Mental Shortcuts

Competition contradiction

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A paradox? A contradiction?

As part of the research for my new book, I’ve been going through a book by Sam Taggart. Taggart is the founder of D2D Experts, an online education company for door-to-door salesmen.

Taggart has a long but distinguished career selling door-to-door, everything from knives to solar panels to security alarms. His door-to-door selling career started at age 11, and culminated around age 35, when he finished as the #1 salesman in a company of 3,000 reps.

Anyways, grok this, if you can:

On page 44 of his book, Taggart’s top recommendation for motivating yourself is to look at all the other salesmen around you, to start tracking their results, and to start thinking of them as competition you have to beat.

And then on page 64, Taggart says how the best salesmen only view themselves as real competition.

Huh?

It’s easy to dismiss this as just contradiction or fluff inherent in a lot of sales material.

But I don’t think so.

A while back, meaning 3 years ago, I wrote about 6 characteristics of people who manage to do the seemingly impossible.

These 6 characteristics came out of a study of pro athletes who came back from devastating injury to compete at the highest level again… as well as star Wall Street traders who managed to beat not only all other traders, but the randomness inherent in the market as well.

One of the common characteristics of such people was that they simultaneously had a short-term view of the task to be accomplished, as well as a long-term view.

In other words, these folks looked at their situation from both 3 feet away, and from 3,000 feet up in the air. They did so the same time, or at least switching constantly between the two.

And so I think it is with Taggart’s advice — and so it is in many other situations in life.

We all want the “one thing” to cling to.

But quite often, particularly in the most important things in life, you gotta hold two opposing thoughts in your head, and you gotta live by both of them.

Of course you don’t really gotta. You don’t gotta do anything. But if you are currently worried by competition, whether that’s other businesses who target same audience as you, or other solutions or trends that tend to wipe out what you’re doing, or simply people within your own company who try to outperform you, then it might make sense to:

1. Make a list of all these villains, to keep track of their activity, and to start viewing them as competition to be beaten

2. To ignore them and to focus on doing the best you can

Anyways, I’ll have Taggart’s advice — not this, but something less contradictory — in my new book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24. The way things are going, I might have to shave half my head, like Demosthenes, to keep myself from leaving the house until the book is finished.

In any case, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​​

Lies and legends of the left brain

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A couple years ago, I came across a bizarre and eye-opening story told by neuroscientist V.S Ramachandran.

Ramachandran was working with split-brain patients, who have surgically had the connection between their left and brain hemispheres cut to control seizures.

In an experiment, Ramachandran demonstrated that these patients effectively had two different minds inside one skull. One mind would like chocolate ice cream best, the other vanilla. One believed in God, the other didn’t.

This story was my first exposure to strange and wonderful world of split-brain research.

I had always thought all the “left-brained/right-brained” stuff was just bunk. I didn’t realize it’s based on pretty incontrovertible scientific proof, going back to research on these split-brain people.

I recently came across another split-brain story, this one in a book by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga.

Gazzaniga did his PhD at Caltech under a guy named Roger Sperry, who went on to win the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work.

Sperry and Gazzaniga were pioneers in working with split-brain patients. These patients seemed to be perfectly normal. But thanks to a bunch of clever experiments, Sperry and Gazzaniga managed to tease out some strange things happening in these patients, which reveal real mysteries of the mind.

For example, the scientists would simultaneously show two images to the patient in such a way that each image only went to one hemisphere.

The patient was then asked to point, with his two hands, to cards connected to the image he had just seen.

One time, a patient was shown a picture of a snow scene for the right brain… and a chicken claw for the left brain.

He then pointed to images of a shovel and a chicken (with the left hand being controlled by the right brain, and the right hand being controlled by the left brain — we’re cross-wired like that).

So far so good. The different sides of the brain had seen different images, and could identify those images by pointing with the hands they controlled.

But here’s where it gets really tricky and interesting:

Gazzaniga had the intuition to ask the patient to explain why he had selected the two images, the one of a chicken and the other of a shovel.

One last scientific fact:

Verbal stuff happens mainly on the left hemisphere (again, we know this based on these split-brain experiments).

In other words, when verbalizing stuff, this patient didn’t have access to the information about the snow scene his right brain had seen. The part of his brain that could speak had only seen one image, that of a chicken claw.

The fact this patient had no possible idea why he had pointed to an image of a shovel didn’t stop him. He immediately and confidently replied:

“Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

Hm. Do you see what happened?

This split-brain patient, or rather the left mind in his skull, came up with a story, consistent with the facts he knew (the fact was he had pointed to a picture of a shovel).

Of course, in this case, the story was completely fabricated and wrong, and had nothing to do with the actual reason (that the other half of his brain had seen a snow scene and had connected it to the image of a shovel).

To me, this is really fascinating. Because it’s not just about these rare few people who don’t have a connection between the left and right brain hemispheres.

This same thing is happening in all of us, all the time, even right now as you read this. It’s just not so neatly visible and trackable in connected-brain humans as it is in split-brain humans (hence why this research won the Nobel Prize).

This is cool knowledge on its own. But it also practical consequences, and gives you specific technique to practice in case you want to influence others.

This technique is nothing new. But it is immensely powerful. (And no, it’s not “Tell a stawrry.”)

You probably know the technique I have in mind. But if not, you can find it in my upcoming book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​ ​

The maple syrup theory of influence

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Fascinating fact about me:

I studied math in college.

Like I said, fascinating. And it gets even more so, because I was never good at math.

Not in elementary school. Not in high school.

Somehow though, when college came, and I could choose to study what I wanted, and I never again had to take any math classes, I wound up taking math classes, and lots of them.

I think I was trying to prove something to myself. I managed it, too, because it turns out you can get a lot done with just curiosity and internal motivation, even in the absence of talent.

Anyways, one time I was taking a math class about “complex analysis” — about how to work with complex numbers, which have both a real and an “imaginary” component (ie, involving the square root of -1).

Whatever. Don’t worry about the math.

The important thing is simply that complex numbers have their own bizarre rules for how they are multiplied and divided, how you take a derivative, how you do integrals.

I never understood complex numbers, not really. But I diligently worked through the course.

I remember a specific homework problem, and the epiphany that came with it.

I was struggling to apply the rules in the textbook. But with some derring-do and with a few leaps of logic, I managed to finally solve the problem and reach the answer.

The answer was simple and elegant.

I remember a feeling of understanding washing over me. I got it, whatever this particular section was about. It made sense to me now. All the struggle and confusion and work had paid off.

Then, as a proper diligent student, I double-checked my answer in the back of the textbook.

It turned out I was 100% wrong. Not just that I’d made some screwup in the calculation, but that I was completely off track. I had misapplied and misunderstood the rules. My feeling of understanding, which had washed over me and given me such relief, corresponded to nothing in reality.

When I was a kid, like 9 years old, I had a feeling I understood myself and the world perfectly.

It was pretty late in life, in my late teens or maybe my early 20s, when I started to notice cracks in my confident understanding of the world.

Gradually, I started to develop a theory that emotions like certainty, understanding, and insight are like maple syrup.

Maple syrup can be poured over whatever you want — pancakes, French toast, waffles.

Likewise, emotions can be poured over ideas that are true, ideas are not true, or even ideas that are complete waffles, meaning some kind of undefined nonsense, like my understanding of complex analysis rules.

On the one hand, it doesn’t get more unsettling than this. I realized my most basic, certain feelings of rightness are not actually reliable.

On the other hand, it was a powerful realization.

For one thing, it was liberating.

It meant that, even if I’m sure — if it cannot, will not, won’t work, if it’s black and not white, if I am right and not wrong — I don’t really know for a fact. It pays to go get some real-world data — the equivalent of checking the right answer in the back of the textbook.

For another, I’m not the only person whose emotions work like this. I find it’s pretty universal.

And it turns out there are ways to get other people to pour their own emotional syrups — whether of desire, or of insight, or of trust — over pancakes, French toast, waffles, donuts, rice, hot dogs, sponge cake, and pretty much any basic foodstuff you may have to offer them.

You can make hot dogs sweet and sponge cake delicious, even irresistible, if you pour enough maple syrup on them.

And you can make honest, dry, uninspiring information exciting and eye-opening and urgent, much in the same way.

Perhaps you’d like some specific techniques of influence, which you can apply to get your audience to pour out their own emotional maple syrups over your offers?

You can find such techniques, delivered daily to your inbox, inside my Daily Email Habit service.

You even double-check your own answers against my answers, which like today, tend to be based on the day’s Daily Email Habit prompt.

In case you’d like to prove something to yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It can’t go on for long like this

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I once took a class on “health economics,” which is just what it sounds like.

One thing that’s stuck with me from those lectures is how back in the 1980s, the best and brightest political scientists in the West had no clue that the Soviet Union was about to collapse.

The only guy who was confidently predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was some low-profile economist who was looking at the rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths in the USSR.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they were sky-high. A major part of the Soviet working-age population was either chronically drunk, sick from drinking, or dying from drinking.

It couldn’t go on for long like this, that economist predicted. And sure enough, it didn’t.

I thought of this a couple days ago while forcing myself to read an article about the U.S. Army’s recruiting shortfalls.

The U.S. Army’s recruiting woes are not a topic that I am personally interested in, but I’m glad I read the article. Among many other interesting things, it taught me the following:

“According to a Pentagon study, more than three-quarters of Americans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are ineligible, because they are over-weight, unable to pass the aptitude test, afflicted by physical or mental-health issues, or disqualified by such factors as a criminal record.”

I wanted to get a baseline.

A bit of perplexitying told me that during World War II, “nearly half” of men were deemed ineligible to serve in the army… during the Vietnam war, that had risen to “more than half” (though many eligible men were exempted for being in college)… by 2017, the number of ineligible men and women, ages 17 to 24, had reached 71%. In the most recent study, in 2022, that number had gone up to 77%.

In other words, in the span of about 50 years, the share of the “ineligible” has gone up by more than 50%… and the share of U.S. citizens, in the prime of life, who are not significantly compromised by health, mental, or behavioral issues, is now barely 1 in 5.

I don’t know what the future of the U.S. is. But the trend certainly isn’t good. It can’t go on for long like this.

Now that I’ve dug a six-foot-deep hole for myself so far in this email, let’s see if I can clamber out.

One idea I’ve personally found very inspiring over the years comes from Dan Kennedy.

I only know this idea as it was retold by Ben Settle in one of Ben’s emails. In fact, it was this email that got me to sign up to Ben’s paid newsletter.

The idea is the “myth of security.” Because, says Dan, there is no such thing as security. Not really, not if you look close.

There’s no security in the money or investments you already have in the bank… in the job that you have now… in the business that you might own… in the current method you have of getting customers or clients… even in your personal relationships, your community, or even your nation (or your nation’s army).

All of that can disappear, from today to tomorrow, or from this year to next year. It’s happened before, and it can happen again.

The only security you have? According to Dan, it’s only in your ‘ability to produce.’ In a few more of Dan’s words:

“… you had better sustain a very, very serious commitment to maintaining, improving, enhancing and strengthening your own ‘ability to produce’, because, in truth, it is all you’ve got and all you will ever have. Anything and everything else you see around you, you acquire and accumulate, you invest in, you trust in, can disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Another valuable idea I’ve learned, this from “Sovereign Man” Simon Black, is that of a Plan B. A Plan B is a plan that works in case things go bad… and that also works and brings in value even if things stay as they are.

Dan Kennedy’s idea of a very serious commitment to your “ability to produce” falls into this Plan B category.

I don’t know what you can produce.

I’ve personally decided to focus on producing effective communication — on putting together words that can motivate, influence, and guide others, and getting better at doing that, day after day.

I figure if nothing ever changes, and things stay exactly as they are, those will be very valuable skills to have.

On the other hand, if things change drastically tomorrow, those will still be valuable skills to have — and they may prove to be the only things that still have value.

If you’d like my help and guidance in developing your own ability to produce, starting today, so you can be prepared for tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

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One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

… we are the children

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I’ve been waiting all year for this.

Well, specifically, I’ve been waiting since April last year.

That’s when I made a note in my journal that I should write an email about the song We Are The World.

Today is January 28, the day that We Are The World was originally recorded, back in 1986. That makes today a particularly good day to talk about it.

You’ve probably heard We Are The World. Maybe you were even around when it came out.

Basically, We Are The World was a bunch of the biggest U.S. pop stars of the time, singing a simple, heartwarming/sappy, highly repetitive song to raise funds for famine relief.

Each of the pop stars sang just a line or two of the total song — a basic melody, over a background of generic pop instrumentation.

But even if you don’t watch the video, it’s remarkable how quickly you can recognize who’s singing, just by the tone of their voices, within a second or two:

Cindy Lauper — shrill and colorful

Ray Charles — smooth and swinging

Stevie Wonder — clearly from another dimension

Michael Jackson — childish and vulnerable

Bruce Springsteen — muscular and tormented

Bob Dylan — nasal and intellectual

Do you think it’s an accident that the world’s biggest pop stars, then and now, are recognizable by the tone of their voice within about a second and a half?

The last one on my list above, Bob Dylan, is a particularly good example.

Early in his career, Dylan had a much more conventional, clear, melodic way of singing.

At some point, he figured out that exaggerating his natural tendencies, or even inventing a completely new voice, gave him distinctness, memorability, immediate recognizability. The critics, who panned him for it, be damned.

Do you think there might be a valuable opportunity for you there as well? At least if you have a presence online, or want to have a presence online?

If you do, here’s a tip based on what I’ve found to be true:

You don’t have to “decide” on your unique and distinct tone and voice today. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do so.

But you can experiment with it from day to day. Introduce little quirks… make little tweaks… or go whole hog and make a big change and see if it sticks.

Do this regularly, and pretty soon, you will settle into something that both feels natural to you, and which is unique and distinct enough to win you attention even in today’s crowded marketplace.

And that’s my soft segue into my offer today, which is the same offer I’ve been promoting for a while now:

Daily Email Habit.

Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with consistently writing daily emails so you can make sales, influence readers, and yes, even develop your own unique voice in time.

You don’t NEED Daily Email Habit to write daily emails.

But it can save you time and headache, and make it more likely you will stick with the process long-term. If that’s something you think could be valuable to you, then—

There comes a time…

When we heed a certain call…

Ok, I won’t get all sappy on you and start singing about the children. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

PSA: Beware the anti-launxxers

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This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I wrapped up the Prospective Profit Pricing event for Daily Email Habit.

Since I rolled out Daily Email Habit some 6 weeks ago and only sold it via regular daily emails since, this PPP event served as a kind of launch.

The event lasted for two days and four emails.

62 new people ended up signing up to Daily Email Habit as a result of those four emails.

Considering how small my list is, and the fact that I have been promoting Daily Email Habit pretty much every day for the past 6 weeks, and that I thought demand was near tapped out (there were days in the past weeks when I made 0 sales), I gotta say I’m pleased with how this turned out.

And now, public service announcement #1:

I’ve been seeing a new crop of online marketers who are positioning themselves as anti-launch.

Their spiel is no deadlines, no scarcity, no urgency — “no manipulation!” Just put your offer out there every day, and eventually everyone who is right for it will buy.

I’m not sure if this is just positioning themselves in a contrary way. Or maybe they’re catering to people who have been exhausted by massive affiliate-based PLF-style launches that have to be run every three months in order to generate any income, with a few lonely crickets chirping in the meantime.

In any case, beware their anti-launch propaganda.

It’s ironic, because those same anti-launxxers run plenty of offers with scarcity and urgency baked in — effectively launches, or email promos at least.

But what if they didn’t?

Their core message is still terrible advice if you ask me.

Launches and daily emails are like heads and tails — two sides of a gold krugerand that you can drop into your piggy bank.

Daily emails build desire for what you sell, and overcome objections. Launches, or promos, or whatever you want to call them, give people an undeniable reason to act NOW.

And as for manipulation?

I side with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who said that the only bad manipulation is manipulation that’s obvious.

The fact is, not a single person wrote me during this “launch” to complain about my manipulative deadline and manipulative disappearing bonus. If anything, I got a lot of people who wrote me to tell me they are excited to get started, and that this was the push they needed.

End of public service announcement #1.

Begin public service announcement #2:

I’d like to turn your attention to something free, new, and frankly AMA~ING.

I will write a full email about it tomorrow.

But if you are at all interested in copywriting, you MUST MUST MUST click through below.

Do you ever hear me using such over-the-top and positive language?

You don’t, because it’s almost never warranted, and in fact it usually works against you, by letting people down when they finally see your offer.

Well, not today. If you are into copywriting, you have to click through, and in fact, you have to sign up for what’s waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/back-in-town

Last chance to gamble before the Daily Email Habit price increase

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Here’s a curious story about looming deadlines:

In the early days of FedEx, founder and CEO Fred Smith took the company’s last $5k and went to Vegas.

FedEx had a fuel bill of $25k. That last $5k wouldn’t be enough to cover it anyhow.

So Smith went to Vegas and played blackjack. He gambled and won $27k. That was enough to cover the fuel bill.

FedEx had survived for another week. And then it survived another week. Eventually, it turned into something big.

Now let me ask you:

Will you gamble $20 on a month of Daily Email Habit?

Will-ye or nill-ye, the price of Daily Email Habit is going up tonight, from $20/month to $30/month, at 12 midnight PST, just three hours from now.

This is the last email I will send before the fateful price increase.

As a reminder, Daily Email Habit is my service to help you start and stick with consistent daily emailing.

Here’s what that means in real terms, from virtuoso-making guitar teacher René Kerkdyk, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

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Just a short raving review:

I just wrote my daily email in 10 minutes going from sheer panic about what to write to a finished email building my expertise and selling my stuff. Thank you, John!

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I have also created a members-only club, Daily Email House, for business owners and marketers who send more or less daily emails.

Until to-night at 12 midnight, Daily Email House is a free bonus in case you sign up to Daily Email Habit. After that, it will disappear as a free bonus, and rise from its ashes as a new, fiery, paid offer.

All that’s to say, maybe the sales page below is worth a look? And right now? Before the deadline sneaks up on you with its cold, sleep-inducing claws?

If you’d like my help writing your daily emails, tomorrow, and the day after, and then next week, until eventually your daily emailing turns into something big:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

David Ogilvy endorses the Daily Email Habit approach

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This morning I found myself reading “Quotations of David Ogilvy,” put out in 2023 by the Ogilvy agency, on the 75th anniversary of its founding.

Here’s a quote from Ogilvy that caught my eye:

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Dr. Gallup reports that if you say something which you don’t also illustrate, the viewer immediately forgets it. I conclude that if you don’t show it there is no point in saying it. Try running your commercial with the sound turned off; if it doesn’t tell without sound, it is useless.

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I’m sharing this with you for two reasons.

One is that it’s a useful reminder, even if you never write a TV commercial. Really, it comes down to effective communication. If you don’t illustrate, the reader will forget it. If you don’t show it, there’s no point in saying it.

Reason two is that I was lucky to have somehow learned that lesson early in my copywriting career. Somebody must have shown it to me, because I also remembered it over the years.

The basic idea above — illustrate, don’t just say — is the underlying idea of pretty much everything I’ve done in the marketing space.

It’s the underlying idea of my Copy Riddles program, and its try-and-compare method of learning to write copy, instead of just a bunch of “here’s how” instruction.

It’s the underlying idea of thousands of sales emails I’ve written, both for clients and for myself, and the way I teach others to do that inside my Simple Money Emails and Most Valuable Email programs.

And it’s the underlying idea of my Daily Email Habit service.

Because on most days — not all, but most — I don’t just send a daily prompt for to help you write your own daily email. I also use that prompt in my own daily email, to show and illustrate how it can be done.

About that, I got the following feedback from Chris Howes, who runs a successful music teaching memebrship, Creative Strings Academy. Chris subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and he had this to say:

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But more importantly, I now get TWO LESSONS from you every day. And I often learn as much or more from your regular daily free emails. Together, hand in hand, they feel like someone dropped off a shopping cart from Sams Club full of gifts at my front door and said here you go…

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As David Ogilvy said, “We sell — or else.”

I don’t know what the “else” is. I don’t want to find out.

So if you’d like to buy a month’s worth of daily email puzzles, in order to write your own daily emails, and to get additional inspiration and illustration from my daily emails, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t read this before bed

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A gruesome and depressing email today. Read at your own risk:

Last night, of course right before bed, I saw a real-life clip online that I really didn’t need to see.

It showed a heartbroken mother wailing. She had just called 911 after she discovered some rotting human remains in her 19-year-old son’s closet.

The rest of the clip showed the police confronting the son.

He calmly and articulately admitted that, yes, that is a human head and a pair human hands in his closet, and yes, he did murder somebody with a knife. Asked why, he replied, “I always wanted to know what it would feel like.”

Of course, rather than closing my laptop at this point and going to drink some chamomile tea to maybe bleach this from my mind, I investigated this case further.

The murderer looks to be as close to pure evil as you can imagine. Cold, remorseless, shark-like.

He was arrested and then tried. His lawyers went with an insanity defense. It didn’t fly.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury felt he was not insane, in the sense that he could clearly distinguish between right and wrong.

But if you see the guy confessing to the murder or talking about the details of it, it’s clear that something is not right in his head. He might not be insane in the legal sense, but he’s certainly not sane in the everyday sense.

If you would dig into the neural pathways, chemicals, bits and blobs of his brain, I bet you’d find they were different to what a normal person has. Maybe this guy was born deficient in some way, or something went wrong early in life, or wasn’t there when it should have been.

I feel like I’m digging myself into a hole with this email. It’s too late to stop now, so let me dig a bit deeper:

I don’t know if we have free will, or like I wrote a few weeks ago, “free won’t.”

But even though the murder case above is as clear of a black-and-white, good-vs-evil, open-and-shut case as you would ever not want to see right before bed, I personally still feel there’s probably much more to it for anybody who would take the trouble to look closer.

Does that mean that the guy is not guilty of murder?

Smart people, such as Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, argue exactly this. Sapolsky says that assigning guilt doesn’t make sense when you actually look at what’s happening in the brain.

I personally don’t know.

One thing I do know is that my “shades of gray” way of looking at the world is a handicap, probably for my own happiness and certainly when it comes to influencing others. Because the more black-and-white you see things, the easier it makes it for others to identify with you, to fall in line with your views, to berserk on your behalf, as Ben Settle likes to say.

This black-and-white stuff also works if you write sales copy. (Yes, I have to somehow try to clamber out of that hole I’ve dug for myself.)

The more extreme, contrasted, polarized you make your claims, the more likely you are to draw attention to and to create desire for them.

This is something I go into much more detail in my Copy Riddles program. Copy Riddles gives you source material from info products of years past, and sales bullets from A-list copywriters who promoted those products, to drill this black-and-white stuff into your brain, such as it is.

In case you’d like to find out more, and maybe bleach this email from your mind:

https://bejakovic.com/cr