Persuasion

Influence 2027: Plan A

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I’ve been traveling the past week, first to Belgrade to visit my ex flatmate Sasha, and now to my hometown of Zagreb to visit family. I know, riveting stuff.

I’m telling you this for context. My mind’s not really on work, and it hasn’t been for days now. Nonetheless, I make a daily commitment to write this daily email. But since my mind hasn’t been on work, I find myself depleted of ideas.

What to write about… today?

When I find myself in situations like this, one of my go-to’s is to check Hacker News, an online newsboard curated by nerds. There’s often something there to jog my vacation-y brain into action.

And so it was today.

I found a trending story called “AI 2040: Plan A.”

In a nutshell, a bunch of nerds (again) got together and wrote up a bunch of scenarios of how, by 2040, AI will either destroy us or it will destroy the things we love, like freedom.

Yawn, I said.

(Bear with me, because this finally gets relevant to you, at least if you have a personal brand or if you write online.)

I asked myself why I was yawning at this trending story about a catastrophic prediction of the highest relevance to the human race.

The answer that came was that people have been dooming about AI for a while now. In other words, the prediction itself is nothing new. Plus, the timeline for the prediction is 2040, which in AI years might as well be 3040.

Now here’s the interesting bit:

This same bunch of nerds who wrote the “AI 2040” report wrote another report back in 2025.

That report was called “AI 2027.” It predicted that by 2027, AI would have superhuman intelligence, at least in the AI-programming realm, with all sorts of technological, political, and economic circumstances that we could see, all within 24 months.

I remember reading that report when it came out and being really captivated by it. Maybe I even wrote an email about it then.

So what’s the difference? Why did the 2025 report captivate me and this new report did not?

Again, the prediction in 2025 was something I had heard a million times before — that AI would eventually become better than humans, and it would lead to this “much better than humans” loop, with crazy consequences.

But the unique thing with the earlier report was the very tight deadline — within just 2 years of the writing of the report.

So let’s pull it all together in a way that pays finally this off for you:

1. I recently wrote an email in which I shared consulting guru Alan Weiss’s advice to people who want to be seen as experts:

“Experts make predictions. They don’t fret about whether they’ll be right, they don’t keep score, and then have no regrets. If you’re afraid to make a prediction because you may be wrong, then you’re no expert.”

2. In order for a prediction to have value, you need one of two things to be true, or preferably both. You either have to make a prediction others haven’t heard before, or you have to make a prediction with a much sooner and more definite timeline than others have made before.

Standup comedian Andrew Schulz once said:

“Comedy is a bullfight, and the premise is the bull. You want a big dangerous bull. The crowd boos if you’re fighting a baby bull.”

And so it is with making predictions.

Speaking of:

Let me tell you about Influence 2027.

A couple weeks ago, The Economist reported that in 2026 the hottest new hires at Open AI and Anthropic are not programmers or data scientists. Rather, they are philosophy majors, who are helping shape the AI models in all sorts of Socratic and Platonic ways.

But that’s so 2026. Here’s my prediction for 2027:

In 2027, the hottest hires at OpenAI and Anthropic will not be programmers, data, scientists, OR philosophers.

Rather, they will be direct response copywriters, standup comedians, stage magicians, and other influence professionals, who understand the triggers and tradeoffs of human psychological drives.

In 2027, knowledge of human psychology, and specifically, of human motivations and inhibitions, will become the deciding factor whether the AI-generated stuff you produce gets people to move, or gets them to yawn, just like that “AI 2040” report made me yawn earlier today.

If you wanna be ready for this heady future, which is coming up imminently, my recommendation is to learn from the best of the best of influence professionals, across many disciplines, and to focus on what they all do in common.

Fortunately, I’ve prepared a by-the-numbers field guide for you about exactly that topic. It’s waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

All experience hath shewn

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For the past year, I’ve been memorizing, one line a day, various famous poems and speeches and passages.

At some point, I memorized the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

You probably know the “all men are created equal” and the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of hamburgers” bits.

But have you ever noticed the following piece of psychological insight in the nation’s founding document?

“All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

In short, that passage says that people prefer the status quo to just about anything else, regardless of how bad the status quo is.

That might seem like a trivial observation.

It is not. It reminded me of an issue of the Gary Halbert Letter (another founding document of the great American experiment), in which Gary asks what the three following situations, all very different from each other, all have in common:

1. “A guy buys a beer joint that’s doing a good business in a blue collar neighborhood. His first move is to decorate the joint and give it a little class and to lower his prices.” Result: He loses most of his customers.

2. “A guy who has never broken 100 is shooting a round of golf. After the first 9 holes, he notices he’s doing exceptionally well and has only used up 36 strokes. And, if he keeps this up for the next 9 holes, he’ll shoot par for the first time in his life.” He finishes the course with 103 strokes.

3. A wealthy Cuban businessman has all his wealth confiscated by the Castro regime. He moves to Miami with nothing. Within a short time, he’s rich again.

Says Gary, what these situations all have in common is a primary human driver, even more powerful than sex, greed, and curiosity. That primary human driver is the need to stick with the status quo.

I don’t know about you, but I personally cling to the status quo while also fighting against it daily. It’s hard work, but what else is there?

Anyways, my point today was just to share that line from the Declaration of Independence of you, because it is great, and because it’s been playing in my head for the past year.

It speaks to a fundamental human truth, as relevant today as it was then, as prevalent in politics as it is in business.

Speaking of business… business needs to be done now.

I am currently promoting Lawrence Bernstein’s Lead Gen Legend, a giant swipe file of massively successful lead gen copy, with examples from right now all the way back to revolutionary times (ok, maybe not, but pretty close).

If you need a way to tie Lead Gen Legend into the topic of today’s email, go back to the status quo thing.

We all have our own routine and limited ideas for writing copy and making sales appeals. But status quo inputs beget status quo results.

It takes an outside impetus to push us out of that status quo, and to open up new vistas of conversion and profit. A curated swipe file of winning ads can be just the thing. Gary Halbert would agree.

If you are mildly convinced by that argument, I will warm you up a bit more by including several bonuses with Lead Gen Legend, if you get it before tomorrow, Sunday, July 5 at 12 midnight PST.

The ones I’ve announced so far:

FREE BONUS #1. Emails that did well

I’ll give you access to my “Emails that did well” document, now and in perpetuity. You can see which of my past emails did well and why. And as I update the document, you will see which future emails have done well. In a way, it’s a swipe file of outstanding email copy, from, as former Agora Financial copy chief Joe Schriefer has said, “one of the best email writers out there.”

FREE BONUS #2. Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call recording

I recently sold this workshop recording for $97, along with some bonuses. It’s yours free (minus the bonuses) if you get Lawrence’s Lead Gen Legend.

FREE BONUS #3. “Perfect Lead Gen Offer”

Not my idea. Also not a specific offer template you can swipe. Rather, a simple but counterintuitive process for figuring out what offer to make in your lead gen ads to maximize lifetime value and minimize ad costs.

Again, my bonuses are good only until tomorrow, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST.

Lawrence has also generously agreed to lower the price of Lead Gen Legend during this promo by $300 from its usual $379 price, so it is now a very attractive $79.

If you’d like to get it before it becomes necessary for me to dissolve this offer:

https://bejakovic.com/leadgen

May I send you the payment link?

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Today is last day to get in on Hogwarts of Influence, one of three tiers I’m offering to make you a wizard of persuasion at greater at greater levels.

Yesterday, I got an email about that offer from Alex Popov. Alex is both an NLP coach and a freelance copywriter with a string of controls for an Agora health brand. He wrote:

===

This past month, I had a chance to grab a $997 [one well-known email marketer] offer with a BIG bonus that included a choice book from any of his great books.

I also had a chance to grab a $997 [another email marketer] offer with roughly $4,500 in bonuses, including a selection of his trainings and back issues of [the dude’s newsletter].

But I’d like to grab your Dumbledore-level offer instead.

That is to say, I quite like and am quite impressed with the way you write your copy, structure your offers and teach this magical stuff.

===

I asked Alex if I could answer any more questions for him or if I can send him the link to the order page.

If you need a marketing lesson today, let it be that.

It’s an application of the “mini-agenda” idea from Jim Camp’s book Start With No.

Rather than plowing on with any negotiation or sale like a horny teenager, take your time, ask for permission to proceed, and let people know what’s coming up before you drop it on them.

It never hinders the people who are ready to proceed, and it can surface surprising stuff from people who say they are, but are not.

Anyways, to my mini-agenda, Alex replied:

===

Thank you for asking, John!

Nope, no questions.

I was at the webinar.

I’ve been analyzing your emails.

I went through the bonus trainings you gave for joining your list. I did it now, after several years. My loss in time & money that I didn’t use your thinking, writing and persuasion tips earlier.

But I guess my brain needed the time to get it.

Anyway, just some feedback for you.

So, please send me the link. Thanks!

===

Alex has since jumped in on Hogwarts of Influence at the Dumbledore level. Will you? It’s your choice. If you want the full details of what’s inside the most generous offer stack I will make this year, before it vanishes later tonight:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw

How to pitch clients who don’t have the problem you solve

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Yesterday, I wrote about a cold email I got with the sneaky subject line, “Intro – John / Matt.”

But what about the body of that email? What was the guy pitching?

The email ran as following:

1. He was writing to me specifically because I have a Skool group

2. Skool owners who sell memberships to their Skool groups via webinars get low conversions

3. The way to solve this problem is by making an AI clone of myself that I can bundle into my webinar offer

If you just shook your head in confusion, let me highlight the good and the bad of this pitch, which might be useful to you in your own client- and customer-getting efforts:

The GOOD:

1. The dude didn’t try to pitch me his AI clone directly, based on its own merits, social proof, technology etc. Frankly, I wouldn’t have cared one bit about any of that.

2. Instead, he picked a problem that people with paid Skool communities might have (it’s hard to get people to sign up), and he tied in his solution to that.

The BAD:

1. I don’t have a paid Skool community (both my groups are free), I don’t have conversion problems, and I don’t run a webinar.

2. If I did have a paid community and did have problems getting people into it, an AI clone of me would sounds as good of a solution as shipping new members a free life-sized cardboard cutout with my smiling mug on it

All that’s to say, if you’re trying to get new clients or customers, if you’re trying to sell your existing products or services, do the stuff in the “GOOD” above.

Don’t do the stuff in the “BAD.”

What to do instead?

Well, honest research. Detailed research. Research into what actual people in your market actually do, instead of what they say they do, or what you think they do.

This is something I’ve covered in detail inside a training I’ve called Heart of Hearts.

It’s about doing research on your market — ideally, your own audience — to find out 1) what actual problems they have and 2) what solution of yours they would pay for to solve that problem.

And no, it’s not something you can automate to Claude or ChatGPT, because it doesn’t involve silently scouring forums.

I sold Heart of Hearts for $297 when I first released it, back in 2024. I haven’t made it available since. I am making it available now, as part of my “Hogwarts of Influence” event, specifically in the “Snape” and Dumbledore” tiers. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Clever lead gen spotted in teddy bear email

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These days, one of the only people whose emails I read regularly is marketing legend Dean Jackson.

Dean has this folksy, cheerful, teddy bear public persona.

He talks slowly and patiently, like he’s your friend, with his arm around your shoulder.

He makes everything into an accessible analogy — “would you like a cookie,” “vending machine vs. slot machine,” “more cheese, less whiskers.”

Dean’s public persona masks the fact that the man is really the fountain of dozens of innovative marketing ideas that have become so widespread online that we don’t even think somebody had to invent them. But somebody did, and that person was Dean.

Anyways, I noticed something in a recent Dean email. Says Dean:

“On Wednesday, at Noon ET, I’m doing a live Book Titles Workshop & Q&A call.”

That might not seem remarkable unless you know one of Dean’s businesses is 90 Minute Books, where they interview you over 90 minutes and then turn that into a book you can use for lead gen.

So how does Dean’s Book Titles Workshop fit in?

Simple.

First, it gets the right people to raise their hands, so they can be identified, tagged, and followed up with. (Dean’s audience is small, brick-and-mortar biz owners, and the workshop is for the few among them who are thinking about having a book.)

Second, to those who actually show up, the workshop gives a small but meaningful win.

With Dean’s help, those people will walk away with a book title, something they can see, feel, hold, treasure, cherish, and talk to others about.

Of course, they still don’t have the book. After they have the book title, Dean’s service is the natural next step.

This is worth doing yourself.

You might have a big service or an expensive offer.

A proven strategy to sell that is to do what Dean is doing.

Help people take the very first step, however tiny, towards the big outcome you ultimately provide.

For one thing, it will help you identify leads. For another, it will give the people who take the first step a quick win, a feeling of inspiration, and momentum they will want to keep.

Let me apply this lesson myself.

The most important part of your marketing message is the promise you make. That’s equally true whether you’re selling a service, coaching, a course, or yourself as a person of trust and influence.

Based on my 1-1 work with dozens of online business owners, I can tell you that most business owners DO NOT DO A GOOD JOB with the core promise they are making in their marketing.

Next Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can Register Here.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.

Last call for Tour de Commandments bonuses

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The past week, I have been running the Tour de Commandments event to mark the 1-year anniversary of the publication of my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc book.

As a result of this event, I have sold more than 100 paperback copies of my book, and have rocketed up the book rankings, at least for a few days, above the paperback of Robert Cialdini’s Influence. That’s really all a daily email writer could ever want for.

Today is the last day of this promotional spectacle. With one final, desperate push towards the finish line, the Tour de Commandments event ends tonight, Sunday the 17th, at 12 midnight PST.

If you take me up on this offer before the deadline (instructions below), you get the following bonuses:

#1. “Manna for Marketers” live workshop and implementation call

Happening next Wednesday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I will cover how I’ve consciously applied these 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. in my biz. I’ll also offer you my help and input if you want to raise your hand live on the call, and ask me how to apply any of these commandments to your biz (or life).

#2. “3 lessons after $18,487 spent on running Amazon book ads”

Over the past 7 years, I’ve spent $18,487 on Amazon book ads. The majority of those ads have been for my two “10 Commandments of SOMETHING” books. I’ve put together a report on the 3 main lessons learned after 7 years, thousands of copies sold, and $18k+ in ad spend.

#3. “40 Pages to Authority: A $1k article series”

Back in 2023, the the Professional Writers Alliance paid me $1,000 to write a 4-part article series about my experiences writing, promoting, and profiting from a 40-page book (my first 10 Commandments book).

PWA made these articles available to their paying members only. But you can get them as a free bonus for taking me up on my Tour De Commandments offer.

#4. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

#5. “The best direct marketing book of the past 15 years”

That’s according to me, somebody who has read and reread all the great direct marketing books, and some of the not-so-great, and who has made millions in sales via the ideas I’ve learned in those books.

Odds are excellent you have not read this book or even heard of it. But I will tell you what it is so you can grab it on Amazon, and I’ll even give you $15 in Bejako Bux so you can get it effectively FREE.

#6. “The best course on selling via email I have personally found”

The information in this course has influenced a ton of people online, indirectly. Yet I never hear anybody talking about this course directly, or implementing the complete system inside, rather than just one fraction.

(I have been going through this course and implementing it myself and helping my coaching students implement it.)

If you like, you can be among a select elite of people who both know about this course and who profit from it. Because, if you take me up on my Tour de Commandments offer, I will tell you where to find this best course on selling via email, for FREE, and completely legally.

#7. Influence Riddles Vol. 1

7 real-life case studies of successful episodes of influence, turned into riddles for you to ponder and profit from, including:

* How one clever offer owner got me to promote his offer as an affiliate even though I knew it wouldn’t sell to my list

* A lead magnet I’ve seen two very successful marketers using, which gets better conversions and higher-intent leads than the usual free report/course/template etc.

* A new upsell strategy that “exploded average order value overnight” (taken from the best direct marketing book of the past 15 years, which is #5 inside this bonus bundle)

If you want to take me up on this Tour de Commandments offer, here’s what to do:

1. Grab five paperback copies of the 10 Commandments book (or four, if you’ve already got a paperback and can dig up that receipt as proof)

2. Forward me your receipt (or receipts, if you already got one) from Amazon

3. I’ll get you in for the Manna for Marketers workshop, and get you access to the above bonuses, as well as others I release in the coming days.

Again, the deadline for this event is tonight, May 17, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re in, here’s where to take me up on this offer:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Prediction about the world by the end of 2027

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Last night, as the sun was setting, my friends and I walked to a park in downtown Athens, directly next to the lit-up Acropolis. Innocent enough.

We then climbed up onto a rock inside the park, where tourists gather to take pictures of the thing. Still pretty innocent.

As soon as we got to the top, a ginger-haired, bearded man who was squatting on top of the rock, turned towards us.

“First time in Athens?” he said with a grin.

My friend Marci, who is something like a human golden retriever, smiled back and said yes.

Uh-oh.

This allowed to the ginger-haired, bearded man to open the floodgates. Over the course of the next 20 or possibly 120 minutes, as he twisted his mustache, he covered:

* How he had been island hopping for the past 8 months…

* How he had been “defeated” by a stone staircase that led down the side of a cliff on a remote Greek island, while women and children successfully managed it in the past…

* How the Greek god of blacksmithing, Hephaestus, was repeatedly cuckolded by the Greek god of war, Ares…

* How the Athenians lost the war to the Spartans, which is not really a vote in favor of democracy…

* And, after a few twists and turns covering the current political situation in several countries, how the closing of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to a worldwide shortage of sulfur… which in turn will cause food prices to skyrocket… which in turn will lead to worldwide famine… which in turn will lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.

