Mental Shortcuts Archives - Page 7 of 16

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

March 13, 2023 by John Bejakovic

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

February 26, 2023February 25, 2023 by John Bejakovic

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.

The most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today

February 17, 2023 by John Bejakovic

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the lives of all marketers in the present moment.

There is no doubt this fact forms the most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today. It splits marketers into two classes of creatures: winners and losers.

I will tell you this fact. Or rather, I will illustrate it.

Yesterday, YouTube served me up a video. The video was blurry and showed a three-piece rock band. They were at some sort of daytime festival. They stood on a tiny stage with flower pots in the front and an American flag pinned to the back wall.

The band members were middle-aged. They all wore matching outfits — black dress pants and shimmering gold sport coats. They started to play a ZZ Top cover and—

The drummer. Something was clearly wrong with him.

He was grimacing. He was flailing his head. He was wrapping his arms around his head before striking the drums. He was doing the robot. He was drumming with one hand. He was doing a kind of imbecile tiny drumming.

If Chris Farley had learned to play the drums before he died of a speedball overdose, this is what it would have looked like.

This video has 51 million views on YouTube right now.

A tiny stage with flowerpots in the front. Shimmering gold sport coats. A ZZ Top cover.

51 million views.

So here’s the fact of utmost importance:

If you prefer not to exaggerate, you must remain silent.

Such is the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

It is, furthermore, entirely new in the history of our modern civilization. Never, in the course of its development, has anything similar happened. Never have there been other periods of history in which exaggeration has come to govern more directly than in our own.

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This is most natural.

Many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes’ thought to this complex matter. And yet they believe that they have a right to an opinion on the issue. It merely confirms the theorem.

These readers feel themselves complete and intellectually perfect. They have hermetically closed off their minds to new ideas and decided to settle down definitely amid old mental furniture.

How to reach such people — except through exaggeration?

The only question that remains is how to best adapt to the present moment. How to exaggerate in the most effective way possible.

I may be mistaken, but the present writer, when he puts is fingers to the keyboard to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, believes this most effective way is called Copy Riddles.

Copy Riddles brings together the greatest collection of copywriting talent ever assembled inside one program. These master persuaders are ready to reveal their secrets to you, to prepare you for the present reality, and to take you outside of yourself for a moment.

To start your transmigration:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Jerry Seinfeld’s serious joke about the news

January 20, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Today I watched a clip of Jerry Seinfeld on the Johnny Carson Show. Jerry smiles his precocious-boy smile and says:

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To me the most amazing thing about the news is that whatever goes on in the world, it exactly fits the number of pages that they’re using in the paper that day. [Johnny Carson chuckles off screen. Jerry continues:]

They must stand around after each edition going, “I don’t believe we just made it again! If one more thing happens, we’re screwed. There’s no more room in this paper!”

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This is a joke if you hear Jerry Seinfeld tell it, or imagine him with his mannerisms, or if you include that exaggeration at the end.

It’s not a joke if you just read the first sentence of that quote. It really is amazing that the day’s news always just fit the newspaper.

Of course, who reads newspapers any more — but the underlying point still stands:

The news was and is just a constant drip of telling you what to think, how to feel, how to react.

The news is not what’s worth knowing. At least that’s the way I look at it.

If you’re still reading, you might wonder what I think is worth knowing. I call it anti-news.

I’ve written before of my policy of not reading books that were published in just the last year.

I’ve been informed this has a clever name, “the Lindy effect,” after some long-surviving deli in New York.

The idea is, if something is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now. More generally, the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to keep being around.

This simple but powerful idea impacts everything I do, from the books I read to the emails I write to the offers I create. And since it’s time to start promoting:

It also lies behind my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is built on examples of winning copywriting that have been around for three, four, five, six decades or more.

But I’d take it still further back:

I believe Copy Riddles is really about the principles of effective communication, going back thousands of years. That might sound high-heeled, but it’s really what direct response marketing is — a merciless distillation that purifies and concentrates the evergreen principles of effective communication.

These principles were relevant yesterday, last year, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

And if you are looking to influence or manipulate people, these principles are your best bet for what will continue to be relevant tomorrow.

As marketing consultant Khaled Maziad wrote me to say after going through Copy Riddles:

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Man, this’s the best course on bullets I have ever seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot. I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet. This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

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As you might know already:

This is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tomorrow, Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The best way to market your old course

January 18, 2023 by John Bejakovic

In the virtual pages of this daily email newsletter, I’ve gone back over and over to an article by James Altucher, titled, I Plagiarized And You Can, Too!

I’ve written about James’s core idea several times already. I won’t repeat it today. But I will point out the interesting 12 words of advice with which James ends his article:

“The best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

That’s how the cookie crumbles, book-wise. But what about course-wise?

For the last few days, I’ve been promoting my Copy Riddles course.

This is the third time I am promoting this course at the current price in the past 6 months.

And yet, during this run, over just a few days, I’ve made more sales of Copy Riddles than I did over several weeks of promotion earlier.

The difference is I’ve announced this is the last week to get the free bonuses that come with Copy Riddles.

At the end of this week, I will remove the free bonuses, expand them, and turn them into paid upsells.

So the best way to market your old course?

Take your free bonuses and convert them into an upsell funnel. And then advertise that fact well to your audience.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The candle is burning down. The hourglass is noiselessly draining away.

The free bonuses for Copy Riddles will disappear this Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST.

The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But the majority of people who bought Copy Riddles over these past few days have been on my list for a while.

That makes me think they’ve been eyeing Copy Riddles for a while.

If, like them, you’ve been weighing up Copy Riddles for a similar while, you have until Saturday to get the whole package, free bonuses included. You can do that at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What never to swallow at the start of your newsletter

January 17, 2023 by John Bejakovic

No, I’m not talking about swallowing your pride. Read on because it’s important.

Last night I was reviewing a newsletter. The newsletter was full of valuable content, but the author didn’t try to sell me on that content in any way. He meant for it to sell itself.

This brought to mind something I heard marketing wizard Dan Kennedy say:

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We sometimes take the attention of the people with whom we communicate with all the time for granted. That they will give us attention because of who we are and our relationship with them. It’s a bad presumption. It was not a bad presumption a decade ago when there weren’t as many of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. But now there’s a lot more of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. And so we gotta earn it, every single time.

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If you’re anything like me, then your brain will try to feed you excuses, all day long, just because it wants to stop thinking. It will say:

“They opted in to my newsletter. They expressed interest. They want to hear what I have to say.”

“They like my persona. They read my emails in the past. They bought stuff from me!”

“I’m sure they will read this too. It’s good enough.”

Don’t swallow your brain’s excuses. Don’t take your readers attention for granted. That’s not good enough.

Not if you want the best chance to influence people, to present yourself as an authority, to get your readers to buy or share or do whatever it is you’re after.

The more closely people read your stuff, the more of your story and your arguments they swallow, the more you manage to spike their emotions in the minutes they spend with your content, the better it is for you. And in a way, for them.

As a Big Pharma salesman might tell you, the most expensive drug is the one that doesn’t work.

And as I, a Big Copy salesman, will tell you, the most expensive 3 seconds for your reader are clicking on your email and skimming straight through to the end because he’s not properly engaged. That’s 3 seconds wasted for nothing.

On the other hand, 3 or 13 minutes reading every word you wrote because you sold it properly ahead of time — that can be both valuable and enjoyable.

So how do you pre-sell your valuable content?

That knowledge is something I don’t pre-sell. That’s something I sell.

Specifically, that’s what I sell inside my Copy Riddles program. In case you’re interested:

Copy Riddles shows you A-list copywriters sell and pre-sell valuable but dry information. But Copy Riddles does much more. It gets you doing the same.

This doesn’t mean you have to go all John Carlton on your newsletter readers.

You can be subtle or savage in the way you pre-sell your content and your information. It’s your choice.

What is not your choice is how people’s brains work, and what kinds of messages they respond to. And the most condensed and powerful way to create messages that people respond to is inside Copy Riddles.

As I mentioned two days ago, this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Announcing my new course: Somewhat Good Email

January 9, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last October, I wrote an awesome email to promote my awesome Copy Riddles program. The subject line read, “Why would you ever say anything that’s not awesome?”

After I sent that email out, I was flying high for a bit. But then I was rudely brought down to earth. Because in response to my awesome email, reader Frederik Beyer wrote:

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Mr Bejakovic,

Is there a use for wildly understated testimonials?

’cause then I’d like to say: “Your emails are somewhat good”

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Somewhat good? Somewhat???

After the initial trauma to my ego, I thought for a moment.

And I realized that of course there is a use to testimonials such as this. You are looking at it right now.

Thankfully, I am not at the moment promoting Copy Riddles.

So I can get to promoting my first love, which used to be called Most Valuable Email, but which I will soon rename to Somewhat Good Email.

Somewhat Good Email shows you how to take important but dry marketing ideas and turn them into cool and insightful emails. Somewhat.

That’s what I did with today’s email, which uses the Somewhat Good Email trick.

Perhaps the underlying important but dry idea is not obvious to you. No matter. You can find that idea spelled out in Somewhat Good Email Riddle #10, at the end of the Somewhat Good Email training.

If you’d like to get your hands on that riddle, and on the rest of the Somewhat Good Email training, head to the link below. Don’t allow the old course name on the sales page to confuse you. I’ll change that soon enough.

Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Threats and shaming in early-morning emails

January 3, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Two mornings ago, I found myself on the street outside my house, in the dark. There were no cabs because it was 4:30am on New Year’s morning. I took my phone out to rent a city bike as the first step of catching my 7am flight, but instead of opening the bike app, I automatically opened my email inbox.

“Hello,” I said. “This will be useful.”

It turns out I’d gotten a new email from marketer Ben Settle. The subject line read:

“Why my ‘no coming back’ policy will inevitably be the new normal”

Ben was talking about his policy of never allowing people who unsubscribe from his paid newsletter to resubscribe.

I have no doubt that Ben’s prediction is right, and that this policy will become more and more common.

After all, newsletters are the Ford Edsel of the information publishing industry.

As Agora founder Bill Bonner, who has sold billions of dollars’ worth of newsletters, supposedly said once, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart racing, pajamas wet from sweat, with the sudden realization, “Good God… we’re all out of newsletters!”

Newsletters are something that the marketer dreamed up, because they provide continuity income, automatically, without the need to keep getting credit card details.

Newsletters are something the market doesn’t really want, not without a huge amount of bribes, indoctrination, and in Ben’s case, threats and shaming. From his email about his “no coming-back” policy:

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“Plus, practically speaking, if the trash lets itself out why take it back in?”

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Whatever. People will justify anything to themselves out of self-interest.

Fortunately, my self-interest isn’t aligned with selling you a newsletter, because I tried it and found I hate it, even before I had to give a single thought to retention.

The good news of that is, I don’t have to threaten you or shame you, which is something I find personally distasteful.

The bad news is, I don’t ever hear the satisfying sound of shopping-cart notifications telling me I’ve made a bunch of sales on autopilot.

Instead, I have to keep sending emails, writing sales letters, and doing my best to tempt you into buying the offers I’m selling.

That’s okay. Like I keep saying, I’m okay with working a bit, regularly, and for the long term.

And I’d rather have my freedom, both from the fixed schedule of publishing a paid newsletter, and from the psychological toll of barking at my subscribers and cracking my whip at them.

Perhaps you also value freedom over automatic shopping cart notifications. Perhaps you can understand where I am coming from. In that case, you might like to sign up to my (free) daily email newsletter.

You can try it… find it doesn’t work for you… unsubscribe… and later, if you change your mind, you can subscribe again. No threats or shaming.

To get started, click here and fill out the form.

Business advice I wish somebody had given me seven years ago

December 13, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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