Simple Certainties

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​ ​

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​

The one ring to rule them all, until it doesn’t

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A few weeks ago, Derek Johanson of CopyHour wrote an email with an inspiring idea:

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Most often all that an online business needs to go from zero to 6 figures is to focus on ONE simple business model and ONE marketing channel for growth.

One Business Model: If you sell courses, only sell courses. That’s your one business model. Don’t add coaching or do freelancing too.
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One Marketing Channel For Traffic: If you’ve picked LinkedIn to drive traffic, don’t think about YouTube or paid ads at all.

That’s it. Going deep into ONE business model and ONE marketing channel is how you double a small business.

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When I read this, I had a double reaction:

1. Whoa this makes sense
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2. Hold on, this can’t be right — it’s just another manifestation of the human desire for “the one thing”

“The one thing,” as you might know, is a popular hook in direct response advertising.

It manifests itself in different guises — “the one thing,” “the ancient secret,” “the real reason” — but ultimately, it taps into to our brains’ desire to melt down the complexity and messiness of the world into just one magic ring of power to rule them all.

Rings like that exist in fantasies, but they don’t exist in real life.

Except, that’s not really what Derek was saying in his email. He was saying something more nuanced, and not-one-thingy.

I wasn’t quite sure how to stickily sum up what Derek was saying. Fortunately, somebody did it for me, in a paid private group (the only paid private group) that I’m a member of. The person in that group summed it up like this:

1. Test until it works
2. Scale until it stops working

Many things can work — for example, as sources of traffic.

The thing is, most things won’t work right out the gate. It will take some time and tweaking for them to produce results.

That’s step 1. Most people quit before they complete this step, and instead they jump to back to the beginning, to another supposed ring of power, hoping that it will work right away.

Derek’s email was about step 2. Going deep into one thing and scaling until it stops working. Which is a worthwhile idea, and like I said, quite not-one-thingy.

I thought about how to apply this to my own business. And I’m not really sure.

In terms of marketing channels to get people reading these emails, my number one source has been referrals and word-of-mouth, which I did absolutely nothing to encourage beyond writing daily and sharing novel ideas and illustrations. Maybe I should just keep writing.

As for the one business model, I still haven’t quite figured out one that I’m happy with. Which is why, over the past few months, I’ve sent out so many emails that ultimately link to $4.99 books on Amazon, or interesting articles you might find valuable, or—

Well, let me get to it now.

You remember I mentioned the paid private community I’m a member of? The only one?

I personally find it very valuable — and interesting.

Maybe you will too. But you will have to decide for yourself. I’m not promoting this community as an affiliate, and I’m not pushing you to join it. But if you’re curious to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

The light at the end of the tunnel

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“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“How do you expect me to respond to this?”

“How about, you love me too?”

“How about: I’m leaving.”

That’s the start of the last scene of the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the movie goes like this:

The first time Harry and Sally meet, they hate each other. The second time they meet, Harry doesn’t even remember who Sally is. The third time they meet, Harry and Sally become friends. Then they sleep together, and things go south and they stop being friends.

And then one New Year’s Eve, Harry finally realizes he loves Sally, and he runs to meet her, and he declares his love. And she says, “I’m leaving.”

The fact is, screenwriter Nora Ephron and director Rob Reiner both felt that movie should end like this.

​​No way should it end with Harry and Sally winding up together. That’s not how the real world works. People in those kinds of relationships don’t end up together.

That’s how the first two drafts of the movie actually went. The bitter truth.

But in the third draft, Ephron wrote this final scene, and Reiner shot it. After Sally’s “I’m leaving,” Harry delivers a speech about all the little things he loves about her, and they kiss and they wind up together, forever, in love.

And that’s how the movie was released, and it was a big, big hit.

So what’s the point?

Well, maybe it’s obvious, but you can go negative and cynical and sarcastic for the whole movie, but you gotta end on an inspiring, positive note.

​​It’s gotta make sense to people and give them a feeling of hope, at least if you want to create something that has a chance to be a big big hit, something that can appeal to a wide swath of the market.

Or in the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:

“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form.”

But now I have a problem:

I’ve just pulled back the curtain. And what’s behind the curtain is not so nice. So how can I end this email on an inspiring, positive note?

Well, I can admit to you that the world is a large and complex and often unjust place. But it does have its own structure. And just by reading these emails, you’re finding out bits and pieces of that structure, and that helps you make more sense of the world you live in, and it helps you shape and influence the world for the better.

I can also tell you that the above bit, about Harry and Sally and Nora and Rob, is part of a book I’m working on, the mythical “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.”

I’ve been working on this book for a long time. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, do you know about my other 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters?

It also collects bits and pieces of the structure of the world, and it can help you understand and shape that world for the better. In case you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The new science of emotion and the old takeaway from it

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Two nights ago, I started read a new book, How Emotions Are Made. In the first chapter, the author writes:

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It was in graduate school that I felt my first tug of doubt about the classical view of emotion. At the time, I was researching the roots of low self-esteem and how it leads to anxiety or depression. Numerous experiments showed that people feel depressed when they fail to live up to their own ideals, but when they fall short of a standard set by others, they feel anxious.

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“Hello,” I said. “I never thought about it that way. This anxiety/depression distinction sounds valuable. Better note that down for the future. Maybe I can apply it in some sales copy.”

I got out my notebook and started to write this idea down. “Numerous experiments showed that…”

But something bothered me. It was that phrase, “first tug of doubt,” higher up in the passage. So I scanned on down the page in the book. And sure enough:

It turns out that in spite of strong belief and “numerous experiments,” this idea about the roots of anxiety and depression is not reproducible.

In fact, 8 subsequent studies designed to reproduce this well-trodden distinction all reproduced the opposite result.

In some people, a failure to live up to one’s own ideals produced neither depression nor anxiety. In others, it produced both depression and anxiety. Never just the one the theory predicted. Same with a failure to live up to standards set by others.

This isn’t just a one-time failure to reproduce a specific result. Rather, it seems to be a new understanding of what emotions are in general.

Apparently, there’s a new science of how emotions are made and what they really are.

It’s not five core emotions like you may have seen in that Inside Out Pixar cartoon. And it’s also not the fixed and familiar smiley/frowny/cry-ey emojis we all know and respond to.

Rather, emotions are something complex, unique, and unpredictable, at least in the way they manifest themselves in our behavior, faces, and bodies. It’s taken us 100+ years of scientific study of emotion to tease out this counterintuitive result.

Whatever. I’m getting too inside baseball. My takeaway for you today is simply this:

Nobody really wants to hear about the complexity, the uniqueness, the unpredictability. Even the scientists, except for a few bad apples.

Instead, we all want the immense, pretty much unfathomably complex nature of the universe reduced to a few rules of thumb, certainties, slogans. And whenever we come across a new one of those, we say,

“Hello. Never thought about it that way. Sounds valuable. Better note that down for the future. And maybe let’s see what else this guy is selling…”

That’s my free advice for you for today.

For more human psychology, gleaned from actual scientific experiments performed over millions of people, you might like my Copy Riddles course.

Copy Riddles shows you what appeals people respond to in in great detail. And more importantly, it trains you to apply this knowledge so you can make more sales. To find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The world’s most handsome email marketer gives me some unsolicited advice

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Two days ago, I started promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training, about getting richer, nicer, classier clients using AI and LinkedIn.

Reader Fotis Chatz, who writes for Ning Li and positions himself as the “World’s Most Handsome Email Marketer” on LinkedIn, bought ClientRaker yesterday.

​​But being excessively handsome is not enough for Fotis. So he wrote in to give me some unsolicited advice about my launch:

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Just bought it.

Your story about him using A.I. is what “got” me. I’m already using FB with a lil bit of success, curious to see what I can do on Linkedin.

Btw, have you considered creating a bonus specifically for this offer? We did it a lot when I was working with Igor (Kheifets). We’d promote an affiliate offer and either give a product of ours that would cover something missing from the offer, or create something from scratch. Great way to make way more sales and win some affiliate leaderboards.

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What Fotis wrote might be unsolicited advice but it’s welcome advice — because I happen to agree 100%. I’m all for creating valuable bonuses, whether for my own offers or for affiliate offers.

I didn’t do it in this case because 1) I’m swamped with other work and 2) because I believe ClientRaker is so attractive that it will sell on its own.

That said, I might create a bonus in the future if Steve ever offers ClientRaker again and if I promote it again. I’ve had several ideas for what I could do, including a training based on the Authority Audits I’ve been doing this week, or another on how to feel comfortable asking for more money.

If that stirs you a bit, I can guarantee you this:

Every time I’ve offered a bonus for an offer, I made sure to also send it to everyone who bought that offer before I did the bonus.

I want to make it a brain-dead simple certainty in your mind that won’t ever be harmed by taking me up on any of my offer early. But you can certainly be harmed by taking me up on an offer late.

In the current situation, if you wait to take me up on this offer, you can miss the current launch window. You may scoff — but life has a way of getting in the way.

And if life does do that, it might mean you won’t be able to get ClientRaker ever — there’s no guarantee Steve will offer it again since he also has lots of things going on and doesn’t need this extra bit of money.

Or you might have to pay more. Because if Steve does run ClientRaker again, I will use all my persuasive skill to get him to double or triple the price.

And most importantly, you will miss out on any new clients you could very conceivably get just by following the simple, paint-by-number instructions Steve lays out inside this training.

If you actually do what Steve tells you to do, and you win yourself a new client or two in the next month that you wouldn’t have otherwise, that can legitimately be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to you — depending on who you work with and what you deliver.

Point being, if you’re considering ClientRaker, it can make sense to get it now rather than wait. The following page has the full details if you want some help making that decision:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker