event called Writer MBA Conference.

I’m not personally going. I’m also not an affiliate for it. I really have no stake in it other than:

Reason #1: I know a segment of my audience is made up of writers — “writer” writers, not writers who, like me, are always fishing for a sale.

Maybe you’re in this “writer” writer group. If so, this conference could be valuable to you.

Reason #2. I know the guy behind Writer MBA. His name is Russell Nohelty.

Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money. And that’s what’s the conference will be about.

When I say I know Russell, I mean I know he’s a good guy.

The best proof is that Russell’s been around for a couple of decades, writing, for real, and writing about the business of writing.

Other people in the writing space work with Russell. They like him. They want to keep working with him, after all these years.

That’s because Russell pretty selflessly offers to help and contribute, without asking anything in return. Example:

When I was promoting a course this past fall, about using paid ads for building up your list, Russell wrote me and suggested we get on a call.

He could share his experiences spending close to $30,000 this year on building up his Substack audience to 70,000 readers.

He suggested we record the call, and then I could give it away as a free bonus to the course I was promoting.

So we did, and I did.

I then asked Russell if anything of his I could help him promote.

He said the Writer MBA Conference, because from what I can tell, it’s his baby. He takes it seriously. He wants to make it something really different to all the other conferences out there.

So here I am, telling you about the Writer MBA Conference.

The most bare-bones details are that it’s happening live and in person, in mid-March, in New Orleans.

As for the full details of why you might want to go, or why you might want to go to this particular conference, I’ll let Russell tell you about that. If you’re a “writer” writer, and you want to meet people who can help you succeed in what you do, take a look here:

https://writermba.com/

How I use AI in my latest little startup

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Comes a question from a tech-curious reader named Jordan:

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Yo John quick question, is the Daily Email Habit built with the AI tools you mentioned building in the “the death of infoproducts” email?

There seems to be a lot of tech behind this (Especially with the streak stuff) and it only makes me wonder.

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I mainly bring up this question so I can gush about AI. Have you heard about AI? It’s pretty incredible.

At the moment, AI is not doing the content behind the scenes at Daily Email Habit. I write each daily puzzle by hand, and I find the day’s meme or cartoon by hand also.

But as Jordan guessed, AI definitely helped (read: did everything) with the tech.

ChatGPT wrote all the back-end code I’m using to track the streaks for different Daily Email habit subscribers — how many days straight they have been sending a daily email — and to display each user’s streak inside of the Daily Email Habit email (not technically trivial).

And if in the future I decide to add more bells and whistles to Daily Email Habit, you can bet my ragged little AI elf will be the one doing all the work.

The reason why I’m telling you this:

If you’re only offering what you do as courses, or coaching, or really any kind of strict DIY how-to info, it’s worth thinking how to turn some or all of that into a cross-cut saw, or a calculator, or a Wordle-like daily puzzle, or at least how to add in a streak counter.

Because right now, creating tools or devices or games has become shockingly easy and quick, even if you don’t want to write a line of code. And a tool or a device or game can make your customers’ experience much nicer… and it can create a little moat around what you offer, beyond just your personal authority.

And AI does it all. Like I said, it’s pretty incredible.

Except, how do you decide what to tell AI to create?

How do you have cool ideas?

How do you find out what device or tool or game people in your market might want, and might be willing to pay for, so you can command AI to go down to the shed and make it?

Also, how do you develop a sense of taste, so that you don’t just accept the first thing that AI comes back with, but keep going until it matches your vision?

And once you do create something you’re happy with, how do you package it up and sell it?

For all that, my answer is as familiar as it is fundamental:

You write.

Writing gives you a point of view. It gives you a sense of taste. It exposes you to ideas, both your own (which might disappear otherwise) and from other people (which you might ignore otherwise).

Writing puts you in contact with people in your market, so you can get your finger on the pulse of what people are interested in and are willing to pay paying for.

And of course, writing helps you make better decisions — because writing is really an exercise in decision making.

In short, if you want to get the most out of AI, write.

It might sound self-serving when I say that. So let me share a message I got a couple days ago, from Justin Zack, who is the Head of Partnerships at Write With AI, a paid newsletter with 54,000 subscribers, all about how to… write with AI.

I figure if anybody has the inside scoop on getting AI to work for you, it’s Justin. And yet, Justin signed up for my Daily Email Habit service, so he can write and so he can think. Says Justin:

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I’m 2 days into the daily email habit (which means I have a 1-day streak, lol).

BUT, I friggin’ love it.

Exactly what I needed to get me thinking about my list and how to write better emails.

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Actually, I just checked, and Justin’s streak is up to three days now.

Maybe you can start your own streak?

To to find out the daily email puzzle I’m using as a starting point for each of my own emails… the same puzzle that folks like Justin are using to get over the initial hurdle, to write something more interesting, and to write something different than they might write otherwise… take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/deh