Persuasion

I bet you already knew what I’ll write about in this email

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Last night I went to see Air, the new Ben Affleck movie about how Nike signed Michael Jordan.

Air is a typical rousing Hollywood stuff — a scrappy underdog does what it takes to win. It was fun to watch, but as the movie neared its emotional climax, I started to feel a kind of gnawing in my stomach.

I kept thinking, “This is it? This is what life is all about?”

A bunch of overworked, overweight, aging people in an office, hollering and high-fiving each other and gazing knowingly into each others’ eyes after their one triumph — getting a 21-year-old basketball player to agree to wear one kind of shoe instead of another kind of shoe?

But the movie is set in the 1980s. Maybe it reflects the corporate ideals of that era.

Anyways, let’s get back on track:

At the start of the movie, a convenience store clerk chats with the main character, played by Matt Damon. The clerk obviously knows a lot about basketball, and is sure Jordan won’t turn into anything big. The Matt Damon character is the only one who believes.

By the end of the movie, thanks to Matt Damon’s dogged believing, Nike signs Jordan in spite of impossible odds. Jordan immediately becomes a huge star. Nike goes on to sell a hundred million pairs of Air Jordans in the first year alone.

Matt Damon goes back to the convenience store and chats up the clerk again. The clerk nods his head. “I always knew Jordan would be a big thing,” he says.

“We all knew,” the Matt Damon character chuckles as he walks out the store.

As I’m sure you already knew, human memory is fallible. We forget, misremember, and flat-out make up stuff if it suits us and matches our sense of self.

You might think this only happens over the span of months or years, like it did with that convenience store clerk in Air.

But maybe you saw — and failed to remember — a new scientific study that went viral earlier this month. Scientists managed to show that people misremember stuff that happened as recently as half a second ago. And if the scientists stretched it out just a bit longer before asking — two seconds, three seconds — people’s memory became still worse and more inaccurate.

So my point for you, specifically for how you deal with yourself, is to write stuff down. Because you sure as hell won’t remember it.

And my point for you, specifically for how you deal with your prospects, is to keep reminding them, nudging them, and telling them the same thing you told them a million times before.

You rarely have people’s full attention. And even when you do have their full attention, they forget. Even if you just told them a second ago.

The only way your prospects are sure not to forget, and to maybe do what you want, is if you remind them today, tomorrow, the day after, and so on, hundreds of millions of Air Jordans into the future.

Which brings me to the group coaching I am planning. I first wrote about it yesterday. Now that I mention it, I’m sure you remember.

This planned group coaching is about email copywriting for daily emails — so you can remind your prospects of your offer over and over, in a way that they actually enjoy.

If you’re interested in this coaching, the first step is to get onto my email list. Click here to do that.

My diagnosis is that you’re trying to normalize rather than pathologize

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I first wrote about Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in this newsletter in August 2021. Clance and Imes are the two psychologists who, back in 1978, wrote a paper in which they defined something called imposter phenomenon.

The interesting thing is they called it imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome. From a recent article in The New Yorker:

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Every time Imes hears the phrase “impostor syndrome,” she told me, it lodges in her gut. It’s technically incorrect, and conceptually misleading. As Clance explained, the phenomenon is “an experience rather than a pathology,” and their aim was always to normalize this experience rather than to pathologize it.

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It might seem like a trivial difference, phenomenon rather than syndrome. It’s not trivial. Like Clance says in that quote, their goal was just to point out, normalize, say, “it’s okay that you feel like a faker, because others do too.”

But that’s not what the public wanted.

The public wanted a concrete disease, a disorder, or at least a syndrome — something unique and special they can point to and explain why they feel uncertain or uncomfortable or why their life is not how they imagine it. The pathological imposter syndrome does that, the wishy-washy, normal, everyday imposter phenomenon does not.

So the public took Clance and Imes’s idea, and they made it their own. Imposter syndrome.

But my real point for you is not the word choice of phenomenon vs syndrome. Sure, it is important, but it’s also the only part that Clance and Imes didn’t get right in their original paper, at least from a persuasion perspective.

My point for you is that difference between concrete vs. wishy washy, unique vs. everyday, pathological vs. normal, all of which Clance and Imes, whether they wanted to or not, definitely did get right in their paper.

People are looking for answers. They want to know to why their life is the way it is, and now the way they want it to be.

If, like Clance and Imes, you give people a satisfying answer to that eternal question, it can literally make you a star in your field, and can have your ideas spread on their own, like fire among dry brush that hasn’t seen water for years.

Maybe this entire email speaks little or not at all to you.

In that case, my diagnosis is that you’re being too nice, and you’re trying to normalize your prospects’ experiences, to give them small incremental improvements and understandings, rather than a total change in perspective in how they view their world.

My prognosis in that case is that you will struggle to be heard, and struggle to make sales. It could even be fatal to your business.

If you want a fix for that unfortunate and dangerous condition, then there’s a pill you can take. I even named it for you above.

But enough of playing doctor.

Back in my own house, the fact remains that I’m still in the process of spring cleaning. I’m throwing out old furniture and old courses, dusting off wardrobes and sales letters, and planning out how to redecorate my living room and my newsletter.

While that’s going on, I will just point you to my only book that’s currently available for sale, and also the only offer I have that doesn’t cost $100 or more. If you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Last day ever to buy Copy Riddles

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Today is the last day ever to buy Copy Riddles. At 2:31 EST tomorrow, Tuesday April 18, I will turn off the shopping cart for Copy Riddles and stop making this program available for purchase.

In the future, depending on interest, I will from time to time offer 2-month group coaching around the content inside Copy Riddles, the way I did for a small number of people last year.

The price for that future group coaching, if it does happen, will be at least $1,000 higher than the price for current self-study Copy Riddles course. This coaching will also only be only available to a few people at a time when it is available at all, since my personal time and attention will be required.

All that’s to say, if you’ve already gone through Copy Riddles, or you never had any interest in doing so, then unfortunately I have nothing for sale to offer you in this email. I promise to do better in the future.

On the other hand, if you have been thinking about Copy Riddles but you’ve been on the fence — an uncomfortable and jagged place — then today is the last day to buy Copy Riddles as a standalone, self-study course.

And if you somehow managed to miss the dozens of emails I’ve sent about Copy Riddles over the past days, months, and years, and you’re wondering what this program is really about, you can read the full details, including the experience of many people who have gone through Copy Riddles already, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The case against reading books

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One of the first-ever emails I wrote for this newsletter, back in August 2018, was about magician Ricky Jay. Jay was widely considered one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in the world.

Why write about a magician in a marketing and copywriting newsletter?

My feeling is that magic, as practiced by top performers like Ricky Jay, is about controlling the audience’s attention, about painting mental pictures, about entertaining, about building curiosity, all the while guiding people to a tightly controlled desired outcome — the magician’s desired outcome.

​​With some small tweaks, that also sounds like the job of a copywriter, or more broadly, any persuader.

Back in August 2018, Ricky Jay was still alive. He died a few months later. He left behind an enormous collection of magic artifacts — posters, books, handbills, paintings, personal letters — from some of the most bizarre, mystical, and skilled magicians, jugglers, acrobats, learned animals, con men, and sideshow freaks of all time.

After Ricky Jay died, his collection was broken up into four parts. Just the first part, auctioned off in 2021, brought in $3.8 million.

Today, I came across a little video of Ricky Jay talking about the books in his collection. And he had this to say:

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There are probably more books written about magic than any other art form. Literally thousands and thousands of books. And I’ve collected thousands of books in my life about magic technique.

But I believe that the real key to learning is personally. It’s almost like the sensei master relationship in the martial arts. That the way you want to learn is by someone that you respect showing you something.

There’s a level of transmission and a level of appreciation that’s never completely attainable just through the written word.

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I agree. If you can find somebody you respect, and you can get them to agree to teach you personally, you will learn things, and at a level of depth that you could never learn otherwise.

So go find a  sensei. But—

What if you can’t find one?

Or worse, what if you find a sensei, and, in spite of your best pleading and cajoling and stubbornly hanging around, he just says no? What if he’s too busy, too cranky, too secretive?

In that case I suggest being your own sensei.

Because books are great. I’ve read two or three of them, so I know. But there’s a level of understanding that’s never completely attainable through the written word.

Anyways, that’s my entire message for you for today. Except, if you want some help becoming your own sensei, take a look at my Most Valuable Email course.

​​Yes, Most Valuable Email is a bit of a how-to guide to a specific technique of email copywriting. But more than that, it’s a framework, a magical one in my experience, for becoming your own sensei. More info here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to increase your average open rate by 1.95%

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My average daily open rate for the last week of February was 33.89%. My average daily open rate for the last week of March was 35.84%. That’s a staggering increase of 1.95%.

Well, it’s not really staggering. It’s not really anything.

Open rates don’t tell you much, and what they do tell you is often bad. I’ve written before how for one large list I was mailing with daily offers, I found a mild inverse relationship between open rates and sales — on average, each extra 1% of opens cost us $100 in sales.

But my sales are up as well. Like I wrote a few days ago, this past March was a record month for me. I made plenty of sales in that last week of March, many more than in the last week of February. I won’t say how much more, but it’s enough to go to Disneyland with.

What gives?

I can tell you my impressions. The jump in both open rates and sales very clearly came after March 6, when I ran an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. But — about that.

The staggering increase in open rates might be due to new subscribers who came via that ad. I don’t know, and ActiveCampaign gives me no easy way to figure it out.

But I do know that the bulk of new sales I saw in the whole of March compared to the whole of February did not come from new subscribers who came via the ad. The bulk came from my existing subscribers.

Many of those sales came from people buying new offers I had made in March, such as Insight Exposed and Copy Zone. That’s normal.

But one thing that struck me is how many existing subscribers, some of whom have been on my list for months or even years, decided this March to buy offers like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email, which I have offered dozens of times before. These readers successfully resisted all my previous pitches, but they found themselves curious and willing to buy now.

It wasn’t just one such person. It was lots. I asked myself what made the difference.

My best answer is this:

There’s a lot that goes into the success of email marketing beyond the actual email funnel and copy. At least if you’re doing something like I’m doing, which is a long-running, personal, relationship-based email newsletter.

I’ll leave you with that for today. And I’ll just remind you of my coaching program for email marketing and copywriting.

I have to include the email copywriting in the coaching program, because it’s what almost everybody wants to learn and believes is most important.

But in my experience, email copy is rarely the thing that really makes the biggest impact in the results of your emails. By results I mean sales, as well as soft stuff like retention, engagement, and influence.

Anyways, if you are interested in my coaching program, you’ll also be interested to know this program is only open to two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

A mystery about people who willingly live in hell

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A few months ago, I was reading a New Yorker article about foreign nationals — Americans, Frenchmen, Kiwis — who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.

I found the article fascinating. I mean, ask yourself:

What makes someone willing to go halfway around the world, into a war zone, to live in a basement and crawl through mud and huddle in icy trenches, as constant explosions blow out his eardrums and traumatize his nervous system?

What makes a person willing to expose himself to getting shot at and wounded and possibly killed? And what makes him willing to shoot and wound and possibly kill others, who have never done any harm to him or his kind?

Most incredibly, what makes a person do all this voluntarily, without any promise of reward or even any real chance at glory, and without the usual government coaxing or propaganda or impressment?

“Maybe,” you say, “these foreign fighters are fighting for freedom, for justice, for the right thing. Maybe they feel they are doing their duty, as soldiers and as human beings.”

No doubt.

​But taking a page from Frank Bettger’s book, let me ask you one further:

In addition to doing the right thing, what other reason might these foreign fighters have to willingly put themselves in what most people would consider a living hell?

Take a moment to think about that. And when you’re done, read about it from the horse’s mouth, or rather, from the Turtle’s mouth. Here’s a bit from the New Yorker article, about a New Zealander fighting in Ukraine, code name Turtle:

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In New Zealand, he’d been “planning out the rest of my life with a girl.” Before coming to Ukraine, he’d ended the relationship, quit his job, and sold his house and car. “In hindsight, it was very selfish,” he acknowledged. Although he may have suggested to his friends and relatives that Russian atrocities — in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and elsewhere — had instilled in him a sense of obligation, such moral posturing had been disingenuous. “It was just an excuse to be in this environment again,” Turtle said.

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Turtle had spent a large and formative part of his life fighting in war zones — he was first sent to Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 17.

Today, a generation later, he’s left his house, his car, his job, and Mrs. Turtle back in the Shire, and he’s decided to trade all that in for an environment he is more familiar with — an army unit in Mordor.

​​“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” Turtle said. “And maybe I can’t escape that — maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”

All that’s to say:

Never underestimate how powerful the pull of the familiar, the known, the status quo is on people, even if that status quo is hell on earth.

And that’s it. That’s my possibly sobering psychological insight for you for today. Think about how it might apply to you and the people you deal with regularly, and maybe you can get some value out of it.

As for me, the time has come for my once-in-a-blood-moon pitch for my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting.

It might seem tacky to put a sales pitch at the end of an email about extreme self-sacrifice, or extreme self-immolation. I do it because extreme cases uncover the everyday cases. In any case, here’s my pitch.

I’ve only let in two kinds of people into my coaching program so far:

1. Business owners who want to use email to build a stronger, longer-lasting relationship with their prospects and customers, in order to sell more and to sell more easily

2. Copywriters who have a profit-share agreement with a client to manage an email list, allowing a large degree of control and an upside when things go well

There are multiple reasons why I restrict my coaching program to only those two groups of people. If you’re curious, I’ll tell you one reason, which is that my coaching program is expensive. I only want the kinds of people to join who can quickly get much more out of this coaching than what they pay me.

So if you fit one of the two categories above, and if you’re interested in my coaching program, then hit reply, tell me about yourself, and we can talk in more detail.

And in case you’re wondering whether a coaching program is something you possibly need:

I can tell you that personally, in most areas of life where I’ve had success, I didn’t have and didn’t need any kind of coach. Instead, I either figured it out myself, or I followed a book or a course to the letter, and got results that way.

On the other hand, there have been a few areas where I hired a coach, and even paid that coach lots and lots of money.

As I’ve written before, some of the value I got from coaching was genuine technical feedback. Some of the value was added confidence, via getting an experienced second pair of eyes to look over what I was doing.

But the majority of the value I got from expensive coaching — I would say 75% — came from having to justify the price to myself. From finally being forced to abandon the status quo, and to do things I should have been doing already, but found excuses not to do.

Maybe you say that’s stupid or illogical. All I can say is that this get-out-of-the-status-quo motivation made coaching absolutely worth it to me, and made it pay for itself many times over.

So do you need coaching?

Only you can decide if you’re stuck in the status quo, and if you find that unacceptable. If you decide the answer is yes, then like I said, write me an email, and we can talk in more detail to see whether my coaching program and you could be a good fit.

I’ll start off this email by projecting out some praise and admiration I’ve gotten in the past

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Right about a year ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Send me your praise and admiration.” Best thing I ever did.

​​Here are a few of the lavishly praising and admiring responses I got to that email. First, from David Patrick, senior copywriter at Launch Potato:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Second, from “The Eco-Copywriter,” Thomas Crouse, who went absolutely nuts and over the top in his flattery of me and the work I do:

“My inbox is bombarded with emails every day. But when I see one from John, I stop and read it.”

And finally, here’s one from Liza Schermann, the lead copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

The reason I’m sharing such lavish praise and admiration with you is because I’m still reading a magic book I mentioned two weeks ago.

​​The book is called “Leading With Your Head: Psychological and Directional Keys to the Amplification of the Magic Effect.” It’s basically a guidebook for stage magicians about how to organize their tricks and their shows to maximize the magic, the fun, the show for the audience.

Here’s a relevant bit from Leading With Your Head:

“If we don’t draw attention to the magical occurrences, the effects may be weakened, or lost. The answer lies in analyzing your performance pieces to know when you need to direct attention to the magic. All other times you should be projecting out and relating to your audience, so they remember you.”

I hope that with all the projecting out and relating I’ve done so far, you will remember me tomorrow. Because now the time has come for me to draw your attention, and in fact direct it, to a bit of sales magic. Specifically, to my Most Valuable Postcard #2, which I am offering for the first and only time ever at a 50% launch discount, until 12 midnight PST tonight.

I started this launch two days ago with a message I got from copywriter Kay Hng Quek.

​​Kay went ahead and bought MVP #2 and wrote me about it yesterday. His message is below. Please read it carefully, particularly the parts about how MVP #2 “blew his mind” and how MVP #1 and MVP #2 are “probably the best $100” he has ever spent on marketing training:

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Read it immediately, and how you tied everything together at the end just blew my mind. Obviously this demands a second or third read. Obviously I will learn so much more from that.

Ngl, I would have loved MVP #3, but I’m grateful I got to read at least MVP #1 and #2. Probably the best $100 I’ve ever spent on marketing training…

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Again, the deadline to get Most Valuable Postcard #2 for 50% off the regular price is tonight at 12 midnight PST. But the only way to get this offer is to be on my email list before the deadline strikes. If you’d like to that, click here and fill out the form that appears.

If you want people to remember you

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My grandma is 92 years old. Yesterday I was talking to her. She got to saying how she is “counting down the days.”

​​Everybody of her generation who lived in her building — a 17-story brutalist skyscraper built in the 1960s — has already died.

“The last two died just recently,” she said. ​​”There was Marija, who was 94, and then there was that guy—” here she turned to my mother “—what was that guy’s name, the guy who liked fried chicken?”

I found this both cruel and hilarious. You live your whole life, even a very long life, and this is how people remember you — “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

It’s not because my grandmother’s memory is failing. At 92, the woman is still razor-sharp and has a much better memory than I ever had.

It’s simply how how mental imprint happens.

Unless there’s something notable, sound bite-worthy, legendary about you, and unless you repeat it often enough to make it stick in people’s heads, then people will pick something random to remember you by — if they remember you at all.

Maybe you don’t want to be remembered. Nothing wrong with that.

But if you are driven to have people remember you, and if you want to make it good, then take matters into your own hands.

A/B test different sound bites about yourself. When you hit upon one seems to resonate, that people feed back to you, then repeat it from here to eternity. Either that, or risk becoming “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

And on that note, let me remind you what I already said yesterday:

I’m now launching my Most Valuable Postcard #2. I’m selling it until tomorrow night at a 50% discount.

Most Valuable Postcard #2 covers a fundamental marketing topic. In fact, it’s a topic that I claim is the essence of marketing and copywriting.

Last night, Jeffrey Thomas from Goldmine.Marketing wrote me to say (some parts redacted):

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Finished reading #2 tonight.

And it was great.

I’ll read it again tomorrow.

Earlier today, before seeing this offer, I thought about [here Jeffrey named “the best copywriting guide ever written” according to a reclusive, bizarre, and yet highly successful financial copywriter]—wild to see it appear in this Postcard!

#2 reminds me that [here Jeffrey spelled out the counterintuitive idea at the end of Most Valuable Postcard #2, which a lot of marketers and copywriters struggle with, but which is true nonetheless].

Definitely some new tools to use. Much appreciated John.

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I redacted some parts of Jeffrey’s message above. For one thing, I want to keep those specifics behind the paywall. For another thing, I don’t think you really mind. Do you?

Anyways, Most Valuable Postcard #2 is available now, but only to people who are signed up to my email list. Maybe you don’t want to get on my email list. Nothing wrong with that. But if you do, here’s where to go.

66 1/2 minutes of getting your money’s worth

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At the start of the evening, the mustached gentlemen at the Boston Athletic Association held on to their top hats and leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide open, all of them focused on the same point at the front of the room.

It’s not every day that you see a living man voluntarily handcuffed, wrapped in chains, placed inside a coffin, and then sealed inside like a corpse.

It was novel and dramatic.

But after a few minutes of intense staring at the unmoving coffin, the audience’s attention started to drift. The members of the athletic club began lighting up fine cigars, talking about sports, the news, and business, chuckling and chattering and catching up.

And then, 66 1/2 minutes after the show started, the coffin crashed open.

The living corpse inside sat up and then stood up, panting, sweat running down his temples, his hair in a mess, his frock coat rumpled. He held the handcuffs in one hand and the chains in the other — he was free.

The gentlemen in the audience broke into applause and cheers. Harry Houdini had done it again. Another amazing and improbable escape.

So far, so familiar. But here’s what gets me:

66 1/2 minutes of sitting and watching a coffin. Many of Houdini’s sold-out shows were like this. They were long — often many hours’ long — and for much of it there was nothing to see, because Houdini performed his handcuff and manacle and chain escapes in a closed cabinet or behind a curtain or inside a coffin.

66 1/2 minutes of nothing happening on stage. What was going on with the audience during all that time?

Was it just a pre-TikTok era, and were audiences happy to sit and zone out for an hour or three, like a cat staring at a blank wall?

Or did people just enjoy being close to danger and death, and was that palpable even if it couldn’t be seen?

I’m sure there was a bit of both to it.

But what gets me in the above story is how the gentlemen of the athletic club started lighting up cigars and having friendly chats about sports, business, and the news.

Maybe that was really what they had come for.

Maybe Houdini’s spectacular escape was really just an occasion to mark out the rest of the audience’s lives. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house, to do what they like to do anyhow — which is to chat and chuckle and gossip — but to do it in a slightly novel and exciting setting.

There’s a good chance you aren’t sold on this point yet. That’s okay. I have more to say about it to try and persuade you. And if you do get persuaded, I have some novel and exciting advice for how to apply this to copywriting and marketing, even today, in the TikTok era, without engaging in daring feats that risk danger and death.

But more about that in a couple days’ time.

For today, I just have a very simple offer for you. It’s my little Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​I used to refer to this as my “10 Commandments book.” I’ll have to stop that since I’m working on a second 10 Commandments book, and I have to distinguish between the two.

Anyways, Commandment III from ties into what I’ll talk about in two days’ time. It’s also the easiest commandment of the lot in my book.

​​This Commandment III takes just 5 minutes to follow, but it can suck your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened. It was first unearthed during an exclusive, closed-door seminar, which cost almost $7,700 in today’s money.​​

In case you’re curious, the secret behind this and all the other A-list commandments in my book are behind the locked door below. The ticket to unlock the door is but $4.99. If you feel you’re ready, step right behind this curtain:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Some facts for you to judge me by

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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:

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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.

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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.