Inner Ring

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

You are a copywriting god… in the making

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Today is June 21, which means that in 10 days, the second issue of my Most Valuable Postcard is going out.

I am preparing to write it by watching a popular Ted talk about classical music… researching the motivations of men who like to go to strip clubs… and revisiting an old Jeff Walker presentation I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Today, I want to share with you a fascinating moment from that presentation. A bit of background:

Some time in the late 2000s, Jeff Walker was offering a business opportunity called Product Launch Manager. The basic idea was:

No list, no product, big money.

HOW???

By managing big companies’ launches using Jeff’s Product Launch Formula.

This was ideal for the most rabid of Jeff’s customers, the people who bought all his products, maybe even consumed those products, but never did anything beyond that.

Now comes the fascinating moment. ​​

At the end of this five-day event, speaking from the stage to a small segment of this group of hyper-responders, who had each agreed to pay $25k to attend, Jeff raised his hands up in the air, lowered his head to his chest, and said in a soft yet penetrating voice:

“You are marketing gods. If you can speak Internet marketing, you are in a separate class from the rest of the people walking the face of the earth.”

Jeff says this set the room on fire.

People jumped up from their chairs. Others started rolling around in the aisles. Still others were tweeting to let the whole world know. “Jeff says we are marketing gods!”

The implied message was that, by paying a lot of money, by attending an event and hearing a bunch of stuff, and finally by getting Jeff’s benediction, these folks had achieved true success.

And who knows, maybe some of them did go on to achieve true success.

After all, Jeff’s program was a step-by-step roadmap for what to do to manage big launches for big clients.

Put one foot in front of the other, while looking at the map, and you will get to your destination, sooner or later.

Still, the thing that struck me was simply the audacity of the claim — marketing gods! — and how much it resonated with people.

I feel it’s something to keep in mind when you are crafting your own promises… and the promises behind those promises.

Anyways, today, being June 21, is also the last day that I will email inviting you to register for my Most Valuable Email presentation, which happens tomorrow at 7pm CET.

At the end of that presentation, I would like to raise my hands, lower my head, and say in a soft and yet penetrating voice:

“You are now copywriting gods… go ye forth and use your new daily email knowledge to line your pockets with many shekels.”

And sure, I will give you a step-by-step roadmap. I will tell you how I write the one kind of email that has been most valuable to me in the history of this newsletter.

This one kind of email has allowed me:

1. To get in the heads of my readers, including some of the most successful and sophisticated direct marketers and copywriters out there…

2. To pump up my own authority, even when I don’t brag about all the successful and sophisticated marketers and copywriters who read my stuff every day…

3. And maybe most importantly, to drastically improve as a copywriter and marketer.

So there is that promise in the air, “… and you can do it too!”

Well, about that:

Attending tomorrow’s presentation, learning all the stuff I will share, and even having my benediction at the end will still only make you something like a copywriting god… in the making.

In other words, it won’t do you a damn bit of good unless you do the moderately hard work of putting one foot in front of the other, and not just once, but many times over.

So the close to this email is not as fire-generating as Jeff’s talk from the stage.

But it is a fact of life, and it might lead you to success sooner, rather than later or never.

Whatever the case may be:

If you would like to get the info inside my Most Valuable Email presentation, you will have to sign up to my newsletter before 7pm CET tomorrow. And once you get my confirmation email, you will have to hit reply, and let me know you’d like to attend, at the last minute, this fearsome email revival meeting.

The Rule of One applied to online communities

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A few days ago, copywriter Stefan Georgi sent out email with subject line,

“Hang out with me in Scottsdale on Jan 29th?”

Stefan was promoting an entrepreneurs’ event in Scottsdale, AZ. So what’s the primary benefit to anyone on Stefan’s list in attending this event?

Well, it’s right there in the subject line. Getting to hang out with Stefan.

This made me think of series of ideas I got exposed to a few months ago. They came from a certain Stew Fortier.

I don’t know Stew, but online, he bills himself as a “former technologist, current writer.”

Anyways, Stew wrote a bunch of interesting and valuable tweets — a horrible format in my opinion — about online communities and why they die or thrive. The answer:

“A purpose is the primary value that members get by participating in the community.”

Stew gives the example of a community of designers. Designers might want many different things. But a purpose is one specific thing, such as:

* Mentor each other
* Help each other find work
* Invent new typography together
* Give feedback on each other’s work
* Lobby Congress to replace the English alphabet with Wingdings

Stew then gives the hypothetical of somebody in this community of designers proposing a book club:

“If the community exists to help designers get higher-paid work, you’ll know to pick books about design careers. Your core utility isn’t diluted, it’s amplified.”

You might recognize this as the Rule of One from the Mark Ford and John Forde’s book Great Leads. And if you ever decide to create an online community, then as Mark and John write,

“Put the Rule of One to work for you in all your communications, especially in your promotions and their leads. You’ll be amazed at how much stronger — and successful — your copy will be.”

And by the way, as Stefan’s email and most online copywriting communities show, gazing at the guru is a completely valid purpose.

Because purpose in an online community is much like value in email copy. Hard core, practical stuff is ok on occasion and for a while. But more illogical, entertaining, emotional stuff is both more powerful and evergreen.

And now:

Would you like to join the community of readers who gaze at my entertaining and fluffy marketing emails every day? Our purpose is simple — to expose you to the most subtle and powerful persuasion ideas out there. If that’s a community you’d like to join, then click here and fill out the application form.

How to make an Inner Ring morra alive

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This morning I drove about 20 miles to a little coast town where I used to spend my childhood summers. Excepting one quick driveby six years ago, it was my first time back since I was 11.

The place was unrecognizable. Built up, and polished, and deforested. It almost made me physically sick to walk around, the modern reality at such odds with what I remember.

But one thing was still comfortingly the same.

At a sunny seaside bar, on a Saturday morning at around 11am, there was a group of old men.

They were throwing down hand signals on the table and yelling at each other. Numbers, corrupted from Italian:

Šije!

Šete!

Šije!

Šije!

It’s an old game. In Italian, it’s called morra. In Croatian, šije-šete (bastardized Italian for six-seven).

The game is basically like rock-paper-scissors, but with numbers instead of rocks, and five options instead of just three.

I read a bit about the history of morra. It was apparently played even in Roman times. For the past century, it has been banned in much of Italy because it’s considered gambling and, more important, because it seems to lead to drunken knife fights.

And yet, the game lives on. A short while ago, a video went viral on YouTube, showing 9-year-old kids playing morra with full fury. It’s just what men in these parts do. And these boys, at 9 years old, know it, and they are getting ready.

I’ve written before about the Inner Ring.

It’s a powerful motivator. A big part of what it means to be human.

We want to belong to a community, or to a dozen overlapping communities.

In the ancient, precorona world, these things happened spontaneously — work cliques, friend groups, drinking buddies.

Today, the need for the Inner Ring is serviced online in the form of masterminds, lairs, and various kinds of membership programs.

But here’s the thing:

A lot of these online communities suck. One reason is that they are missing rituals.

Rituals are enjoyable for their own sake.

But rituals also keep the structure of the Inner Ring.

Everybody performs the ritual because everybody else performs it, and nobody wants to fall out of the Inner Ring by being a drag.

Men around here play šije-šete because it’s fun and it’s competitive and because they can get a free drink out of it. But also, because a giant and frightening void starts to open up if they don’t play when their buddies do.

So that’s what I’m suggesting to you too.

Maybe you have an online community you run already. Or maybe, like me, you’re just thinking about creating one.

​​In either case, think about rituals you can introduce to give your community some structure and coherence. Even if they lead to drunken knife fights on occasion. It’s a small price to pay for unity and the wonder of the Inner Ring.

Want inside my own Inner Ring? Oh no, it’s not so easy. But the first step is to join my email newsletter. You can do that here.

The opportunity of the Inner Ring

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“For all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table, they think them more blessed, and more in worship, than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship.”

That’s from a collection of stories about King Arthur, written down in the 15th century. Lots of things have changed since the 15th century, but a few things stay the same.

Such as, for example, the need to belong. And, in particular, to be on the inside of what C.S. Lewis called the “Inner Ring.”

It’s a very strong drive. It’s so strong it can even overcome self-interest, like in the quote above. Other times, the drive to the Inner Ring might disguise itself as self-interest. In Lewis’s words:

“I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.”

C.S. Lewis believed in a universal morality, and warned against lust for the Inner Ring. I do not believe in a universal morality, and have no issue with lust, for the Inner Ring or otherwise. That’s why I’ll leave you with the following:

The need to belong to an Inner Ring is not met for many people. That was true in the 15th century, and it is true today. It’s almost true by definition, because an Inner Ring is formed by excluding people.

So a lot of people have this yawning, unmet need… and they have few options for sating themselves. Do you know what this is usually called?

You guessed it. An opportunity.

Anyways, I’ve got my own Inner Ring. It’s a small group of people I write an email to each day with thoughts like what you’ve just read. I occasionally open up spots to a few new people to join… but not right now.

You’re funny and smart, and I’ll tell you why

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Here’s a personal story I think you will appreciate (I’ll explain why in a second):

Today I walked up the hill to the local tourist attraction. A couple was dragging behind me.

When I got to the entrance, a guard popped out, blocking my way.

“Where are you from?” he asked with a scowl.

I told him — a neighboring country.

“And where are they from?” He nodded towards the couple.

“Russians, I guess.”

“All right,” he said, “hold on a moment.”

The upshot is, the Russians got in first, paying 5 euro each for the privilege. I had to wait a minute while the guard talked to me about the political and economic crisis in his country. And then he let me in for free.

I was chuffed by this experience. I kept replaying it as I climbed up to the fortress at top of the hill… and then all the way back down.

“I got in for free,” I chuckled to myself, “while the Russians had to pay!”

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

It’s not just that I managed to save 5 euro. That part is nice, but the fact is, I can afford 5 euro. Instead, I was pleased because I was somehow chosen, selected, and approved.

Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins do this in their programs.

“You are very special,” they effectively say. “How do I know? Because you bought this course… which tells me you care more about success than most of your peers. Because you listened this far… which shows you’ve got the determination to improve and succeed.”

You can use this same approach in your sales copy as well. And I’m not just talking about the lazy argument you’ll often hear at the end of a VSL. (“You’ve watched this far, so you must want this product… so click the Buy Now button.”)

No, I’m talking about everything you can conclude about your prospect. Bring these things up, and use them to explicitly compliment or flatter. Make your prospect feel special, as though these reasons are what make him or her perfect for your offer.

For example, what do I know about you?

I know you’re not satisfied with surface-level ideas, and you want something deeper. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done the research needed to dig up my blog.

I also know you’re a reader. This gives you a big advantage in today’s world, where most everyone needs information served up in fluffy, less dense formats.

Finally, I imagine you resonate with the stories and examples I use to illustrate these marketing lessons. This tells me you’ve got a great sense of humor and a refined taste.

And for all of these reasons, I think maybe you will like to subscribe to my email newsletter. It’s where I talk about marketing and persuasion, and sometimes even give demonstrations of the techniques I talk about. In case you are interested, here’s where to go.