Predictions

The end of info products

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THE FOLLOWING EMAIL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME AUDIENCES

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

You might be familiar with Max Sackheim’s famous ad, “Do you make these mistakes in English?”

The ad ran for decades, unchanged, and kept bringing in profitable business better than any contender.

Thousands of pages of analysis have been written about the 7-word headline of this ad and the copy that followed.

But what about the actual product this ad was ultimately selling? What about the means by which a prospect could hope to correct his or her mistakes in English? What were prospects actually exchanging their money for?

Sackheim’s copy only teases you about the product, and calls it a “remarkable invention” and a “100% self-correcting device.”

As far as I know, nobody today actually has this remarkable invention stashed away in their garage. Whatever it was, it’s clear it was sold as some kind of tool, a device, and not just information.

This is a well-known direct marketing truth that’s been around since Sackheim’s days and before, back into the age of patent medicines.

A real, tangible, external mechanism — a fat-loss potion, a dog seatbelt, a “100% self-correcting device” — sells much easier than just good info — how to lose weight, how to be a less negligent dog owner, how to speak gooder English.

Smart modern-day info marketers have gotten hep to this fact. That’s why people like Russell Brunson and Ben Settle and Sam Ovens have put their reputation and audience to work behind tools like ClickFunnels and Berserker Mail and Skool.

The thing is, creating a tool, whether physical or software, has traditionally been an expensive, complicated, and risky business.

Take a look at Groove Funnels, another tool created a few years ago by another experienced info marketer, Mike Filsaime. Groove Funnels is a bloated, buggy, frankly unusable product. I say that as somebody who invested into a lifelong subscription in Groove Funnels.

I have a couple degrees in computer science. I also have about a decade’s worth amateur and pro software development experience. But after I quit my IT job 10+ years ago, I never once considered putting this experience to use in order to develop any kind of tool I could sell.

Until now.

Because things are changing. Today even a monkey, working alone, can create and deploy a valuable app simply by querying ChatGPT persistently enough. And there are plenty of shovels available for such would-be gold miners, tools to build tools, which will do much of the in-between work for you. Just say what you will to happen, and it will be done.

Decades ago, master direct marketer Gary Halbert said that the best best product of all is… information!

But I bet if Gary were alive today, he’d be hard at work (or maybe easy at work) creating some kind of high-margin tool to sell, in the broadest sense of the word — a thing to do some or all of the work for an audience with a problem. A few reasons why:

* Again, tools are easy to sell. They fit with innate human psychology of how we want to solve problems.

* Tools can make for natural continuity income if you license them out instead of sell them outright.

* Tools can create their own moat over time. There can be lock-in or switching cost if your users build on top of your tool.

* And now, thanks to the most remarkable invention of AI, it’s possible to create tools quickly, cheaply, and with great margins.

All that’s to say, best product of all… information? I don’t think so. Not any more. Best start adapting now.

Speaking of which, I got an offer for you:

Would you say that there are any tech issues that are keeping you from starting your own email list?

If there are, write in and let me know about them.

In turn, I’ll have something for you that you might like.

Swan song for famous forecaster

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Today’s top headline in the New York Post:

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver reveals latest forecast for presidential election”

That’s news to me because I remember Nate Silver as a famously failed forecaster.

Silver confidently predicted the 2016 election for H. Clinton. After Trump won that election, Nate Silver waffled and said the data was right but his own weakness got in the way. The implied promise was, “I’ll be right next time.” People around the Internet shrugged and said, “That’s good enough.”

I think there are lotsa lessons to be learned from the ongoing career of famed forecaster Nate Silver. I will draw just one for you today, one I read in Lawrence Bernstein’s newsletter a few days ago:

“Rule #1 of Financial Copywriting 101: It’s better to be wrong than wishy-washy.”

This applies to any copy, not just financial.

So I’d like to make a confident prediction of my own. We won’t be hearing from Nate Silver again, at least not in front page stories for big publications like the New York Post, and not around major future contests like the 2028 presidential election.

Because Silver seems to have lost his nerve, possibly after the last Trump election he had to call. While people dearly want him to make confident predictions, he’s hedging his bets now. From the NY Post article (emphasis mine):

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver called the race for the White House a “PURE TOSS-UP” Sunday as he gave ex-President Donald Trump a SLIGHT EDGE over Vice President Kamala Harris in his latest forecast.”

Who’s got any use for wishy-washy forecasts like “pure toss-up?” My prediction is that the media will find a new Zoltar, one who is willing to confidently say what will happen and cheerfully be wrong.

Another prediction:

Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training will happen this Wednesday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

Tom will talk about how to think less pedantically, how to be okay without clinging to the latest mental-model-of-the-month, and how to do better in life as a result — emotionally and maybe even practically.

Tom’s training is free for you because you are a subscriber of my newsletter.

If you’d like to sign up for it before the polls close:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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

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

But what did the quote say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyways, these are things I like to think about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The End of Marketing and the Last Mail

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If you want to get influence and become famous in the near future, I have a strategy you can start using today.

Let me set it up by telling you about Francis Fukuyama. He was the 90s version of Jordan Peterson. A sober academic… who somehow exploded into the high heavens and became an international celebrity.

But unlike Peterson, Fukuyama did it without the help of YouTube. Instead, he did it with a book called The End of History and The Last Man.

In that book, Fukuyama prophesied that there be some standing here (meaning 1992, when the book was published)… who will not taste death before they see liberal democracy ruling the world.

That seems a bit naive today. We got empires like China and Russia on the ascendant… we got huge corporations, controlling more power than most elected bodies… we got the Taliban flag, hoisted over Kabul once again.

But whatever. That’s how it goes with predictions. Most predictions, even by experts or otherwise smart people, end up ridiculously off the mark. In fact, a reliable way to get a laugh is to bring up stupid past predictions:

“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” — Charlie Chaplin, 1916

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

“Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.'” — David Pogue, The New York Times, 2006

No matter. Francis Fukuyama became a star by making a bold prediction. And so can you.

Because like kicking the cat, predictions give us a feeling of control in an out-of-control world. And as the singularity nears… and as the fog over the horizon continues to get thicker, limiting our field of view with each passing month… we as a society feel more and more need for dramatic, outlandish, and yet believable predictions.

That’s why I keep making my ongoing prediction about the end of marketing. Or at least the end of classic-style DR marketing, with its flashing neon signs and blaring warning sirens.

My personal bet for the future is on influence instead of persuasion… insight instead of desire… and breakthroughs in print instead of salesmanship in print.

So make a prediction. Even if it ends up being proven wrong. That’s my free idea for you to start building influence today.

I have more such ideas inside Influential Emails, the training I’m offering right now. In fact, I got got to thinking about this prediction stuff because of my “12+4 Most Influential Emails.” This is one of the free bonuses inside my current offer.

This free bonus contains 12+4 emails, including one which influenced me more than any other email I’ve ever gotten from a marketer. The email was all about a prediction. And the crazy thing is, the prediction didn’t even come from the marketer who wrote the email.

Instead, it came from somebody else… writing in another format, years earlier.

That’s the power of influence, and of influential writing.

The initial idea stuck around… lived on in somebody else’s head… made its way into my head… and I will now be passing it on to people who join my Influential Emails program.

Perhaps that will be you. Or perhaps not. But if you’d like more info to help you make that decision, I predict you’ll soon find it here:

https://influentialemails.com/

The awesome selling power of a good almanac

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Here’s a thrilling and true historical anecdote:

When Christopher Columbus made his fourth and final voyage to the New World, his boats were eaten away by an attack of boat-eating shipworms. Columbus had to make an emergency landing, and he did, in what is today Jamaica.

The locals initially welcomed Columbus and his men, and supplied them with food for a while. But how long would this go on? After many months of warm hospitality, the locals said enough’s enough, get your own fish.

Columbus and his men grew hungry and desperate. Fortunately, Columbus had his almanac. Specifically, he had the Regiomontanus almanac, which had all kinds of useful info about the stars and planets.

By studying this almanac, Columbus spotted an upcoming lunar eclipse. Maybe he could use to his advantage.

“Our Christian god is very angry with you,” Columbus said to the local chief. “He’s angry you’re keeping us hungry. Where’s the fish? If the fish doesn’t start flowing again soon, our god will punish you heavily. To show his might and his ill will, he will make the moon appear inflamed with wrath, three days hence.”

Three days passed. The moon rose. And sure enough, just as Columbus had threatened, it soon turned to an eerie blood-red color.

The locals realized the Christian god wasn’t fooling. They hurried to Columbus with new supplies of fish, and begged him to intercede on their behalf.

Columbus checked his almanac again, and said he would mull over the locals’ request. And he mulled, for about 48 minutes. That’s how long his almanac said the eclipse would last.

“I’ve spoken to my god,” Columbus finally said, right before the moon turned white again. “He has decided to withdraw his punishment from you. But don’t make him angry again.”

You can bet the locals listened. They kept Columbus and his men full of fish until six months later, when relief came, in the form of a Spanish ship from Hispaniola.

So that’s my message for you for today. Make a big prediction, and if you guess right, you get a lot of influence.

Perhaps you find that a little underwhelming. So let me sketch out just how scary powerful this can really be:

First of all, prediction is a very loose word. You don’t have to predict the outcome of the next election of where the Dow will be in two months time. Prediction can include very manageable things, like we talked about yesterday and the day before.

For example, find out what symptoms your prospect has, but hasn’t articulated yet. Call that out, and give it a name.

Or:

T​ell your prospect something new about himself that also sounds true and unique. It doesn’t matter if it’s not so true, or if it can apply to every other living creature in the world. All you have to do is make it sound true and unique.

Second, you can focus that influence and awe on an object, a process, or God forbid, a product.

Example: Bertram Forer’s case from yesterday. Students rated Forer’s personality questionnaire as highly valuable. Even though it had nothing to do with the actual personality sketches they were given.

And while Columbus wasn’t in the direct response business, can you imagine? I mean, imagine if Columbus had held up his almanac — “available for $49.99, call now” — and said it was the path to communicating with his powerful god?

When you put those two things together… well, perhaps you see where I’m going. In any case, I won’t spell it out further, because I feel like I’m on thin ice here in terms of ethics. But use this responsibly, and nobody gets hurt.

Finally, here’s a prediction:

You pride yourself on being an independent thinker. That’s why you don’t accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.

Was I right? If yes, and you want to know the system I used to figure that out about you, then sign up for my email newsletter. It’s where all my secrets are revealed.