Persuasion

The magic of not using a person’s name

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When I was, I don’t know, 18, my grandfather handed me a book. “Read this book,” he said. “It’s very important.”

The book was How To Win Friends And Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It was one of my grandfather’s stock book recommendations. I think he gave me another copy a few years later.

I read the book then, and several times since.

It really is important. It’s full of simple but useful advice like, smile… be interested in other people… remember and use people’s names.

Of course, you can do all this stuff and still get nowhere, or do worse than simply not doing anything.

I remember a Mitchell & Webb skit in which two guys meet at a dinner party. One of them, played by Robert Webb, is introduced as a real “people person.” Sure enough, he does everything Dale Carnegie advises, dialed up to 11.

The guy he’s talking to, played by David Mitchell, doesn’t pick up on it at first. But then he starts to sense something strange. And eventually it dawns on him:

===

Ohhh, I see what’s going on. You think you’re good with people. It all makes sense now. The fake mateyness… the rapey arm-touching… the way you keep using my name in a way that makes me feel oddly violated, as if you’d just dipped your cock in my drink.

===

In short:

There’s something known as “calibration.”

In long:

When you learn any new technique and persuasion strategy, you gotta twiddle and tweak the knobs until you dial it down to the lowest possible effective dose. Otherwise you go from being a people person to being that guy or gal who “thinks he’s good with people.”

I’m telling you all this in anticipation of my new book, all about persuasion and influence, of the full and magnificent title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​ ​

Lies and legends of the left brain

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A couple years ago, I came across a bizarre and eye-opening story told by neuroscientist V.S Ramachandran.

Ramachandran was working with split-brain patients, who have surgically had the connection between their left and brain hemispheres cut to control seizures.

In an experiment, Ramachandran demonstrated that these patients effectively had two different minds inside one skull. One mind would like chocolate ice cream best, the other vanilla. One believed in God, the other didn’t.

This story was my first exposure to strange and wonderful world of split-brain research.

I had always thought all the “left-brained/right-brained” stuff was just bunk. I didn’t realize it’s based on pretty incontrovertible scientific proof, going back to research on these split-brain people.

I recently came across another split-brain story, this one in a book by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga.

Gazzaniga did his PhD at Caltech under a guy named Roger Sperry, who went on to win the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work.

Sperry and Gazzaniga were pioneers in working with split-brain patients. These patients seemed to be perfectly normal. But thanks to a bunch of clever experiments, Sperry and Gazzaniga managed to tease out some strange things happening in these patients, which reveal real mysteries of the mind.

For example, the scientists would simultaneously show two images to the patient in such a way that each image only went to one hemisphere.

The patient was then asked to point, with his two hands, to cards connected to the image he had just seen.

One time, a patient was shown a picture of a snow scene for the right brain… and a chicken claw for the left brain.

He then pointed to images of a shovel and a chicken (with the left hand being controlled by the right brain, and the right hand being controlled by the left brain — we’re cross-wired like that).

So far so good. The different sides of the brain had seen different images, and could identify those images by pointing with the hands they controlled.

But here’s where it gets really tricky and interesting:

Gazzaniga had the intuition to ask the patient to explain why he had selected the two images, the one of a chicken and the other of a shovel.

One last scientific fact:

Verbal stuff happens mainly on the left hemisphere (again, we know this based on these split-brain experiments).

In other words, when verbalizing stuff, this patient didn’t have access to the information about the snow scene his right brain had seen. The part of his brain that could speak had only seen one image, that of a chicken claw.

The fact this patient had no possible idea why he had pointed to an image of a shovel didn’t stop him. He immediately and confidently replied:

“Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

Hm. Do you see what happened?

This split-brain patient, or rather the left mind in his skull, came up with a story, consistent with the facts he knew (the fact was he had pointed to a picture of a shovel).

Of course, in this case, the story was completely fabricated and wrong, and had nothing to do with the actual reason (that the other half of his brain had seen a snow scene and had connected it to the image of a shovel).

To me, this is really fascinating. Because it’s not just about these rare few people who don’t have a connection between the left and right brain hemispheres.

This same thing is happening in all of us, all the time, even right now as you read this. It’s just not so neatly visible and trackable in connected-brain humans as it is in split-brain humans (hence why this research won the Nobel Prize).

This is cool knowledge on its own. But it also practical consequences, and gives you specific technique to practice in case you want to influence others.

This technique is nothing new. But it is immensely powerful. (And no, it’s not “Tell a stawrry.”)

You probably know the technique I have in mind. But if not, you can find it in my upcoming book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​ ​

Lilla

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I will call the girl Lilla, because that really was her name. I met her on the sidewalk of a busy street in Budapest, Hungary.

I’d been walking with a group of friends down the Kiskörút — the “small ring road” in the center of Budapest — when an attractive girl of about 25 walked past us.

I wheeled about without saying a word… jogged back through the crowd of people… stepped in front of the still-moving girl… locked my eyes on hers like two suction cups… smiled… and held up my hands to make it clear I had something to say to her.

She stopped. I asked if she spoke English. She said she did. I gave her a compliment, saying that she looked nice. She smiled and said thank you.

We chatted for a few more minutes. Eventually, I said I have to go, but that I’d like to invite her for a drink one evening. Lilla, for that was her name, smiled and said, “Ok. Here, take my number.”

After I put her number into my phone, we talked for a couple more minutes, and then said goodbye. Lilla walked on the way she was going, and I rejoined my friends, who were waiting some way down the street, nodding their heads in approval.

If you think I’m trying to boost myself up as some sort of supernaturally talented seducer, let me tell you the sad truth:

For the first three decades of my life, I was entirely useless with women. Shy, passive, avoidant.

That changed when I discovered “daygame” — a collection of online wisdom for how to approach a woman on the street, start a conversation, and then get her phone number, with the clear and stated goal of inviting her out one evening.

It took a couple months of daily practice to perform this mating dance naturally and with confidence. But soon enough, an interaction like the one with Lilla became typical.

I could stop almost any girl on the street and have a pleasant conversation. Many times, those five-minute chats ended with plans to meet again one night for a drink.

And so it was with Lilla. I invited her out a few days later.

Lilla lived far in the outskirts of Budapest. Since I suggested the center as the meeting place, she said that 6pm, right when she finished work, was really the only time that would work.

What to do? 6pm is not the sexiest time of the day, but I already had plans for every other night. So I agreed.

To make this seduction even less likely, it turned out Lilla didn’t drink alcohol.

So here we were, at 6:30pm, with the June sun still high up overhead, sitting in a tea house in the fifth district in Budapest, sipping rooibos, and having the most intensely boring, chemistry-free conversation imaginable. Lilla’s friends, my job, her travel plans.

Lilla’s English was fine but not perfect. Or maybe she just wasn’t “that kind of girl.” In any case, all my attempts at sexual innuendo fell flat as they made their way across the table.

I looked inside my teapot. It was nearing the end. I couldn’t imagine that a second round of rooibos would help any. Something had to change.

“How about we go for a lemonade?” I asked. “I know a place around the corner.” Lilla said fine.

As we strolled through Budapest’s fifth district, my mind raced over my options. A lemonade was clearly not any kind of real solution. Where would we take our conversation now, sugar or no sugar? Another 40 minutes of pointless interview chatter wouldn’t do either Lilla or me good.

And then, suddenly, I had a moment of inspiration. I thought back to the collection of online pick up wisdom I had read. I remembered something. And I stopped walking.

Lilla stopped too, and turned to me to see what’s up.

I locked eyes with her, again suction-cup-like. I said, “Give me your hands.” I held out my hands to her as I said this.

For a moment, Lilla hesitated. Quite natural. She had really just met me a short while earlier. I hadn’t explained what I wanted her hands for, or what I was planning to do. I just stood there, my eyes on hers, my hands held out, smirking a little, not saying anything.

Slowly, a little smile spread across Lilla’s face. She looked down at her feet and then back up at me. And she put her hands in mine, curious to see where this would lead.

Are you curious also? I hope so.

Because this is one of the more personal stories I’m including in my new 10 Commandments book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

Earlier this week, I went to the crossroads and made a pact with a traveling salesman who lurks there a lot.

This traveling salesman promised he’d make sure I finished this book by March 24 if only I would sign some kind of contract he had.

I signed, and as a result, I have been making great progress on a final push to get this book published by March 24.

In the meantime, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

And on that note, if you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​​

Do you subscribe to the New Yorker?

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You probably don’t. But I do.

I subscribe to the New Yorker because the New Yorker’s feature articles are well-written fluff, which exposes me to new ideas.

But if I’m being 100% honest, that’s not the only reason.

There’s also the New Yorker cartoons, which I find funny. In fact, the zeroth issue of my Daily Email Habit service, which I have on the sales page as an illustration of what customers get every day, features a cartoon from New Yorker.

A few years ago, the New Yorker started running a cartoon caption contest.

In each issue, there’s a new cartoon without a caption, inviting completely new caption submissions.

There’s also last week’s cartoon with the top 3 captions, inviting readers to vote among them online.

And then there’s the cartoon from two weeks ago with the winning caption, the caption that got the most “funny” votes in the past week.

(This week’s winner is for a cartoon that shows a psychiatrist’s office with two clocks sitting on the psychiatrist’s couch. The clocks have eyes, arms, and legs, and one seems to be exasperated. The winning caption reads, “I was born in New York. I grew up in New York. Then we move to California and she expects me to change.”)

Here’s a curious thing I found out in a recent New Yorker article about humor:

Even the top-rated New Yorker cartoon caption entries receive mostly unfunny ratings. (The options when voting are “funny,” “somewhat funny,” and “unfunny.”)

In other words, even when it comes to the funniest captions, most people will think it’s not funny at all. Not just not less funny than really he-he ha-ha. But totally unfunny and flat and stupid, with not even a smile resulting.

Very very interesting.

From what I have read and seen inside my own head, the sense of what’s funny, like shoe size, is highly individual.

In general, the only joke we will consider laughing at is a joke we can identify with in some way, much like the only shoe we will consider wearing is one that actually fits on our foot, however tightly.

Maybe you are not funny. Maybe you’re not trying to be funny.

But maybe you’d like to make money and have influence and have stability in your life.

I keep promoting the idea of writing daily emails as a means to all three of those outcomes.

But I know that a good number of people out there are hobbled by the thought that they aren’t writers… that they have nothing to say… or that they have no right or authority to say anything, even if they might have something to say.

Writing for sales and influence works in the same way as humor.

It’s identification first… authority and expertise second, or maybe 3rd.

On the one hand, this means that, regardless of how much of an expert you are and how much authority you have, most people will simply never be moved by what you write. Again, even the top-rated New Yorker cartoon caption entries receive mostly unfunny ratings.

On the other hand, it also means that even if you have little expertise and less authority, there will be people who read and are influenced by what you write, simply because they identify with you as a person, however tangentially. If you’ve ever been in a relationship, and felt pressured to change as a result, you’ll even find two clocks on a shrink’s couch funny if they share the same frustration as you.

All that’s to say, if you want to influence and make sales to an audience that I personally have no hope of ever influencing or selling to, you can do so, starting today, simply by virtue of being a unique person with unique interests, experiences, life conditions, and attitudes.

Which brings me back to Daily Email Habit.

Daily emails a great way to influence and sell, because they are a constant drip of you, and your unique interests, experiences, life conditions, and attitudes.

I can help you get started and stick with daily emails, even if you worry that you have nothing to say, or no right to say it. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The maple syrup theory of influence

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Fascinating fact about me:

I studied math in college.

Like I said, fascinating. And it gets even more so, because I was never good at math.

Not in elementary school. Not in high school.

Somehow though, when college came, and I could choose to study what I wanted, and I never again had to take any math classes, I wound up taking math classes, and lots of them.

I think I was trying to prove something to myself. I managed it, too, because it turns out you can get a lot done with just curiosity and internal motivation, even in the absence of talent.

Anyways, one time I was taking a math class about “complex analysis” — about how to work with complex numbers, which have both a real and an “imaginary” component (ie, involving the square root of -1).

Whatever. Don’t worry about the math.

The important thing is simply that complex numbers have their own bizarre rules for how they are multiplied and divided, how you take a derivative, how you do integrals.

I never understood complex numbers, not really. But I diligently worked through the course.

I remember a specific homework problem, and the epiphany that came with it.

I was struggling to apply the rules in the textbook. But with some derring-do and with a few leaps of logic, I managed to finally solve the problem and reach the answer.

The answer was simple and elegant.

I remember a feeling of understanding washing over me. I got it, whatever this particular section was about. It made sense to me now. All the struggle and confusion and work had paid off.

Then, as a proper diligent student, I double-checked my answer in the back of the textbook.

It turned out I was 100% wrong. Not just that I’d made some screwup in the calculation, but that I was completely off track. I had misapplied and misunderstood the rules. My feeling of understanding, which had washed over me and given me such relief, corresponded to nothing in reality.

When I was a kid, like 9 years old, I had a feeling I understood myself and the world perfectly.

It was pretty late in life, in my late teens or maybe my early 20s, when I started to notice cracks in my confident understanding of the world.

Gradually, I started to develop a theory that emotions like certainty, understanding, and insight are like maple syrup.

Maple syrup can be poured over whatever you want — pancakes, French toast, waffles.

Likewise, emotions can be poured over ideas that are true, ideas are not true, or even ideas that are complete waffles, meaning some kind of undefined nonsense, like my understanding of complex analysis rules.

On the one hand, it doesn’t get more unsettling than this. I realized my most basic, certain feelings of rightness are not actually reliable.

On the other hand, it was a powerful realization.

For one thing, it was liberating.

It meant that, even if I’m sure — if it cannot, will not, won’t work, if it’s black and not white, if I am right and not wrong — I don’t really know for a fact. It pays to go get some real-world data — the equivalent of checking the right answer in the back of the textbook.

For another, I’m not the only person whose emotions work like this. I find it’s pretty universal.

And it turns out there are ways to get other people to pour their own emotional syrups — whether of desire, or of insight, or of trust — over pancakes, French toast, waffles, donuts, rice, hot dogs, sponge cake, and pretty much any basic foodstuff you may have to offer them.

You can make hot dogs sweet and sponge cake delicious, even irresistible, if you pour enough maple syrup on them.

And you can make honest, dry, uninspiring information exciting and eye-opening and urgent, much in the same way.

Perhaps you’d like some specific techniques of influence, which you can apply to get your audience to pour out their own emotional maple syrups over your offers?

You can find such techniques, delivered daily to your inbox, inside my Daily Email Habit service.

You even double-check your own answers against my answers, which like today, tend to be based on the day’s Daily Email Habit prompt.

In case you’d like to prove something to yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It can’t go on for long like this

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I once took a class on “health economics,” which is just what it sounds like.

One thing that’s stuck with me from those lectures is how back in the 1980s, the best and brightest political scientists in the West had no clue that the Soviet Union was about to collapse.

The only guy who was confidently predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was some low-profile economist who was looking at the rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths in the USSR.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they were sky-high. A major part of the Soviet working-age population was either chronically drunk, sick from drinking, or dying from drinking.

It couldn’t go on for long like this, that economist predicted. And sure enough, it didn’t.

I thought of this a couple days ago while forcing myself to read an article about the U.S. Army’s recruiting shortfalls.

The U.S. Army’s recruiting woes are not a topic that I am personally interested in, but I’m glad I read the article. Among many other interesting things, it taught me the following:

“According to a Pentagon study, more than three-quarters of Americans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are ineligible, because they are over-weight, unable to pass the aptitude test, afflicted by physical or mental-health issues, or disqualified by such factors as a criminal record.”

I wanted to get a baseline.

A bit of perplexitying told me that during World War II, “nearly half” of men were deemed ineligible to serve in the army… during the Vietnam war, that had risen to “more than half” (though many eligible men were exempted for being in college)… by 2017, the number of ineligible men and women, ages 17 to 24, had reached 71%. In the most recent study, in 2022, that number had gone up to 77%.

In other words, in the span of about 50 years, the share of the “ineligible” has gone up by more than 50%… and the share of U.S. citizens, in the prime of life, who are not significantly compromised by health, mental, or behavioral issues, is now barely 1 in 5.

I don’t know what the future of the U.S. is. But the trend certainly isn’t good. It can’t go on for long like this.

Now that I’ve dug a six-foot-deep hole for myself so far in this email, let’s see if I can clamber out.

One idea I’ve personally found very inspiring over the years comes from Dan Kennedy.

I only know this idea as it was retold by Ben Settle in one of Ben’s emails. In fact, it was this email that got me to sign up to Ben’s paid newsletter.

The idea is the “myth of security.” Because, says Dan, there is no such thing as security. Not really, not if you look close.

There’s no security in the money or investments you already have in the bank… in the job that you have now… in the business that you might own… in the current method you have of getting customers or clients… even in your personal relationships, your community, or even your nation (or your nation’s army).

All of that can disappear, from today to tomorrow, or from this year to next year. It’s happened before, and it can happen again.

The only security you have? According to Dan, it’s only in your ‘ability to produce.’ In a few more of Dan’s words:

“… you had better sustain a very, very serious commitment to maintaining, improving, enhancing and strengthening your own ‘ability to produce’, because, in truth, it is all you’ve got and all you will ever have. Anything and everything else you see around you, you acquire and accumulate, you invest in, you trust in, can disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Another valuable idea I’ve learned, this from “Sovereign Man” Simon Black, is that of a Plan B. A Plan B is a plan that works in case things go bad… and that also works and brings in value even if things stay as they are.

Dan Kennedy’s idea of a very serious commitment to your “ability to produce” falls into this Plan B category.

I don’t know what you can produce.

I’ve personally decided to focus on producing effective communication — on putting together words that can motivate, influence, and guide others, and getting better at doing that, day after day.

I figure if nothing ever changes, and things stay exactly as they are, those will be very valuable skills to have.

On the other hand, if things change drastically tomorrow, those will still be valuable skills to have — and they may prove to be the only things that still have value.

If you’d like my help and guidance in developing your own ability to produce, starting today, so you can be prepared for tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

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One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Inspiration in case everybody else is doing better than you

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A couple days ago, I wrote an email about an idea from Dave Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar.

It seems many readers found that email unusually inspiring, and wrote in to say so.

So I will shamelessly go back to the same well, and tell you another anecdote from Sandler’s book to try to inspire you.

Here goes:

Sandler didn’t start out as a salesman. He had inherited his father’s profitable business. But then, through a combination of entitlement and stupidity, Sandler lost that business.

He turned to sales because he hoped to once again afford the kind of lifestyle he was used to.

Sandler started selling self-help materials. He struggled and sucked.

In the first year of his miserable new sales career, he went to an awards show for the star salesmen of his company.

Of course, awards were given out at the awards show. Of course, Sandler, who struggled and sucked, won no awards. Of course, he felt inferior, and even doubly bad about struggling and sucking as a salesman.

But through some combination of gnawing insecurity, personal drive, and a lack of better options, Sandler stuck to it. And he made a vow to improve.

Sandler started visiting the salesmen who had won the top awards at the the awards show. His plan was to interview them, learn from them, soak in their skills and mindset by osmosis. Except, that’s not what ended up happening.

In Sandler’s own words:

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One by one I was disappointed by what I discovered. They were all struggling. I went from Dallas to Denver, from Washington to Virginia, and interviewed every distributor who agreed to spend time with me. Most of them were starving. There was nothing consistent about their lives. A year of success was easily followed by a year of failure, but they faked their way through it, just as they had been taught to do. These were the stars of the distributor network, and most of them were miserable.

===

That’s it. That’s the anecdote. The end.

Yeah, of course the book goes on to describe how Sandler developed his own sales system, and how he eventually started consistently making sales, and winning awards, and how he became the star salesman for his company, year after year, etc.

But you’ve probably heard enough rags-to-riches stories in your life.

That’s why the end of the Sandler anecdote, if you ask me, should really fall where he goes to talk to all these industry stars, who seem to be doing great, making tons of sales, getting awards and kudos, and the reality is they’re struggling and experiencing all kinds of volatility and scarcity.

I don’t know what your specific situation is.

But I imagine you have certain insecurities. We all have them.

Maybe you’re insecure about something objective and measurable — you’re not making enough money, you have no kind of audience.

Or maybe you’re insecure about something less measurable but still real — your experience and status.

It’s bad enough to deal with such insecurities and the underlying realities on their own.

But it’s doubly bad when you look around, and spot people who appear to be doing amazing and inevitably compare yourself to them. 7-figure this! 4-hour that! A newsletter with 250 million readers!

I’d like to suggest to you — as in Sandler’s time, so today.

There’s no reason to feel doubly bad comparing your situation to the 7-figure, 4-hour superstars. Because there’s an excellent chance they are struggling behind the scenes. If you could really talk to them, it would be obvious enough.

As for the realities you might be facing — whether income, or influence, or your experience and status — my stock answer is to start writing daily emails. And it will fix itself.

You’ve probably gotten used to hearing me say that, and maybe you’ve gotten deaf to it.

So let me share a message I got a couple days ago from Chavy Helfgott, who is a copywriter and brand strategist for consumer brands.

Chavy signed up to my Daily Email Habit service on day one, back in November. She was looking to bring her career back into focus after a couple years off due to personal reasons.

She started writing first daily, then weekday emails. 66 emails so far since November.

Chavy wrote me a couple days ago to report the result:

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Hi, just wanted to share a daily email win. After 66 emails, I just closed my first sale which I directly attribute to daily emails, and that client is already expressing interest in another package.

Additionally, writing the daily emails has helped me become more confident about pitching myself in other places. I responded to a question on a WhatsApp community of business owners, and it led to two calls with potential clients.

===

I’m not making any promises that daily emails will sort out your life in 66 days.

But if you have the right combination of gnawing insecurity, personal drive, and a lack of better options, might as well get started daily emailing today? One thing I’m sure of, the results will surprise you.

And if you want my help along the way, here’s more info on Daily Email Habit:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Even better than getting rid of cliches

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“The good salesman combines the tenacity of a bull dog with the manners of a spaniel. If you have any charm, ooze it.”

— David Ogilvy, The Theory and Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker

You ever find yourself spewing cliches? I know I do, particularly when I write a quick first draft. But I hate cliches, or rather, I hate being seen as a person who speaks in cliches.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix in writing. That’s what second drafts are for. You can always take a cliche out and replace it with something less cliched.

But better yet, in my humble opinion, expressed from my humble couch in my humble home, is to take the cliche and somehow extend it, exaggerate it, subvert it. I believe the term of trade is “hang a lantern on it.”

A couple more examples, with the cliches and lanterns highlighted for you. From Gary Gulman’s “the best joke in the world”:

“All you have to know for this is that we have fifty states in America and they each have a two capital letter abbreviation. But that wasn’t always the case! Up until, I WANNA SAY, 1973… [beat] and so I WILL.”

From William Goldman, I believe in the Princess Bride though I can’t find the original quote:

“It had SEEN BETTER DAYS (or at least ONE BETTER DAY)…”

There’s nothing quite so funny as explaining a joke, so I will end this email here without killing yet another funny example for you. But I hope you get the point. In the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:

“I used to say that a good writer throws out the stuff that everybody else keeps. But an even better test occurs to me: perhaps a good writer keeps the stuff everybody else throws out.”

Today’s email is brought to you by my Daily Email Habit service. It forced me to write an email I wouldn’t have written otherwise. And it turned out to be useful, for me at least.

Maybe this practice could be useful for you as well? If you’d like more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh