My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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

Good Will Hunting disease: Why you shouldn’t join Age of Insight

“So why do you think I should work for the National Security Agency?”

Today is the last day to sign up for my Age of Insight live training. And since this is the last email I will send before the deadline, let me tell you why you shouldn’t sign up.

I call it Good Will Hunting disease.

As you might know, Good Will Hunting is movie about a tough-talking, blue-collar math genius from the slums of Boston, played by a young Matt Damon.

In one scene, Will is interviewing for a job at the NSA.

“You’d be working on the cutting edge,” says the NSA guy in a cocky sales pitch. “You’d be exposed to the kind of technology not seen anywhere else because it’s classified. Superstring theory. Chaos math. Advanced algorithms. So the question is, why shouldn’t you work for the NSA?”

Will nods his head and thinks. “Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA… That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.”

And then he goes on a 2-minute rant, all about how he’d just be breaking codes the NSA, feeling good about doing his job well, but the real upshot of his work would be burned villages, dead American soldiers, lost factory jobs, drug epidemics, inflation, and poisoned baby seals.

Will finishes up his rant and smirks sarcastically. “So why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? I’m holding out for something better.”

Of course:

Your offer is nothing like a job at the NSA. And your pitch is nothing like the NSA recruiter’s pitch.

Still I bet you that your audience, on some level, suffers from Good Will Hunting disease.

Too smart. Too sophisticated. Too skeptical.

And if you need proof of it, just look inside yourself. Don’t you smirk and scoff and shrug off pitch for top-secret opportunities all the time, even if they are at the cutting edge, and even if they promise things you superstring theory and chaos math, or whatever the equivalent is in the marketing space?

And this is why I am not making a pitch for you to join the Age of Insight training. The only offer I will make you, unless you are holding out for something better, is to join my email list. Click here smart guy.

How to handle tire kickers, trolls, and Tommy Boys

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

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.

Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.

Free info on free reports

Copy Riddles member Andrew Townley takes advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege to ask:

I was listening to a Dan Kennedy program today that got me thinking about all those direct mail “free reports.” I was wondering if you had a source of any guidance on how to build one. I remember Parris describing the process somewhere on a podcast or something, but I can’t find it now.

The background, as you might know, is this:

A-list copywriters like Dan Kennedy and Parris Lampropoulos are experts at selling newsletters. Newsletters are a direct marketing staple because they are great for the publisher. Money comes in like clockwork, on your own schedule, without any added selling of your vague and broad and cheap-to-produce subscription offer.

For those same reasons, newsletters are a suspect deal for the subscriber. Many potential subscribers instinctively feel repulsed at the thought of paying good money, every month, for a “cat in the bag” piece of content, whether they are eager to consume it or not.

Enter free reports. Free reports are one effective strategy that guys like Dan and Parris use to overcome the resistance of skeptical newsletter buyers. The recipe is simple:

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)

2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

​3. Put that sexy stuff in its own little package.

​4. Give that package a sexy and mysterious new name.

​5. Repeat as many times as your stamina will allow. I believe one Boardroom promo offered 99 free reports along with a newsletter subscription.

When you think about it, this is really just the same work that a copywriter would do normally. Look at what he has to sell… figure out the sexiest parts of that… highlight it in the sales material, and of course, make it sound as sexy and as mysterious as possible.

And now for the pitch that probably won’t convince you:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

But like I said, that probably won’t convince you to sign up.

So let me take my own advice, and offer you a free report when you sign up:

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

This report shows you how to start a profitable repositioning business, with your own home as headquarters. In case, you want this report, follow these steps:

  1. Click here and sign up to my free daily email newsletter
  2. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me you want the free report

Fear and loathing inside the happiest place on Earth

Imagine the surreal scene:

Dozens or maybe hundreds of police officers, linked hand-in-hand like eight-year-olds on a school trip, guarding the exit of the happiest place on Earth to keep people from escaping the happiness inside.

Maybe you heard the news from the last week. Some person somewhere in Shanghai tested positive for corona virus.

As a result, the entire city went into high corona alert.

A part of it was that Disneyland Shanghai lifted its drawbridge, dropped the heavy portcullis, and manned its walls to prevent any breach in the walls.

Except of course, all these measures were not to keep barbarian invaders from breaking into the Magical Kingdom.

Instead, these measures to keep peaceable Disneyland visitors from escaping to the outside.

Now think about how weird this really is:

Disneyland. The happiest place on Earth.

​​People plan a trip there for months, and pay a lot of money to be let in.

​​Also, from what I read in the news, once the gates of Disneyland Shanghai slammed shut, the rides inside the theme park kept running. To make it an even sweeter deal, Disneyland offered its prisoners free food.

And yet it didn’t matter.

Thousands of panicked visitors pressed towards the exit, trying to make their way out, becoming angry and indignant when they found out they were locked inside.

Now I’m sure different reasons possible why people wanted to get out of Disneyland.

Fear of corona… work and family obligation… getting sick of hearing “It’s a small world” playing over and over…

But there’s something else also.

Reactance.

That’s the word to describe that even the most attractive, desirable things become instantly repulsive if they contain an element of compulsion. If it’s not our free choice, but imposed on us from outside, whether by force or by manipulation.

Fear and loathing inside Disneyland is just a dramatic example of reactance. But reactance happens all the time — whenever people try to order you, force you, or of course, try to sell you something.

How do you deal with this?

I will have much more to say about that soon, and share various ways to pre-empt and side-step reactance before it even has a chance to form. If you’re interested in hearing more about that, sign up to my daily email newsletter and to be the first to find out.

The secret reason I still stick with copywriting after all these years

Here’s a confession:

I’m not in this field because of the money or supposed freedom that copywriting brings.

Sure, that’s why I got into it in the first place. And I guess if I didn’t make any money, or if the work conditions sucked, I might move on to something else.

But the real thing that keeps me going in copywriting, that sucks me in and fascinates me, is learning more about myself and about other people.

Because it turns out that direct response marketing is an incredible lens to allow you to see inside people’s psyches, and what they really respond to.

Case in point:

Joe Sugarman of BluBlockers fame once told a story about his cousin, who was a psychiatrist. The cousin was hired by the San Diego Chargers, an American football team.

The Chargers wanted to find out what separated football superstars from the rank-and-file of all the others players. After some MK-Ultra type research, Joe’s cousin figured out there were two personality types who became superstars. They were either:

A. Egomaniacs

or

B. Deeply religious

“And when you really think about it,” Joe said, “what did they have in common? A very strong belief in either themselves or in a higher power.”

I’m not here to tell you to believe in yourself, or in a higher power.

I’m just here to point out am important fact in case you ever want to sell something:

If the thing that sets superstars apart is that they believe, either in themselves or in God, then what does that say about everybody else? What does it say about the 99.9% of people in any field who are not superstars?

They don’t believe. Or at least they don’t have anything focused to believe in.

And mercenary thought it might sound, smart marketers have been taking advantage of this lack of belief to sell trillions of dollars worth of stuff.

Because smart marketers give prospects something to believe in. An external thing… and yet, a thing that doesn’t require religious feeling or faith in the supernatural.

That thing is called the mechanism.

The mechanism is usually described as “how the solution works.” And it is that. But it’s really much more. It’s hope and belief in something outside yourself.

Of course, after a century-plus of creative mechanisms — cold showers and hyperventilation, buttered coffee, adaptogenic mushrooms — you can’t just hold up a bag of rocks and say, “Here, believe in this.”

You gotta come up with a mechanism that threads the thin line between exciting and exotic and believable and achievable.

I got a mechanism for you. It’s called “The John Bejakovic Letter” and it’s been called the most insightful newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. In case you’d like to sign up for it, click here and follow the instructions.

sold out

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”

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