Persuasion

The world’s most handsome email marketer gives me some unsolicited advice

by

Two days ago, I started promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training, about getting richer, nicer, classier clients using AI and LinkedIn.

Reader Fotis Chatz, who writes for Ning Li and positions himself as the “World’s Most Handsome Email Marketer” on LinkedIn, bought ClientRaker yesterday.

​​But being excessively handsome is not enough for Fotis. So he wrote in to give me some unsolicited advice about my launch:

===

Just bought it.

Your story about him using A.I. is what “got” me. I’m already using FB with a lil bit of success, curious to see what I can do on Linkedin.

Btw, have you considered creating a bonus specifically for this offer? We did it a lot when I was working with Igor (Kheifets). We’d promote an affiliate offer and either give a product of ours that would cover something missing from the offer, or create something from scratch. Great way to make way more sales and win some affiliate leaderboards.

===

What Fotis wrote might be unsolicited advice but it’s welcome advice — because I happen to agree 100%. I’m all for creating valuable bonuses, whether for my own offers or for affiliate offers.

I didn’t do it in this case because 1) I’m swamped with other work and 2) because I believe ClientRaker is so attractive that it will sell on its own.

That said, I might create a bonus in the future if Steve ever offers ClientRaker again and if I promote it again. I’ve had several ideas for what I could do, including a training based on the Authority Audits I’ve been doing this week, or another on how to feel comfortable asking for more money.

If that stirs you a bit, I can guarantee you this:

Every time I’ve offered a bonus for an offer, I made sure to also send it to everyone who bought that offer before I did the bonus.

I want to make it a brain-dead simple certainty in your mind that won’t ever be harmed by taking me up on any of my offer early. But you can certainly be harmed by taking me up on an offer late.

In the current situation, if you wait to take me up on this offer, you can miss the current launch window. You may scoff — but life has a way of getting in the way.

And if life does do that, it might mean you won’t be able to get ClientRaker ever — there’s no guarantee Steve will offer it again since he also has lots of things going on and doesn’t need this extra bit of money.

Or you might have to pay more. Because if Steve does run ClientRaker again, I will use all my persuasive skill to get him to double or triple the price.

And most importantly, you will miss out on any new clients you could very conceivably get just by following the simple, paint-by-number instructions Steve lays out inside this training.

If you actually do what Steve tells you to do, and you win yourself a new client or two in the next month that you wouldn’t have otherwise, that can legitimately be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to you — depending on who you work with and what you deliver.

Point being, if you’re considering ClientRaker, it can make sense to get it now rather than wait. The following page has the full details if you want some help making that decision:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

Secret lineage to mysterious gurus

by

I got in the cab. I was in front, copywriter Vasilis Apostolou and business guru Barry Randall were in back.

There were lots of conceivably smart and valuable questions I could have asked Barry. I could have asked for a business tip. I could have asked for connections to partners. I could have asked for mindset advice.

But I was not so disciplined. Instead, I turned around and said:

“Hey Barry. Today when Parris Lampropoulos got on stage, he said that he and you and Toe Cracker all have the same coach right now. But he didn’t say who. If it’s not a secret, who is it?”

Would you like to know who the mysterious coach is behind these legendary 8- and 9-figure copywriters and marketers?

Well I’m not surprised.

Yesterday I sent out an email, promoting my Most Valuable Email training, along with a 24-hour disappearing bonus. The disappearing bonus had 3 parts:

1) A freely available resource with several valuable marketing ideas
​
2) One specific idea that caught my eye in that resource, and my advice on how to implement it today

​3) The man behind this resource, who I have only written about once before, but who has influenced my thinking on a deep level

Yesterday’s email was a big success. It made me more sales of MVE in a single day than I have had since the last day of the initial launch, last September.

Since the disappearing bonus was open to anyone who bought MVE previously (and not just last night), I also got dozens of responses from previous buyers.

The number #1 specific thing people said was they wanted to know part 3) the mysterious man behind the resource, who had influenced me so deeply.

So that’s my conclusion:

People are curious about secret lineage to mysterious gurus. And you can use that to drive action.

