Persuasion

An old Soviet joke from a modern Russian prison

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Here’s a Soviet joke for you:

A shy, unathletic, bookish boy is walking across a snow-covered courtyard in Moscow, past a group of kids who are playing football.

The ball rolls to the boy’s feet. He decides against habit to join in the game. He kicks the ball awkwardly, and it veers off and crashes through the window of the janitor’s apartment on the ground floor.

The janitor emerges. He’s a huge, bearded man, who has clearly been drinking. He roars and starts to chase the boy.

The boy runs for his life, thinking to himself, “Why do I need football in the cold and the snow? I should be at home, safe and comfortable, reading a book, conversing with my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.”

Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway is in a Havana bar, drinking rum, with a salsa band playing next to him. It’s hot. Hemingway thinks to himself, “God I’m sick of this heat and rum and salsa. I should be in Paris, the center of the world, drinking Cavalos with my great friend Jean-Paul Sartre, and discussing philosophy.”

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre is in a Paris cafe, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’s taking part in an abstract but heated discussion that means nothing to him. “God how I’m sick of all these cigarettes and cafes and empty discussions,” thinks Sartre. I should be in Moscow, talking to my friend, the great novelist Platonov, about things that are real and mean something.

Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard. And he growls through his gritted teeth, “God I swear if I ever catch him, I’ll kill the little bastard.”

That’s from the memoirs written by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Navalny wrote down the Soviet joke above — “my all-time favorite joke” — while in prison in the Pokrov correctional colony.

You might know Navalny’s story. Back in 2020, he was poisoned by the Russian secret service with a nerve toxin, almost died, but somehow made it to Germany to get medical treatment.

He recovered over the course of months. During this time, he cold-called Russian secret service agents and tricked them into revealing how they had poisoned him (I wrote about the crazy story ​back in December 2020​).

In spite of the assassination attempt, Navalny decided based on his principles to return to Russia.

He was promptly arrested as soon as he landed at the Moscow airport. He was then charged with embezzlement, fraud, and extremism, and was tossed in jail.

That was back in 2022.

Navalny never made it out of jail. He died earlier this year, on February 16, at age 47, under mysterious circumstances in the “Polar Wolf” prison, which sits in Western Siberia above the polar circle. “All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results,” the prison statement read.

I’m telling you this because somehow, during all this, Navalny remained cheerful and optimistic, in spite of the fact he was in prison in Siberia, in spite of the fact he had a 19-year sentence, in spite of the fact he knew he was really in for life, one way or another.

All that’s to say, if you think that whatever you’re writing about is too serious for joking, that your audience cannot and will not stand lightheartedness, that certain topics are sacred, well, it might be worth reading some of Alexei Navalny’s posts from prison. They are fascinating, inspiring, and well-written. Plus they might give you a change of mind on some things.

In case you’re curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

Smug, yet falsely modest

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I plopped onto my couch this morning and ripped open the latest New Yorker. I skipped the first few pages by instinct — after all, they’re just ads. “Except,” I said to myself, “that’s kind of my job?”

So I flipped back to page one.

What I saw was a two-page ad for AI company Anthropic, which makes Claude, a ChatGPT competitor.

The Claude logo took up the entire left page.

On the right page, the headline read, “Late bloomer” (including the quotes).

The body copy then went on to say that Claude might not be the first AI chatbot to market. But this was by design, the ad explained, so Claude could be so good, and so safe, and so useful as it happens to be. “We build AI you can trust,” concluded the copy

In a way, this kinda sounded like the famous Avis ad, “Avis is only No. 2,” which turned being second in a market into an advantage.

Or maybe it kinda sounded like the famous Volkswagen “Lemon” ad, which flipped quality concerns into a demonstration of higher standards.

The Anthropic ad kinda sounded like that… but it failed.

Because those headlines — “Avis is only No.2,” “Lemon” — really were objections that people were throwing at Avis and Volkswagen.

Whoever wrote this ad for Anthropic could have gone that same route by saying something like “Also-ran” in the headline.

Instead, they went the board-pleasing “Late bloomer” route, which is not any kind of insult or objection, but in fact a kind of smug self-compliment.

I can’t say whether this Anthropic ad will prove to be effective in any way, and neither can Anthropic. Because this ad is a typical “tombstone ad,” with no mechanism to track response.

All I can tell you is that this headline + body copy violate a kind of core rule of effective communication.

That rule is contrast.

If you say about a person that he is smug yet effective, then there is some tension and power in that description, because of the contrast. Plus, you get bonus points for transparency.

On the other hand, if you describe someone as “smug, yet falsely modest,” then at best you’ll confuse your audience based on what they were expecting. At worst, you’ll sound repetitive, mealy-mouthed, or self-serving, which is what I felt about this Anthropic ad.

So use contrast for power. Avoid contrast for blandness.

Also, if you haven’t done so yet, consider reading my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It doesn’t have anything to do with this email, and so I won’t pretend otherwise. The only thing I will say in favor of this book is that it’s short yet cheap. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The end of info products

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THE FOLLOWING EMAIL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME AUDIENCES

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

You might be familiar with Max Sackheim’s famous ad, “Do you make these mistakes in English?”

The ad ran for decades, unchanged, and kept bringing in profitable business better than any contender.

Thousands of pages of analysis have been written about the 7-word headline of this ad and the copy that followed.

But what about the actual product this ad was ultimately selling? What about the means by which a prospect could hope to correct his or her mistakes in English? What were prospects actually exchanging their money for?

Sackheim’s copy only teases you about the product, and calls it a “remarkable invention” and a “100% self-correcting device.”

As far as I know, nobody today actually has this remarkable invention stashed away in their garage. Whatever it was, it’s clear it was sold as some kind of tool, a device, and not just information.

This is a well-known direct marketing truth that’s been around since Sackheim’s days and before, back into the age of patent medicines.

A real, tangible, external mechanism — a fat-loss potion, a dog seatbelt, a “100% self-correcting device” — sells much easier than just good info — how to lose weight, how to be a less negligent dog owner, how to speak gooder English.

Smart modern-day info marketers have gotten hep to this fact. That’s why people like Russell Brunson and Ben Settle and Sam Ovens have put their reputation and audience to work behind tools like ClickFunnels and Berserker Mail and Skool.

The thing is, creating a tool, whether physical or software, has traditionally been an expensive, complicated, and risky business.

Take a look at Groove Funnels, another tool created a few years ago by another experienced info marketer, Mike Filsaime. Groove Funnels is a bloated, buggy, frankly unusable product. I say that as somebody who invested into a lifelong subscription in Groove Funnels.

I have a couple degrees in computer science. I also have about a decade’s worth amateur and pro software development experience. But after I quit my IT job 10+ years ago, I never once considered putting this experience to use in order to develop any kind of tool I could sell.

Until now.

Because things are changing. Today even a monkey, working alone, can create and deploy a valuable app simply by querying ChatGPT persistently enough. And there are plenty of shovels available for such would-be gold miners, tools to build tools, which will do much of the in-between work for you. Just say what you will to happen, and it will be done.

Decades ago, master direct marketer Gary Halbert said that the best best product of all is… information!

But I bet if Gary were alive today, he’d be hard at work (or maybe easy at work) creating some kind of high-margin tool to sell, in the broadest sense of the word — a thing to do some or all of the work for an audience with a problem. A few reasons why:

* Again, tools are easy to sell. They fit with innate human psychology of how we want to solve problems.

* Tools can make for natural continuity income if you license them out instead of sell them outright.

* Tools can create their own moat over time. There can be lock-in or switching cost if your users build on top of your tool.

* And now, thanks to the most remarkable invention of AI, it’s possible to create tools quickly, cheaply, and with great margins.

All that’s to say, best product of all… information? I don’t think so. Not any more. Best start adapting now.

Speaking of which, I got an offer for you:

Would you say that there are any tech issues that are keeping you from starting your own email list?

If there are, write in and let me know about them.

In turn, I’ll have something for you that you might like.

Swan song for famous forecaster

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Today’s top headline in the New York Post:

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver reveals latest forecast for presidential election”

That’s news to me because I remember Nate Silver as a famously failed forecaster.

Silver confidently predicted the 2016 election for H. Clinton. After Trump won that election, Nate Silver waffled and said the data was right but his own weakness got in the way. The implied promise was, “I’ll be right next time.” People around the Internet shrugged and said, “That’s good enough.”

I think there are lotsa lessons to be learned from the ongoing career of famed forecaster Nate Silver. I will draw just one for you today, one I read in Lawrence Bernstein’s newsletter a few days ago:

“Rule #1 of Financial Copywriting 101: It’s better to be wrong than wishy-washy.”

This applies to any copy, not just financial.

So I’d like to make a confident prediction of my own. We won’t be hearing from Nate Silver again, at least not in front page stories for big publications like the New York Post, and not around major future contests like the 2028 presidential election.

Because Silver seems to have lost his nerve, possibly after the last Trump election he had to call. While people dearly want him to make confident predictions, he’s hedging his bets now. From the NY Post article (emphasis mine):

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver called the race for the White House a “PURE TOSS-UP” Sunday as he gave ex-President Donald Trump a SLIGHT EDGE over Vice President Kamala Harris in his latest forecast.”

Who’s got any use for wishy-washy forecasts like “pure toss-up?” My prediction is that the media will find a new Zoltar, one who is willing to confidently say what will happen and cheerfully be wrong.

Another prediction:

Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training will happen this Wednesday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

Tom will talk about how to think less pedantically, how to be okay without clinging to the latest mental-model-of-the-month, and how to do better in life as a result — emotionally and maybe even practically.

Tom’s training is free for you because you are a subscriber of my newsletter.

If you’d like to sign up for it before the polls close:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

Breaking the silence after the promo

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Last night, after the 3rd Conversion training call, I got a note from one of the participants. I’m not sure she wants me to share her name, but she wrote:

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It was so nice to see you on the call. I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)

===

I’m telling you this because, well, it says nice things about me, and I need all the ego stroking I can get.

But I’m also telling you this because I’ve noticed lots of people who sell online, myself included at times, are guilty of promoting an offer intensely… and when the promo period ends, it’s on to promoting the next damn thing.

Meanwhile, what happened to the previous training/course/book, which had such large promise about it?

There’s largely silence on that point, until of course it’s time to promote the same thing again.

My theory is that today, people are more than ever craving things that feel real.

It’s not simply because of the recent explosion of AI, but also the ability for automated communication, and simply the inhuman scale of the Internet.

When before in history was it an everyday possibility for most humans to write something that will go out to thousands or even millions of people?

Inevitably, we all become more guarded as a result of this. Things sound good, but they’re not actually good… or they might not even be there at all (Google “these cats do not exist”).

That’s why I think it’s valuable to not only do a good job promoting what you sell… not only do a good job delivering it… but also do good job continuing to communicate, even to people who didn’t buy, even after the fact, that this thing you were selling was for real, and that you in fact are for real.

That’s one way to cope with The Nothing that’s overtaking our world.

Another way is simply longevity, persistence, or maybe track record.

A few hundred words of text, once, can be optimized, faked, generated to suit the moment and to deceive the unguarded.

A few hundred words of text, every day, for years, are hard to fake, particularly if those words are going out to the same group of people.

That’s why there’s power in daily emails.

Writing daily for years might sound intimidating. It doesn’t have to be.

Really, it’s just one day’s effort at a time. And pretty soon, it becomes enjoyable and even addicting (ask me how I know).

The sooner you start, the sooner it will become easier, and the sooner you will reap the rewards.

Even if you don’t know nothing about email, or copywriting, or even writing, you can start writing a daily email today.

But if you must have a guide to help you get started, here’s one I created, based on my own real experience:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Thank you for putting back the plates

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I was at the gym a few weeks ago, headphones in, listening to the Español Con Juan podcast, when one of the girls who works at the gym started talking at me and gesticulating.

“Huh?” I said, taking my headphones out. “Sorry, what?”

“I just wanted to thank you for putting back the plates,” she said.

I must have stared at her with a look of total confusion, because she smiled and pointed to the two 10-kg plates I was holding in my hands.

“… putting back the plates where they belong,” she explained. “I think you are the only one who does it.”

It’s true. I was putting the plates backs on the rack.

But the truth is, I don’t always do that. Well, at least I didn’t always do that, not before the girl talked to me. I’ve been putting back the plates religiously ever since, like a proud little Boy Scout.

Point being?

Maybe it’s obvious. And if not, you can hear me spell it out on tomorrow’s 3rd Conversion training.

This training will be all about techniques that make your paid courses and ebooks and programs more consumable and more digestible… with the goal of getting more people to actually benefit from what you sell, so they get their money’s worth and more, and so they come back and buy from you again and again.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

No response

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Here’s an idea that I’ve found to be true:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content all the way through, it’s much easier to get great testimonials, ones you can actually feature because they say something substantive, and because they have a real shot of converting others as well.

I bring this up because last night, a copywriter named Pete, who’s been on my list for a while and who has already bought a few of my previous offers, signed up for my 3rd Conversion training, all about consumption and digestion.

When I asked Pete why, and what he’s hoping to get from the training, he replied:

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Reason I joined is, because I’ve done a few workshops in the past few months that I’ve repurposed as content to sell.

Some people bought, but when I send emails to them to get feedback I get no response.

Which I’m assuming is because they haven’t gone through it.

If they thought it sucked, I’m certain I would hear about it. As negative people usually have something to say lol

===

I’m not sure if people who think an offer sucked usually have something to say about it. I know I like to keep my mouth shut and just go elsewhere.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Pete’s case, and there’s no reason to think so based on his message.

But I do know what I told you above:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content, it becomes much easier to get great testimonials, or at least feedback and response of some sort.

And as an example of that, I can tell you that last month, Pete bought my Most Valuable Emails and the stripped-down version of Simple Money Emails. When I wrote to him to deliver the courses, he replied:

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I stayed up last night to binge read everything in MVE…

And all I have to say is, you’re not charging enough, dude.

After going through Copy Riddles and now MVE, and I’ll likely do the same with SME…

Everything you sell is solid.

Always grateful when I see one of your emails roll in.

===

Today, I’m not selling either Copy Riddles or MVE or SME, though of course if you’d like to give me money for those, you can.

Today, I’m simply trying to tell you it’s the last day to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training.

On the training, I will cover a small number of techniques, ones I’ve used and ones I’ve had used on me, to get people to actually go through your paid courses and ebooks and programs, ideally to the end.

I’m only charging $100 for this training. It’s probably not enough, but I’m doing it because frankly I want to organize this knowledge in my own head.

Doing it live, in front of an audience of people who are genuinely interested and can profit from it, is a good motivator for me.

In other words, money and sales are not main reason why I’m putting this training on.

That said, money and sales can be the main reason why you might want to join me on this training.

Everything in your business — from your ads to your emails to your sales pages (hello testimonials) — becomes much easier if people get value from what you deliver.

And in order for them to have any chance of getting value from what you deliver — beyond just the thrill of spending money on something — they have to consume and digest what you’re selling them.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

Last chance: Shangri-La mountain pass closing

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“Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain pass.”

No, it’s not. I checked just now. The Tibetan word for mountain pass is something entirely different than “la.”

But Shangri-La is what James Hilton, the author of Lost Horizon, called his magical lamasery hidden away in the Himalayas, And a narrow and hidden mountain pass is how he explained that Shangri-La was practically impossible to find or reach — every century only a few wanderers managed to happen upon the place.

I’m telling you this because in a few short hours, at 12 midnight PST, the mountain pass to my Shangri-La MVE event will close. Once the pass gets buried under of mountain’s worth of snow and ice, there’s no saying when or if it will ever be passable again.

I won’t be writing any more emails before the deadline. So if you are interested in reaching the magical and carefree valley on the other side, it might make sense and make your way through the narrow and hidden mountain pass right now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

And if you need a reminder of what this Shangri-La MVE offer is all about, before the clock strikes 12, here are the full details:

===

I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the three parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

3. The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. 937 interesting ideas I’ve collected over the years from books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Reach into this library to never again run out of ideas for your Most Valuable Emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… 12 bonus persuasion secrets… and all the email ideas you will ever need.

This offer is good until tonight, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote about yesterday — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets and the Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. No need to write me for them. I’ll add them straight inside the MVE course area.

