Persuasion

The most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today

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There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the lives of all marketers in the present moment.

There is no doubt this fact forms the most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today. It splits marketers into two classes of creatures: winners and losers.

I will tell you this fact. Or rather, I will illustrate it.

Yesterday, YouTube served me up a video. The video was blurry and showed a three-piece rock band. They were at some sort of daytime festival. They stood on a tiny stage with flower pots in the front and an American flag pinned to the back wall.

The band members were middle-aged. They all wore matching outfits — black dress pants and shimmering gold sport coats. They started to play a ZZ Top cover and—

The drummer. Something was clearly wrong with him.

He was grimacing. He was flailing his head. He was wrapping his arms around his head before striking the drums. He was doing the robot. He was drumming with one hand. He was doing a kind of imbecile tiny drumming.

If Chris Farley had learned to play the drums before he died of a speedball overdose, this is what it would have looked like.

This video has 51 million views on YouTube right now.

​​​A tiny stage with flowerpots in the front. Shimmering gold sport coats. A ZZ Top cover.

51 million views.

So here’s the fact of utmost importance:

If you prefer not to exaggerate, you must remain silent.

Such is the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

It is, furthermore, entirely new in the history of our modern civilization. Never, in the course of its development, has anything similar happened. Never have there been other periods of history in which exaggeration has come to govern more directly than in our own.

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This is most natural.

Many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes’ thought to this complex matter. And yet they believe that they have a right to an opinion on the issue. It merely confirms the theorem.

These readers feel themselves complete and intellectually perfect. They have hermetically closed off their minds to new ideas and decided to settle down definitely amid old mental furniture.

​​How to reach such people — except through exaggeration?

The only question that remains is how to best adapt to the present moment. How to exaggerate in the most effective way possible.

I may be mistaken, but the present writer, when he puts is fingers to the keyboard to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, believes this most effective way is called Copy Riddles.

Copy Riddles brings together the greatest collection of copywriting talent ever assembled inside one program. These master persuaders are ready to reveal their secrets to you, to prepare you for the present reality, and to take you outside of yourself for a moment.

​​To start your transmigration:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

My infotaining emails totally flopped for my first big DR client

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My first big direct response copywriting customer was Dr. Audri Lanford, back in 2017.

​​Dr. Audri and her husband Jim were direct response veterans — they ran a big Internet Marketing event with the legendary Jay Abraham back in the year 2000.

Audri and Jim died in 2019 in a freak gas leak explosion. I found out about that through Brian Kurtz’s newsletter because Brian was apparently good friends with Dr. Audri and her husband.

Back in 2017, Dr. Audri had an innovative offer called Australian Digestive Excellence.

​​ADE was a drink of some sort that fixed every chronic digestive problem you could ever have. According to the hundreds of testimonials Dr. Audri had accumulated over just a year or two, it seemed the stuff was really magic.

Now it was time to scale.

Dr. Audri had her source of cold traffic, I believe banner ads on a radio talk show website.

​​These banner ads drove leads to a quiz. And after the quiz, that’s where some patented Bejako emails kicked in.

Well, really, my patented emails were a 12-email sequence in the infotaining style of marketer Ben Settle. I just softened Ben’s somewhat dismissive and harsh tone to make it more suited to these tummy-sensitive leads.

Result?

What were the total sales, made ​across I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of expensive cold leads?

Two. ​​Two sales total.

Why? Why???

The email copy was solid. Sure, I would do it better today, but even back then, I had a “George Costanza school of digestive health” email and one about “How to survive 5-star restaurant food.”

I don’t know the reason why my infotaining email copy flopped. But it brings to mind this old but gold point raised by master copywriter Robert Collier:

“It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Tweaking words is rarely your biggest lever. Even less so if your copy is halfway decent.

Instead, figure out the right scheme. The scheme to get in front of the right prospect. The scheme to get their attention. The scheme to appeal to hidden closets and cupboards of their psychology. The scheme to get them eager and greedy.

Do that,​​ and the specific copywriting tricks you use won’t matter all that much.

And now, let me tell you about my Most Valuable Email trick. It’s an email copywriting trick.

It might seem self-defeating to tell you about it. ​​

Except, through some magic, this email copywriting trick turns you into a 21st-century scheme man or scheme woman. Maybe one to parallel Robert Collier himself one day.

I won’t explain in more detail how the Most Valuable Email trick makes that happen.

For anybody who has bought and gone through my Most Valuable Email training, it will be obvious.

For you, if you haven’t yet gone through Most Valuable Email, and if you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Spewing inappropriate things at Kim Krause Schwalm

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A while back, I asked my readers which of my emails first came to mind. One reader (not sure he wants me to share his name) had this to say:

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The first one that jumped out of my memory was “How Copywriters can avoid ham-handed segues that get them eaten alive.”

The first time I read this email, I printed it out.

And to this day, I read it frequently.

Sometimes even multiple times.

It pretty much shaped the way I write now.

The other day I was reading an email from Kim Krause Schwalm that started with a fascinating story.

It sucked me in and kept me scrolling down, begging for more.

And as you might expect now, she jumped into a straight pitch with no transition whatsoever.

Man, I was spewing…

“No, Kim. No, not you. Why?”

I found myself saying some inappropriate things to a person whom I highly respect.

And gues what? I went to reread your email and laugh like a maniac.

The way I see it… It’s like conducting an instant hypnotic induction, then smacking the sh!t out of the person and forcing him to snap out of it.

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That “ham-handed segues” email is archived on my website. You can find it and read it if you like.

It talks about how copywriters often perform a clumsy bait-and-switch from their fascinating story to their self-interested sales pitch.

Even the best fall into this trap sometimes.

In my ham-handed email, I told a story of an unnamed A-list copywriter who did this bait-and-switch on me, and had me yelling at my laptop. And my reader above had the same frustrating experience with Kim Krause Schwalm.

So how to avoid ham-handed segues?

Get ready. Because the sales pitch is coming. Let me build it up for you. Here it is:

You can find out about that in my Most Valuable Email training.

Because the “ham-handed segues” email uses my Most Valuable Email trick. (And I’m not using that trick in today’s email, in case you’re wondering.)

If you want an explanation of how and where the “ham-handed segues” email uses the Most Valuable Email trick, you can find that in the Most Valuable Email Swipes. That’s a collection of 50 of my best MVEs, which I give you along with the core training of the course.

Look up #10 in that swipe file, and you get an explanation of the trick in action.

Plus as an added benefit, you will learn how to avoid ham-handed segues that get you eaten alive, or worse, spewed upon.

To get Most Valuable Email now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

4 stories

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Story 1. John Carlton was interviewing a copywriting client. After hours of ho-hum information, the client casually mentioned how the TorsionFlex Super Saiyan MiracleT golf swing he was teaching was something he learned from a golfer who had lost a leg, possibly in a whaling accident.

​​”Huh?” said Carlton as he leaned in. This turned into John Carlton’s most famous headline:

“Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks And Slices… And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight”

Story 2. Dan Ferrari struggled as a copywriter for the first year of his career, only getting work from freelance sites.

​​Things only changed when saw an job listing from the Motley Fool, which I believe he applied to just because it was down the street from where he was living at the time.

These days, he’s known as the number 1, most successful, how-does-he-do-it direct response copywriter out there. ​​

Story 3. Dan Kennedy once had a car repossessed during a seminar he was giving.

​​The seminar was in an office park building with big windows. All the attendees could see Dan go out to the parking lot, knock on the window of his own car, and hand the repo man a $20 tip, as though he was taking the car to get detailed.

4. My mom threw a slipper at me once out of frustration and fear. I was going through a teenage melancholy phase, looking wilted and sad for days, possibly ready for self-harm.

​​My mom kept asking me what’s wrong but I just sighed and turned away. Eventually the slipper came at my head. I managed to dodge it, but it did wake me up.

My point?

I heard recently that door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen were taught to first tell four stories before they go for a trial close.

Now, I’m selling an encyclopedia or an A-Z guide to copywriting. Rather, I’m selling a collection of wisdom that’s been handed from people who made it to the very top of the copywriting mountain.

I’m talking about my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

The three A-list copywriters above, plus me, all feature in the book. No, none of the stories above are in the book. But many others are. In case you would like to read those stories, and maybe obtain some wisdom in the process:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

“Pharma Bro in contempt”: Everything going to plan

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I’m signed up for the Federal Trade Commission newsletter, because I like to get news of marketing scams, pyramid schemes, and other skulduggery that can be useful for business. So a few days ago, I got a press release with the unlikely but highly satisfying headline:

“FTC Asks Federal Court to Hold ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli in Contempt”

You probably know Shkreli. He’s a young guy who caused mass outrage a few years back. He bought a pharma company that sold a lifesaving drug, and then raised the price of that drug 55x, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Shkreli then schemed to suppress competition, to make sure desperate patients were forced to pay the new 55x price for his drug.

When this became international news, Shkreli smirked at cameras, and said the one mistake he made was that he didn’t raise the price even higher.

“Why are people coming after you?” asked one interviewer.

“It might have something to do with me being very handsome,” Shkreli answered with a smile.

People were fuming.

“Martini Shkreli,” said one irritated TV announcer, doing what he does best: looking like a real slappable prick.”

So the FTC headline is very clever and very fitting. The new news, by the way, is not that Shkreli is now officially contemptible — which is what the headline makes you think, and which is what most people feel — but that he disobeyed court orders, and is therefore himself “in contempt of court.”

Whatever. Point is:

Maybe Shkreli is a natural-born “slappable prick.” Or maybe it’s an act he’s putting on for reasons of his own.

Either way, I think Shkreli’s behavior is worth studying — and even emulating.

“Whoa whoa hold on there,” I hear you saying. “John, you don’t want to go down that road! There are many better ways to get attention than to become contemptible. It’s not worth it!”

No doubt. And I’m not actually planning on getting into the pharma business, or doing anything to taunt the FTC, or playing around with people’s lives.

But that doesn’t change the fact that specific strategies Shkreli is using — whether instinctively or consciously — can be very valuable if you run a completely above-board, highly moral, or even noble business.

That’s something I will write more about in a future book on positioning, which I’m working on now.

But to twist the advice of James Altucher:

“The best way to promote your next book? Get people to read your current book.”

And so let me remind you of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​Get it now if you want, because tomorrow I will be raising the price of this baby to $200 for the ebook and $250 for the paperback — the highest prices Amazon will me allow me to charge. You can watch the price increase at the page below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Be grateful you read my newsletter

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This past weekend I finished removing the free bonuses from my Copy Riddles program. I sent out an email to previous buyers to tell them 1) they will continue to get access to bonuses and 2) when I flesh out those bonuses into paid courses, they will be automatically upgraded to those new courses.

To which I got a response from a Copy Riddles member:

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Thanks for the update, John. You’ve been treating us OG buyers very well and fairly, and I think you deserve a bit of appreciation!

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I really do. I really do deserve a bit of appreciation.

I’m telling you I deserve appreciation for two reasons. One is that it’s self-serving — I’m a good guy, and others say so about me. I treat my customers well and fairly, and you should keep that in mind the next time I make an offer.

There’s a second reason also:

If you run any kind of business, chances are you’re doing good stuff that you’re not getting credit for.

That means you’re shirking your duties really. As “guru to the gurus” Rich Schefren likes to say, marketing is teaching prospects to value your offer.

The thing is, valuing stuff at what it’s worth is not something we humans are good at. If you want proof of that, go on Amazon, and look at the thousands of gratitude journals for sale, and the hundreds of inspirational guides telling you how important gratitude is, and how you should practice it regularly.

None of that would be necessary if appreciation came easy to humans.

Oh well. that just means you have to do the work for your prospect, and teach him to appreciate what you do.

So be grateful you read my newsletter. Because I always make a point to share something valuable and interesting, usually something you can take and apply right away, if you only think for a second or two.

Now on to my interesting and valuable offer. It’s my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters book.

The fact is, I could take the content of this book, change absolutely nothing except the format, and sell it as a $100 course instead of $5 Kindle book.

Or I could take that same content, deliver it over in a series of 5 Zoom calls, and charge $500 for it.

And people would pay, and they would get great value from it.

And yet, you can get all this value for just $5.

Perhaps you can guess my reasons why. And if not, that’s a topic for another interesting and valuable email.

Meanwhile, if you still haven’t read my 10 Commandments book, you’re shirking your duties as a marketer. Here’s where you can fix that:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The Eleven Steps of Shiny Objectaholics Anonymous

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I got an email from a reader yesterday with an excessively long subject line:

“The most valuable info is rarely sexy, and it’s probably been staring you in the face for a long while.”

Hm. Sounded familiar. It turned out to be a quote from the last chapter of my 10 Commandments book. The body of the email went on to explain:

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Hi John,

In a sea of great quotes from your book, this one spoke to me differently.

Why?

Cause I’ve been chasing shiny objects and secrets the past one year after quitting my banking job to write online.

Only to realize it’s BS 😅

The plan this year is to do the boring shit, on repeat. Till I get good at it. Means reading the fundamental books on copy and doing copywork a lot.

I’m already on your list and enjoy reading your emails. But it’s premature for me to buy yet – in due course though haha.

Anyways, this was an open invitation so I went for it.

Have good Sunday!

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I have this theory that people who wind up in copywriting and direct marketing are all shiny object addicts by nature.

It’s just that the ones who make it realize their addiction at some point, and begin a gradual process of detox and recovery.

If you want a ten-step program to begin your own detox and recovery, then consider my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

A few of these commandments might be new to you. But odds are, most will be either familiar, or obvious. That doesn’t change the fact it’s where the real value is.

If you have already admitted to yourself you are powerless over shiny objects — and that your life has become unmanageable as a result — then have taken the first step. For the next 10 steps:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Jerry Seinfeld’s serious joke about the news

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Today I watched a clip of Jerry Seinfeld on the Johnny Carson Show. Jerry smiles his precocious-boy smile and says:

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To me the most amazing thing about the news is that whatever goes on in the world, it exactly fits the number of pages that they’re using in the paper that day. [Johnny Carson chuckles off screen. Jerry continues:]

They must stand around after each edition going, “I don’t believe we just made it again! If one more thing happens, we’re screwed. There’s no more room in this paper!”

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This is a joke if you hear Jerry Seinfeld tell it, or imagine him with his mannerisms, or if you include that exaggeration at the end.

It’s not a joke if you just read the first sentence of that quote. It really is amazing that the day’s news always just fit the newspaper.

Of course, who reads newspapers any more — but the underlying point still stands:

The news was and is just a constant drip of telling you what to think, how to feel, how to react.

The news is not what’s worth knowing. At least that’s the way I look at it.

If you’re still reading, you might wonder what I think is worth knowing. I call it anti-news.

I’ve written before of my policy of not reading books that were published in just the last year.

I’ve been informed this has a clever name, “the Lindy effect,” after some long-surviving deli in New York.

The idea is, if something is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now. More generally, the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to keep being around.

This simple but powerful idea impacts everything I do, from the books I read to the emails I write to the offers I create. And since it’s time to start promoting:

It also lies behind my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is built on examples of winning copywriting that have been around for three, four, five, six decades or more.

But I’d take it still further back:

I believe Copy Riddles is really about the principles of effective communication, going back thousands of years. That might sound high-heeled, but it’s really what direct response marketing is — a merciless distillation that purifies and concentrates the evergreen principles of effective communication.

These principles were relevant yesterday, last year, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

And if you are looking to influence or manipulate people, these principles are your best bet for what will continue to be relevant tomorrow.

As marketing consultant Khaled Maziad wrote me to say after going through Copy Riddles:

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Man, this’s the best course on bullets I have ever seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot. I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet. This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

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As you might know already:

This is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tomorrow, Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Billion-dollar psychology lessons for cheap

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“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”

You recognize that?

​​It’s from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. One of the biggest movies of all time. And an incredibly valuable resource — if you only know when to stop watching.

When I was a kid, around age five, my eyes bulged out each time my parents took me past the main movie theater in town.

​​For some reason, the ​theater​ still showed the marquee for E.T., even though the movie had stopped playing years earlier.

I was too young to see E.T. when it came out. And I suffered for years, seeing that marquee. I wanted to watch the movie so bad — a real life alien! On Earth! Makes friends with a little boy and turns the boy’s bike into a flying machine!

It’s everything my 5-year-old self wanted in life. But the movie was no longer in theaters, and there was no VHS either.

So a few years ago, fully grown and rather jaded, I downloaded E.T. to finally heal this childhood wound, and to see why this Spielberg fantasy is called the #24 greatest film of all time.

Unfortunately, the moment has passed.

I couldn’t really get into E.T. But I did get some use out of it.

​​That scene above. Let me repeat it in case you didn’t read:

“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”​​

That’s when E.T. dies, about nine-tenths of the way through the movie. And the boy, Elliott, who had a psychic link with E.T. and who has felt everything E.T. has felt, suddenly cannot feel anything any more.

I can imagine that when E.T. played in movie theaters, both the kids and the parents choked up at this point.

​​The kids, because the cute little extraterrestrial is dead.

​​The parents, because they felt on some level this scene might be about their childhood dreams, hopes, and capacity for joy and wonder… which have been drained out of them as they grew up and became adults.

And then of course, in the movie, E.T. comes back to life and everything works out just fine. Which is the insight I want to leave you with today.

If a story reaches mass popularity — E.T., Fight Club, Bad Santa — it’s because it makes people vibrate.

The thing is, social order must be maintained. That’s why each mass-market story either has a happy ending (if the characters were deep-down deserving) or a moral to be learned (if they were not).

Don’t let that fool you.

Market-proven tear-jerkers like E.T. can really show you true human nature — if you don’t wait until the end. The end is just tacked on to muddy the waters. But the psychology lesson is all the emotional buildup that happens before the turnaround.

That buildup shows you how people really are. Those are the real problems and desires people respond to, and that’s what you should speak to. Everything else is just Hollywood.

Meanwhile, in an alternate cinematic universe:

I’d like to remind you that this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with my Copy Riddles program. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

That’s just two days away. ​​

Once the deadline passes, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The best way to market your old course

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In the virtual pages of this daily email newsletter, I’ve gone back over and over to an article by James Altucher, titled, I Plagiarized And You Can, Too!

I’ve written about James’s core idea several times already. I won’t repeat it today. But I will point out the interesting 12 words of advice with which James ends his article:

“The best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

That’s how the cookie crumbles, book-wise. But what about course-wise?

For the last few days, I’ve been promoting my Copy Riddles course.

This is the third time I am promoting this course at the current price in the past 6 months.

And yet, during this run, over just a few days, I’ve made more sales of Copy Riddles than I did over several weeks of promotion earlier.

The difference is I’ve announced this is the last week to get the free bonuses that come with Copy Riddles.

At the end of this week, I will remove the free bonuses, expand them, and turn them into paid upsells.

So the best way to market your old course?

​​Take your free bonuses and convert them into an upsell funnel. And then advertise that fact well to your audience.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The candle is burning down. The hourglass is noiselessly draining away.

The free bonuses for Copy Riddles will disappear this Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST.

The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But the majority of people who bought Copy Riddles over these past few days have been on my list for a while.

That makes me think they’ve been eyeing Copy Riddles for a while.

If, like them, you’ve been weighing up Copy Riddles for a similar while, you have until Saturday to get the whole package, free bonuses included. You can do that at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr