Means Of Control

Discipline in print

by

Last night, I got a 4-word reply to my email about how quickly memory fails. A reader with a pseudonymous email address replied with just the following aimless question:

===

John How r u?

===

I got out my 3-ring binder of previous reader replies. I flipped through the pages in search of this reader’s email address. Sure enough, at the bottom of page 22, I found it. This reader had written me before. On January 24 of this year, in response to an email about teaching people to value your offer, this reader had written me to say:

===

Who the fuck do you think you are?

===

Now I remembered. I even wrote an email about that reply back in January.

Back then, I decided to keep this guy or gal on my list because 1) I don’t get many abusive replies from readers, and I’m more amused than bothered when it does happen and 2) I thought this reader might provide me fodder for an email in the future. That’s just what happened.

I proactively unsubscribed my “How r u” reader last night. Again, not because I was annoyed or bothered by the pointless reply.

“How r u” reader simply became a noble sacrifice to demonstrate an immensely important and fundamental point about all marketing, and in particular, about email marketing.

I honestly cannot overstate the importance of the following point. Even more so if you’re somebody like me — far from a born marketer, salesman, or promoter, and coming from a rather permissive and lax family background.

The point is this:

A key to all marketing, and perhaps the key to email marketing, is to train your audience.

Once upon a time, when I was very naive, I thought marketing was simply about getting the word out about what you have. “Whole frozen turkey, 16 lbs., $25.91. Walmart.”

Later, I figured out that marketing actually changes people — creates new desires, habits, beliefs. “Welcome to Marlboro country.”

But for some reason — again, I’m far from a born marketer or salesman – it took me a long, long while to connect the fact that 1) if you are creating marketing and 2) since marketing changes people then 3) you should consciously create marketing that changes people in a way that suits you.

This is what I mean when I say, train your audience. Tell ’em what to do. Reward those who do it. Punish those who don’t. And make an example of ’em.

100 years ago, John E. Kennedy said marketing is salesmanship in print.

Today, John E. Bejakovic is telling you, marketing is discipline in print.

Of course, maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you think I’m saying something offensive or crude or just wrong. In that case, I invite you to write in and tell me so. I promise to read what you write me, and to reply as politely and thoughtfully as I know how. Perhaps publicly.

In any case, let’s get on to the discipline:

For the past couple days, I’ve been talking about a group coaching program I’m planning for the future. The goal of this coaching program is to get people writing daily emails, regularly and well.

Right now, if you’re interested, you can get on the waiting list for that program. The waiting list is the only place I will make this program available.

And as I say on the optin page for the waiting list:

If you do sign up to the waiting list, you will get automated email from me with a few questions. Answering those questions will take all of two minutes, but it will give me valuable information to see whether this group coaching could actually be right for you. Please reply to that email within 24 hours with your answers. I will take anyone who doesn’t do this off the waiting list.

So far, a good number have signed up for the waiting list and have written me in reply to that automated email. I wrote back to each of them individually to say thanks.
​
​But a few people have signed up to the waiting list, and then failed to reply to the automated email within 24 hours.

Maybe they changed their minds about the coaching. Maybe they simply forgot. Maybe they were testing me.

Whatever the reason may be, I took them off the waiting list, and I prevented them from getting back on. They might be fine people, but they are clearly not good prospects for a strict coaching program, which is what I intend for this program to be.

If you’re interested in this coaching program, then the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so.

Some facts for you to judge me by

by

Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:

I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.

My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. ​​I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.

Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:

Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.

And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.

​​The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.

And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:

I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.

I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:

===

I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.

===

Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.

So you got two options:

Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.

On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.

Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.

You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.

Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.

Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.

It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.

Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.

Ben Settle’s strange interest in selling to distracted and damaged addicts

by

Marketer Ben Settle wrote a strange email on Friday to promote his mobile-first, app-based, course-delivery platform Learnistic. One of the arguments Ben gave for why mobile apps like Learnistic are the future is this:

===

Everyone’s basically Gollum now.

Stroking their Precious phone in the dark.

Looking at it, checking in on it, making sure it’s safe and pulling it out just to make sure… not able to rest or bear to be too far away from it — all while scrolling, consuming content, and wrapping their very existence around it.

===

By that same logic, I’m surprised Ben is still writing and sending emails.

I mean, if he’s interested in selling to distracted and damaged addicts, which is what he seems to be saying above, then it would make more sense to get himself on TikTok, or at least back on Facebook, rather than to keep writing and sending emails, a relatively low-addiction technology.

My experience, like I wrote a few days ago, is different. I’ve found that if you treat people how you’d like them to behave, then more often than not, they actually meet your expectations. Treat your customers like capable human beings, instead of like Gollum, and you will often find them to be that way.

But really, all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. That applies to Ben, and it applies to me also.

The fact is, I dislike my phone, and I hate apps. So maybe everything I wrote above is just justification for that.

I held out for years before I got a cell phone, even as everybody else around me got one. I held out much longer before I got a smart phone — basically until girls I was talking to started getting suspicious, and thinking my old-school Nokia must be a burner, and that I must really be married and hiding it.

Even now, with a smart phone in my pocket, I still refuse to use or download all but the most essential apps. And as much as I’ve learned from Ben himself, and as curious as I’ve gotten several times when he teased free content through his Learnistic app only, I’ve never once been tempted by him to download Learnistic.

That’s also why I host my courses inside the members-only area of my website, using technology from caveman days. It’s also why for my own personal work — journals, notes, research — I mainly use text files on my hard drive, a pre-caveman technology.

Anyways, tonight was the end of the launch for my Insight Exposed program. I only made that program available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get on my email list, you can sign up for free by clicking here.

The Eleven Steps of Shiny Objectaholics Anonymous

by

I got an email from a reader yesterday with an excessively long subject line:

“The most valuable info is rarely sexy, and it’s probably been staring you in the face for a long while.”

Hm. Sounded familiar. It turned out to be a quote from the last chapter of my 10 Commandments book. The body of the email went on to explain:

===

Hi John,

In a sea of great quotes from your book, this one spoke to me differently.

Why?

Cause I’ve been chasing shiny objects and secrets the past one year after quitting my banking job to write online.

Only to realize it’s BS 😅

The plan this year is to do the boring shit, on repeat. Till I get good at it. Means reading the fundamental books on copy and doing copywork a lot.

I’m already on your list and enjoy reading your emails. But it’s premature for me to buy yet – in due course though haha.

Anyways, this was an open invitation so I went for it.

Have good Sunday!

===

I have this theory that people who wind up in copywriting and direct marketing are all shiny object addicts by nature.

It’s just that the ones who make it realize their addiction at some point, and begin a gradual process of detox and recovery.

If you want a ten-step program to begin your own detox and recovery, then consider my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

A few of these commandments might be new to you. But odds are, most will be either familiar, or obvious. That doesn’t change the fact it’s where the real value is.

If you have already admitted to yourself you are powerless over shiny objects — and that your life has become unmanageable as a result — then have taken the first step. For the next 10 steps:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Keep doing a good job

by

A few weeks ago, I was at the gym on the elliptical, getting in my weekly hours of Zone 2.

I was staring out the big gym windows to distract myself. Out on the street, I saw a family of three in a miserable scene.

At the head of the pack was a mother, standing, weighed down by several heavy bags of groceries, looking exhausted.

Staggering towards her was a five-year-old boy. He was pulling his hair in a gesture that seemed to say, “I can’t do this any more.”

And a few steps behind him was his three-year-old brother, the cause of all the misery.

He was rooted in place and obviously throwing a tantrum. What killed me was that he was wearing a rainbow-colored t-shirt that said, “Keep doing a good job.”

All of which is to say, be careful of what behavior you encourage.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to get my daily emails. Maybe you’d like to join them, so you can get my entire messages, including some special offers that I never make outside my newsletter. In that case, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Threats and shaming in early-morning emails

by

Two mornings ago, I found myself on the street outside my house, in the dark. There were no cabs because it was 4:30am on New Year’s morning. I took my phone out to rent a city bike as the first step of catching my 7am flight, but instead of opening the bike app, I automatically opened my email inbox.

“Hello,” I said. “This will be useful.”

It turns out I’d gotten a new email from marketer Ben Settle. The subject line read:

“Why my ‘no coming back’ policy will inevitably be the new normal”

Ben was talking about his policy of never allowing people who unsubscribe from his paid newsletter to resubscribe.

I have no doubt that Ben’s prediction is right, and that this policy will become more and more common.

After all, newsletters are the Ford Edsel of the information publishing industry.

As Agora founder Bill Bonner, who has sold billions of dollars’ worth of newsletters, supposedly said once, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart racing, pajamas wet from sweat, with the sudden realization, “Good God… we’re all out of newsletters!”

Newsletters are something that the marketer dreamed up, because they provide continuity income, automatically, without the need to keep getting credit card details.

Newsletters are something the market doesn’t really want, not without a huge amount of bribes, indoctrination, and in Ben’s case, threats and shaming. From his email about his “no coming-back” policy:

===

“Plus, practically speaking, if the trash lets itself out why take it back in?”

===

Whatever. People will justify anything to themselves out of self-interest.

Fortunately, my self-interest isn’t aligned with selling you a newsletter, because I tried it and found I hate it, even before I had to give a single thought to retention.

The good news of that is, I don’t have to threaten you or shame you, which is something I find personally distasteful.

The bad news is, I don’t ever hear the satisfying sound of shopping-cart notifications telling me I’ve made a bunch of sales on autopilot.

Instead, I have to keep sending emails, writing sales letters, and doing my best to tempt you into buying the offers I’m selling.

That’s okay. Like I keep saying, I’m okay with working a bit, regularly, and for the long term.

And I’d rather have my freedom, both from the fixed schedule of publishing a paid newsletter, and from the psychological toll of barking at my subscribers and cracking my whip at them.

Perhaps you also value freedom over automatic shopping cart notifications. Perhaps you can understand where I am coming from. In that case, you might like to sign up to my (free) daily email newsletter.

You can try it… find it doesn’t work for you… unsubscribe… and later, if you change your mind, you can subscribe again. No threats or shaming.

To get started, click here and fill out the form.

How to handle tire kickers, trolls, and Tommy Boys

by

Since I am an avid follower of news, I found out this news yesterday:

Google execs have asked Google managers to fire 6% of the Google workforce. But not just fire.

The managers are to designate this 6% of the Google workforce as poor performers.

These poor performers won’t just lose their jobs, but might also lose their stock options — and probably their self-esteem. I mean, just think of the shame of it.

“So why did you leave Google?”

“As a matter of fact, I was designated a poor performer. But I was thinking of making a change anyhow. So tell me more about this new role you’re looking to fill. I’m very excited about it.”

This might seem like a very evil tactic by Google.

But the fact is, if you spin it right, then it’s probably true that many of that those 6% really were poor performers. Maybe they got a bit lazy, a bit demotivated, a bit entitled. At least more so than the other 96% who got to keep their jobs and their “adequate performer” status.

I bring this up because what’s good for the Google is good for the gander.

I mean, the same underlying attitude that Google adopted is often adopted in the space that’s much nearer to me — the space of marketing influencers, copywriting coaches, online gurus. And in case it’s not clear, that attitude is:

If some people are bad for business, then demonize them.

You can see a playbook of how to do it in the Google story above.

The thing is, if you think about this evil tactic a bit, you might figure out a way to use it not just to lower people’s self-esteem — but to raise it also.

How to do this is something I will explain in my upcoming Age of Insight training.

The deadline to register for Age of Insight is approaching fast: this coming Wednesday, Nov 30 at 12 midnight PST. That’s just four days away.

And here’s one thing that always gets me:

Whenever I put on an offer, I always make the deadline clear, and make it clear won’t be letting people in after the deadline.

And yet, there are always a few Tommy Boy characters — puffing and panting like Chris Farley at the start of Tommy Boy, late for school, bumbling forward in a big hurry, bumping into things, dropping their lunch and schoolbooks, checking their watches in a panic, finger up in the air to try to catch the bus driver’s attention — and still missing the school bus and getting left behind in the dust.

Don’t be a Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl.

I am only making my live Age of Insight training available to people on my email newsletter. In case you are interested in this offer, then don’t be Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl. Get on the bus while there’s still time.

Too bad! You did not win today, try again tomorrow

by

This morning, I went down to the lobby of my building. I glanced at my mailbox and gritted my teeth.

My feet were ready to take me to the mailbox so I could open it and check the mail.

​​But with the last bit of dignity left to me, I asked myself, “What are the chances that the mailman came between 9pm last night, when I last checked the mail, and now, at 8am?”

Low.

With a strong exercise of willpower, I stopped myself from checking the mail. It would only end in disappointment.

On the other hand, you can be sure I will check the mailbox in a few hours’ time. And if it happens to be empty again, I will probably check it once or twice more during the rest of the day.

Last month, I subscribed to the New Yorker. The New Yorker is a fine magazine, but hardly anything to be addicted over.

Aye, but here’s the rub:

Since I live in Spain, mail from abroad arrives inconsistently. The New Yorker is a weekly magazine, but it doesn’t arrive to my mailbox on any kind of weekly schedule. Sometimes, two issues will come a day apart. Sometimes, like now, a few weeks will pass and still no New Yorker.

Result?

Well, I told you already. Addiction. Independent of the addicting qualities of the product itself. It just comes down to how you deliver it.

“Great,” you might say. “So you’re telling me to become a flake? To make my daily emails sometimes non-daily, and sometimes multi-daily? To deliver my subscription products, sometimes a day early, sometimes a month late?”

That’s certainly one option. But there’s a bigger point here. Let me explain.

If you check today’s subject line, you will see you did not win today. I don’t mean that glibly. I’m 100% serious.

Because what I did today was actually write two and send versions of this email, each to 50% of my list.

One version is for the people who won. In that version, I explained the bigger point I had in mind, and I ended with a link to a valuable resource.

Version two is what you’re reading right now, since you did not win. This version doesn’t have the explanation or the link.

The good news is, the resource I shared with the winners is so valuable that I will probably write about it again. And I will probably share it again. Maybe even tomorrow. And maybe tomorrow, you will have better luck than today. There is always hope!

But I have to end today’s email with some kind of offer.

So I will tell you about a fine offer. Sometimes, I will promote this offer day after day. Sometimes, like now, weeks will pass before I promote this offer again. In case you want to grab it now, while it’s still fresh on your mind, click here and sign up to my sometimes daily, sometimes multidaily email newsletter.

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

by

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.

An “awful” way to guilt-trip customers into staying subscribed

by

A few days ago, I sent out an email trying to sell you the idea that much of the sale happens after the transaction is over. And I asked, how can you keep a customer selling himself on your offer, even after he’s bought it?

I got lots of interesting responses. One business owner, who asked to remain unnamed, wrote in with the following:

We plant a tree for each subscriber every month.

Each week we remind the subscriber of how many trees they’ve planted via their subscription.

The idea being that their subscription is making an ongoing difference by employing locals in areas affected by deforestation.

If they unsubscribe now there will be consequences for others.

This actually sounds kinda awful…

I don’t know about awful… I just thought it was wonderfully guilt-trippy. It also happens to be the exact flip-side of one way I’ve used to inspire people to buy, which is to say that their self-interested drive for success will have beneficial wider consequences.

That idea, about beneficial wider consequences, is one of 7 ways to inspire that I wrote up in an email long ago.

This was in the early days of my newsletter, when I stupidly and shamelessly whole-hogged how-to advice in my emails. The only thing I can say in my defense is that with this particular inspiration email, I at least camouflaged the how-to in with some infotainment (I matched up each how-to-motivate strategy with a pop song).

Anyways, I bring all this up for two reasons:

1. I realized that each of my 7 ways to motivate people to buy can be flipped to motivate people to stay sold. I just gave you one example above of how that works. But with the smallest bit of thought, all the other 6 ways can be flipped in such a way as well.

2. If I were a little smarter, like Ben Settle for example, I would take my “7 ways to inspire” email off my site, flesh it out a bit, and sell it for $97 as part of a paid newsletter.

It turns out I’m not very smart. But maybe I will get smarter one day, maybe one day soon.

As it is, you can still read that inspiration email for free, on my site, at the link below. And who knows. Maybe you can even take one of those ideas, use it to inspire some customers to take action today, and benefit them while also making money for yourself. Or flip that idea, and keep those wayward sheep from making a big mistake and straying from your flock.

In any case, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/