Spend all your time trying to sell out games

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Yesterday I watched a movie, Local Hero, which finished around 9:17pm my time, some 32 minutes after my daily email went out.

In those 32 minutes, I had 21 sales of the offer I introduced yesterday — “give me $10, and I’ll make you a ‘beta-tester’ for my new book.”

Since I only wanted 20 such beta-testers, I closed the shopping cart, and I updated the checkout link to point to a page that said “Thanks but this offer is now sold out.”

You might think it’s not much of an accomplishment to sell out 20 spots (actually 21) at $10 each.

And true, it’s not a lot of money.

But it’s very important anyhow. Not just for my own morale, but for public perception.

And on that note, I would like to share with you a quote from sports marketer Jon Spoelstra.

Spoelstra worked with some of the losingest and least popular sports franchises out there.

In spite of the lousy sports records of these teams, Spoelstra repeatedly managed to turn the teams into cash-cows. Here’s how:

“At the Nets, we spent all of our energies in trying to sell out games. This started with the games that people most likely would want to go to — the games with the marquee players on the opposing teams. You might think it was easy. It wasn’t. If we hadn’t committed all of our resources and manpower to selling out our best games, we wouldn’t have. A funny thing happened on our way to sellouts. Our attendance picked up in the other games where we weren’t even trying.”

I was planning to promote my beta-tester offer today to make sure this offer sold out, just like Spoelstra advises.

But since the offer sold out with just one email last night, that plan’s out.

So let me remind you of my most popular program, Most Valuable Email.

I can tell you that today’s email does not use the Most Valuable Email trick, which is what this program teaches you to perform in less than an hour.

And yet, the Most Valuable Email trick in a way underlies this entire newsletter, whether I use it in a particular email or not.

I can imagine that doesn’t make much sense without knowing what the Most Valuable Trick is. In case you’d like to find out, and better yet, to profit by using this trick yourself:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

How to get unreasonable people to change

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“The banana but the clouds won’t let me, and the doctor shoes my running out of numbers!”

George sat there on the bench furiously exclaiming sentences like this. He had been committed to the state mental hospital 5 years earlier. Nobody knew his last name, and he wouldn’t say.

In fact, besides saying “good morning,” “good night,”” and “my name is George,” he would only speak to others in word-salad – a jumble of words that made no sense.

Many doctors had tried to treat George. They all failed.

Then a new doctor came to the state mental hospital. He tried a new approach.

The new doctor didn’t reason with George, didn’t didn’t try to coax or cajole George into making sense, didn’t encourage George to talk about his childhood.

Instead, the new doctor sat down on the bench next to George, and started producing word salad of his own:

“Why does the window taste like blue? I sat the clock to told bark dinner.”

To which, George would reply with his own word-salad. The doctor would then have some new interesting word salad to add. George would ask a word-salad question for clarification. The doctor would give a word-salad answer with all the details.

This went on for months until finally one day, after a particularly dense bit of word-salad by the doctor, George said,

“Talk sense, Doctor.”

“Certainly,” said the doctor. “I’ll be glad to. What is your last name?”

“O’Donovan, said George. “And it’s about time somebody who knows how to talk asked. Over five years in this lousy joint…” … and then George went back to a few sentences of pungent word salad.

A few months later, George was released. He had largely gone back to speaking normally, though he often tacked on a bit of word-salad to the end of his speech, just for good measure. As he said in one interview, “Nothing like a little nonsense in life, is there Doctor?”

You might wonder 1) the point of this story, and more importantly 2) what it has to do with anything you might care about.

As for 2, I’m telling you this story because it’s relevant if you care about creating change, whether that’s turning sick people into healthy, or indifferent into engaged, or strangers into customers.

As for 1, the point of this story, it’s probably obvious. But if not, you will have to wait for my new 10 Commandments book, The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Hypnotists, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.

I’m working on this book right now, chipping away, producing a furious word-salad of my own. I hope to have it finished by the end of October.

Meanwhile, if you want to get my existing 10 Commandments book, and find out some control-beating breakthroughs A-list copywriters like Gary Bencivenga, Gene Schwartz, and Jim Rutz, you can find that here blanket forgot to listen:

​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments​