Mental Shortcuts

My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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I went for a walk this morning and I passed by a small public park. The gate was closed. On the gate, hand-written in white paint, was a quote in Spanish. It said something about a man sitting in the shade, and it was attributed to actor Warren Beatty.

I’m a big Warren Beatty fan, going back to the movie Shampoo. As soon as I saw this quote, I imagined this handsome, confident, and yet accommodating Hollywood star smiling at me as he said whatever the quote said.

But what did the quote say?

My Spanish is still not so good. I googled “warren beatty tree quote” on my phone, hoping to find the original. Amazingly, the quote popped right up:

“‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ With this quote, Buffett was speaking to long-term investing…”

That was the original quote all right. But Warren Buffett? Giving a metaphor for investing? I did a double take.

I checked what I had googled. Sure enough, I had searched for “warren buffett tree quote.”

I looked at the handwritten quote on the gate. It too was attributed to Warren Buffett.

And yet, in spite of processing “Warren Buffett” on some level, the conscious part of my brain had confidently seen actor Warren Beatty’s face and heard Warren Beatty’s voice — not Warren Buffett’s.

That might seem like a trivial mistake. But to me it’s not. Consider another anecdote:

A couple years ago, I was driving a car on a mountain road. Turn after turn, all I saw was forest around me.

It got a little monotonous but I kept my eyes on the road and kept focused — the way was windy and narrow.

And then, as I was staring ahead at the next turn, straight into some bushes, in a flash, the bushes metamorphosed and became a deer that was standing in the road.

Of course, I realize the bushes probably didn’t jump into the road and turn into a deer.

What I guess happened is that my brain kept predicting “bushes, trees, turn, trees, bushes, turn…”

But then that monotonous picture became unsustainable, and a more useful picture — there’s a deer in the road — popped into my consciousness.

I’d like to suggest to you this is what the human brain does all the time. It makes up guesses, predictions, images, stories, in line with what we expect and what we hope. But it does something else also.

The brain also gives us an incredibly powerful feeling of certainty that whatever we are seeing right now, right in front of our eyes, is real and right — even when it’s far from what the “reality” is. We just don’t usually see the counter-evidence as clearly as I did today or on that mountain road.

Anyways, these are things I like to think about.

I also like to think about how to play with that feeling of “certainty of rightness” that we all experience at the core of who we are.

And that’s connected in some subtle way to my Most Valuable Email.

Today is the last day I will be promoting that program for a while. That’s not any kind of real deadline, except for the benefits you could be getting if you went through this course today.

Maybe you’ve been interested in Most Valuable Email. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you want to go through it and apply it. But maybe you’ve been postponing it because you think there’s time and I will keep reminding you day after day.

If so, then your brain might be fooling you with certainty that isn’t very useful.

In case you want to get a jump on your brain while the image of MVE is still in your consciousness, here’s where you can get the Most Voluble Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to handle tire kickers, trolls, and Tommy Boys

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Since I am an avid follower of news, I found out this news yesterday:

Google execs have asked Google managers to fire 6% of the Google workforce. But not just fire.

The managers are to designate this 6% of the Google workforce as poor performers.

These poor performers won’t just lose their jobs, but might also lose their stock options — and probably their self-esteem. I mean, just think of the shame of it.

“So why did you leave Google?”

“As a matter of fact, I was designated a poor performer. But I was thinking of making a change anyhow. So tell me more about this new role you’re looking to fill. I’m very excited about it.”

This might seem like a very evil tactic by Google.

But the fact is, if you spin it right, then it’s probably true that many of that those 6% really were poor performers. Maybe they got a bit lazy, a bit demotivated, a bit entitled. At least more so than the other 96% who got to keep their jobs and their “adequate performer” status.

I bring this up because what’s good for the Google is good for the gander.

I mean, the same underlying attitude that Google adopted is often adopted in the space that’s much nearer to me — the space of marketing influencers, copywriting coaches, online gurus. And in case it’s not clear, that attitude is:

If some people are bad for business, then demonize them.

You can see a playbook of how to do it in the Google story above.

The thing is, if you think about this evil tactic a bit, you might figure out a way to use it not just to lower people’s self-esteem — but to raise it also.

How to do this is something I will explain in my upcoming Age of Insight training.

The deadline to register for Age of Insight is approaching fast: this coming Wednesday, Nov 30 at 12 midnight PST. That’s just four days away.

And here’s one thing that always gets me:

Whenever I put on an offer, I always make the deadline clear, and make it clear won’t be letting people in after the deadline.

And yet, there are always a few Tommy Boy characters — puffing and panting like Chris Farley at the start of Tommy Boy, late for school, bumbling forward in a big hurry, bumping into things, dropping their lunch and schoolbooks, checking their watches in a panic, finger up in the air to try to catch the bus driver’s attention — and still missing the school bus and getting left behind in the dust.

Don’t be a Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl.

I am only making my live Age of Insight training available to people on my email newsletter. In case you are interested in this offer, then don’t be Tommy Boy. Or Tommy Girl. Get on the bus while there’s still time.

Booyakasha: Happy birthday to my main man, Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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Today is November 14, the birthday of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

What pops into my mind when I hear that name is that the man was formerly Secretary General of the UN and that he was interviewed by Ali G. From the opening of the interview:

“I is here with the geezer who was the Secrety General of the United Nations. His name be none other than my man Boutros… Boutros… Boutros-Ghali. And him will explain about the United Nations innit?”

In case you somehow missed it, Ali G was one of the characters invented by Sacha Baron Cohen, the guy who invented Borat.

Ali is a white, middle-class boy from London who wears a track suit and orange-tinted sunglasses, speaks with a mock Jamaican accent, and conducts ridiculous interviews with high-ranking, unsuspecting marks.

AG: “Is Disneyland a member of the UN?”

BBG: “No! Because Disneyland is not an independent state.”

I’ve known about Ali G for over 20 years, ever since the show initially aired on Channel 4 in the UK.

But only today did I investigate how exactly Ali G got so many high-level interviews. Noam Chomsky… Ralph Nader… Donald Trump.

It turns out to be your standard social engineering, really nothing fancy:

It would all start with a flattering letter, often to a former official or directly to a lone personality who didn’t have a dedicated PR department, asking for an interview as part of an interview series.

The URL on the letter linked to a (real) website for a (dummy) production company, which was even registered as a business and had a real address.

If that first letter didn’t hook, there would be repeated requests, sometimes backed by endorsements from reputable people in the media world.

Once the mark agreed to the interview, and before the actual interview began, the producers would start making excuses for Ali’s appearance, manner of talking, and apparent idiocy. “He is very popular with the young-adult target audience.”

And that’s how you get high-level and often very smart people to sit through a shockingly silly interview. “We truly left there thinking he was the stupidest person ever,” said one high-level political celeb, who was interviewed on the Ali G show.

So what’s my point?

Well, maybe it’s the power of trappings of authority and status, as opposed to inherent value or talent.

Or if that doesn’t suit you, or if you’re not looking to camouflage yourself like Sacha Baron Cohen, then maybe the point is simply:

Different is better than better.

That’s a koan that marketer Rich Schefren likes to repeat.

People have a hard time truly judging who’s good, and who’s an idiot or a conman. It’s even harder before you have a chance to sit across from the person and have them ask you, as Ali G asked Buzz Aldrin:

“I know this is a sensitive question. But what was it like not being the first man on the moon? Was you ever jealous of Louis Armstrong?”

On the other hand, people have a very easy time judging who is different. It’s part of our neurology.

And that’s why, in many situations, being different — along with being persistent — is all it takes to get the interview or to make the sale.

Speaking of which:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s utterly different from any other newsletter out there, to the point that I even advertise it as an un-newsletter. In case you’re curious to read it, you can sign up for a free trial — no credit card required  — by clicking here.

sold out

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Just a heads up, nearly half of all the artificially restricted copies of Copy Riddles have sol—

Relax. I won’t go there.

A couple days ago, I tapped into a rich vein of discontent by writing about Justin Goff’s “sold out” email, which tried to push an unattractive offer that had “sold out” fewer than half of all available copies.

Many readers wrote in to say they found this kind of marketing sneaky and misleading (“This email had me screaming at my phone”).

And then, among the many “you tell ’em!” replies, I got a message by a reader named Andre, who wrote in with a suggestion for me:

Your email about no real urgency on infinite+ digital copies reminded me of what Tony Shepherd used to do.

Because he had a fairly large suite of digital products…

He ripped a page out of Disney’s marketing book.

What he did was promote a product for a set amount of time and then…

Put it back into the “vault” where it was unavailable until the next time he promoted it.

It’s an interesting strategy to use for digital products.

Not sure if that would ever work for you, or even a creative variation, but hey, there it is.

The fact is, this model is exactly what I was doing with my Copy Riddles program — until yesterday.

I presold and launched Copy Riddles last year in April. I dripped the content out by email day by day — because I was creating it live, day by day.

After that initial launch finished, I placed Copy Riddles inside a heavy trunk and had the trunk locked and brought inside the Bejakovic Cave of Treasures.

​​I then had the cave sealed with a large boulder and guarded by a large man with a large sword, who only ever said one thing, “Hassan chop.”

It was only every few months that I had Hassan move the boulder and open up the cave. Only for a few days at a time did I let people inside to partake of Copy Riddles treasures.

This model worked well. Each time I made Copy Riddles available for a few days, I had new people sign up. And I made good money.

Plus there were other benefits, too.

For example, many people who had signed up during earlier runs signed up again, since they got lifetime access.

​​On that second or third run, some of them finally consumed all the content, which made it so they could finally get the promise of the course — A-list copywriting skills, implanted into your brain.

​​That was good for them and good for me. Because, promise delivered, they were now that much more likely to become my long-term customers.

Anyways, like I said, that’s the model I used — until yesterday.

As of yesterday, Copy Riddles is now an evergreen course. It’s available year-round, and not just during a few launch periods. And it’s delivered through a members-only area of my site (which I might rename The Cave of Treasures) and not through email.

I’m telling you all this because of the ongoing Copy Riddles “launch.”

All the current “launch” really means is that if you do decide to get Copy Riddles before this Sunday, Oct 30 2022, at 12 midnight PST, you will pay less than if you join Copy Riddles after this “launch” period ends. I will increase the price to $400 on Monday as a first step.

But there’s a second reason why I’m telling you about my course model switch. And that’s in case you ever create and want to sell courses of your own.

How you package up and deliver those courses will have a big impact on how those courses are perceived, sold, and consumed — independent of the content and value inside.

But if you are creating your own courses, don’t assume that just because I changed from the launch to the evergreen model that this is the way to go.

The fact is, this switch wasn’t a decision about money or about the number of sales made.

I simply wanted offers I could promote regularly at end of my daily emails. Copy Riddles is now one of those offers.

But this switch means I’ve lost some of the benefits of the launch model. I’ve had to think up ways to try to reproduce at least a part of them.

We will see if the price increase on Monday will work to stimulate the same kind of urgency as Hassan rolling back the boulder on the mouth of the cave.

And as for those other benefits of the launch model — like people actually consuming the content and getting value out of the course — well, I’ve had to think up other things.

I’ll talk about those in future emails during this “launch” period. Meanwhile, if you want to get Copy Riddles now, before the price goes up, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

“sold out”

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Yesterday, marketer Justin Goff sent out an email with the subject line “sold out”. The body copy immediately explained what was sold out:

Just a heads up, nearly half of the 250 swipe files that are available in the special sale going on today have already been taken…

So they will be sold out soon.

Here are a few things I, and probably many other people who are on Justin’s list, know after this email:

1. Justin has been promoting this affiliate offer for a few days.

2. So have several other marketers with large lists, including some with the largest lists in the copywriting/IM niche.

3. After several days of steady emailing by all those marketers, going out to tens of thousands of people in total, fewer than 125 sales of the affiliate offer have been made. That probably translates to a less than 0.1% conversion rate — and maybe as low as 0.025%.

I don’t know how many sales, and more importantly, how much money, Justin made with this “sold out” email. Maybe he did great. And maybe I will look like a fool for sticking my nose into things that I don’t know anything about.

With that in mind, let me say that Justin’s email is a violation of a fundamental rule of copywriting.

Perhaps the most fundamental rule of them all.

It’s a rule I was exposed to in the mythical webinar training that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos put on back in 2018. Parris repeated this rule, over and over, while talking about how he evaluates his own copy, and while critiquing many pieces of student-submitted copy. The rule is this:

“Does it help your case, hurt your case, or is it neutral? Only keep it in if it helps your case.”

This rule might seem blindingly obvious. But as Justin’s email above shows, even smart and successful marketers will break this rule — because they get rushed, careless, or greedy.

When I read Justin’s email, my first impression was, “Fewer than 125 copies sold? This must not be a very attractive offer.” My second impression was, “Even if it’s a fine offer, I’ve got plenty of time to get it, since at this rate it won’t sell out soon — in spite of Justin’s alarmist subject line.”

Again, I might be sticking my hoof in my snout by talking about a promotion where I don’t know the actual sales numbers, and one which is still going on.

But the bigger point stands. Does it help your case, hurt your case, or is it neutral?

Anyways, on to my own promotion:

Nearly half of the infinity+ digital copies of my Most Valuable Email course have already been sold.

The remaining infinity+ copies are sure to sell out soon. So starting tomorrow, I will turn my great eye elsewhere, and start promoting my twice-born Copy Riddles program.

That means you might not hear from me about my Most Valuable Email program for a while, even though it will continue to be available for sale.

But hold on—

Is this any kind of way to do urgency? Should the fact that I won’t be pitching MVE for a while make you want to buy it today?

No. Not unless you’re the type to get activated by “sold out” subject lines and other transparent scarcity tactics.

On the other hand, if you like the basic promise of Most Valuable Email — “turn ordinary and rather boring emails into something clever and cool” — then today is as good a day as any to start down that path. ​​And maybe even better than any later day — because if you get going now, you will start seeing the benefits of this little trick in action sooner.

Whatever the case, if you are interested, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The post mortem of my “wanted” ad

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Gary Halbert advised all would-be marketing millionaires to take out a classified ad that reads:

“Housewives wanted to address envelopes at home. You must have a typewriter or good handwriting. Call 000-0000.”

That’s good advice still, whether you are a DM marketer, looking for that first-person experience of what getting sprayed by a firehose of response feels like… or a freelancer searching for insights on what the world is like on the other side of the looking glass, when you send in your own job application.

Last Friday, I sent out an email with the subject line,

“Wanted: Competent human to do some monkey work”

In that email, I made a job offer.

In spite of trying to make the job sound as unattractive as I could, I got two dozen applications, mostly from people who were clearly overqualified, but who applied nonetheless.

After looking over all the applications, I ended up hiring somebody yesterday. And I can tell you this:

The content of this guy’s application was largely irrelevant.

The price he quoted me was more relevant, but still secondary.

What really made me hire him is that I had interacted with him a hundred times before. He has bought a bunch of my offers — Most Valuable Email, Most Valuable Postcard, Copy Riddles, which he has gone through twice. He has participated in QA calls, contests, and masterminds I put on, and has given me testimonials before.

In other words, I already knew this guy well, as well as I know anybody from my list.

My point isn’t that you should buy any and all offers I put out, though you certainly should do that.

My point is simply that my brain, and from what I’ve seen, everybody else’s brain, is constantly looking for shortcuts.

The fact is, I don’t know that guy I hired will 100% do a perfect job, or a better job than the dozen or so people who offered to do the same job for less money.

It doesn’t matter.

I had to make a decision. And I was looking for easy ways to do that. You could say I was clutching at straws.

And that’s how most people make most decisions — largely irrationally, just trying to put the unpleasant task behind them. Which can work in your favor — if you put a bit of thought into how to give your prospects mental shortcuts, and how to make their decision process easier and less unpleasant.

Anyways, getting back to Gary Halbert. Gary advised people to take out that classified job ad because “Spectators Can Never Understand What It Is To Be A Player!” Gary explained in more detail:

“You know what the hardest thing it is for a caring teacher like me to do? I’ll tell you… it’s not to explain something to my audience. That’s relatively easy. No, my friend, the real challenge is to make my message real to that audience.”

Which fittingly enough is one of the core ideas behind my Most Valuable Email training. The MVE trick is all about making your email real to your audience — and to yourself.

In case you’d like to get the Most Valuable Email, and maybe interact with me in some way over it, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Dan Kennedy corrects a mistake I’ve made in my copywriting career

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Let me tell you a copywriting client experience that still stings:

About two years into my freelancing career, I got the opportunity to write some emails for RealDose Nutrition.

​​RealDose is an 8-figure supplement company, started by a couple of direct marketers and an MD. They sell actually legit supplement products — their USP is right there in the name.

Long story short – I did a good job with those emails. I even tripled results in one of their main email funnels.

Impressed with those results, the CEO of RealDose asked me to write a sales letter next, for their probiotics product.

The only problem was, at this stage of my career, I had never written a full-blown sales letter.

​​What to do?

​​I took Gary Bencivenga’s olive oil sales letter and analyzed the structure. I wrote something that looked nothing like Gary’s letter, but was the exact same thing under the hood.

I gave it to the guys at RealDose. They shrugged their shoulders. They copy seemed okay… but I guess they weren’t sold. Because as far as I know, the sales letter was never tested.

Some time later, I got that sales letter critiqued by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said the body copy was fine. But the hook? The headline and the lead?

Parris used my headline and lead to publicly illustrate what an uninteresting promise looks like. “Are you the first person on the plant to ever sell a probiotic?” Parris asked me. He laughed and shook his head.

I never got another chance to write anything else for RealDose. I always wonder how my career might have gone had I done a better job with that big shot that I got.

I bring this up because today, I made a list of 10 mistakes I’ve made in copywriting career.

That RealDose sales letter, with the uninteresting promise in the headline, was no. 1.

No 4. was that this newsletter, the one you are reading now, is actually the third iteration of my daily email newsletter.

​​I deleted the previous two versions.

Version one was very much like this, and ran for a few months in 2016.

​​​​Some time later, I deleted it because I started writing about crypto marketing.

​​Then in 2018, I deleted that crypto daily email newsletter… and started writing this current iteration, starting over where I had left off two years earlier, and wasting a bunch of time, effort, and opportunity in the process.

So those are mistakes no. 1 and no. 4.

And then there’s mistake no. 7.

Mistake no. 7 is that i didn’t treat my freelancing career as a business for way too long. And when I say that, I might not mean what you think I mean.

For example, I always paid a lot of attention to the prices I was charging clients. And I worked hard on getting those prices higher.

I was also always on the hunt for new leads and new ways of getting leads.

And yet, at the same time, I didn’t ask myself, until way too late, “How can I promote this? How can I make a spectacle out of this? How can I get this offer that I have — meaning myself and my copywriting services — in front of a much bigger audience?”

Maybe what I mean is best summarized by Dan Kennedy, the very smart and successful marketer I’ve mentioned a few times in the past few days. Dan once said:

“Your growth will have less to do with your talent, your skill, your expertise or your deliverables than it will your ability and willingness to create and exploit your own status.”

Dan claims this applies regardless of what business you are in, whether you are selling services or products. In fact, Dan gave the above advice to a guy with a software company.

Which brings me to my offer to you for today.

How would you like a free consulting day with Dan Kennedy?

A daylong consult with Dan normally costs $18k. But you can get it for free.

Well, fine, not the whole thing.

But you can get three highlights of the consulting day that Dan gave to marketer Mike Cappuzzi.

The fact is, I told you one of the highlights of that consult day above. But in case you think a little bit of Dan’s $18k/day wisdom could benefit your business, here’s where you can read Dan’s other two consulting day highlights:

https://mikecapuzzi.com/an-insiders-glimpse-into-a-consulting-day-with-dan-kennedy/

I will attempt to make you salivate with this email

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Some time ago, I sent an email with the nonsense subject line:

“The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way”

That was in response to a message I got from a mysterious reader. He sent me an email with no body, with just a file attached. The file had seven “tested and proven” subject line templates, which I mashed together to produce that monster above.

A bit of fun to prove a point. I thought that would be the end of it.

Except, a few days ago, my mysterious “won’t even say hello” correspondent popped up again. Another empty-bodied email. Another file attached.

This file promised to teach me “How to Make Your Reader Salivate Over Your Offer.”

The file described a sales technique. I won’t repeat it here. While it’s solid sales advice, it really won’t make anyone anywhere salivate.

I mean, really.

​​Have you ever found yourself literally salivating at a bit of sales copy? Staring at the screen, your lips parted, your tongue lolling around your mouth, having to swallow hard every few seconds?

Of course not. That kind of physical reaction is impossible to produce with words alone. Right?

Right. Or maybe not right. ​Because here’s a passage that this “make your reader salivate” stuff brought to my mind:

​For instance, just think of the word lemon, or get a quick image of a lemon and notice your response.

​​Now see a richly yellow 3-D image of the same lemon, and imagine slicing it in half with a sharp knife. Listen to the sound the knife makes as it slices through, and watch some of the juice squirt out, and small the lemon scent released.

​​Now reach out to pick up one of the lemon halves and bring it slowly to your mouth to taste it. Listen to the sound that your teeth make as hey bite into the juicy pulp, and feel the sour juice run into your mouth. Again, notice your response. Are you salivating a bit more than you did when you just had a word or a brief image of a lemon?

This passage comes from a self-help book. It’s in a chapter on getting motivated. It describes a technique that’s supposed to make you want an outcome more. Because as Seth Godin wrote a while ago:

Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset.

But only when we want to.

The hard part, then, isn’t the changing it.

It’s the wanting it.

I don’t know if the lemon technique above works in making you want to change. At least for the long term. But it doesn’t matter much.

My point is not how to achieve real change in yourself… but how to achieve the feeling of possible change in other people.

Because if you are in the business of direct response marketing… then much of your work consists of spiking up people’s feelings just long enough that they step out of the warm bathtub of their usual inactivity.

And that’s why popular self-help books might have a lot to offer you.

Which brings me to an offer that will almost certainly not make you salivate. In fact, this offer will probably not interest you or tempt you in the least.

Because my offer to you is the book from which I took that lemon passage above.

​​I already promoted that book extensively in this newsletter. It’s called NLP, and it was written by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.

I promoted this book previously as a self-help book.

The value of this book as such is dubious, as is the value of all self-help books.

But the value of this book as a guide on how to stimulate the feeling of change and progress… of motivation and inspiration… in yourself and other people — that value is certain.

And for any marketer or copywriter who is willing and able to read the book as such, the book will be delicious. Maybe even mouthwatering. Figuratively speaking of course. In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/nlp

I’ve decided to let Adam Neumann act as my personal advisor on all personal branding and positioning matters

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A few weeks ago, a friend clued me into an amusingly shocking fact:

Adam Neumann is back.

You might remember Neumann as the former CEO of WeWork. ​​Handsome, charismatic, and prophet-like, Neumann built a $40-billion company, only to have it all crash down as the WeWork IPO failed. ​​In the wake of that, news reports exposed WeWork’s flimsy business model and the cult-like culture that fluffed it up for investors.

After Neumann was forced out as CEO, he was disgraced in the media as a grifter, hype artist, and woo-woo crackpot whose delusional self-belief infected others. “Serves you right for getting so big so fast,” cackled the little men at the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair, “you’ll never work in this town again!”

Well, like I said, Neumann is back. Is it really any surprise?

He now has a new company, something to do with climate and crypto. He has raised $70 million for it already.

Will this new MacGuffin turn into another multi-billion-dollar venture?

Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. One thing is for sure:

Adam Neumann does some very important things very right.

For example:

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson once said that Neumann reminded him of Jobs. Some time later, Neumann claimed that Isaacson might write his biography. (Isaacson apparently never considered writing such a book.)

Another example:

Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of JP Morgan Chase, lead a round of investment into WeWork. As a result, Neumann called Dimon his own “personal banker” and said Dimon might leave JPMorgan to run Neumann’s family investment office one day. (Dimon apparently never had any plans to leave JPMorgan.)

You might think these are examples of braggartly and grasping status-building. But I think it goes much deeper than that. I will have more to say about it, and probably soon.

For now, I’d like to announce that I’ve decided to allow Adam Neumann to act as my personal advisor on all matters personal branding and positioning. I respect Adam’s skills and instincts within this sphere. And I always look to surround myself with the best advisors, associates, and underlings. Adam is definitely fit to be among my inner circle.

It might take a bit of time for word to reach Adam that I have decided to let him become a trusted advisor to me.

In the meantime, I will continue to offer you the chance to transform your own business through my consulting service.

Once Adam joins my team, I might raise my consulting rate to $100k/hr and a 20% stake of your business. Or I might just drop the consulting and focus on my own more lucrative projects. We will see what input Adam has to give me on the matter.

For now though, you have the opportunity to have me help you elevate your offer, wow your clients and customers, and even position yourself as a prophet in your industry. In case you want a piece of the action:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

I spent 120+ hours to uncover this marketing secret for you

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Do you remember the TV show Lost?

It was a big cultural phenomenon some 15-20 years ago. A planeful of people crash on a mysterious island. They have to fend for themselves while uncovering the island’s many bizarre secrets.

I watched Lost a few years after it came out. I did it because my girlfriend at the time insisted. She insisted because everybody else insisted.

So we got into bed one night and we watched the pilot episode.

Beautiful setting. Good-looking actors. Some ridiculous cliffhangers.

“Do we really need to keep watching this?” I asked my girlfriend.

“Yes! Everybody says it’s sooo good.”

So we watched another episode. More of the same.

And a third episode. ​

​​Beautiful setting. Good-looking actors. Some ridiculous cliffhangers.

But bit by bit, I was getting sucked in.

​​I was starting to like or dislike the various characters. I formed theories about the island’s bizarre secrets and the show’s unresolved cliffhangers. I looked forward to settling into bed each night for yet another episode.

And that’s how I ended up wasting about a hundred hours of my life, watching the remaining 120+ episodes of Lost. Even though my initial experience summed up what each of those episodes were all about:

Beautiful setting. Good-looking actors. Some ridiculous cliffhangers.

I recently talked about Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. Here’s one curious thing from that book that got to me:

“It is generally the most disinterested spectator who is the hardest to fool. Those who watch less end up seeing more.”

Brown was talking about doing magic. Apparently, a drunk at the bar who is not paying attention to the magician on stage will spot the sleight much more easily than an attentive audience member who is focused on the magician and who is determined to catch the trick.

That’s because, as Brown says, magic is about “entering into a relationship with a person whereby you can lead him, economically and deftly, to experience an event as magical.”

As in magic, so in marketing.

Except you might already be a little sick of being told that marketing is all about the relationship.

And the fact is, what I’m telling you about is both more and less than a relationship. You can see some of the stuff I mean in my Lost history above. Social proof and pressure… a sufficiently tight curiosity gap… an attractive or inviting selling context.

Or, in a few simple but powerful words:

“One prime objective of all advertising is to heighten expectations.”

And with that, I’d like to promote a book to you. And it’s NOT Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind.

Instead, it’s one of the top five marketing books I would recommend to anyone…

It’s part of A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos’s mandatory reading for copywriters who want to make it into the top 10% in just a year…

And it’s where I got the quote above about that prime objective. I spotted that quote on, I believe, my third re-reading of this book.

Of course, there’s a lot more in this book besides this one quote.

Like horses. And beer. And ketchup. If you’d like to read more:

https://bejakovic.com/lost