Identity

How to fix bad habits

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Yesterday, I was ellipting on the elliptical and to make the process less maddening, I listened to a podcast, which turned out to be surprisingly valuable.

It was a health podcast. The guest was a psychotherapist, a certain Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD.

That name was familiar to me.

Turns out it was the same Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD, who was also a successful direct marketer a while back.

​​I checked for his name in my inbox just now. He has at different times partnered with or been named-dropped by direct marketing rhinos and mammoths like Terry Dean, Ryan Levesque, Ken McCarthy, and Perry Marshall.

But back to the podcast. Like I said, it was a health podcast, about how to quit overeating.

Turns out Dr. Glenn is an expert on the matter.

Not only has he battled overeating his whole life, but he has written a bunch of books on the topic. The best selling one, Never Binge Again, has 19,224 reviews on Amazon.

Perhaps you’re wondering whether this email will ever get to a point. The point is this:

For years, Dr. Glenn used his psychotherapeutic training to try to quit overeating.

Never worked.

After years of therapy, introspection, and digging into his family history, Dr. Glenn finally unearthed the surprising root cause of why he was overeating his whole life (mommy issues).

And it still didn’t fix a damn thing. If anything, it made his overeating worse, because he now had a legit excuse, where he didn’t have one before.

And yet, Dr. Glenn did manage to get his eating under control.

​​I’ll tell you how:

He isolated, named, and in fact shamed the part of his mind that was craving and reaching for chocolate, for chocolate was his weakness.

Dr. Glenn told himself, “That is my Inner Pig talking. The Inner Pig wants its slop. But I am not one to be ruled by farm animals.”

The effect wasn’t immediate — few things outside direct marketing promises are. But the effect was there, and after a bit of time, this inner-piggization cured Dr. Glenn Livingston, PhD, of his overeating habit, making him a healthier, happier, better person.

The bigger point, as Dr. Glenn says on the podcast, is that identity is stronger than will power.

You can use this truth if you’re trying to influence and persuade others.

Or you can use it to fix your own bad habits.

I’ve just told you the main highlight of this surprisingly valuable podcast with Dr. Glenn Livingston. But there are more good things inside that podcast. And there’s more development of that core idea, that identity is stronger than will power, in a way that might help it actually sink into your head.

If you want to influence and persuade others better… or if you want to improve your own life and control your mind better, this podcast is worth a listen. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/bad-habits

One word, out of 495, that drew a bunch of replies

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Last week I sent out an email, “Write 10 books instead of 1,” that got a good number of replies. The curious thing was the replies split neatly into two camps.

One camp was people who liked the core message in the email and felt inspired to start or finish their own book or books.

But the other camp, in fact the majority of people who replied to that email, had nothing to say about the core message.

Instead, this second group replied because of a single word of that email. A single word that was hidden, between two commas, in position 408 in an email of 495 words.

Would you like to know what that word was?

​​Good, then I’ll tell ya.

That word was inshallah.

Inshallah, as you might know, is a saying used in Muslim societies. It means “God willing.” It expresses both hope for a future event and resignation that the future is not in our control.

But why??? Why would I use this word in the tail end of my email?

Is it because I myself am Muslim?

Is it some kind of incredibly clever personalization based on the reader’s IP address?

Was it a joke or irony?

Readers wanted to know. And from my religious profiling based on these readers’ names, almost all the people who wrote me to ask about inshallah were either Muslim or came from Muslim societies.

I’ll leave the mystery of why I used inshallah hanging in the air. Instead, let me tell you a story that this reminded me of, from legendary marketer Dan Kennedy.

Dan used to travel the country on the Peter Lowe Success Tour, a modern-day speaking circus that featured former U.S. presidents and Superbowl quarterbacks as speakers.

Dan would go up on stage at the end of the night and deliver a rapid-fire comedy routine/sales pitch to sell his Magnetic Marketing program.

I highly recommend tracking down Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing speech and listening to it. ​​I’ve listened to it multiple times myself.

But one thing I never noticed, in spite of the multiple times listening, is that Dan somewhere mentions that he used to stutter as a kid.

Again, this speech is rapid-fire. It lasts maybe 50 minutes. It contains thousands of words. And among those words, there are a few — maybe a dozen, maybe a half dozen — that refer to the fact that Dan Kennedy stuttered as a kid.

It’s very easy to miss. Like I said, I’ve listened to this speech multiple times and I’ve never caught it.

But there’s a group of people who don’t miss it.

And that’s people who themselves stutter or who have kids who stutter.

Dan said somewhere, in one of his seminars, how he’d regularly finish his speech and try to get out of the room, only to be faced with an audience member, holding a brand new $197 copy of Magnetic Marketing in their hands, and ready to talk about stuttering and how Dan overcame his stutter and how he now performs on stages in front of tens of thousands of people.

That’s something to keep in mind, if you’re missing a word to put into the 408th position in your sales message… or if, like me, you suffered from epileptic seizures as a kid.

All right, moving on.

I got nothing to sell you today. But I do have something to recommend.

Well, I recommended something already, and that’s Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing speech. Dan has said that this speech is the best sales letter he’s ever written.

It’s worth listening to if you want to learn how to write an interesting, indirect, and yet effective sales message.

On the other hand, if you want to learn how to do marketing that gets you really rich — who to target, how to reach them, what offers to create — then I can recommend a book I’m reading right now. It’s also by Dan Kennedy. It’s more relevant now than ever before. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/reallyrich

I thought “fake news” was stupid but this is not

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A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about Ozempic, the diabetes drug that celebs are using to lose weight quick and easy. The article appeared in the New Yorker, which is not ashamed of its left-leaning proclivities.

One of the points in the article is that the main harm from obesity is negative perception both by doctors and obese people. In other words, it’s not the fat that’s the real problem.

​​To make its point, the article used the following statistics sleight-of-hand, which put a smile on my face:

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A recent study examined subjects’ B.M.I.s in relation to their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance. Nearly a third of people with a “normal” B.M.I. had unhealthy metabolic metrics, and nearly half of those who were technically overweight were metabolically healthy. About a quarter of those who were classified as obese were healthy, too.

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A few years ago, there was a lot of fuss over fake news. I always thought that fuss was stupid. Predictably, it has passed now.

I’m not advising anyone to write fake news or to make up stuff.

But you can and in fact you must spin. You must twist facts and figures, cherry pick quotes and stories, and direct and misdirect your readers’ attention at every step.

Not only to make your point, like in that “metabolically unhealthy” quote above.

But also to give people what they want. I mean, I read the New Yorker because I find the articles interesting and horizon-expanding. But I also read it because I enjoy agreeing with the writers’ points of view, and I enjoy even more disagreeing with their point of view.

I hope I’ve managed to get you to disagree with at least some of the points I’ve made in this email.

But if I’ve just managed to make you agree, I’ll have to settle for that today. Tomorrow, I’ll work to do better.

That’s the beauty of writing a daily email. You have a chance to constantly get better at influencing your audience, and to make your case anew, and to get people to agree or disagree with you. If you want to keep agreeing or disagreeing with me, starting tomorrow, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter here.

I bet you already knew what I’ll write about in this email

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Last night I went to see Air, the new Ben Affleck movie about how Nike signed Michael Jordan.

Air is a typical rousing Hollywood stuff — a scrappy underdog does what it takes to win. It was fun to watch, but as the movie neared its emotional climax, I started to feel a kind of gnawing in my stomach.

I kept thinking, “This is it? This is what life is all about?”

A bunch of overworked, overweight, aging people in an office, hollering and high-fiving each other and gazing knowingly into each others’ eyes after their one triumph — getting a 21-year-old basketball player to agree to wear one kind of shoe instead of another kind of shoe?

But the movie is set in the 1980s. Maybe it reflects the corporate ideals of that era.

Anyways, let’s get back on track:

At the start of the movie, a convenience store clerk chats with the main character, played by Matt Damon. The clerk obviously knows a lot about basketball, and is sure Jordan won’t turn into anything big. The Matt Damon character is the only one who believes.

By the end of the movie, thanks to Matt Damon’s dogged believing, Nike signs Jordan in spite of impossible odds. Jordan immediately becomes a huge star. Nike goes on to sell a hundred million pairs of Air Jordans in the first year alone.

Matt Damon goes back to the convenience store and chats up the clerk again. The clerk nods his head. “I always knew Jordan would be a big thing,” he says.

“We all knew,” the Matt Damon character chuckles as he walks out the store.

As I’m sure you already knew, human memory is fallible. We forget, misremember, and flat-out make up stuff if it suits us and matches our sense of self.

You might think this only happens over the span of months or years, like it did with that convenience store clerk in Air.

But maybe you saw — and failed to remember — a new scientific study that went viral earlier this month. Scientists managed to show that people misremember stuff that happened as recently as half a second ago. And if the scientists stretched it out just a bit longer before asking — two seconds, three seconds — people’s memory became still worse and more inaccurate.

So my point for you, specifically for how you deal with yourself, is to write stuff down. Because you sure as hell won’t remember it.

And my point for you, specifically for how you deal with your prospects, is to keep reminding them, nudging them, and telling them the same thing you told them a million times before.

You rarely have people’s full attention. And even when you do have their full attention, they forget. Even if you just told them a second ago.

The only way your prospects are sure not to forget, and to maybe do what you want, is if you remind them today, tomorrow, the day after, and so on, hundreds of millions of Air Jordans into the future.

Which brings me to the group coaching I am planning. I first wrote about it yesterday. Now that I mention it, I’m sure you remember.

This planned group coaching is about email copywriting for daily emails — so you can remind your prospects of your offer over and over, in a way that they actually enjoy.

If you’re interested in this coaching, the first step is to get onto my email list. Click here to do that.

My diagnosis is that you’re trying to normalize rather than pathologize

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I first wrote about Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in this newsletter in August 2021. Clance and Imes are the two psychologists who, back in 1978, wrote a paper in which they defined something called imposter phenomenon.

The interesting thing is they called it imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome. From a recent article in The New Yorker:

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Every time Imes hears the phrase “impostor syndrome,” she told me, it lodges in her gut. It’s technically incorrect, and conceptually misleading. As Clance explained, the phenomenon is “an experience rather than a pathology,” and their aim was always to normalize this experience rather than to pathologize it.

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It might seem like a trivial difference, phenomenon rather than syndrome. It’s not trivial. Like Clance says in that quote, their goal was just to point out, normalize, say, “it’s okay that you feel like a faker, because others do too.”

But that’s not what the public wanted.

The public wanted a concrete disease, a disorder, or at least a syndrome — something unique and special they can point to and explain why they feel uncertain or uncomfortable or why their life is not how they imagine it. The pathological imposter syndrome does that, the wishy-washy, normal, everyday imposter phenomenon does not.

So the public took Clance and Imes’s idea, and they made it their own. Imposter syndrome.

But my real point for you is not the word choice of phenomenon vs syndrome. Sure, it is important, but it’s also the only part that Clance and Imes didn’t get right in their original paper, at least from a persuasion perspective.

My point for you is that difference between concrete vs. wishy washy, unique vs. everyday, pathological vs. normal, all of which Clance and Imes, whether they wanted to or not, definitely did get right in their paper.

People are looking for answers. They want to know to why their life is the way it is, and now the way they want it to be.

If, like Clance and Imes, you give people a satisfying answer to that eternal question, it can literally make you a star in your field, and can have your ideas spread on their own, like fire among dry brush that hasn’t seen water for years.

Maybe this entire email speaks little or not at all to you.

In that case, my diagnosis is that you’re being too nice, and you’re trying to normalize your prospects’ experiences, to give them small incremental improvements and understandings, rather than a total change in perspective in how they view their world.

My prognosis in that case is that you will struggle to be heard, and struggle to make sales. It could even be fatal to your business.

If you want a fix for that unfortunate and dangerous condition, then there’s a pill you can take. I even named it for you above.

But enough of playing doctor.

Back in my own house, the fact remains that I’m still in the process of spring cleaning. I’m throwing out old furniture and old courses, dusting off wardrobes and sales letters, and planning out how to redecorate my living room and my newsletter.

While that’s going on, I will just point you to my only book that’s currently available for sale, and also the only offer I have that doesn’t cost $100 or more. If you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Some facts for you to judge me by

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Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:

I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.

My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. ​​I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.

Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:

Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.

And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.

​​The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.

And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:

I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.

I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:

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I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.

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Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.

So you got two options:

Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.

On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.

Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.

You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.

Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.

Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.

It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.

Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.

This offer is improper — unless you’re a grown-up

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I checked the fridge this morning and I found I was fresh out of emails ideas. So I ran down to the corner shop and grabbed the latest glossy issue of “On Today’s Date.” I brought it back home, jumped on the couch, and greedily opened it to the first page. That’s how I discovered that the most significant historical event ever to happen on March 9th was:

The first appearance of the Barbie doll. It happened on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair, in New York City.

I put my head in my hands. “Who cares about Barbie dolls?” I said. “I need email ideas!”

But after a few moments of quiet despair, I happened to glance back at that Barbie article.

And in that brief moment, in the very first paragraph, I spotted something new to me — why we’re still talking about Barbie dolls today, and why you and I and probably all the other 8 billion people on the planet have heard of Barbie.

Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, created Barbie after watching her own daughter. Handler’s little girl kept ignoring her closetful of baby dolls. Instead, she played make-believe with paper dolls of adult women.

Handler put 2 and 3 together, and realized there was an open niche here, a unique position to be filled:

A toy doll with adult features, adult outfits, and enormous adult breasts.

Barbie was an instant hit. Mattel sold around 350,000 Barbies in the very first year of production. They sold almost $1.5 billion worth of Barbie plastic last year.

So what’s my point?

Simple. People want to be grown up, or at least play make-believe at it. If ya don’t believe me, here’s a second example:

Tobacco company Lorillard once put out a covert ad campaign targeted at kids. The ad was supposedly designed to keep kids from smoking. But the devious message in that Lorillard campaign was:

“Tobacco is whacko — if you’re a teen.”

A later statistical study found that each exposure to this ad increased the intention of middleschoolers to try cigarettes by 3%. In other words, if your kid sees this ad 30 times, his or her odds of trying a cigarette double.

You might say this only applies to kids and middle schoolers, but I don’t think so. I think it applies to all of us, just in more subtle ways.

​​In any case, enough history.

Instead, I have an offer for you, which is entirely improper — unless you’re a grown-up copywriter or marketer.

​​The offer is my Most Valuable Email course. That course will only work for you if you already have an email list, or are willing to create one, and write to it regularly. Like I said, grown-ups.

But on second thought, maybe it’s better if you don’t get Most Valuable Email even if you’re a grown up. As one marketer, Kyle Weston, wrote me after going through this course:

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I love how the course is short and to the point, yet still packs in all the powerful info we need. And then the tools you give us at the end are brilliant. The MVE Swipes pdf alone is worth way more than a measly $100. Anyone involved in marketing or copywriting at any level will want to check this out. Then again, maybe its better for me if less people know about this tactic — makes it easier for me to beat out the competition muhuhahaha!

===

If that doesn’t deter you, you can get Most Valuable Email here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Bat-John: The Killing Joke

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

Another slow night.

​​No Scarecrows or Penguins running amuck anywhere.

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

“Subscribe For ‘LIFE’ please”

“You had me in stitches with this part”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The fallout of my “rape” subject line

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3 days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Don’t rape your audience.”

That hook came from a quote from screenwriter William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), who compared gradually seducing your audience (movie screenplays) to raping them (TV writing).

Like I said at the start of that email, rape is a shocking metaphor. In today’s society, it’s borderline impermissible.

So sure enough, when I checked my unsubscribe count for this email, it showed I disappointed, offended, or perhaps triggered a lot of people. ​​My unsubscribes proved it. I had 7 unsubscribes total, which might not sound like a lot, but is 5.8x my norm for the past 90 days.

I did the hard work of checking who all those unsubscribes were.

Some were new — they signed up only a few weeks ago for my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

Others had been on my list for a while.

Either way, none of them had ever bought anything from me… replied to any of my emails… played along with any of the engagement bait I regularly put out… or even opened and read my emails very often.

So there’s that, the hard and toxic fallout.

On the other hand, I also had a dozen thoughtful replies to my email, both about the subject line and the idea in the body. Almost all these replies came from successful marketers and copywriters. For example, copywriter Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency, wrote in to say:

Yo.

Yesterday I was on a zoom call with the team.

It was about our marketing emails.

I shared my screen and opened my email app to talk about a thing.

Instead of talking about our email stuff, we spent the next 10 minutes admiring your subject line.

It’s tier-1.

At first, I had a thought like:
“In a non-DR market this would get super-high Opens, but just as many Spam complaints.”

Addendum to original thought after opening:
“…Only if the body doesn’t deliver.”

3rd addendum after reading body:
“And… It delivered.”

Kick ass! And super inspiring to see. Really got me thinking: “my subject lines suck!”

Robert pretty much spelled out everything I wanted to say about this crisis.

Shocking subject lines, and shocking topics in general, will polarize your audience.

But if you can somehow back up your shocking stuff in a congruent way, you will only scrub away the barnacles clinging to the gleaming white hull of your magnificent ship.

At the same time, you will engage and bond more deeply with successful, thoughtful people, the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with, whether as customers, clients, or just readers.

You might say I am not telling you anything new here.

And you’re right. Ben Settle and Dan Kennedy before him have both been preaching this kind of repulsion marketing for years.

But fundamentals like this work. And so they are worth repeating from time to time. Until maybe the right time, when it all clicks for you and you decide to try it out for yourself.

Anyways, if you have a business, and you’re worried your subject lines suck, then you might want to hire me to help with that.

Because as of now, I’m offering consulting. And one of the things I’m highly qualified to consult on is email marketing and copywriting. And not just the shocking and repelling kind. And not just to my own email list.

If case you are interested, fill out the form below, and I’ll be in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

You are not an introvert

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In my last-ever real job, some 10 years ago, I was a manager at a 100-person IT company.

Well, not really a manager. I was a scrum master, which might sound either like some kind of S&M role or a made-up demon name from Ghostbusters.

So each each week, I the scrum master and our teams “product owner” (another Ghostbusters-themed managerial role) had to meet with the owner of the company to give him an update on how we were progressing.

We had been working for over a year, building a large piece of software that was one day supposed to be sold to big pharma companies like Glaxo Smith Kline.

But it wasn’t ready yet. Or anywhere close to ready. Our team wasn’t making any money. We were just a giant drain on company resources.

So when we sat down with the owner of the company, he gave us a weary look.

“Tell me guys,” he said a little bitterly, “how many sales have you made this week?”

I put on my straight face. And I shrugged my shoulders as if to suggest it’s all relative. “Do you mean the week starting this Monday,” I said, “or starting Sunday?”

The owner of the company locked his eyes on me. He squinted for a second.

​​And then he brightened and started to laugh, the joke being that we had never made any sales and it was doubtful we ever would. “All right all right,” he said with a smile, “at least tell me how the development is going.”

Now I don’t have a life history of joshing and ribbing and joking with people who have authority over me.

But I did it in this case, and it worked out well.

The reason I did it — the reason the joke came naturally, at the right moment, on its own — was that the previous few days, I had started walking around town, approaching girls on the street, complimenting them, and even asking them out.

On the one hand, approaching unfamiliar girls in the middle of the street, often in the middle of a crowd, and starting a conversation — well, it was immensely hard.

But it was also very liberating. Literally. There were parts of my brain that I didn’t even know were there that suddenly became active and alive.

And that’s how I found myself spontaneously teasing my boss, and instantly turning him from a bitter to a good mood.

My point being that over the past few years or the past decade, there’s been a lot of celebrating of introverts, and a lot of proud ownership of being an introvert.

​​Some people even take a holier-than-thou attitude to it, and claim that they alone are the real introverts, while others are just poser-introverts.

Whatever. I’d like to suggest to you that if you think you are an introvert — even a real, natural introvert, the way I thought of myself for years, and which I had very hard evidence for — it’s only one configuration of the person you can be.

Clinging to the idea you are an introvert is little like saying you are a sitting person. Because whenever you see an empty chair, you are tempted to sit in it, and when you do sit, you find it comforting. And then, concluding from that, “Oh no, I’m not a walking type. I just can’t. It drains me. I’m a sitting person.”

And my bigger belief, if you care to know it is this:

You are lots of things. You have different abilities and resources, including those you are not aware of, until you put ourselves into a situation to make use of them.

​​Yes, it might be immensely hard at first. But it can also be liberating. Literally.

Ok, on to business:

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