Status

The reputation benefit of a bigger list

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My own email list — this one, about marketing and copywriting and influence — is tiny. But some of the people on my list have much bigger lists than I do.

One such person is Russell Nohelty. Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money.

Russell’s audience on Substack is over 70,000 people.

Last week, when I started writing about my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic, Russell reached out. He offered to share his experiences spending $30k since February to grow his audience.

Russell and I got on a call this past Monday. It was interesting and valuable throughout, but one thing in particular stuck with me, something Russell said about the reputation benefits of various list sizes. In Russell’s words:

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There were a couple of break points where everything felt different.

10,000 emails felt different than 8,000.

30,000 emails felt way different than 20,000 emails.

From my experience, talking to other people, 50,000, 80,000 — there’s different break points where people go, “Oh you’ve got 45,000 people on your list! Yes, I want to get in front of them!”

Promotions become easier. When you’re a Dream 100 guy like I am, you can reach out to almost anyone and be like, “Hey, do you wanna be in front of my 35,000, 45,000, whatever the number is, people.”

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I can imagine that somebody somewhere has just crossed his arms and frowned. “Well, I’d much rather have a small but mighty list than a stupid big list that doesn’t read or buy from me.”

Sure. It’s my policy as well with my own list. That said, you can have both a large and a mighty list — Russell does.

But here’s the sneaky thing:

All of us constantly use mental shortcuts to evaluate the people around us and the choices we have.

On the one hand, a large list is an immensely valuable asset for its own sake.

On the other hand, a large list is also an immensely valuable asset because of its reputation benefit. Because people treat you differently if you get one. Because opportunities open up which would be closed otherwise.

All that’s to say, if you got a business, and a list, but it’s not quite going how you’d like… then the solution might just be to get a bigger list. Maybe if you can make it to the next break point, like Russell says above, then your problems now might just go poof.

Which brings me back to my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497 to get started, plus $10-$15 a day for ads. If that doesn’t deter you, hit reply and tell me so, and I can give you more information.

Very insightful AI-generated summary for my book’s reviews

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Yesterday, I checked my little 10 Commandments book on Amazon to see if I have any new reviews. I have no new reviews. But there is something new.

Above all the reviews I’ve gotten so far, there’s a new AI-generated summary that says:

“Customers find the book a great read with great bits of advice. They also appreciate the names of the great bits.”

Huh? Names of the great bits?

​​I’m guessing that’s the AI-generated summary of the following human-generated review, which contains the word “names” several times:

“Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.”

Now, this is not one of those “Haha stupid AI, it will never be as smart as us great apes” emails.

I’ve gone on record three years ago, before ChatGPT really broke, saying I think AI will in fact be able to replace any and all human work, including supposedly creative work.

I still stand by that. If AI is not quite there yet today, like with the above review summary, then it will get there tomorrow, or the day after.

That said:

My awkward AI summary above actually makes an insightful point. Humans do appreciate the names of the great bits.

Specifically, we appreciate the names of great bits known as other humans.

I’ve noticed I get turned off when I realize something is AI-generated. Not because it’s inferior in quality. Often it’s not — often it’s actually better. But I still get turned off, simply because I realize it’s AI-generated.

Really, this isn’t anything new.

I haven’t been to many standup comedy shows. But I have heard they are typically set up in a 1-2-3 order:

Number 1 comic is unknown and often terrible. Number 2 comic is unknown but really good, on the way up. Number 3 comic is nationally famous and has been so for a few years.

Objectively speaking, the no. 2 comic will often deliver the best, tightest, funniest set.

But it’s the no. 3 comic who will draw the biggest laughs, simply because people have come to see him, because he’s the headliner, because he’s got the name they know. The quality of the content is actually secondary or tertiary.

While there are still humans, and while there is still work for us to do, there’s a lesson to be drawn from that.

​​And now, related to that lesson, here’s my offer to you:

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about creating some kind of a workshop or program to help people build up their status, their authority, their name. How to do this is a personal interest of mine. And maybe I can help you do it, quickly and thoroughly.

I haven’t yet decided whether to organize this workshop or program, or how it would look. But if you’re interested, just hit reply and tell me so.

I won’t have anything to pitch you — not yet at least. But I want to hear from you, and I want to talk to you, and see if I can help. So if you’re interested, hit reply and let’s talk.

How to go from not funny to funny

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Yesterday, I read about championship golfer Lee Trevino, who went from being not funny to being funny. Here’s how he did it, in his own words:

“When I was a rookie, I told jokes, and no one laughed. After I began winning tournaments, I told the same jokes, and all of a sudden, people thought they were funny.”

This might sound like a joke itself. It’s not. It’s a fact of life. Status, success, and authority are more important than what say.

A corollary is that what you say should be as much about hinting at your status, success, and authority, as it is about your “actual” message.

Think Tai Lopez, talking about the importance of reading books, while standing in his garage, and casually mentioning how it’s fun to drive his new black Lamborghini “here in the Hollywood hills.”

Of course, you can be more subtle than Tai if you want.

If you want to learn some subtle ways that I build up my status, success, and authority in my emails, you can find those described in my Simple Money Emails training.

This training shows you my simple, “hypnotic,” 1-2 process to make sales today and to keep your readers’ interest tomorrow.

I distilled down this process after close to 2,000 sales emails, written both for myself and for 7- and 8-figure clients I used to work with.

So if your jokes aren’t getting any laughs right now, and if your emails aren’t making any sales right now, this training could be the fix.

For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

#1 common feedback to my coaching group last night

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Last night I hosted the first Write & Profit coaching call.

I aimed to get 5 qualified people to join this coaching program. And I got five qualified people.

We had the owner of dog-training business in the Midwest who’s had thousands of clients… a harp-playing marketing specialist who helps offline service businesses get online… a copywriter who’s gotten some big wins for coaches… a London banker who went on a hero’s journey to find satisfaction in his well-paid corporate job, and now teaches others to do the same… and a 24-year-old fitness wiz who’s already got a coaching business with hundreds of high-ticket clients.

All five are great at what they do.

All five have success stories to share, either their own or work they’ve done for others.

And yet, there was one piece of common feedback that I had to give all of them.

It probably applies to you too.

It certainly used to apply to me, and still does on some days. It’s this:

None of them was not making adequate use of their status, endorsements, case studies, and success stories.

Maybe you wince when I say that. If so, you should know that doing it adequately doesn’t have to feel tacky, like maple syrup left to dry on the counter.

You can build up your status and share success stories in a natural, even helpful way. For example, consider what I did with this email.

I told you about my coaching program. I told you I filled it how I wanted to fill it. I built up the people inside the program to highlight they are qualified and successful.

And if I could only find some way to also work in the fact that I got these 5 people to each agree to pay me multiple thousands of dollars, using a 3-page Google doc, with no sales calls, no pressure or awkwardness, no haggling over price…

… then you might ask me how? How did I do it? And more importantly, how can you do it?

It certainly isn’t a magical 3-page Google doc that makes sales like that.

Instead, it’s a constant commitment to share your own status items, case studies, success stories… and to stuff those into regular emails, that are written so that people will want to keep reading.

If you have inhibitions about doing the first, then this email you’ve read should help you with that.

As for the second:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Don’t be like me

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For the past two days, I’ve been running a kind of flash offer I’ve called Copy Riddles Lite.

In order to promote that, I have finally done something I should have done months ago, and that’s to go through the emails that Australia’s best & world’s most provocative copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote to promote Copy Riddles back in September.

Daniel’s emails are filled with gold I could and should have been using to promote Copy Riddles ever since. Such as, for example, the following quotes:

“There are few other courses I fully and wholeheartedly endorse as strongly as one of my own. Copy Riddles is one of them.”

“I have literally never had so many people write to me after I start promoting something, offering unsolicited & gushing feedback on it!”

“It’s the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen … literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you copywriting.”

So don’t be like me — lazy, careless, and self-defeating when it comes to promoting your own good offers.

Instead, when people write nice things about you and what you sell, save those comments… cherish them… casually drop hints about them over tea or coffee… and every Sunday or even more often, stand up on a soapbox, and openly and dramatically read out those flattering endorsements to everyone who might be interested and many of those who are not.

The Copy Riddles Lite offer is closing down tonight, in another 8 hours, specifically at 8:31pm CET.

Copy Riddles Lite is not a gamified series of sequential puzzles. That’s the full Copy Riddles course, which contains 20 such sequential puzzles.

Copy Riddles Lite contains just one such puzzle.

But it’s a puzzle that stands alone, without the rest of the Copy Riddles program. And if you can guess the right answer — or even if you don’t, but you put in the effort — it will teach you something very valuable about copywriting, in a very short period of time.

Copy Riddles Lite is priced lightly, according to its lite nature. And if you buy it and decide you want to upgrade to the full Copy Riddles program, I will credit you the price you paid for Copy Riddles Lite.

So if you’d like to get this piece of a highly endorsed training before I close down the cart, here’s where to go (no sales page, just an order page):

https://bejakovic.com/crl​​

Magic words that bring you status

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Yesterday, I went on Twitter in search of my own name.

What I found was a photo somebody had posted of a densely scribbled page, containing the text of one of my emails.

I squinted and leaned in so far my nose almost touched the screen. It was true.

People are actually copying out my emails by hand as a way to learn email copywriting.

It was a bizarre moment. It reminded me of the first time I printed a black-and-white photograph in my high school’s darkroom.

Take a normal-looking piece of paper, expose it to light for a second, then dump it into a bit of clear, water-like liquid. A picture emerges of something you had photographed days or weeks ago.

It feels like magic, because the ingredients seem so ordinary — paper, light, a bit of water-like liquid.

I’ve been writing this daily email newsletter for 5+ years. At first, I was writing mostly just to practice and then sending my emails out into the void.

After a while, I created an offer. I sent out an email just like the ones I had been sending out. Except this time, money came back at me.

It felt like magic, because it was still the same ordinary ingredients — a bare-bones text editor, ActiveCampaign, the blue “send” button.

Since then, I’ve continued sending the same text-only emails, just words in a text editor. And that’s been good enough to give me status and authority in this field. I got into copywriting some ten years ago by hand-copying issues of Gary Halbert’s newsletter. Today people are copying my newsletter issues by hand.

A few days ago, I announced I’m looking for five beta testers for a 3-month group coaching program.

The goal for this group coaching program is to implement the techniques and ideas I talked about on the “How I do it” call I held on Monday. Write interesting emails… build a list… grow your status… make money.

I announced this group coaching program to the people who were there for the live “How I do it” call, and to the people who signed up for the recording.

And in spite of the fact I once again managed to muck up the tech, so that some people never got the link to join the live call, and others never got the recording, I’ve so far filled three of those five spots. I also have a few people who’ve expressed interest in the remaining two.

But I want to get this sign-up process wrapped up now, so I can kick the group coaching off.

So if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know a bit about who you are and what you do.

I will send you a doc with the full info on this 3-month program, and you can decide if it’s for you or not.

If not, no problem. But if yes, then you can join us, and we will start next week.

I am wired for story… from a trusted, liked, famous source

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A non-personal but true story:

Late into his career escape artist Harry Houdini started cutting some corners in his stage show.

Houdini was injured and physically exhausted, and it was hard to put in the same level of shoulder-dislocating, suffocating, skin-tearing escapes he used to put on.

Sure, Houdini still did some of that, but he minimized it. Instead, he filled up the empty time on stage with some magic tricks and with talking. About himself.

One viewer was shocked and disgusted.

This viewer was the newspaper critic for the local paper in Nottingham, England. So rather than simply firing off an outraged email to Houdini to say how the show isn’t as good as it used to be and to demand to be unsubscribed, this critic wrote up the following review and published it in his paper:

“Why on earth should Houdini imagine that any audience would be entertained by hearing a long and uncalled-for account of what he has been doing during the past six years… people go to a vaudeville house to see a performance… not to hear a diatribe on the personal pronoun around ‘the story of my life, Sir.”

Truly, who would want to hear a diatribe on the personal pronoun? Certainly not the critic.

​​But the audience?

Turns out Houdini broke all attendance and earnings records that year. He earned the highest salaries of his career, pulling down $3,750 a week — about $60,000 a week in today’s money.

Now at this point your brain might jump ahead and conclude, That’s the power of personal stories and reveals! Almost $60k a week! Let me get on it!”

But I’ve made the point before, and I will make it again:

Nobody cares about your stories and personal reveals. Not unless you already have real authority and even fame.

When Houdini changed up his show to be more personal and story-based, he had already been performing his stage show for decades. He didn’t change the core of his show during that time, and it’s probably a good thing. It’s what the crowds wanted and expected.

But then Houdini went to Hollywood. He made a couple of hugely successful movies, rubbed shoulders with Hollywood celebrities, and became a truly international star himself, beyond just the vaudeville stage.

That’s when people wanted to hear Houdini’s stories and the details of his personal life — and that’s what he was talking about on the stage. As Houdini himself put it, “Blame it all on the fact I have been successfully in the movies.”

So tell your stories and share your vulnerabilities — after you’re known and respected and even admired. People will love it then.

Before then?

Well, before then you might be interested in my Most Valuable Email training.

Most Valuable Emails never required I have any status or authority.

These emails make it 100% clear I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

As a result, Most Valuable Emails helped me build up immediate and unquestionable authority — even when I had no standing in the industry. ​​

And I claim Most Valuable Emails can do the same for you. In case you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to become in-demand in your niche even if you have no contacts, portfolio, or good sense

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A long while ago, in the days when elephants still roamed the Earth, I came across the following question:

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Say I wanted my copywriting niche to be SaaS, but have no contacts or portfolio, what are the steps I’ll need to take to become in-demand for my niche?

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Here are the exact steps I would suggest:

Step 1: Go to Silicon Valley.

Step 2: Get in front of somebody famous in the startup space, like Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel. ​​Get creative if you have to — stalk them at a coffee shop they are known to go to, pay to go to a conference where they will appear, or maybe just write them an email and ask if they will meet you because you’re such a big fan.

Step 3: Take a selfie of yourself next to the famous nerd in Step 2.

Step 4: Put that selfie up on your site, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Tinder, along with an article like, “10 surprising copywriting lessons from my meeting with Marc Andreessen.”

Step 5: In your article, mention several times that you are a SaaS copywriter, and link to a “Free Consultation” page.

Step 6: Repeat Steps 1-5 with additional famous nerds, as needed.

Result: Almost instant status and authority, and very probably, serious demand for your services.

You might think I’m being flippant. But I’m being 100% serious.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you the big secret of peak status.

The thing is, you might not want to hear it. Or you might not want to believe it.

Because the secret is that status can be manufactured, and very quickly.

In the same way that quality is only a minor part of the influence that your content is likely to have, your resume is only a minor part of the the status you are likely to achieve. And all the other, more important stuff, can be accomplished in two weeks’ time, if you are willing to really hustle.

Maybe you get what I’m saying.

But maybe you feel exasperated. Maybe you are sure I am either 100% wrong. Or maybe you suspect I am right, but you just find it impossible to really hustle to create status for yourself.

In that case, my advice is not to hustle. Take it slowly. Better slowly than never.

My added advice is that, if you are a marketer or copywriter in search of status, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email.

Sure, MVE will show you a new way to create quality content, but that’s not why I recommend it. Instead, the real status-building value of MVE is that it can get you gradually more comfortable with all those content-adjacent status-building practices which really make the difference.

I imagine that sounds very vague and abstract. I can’t make it more specific without giving away the Most Valuable Email trick. If you’d like to find out what that trick is, and even start practicing it today, head on over here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Why I’ve just sent you the only Times New Roman newsletter you are likely to read today

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This past Wednesday, I found myself mystified by an article titled The Reaction Economy. It was written by a William Davies — “a sociologist and political economist” — in the London Review of Books.

Davies was complaining about Twitter, and how he is trying to wean himself off it, and how his brain screams to set the record straight whenever it sees idiotic conservative tweets. But Davies is a disciplined person, so he didn’t give in to the urge and get back on Twitter. Instead, he went and wrote a 6,276-word article in the LRB about it.

As I read this, I found myself mystified why I was reading it at all. I mean, what was fresh here? Some guy saying he wants to use social media less? Or a liberal airing his lungs about conservative trolls? Or an online pundit shaking his finger and warning me, as I nod along in silence, that social media is designed to provoke outrage?

And yet, there I was, reading, paragraph after long paragraph. I asked myself why. One small part was the good headline, The Reaction Economy. That sucked me in initially. But what kept me going had nothing to do with the actual content, which was neither new nor insightful.

I realized that the real reason I was reading was that the article was hosted on the LRB website. Beyond that, it was the formatting — 10-line paragraphs, drop capitals, Times New Roman font.

Copywriter Gary Bencivenga once told a story of how his ad agency rushed an ad into the New York Times. In the rush, the NYT typesetters set the ad with a sans-serif font. Gary’s agency complained, and the Times offered to run the ad the next week, for free, with the correct serif font. This was not a proper A/B split test. Still, the serif ad ended up pulling 80% more sales than the sans-serif ad the week earlier.

Is there really sales magic to serif font? Probably not. But we use cues all the time to decide on value, and to guide our decisions. I’ve written before how I find myself unable to spend more than 20 seconds reading a 700-word blog entry or email newsletter, but that I’m happy to read a four-volume book of 1,900 pages for more than a year.

Quality of content is a part of it, but only a part. The fact is, I use cues all the time to evaluate that quality, and I rely on past habits to determine what deserves my attention or not.

So my point for you is is, why stack the odds against yourself? Why give your reader subtle cues that your writing is skimmable, disposable, low-value fluff? The bigger principle, which I’ve seen proven in different areas of life, is: Assume people are already acting how you want them to act. Very often, they will end up doing just that.

Since you’ve read this far, I assume you must be a reader. So I will remind you that, for the next three days, until February 27th, I am opening the doors to my Insights & More Book Club. After that, I will close off the club to new members. We will start reading the next book on March 1st, and it makes no sense to have people join mid-way. The only way to join is to be signed up to my email newsletter first. If you like, you can do that here.

Business advice I wish somebody had given me seven years ago

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Last year, while writing the sales page for my Copy Riddles program, there came a time in the copy when I had to talk about myself.

I shifted in my seat, coughed a little, and shrugged my shoulders.

“What exactly would you like to know?” I said to the blinking cursor. “I’ve been working as a copywriter for several years now. Each year, it’s been getting better and better. And that’s pretty much it.”

If I ever had a copywriting client tell me something like this, I would get angry. ​​​”Tell me some specific accomplishments,” I would say. “Something soundbite-worthy. You don’t have to have saved the sea cows. It just has to sound good.”

In the end, on that Copy Riddles sales page, I managed to weasel my way out without saying anything about myself — the course is not really about my authority, after all.

I’m not trying to sell you Copy Riddles right here. I’m just trying to share a bit of advice that I wish somebody had shared with me seven years ago, or really, any time before this year. The advice is this:

1. Start a new Google Doc right now

2. Name it “[your last name] – status”

3. Whenever anything even remotely impressive happens to you business-wise, add it to this document right away

And that’s it. But maybe an example will help.

This entire week, I’ve been promoting my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

And it’s been working. The book has sold a few extra copies each day.

As a result, it’s been climbing from its usual place on the Amazon best seller lists. It peaked at one point yesterday, while being ranked higher than both Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters and Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing.

So this is what I added yesterday to my “BEJ status” document:

“My 10 commandments book has been ranked higher among Amazon bestsellers than Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters and Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing.”

You might think this is cheap. You might think it’s transparent. You might think it’s shady.

To which, all I can do is shift in my seat, cough a little, and shrug my shoulders.

The fact is, you might not think you have any accomplishments. But if you make sure you write down every even marginally status-building thing that happens to you, pretty soon you will have a whole encyclopedia of little soundbites that you can feed to clients and customers and prospects.

And who knows, when you look over your growing collection of marginal accomplishments, maybe you will even start to impress yourself.

As for me, I’m gonna keep promoting my 10 Commandments book for a couple more days. Because yesterday, a long-time reader and customer named Gregory wrote me to say:

Okay. I finally bought it. This email got through to me. Not sure why since you’ve mentioned it so many times but there you have it…
Thanks John!

Looking forward to digging into it this week.

Maybe there is still some untapped demand in my list.

And who knows. With your help, maybe I can reach new heights on the Amazon bestseller list — for example, selling better than that clown Malcolm Gladwell, with his stupid Tipping Point. At least for an hour.

In case you wanna help me get there:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments