Persuasion

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.

I could not be in better company

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Today I’ve got quite the testimonial to share with you. Please indulge me.

This testimonial comes from a man who has sold 8 million books, and who, through his marketing and copywriting savvy, has gotten his business partner, who is the face of their business together, on 6,000 radio shows and 120 TV appearances, including the Oprah Winfrey Show.

This man’s name is J.Michael Palka. Somehow J.Michael found my “10 Commandments of Con Men, etc.” book. He read the book, and then he wrote me to say:

===

John,

I have been writing copy for decades.

I have read, listened to and watch everything available on copywriting.

Probably have 500GB of copywriting material from all the greats and a few from the not so greats.

Your book is right there at the top.

As a master of marketing for over 50 years (my business partner and I sold 8 Million of our own self published books in print), I understand the foundation for marketing is psychology which I have studied for decades.

And your book blew me away.

Why I never heard of it before mystifies me. But the Universe always delivers when the time is right.

I will read it a few more times to get a full grasp of some of the concepts.

Your book is one of 2 books I will always have with me. The other is Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. You could not be in better company.

Thanks for your effort in writing the book. And may you live a long, healthy and fruitful life.

===

I feel I should pull out some kind of a clever marketing or psychology lesson to share with you out of all this…

… but can’t I just share a glowing testimonial from time to time?

If you really want a some clever marketing or psychology lessons, I’ve written a book that’s full of that. People who are in the know like this book and recommend it quite highly. If you haven’t read it yet, your copy is waiting for you, right now. Here’s where you can find it:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

[Psych Psundays] Cops and robbers

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For the past couple weeks, I’ve been running a new email series I call Psych Psundays. The first week, the response was good. The second week, it was also good:

#1. “Wow. Thank you, John.”

#2. “Lovely email John – many thanks for writing it – I loved reading it. Great storytelling.”

#3. “These Psych Sundays are helpful.”

#4. “Honestly this came at the right time for me. Just started a new creative strategist role – my first time writing ad scripts – with a new supplement brand. Since this is my first time doing this, I’ve been fighting similar thoughts like “This isn’t right for me, I only know email”… big imposter syndrome stuff. Been taking the next step and fighting those thoughts, leading up to submitting my first ads, was wondering if they’d be ripped to shreds, but the only real feedback I got was “good ads 🔥”… So it’s been a trip.”

This third week, Psych Psundays continues, and threatens to bleed into Pself-Help Psundays instead.

Will this be the end of this series as readers unsubscribe in disgust?

Or will I tell you something interesting and possibly valuable?

Let’s see.

I will start by admitting that last week I rewatched the 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs. You might know it better in the 2006 remake version by Martin Scorcese, called The Departed.

The movie tells the story of a drug kingpin and a police captain, each of whom plants a mole in the other’s organization.

The cops and criminals keep clashing, pulling away to try to outwit each other, and clashing again.

This coming together and pulling away is precisely what makes the movie tense and fun to watch, all the way to the final showdown, where everybody loses and order is restored to the universe.

Compare that to an article I read a while back about a man named Daniel Kinahan. The article asked a simple question, “An Irish drug dealer, Daniel Kinahan, commands a billion-dollar cocaine empire from the U.A.E. Why isn’t he in prison?”

The background was that Kinahan’s father, Christy, grew up middle class in Dublin, but got into the drug trade. Christy was smart, polite, and careful. Unlike everybody else in the drug business, he was not an addict himself.

Still, in the first few years of his career, back in 1987, Kinahan Sr. got caught and served a few years in prison.

After he got out, Kinahan Sr. made changes to how he was running his drug trafficking business to make it less likely he would get caught.

When his son Daniel took over, there were even more changes introduced, and the risk was reduced even further.

The result is that the Kinahans have been running one of the world’s biggest cocaine organizations, but continue to live free in Dubai, and apparently the police cannot or will not touch them.

Frankly, not much of a story there, and definitely not worth a movie.

A couple weeks ago, back in the inaugural Psych Psunday email, I mentioned I was reading a book called Games People Play. The book is a catalogue of “games” — repeated personal interactions that are played for ulterior motives and payoffs rather than the obvious reasons.

One game described in Games People Play is called “Cops and Robbers.” It’s about real-life cops and robbers, or at least some of them.

The game of “Cops and Robbers” is played for a combination of excitement and security. The excitement comes from being chased. The security comes from being caught and put back to the same place where the robber is used to being, whether that’s the local slum or prison.

But here’s the bit I found interesting. Not every criminal plays “Cops & Robbers.” From Games People Play:

“There seem to be two distinctive types of habitual criminals: those who are in crime primarily for profit, and those who are in it primarily for the game — with a large group in between who can handle it either way. The ‘compulsive winner,’ the big moneymaker whose Child really does not want to be caught, rarely is, according to reports; he is an untouchable, for whom the fix is always in. The ‘compulsive loser,’ on the other hand, who is playing ‘Cops and Robbers,’ seldom does very well financially.”

I found this distinction between “pros” and “C&R players” interesting. It’s the difference between the “Cops & Robbers” players as dramatized in Infernal Affairs, and the Kinahans, the real-life untouchables and compulsive winners, who don’t really make for a good story, but who do live rich and free.

This distinction between “pros” and “players of Cops & Robbers” goes way beyond the criminal world. If you ask me, this same distinction applies pretty much everywhere in life, including the direct response industry.

Publicly, the DR industry all about dramatic transformations and secret push-button solutions that will make you lose weight or turn you into a millionaire in the next 24 hours.

Privately, behind the scenes, the DR industry is built on the Recency-Frequency-Monetary Value formula.

Basically, it’s about selling the same thing, over and over, to people who have been buying for years, people who actually have ulterior motives than making money or losing weight quickly, even though that’s what they they are paying for.

And this is where we veer from Psych Psunday.

Psychology is good at classifying and diagnosing. For how to change, you gotta go to a different section of the bookstore, the self-help section.

For example, I once read a book called Straight-Line Leadership. At its core, it’s about the distinction between “straight-line people” and “circle people.”

It’s the exact same distinction as Games People Play makes, between “pros” and “people who play Cops & Robbers.”

The difference between Straight-Line Leadership and Games People Play is that Straight-Line Leadership tells you that you can become a straight-line person today.

You don’t have to keep quitting or “being caught” once things are going well. You can simply keep going in a straight line, onwards and upwards, like a compulsive winner.

And if you do encounter a setback (eg. you get thrown into jail, like Kinahan Sr.) you can simply come out of jail, make some changes, and get back on the straight line.

A master of direct marketing once wrote:

“One of the greatest lessons I learned about direct marketing over the years is that if it ain’t boring, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re juggling too many balls, running around frantically putting out fires all the time, if every day is a constant uphill battle to succeed… then… something ain’t right. This business, when done correctly, should be dull, boring, slow moving (even at high speed), and mostly automated.”

So there you go. To have a real shot at getting rich and free, get your kicks from somewhere other than your business.

Or don’t. Get your kicks from your business, keep playing Cops and Robbers, experiencing exciting ups and downs.

Many people do it, and there’s no shame in it.

But in that case, you can spare yourself the frustration of wondering why those ups and downs are always there, and realize they’re there because you want them on some level.

And now, a reminder that my Most Valuable Offer launches this coming Wednesday.

With Most Valuable Offer, I’m offering to give you my direct help so you can run a successful launch of a paid live workshop by the end of April, which you can then keep selling, in an automated way, until the stars fall from the sky.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mvo

Fears of list rot

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Yesterday I launched a new offer, to help you launch a live workshop, delivered on a specific day that’s coming up soon, which I’m calling Most Valuable Offer.

I’ve had a few people sign up already. Among them was one list owner who said that his motivation is that he worries about list rot, and a live workshop could be a way to light a fire under his feet to combat list rot.

I dug in deeper. I asked him if he had seen signs of rot on his list. He explained:

===

Not signs necessarily.

It’s more that the handful of times I’ve solicited engagement from my list to gauge interest in a particular product I was going to make, I got pretty good response. Then, when I’d start making it, I’d get too far in the weeds, then eventually, get distracted by life or some other thing, and then set it aside.

So, my concern is that they will start thinking I’m a flake who keeps asking for feedback, and then never coming through with the finished product. Which will lead to that rot.

So, I’m seeing this as that chance to spark that life back into the list by getting this MVO launched & out there.

===

One of the chapters I was considering for my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, etc” book was, “assume rapport.”

It’s a common behavior among many influence professionals like pick up artists, sales men, and stand up comedians.

Influence professionals behave how they want you to behave.

They treat you like a lifelong friend because they want you to treat them like a lifelong friend. They trust you because they want you to trust them. They find you endlessly fascinating and charming because they want you to find them fascinating and charming.

There’s a bigger principle here:

We all take our cues for how to behave from other people.

Influence professionals know this, and that’s why they take the lead. As with many things common to influence professionals, this applies more broadly to business and life, in ways that can be perfectly ethical.

In short, the above list owner’s fears of list rot are justified.

If you yourself behave like a flake, people will in time take their cues from you.

They will say one thing and do another. They will be late or not show up at all. They will make excuses or ghost you.

The good news is, the fix is easy, and and you can get started on it today.

The fix is to be punctual, to do as you say and to follow through, to make people a clear offer and ask them for a clear yes or no answer.

The results of that are both instant and long-term.

Instant, as in sales and a spike in engagement.

Long-term, as in a stronger bond with your list, greater trust in you and what you sell, and higher perceived value of your offers.

Like I said, yesterday I offered to help you launch and deliver your own Most Valuable Offer.

You can find the full details below.

If you decide that this offer is not for you, that’s perfectly fine.

If you decide it is for you, comment on the post below if you’re a member of Daily Email House, or if you’re not a member of Daily Email House, send me an email and tell me you’re in.

Here’s the link:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/would-you-like-a-chocolate-chip-most-valuable-offer

[Psych Psundays] Kids are stupid

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Last Sunday, I kicked off a new series in this newsletter, Psych Psundays. The reaction to that first issue was positive:

#1 “Love this, love the concept”

#2 “LOVED THIS. Thanks!”

#3 “This was awesome, John! Grazie”

#4 “Excellent thoughts and incredibly timely… for me, anyway.”

#5 “I love Psych Psundays.”

Let me see if can keep it going for another week.

Today’s installment of Psych Psundays is built around two highly instructive videos I watched this week.

The first was posted in the subreddit r/KidsAreFuckingStupid.

It showed a girl, about 3, standing on a nice-looking wooden deck, made up of normal wooden boards laid tightly together.

In spite of this being perfectly solid and perfectly safe ground to stand and walk on, the little girl was screaming her lungs out, and was otherwise paralyzed with fear, unable to take a step. The caption for the video read:

“She thought she would fall through the cracks.”

That leads me to the first curious bit I want to share with you on this Psych Psunday:

A hundred years ago, a psychologist named Jean Piaget was one of the first psychologists to observe children very carefully — their speech patterns, their ideas, their way of looking at the world.

Piaget found that children’s thinking is black and white, magical, absolute.

To children, ideas are the same as things, with the same concreteness and reality. An idea, if it pops up in a kid’s head, must be true, has always been true, will always be true, isn’t made false by evidence or by previous ideas that contradict it.

That’s why, if a kid gets the idea idea that she can fall through a 1/8-inch crack in the floor, why, she can. WAAAAAAHHHH!

Stupid kids, right?

Anyways, let’s move on to the second highly instructive video I watched this week. It was an interview with actor Dustin Hoffman.

Hoffman was talking about the early days of his career, back when he was unknown, but had just gotten rave reviews for an off-Broadway play.

Even though he had no movie experience, Hoffman suddenly got an invitation to come out to Hollywood and read for a part in a big new movie that was being cast.

Hoffman flew out, and met the director, Mike Nichols. The meeting went down like this, in Hoffman’s words:

===

He [Mike Nichols, the director] comes over to me, and immediately I’m feeling miserable.

I just have bad feelings about the whole thing. This is not the part for me. I’m not supposed to to be in movies.

I’m supposed to be where I belong. An ethnic actor is supposed to be in ethnic New York in an ethnic off-Broadway show.

I know my place. And I can read him. I feel I can read him, like he feels like he’s made a big mistake.

===

Turns out, Nichols didn’t feel he had made a big mistake.

In fact, Nichols gave Hoffman the lead role in that movie, the Graduate, which would make Hoffman into an international star, and would in time lead him to a couple Oscars and an estimated net worth of around one hundred million dollars.

So kids are stupid. They think that just because a thought popped up into their heads that they can fall through a 1/8-inch crack between wooden boards, that this makes it so.

But, I’d like to claim, the kind of black-and-white, imagined-is-real thinking of children stays inside us forever. Adults still operate on the same basic machinery.

We feel we know how the world is. In fact we KNOW how it is, with 100% certainty. You can hear it in Dustin Hoffman’s words above:

“This is not the part for me.”

“I know my place.”

“He feels like he’s made a big mistake.”

So that’s my second curious bit for this this Psych Psunday. Great. Now what? What do you do with this?

Does it mean that your intuition, your gut feeling, your sense of what’s real is always wrong, because kids are stupid, and we’re all kids inside?

No, clearly not.

But it does mean that how you feel, I mean, how you know the world to be, with 100% certainty, is not necessarily what the world really is like.

And maybe that’s an inspirational takeaway we can end this Psych Psunday on.

The next time you are faced with a new opportunity and you find yourself knowing for sure that this is not for you… this is not your place… the world does not want you to go in this direction… take another step.

You might find the ground under you solid and safe, and you might also find a couple Oscars, or at least a million dollars or two, in your future.

[Psych Psundays] Why don’t you… yes, but

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I thought to introduce a new little series I could do every week, Psych Psundays.

I’m not a psychologist nor do I play one on TV, but I am interested in pop psychology. I read books about it, and I have a kind of live lab via this newsletter and other marketing I do. Plus I have a mind myself. I keep tabs on it. Sometimes I learn stuff that way too.

Let’s see if this new series could be interesting to you or not, and if it is, how long I can keep it going.

The first installation of Psych Psundays starts off with a reader question I got a few days ago:

===

Hey John, how are you? I just wanted to ask if you could recommend a resource for audience building without video based content.

I’m writing daily emails but I can barely grow my newsletter, Twitter is filled with AI and it feels hollow.

The little subscribers I’ve gotten are from communities where I shared a little value with a link in my bio.

What would you recommend?

Thanks a lot and I hope you have a great weekend.

[name]

P.S. You don’t owe me crap of course so feel free to ignore this and go on with your day!

I just thought I’d ask you because I love your daily emails, it’s actually why I started writing daily.

===

I didn’t reply to this guy.

On the one hand, I enjoyed the flattery.

On the other hand, I suspect this was an attempt at playing a game, one that I no longer enjoy.

Right now, I’m reading a book called Games People Play by a guy named Eric Berne. The book was kind of a big thing back in the 1960s. It’s basically about repeated “games” — patterns of communication that people engage in, not for the stated and obvious purpose, but for ulterior motives.

The first “game” discovered by Berne was called “Why don’t you… yes but.” It’s the game I feel my reader above is asking me to play with him. It goes like this:

First, one person brings up a problem, say, they can’t grow their newsletter.

Then other person (or persons) jump in with suggestions:

– Why don’t you get on Twitter? Yes, but Twitter is filled with AI and feels hollow

– I hear YouTube works well, why don’t you try that? Yes, but I don’t want to create video content

– Why don’t you just keep posting in communities if that’s worked for you? Yes, but that takes way too much time

– Why don’t you try running ads? Yes, but I can’t afford ads

– Why don’t you try doing list swaps? Yes, but my list is too small for list swaps

– Why don’t you just invite perfect prospects to your list one by one? Yes, but that would be so slow and anyways who would say yes

The fact is, there are 1,001 ways to grow your newsletter. There are entire (free and high-quality) websites dedicated to cataloguing those ways. I myself have written about the topic dozens of times, including earlier this month.

But none of that really matters.

Because the point of playing “Why don’t you… yes, but” is not to get a workable solution, but to keep going until all the suggestions run dry, and the original person asking for advice can say, “See, I knew they had nothing for me.”

Ok. So now I probably sound like a dick, and a conceited dick at that.

I mean, have I really told you anything new here? Or have I just put a fancy new label on something that everybody already knows and does, while singling out a poor reader who just asked a question?

Fine. Let me tell you something else I read in Games People Play, which might be genuinely new and useful to you. Says Berne:

===

While almost anyone will play this game under proper circumstances because of its time-structuring value, careful study of individuals who particularly favor it reveals several interesting features.

First, they characteristically can and will play either side of the game with equal facility.

This switchability of roles is true of all games. Players may habitually prefer one role to another, but they are capable of trading, and they are willing to play any other role in the same game if for some reason that is indicated.

===

I can tell you that, until not too long ago, I myself was a ready player of “Why don’t you… yes but.”

Like Berne says, I happily played either side. I would both bring up frustrations and dismiss offered solutions… and at other times, I would also offer advice, have that advice dismissed, and then offer more advice.

I played either side happily because it made me feel smart and righteous.

Curious thing:

I noticed recently that I don’t play this game much any more.

These days, if people offer me advice, I nod. If it’s somebody I trust and respect, I do exactly as they say. Otherwise, I just let it go.

And on the other hand, when people come to me with their frustrations, I also nod. And then I say, “That sounds frustrating. What do you think you will do?”

Maybe, maybe, this change is tied to a bigger change in me, to being more proactive, less of a “thinker” who is mainly interested in collecting information, and a little more of a “doer” who at least sometimes tries and sees what will happen for real.

So that’s my mildly inspiring takeaway for you on this Pysch Psunday.

Maybe you are a habitual player of “Why don’t you… yes, but.”

If so, it’s not any kind of lifelong condition. If you like, you can change, starting right now.

And if you are having trouble getting yourself to take action, in spite of knowing what you should do… well, maybe Eric Berne is right about the “switchability of roles.”

I could tell you how to apply Berne’s idea to become more proactive, more of a doer. Except it would kind of defeat the whole point of this email.

Summation of stimuli

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Here’s a personal defect on the scale of Derek Zoolander’s “I can’t turn left”:

I am particularly bad at coming up with “hot takes.”

The way I’ve gotten through life in spite of this defect has been to skip the news and consume things nobody else is consuming, because then even the most lukewarm take still tingles.

That’s how I’m currently making my way through a 574-page behemoth titled Principles of Psychology, from the year 1890, by a man named William James.

It’s slow going. I imagine it will take me till the end of this year to finish at the pace I’m reading.

But it’s been worth it already. On page 39 I came across the following idea, which James call “summation of stimuli.” Even though it’s extremely lukewarm on the surface, it still made me tingle. Says James:

===

The law is this, that a stimulus which would be inadequate by itself to excite a nerve-centre to effective discharge may, by acting with one or more other stimuli (equally ineffectual by themselves alone) bring the discharge about.

===

No? That doesn’t make it clear? I told you the book is slow going. James goes on to explain in slightly clearer language:

===

The natural way to consider this is as a summation of tensions which at last overcome a resistance. The first of them produce a latent excitement or a heightened irritability; the last is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

===

Maybe that doesn’t help either. James fortunately gives a concrete example:

Take a dog (19th century scientists loved doing experiments with dogs).

Apply a weak electrical current to a nerve in the dog’s leg.

The current is too weak to set the dog’s leg to twitching.

But repeat the same weak current enough time, at a close enough interval, and somehow, even though none of the currents was enough to set the dog’s leg a-twitching, a-twitching is what you get.

“Ok,” you might say, “thank you for that lukewarm take on dog leg twitching. I gotta g-”

Wait! There’s more.

Because this isn’t just about dogs getting stimulated and starting to twitch. This is the basic neurology that underlies… pretty much everything, or at least a lot of human psychology and mental life.

I mean, I don’t have proof for what I’m about to say, because I’m only 15% through James’s psychology book.

But my guess is that this “summation of stimuli” is why one of the most fundamental techniques of persuasion, repetition, actually works.

If I say “I’m the best,” that doesn’t make it so.

But if i say “I’m the best,” every day, for years and years, and you’re forced to listen to me, then somehow, even though each individual claim is as hollow as every other one, the summation of them all turns into something with substance.

Maybe I start to genuinely believe I’m the best. Maybe you start to believe it too. And if we both believe it, then it does make it so.

Now let me make this practical to you:

In my Daily Email House community, a discussion sprang up today (ok, I sprang it up) about whether email marketing is dying.

I sprang that discussion up because I’ve seen “RIP Email Marketing” a surprising number of times in the past week alone.

The conclusion among House members was that email marketing is doing fine, but in any case, it was never about email marketing, not really, but about having a great relationship with your audience.

And the first step, and the most fundamental step, of building a great relationship with your audience is… summation of stimuli.

Showing up regularly, ideally every day, and ideally in different formats. Such as daily emails… and a community.

Speaking of, if you’d like to have your say in the conversation about email marketing and whether it’s dying or not, my Daily Email House is now accepting new members. If you’d like to spring up and join us:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Why fhe unsubscribe

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A couple days ago, I promoted a book by marketer Denny Hatch.

Not, as said in the email, because I read the book or planned to read it.

Instead, I recommended the book based on the strength of Denny’s reputation, as well as on the endorsement of one of my own readers, Jeffrey Thomas, who felt so strongly about this book that he worked with Denny to bring it back to life after many years of being out-of-print.

I honestly recommended Denny’s book as well as I could without reading it. I gave my (rather unique) reasons why I won’t be reading it, and I gave reasons why you should. From what I can tell by my Amazon Affiliates portal, I actually drove Denny some sales.

Good deed? Bad deed?

Well, turns out Denny Hatch was subscribed to my newsletter.

Turns out he read that email from a couple days ago.

Turns out he unsubscribed today. And not only did he unsubscribe, but he wrote in to tell me so:

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Why fhe unsubscribe:

February 17, 2026 by John Bejakovic

“Today I will recommend to you a book that I have not read and that I have no plans on reading.” [the first sentence of the email I sent to promote Denny’s book]

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I’m not foolish enough to let a good “reason for unsubscribing” go to waste, even if that reason comes from a respected elder in the field.

So let me draw what lesson I can from this. It’s the most basic and fundamental lesson of them all:

Make people feel okay. In other words, make them feel seen, acknowledged, and respected.

And vice versa. If you make people feel unokay — ignored, dismissed, or disrespected — then even if you are somehow, objectively, but-why-can’t-you-see-it doing right by them, it won’t matter none.

They won’t be happy, and they will even feel the need to get back at you, to get the last jibe in.

This is such a fundamental law of human nature that I put it as Commandment I in my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, etc.” book.

I’ve read that book, and I recommend it to you based on my own reading. But ok, I also wrote that book, so maybe that doesn’t count for so much.

Instead, let me share a bit of recognition and acknowledgement I just got regarding that book.

It comes from a successful online educator in the finance space. He just signed up to my list a few days ago, after reading my book and opting in for the bonus chapter. He simply wrote:

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I’m reading your book now for the 2nd time. Amazing what you can pick up the 2nd time around!

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Honestly that’s the best praise I think a book can get. I’m feeling quite okay right now as a result.

If you’d like to read my 10 Commandments book as well, maybe once, maybe twice, and learn some fundamental lessons about human nature, and how you can use them on occasion to bend reality to your will, and feel okay as a result:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Follow up about yesterday’s follow up

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Yesterday, I sent an email telling readers to:

1. Find out who their highest-LTV customer is

2. Reach out to that customer and simply catch up

A couple hours after that email went out, I got a message from a long-time reader who runs a paid newsletter, which she sells via a $2k yearly subscription. The reader wrote:

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What a great idea, John!

I sorted my Google spreadsheet and found 11 current subscribers stood out as paying in the 5 figs, some of whom surprised me.

Sent them each a nice note since no one in [industry] answers the phone, while they do respond to emails.

Every one of them responded within an hour. Several good convos came out of this.

Also reached out to 6 expired subs worth over 5 figs.

One is in between jobs and will sub once they land somewhere.

Two have retired and miss the blog dearly.

One is waiting for the new 2026 budget to open.

One just re-upped their subscription and thanked me for the reminder.

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That’s-a what I’m a-talking about!

Particularly impressive I thought was the last line, about somebody who had lapsed as a customer, and who ended up making a $2k purchase after being hit with a little reconnect message.

This morning, I took this to heart and created a spreadsheet which I titled “Follow Up Systems.” It’s a more structured way to follow up with people than simply counting on a kind guardian angel to remind me to do it. My spreadsheet has following columns:

* who

* when (eg. email, Skool)

* where

* about what

* next followup date

* next followup content

I noticed that creating this spreadsheet already took a lot of anxiety around the topic of followup out of my head.

Today, I found myself following up with people just so I could fill in the spreadsheet.

Tomorrow, I figure I will add any conversations in there that have stalled in the meantime.

And then in the days that come, I will sort this spreadsheet by the “next followup date” column, and follow up with people I said I should follow up with then.

Maybe it’s worth creating a spreadsheet like this for yourself right now, if you’re looking for clients, referrals, JV partners…

… except, that’s just the structure, the scaffolding.

What about the content? The stuff you actually send to people?

I figure you have a few options:

1. You can wing it each time.

2. You can craft your own system based on what worked and didn’t work for you.

3. Or you can take somebody else’s system that works.

The Notorious Nick Bandy has a system that works, called Ghostbuster Sequence.

It’s a series of 5 mostly templatized/somewhat adaptable followup messages you can send to clients, referrals, JV partners to get them to say yes or no.

Either a yes or a no is ok. What’s not ok is not following up at all or sending one message and treating silence as a reply, and letting it eat away at your little entrepreneur heart.

Btw, when I say Nick’s system works, here’s a recent story he shared about it:

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Last year I set my eyes on an A+ potential partner, he tried ghosting me. I even wrote about him on the sales page for The Ghostbuster Sequence.

I busted the ever-loving ectoplasm out of that ghost…

Totally flipped the script…

Got HIM chasing ME.

But I got busy…went to Singapore…hibernated for a month, chillin’ with my wife and toddler.

I’m a busy and very important guy.

🦥

He kept following up…over and over again.

And today? Just sent over his entire customer and lead database.

The LIFEBLOOD of his business.

THIRTY THOUSAND CUSTOMERS.

30k!

Do you know how hard I’m rubbing my hands together right now? With an average deal size of $20k and up?

To me. Some random guy. I’m dressed like a K-Drama fanboy in my profile picture. You should not trust this dude with your business. But he did.

Why? Because I’m the best copywriter in America?

No.

Because I read this 9-page, poorly formatted PDF and I know that NO isn’t NO.

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That 9-page PDF Nick read?

It’s Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence, which he himself rereads and applies.

The Ghostbuster Sequence will set you back a mighty $54. But it could legit be worth tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to you if you only put it to use.

If you wanna get it, and better yet, want to start using it today, in just five minutes from now:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster