Persuasion

Last chance: Shangri-La mountain pass closing

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/mve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

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

Spend all your time trying to sell out games

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

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

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

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

And true, it’s not a lot of money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

How to get unreasonable people to change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Talk sense, Doctor.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pros and cons of the “mask of misfortune”

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“Hey what’s your name?”

“Helen.”

“That’s nice. You look like a Helen. Helen, we’re both in sales. Let me tell you why I suck as a salesman.”

Maybe you know this scene. It’s from the movie Tommy Boy.

Chris Farley plays his usual character, “manic fat guy,” trying to make sales to save his family business.

In this scene, Chris is in a diner, trying to order chicken wings. But Helen, the waitress, flatly tells him the kitchen is closed.

Instead of pressing the point, Chris goes on to tell Helen why he sucks as a salesman. He uses a bread roll to illustrate his possible sale:

He loves his possible sale so much, like a pretty new pet, that he ends up ripping it apart — because he’s such a manic fat guy.

It’s a funny scene, worth watching if you haven’t seen it, worth revisiting if you have.

At the end of Chris’s manic fat guy routine, Helen the waitress shakes her head.

“God you’re sick,” she says with a chuckle. “Tell you what. I’ll go turn the fryers back on and throw some wings in for ya.”

The typical conclusion to a story like is — “Share your stories of vulnerability and failure, and magic doors open!”

Maybe. But I’d like to tell you a different conclusion.

Because Chris Farley really was sick. He battled alcoholism and drug use and apparently felt horrible about the weight he always joked about. He ended up dead at age 33, from a combination of cocaine and morphine, though traces of marijuana and antidepressants were also found in his system.

I’m not trying to bring you down. I’m trying to give you some practical advice. Specifically, some practical advice I read in a book called The Narrow Road, by a multimillionaire named Felix Dennis. Says Dennis:

“Donning the mask of misfortune for the amusement of those around you or to elicit sympathy is a perilous activity. You run the risk of the mask fitting a little too well. Or — and I have seen this happen — of becoming the mask.”

In entirely unrelated news:

The deadline to get The Secret of the Magi before the price doubles is tonight, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST.

The Secret of the Magi tells you just one thing — the big takeaway I’ve had about opening conversations that can lead to business partnerships. It’s based on my experiences being both on the receiving end of many cold outreach attempts… and spending this past summer cold contacting a bunch of other people.

Your investment to get The Secret of the Magi is a whopping $23.50. Well, assuming you get it before the deadline, which is, again, tonight at 12 midnight PST.

I won’t be writing any more emails before then. So in case you want this guide, maybe get it now?

It’s up to you. Here’s the link if you want to find out the secret:

​https://bejakovic.com/secret-of-the-magi​

[firstname], here’s what’s working in email NOW

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Hey [firstname]!

Last week, I switched my email software from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit. It’s largely been a smooth transition. The only thing I have to gripe about is ConvertKit’s overly enthusiastic UX, which greets me like a robot cheerleader each time I send a new email, and shows me a drawing of confetti and tells me congratulations. It makes me feel a bit like an imbecil.

I have this theory that, today more than ever, we all want something that feels real.

Or at least I do, and I notice how quickly I dismiss anything that gives off subtle hints that it’s not real:

Stale weeks-long autoresponders…

Merge fields…

Or just a fake emotional tone or connection, where there clearly cannot be any, like with a piece of email software that pretends to be my friend. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

A few days ago, I talked to a very smart and enterprising young marketer named Shakoor. He asked me if I think the email business model — build an email list, send emails, make money — will ever disappear.

I’m personally bullish on the email business model. But if it does ever disappear in its current form, I figure it will be replaced by something that works in basically the same way. Relationships with other humans will keep having value, as long as anything humans do still has any value.

And on that note:

Let me remind you that tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8pm CET/2PM EST/11am PST, I will host a “fireside council” with Travis Speegle.

Travis been selling online since 1996, and has been working as media buyer for 7- and 8-figure direct response brands for a good amount of time. He has seen things come and go.

Tomorrow, Travis and I will talk about paid traffic to grow an email list.

I imagine that nothing we discuss will be stuff that’s working NOW, in the sense that it wasn’t also working yesterday and won’t also work tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

But maybe that’s exacly the kind of information you’re looking for.

If you’d like to join Travis and me on the call tomorrow, you’ll have to be on my list first. Click here to make that happen.

A favor?

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Would you do me a favor?

As you might know, for the past few days I’ve been promoting a new “work alongside me offer.”

In short, I’ve launched a new list and I’m starting to grow it by paying for ads. I’m inviting people who want to follow the same process I’m following to work alongside me and to grow their own list, while getting copywriting feedback and marketing input from me.

A part of how I will deliver this feedback and input will be via a Skool community.

Which brings me to the favor:

I will be promoting this “work alongside me” offer for another week.

But I want to open up the Skool community early, and start interacting with people and giving them feedback. The reason for this is both to take the load off that’s sure to come with a bunch of people signing up at the final deadline… and also to get a sense of where people are at, and inform the marketing I will do during this last week.

So if you’ve been interested in this offer but you have been holding off, would you let me know now?

I can then share the full details of how this “work alongside me” offer will work. And if you decide to join early, by tomorrow, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST, instead of waiting for final deadline in one week’s time, then I will do two things:

1. I will put you into the Skool community as soon as I open it up on Monday

2. I’ll give you a special mystery bonus to say thanks. This special mystery bonus is about a strategy that’s not covered in the list-building blueprint I will be following… but a strategy that I’ve used in the past to offset the cost of running ads, and in one case even eliminate it

So if you’re interested in this offer, would you let me know? I’ll be checking my inbox throughout the weekend, but maybe it’s best to do it now, while it’s fresh on your mind. Thanks in advance.

The reputation benefit of a bigger list

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My own email list — this one, about marketing and copywriting and influence — is tiny. But some of the people on my list have much bigger lists than I do.

One such person is Russell Nohelty. Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money.

Russell’s audience on Substack is over 70,000 people.

Last week, when I started writing about my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic, Russell reached out. He offered to share his experiences spending $30k since February to grow his audience.

Russell and I got on a call this past Monday. It was interesting and valuable throughout, but one thing in particular stuck with me, something Russell said about the reputation benefits of various list sizes. In Russell’s words:

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There were a couple of break points where everything felt different.

10,000 emails felt different than 8,000.

30,000 emails felt way different than 20,000 emails.

From my experience, talking to other people, 50,000, 80,000 — there’s different break points where people go, “Oh you’ve got 45,000 people on your list! Yes, I want to get in front of them!”

Promotions become easier. When you’re a Dream 100 guy like I am, you can reach out to almost anyone and be like, “Hey, do you wanna be in front of my 35,000, 45,000, whatever the number is, people.”

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I can imagine that somebody somewhere has just crossed his arms and frowned. “Well, I’d much rather have a small but mighty list than a stupid big list that doesn’t read or buy from me.”

Sure. It’s my policy as well with my own list. That said, you can have both a large and a mighty list — Russell does.

But here’s the sneaky thing:

All of us constantly use mental shortcuts to evaluate the people around us and the choices we have.

On the one hand, a large list is an immensely valuable asset for its own sake.

On the other hand, a large list is also an immensely valuable asset because of its reputation benefit. Because people treat you differently if you get one. Because opportunities open up which would be closed otherwise.

All that’s to say, if you got a business, and a list, but it’s not quite going how you’d like… then the solution might just be to get a bigger list. Maybe if you can make it to the next break point, like Russell says above, then your problems now might just go poof.

Which brings me back to my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497 to get started, plus $10-$15 a day for ads. If that doesn’t deter you, hit reply and tell me so, and I can give you more information.

From the archives: DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO

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An angry Seth Taft stood up in front of the crowd and held up a tear sheet from a newspaper.

The year was 1967. Taft was the grandson of former U.S. President William Howard Taft, and was running for mayor of Cleveland. He held up the tear sheet to show a full page ad that had recently run in local papers. In large, bold letters, the headline read:

“DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO”

That ad had been paid for by Taft’s opponent in the mayoral race, Carl Stokes.

The odd thing was that Stokes was black and Taft was white.

And yet, here was Taft, the front-runner and shoein for the office in predominately white Cleveland, angry and complaining about how unfair this ad was. And it was the folks behind Stokes’s campaign who had paid for an ad seemingly telling you not to vote for their guy.

The long and short of it is that Stokes won that election. In the process, he became the first black mayor of an American city.

​​It’s impossible to say whether this ad won Stokes the election. Nonetheless, the ad is a brilliant example of effective messaging, and of a general principle that holds as true in political propaganda as it does in other influence disciplines, including sales and copywriting.

What’s the general principle? And more importantly, how might you apply it in your business?

For that, take a look at link below. It’s a post I wrote a couple years ago, inspired by this ad.

​​In case you’re looking for a slight edge in your business… or in case you have a significant disadvantage relative to your competition… this post might give you some good ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/dont-listen-to-me-im-just-some-guy/

Do you want to play the Questions game?

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Have you ever heard of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead?

Did you read the play? Or did they make you watch the movie, like they made me, in high school English class?

Do you remember the Questions game that R+G play?

Was it more like badminton? Or more like tennis?

What were the rules? I mean, what else was forbidden, besides lobbing a statement over the net?

Why were repetitive questions not allowed? What counted as out-of-bounds “rhetoric”? And how long was an invalid hesitation?

More importantly, why am I telling you all this?

Do you think it might have something to do with persuasion and sales and marketing?

Would you be surprised if I told you it did?

Have you heard me talk recently about sales trainer David Sandler?

Have you heard of Sandler’s “Silver Dollar” game? Can you see how it’s basically the same game as the one that R+G played?

And can you think of at least a few good reasons why a hard-nosed salesman like Sandler would encourage his students to spend time fooling around like this?

Do I have you confused? Would an example help? Why not click below then, and see if this clip makes things clearer?

The very first con artist

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On July 8, 1849, The New York Daily Herald published a fateful Sunday issue.

It started rather unpatriotically, with a front page full of news from across the Atlantic.

The French had just invaded Italy and were attacking Rome.

But the “effeminate,” “emasculate,”” and “degenerate” Italians, “upon whom it is the fashion to heap every stigma,” managed to repel the attack of the mighty French.

Further down the page, there was a revolution quashed in Paris.

The Berlin correspondent reported on military action against an uprising in Prussia.

In Ireland, things were quiet, and the Dublin correspondent simply wrote, “I have not any news of importance to communicate.”

With the grand European news covered, the Herald moved to smaller, more local matters.

First, there was an attack by Spanish pirates. Then a steamboat accident. Then theater news (“more dull than ever”).

Turning to page two, the Herald advised its readers of the arrival of the steamship Tennessee to town. Then it tallied up the progress of the cholera epidemic (67 new cases, 22 deaths). Next came sporting news (“the great trotting contest” at the Union Course race track).

And then, finally, deep in the middle of page 2, after several notices of curious deaths (an Irish woman had suffered “death by intemperance”), readers got to the “Police Intelligence” section.

That’s where our story starts. Because it was there that a small, insignificant, 351-word article appeared under the headline,

“Arrest of the Confidence Man”

This tiny article was the first known use of the term “confidence man” in English, which later gave us such terms as con man, con artist, and con game.

The Herald article told of a certain William Thompson, a “graduate of the college of Sing Sing.” Thompson had made a habit of stealing watches from wealthy New Yorkers, on the street, in broad daylight.

What was newsworthy was that Thompson didn’t steal through threats and violence, or through stealth and speed.

​​Instead, he stole in full view of his marks, calmly, with a big smile on his face, using just words.

Thompson’s con involved approaching a stranger on the street and starting a conversation. Then, after a few moments, Thompson would ask if the stranger had the confidence to lend him his watch for a day.

The crazy thing is it worked.

Contrary to all logic and reason, many marks did as Thompson asked. Thompson walked away, laughing, with the stranger’s watch in his pocket. One gold lever watch stolen in this way was worth $110 in 1849 money — about $4,300 today.

The story is so bizarre that it doesn’t quite sound real.

​​Sure, 1849 New York was a very different place from today. But strangers were still strangers, and valuables were still valuables.

Why would Thompson’s marks be so gullible? Why would they just do what they were asked to do? Why would they give their confidence to a complete stranger on the street after just a few moments of talking?

I’m hoping you can help me figure this mystery out.

​​I’m asking you because, if you’re interested in direct marketing and copywriting, I imagine you’re smart and well-read.

​​If you have any clues, hints, or ideas for me, write in and let me know. It will help me prepare a new book I’m working on. Thanks in advance.