That disappearing bonus has now fully disappeared. The mysterious guru who influenced me will retreat to the shadows.

But if you’re curious about my lineage to several other gurus, you can find that inside my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Bonus — this book doesn’t just tell you the name of each guru.

​​I found out the name of Barry Randall’s coach. And I got nothing from it — because the guy hasn’t written a book, doesn’t have a newsletter, doesn’t tweet. Unless you have $20k per month to join his mastermind, his name alone won’t do you any good.

​On the other hand, my little 10 Commandments book gives you a bunch of specific and valuable answer to questions about business, mindset, and marketing. All from some of the most smartest, most successful, and most influential people in this space that I’m in. All available here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Bud Light boycott keeps getting worse, but I can fix it

by

Bud Light is in a tailspin. You may have heard the news.

On April 1, transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney announced that Bud Light had sent her personalized cans to celebrate her one-year anniversary living as a trans woman.

A boycott of Bud Light started as a result. In the weeks and months since, sales of Bud Light have plummeted close to 30%. The stock price of Anheuser-Busch is down by almost 20% compared to April 1. This fiasco has erased over $22 billion worth of market value.

Brand boycotts normally blow over in a couple weeks. The Bud Light boycott is getting stronger after 3 months. Sales of Bud Light are trending lower and lower each week. Data out In June showed Mexican lager Modelo replacing Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer.

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a peacemaking statement, saying the company never meant to be “part of a discussion that divides people.”

​​Bud Light continues to sponsor Major League Baseball and has a new summer campaign, “easy to drink and easy to enjoy.”

None of this is making an impact.

At this point, I’d like to step in. ​​Anheuser-Busch is an American institution, as is Bud Light. Also, some 18,000 people’s jobs are directly on the line.

At the same time, it’s clear that this is not an issue of beer or jobs only, but really about values and identity.

Where Brendan Whitworth and the billion-dollar marketing agencies that Anheuser-Busch employs have failed, I will succeed.

Using the almost mystical influence powers I have gained through repeated use of my Most Valuable Email Trick trick, I will realign Bud Light’s public positioning so it once again fits its core market’s values and identity. At the same time, I will do so in a way that leaves the progressive community impressed and content.

If I were to start now, I could have Bud Light back on top, ahead of Modelo, getting more Americans slightly buzzed without feeling bloated, well before Labor Day. All Anheuser-Busch has to do is get Whitworth to write me and ask. My email address is publicly available.

In other news, I have a disappearing bonus for you for today.

This morning I came across an incredible resources, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice.

It comes from a man I’ve actually 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.

Among a dozen or more great ideas in that resource I found today, one stood out to me.

So here are the details of my disappearing bonus offer:

1. Get a copy of my Most Valuable Email training at https://bejakovic.com/mve

2. Then reply to this email and say you want the disappearing bonus offer.

3. I will write you back and tell you 1) That resource I found this morning, and where you can get it for free 2) the particular idea that struck me, and how you can apply it in your own marketing and 3) why the man behind this resource has been so influential to me personally.

4. This disappearing bonus offer is good until tomorrow, Tuesday July 11, at 8:31pm CET.

5. And of course, if you’ve bought MVE already, this is open to you as well. Write in and ask away, and I will tell you. But the same deadline applies.

I don’t beg pardon for good results, and you don’t have to either

by

Yesterday, I made a new offer, Authority Audit. One of the first people to take me up on it wrote:

===

You really know your audience (or at least it seems like you’re reading my mind.) This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about, to the point of even redoing all my optins and email sequences. But I know I should be getting way more out of what I got… so thank you for the offer.

===

The fact is, I got more people ordering these Authority Audits than I really want to do. I certainly don’t want still more. So I closed the offer down, even sooner than I expected to.

Yes, I’m telling you this to build up my own standing and authority. I’m also telling you as a permission slip in case you need it.

If you got good results, don’t beg pardon for them. Tell your prospects about your results to help them make up their own minds. Take away their confusion and uncertainty, so they themselves can get some of those good results in the future.

But what if you don’t got results yet? One dude interested in the Authority Audit wrote:

===

Would this go well for someone that’s starting from scratch?

for a background:

Hated social media and only started one to build some sort of “inbound” system of client acquisition

my plan to write articles and content a la Chris Orzechowski but I’ve yet to find what value is and how to define it.

this is the only concern I have as you’ve proven to be the best at what you do.

===

I replied to say that, in his case, there wouldn’t be much for me to review or audit.

I also told him that next week, I will be promoting an offer that might be a better fit — a new training (not my own) for getting clients. For figuring out exactly what value you offer. For defining it in exactly your prospect’s words. So you can start getting leads, clients, results, even if you don’t got ’em yet.

But that’s next week.

For today, I have a little authority- and status-building tip for you.

It’s hidden inside my Most Valuable Email course, as an aside.

​​It has nothing to do with the actual training of the course. Rather it’s something that’s been valuable to me, and so I decided to take a little aside while talking about the MVE trick to share it with people who buy the course.

It’s a little habit you can start today, and tomorrow, to transform how you see yourself and how potential clients and customers see you. It’s something I wish somebody had told me years ago, when I was just starting out. And it’s something that amplifies, rather than clashes with, that client-getting training I will be promoting next week.

​​In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Announcing: Authority Audit

by
I’m reading a book called The Charterhouse of Parma. It was written in 1838 by a guy named Stendhal, who Friedrich Nietzsche called the “last great psychologist.”

​​The Charterhouse of Parma is all about the love affairs and political intrigues at the court of Parma.

​​Two of the main characters are aging count Mosca, who is the prime minister, and his lover, the beautiful and clever duchess Sanseverina.

​​The two plan on running away from their problems in Parma to live in peace in Naples — but they won’t really have much money if they run away. To which the count rightly tells the duchess:

“It will never be the luxury, greater or less, in which we live, that will insure our position; it will be the pleasure the clever folk of the place may find in drinking a cup of tea in your drawing room.”

I wrote this down because I really think it’s true. It’s good to have the trappings of success, and no doubt they will buy you some standing. But it’s poor gruel compared to the endorsement and approval of people who already have standing.

I’ve got a new offer for you today. It’s cheap. I won’t keep it up long. It’s called the Authority Audit.

Over the past year I’ve consulted and coached a few dozen business owners, course creators, coaches, marketers, and copywriters. I’ve found that my feedback on their personal marketing often comes back to the same few fundamental mistakes.

One of these fundamental mistakes is insufficient authority, status, standing. Not in reality usually, but as presented in the marketing itself.

So my offer with the Authority Audit is that I look at who you are and how you present that to the world. And I tell you where you are falling short on the status and authority part. I tell you how you can use what you’ve already got to look much more authoritative. I tell you how you can quickly build up more status to plug up any holes you might actually have.

Like I said, I’m making this offer cheap, $100. You might say that’s a mistake, and that it’s working against my own status and authority. To which I would say — you’re absolutely right.

The reason why the Authority Audit is so cheap is that I want to take what I might tell you and apply it more consciously myself. Because I too am guilty of the same mistakes often.

I’m also planning to create a more in-depth, much more expensive training about this later. And I plan to use any Authority Audits I perform as material for that future training.

I won’t be offering the Authority Audit long, 2-3 days max, and I will close it off without any ceremony and announcement. I also won’t go into detail here as to how it will be organized and delivered.

That’s why I suggest you only get the Authority Audit if you suspect that you’re not doing a good job convincing the world you are somebody… if you can afford $100 right now… and if you already trust me.

​​If all three are true of you, you can order your Authority Audit here:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/authority-audit/

The power of preparation for perplexing performances

by

“Tell me Sir, was this real… or was it humbug?”

Houdini was shocked at the power of his own show. He couldn’t believe that the man standing across from him — respected, intelligent, worldly — could be asking him such a question.

“No Colonel,” Houdini said with a shake of his head. “It was hocus pocus.”

The year was 1914. The place was the Imperator, a ship on the Hamburg-New York line, sailing west across the Atlantic. Houdini was traveling on the ship as a passenger, but he agreed to perform a seance act for the large and rich ship’s company.

Houdini walked around the audience, giving out pieces of paper and envelopes, telling people to write down a question, seal it in the envelope, and then put it in a hat that Houdini passed around.

But one of the audience members was particularly distinguished and highly reputable — Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, former President of the United States, traveling back from the UK. Roosevelt had just finished promotion of his new book about an adventure trip he had taken to Brazil the year previous.

“I am sure there will be no objection if we use the Colonel’s question,” Houdini said during the seance, tentatively walking towards Roosevelt. The audience murmured assent.

Then Houdini took out two little slate tablets, which were blank. After appropriate buildup and mystery, he asked Roosevelt to place his envelope, with the question inside, between the two tablets.

“Can you please tell the audience what your question was?” Houdini asked.

“Where was I last Christmas?” Roosevelt said.

Houdini opened up the slate tablets. They were no longer blank. Instead, they now showed a colored chalk map of Brazil, with the River of Doubt highlighted, where Roosevelt had spent the Christmas prior.

The effect of this on the crowd, and on Teddy Roosevelt himself, was immense. Roosevelt jumped up, and started laughing so hard and slapping his legs until tears ran down his face.

And then, the very next day, Roosevelt buttonholed Houdini on the deck of the ship. Roosevelt asked, in a hushed voice, whether Houdini truly had connections to the spirit world.

Houdini did not. It was hocus pocus, and he was ready to admit it.

So what lay behind his spectacular performance?

I won’t tell you the exact details. Like all tricks, it’s underwhelming when you find out the truth. But I will tell you the powerful underlying principle, in a single word:

Preparation.

An immense amount of quiet background work… research… setup… as well as thinking up and making plans for all possible contingencies.

Like I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to put together a new book. Working title — and maybe final title — is “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

Some of the commandments I have in mind are clever techniques. Others… well, they’re stuff like this. Research. Preparation.

Few wanna do it. Few take it seriously. But the ones who do are eventually seen as having supernatural powers, while everybody else — ah, it’s not too bad, but I could do the same.

I already have a lot of this book ready, thanks to emails like this that I’ve already written. But it’s still gonna take me a while to pull everything together and get the book published.

Meanwhile, if you want a similar book, with a similar mix of stories and often unsexy but extremely powerful ideas, take a look at my other 10 Commandments book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to relax resisting bodies and minds

by

I went to the gym just now, and I tried to do something like the splits.

I sat myself down on the mat. I splayed my legs out. But instead of the necessary 180 degrees, which is what the splits call for, my legs only went about 90 degrees. “The squares, not the splits,” they said to me. “That’s all we’re doing today.”

I tried negotiating with my legs, both together and individually. “No,” they kept saying in unison. “No means no.”

But where persuasion won’t work, force will.

So I put my fists on the insides of my thighs. Instead of trying to spread my legs ever wider, I squished my legs in towards each other, against the resistance of my fists.

I kept this up for about ten seconds. I then relaxed for a moment. And I tried the splits again. Result?

Of course I didn’t manage it. But this time, instead of just 90 degrees, I got noticeably further, 98, maybe 100 degrees.

That’s a little trick I learned a long time ago from Pavel Tsatsouline’s book Relax Into Stretching.

As you, might know, Pavel’s legend is that he was formerly a fitness instructor for the Soviet Special Forces. He loves to use the word “comrade” in his training videos and to cite Soviet-era exercise science to back up weird body tricks.

Such as [imagine it with a Russian accent]: “Contract-relax stretching is documented to be at least 267% more effective than conventional relaxed stretching!”

But it’s not just the body that works this way. The mind does too.

There’s a way to bring people into hypnosis called the Dave Elman induction. A part of it is the usual, “close your eyes, relax” guidance from the hypnotist.

Except once your eyes are closed, the hypnotist tells you, ​​​”Open your eyes. Now close your eyes again and relax twice as deeply as before… Now open your eyes. And close your eyes again and relax even more deeply…”

It’s called fractionation, and it’s supposed to be a reliable technique to bring people into deeper and deeper trance.

Does it really work?​
​
Test it out yourself and see. The next time you’re at the gym… or in bed as you’re trying and failing to fall asleep… or perhaps the next time you’re writing a sales email.

And now imagine click below to my Most Valuable Email sales page, and reading all the fascinating and curious things I promise in the headline…

No no, stop imagining. Come back to earth or at least back to this email.

Now imagine that fascination and curiosity building up to an almost unbearable level as you make your way down the sales page…

Seriously stop it. Stop imagining being so fascinated and curious. It’s off-putting.

Except wouldn’t it be fascinating and curious to finally find out what the Most Valuable Email trick is? Of course it would. Here’s where to go to get it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The Big Store

by

I’m reading a book about con men. Ben Marks was one of them. His specialty was three-card monte, hustling cattlemen and miners and soldiers in the streets of Cheyenne.

Marks was good. He’d regularly make $5, $10, sometimes $25 by fleecing some greedy passerby on the street.

Marks made a living. But it was hardly a business. The streets of Cheyenne were too busy and too crowded and there was too much competition. Saloons offering booze. Hotels offering gambling. Brothels offering love.

So Marks hit upon a novel idea.

Why not open his own establishment? Get people to come to him? Do away with the competition?

It’s a concept that became known as the Big Store.

The Big Store became a key part of the big con. A fancy gambling club, or a brokerage house, or in Marks’s case, The Dollar Store — everything for a dollar, including some very attractive and expensive goods, displayed colorfully in the store windows.

But when a prospect stepped inside The Dollar Store, he’d see several lively monte games already in play, with Marks’s shills and “sticks” in place of real gamblers.

The new prospect forgot about the attractive merchandise.

He left The Dollar Store some time later, not having bought anything for $1. But he did leave behind a wad of cash nonetheless.

I’m not encouraging you to grift, conning, or crime of any sort. But I do tell you the above because:

1. The basic idea is usable in non-criminal ways also. Think, how can I get them to come to me? How do I do away with the competition and other distractions?

2. “Get them to come to you, instead of going to them” might sound like a simple, familiar, or even trivial idea. But it’s not one you should dismiss. Marks’s Big Store was the innovation that created the big-money confidence games that netted $75,000 or $100,000, instead of $25 hustles in back alleys and on train cars and street corners.

Do you wanna see a Big Store in action? Here’s a clip (no spoilers) from The Sting, one of my favorite films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYjyFQS3DWM

Why the girl-and-python show is a great place to negotiate

by

Here’s an intriguing (and for writers, a most instructive) scene from one of the greatest films in Hollywood history:

“Christ what a trip. The whole time I’m thinking, what if somebody knows what I got in here? Can you imagine that? Two million dollars on the seat next to me in that plane? Mikey, what the hell’s going on anyway? I’m totally in the dark.”

Mikey picks up the suitcase and carries it off. “The family’s making an investment in Havana. This is a little gift for the President.”

Maybe you recognize this scene. It’s from The Godfather, part 2. ​​Fredo Corleone, the oldest surviving son of the Godfather, is talking to his younger brother Michael, who now heads the Corleone crime family.

Michael recently survived an assassination attempt. He knows his business partner Heyman Roth and Roth’s henchman Johnny Ola were behind it. What he doesn’t know is who inside his own circle betrayed him and collaborated with Roth.

Fredo puts his hands in his pockets as he watches the suitcase disappear.

“Havana’s great!” he says. “My kind of town. Anybody I know in Havana?”

Michael pours himself a glass of water. “Oh… Heyman Roth? Johnny Ola?”

Fredo stares for a bit, trying to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. Finally he manages to get the cigarettes out. He looks away.

​​”No. Never met them.”

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email about negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp helped negotiate many billion-dollar deals, but he became famous thanks to his contrarian, oracle-like sayings.

One thing Camp said is that he likes to negotiate in the bathroom. That might sounds contrarian, but it’s not. It’s very literal, and backed by basic human psychology.

For an example, fast forward a bit, to Havana.

​​Fredo isn’t smart or strong enough to run the Corleone family, but he’s a fun guy. He knows all the cool spots. He takes Michael and a few U.S. Senators and judges to a girl-and-python act.

“Watch,” says Fredo, as he pours out glasses of rum. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

A young woman is brought out on stage. She is tied to a kind of ceremonial pillar. Then a man in a silk robe is brought out. Two assistants pull off his silk robe to leave him standing naked in front of the audience.

The guys with Fredo — except Michael, who’s checking his watch — gasp and then start chuckling.

“That thing’s gotta be a fake. Hey Freddie! Freddie! How’d you even find this place?”

Fredo doesn’t take his eyes off the stage. “Johnny Ola told me about this place. He brought me here. I didn’t believe him, but seeing is believing. Old man Roth would never come here, but old Johnny knows these places like the back of his hand.”

Michael doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. But he looks like somebody just punched him in the gut. And he turns around, and gives a signal to his man who is standing at the door.

So there you go. The reason to negotiate in the bathroom, or during the girl-and-python act. It’s because barriers come down. Jim Camp explains: “As they go to the bathroom, you ask them a question. They’ll answer. They smile, and they answer the question. It’s a great time to do research.”

I wrote about that in my email couple weeks ago. But then I asked myself, what’s really going on? Is this just a negotiation trick?

Eventually, it dawned on me. It’s not a trick. It’s a bit of very basic human psychology.

Our brain likes to think in discrete events, snapshots, scenes, like a movie. This much is obvious. What’s less obvious and more interesting are the consequences. From a New Yorker article on the topic:

“Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.”

Like I said, a bit of fundamental human psychology.

You can now shrug your shoulders and say, “So what?” That would be a Fredo-like thing to do.

Or you can be more like Michael Corleone, and think about how to adapt, how to use this bit of psychology for your own ends.

That’s what Jim Camp did. That’s what successful magicians do. And successful writers, too. In fact, it’s what I’ve tried to do in this very email.

Let me end there, and point you to an offer you can certainly refuse. It’s my Most Valuable Email training, a kind of man-and-keyboard act. In case you’re a person who likes to take advantage of fundamental human psychology:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Simple strategy to build your status, turn readers into advocates, and create a content flywheel

by

Yesterday, I wrote an email about true magic, in which I promoted my Most Valuable Email course right at the top. I got a reply to that email from reader Jakub Červenka:

===

John, I hope you are selling tons of mves.

Had I not bought it already, I would now, just as a thank you for many clever ways how you pitch it.

===

Perhaps you skimmed across Jakub’s message just now, without really reading. I hope you didn’t. But even if you did, well…

I always thought that when people write emails featuring a reader comment, it’s all about being 1) pressed for time, because it’s easy to write an email that’s mostly a reader reply, and 2) self-serving, because the reader comment is usually a testimonial or an endorsement of some sort.

And no doubt, both of those are good reasons to regularly feature reader comments in your emails.

But there are other good reasons, too.

For one, it shows off you have readers. Don’t scoff.

Lots of people who write a newsletter don’t have any readers, particularly readers who are engaged enough to reply. So if you do have ’em, and can prove it, it builds your status and authority, independent of the content of the actual reply you got.

For two, it acknowledges and recognizes the reader who wrote in. It’s nice to see your name in print, going out to thousands of people, even if it’s just in an email.

Plus, it can give the reader added benefits. I’ve had Ben Settle featured something I wrote him in one of his emails, and people found me and signed up to my list as a result.

Point being, featuring a reader’s reply can benefit that reader in different ways, making it more likely he sticks around and becomes an advocate, not just a reader or customer.

For three, it encourages more responses in the future. This contributes to all the other benefits I listed above.

I could go on. But if you weren’t convinced by three arguments, what are the odds you will be convinced by a fourth? Slim.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, perhaps you too are in the daily race to find clever ways to pitch your offers. And perhaps you find yourself writing things that are a little too dry and literal. Perhaps you don’t even have any readers replying to your emails yet. If so, here’s a way to fix it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve