Guruship

Mysterious showman’s unnatural advice

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For the past four days, I’ve been promoting my new coaching program, but maybe I should stop.

Days one and two produced a lot of response.

Day three produced less response.

Day four has so far produced no response.

It might turn out somebody will still respond to yesterday’s email. After all, I sent it out less than 12 hours ago.

Or it might turn out I’ve genuinely tapped out demand. Especially since I’ve been trying to disqualify people pretty hard in my copy.

Or it might just be that my audience is getting weary of my recent barrage of long, charged, promise-heavy emails.

In connection to that last possibility:

I want to share a tip with you from the mysterious Derren Brown.

Brown is a hypnotist and illusionist and mentalist who has spent a lot of time on stage performing to big crowds, and a lot of time on UK’s Channel 4, making mindbending TV specials for audiences of millions.

Writing once about his experience playing to crowds, Brown gave this advice:

The lesson I quickly learned, which goes against every natural instinct when you are on stage showing off to people, is that if they are losing interest and starting to cough, you must become quieter.

Let me test out Brown’s advice.

So no benefits of my coaching program today. No man-or-mouse copy. Not even any deadline countdown.

I will just quietly remind you that I will be offering a coaching program with a focus on email marketing, starting in January. In case that interests you, the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so. After that, we can talk in more detail.

Buy my 10 Commandments book

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This past November, copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email with 38 lessons to mark his 38th birthday. Lesson number 9 read:

9. People love commandments. A little copy “trick” I don’t see used often enough is to create a commandment and then repeat it over and over again, like the chorus to a song. Here’s an example… “remember: commandments always equal higher conversions.” If this were a sales letter, that would be the chorus line.

I haven’t promoted my 10 Commandments book for a while. So let me do it now.

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​Why? Because it’s great. Here’s a testimonial — or more specifically, a four-star review, which is as negative of a review as I’ve gotten so far:

“Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.”

As the reviewer above says at the end of his 4-star review:

Buy my 10 Commandments book. At least if you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so.

Maybe you’re still not convinced.

​​So let me tell you that the book contains a commandment by Dan Ferrari. Dan is one of the smartest and most successful people in the copywriting world right now.

Over the past decade, Dan has made himself a lot of money by writing copy for some of the biggest direct response publishers. He has a long string of controls, even when going up against other top pros. As a result, he was voted the no. 1 direct response copywriter in a recent ranking some dude put together.

So that’s another reason why you should buy my 10 Commandments book.

Maybe, maybe you’re still not convinced.

In that case, I can tell you my 10 Commandments book costs only $5. It’s by far the cheapest of my offers, and outside of any future Kindle books I may one day write, it’s also the only thing I will ever sell for under $100, at least outside special launch prices.

Are you starting to feel the refrain coming on? I’m feeling it. And it goes like this…

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​You can do it at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Hot takes are dead… here’s why

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About six months ago, I wrote an email that for some reason I never sent. In that email, I wondered what had happened to James Altucher’s writing.

The background is this:

James Altucher is an online personality, a podcaster and also writer who used to write daily.

James is one of few people whose daily writing I enjoyed reading. Plus I’ve gotten multiple really valuable ideas from James that have transformed how I work.

James used to write regularly on his own site.

But his last post there came on June 15 2021. Since then he’s published a few pieces on other sites including LinkedIn, but his writing has largely disappeared.

There aren’t many people online that I would miss if they got swallowed by a sinkhole.

But James Altucher is one, largely because I’ve found his writing both insightful and valuable.

So I was wondering what happened to his writing and wishing somebody could tell me.

Well, I found out. James revealed it himself on a recent podcast.

Back in August 2020, he wrote an article titled, “New York City is dead forever… here’s why.”

James lived most of his life in NYC, but in that article, he predicted the death of the city based on the effects of the corona pandemic.

That article went very viral. It got a huge amount of readership, and also a huge amount of blowback.

And maybe most painful to James, who used to own a comedy club, “The New York is dead” piece got Jerry Seinfeld to write a trolling response in the lying New York Times in which he only referred to James as “some putz on LinkedIn.”

With all that blowback, and the personal attack by Jerry Seinfeld, James gradually retreated from writing. Maybe he will get his courage back to write daily. Or maybe he won’t.

I’m not sure what my point is. I guess there are many.

Such as, it’s harder to not care what people think that most of us would like.

Such as, don’t pick on people who are known to be combative (New Yorkers as a group, who knew about Jerry Seinfeld).

Such as, writing hot takes can burn you as well. And putting your own attitudes into your writing makes you vulnerable to personal attacks.

If you agree with me on these points, then what can you do?

Well, develop a tougher skin… only pick on people who will take it… or find some other way to get readership and attention than by writing hot takes and sharing your own personal attitudes.

I can’t help you with the skin part or with finding meek targets to pick on.

As for that last part, about other ways to get readership and attention, I can remind you of my Most Valuable Email trick.

A few of the emails I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick have gone semi-viral — they got unexpected forwards and shares in the small direct marketing community.

And using the Most Valuable Email trick allows me to write in a way that’s separate from what I believe personally. And yet my readers don’t mind this lack of “authenticity” — in fact, they even seem to enjoy it.

Maybe it’s not too clear how this can possibly be true.

If you’re curious, try out my email newsletter and witness it for yourself. Click here to sign up.

The strategy of hypocrisy and scoundreldom

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Mark Ford once shared the following personal story in his newsletter, which has rattled around in my head for years:

AJ is one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet. We became acquainted almost 40 years ago when my boss at the time got into a joint venture with him.

The deal made both of them a lot of money, but it ended badly when they argued about dividing the spoils. AJ’s behavior after that was reprehensible. I was so disturbed by it that once, at an industry event, I actually challenged him to a duel. He declined.

Years later, we reconnected. I was still angry with him – but before I had a chance to bring it up, he said, very casually, “But of course I’m a hypocrite and a scoundrel.”

The moment he said that, I forgave him.

Maybe it’s the gossip in me, but I’ve always wondered who this brilliant marketing mind is in reality.

I have my own theory.

Maybe you do too, or maybe you know the true back story. In any case, the following two points stand:

1. The direct marketing world attracts many morally bankrupt characters, some of whom are very smart and very effective at what they do.

2. You can’t really tell much from the outside. The whole thing about marketing is presenting an attractive facade to the world, including of your own self.

And by the way, playing consumer advocate, which is kind of what I’m doing with this email, is just another way of dressing up that attractive facade.

Having said that, I would now like to sell you on signing up for my daily email newsletter.

You might rightly wonder why, having primed you to be guarded and suspicious, you should listen to anything I have to tell you now.

The fact is, people can be very good at presenting an attractive facade to the world — for a while. But it becomes hard to do it week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s why daily emails are one way to get a peek behind that facade, and see who is morally bankrupt, and who has some money in the moral bank.

And besides, you might get some good ideas about copywriting or marketing or persuasion from my daily emails.

Whatever the case, if you’d like to sign up, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Bejako the email clown

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About a week ago, I sent out an email about a budding email copywriter who made me an offer I could refuse. I got the following reply to that email:

Honest feedback.

This email does not sound like your personal voice.

There’s a uniqueness in the way you phrase things and keeps me reading. I sense a difference in this email. I don’t know if this an earlier version of you.

I sat there for a moment, staring at this reply, tilting my head from side to side like a confused beagle.

What exactly was the intent behind this reply? What was I to do with this honest feedback?

I never did figure it out.

But I’ll tell you what I will not do.

I won’t go through my “budding email copywriter” email, figuring out where my tone of voice went wrong. I also won’t go through other emails, reverse-engineering what a proper Bejako email sounds like. And I certainly won’t poll my readers and say, “Please tell me what you like about my online persona, so I can give you more of what you like, and less of what you dislike.”

I recently discovered the term flanderization.

On The Simpsons, the character of Ned Flanders went from being a good neighbor, who served as a foil to Homer Simpson, to being an annoying religious fundamentalist.

​​In other words, Flanders became more and more of a one-dimensional caricature of himself over the course of the many seasons of The Simpsons.

It’s not just The Simpsons. The same thing happens with other shows and other characters, including those that people play in email newsletters like this one.

I’ve often written that I’m in it for the long game with this newsletter.

That’s why my prime directive is to make writing these emails fun and interesting for me personally.

But painting myself into a corner of what I can and cannot say — because not it wouldn’t be in line my tone of voice or online persona — well, that’s neither fun nor interesting for me. I’d rather be free to say what I want to say, when I want to say it, even if it makes me sound off-brand on certain days, and like a clown on others.

Anyways, this probably doesn’t benefit you in any way. Not unless have an online presence, or are planning to start one.

But if you are putting some aspect of yourself out there regularly, maybe my perspective on it can be helpful to you somehow.

And here’s something else that might be helpful, at least if you are interested in copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

Dan Kennedy corrects a mistake I’ve made in my copywriting career

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Let me tell you a copywriting client experience that still stings:

About two years into my freelancing career, I got the opportunity to write some emails for RealDose Nutrition.

​​RealDose is an 8-figure supplement company, started by a couple of direct marketers and an MD. They sell actually legit supplement products — their USP is right there in the name.

Long story short – I did a good job with those emails. I even tripled results in one of their main email funnels.

Impressed with those results, the CEO of RealDose asked me to write a sales letter next, for their probiotics product.

The only problem was, at this stage of my career, I had never written a full-blown sales letter.

​​What to do?

​​I took Gary Bencivenga’s olive oil sales letter and analyzed the structure. I wrote something that looked nothing like Gary’s letter, but was the exact same thing under the hood.

I gave it to the guys at RealDose. They shrugged their shoulders. They copy seemed okay… but I guess they weren’t sold. Because as far as I know, the sales letter was never tested.

Some time later, I got that sales letter critiqued by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said the body copy was fine. But the hook? The headline and the lead?

Parris used my headline and lead to publicly illustrate what an uninteresting promise looks like. “Are you the first person on the plant to ever sell a probiotic?” Parris asked me. He laughed and shook his head.

I never got another chance to write anything else for RealDose. I always wonder how my career might have gone had I done a better job with that big shot that I got.

I bring this up because today, I made a list of 10 mistakes I’ve made in copywriting career.

That RealDose sales letter, with the uninteresting promise in the headline, was no. 1.

No 4. was that this newsletter, the one you are reading now, is actually the third iteration of my daily email newsletter.

​​I deleted the previous two versions.

Version one was very much like this, and ran for a few months in 2016.

​​​​Some time later, I deleted it because I started writing about crypto marketing.

​​Then in 2018, I deleted that crypto daily email newsletter… and started writing this current iteration, starting over where I had left off two years earlier, and wasting a bunch of time, effort, and opportunity in the process.

So those are mistakes no. 1 and no. 4.

And then there’s mistake no. 7.

Mistake no. 7 is that i didn’t treat my freelancing career as a business for way too long. And when I say that, I might not mean what you think I mean.

For example, I always paid a lot of attention to the prices I was charging clients. And I worked hard on getting those prices higher.

I was also always on the hunt for new leads and new ways of getting leads.

And yet, at the same time, I didn’t ask myself, until way too late, “How can I promote this? How can I make a spectacle out of this? How can I get this offer that I have — meaning myself and my copywriting services — in front of a much bigger audience?”

Maybe what I mean is best summarized by Dan Kennedy, the very smart and successful marketer I’ve mentioned a few times in the past few days. Dan once said:

“Your growth will have less to do with your talent, your skill, your expertise or your deliverables than it will your ability and willingness to create and exploit your own status.”

Dan claims this applies regardless of what business you are in, whether you are selling services or products. In fact, Dan gave the above advice to a guy with a software company.

Which brings me to my offer to you for today.

How would you like a free consulting day with Dan Kennedy?

A daylong consult with Dan normally costs $18k. But you can get it for free.

Well, fine, not the whole thing.

But you can get three highlights of the consulting day that Dan gave to marketer Mike Cappuzzi.

The fact is, I told you one of the highlights of that consult day above. But in case you think a little bit of Dan’s $18k/day wisdom could benefit your business, here’s where you can read Dan’s other two consulting day highlights:

https://mikecapuzzi.com/an-insiders-glimpse-into-a-consulting-day-with-dan-kennedy/

It’s okay to open this email

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Here are some intimate facts about my personal life right now:

I have two friends visiting and staying with me. Two nights ago, the three of us went out to dinner. The food wasn’t great. But it sure was toxic.

At least that’s how I explain the sudden onset of nausea and high fever that hit me a few hours later, when I got home and went to bed.

Each time I turned between the sheets, I thought I might throw up. I also burned feverishly throughout the night, and got almost no sleep.

I spent most of the following day on the couch, taking cat naps, only eating paracetamols to bring my body temperature back into normalish range.

Maybe you say this doesn’t sound like a typical case of food poisoning.

Maybe you are right.

But what still makes me suspect the dinner was that within another 24 hours, I was completely fine.

No more fever. No more frightened stomach. Nothing except a little lingering tiredness.

In fact, I was so fully fine that by the end of that second day I considered going to the gym.

Sure, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea. I hardly ever am. But I felt guilty at already missing a day.

“I will do it,” I said to one of my friends, who was sitting on the couch next to me. “I will go to the gym.”

This friend, a dominant Turkish girl, looked at me crossly.

“What! Don’t go to the gym. Your body needs to recover. Besides, you didn’t really eat anything for the past 24 hours. You need fuel if you will go to the gym!”

I smiled and nodded at how right she is. I concluded that I should follow her wise advice and skip the gym. Which was convenient, because it’s what I wanted to do all along.

You might see how this story lends itself to persuasion and influence. As Dan Kennedy likes to say, “There is power in issuing permission slips.”

Speaking of which:

I found that bit of “persuasion slip” wisdom on the bottom of page 47 of a huge 270-page document called,

“Dan Kennedy’s Million Dollar Resource & Sample Book”

I don’t know how much Dan originally sold this “Million-Dollar Sample Book” for. But I do know that it’s available for free as a bonus to Brian Kurtz’s very affordable book Overdeliver.

But in case you are quickly backing away from me right now, let me reassure you:

You might legitimately feel that buying Brian’s Overdeliver, and getting access to a few metric tons of high-quality marketing advice in the form of bonuses, has both its good and bad sides.

The good side is that it’s clearly an attractive offer. Brian’s book costs something like $12. And the bonuses that Brian gives away have sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

That’s the good side. The bad side is that:
​​
Almost certainly, you already have a mountain of good marketing advice sitting on your laptop right now, unconsumed, unloved, and unimplemented.

If that bothers you, I can telly you that I have the same. I have a ton of marketing content I have paid for but still haven’t done anything with.

Even so, I still encourage you to check out Brian’s Overdeliver collection.

In part, that’s because it is such a valuable hangarful of information. And because it is such an incredible deal.

And also, because I will make it easy for you to get value out of Brian’s offer. Here’s the deal:

1. Get Overdeliver

2. Get the bonuses using the form on Brian’s page below

3. Open up the Dan Kennedy Sample Book and go to page 47, where it says “There is power in issuing permission slips”

4. Send me an email, with the sentence immediately preceding that “permission slips” sentence

I will then tell you the most valuable and interesting thing I have personally learned out of that entire 270-page sample book, and possibly out of entire Overdeliver collection. Because I have gone through the entire massive collection, each part of it, and I have taken notes.

So here’s the link to get started. ​​Go ahead. ​​It’s okay:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

My big takeaway from yesterday’s Daniel Throssell presentation

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I’m at the airport as I write this, sitting in a dangerously comfortable armchair, staring out the big windows onto the tarmac, and waiting to fly from Sofia, Bulgaria to Barcelona, Spain.

This is the latest leg of a crisscrossing world journey I started almost two years ago. During that time, I have moved some two dozen times, staying mainly in Airbnbs though occasionally also with friends and family.

If you’re wondering why I’m gushing all this atypical and overly personal information at you, it’s because yesterday I held my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

In the aftermath of this presentation, I noticed I got as much positive feedback about the actual content I shared as about random personal things people spotted about me. The Firefox extensions I use… the labels in my Gmail account… my own charming face (apparently I look like actor Mike Connors).

The presentation seems to have been a success. Exactly 430 people registered for it, and by my very precise estimate, somewhere between 0 to 430 people attended live (I was too focused on what I had to say to actually check how many people were on the Zoom call).

The three techniques I was so focused on sharing during this presentation, the three techniques I identified in Daniel’s copy, are what you might consider “secrets.”

In other words, they are stuff you probably hadn’t heard or thought about before. They are meant to make you say, “Ohh, that’s clever” when you hear them.

These three techniques made certain of Daniel’s emails stand out to me. In that way, they are undoubtedly valuable.

But marketing “secrets” like this are rarely as valuable as the fundamental stuff you probably hear all the time, and have probably been hearing for years, but for one reason or another you refuse to accept, or refuse to do.

Such as the idea that personal reveals create trust, build a sense of liking, and set the foundations for a long-running relationship.

That’s probably plenty obvious to you if you are a regular reader of Daniel’s emails.

Perhaps you have incorporated revealing personal stuff in your own marketing, and you’ve reaped the benefits thereof.

Or perhaps like me, you dislike the idea of talking about yourself in any way.

In which case, all I can say is, it’s worth pushing yourself, and experimenting with how to make personal reveals in your marketing while still keeping your sense of integrity.

Because personal reveals definitely have benefits. Like I said above, they seem to be as impactful, and probably more so, as the info you actually share and the benefits you provide your audience.

That’s my big takeaway from yesterday’s presentation.

Does it resonate with you in any way?

No? You want more secrets?

In that case, you definitely won’t like the offer I will make in my email tomorrow.

To be honest with you, I actually hoped to put this offer it into today’s email. But I’m very sleep deprived, and it took me shamefully long to write the preceding 507 words. And in just a few minutes, boarding is starting.

So the only offer I have for you today is my workhorse, The 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It might have slipped by you if you joined my list only recently.

It doesn’t really have any secrets, but it does have a lot of really fundamental advice, some of which might be trasnformative for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

A shocking demonstration of influence or just a bit of misdirection?

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Last night, I watched The Heist, a Derren Brown special that ran on the BBC in 2006.

I wrote about Brown a few days ago. He’s a stage mentalist and magician, and TV debunker of psychics, faith healers etc.

The premise of The Heist is simple:

Can Brown take a group of middle managers who show up for a self-improvement seminar… and within a few weeks, turn them into criminals willing to steal £100,000 at gunpoint?

The short answer is, yes he can.

How exactly does Brown do it? Well, if you watch The Heist, it seems to be a matter of:

1) Carefully choosing the right marks
2) Classical conditioning
3) NLP and hypnosis
4) Making use of deference to authority
5) Commitment and consistency

The show starts out in a countryside castle. Brown delivers a training there to a group of 13 people who responded to a newspaper ad.

Brown was already a TV celeb at this point, and the ad promised that, in the training, chosen participants would learn some of his cool techniques.

During the training, Brown teaches the attendees some useful stuff, such as his memory tricks. But he also programs them using his hypnosis and NLP skills. And he encourages them to commit a petty crime — to steal some candy from the corner store.

Most of the attendees end up complying. They walk into the store, and more or less awkwardly, they walk out with a Snickers or a Kit Kat tucked in their pants or jacket sleeve.

Over the coming weeks, Brown focuses on the most promising prospects. He gives them more tasks and training, which are really more compliance tests and criminal suggestion in disguise.

In the end, Brown picks four of the original 13 — three men and one woman. He massages them more with suggestion and mind tricks, amping up their aggression, planting the seeds of a daring and serious crime.

The climax of the show is covert footage of each of four final would-be criminals. One by one, they walk down the same London street, toward a bank security guard (actually an actor).

Three of the four end up pulling out a fake gun and robbing (or thinking they are robbing) the security guard.

Only the fourth guy nervously walks on, twitching his head and gritting his teeth, but leaving his toy gun unused.

So that’s the story you get if you watch The Heist.

But what’s the reality? Well, who the hell knows.

Because I’m not telling you about Brown’s Heist as an example of the power of influence techniques, or NLP, or good list selection, all of which I’ve written about plenty in this newsletter.

Instead, I’m telling you about The Heist as an example of sleight-of-hand and misdirection.

Brown says there was no trickery and no fooling the viewer involved in The Heist. And I believe the participants in The Heist were real, and not actors. I also have no doubt they believed they were doing something real when they pulled the toy gun on the bank security guard.

Even so, I think The Heist contains some clever editing to make you come away with the story above… as opposed to a significantly different story.

Maybe if you watch The Heist yourself, you will spot the crucial bits that I think are missing, and you can learn something about misdirection.

Or who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong.

Maybe The Heist really is demonstration what it takes to convert a few ordinary law-abiding citizens into serious criminals. If so, it’s worth watching for inspiration and self-programming value alone.

(Not to be a criminal, you goose. But just to realize the true power of these influence techniques we use all the time in copywriting and marketing.)

In any case, if you are curious, or suggestible, then take a look at the entire Heist special below. And before you click to watch it, if you want to get more influence and persuasion ideas like this, sign up to my newsletter.

“Filthy animals”: How to become a star and embarrass your mom

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Colby’s phone was ringing. He looked at it and his head sank to his chest.

It was his mom again. He would have to finally talk to her. And he knew what she would say.

“This is horrible, Colby,” his mom yelled as soon as he answered. “How could you? I just saw it again on ESPN! You called them filthy animals! An entire country, and you called them filthy animals! This is not how we raised you Colby! I should come over there and wash your mouth out with a bar of soap!”

You might know who I’m talking about. Colby “Chaos” Covington, currently the number-1-ranked welterweight in the UFC.

In case that doesn’t mean much to you, let me explain:

Covington is a professional MMA fighter. And he’s good at fighting.

But it turns out fighting is only a part of his job.

So in spite of being good at fighting, Covington was at one point on the edge of getting dropped from his contract with the UFC.

He was just not very exciting to watch or listen to.

So Covington started wearing a MAGA hat and name-dropping Donald Trump at every opportunity…

He started talking up his support and admiration of the police, right as the BLM movement was dominating the news…

And then, he went into his fight against the Brazilian fighter Damian Maia, in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

And right after beating Maia, during the post-fight interview, as the crowd started whistling and booing, Covington yelled into the microphone that Brazil is a dump and that Brazilians are filthy animals.

“What do you want me to do, mom?” he said when she finally gave him a chance to speak. “They really were acting like animals. They were all drunk, and they were throwing things at me and booing.”

So that’s the point I want to share with you today.

Covington says his public persona is really him. He’s not making it up.

He is a Trump supporter. He does admire and support the police and the military. And he thought the Brazilian crowd, before and during and after his Sao Paolo fight, was being incredibly rude.

The difference is, Covington took all those things… and he took them to 100.

It definitely worked for him. He had his UFC contract extended… he started making much more money… and he became one of the biggest names in the sport today.

And it can be the same for you, too.

You don’t have to be a natural to succeed at anything. Including having a personality.

You can even have fun doing it. A/B test different aspects of who you already are… exaggerate them, caricature them… and see what people respond to.

Money, fame, and opportunities will follow.

And in case you’re wondering:

Yes, I am telling this to you as much as to myself. Because this is an exercise I have been slacking off on doing.

So if in the near future you want to see me contradicting myself blatantly… or writing about crystal skulls and Akashic records… or announcing that I have converted to Taoism… well, sign up to my email newsletter. And get ready to witness my transformation.