Eventually, the guy must have felt he had exhausted his audience.

He stood up, and before walking off into the sunset, he raised his finger to the sky like Plato. “By the end of 2027!” he cried out. “Remember when the collapse happens that the aspy guy in Athens predicted it!”

Now here’s my prediction, which I fully expect to be realized by the end of 2027:

Things will be better than ever.

Humans are not like spaghetti, which flies in a straight line when you fling it at the wall. Instead we have agency, the ability to adapt and solve problems, to change the course of our flight, and to come out ok and even better off.

It’s been like that for a long, long time. And so it will be this time.

(When the end of 2027 comes and things are better than ever, remember this email newsletter predicted it.)

Of course, some people will be worse off in a year and a half. That’s always true.

But you can choose, and the decisions you make today will determine which group — better off or worse off — you will be in when the end of 2027 rolls around.

Since I’m in a prophetic mood, let me give you one more prediction:

An audience, and a strong relationship with that audience, are the only things that will have value in the future…

… because of AI, because of political uncertainty, because of increasing competition in whatever field you’re in, because of a worldwide shortage of sulfur.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.

Maybe you do agree with me, or at least think that having an audience and a strong relationship to that audience is a worthwhile bet to make on behalf of your future self.

If so, you might like my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen etc.” book.

I wrote that book to be interesting (at least if you find stories about persuasion and influence interesting) and provocative (hence the con men and pick up artists right at the start of the title).

The core ideas of this book, however, are really just about effective communication, or if you like, persuasion, which is ultimately what building and keeping a strong relationship is about, whether individually or in groups.

If that sounds valuable to you, and if you you wanna make a bet on yourself for the future:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

P.S. To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this book, I will be kicking off a Tour de Commandments event on May 11th.

I’ll have more details about this exciting, unique, spectacular, historic, one-time, never-to-be repeated event over the next few days, as the countdown to the start gets closer and closer to zero.

If you wanna be ready for it, grab your copy of my book at the link above.

[T-minus-3] Commercial from the Mediterranean Sea

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Fair warning:

This email is a commercial, coming to you from a sailboat in the Mediterranean, with zero secret tactical info, and the only intended goal of hyping myself up a bit.

The reason for this:

Like I said, I’m currently on a boat, somewhere on the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, with a few friends.

The evening is warm, the sea is calm, the Germans on the next boat over are playing some dice game while my friends chatter quietly in Hungarian.

Frankly it’s very nice. Yet I’m still trying to squeeze in an email.

Because of the circumstances, I want to be quick, and so I will simply share a nice testimonial, one of the top ones I’ve gotten in the past year.

This testimonial comes from Nick “Jet Set” Bandy.

Nick, as you might know, works as a fractional CMO, and makes a nice $12k/month for a modest 15 hours a week of various and interesting marketing work. He also writes pretty fantastic daily emails, and sell pretty fantastic offers to his email list.

And that’s when he’s not doing commisson-only deals with local businesses that have customer datbases of 10s of thousands of names, and offers in the 10s of thousands of dollars…

… and of course, when he’s not jetsetting with his wife and baby around the world, as he is doing now in Japan.

Nick recently went through one of my courses. That prompted him to write me unbidden:

===

Hey man just wanted to say that your stuff is incredible. I’ve been purposefully not consuming courses for the past few months and just got around to going through a handful of yours. Also grabbed 10 Commandments of Con Men et al to read on our trip.

There are only a handful of people whose products I can go through and say “I couldn’t have prompted Claude to come up with this” and you’re one of them.

===

I’m glad I can still be better than AI, even when prompted by somebody clever and skilled like Nick.

I could link to one of my expensive courses here, hoping that you will buy it.

Instead, I’ll suggest you grab a copy of my 10 Commandments of Con Men et al. book.

It’s only 5 bucks on Amazon, and whether you’re going on a trip or staying at home, I suspect you might find it incredible if you give it a quick read. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

How to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you promote other people

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I was talking to a dude today. He’s a very established, skilled, and successful copywriter who works with big clients. He also has his own personal email list and quality offers that genuinely help people.

At one point, the dude complained that, when he promotes other people’s offers, whether for clients or affiliate offers to his list, he can make his pitches for these offer amazing, incredible, stupendous.

“Why can’t I write this way about the my stuff?” he said.

It’s a legit problem, and one I’ve had in the past.

It’s not just a matter of being coy, of not wanting to brag about your own stuff.

A part of the problem is that we’re all simply too close to our own offers, and we take them for granted, or we even focus on the deficiencies, limitations, and problematic corner cases. Beyond that, there are even neurological reasons why it’s dramatically harder to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you can muster to promote somebody else.

Well… until now.

(Get ready. I’m about to make you a pitch.)

I have a way out of this predicament, a mechanism, a “Light Bulb Mental Switch.”

It allows you to promote your own offers with the same persuasive energy that you can summon when you promote others’ offers.

It also doubles as a litmus test, a way to double-check your marketing after it’s written to make sure it passes the test. It tells you how to tweak it in order to transform it, if it doesn’t immediately pass.

This Light Bulb Mental Switch is magical, mysterious, and multifaceted.

It helps you promote your own offers the way you promote others. It also helps you promote others even more effectively than you can now.

And now, the deal:

A 24-hour disappearing bonus.

I will reveal to you this Light Bulb Mental Switch if you get my Most Valuable Email training.

Do so and you will learn my Most Valuable Email trick, which I still stand by as being most valuable, all these years after I first hit upon it, and thousands of emails later.

The Most Valuable Email trick is not stupid stories, not predictable personal reveals, and not rehashed references to Batman movies or Game of Thrones episodes.

The Most Valuable Email trick is something entirely new different, much like my Light Bulb Mental Switch.

Get Most Valuable Email, write me before tomorrow at 8:31pm CET, and ask to have the Light Bulb Mental Switch, and I will reply to you and share it with you.

(Don’t write me after the deadline. This is a 24-hour-only deal.)

24 hours from now, you can be nothing but one day older — or you can be on your way to getting rich by promoting yourself the way you really deserve. You decide.

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Coaching is dead

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I’m reading a book called Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss, in which Weiss makes the claim in a subhead that “Selling is dead.”

A few pages later, Weiss tells the story of how he got started as a consultant:

===

When I was fired and thrust out on my own with about 250,000 independent consultants around around me in the United States, I asked myself how I could stand out. I decided to write and speak, since those are my strengths and you build on your strengths.

[Weiss decided to write an article with a contrarian take on a then-popular methodology, titled, “Quality Circles Are Dead.”]

The quality movement adherents besieged the magazine. I was so stunned, I called the editor to apologize.

“Kid,” he said, “I want you to write an article like this for us every month, and I’ll pay you $50 for each one.”

“But they hated it,” I pointed out.

“They read it,” he pointed back.

I wrote for 72 months, opposing every flavor of the month and program du jour extant. I became known as “The Contrarian.” And that name has stuck to this very day.

===

I’m reading Weiss’s book because the core message of it is to stop selling your time, and to start selling the value of the outcomes you deliver.

It’s a simple enough message, and one that everybody is willing to accept with their prefrontal cortex.

But go beyond that into the other parts of the brain, and the neural activity changes.

I’ve been talking to various business owners and marketers. Almost all of them fail to sell the outcomes they provide, and instead fall into the trap of selling a 16-page PDF, or a welcome sequence, or coaching once a week, every week, for an hour over Zoom.

The trouble is, PDFs are dead. Welcome sequences are dead. And coaching is really, really dead.

Yes, I am playing along with Weiss’s contrarian thing. But I also happen to believe what Weiss says about outcomes, and specifically, that coaching really is dead.

I’ve been working with a number of people this year. Some of the outcomes I’ve promised to deliver and problems I’ve promised to solve for them:

* Build them up into a name on the Internet, and help them make $31k in the process

* Help them define a new offer that sells 3-5 times copies per month for $1k+

* Increase the money they make from their email list to $1 per subscriber per month

In all these cases, what I’m actually delivering is some Zoom calls, some support by email, some copy critiques, and a lot of listening and occasional talking.

All of that could really be bundled up and called “coaching.” But I can tell you it’s been much more enjoyable and easy to sell it not as a bunch of Zoom calls and email support and some copy critiques, but as an exciting and lucrative outcome.

Maybe you offer coaching or some other form of dead deliverable that your audience doesn’t seem to value correctly. Maybe you also have an email list. Maybe you have a problem, or things just aren’t working right, and you suspect that coaching is dead, or deliverables are dead, or email is dead.

If so, reply to this email. I don’t offer coaching, but we can talk, and maybe I have a way to solve your problem, or to help you get to an outcome that you’d be ecstatic over.

It costs you nothing to tell me about your problem. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.