Direct marketing explained in two simple steps

Yesterday, I was on a call with a smart and very successful direct marketer. He explained his entire philosophy of direct marketing in two steps:

1. Get people to say YES, and then

2. Upsell them

(Of course, people are free to say no to the upsell. No hard feelings.)

This is a fractal that repeats over and over, throughout the direct marketing world. For example, it’s how I have run ads in other newsletters that paid for themselves on day 0:

1. Get people to say YES to a cool free offer in the ad and on the landing page, and then

2. Upsell them to a paid offer on the thank-you page

Of course, people are free to say no to the thank-you page offer. (Once again, no hard feelings, just a bit of me sticking voodoo pins into a little doll I use to represent my ideal customer avatar.)

The above is basically the model I’m gonna help you implement if you manage to win the bidding in the upcoming “I endorse YOU to my list” auction, which I will be running soon in my Daily Email House community.

The community is free to join… though if you do join, I’ll try to upsell you on participating in the auction.

Of course, no hard feelings if you say no to that.

(Starts muttering, and gets pins ready.)

Just kidding. Here’s where to join my FREE community, where the shared mission is, “Use your email list to pay for a house”:

https://bejakovic.com/house

I promoted Dan Kennedy’s $0.99 audiobook but when the results rolled in!…

This past Wednesday, I was moving my stuff from my old apartment, in the peripheral “Williamsburg of Barcelona,” to my new apartment, in the very heart of Barcelona.

It’s stressful to move, even though I have little stuff.

I found some movers on the Spanish version of Craigslist. They showed up unprepared, possibly drunk, and clearly determined to take as much advantage as they could of the fact they were being paid per hour, rather than per completed job.

It took 3 and 1/2 hours for them to move a few plants and a few trashbags’ worth of stuff 3 miles across town.

My day was eaten up with preparing for this move… with witnessing the move in all its glacial fury… and then with recovering from the move ie. hiding the trashbags of stuff in places around my new apartment where I cannot see them and don’t have to think about them for a while.

All that’s to say, on Wednesday I really had no time or brain power to write my daily email.

So I took post from my Daily Email House community, in which House member Anthony La Tour shared how it’s now possible to get get several super valuable, multi-thousand dollar Dan Kennedy seminars for the cost of an Audible audiobook, and I basically sent that out as my email.

Results:

$306 in Audible bounties so far, plus about a dozen readers writing in to say “thank you” for cluing them into this offer.

Conclusions:

#1 Audible can be a legit “in-between” offer to promote

The regular Amazon affiliate program pays peanuts, but the bounties when somebody signs up for Audible are generous — $10 for a $0.99 trial, whether the customer sticks or not.

When you add it all up, and add up some other bounties Amazon is giving to affiliates, you get the $306 I made with my email on Wednesday.

$306 is not “pay for a house” money.

But I wasn’t in the middle of promoting anything anyhow. $306 is a decent return for spending about 15 mins to “write” and schedule an email in the middle of moving apartments.

Of course, in order for this to be a repeatable thing, it would take other unique audiobook deals — either something not available in other formats, or only available for drastically more in other formats, like the Dan Kennedy thing.

#2. There’s great value in telling people something new

On Wednesday, I had no idea whether talking about this Audible deal would make me any money.

I knew it was still a good thing to share this deal in my email.

Because much more than the direct money from the sales you might make, there’s value in telling people something new.

Genuine news hooks readers on opening your emails in the future as well, and at least checking out you future offers also. After all, they might miss out! And few new things are as interesting as a legit new deal on something people already want.

#3. “How can they afford this???”

Audible pays out $10 bounties for somebody signing up for a $0.99 trial.

That connected in my mind to Internet Marketer Igor Kheifets’s pretty irresistible offer to affiliates:

Igor is currently paying out a $30 commission for each affiliate sale of his $3.99 book.

How can Amazon (and Igor) afford to do this?

They can afford to do it because:

1. They know their numbers ie. what a new customer in this funnel is worth to them, and

2. They have high-enough numbers, because they make new customers all kinds of additional offers in the form of order bumps, upsells, downsells, and cross-sells.

And that’s just in that one funnel.

After the customer buys, Amazon and (Igor) own the customer relationship. They can then simply make new backend offers from now till doomsday. As Igor wrote to me as I was promoting his book, “I only need one backend sale to cover everything.”

I’ve long been guilty of not having either of the 2 items above.

#1 (not knowing what a new customer in a funnel is worth to me) is fairly easy and quick to fix.

#2 (not having two dozen other offers to make in one funnel) is less so.

But I’m working on both of them. And I’m sharing what I’m learning, and I’m trying to take some people along for the ride. If you wanna go for that ride as well:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Announcing: Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition

(takes a deep breath)

Today is the last day of the 2025 Black Friday Bundle…

Offers from 11 people, myself included, around copywriting and email marketing, are all being bundled together at a steep discount…

You can find out the full details of what all is included on the page below…

But I can tell you that my part of the bundle alone, a year’s subscription to my Daily Email Habit service, currently sells for more ($494) than the cost of this entire bundle ($299).

(exhales)

HO HUM.

I just dutifully told you all the dry and respectable facts about the ongoing and soon-ending Black Friday Bundle offer.

But frankly, those details are JUST NOT VERY FUN.

What is fun?

Lotsa stuff.

For example, one thing that’s fun is starting a new collection… adding a new item to that collection… and then finally, after much struggle and travail and effort and cost, completing the collection with the last missing piece.

And that’s why I am now announcing:

“THE BLACK FRIDAY BUNDLE COLLECTOR’S EDITION”

The Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition is a virtual display case, containing 15 slots for you to lovingly jam the correct item inside.

You fill slots #1-#11 of the Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition with items from the Black Friday Bundle, which I told you about above, and which you can get at the link below.

As for the remaining four slots, they are this:

#12. “$25 Classified Ads”

A behind-closed doors opportunity to get in front of about 20,000 relevant prospects… advertise and test out your offers… get clients and partners… and grow your list… for what works out to $25 a pop.

#13. “Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer”

How to get coaching clients to pay you in the next four days, even if you have little experience. This course costs $997. The most expensive collector’s item of the lot. Still, if you consider that this Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer you make itself sells for $997, and is truly irresistible, then even one client means this Black Friday Collector’s Edition item will pay for itself.

#14. “How to acquire entire newsletters, communities, and online service businesses with no money out of pocket”

Thousands of people previously paid $2,995 for this information, but you can get this Colelctor’s Edition item for just $497.

#15. “Huge $$$$ Communities”

How to create and monetize online communities that generate hundreds of thousands of dollars, often from only a few hundred members. People have paid $5k for this information in the past, but you can catch this Collector’s Item today, if you know where to look, for only $97.

As I wrote and tried to make abundantly clear yesterday, I am not giving away any of these these final four Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition items.

But if you get items #1-#11 using my link below, I will tell you where items #12-#15 are hiding, so you can go out into the world and catch ’em all, and then stuff them inside your Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition display case, to show off when guests visit your house or simply to look at with satisfaction on a nice Sunday afternoon.

This will be the last email I send about this collector’s opportunity, which closes at 12 midnight EST tonight.

If you wanna kick start your Black Friday Bundle collection, and then have me tell you how and where you can get the remaining items so you can complete the whole set:

https://bejakovic.com/greatdeals

Black Friday deals against humanity

Earlier this week, I came across the following Black Friday trivia:

Cards Against Humanity, a deck of cards used for a popular party game, has a history of making funky Black Friday offers.

One year, they promoted a “Bullshit Box” as a way of distancing themselves from Black Friday craziness.

The box was advertised as containing “literal feces, from an actual bull.”

30k people bought it. It turned out to really be a piece of cow dung, in a little black box, shrink wrapped and mailed to your house.

Another year, rather than offering a discount for Black Friday, Cards Against Humanity hiked up the price of their card deck by $5.

This ended up getting a lot of press and went viral on social media.

Cards Against Humanity ended up as the #1 card game on Amazon that Black Friday, and the company made bank as a result.

These campaigns bounced around my head and influenced how I decided to promote the Black Friday Bundle I am participating in this year.

I figured everyone else participating in this bundle would try to outdo themselves with free giveaways if you buy via their affiliate link.

I decided to try something different, Cards of Humanity-style.

Rather than giving a bunch of additional stuff for free in the form of bonuses, I decided to JUST TELL YOU WHERE YOU CAN BUY FOUR MORE REALLY GREAT DEALS THAT YOU MIGHT NEVER FIND OTHERWISE.

Haha fun and games, right?

Maybe not. Because yesterday, I got this question from a reader:

===

I was actually wondering if one gets all of the bonuses as part of purchasing through your link, or if you get the bonus based on the day you purchase it, or you pick one.

===

This question got me a bit panicked.

I suddenly realized that, much how I skim other people’s emails, other people skim mine.

Many of my readers are likely to scroll down to the bottom of my email, simply see the stuff I’m listing, and assume that these are actual giveaways, rather than JUST POINTERS TO WHERE YOU CAN BUY THESE DEALS.

Next thing, I imagined myself in Internet marketer jail, wearing one of those striped prison pajamas, a placard around my neck that says, “Made promises he had no intention to keep.”

I would plead to the judge that I did explain everything in my emails, plainly and thoroughly. But the judge would slam down his gavel and say, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law.”

And the law is this:

People skim your copy and split their attention across five things. That means you gotta repeat yourself, and make your message black and white, and simple as salt, and then repeat yourself some more.

So to reiterate my Black Friday deal against humanity:

If you buy via my affiliate link, I AM NOT GIVING AWAY ANY FREE BONUSES.

The Black Friday bundle already has a ton of stuff inside, most of which people are unlikely to consume.

So why are people still buying the Black Friday bundle?

Well, I figure that the real benefit is actually purchasing, and getting the thrill of a good deal on valuable and exciting products.

That’s why, if you do buy via my affiliate link below, I WILL TELL YOU WHERE TO BUY THE FOLLOWING FOUR OFFERS, BUT I WILL NOT IN ANY WAY GIVE YOU THESE OFFERS FOR FREE (the whole point is that you gotta pay for them):

1. “$25 Classified Ads”

A behind-closed doors opportunity to get in front of about 20,000 relevant prospects… advertise and test out your offers… get clients and partners… and grow your list… for what works out to $25 a pop.

2. “Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer”

How to get coaching clients to pay you in the next four days, even if you have little experience. This course costs $997. That might not sound like any kind of a bargain, but if you consider that this Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer you make itself sells for $997, and is truly irresistible, then even one client, and this course will pay for itself.

3. “How to acquire newsletters, communities, and online service businesses with no money out of pocket”

Thousands of people previously paid $2,995 for this information, but you can get it now for just $497.

4. [Still to be revealed tomorrow]

Which of these sweet deals do you get if you buy the Black Friday Bundle via my affiliate link below?

NONE OF THEM.

My deal is simply I will tell you WHERE AND HOW YOU CAN BUY ALL OF THEM, OR ANY OF THEM, OR NONE OF THEM, AS YOU CHOOSE.

Clear? I hope so. I am planning to enter this email as “Defense Exhibit 1A” in case I’m ever put on trial for this promo.

Meanwhile, if you wanna take me up on my NON GIVEAWAY OFFER, here’s my affiliate link:

https://bejakovic.com/greatdeals

Announcing: Opportunity to buy more stuff and get more great deals

Today kicks off the Black Friday Bundle, which is neither black nor does it seem to have anything to do with Friday (today being Thursday).

The Black Friday bundle includes offers from a dozen people in the copywriting and email marketing niches, myself included.

The dozen or so people who are participating in this bundle are all promoting it to their lists.

How can you stand out among a dozen people standing on stage, all straining to appear the tallest, in front of pretty much the same audience?

I don’t know. But I did ask myself what the underlying psychology is when it comes to bundles in particular, and to Black Friday in general. I came up with following:

1. People buy stuff because they find buying enjoyable

2. They want to feel like they’re getting a deal

Does that sound right? Is that what you want? If so, I’ll give it to you.

I figure that everybody else participating in this Black Friday Bundle will pile on more stuff in the form of free bonuses.

Unfortunately, free bonuses have the downside of being free.

And who wants free, when you can have the pleasure of 1) actually buying something, for real money and 2) still feeling like you’re getting a great deal?

So instead of piling on free stuff, I will tell you where to get more great deals, for real money.

To start, if you buy the Black Friday Bundle via my link below, I will tell you where you can buy something I’m calling “$25 Classified Ads.”

These “$25 Classified Ads” are something I’ve already teased inside my Daily Email House community. But so far, I haven’t shared this secret with a single person (you could be the first).

If you’re a marketer or an agency owner or a copywriter, then “$25 Classified Ads” is a behind-closed doors opportunity to get in front of about 20,000 relevant prospects… advertise and test out your offers… get clients and partners… and grow your list… for what works out to $25 a pop.

(You have to buy a package of 4, for $97, though there’s a way to get an even better deal if you’re willing to buy a bigger package.)

I have used these $25 Classified Ads myself with good results so far, which might possibly turn into great results soon.

I will tell you what these $25 Classified Ads are, and how you can buy these ads yourself — IF you buy the Black Friday Bundle through my link below and forward me your receipt.

Oh, and tomorrow, and Saturday, and Sunday, I will have three more great, buyable deals to share with you.

All of these are deals are ones I have personally invested in (well, except one, which I was gifted).

I can recommend all of them fully.

Of course, if you buy today, I will also tell you the other deals as I tease them out to the rest of my list.

In any case, if you wanna buy the Black Friday Bundle and get a great deal, and then have the opportunity to buy more stuff and get even more great deals:

https://bejakovic.com/greatdeals

To all my dog trainers, pottery instructors, and professional alpaca whisperers

Yesterday I got a question from Liza Schermann, the original “Crazy Email Lady” and current head copywriter at surging startup Scandinavian Biolabs. Liza wanted to know:

===

Why so tempting??

I promised myself never to click through to the sales page of Daily Email Habit. It’s too good an offer not to buy, but I knew I wouldn’t commit. Yesterday, I gave in and clicked against my better judgement.

Anyhow, now I’m wondering:

The example you provide on the sales page is very specific to online marketing. Are most of the prompts geared towards this crowd? Or is it a mix, and people can adjust as they see fit for their own purposes?

I happen to be in this crowd, so it makes perfect sense to me. But maybe there’s a dog trainer, a pottery instructor, or a professional alpaca whisperer on your list who’s scratching their head wondering what to do with a prompt about daily emails (or something similar).

===

I got variants of this question all week. In a nutshell:

Daily emails, like the kind Daily Email Habit gets you to write (including the sample prompt on the sales page) will work in any business or industry. The only caveat is you must be willing to put yourself (or some sort of avatar you write behind) as the face of that business.

In fact, that’s the point of daily emails, unpleasant though it may sound.

You’re ultimately selling yourself as the product, rather than whatever your “product” officially is. In the words of Dan Kennedy, a direct marketer who has managed to sell himself for millions and millions of dollars:

“The higher up in income you go, the more you’re paid for who you are, rather than what you do.”

So now the question becomes, are daily emails, the way Daily Email Habit helps you to write, a fit for you?

Only you can decide that.

Maybe you don’t like the business of selling you, even for a premium, and maybe you want your products or services to stand for themselves, at competitive market rates.

That’s a fine decision. In this case, don’t go the daily email route, because the relationship and authority you build up will only interfere with people buying from you on the strength of your product or price alone.

On the other hand, if you want to charge higher prices… or surround yourself with a moat that’s not easily crossed by marauding neighbors… or have a ready source of income whenever your business or personal life needs it… then daily emails work great.

And Daily Email Habit will help you write them, in an effective and (relatively) painless way, whether you are a dog trainer, pottery instructor, or professional alpaca whisperer.

But that doesn’t change the cruel truth:

The price for Daily Email Habit is going up tonight at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to an obscene $50/month.

If you’re considering getting in before the price increases for ever and ever, and you want the full info on DEH:

https://bejakovic.com/deh/

Nobody’s perfect: I give 4 stars to this new reviewer of my book

Jerry: Osgood, I’m gonna level with you. We can’t get married at all.

Osgood: Why not?

Jerry: Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde.

Osgood: Doesn’t matter.

Jerry: I smoke! I smoke all the time!

Osgood: I don’t care.

Jerry: Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player.

Osgood: I forgive you.

Jerry: [tragically] I can never have children!

Osgood: We can adopt some.

Jerry: But you don’t understand, Osgood! Ohh… [Jerry pulls off his wig] I’m a man!

Osgood: [shrugs] Well, nobody’s perfect.

Those are the closing lines of the greatest comedy of all time, as ranked by American Film Institute, namely, Some Like It Hot.

These lines came to mind because last night I checked the Amazon page for my new 10 Commandments book.

I published the book back in May, and though reviews were slow to come at first, I have amassed 46 reviews so far. Well, 46 ratings, from 1 to 5 stars, most of which don’t actually have any kind of review text beyond the number of stars.

So far, while I’ve gotten a couple 4-star ratings and even a 3-star, all the actual thoughtful reviews with written words were accompanied by 5 star ratings as well.

Until last night.

I now have a new text-based review, only 4 stars, which says:

“Book is 5 stars really but nothings perfect… This book seriously is a must read as you will understand at a deeper level human nature…”

What to say?

I give this reviewer 4 stars. I would give him or her 5 stars for the nice things said about my book… but nobody’s perfect.

In any case, if you STILL haven’t yet read my “must-read” book that will help you “understand at a deeper level human nature” — and you know who you are, and I know you are reading — then here’s where to find the number one comedy… and pickup… and con game… and hypnosis… and sales etc. book, as rated by the BFI, the Bejako Fund of Infotainment:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Disconnect at my first FC Barcelona match

Yesterday, for the first time ever, and after three years of living in Barcelona, I, a total non-fan, went to my first football game ever. And it was super exciting.

FC Barcelona, one of the most dominant and richest teams in the world, was playing Girona FC, a total underdog and second-to-last in the league standings.

The reality of the match:

Barcelona scored early. Girona equalized with a bicycle kick shot. There was lots of attacking and chances on both sides. And then, in the last minute of extra time, Barcelona scored the winning goal.

Honestly, it was the best possible way to see a real live football game for the first time ever.

But what really got me is the feeling of disconnect.

This match happened at the small Barcelona Olympic stadium, where FC Barcelona is playing while their main stadium is being refurbished.

There was almost no advertising anywhere, no flashing jumbotrons, no announcements, no fireworks.

There were lots of empty bleachers because this old Olympic stadium is not really good for watching football, plus apparently some fans are simply boycotting the games since this place is not the real “home” of Barcelona.

As a result, the entire atmosphere felt like watching a local under-17 practice more than some super consequential world-class match… featuring supremely skilled athletes chosen from millions who tried very hard to be worthy of appearing on this same stage… with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line in terms of possible sponsorships, injuries, transfers, etc.

It also felt weird to know that every consequential and inconsequential moment I was witnessing was being streamed all around the world, and that countless photos, reels, writeups, analyses, and stats from this event would appear billions of times on phones and laptops and TVs in the coming days.

I’m not sure what happens when something real, like a bunch of dudes running after a ball on a grassy pitch on Montjuic one afternoon, passes into the symbolic realm, like articles and photos and stories that can live forever.

But something happens.

It’s a very strange and powerful thing, something so strange and powerful that we usually like to shrug it off because the truth of it makes us uncomfortable and forces us to face things about ourselves that we’d rather ignore.

I realize this is all getting a little vague and philosophical.

Rather than waffling on more, I will simply point you to an email I wrote a long time ago.

This old deals with this topic, and in fact talks about a sociological theory that has to do specifically with this. But it’s not just theory. This old email also gives you a practical takeaway for your marketing and writing and branding, if those are the kinds of things you engage in.

By the way, after I wrote this email years ago, I got the following kinds of replies from readers:

“Glorious”

“This is a profound message John. Just a message of appreciation.”

“Daaaamn good!!!”

“The greatest crime you commit is not selling something in your emails. You have the best marketing insights of ANY list I’m on…”

That last comment came from “Australia’s best copywriter,” Daniel Throssell. In case you’re curious what Daniel and my other readers liked so well, and how you can use it in what you do today, here’s the email in question:

https://bejakovic.com/more-real-than-real/

How to get informed (it’s not the news)

Perhaps you’ve seen the trending anti-news article that’s gone viralish over the past week.

It deals with news versus reality, specifically, deaths as reported in the news versus the deaths people actually die from.

The article compared data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to news reports of deaths in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news website of Fox News.

Some of the results:

First, there wasn’t much difference between the three news outlets, in spite of different political leanings.

Second, there was a big gap between which deaths get written about and which deaths actually happen.

On the over-represented side, murders were 43 times more reported than their share of deaths. Terrorism deaths got 18,000 times more coverage than their share of actual deaths.

On the under-represented side, deaths from things like stroke and heart disease were underreported in the news by a factor of 9 and 10, respectively.

I personally don’t watch or read the news, and this kind of stuff allows me to be smug. “You see,” I imagine telling some imaginary debate partner, “I haven’t been missing anything.”

The fact is, the news doesn’t represent reality, meaning stuff that happens out there. The only reality it represents is what biases exist in the human mind, across time and across space and culture:

Our cravings for novelty… for low probability, high-impact events… for negative rather than positive outcomes… for individual dramatic stories rather than statistics encompassing millions of data points.

But though I personally ignore the news and even like to be smug about it, it’s not just cynical and self-serving news outlets that do this to us.

We do the same thing to ourselves, all the time, because of habit but also because of our inborn neurology. We focus on the negative… the low-probability… the high-impact… and we weave stories about such things that often have little to do with the reality of of our existence.

This all sounds kinda depressing, and I don’t want you leaving my email that way.

So let me share a resource I’ve shared multiple times over the past year and a half.

It lays out a simple process that has allowed me to see reality more clearly and to challenge stories my brain likes to tell itself.

This process worked for me when I first read about it and tried it a year and a half ago. It’s working for me still.

Maybe most importantly, following this process opened up some sort of a gateway in my mind that’s allowed related ideas and practices to flow in, which have made me more happy and resilient these days than I have felt my whole adult life.

In case you want to get informed about reality:

https://bejakovic.com/stillworking

The bluebird who paid a $10k bill plus travel expenses

Recently, I had the idea to take a bunch of my previous emails on the topic of pricing and positioning, and to write a book titled “Charge More,” or something like that.

The basic idea being, charge more for what you offer.

But like “Just Do It,” “Charge More” is one of those bits of good advice that people nod their heads to in agreement, but rarely actually follow.

So rather than just repeating “Charge More” for 150 pages to no effect, I figured I would take a bunch of emails I’ve written, with distinctions and stories, to both inspire people to raise their prices, and to give them tips on how to do so in various situations.

And now that I’ve given you that intro, it seems a good time to share a story by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read in Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. The story goes like this:

Sandler once gave a talk at a business convention, outlining his own homebrewed system for raising salesmen’s self-esteem.

Next day, Sandler flew back from the convention to his home in Baltimore.

At the time, all of Sandler’s business was local to Baltimore. He wasn’t expecting anything to come from the convention.

But the next morning, Sandler got a call from an excited business owner from Indiana, halfway around the country.

The business owner was there at convention. He said he took Sandler’s ideas back to his salespeople. He was flabbergasted at the initial results. He wanted Sandler to come out immediately and give his salespeople the full training.

While this guy talking, Sandler thought to himself, “Well! here’s a bluebird.” It’s like the guy had just flown in through an open window and landed on Sandler’s desk.

At the time, Sandler’s fee for a 2-day seminar in Baltimore was $2,500 dollars (this was in the early 1970s). He was simply waiting for the excited business owner to exhaust himself with talking, and then he’d ask for $2,500 plus travel expenses.

But the business owner kept talking, all about how much money he had spent on traditional sales training… and how happy he had been to hear Sandler speak on this topic, because Sandler was right, and others didn’t get it…

“I do have to spend the night at a hotel and away from home to teach this seminar,” Sandler thought. “Better ask for another $500 and make it an even $3k. I’ll do it once the guy stops talking.”

… but the business owner still kept on, all about the books and tapes and trainings he had purchased for his sales staff, and how none of it had worked… and how much it’s been hurting his business… and how it’s been driving him up the wall and he didn’t know what to do until now…

“I do also have to get on a plane for this,” Sandler thought. “Plus I’ll have to give up some selling time. I’ll tell him the price is $3,500, as soon as he slows down.”

… but the biz owner kept talking and talking, venting and venting, revealing and revealing. Sandler says it felt like the guy talked for an hour, even though it was probably only a few minutes.

Finally the business owner talked himself out. “By the way,” he said, “how much is this going to cost me?”

“$10,000,” Sandler said, “plus travel expenses.”

“Well that’s no problem,” the business owner replied. “How soon can you get here?”

I think there are lots of lessons in this little story. Let me just share one, right at the top, about how Sandler got a warm inbound lead, a bluebird who landed on his desk, ready to to buy without any sales call or persuasion or objection overcoming.

Sandler did it by flying across the country and getting up on stage and giving a talk.

That’s an effective way of getting warm inbound leads, if you’re willing to fly around and get up on stage and give speeches to crowds.

But the same psychology applies whenever you have a platform to speak from, even if that platform is entirely virtual, and even if speaking is really writing, like what you’re reading now.

The key is simply to build a mini-monopoly, a situation in which people in your audience have grown to trust you and to have a relationship with you and to want to work with you specifically, even if you have supposed “competition.”

All that’s to say, if you don’t consistently write daily emails yet, it pays to start. And if you want my help doing so:

https://bejakovic.com/deh