Persuasion

Bat-John: The Killing Joke

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Last night, Bat-John sat on his couch in shorts and a t-shirt, officially watching the penalty shootouts at the World Cup, but really, keeping an eye on the Bat-Fax for news of criminal activity in Gotham City.

Another slow night.

​​No Scarecrows or Penguins running amuck anywhere.

Instead, all that came through the Bat-Fax were letters from grateful citizens of Gotham:

“Subscribe For ‘LIFE’ please”

“You had me in stitches with this part”

“I was so tempted to reply to this with an off the wall rant — just for fun. But I’d rather remain subscribed…”

“Love your emails. But I must admit I have to read the ones you mentioned about the trolls.”

The background, in case you missed it, is that I wrote an email yesterday, modestly comparing myself to Batman.

​​My point was that it’s good for business if your readers see you scrapping each night with wacky costumed villains who lurk beneath the surface of your email list.

Unfortunately, that email didn’t provoke any of these wacky villains to pipe up.

But based on the replies I did get, my point stands. Create enemies, and people rally around you.

And since the Bat-Fax has been so quiet today, here’s some truly wacky news from outside Gotham City:

Have you heard of the violent coup d’etat attempt in Germany this past Wednesday?

The German police arrested some two dozen far-right terrorists, including a Russian national, who were planning to overthrow the German government and install 71-year-old Prince Heinrich XIII, a member of the royal House of Reuss, on the restored throne.

For months, these 25 terrorists had been making plans about the colors on their future flag… recruiting new members at RPG nights at the local comic-book store… gathering equipment, including thermal socks and cans of corn.

A press release from German’s federal public prosecutor explains what was going on in the heads of these terrorists:

“The accused are united by a deep rejection of the state institutions.”

Hm.

Could it be that the German government is trying to create its own villains out of thin air… as a way to get its citizens rallying around its state institutions?

Maybe you don’t think there’s anything there.

But maybe you are intrigued or at least entertained by the idea, now that I bring it up.

If so, you might want to know what just happened inside your head. It’s one of my 10 Commandments of A-list copywriters, Commandment V:

“Honor thy reader’s skepticism, and structure your ad accordingly.”

This particular commandment is by Gene Schwartz. It’s not about sophistication or awareness, two concepts that Gene is best known for.

Instead, this commandment is real A-list stuff. Few copywriters know it and even fewer follow it.

Ignore this commandment and all your case studies, testimonials, statistics, and other proof will be worthless. Follow it and the power of your proof will be amplified hundredfold.

In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

“Unsubscribe please”

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Last night, following my “Buy my 10 Commandments book” email, a reader replied:

“Unsubscribe please”

I’ll admit it. This irritated me. I figured my reader was just too dumb to know how you unsubscribe from an email newsletter.

But then I had a hopeful thought.

Maybe my reader just wanted to show her displeasure at my grossly self-promotional, zero-value email?

When I checked ActiveCampaign, it turned out I was right. My reader had found the unsubscribe link and unsubscribed on her own. But as she was walking out the door, she just had to let me know about it.

This isn’t the only parting shot an unsubscribing reader has taken at me.

Last January, during a launch I was running, a troll wrote me and suggested I read up on copywriting fundamentals before promoting any more offers of my own.

To which, I wrote a newsletter email about his helpful suggestion.

The troll replied to that newsletter email in an offended tone.

So I wrote a second newsletter email about his offended tone.

At which point, the troll unsubscribed. In the “reason why” field you get when you unsubscribe, he wrote:

“You’re simply too dumb to be helped.I tried twice & you can’t tell the difference between a troll & someone with advice. Good luck. You’ll need it.”

I’m telling you all this because enemies are good for business. They’re so good that if you don’t have them, you have to make them up. Here’s America’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga, on the matter:

“And if you can create an enemy in your copy, that’s what happens. You set up a three-point discussion and you come around from your side of the desk to be on the reader’s side of the desk and then it’s you and the reader against the enemy that you’re railing against.”

The trouble is, my emails are usually so placid and polite that I’ve been suffocating any potential enemies in the womb.

In that whole span from the guy back in January to the woman last night, I’ve gotten zero even mildly criminal replies to any of my emails.

I don’t know if it’s too late. I hope not.

There’s a theory that Gotham City is so full of wacky costumed villains simply because Batman is there. The villains watch the evening news, and see other criminals scrapping with Batman. They want a challenge also, and so they congregate on Gotham.

I’ll see whether writing about the “unsub plz” lady or the “you’re too dumb to be helped” troll will bring out any latent Scarecrows or Penguins on my list.

If they do come out, I’ll be sure to write an email and let you know about it.

In the meantime, let me promote something. That’s like lighting up the Bat-Signal in the night sky for making blood boil among wacky villains.

My offer for you today is my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.

This little book features a commandment by Gary Bencivenga. Gary’s commandment is not about enemies. It’s both more fundamental and more powerful than that.

If you’d like to read it, here’s where to go…

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

… and I’ll be back tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. ​​

Buy my 10 Commandments book

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

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

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

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

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

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

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

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

Maybe you’re still not convinced.

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

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

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

Maybe, maybe you’re still not convinced.

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

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

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​You can do it at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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I went for a walk this morning and I passed by a small public park. The gate was closed. On the gate, hand-written in white paint, was a quote in Spanish. It said something about a man sitting in the shade, and it was attributed to actor Warren Beatty.

I’m a big Warren Beatty fan, going back to the movie Shampoo. As soon as I saw this quote, I imagined this handsome, confident, and yet accommodating Hollywood star smiling at me as he said whatever the quote said.

But what did the quote say?

My Spanish is still not so good. I googled “warren beatty tree quote” on my phone, hoping to find the original. Amazingly, the quote popped right up:

“‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ With this quote, Buffett was speaking to long-term investing…”

That was the original quote all right. But Warren Buffett? Giving a metaphor for investing? I did a double take.

I checked what I had googled. Sure enough, I had searched for “warren buffett tree quote.”

I looked at the handwritten quote on the gate. It too was attributed to Warren Buffett.

And yet, in spite of processing “Warren Buffett” on some level, the conscious part of my brain had confidently seen actor Warren Beatty’s face and heard Warren Beatty’s voice — not Warren Buffett’s.

That might seem like a trivial mistake. But to me it’s not. Consider another anecdote:

A couple years ago, I was driving a car on a mountain road. Turn after turn, all I saw was forest around me.

It got a little monotonous but I kept my eyes on the road and kept focused — the way was windy and narrow.

And then, as I was staring ahead at the next turn, straight into some bushes, in a flash, the bushes metamorphosed and became a deer that was standing in the road.

Of course, I realize the bushes probably didn’t jump into the road and turn into a deer.

What I guess happened is that my brain kept predicting “bushes, trees, turn, trees, bushes, turn…”

But then that monotonous picture became unsustainable, and a more useful picture — there’s a deer in the road — popped into my consciousness.

I’d like to suggest to you this is what the human brain does all the time. It makes up guesses, predictions, images, stories, in line with what we expect and what we hope. But it does something else also.

The brain also gives us an incredibly powerful feeling of certainty that whatever we are seeing right now, right in front of our eyes, is real and right — even when it’s far from what the “reality” is. We just don’t usually see the counter-evidence as clearly as I did today or on that mountain road.

Anyways, these are things I like to think about.

I also like to think about how to play with that feeling of “certainty of rightness” that we all experience at the core of who we are.

And that’s connected in some subtle way to my Most Valuable Email.

Today is the last day I will be promoting that program for a while. That’s not any kind of real deadline, except for the benefits you could be getting if you went through this course today.

Maybe you’ve been interested in Most Valuable Email. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you want to go through it and apply it. But maybe you’ve been postponing it because you think there’s time and I will keep reminding you day after day.

If so, then your brain might be fooling you with certainty that isn’t very useful.

In case you want to get a jump on your brain while the image of MVE is still in your consciousness, here’s where you can get the Most Voluble Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Hot takes are dead… here’s why

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

The background is this:

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

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

James used to write regularly on his own site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Will Hunting disease: Why you shouldn’t join Age of Insight

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“So why do you think I should work for the National Security Agency?”

Today is the last day to sign up for my Age of Insight live training. And since this is the last email I will send before the deadline, let me tell you why you shouldn’t sign up.

I call it Good Will Hunting disease.

As you might know, Good Will Hunting is movie about a tough-talking, blue-collar math genius from the slums of Boston, played by a young Matt Damon.

In one scene, Will is interviewing for a job at the NSA.

“You’d be working on the cutting edge,” says the NSA guy in a cocky sales pitch. “You’d be exposed to the kind of technology not seen anywhere else because it’s classified. Superstring theory. Chaos math. Advanced algorithms. So the question is, why shouldn’t you work for the NSA?”

Will nods his head and thinks. “Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA… That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.”

And then he goes on a 2-minute rant, all about how he’d just be breaking codes the NSA, feeling good about doing his job well, but the real upshot of his work would be burned villages, dead American soldiers, lost factory jobs, drug epidemics, inflation, and poisoned baby seals.

Will finishes up his rant and smirks sarcastically. “So why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? I’m holding out for something better.”

Of course:

Your offer is nothing like a job at the NSA. And your pitch is nothing like the NSA recruiter’s pitch.

Still I bet you that your audience, on some level, suffers from Good Will Hunting disease.

Too smart. Too sophisticated. Too skeptical.

And if you need proof of it, just look inside yourself. Don’t you smirk and scoff and shrug off pitch for top-secret opportunities all the time, even if they are at the cutting edge, and even if they promise things you superstring theory and chaos math, or whatever the equivalent is in the marketing space?

And this is why I am not making a pitch for you to join the Age of Insight training. The only offer I will make you, unless you are holding out for something better, is to join my email list. Click here smart guy.

How to handle tire kickers, trolls, and Tommy Boys

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

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

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

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

“So why did you leave Google?”

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

This might seem like a very evil tactic by Google.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s one thing that always gets me:

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

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

Don’t be a Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl.

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

Booyakasha: Happy birthday to my main man, Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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Today is November 14, the birthday of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

What pops into my mind when I hear that name is that the man was formerly Secretary General of the UN and that he was interviewed by Ali G. From the opening of the interview:

“I is here with the geezer who was the Secrety General of the United Nations. His name be none other than my man Boutros… Boutros… Boutros-Ghali. And him will explain about the United Nations innit?”

In case you somehow missed it, Ali G was one of the characters invented by Sacha Baron Cohen, the guy who invented Borat.

Ali is a white, middle-class boy from London who wears a track suit and orange-tinted sunglasses, speaks with a mock Jamaican accent, and conducts ridiculous interviews with high-ranking, unsuspecting marks.

AG: “Is Disneyland a member of the UN?”

BBG: “No! Because Disneyland is not an independent state.”

I’ve known about Ali G for over 20 years, ever since the show initially aired on Channel 4 in the UK.

But only today did I investigate how exactly Ali G got so many high-level interviews. Noam Chomsky… Ralph Nader… Donald Trump.

It turns out to be your standard social engineering, really nothing fancy:

It would all start with a flattering letter, often to a former official or directly to a lone personality who didn’t have a dedicated PR department, asking for an interview as part of an interview series.

The URL on the letter linked to a (real) website for a (dummy) production company, which was even registered as a business and had a real address.

If that first letter didn’t hook, there would be repeated requests, sometimes backed by endorsements from reputable people in the media world.

Once the mark agreed to the interview, and before the actual interview began, the producers would start making excuses for Ali’s appearance, manner of talking, and apparent idiocy. “He is very popular with the young-adult target audience.”

And that’s how you get high-level and often very smart people to sit through a shockingly silly interview. “We truly left there thinking he was the stupidest person ever,” said one high-level political celeb, who was interviewed on the Ali G show.

So what’s my point?

Well, maybe it’s the power of trappings of authority and status, as opposed to inherent value or talent.

Or if that doesn’t suit you, or if you’re not looking to camouflage yourself like Sacha Baron Cohen, then maybe the point is simply:

Different is better than better.

That’s a koan that marketer Rich Schefren likes to repeat.

People have a hard time truly judging who’s good, and who’s an idiot or a conman. It’s even harder before you have a chance to sit across from the person and have them ask you, as Ali G asked Buzz Aldrin:

“I know this is a sensitive question. But what was it like not being the first man on the moon? Was you ever jealous of Louis Armstrong?”

On the other hand, people have a very easy time judging who is different. It’s part of our neurology.

And that’s why, in many situations, being different — along with being persistent — is all it takes to get the interview or to make the sale.

Speaking of which:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s utterly different from any other newsletter out there, to the point that I even advertise it as an un-newsletter. In case you’re curious to read it, you can sign up for a free trial — no credit card required  — by clicking here.

Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

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I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.

The strategy of hypocrisy and scoundreldom

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

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

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

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

The moment he said that, I forgave him.

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

I have my own theory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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