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Day 2 at a copywriting conference starts in bed

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Last night, I slept through the night. I don’t remember the last time I slept through the night.

But yesterday I was exhausted. It was day 1 of a copywriting and marketing conference I’m attending.

It’s been a strange experience. The talks are interesting. The people are nice and smart and many are very successful.

But yesterday afternoon, when it was time for the second coffee break — the fourth networking opportunity of the day to that point — I had to leave and just go out for a walk and get away. So much listening and talking in such a short space.

All in all, I counted 12 hours of strenuous ear or mouth work yesterday. That’s why I managed to sleep through the night.

In another half hour, it will be time to start the second day.

I still have to shower. I have to get dressed. And I have to rouse whatever socializing energy is left in me for the morning coffee. It’s not the coffee that will require an effort but the inevitable socializing.

Since there isn’t much time, let me quickly tell you the best thing I heard during yesterday’s talks.

Well, really the best thing was listening to Drayton Bird, who is 87, but who was so full of energy and charm and stories — “…and then Gene Schwartz asked me to show him my headline. He showed me his. They were identical…”

Those kinds of stories were really the highlight.

But the best takeaway I heard came from business owner Barry Randall. Barry is apparently renowned for getting things done. So much so that A-list copywriter John Carlton has apparently invented a “Barry Quotient,” which I guess is defined as the fraction of good ideas you implement over the good ideas you hear about.

How does Barry maintain a super high Barry Quotient? One thing he said, which stuck with me, is:

“Simple ALWAYS gets done”

Maybe you shrug. Maybe you say that’s obvious and nothing new. It sounded profound to me. But maybe that’s because I heard it live. And maybe that’s really the advantage of a live event over an email or paper newsletter, even if they share the exact same ideas or strategies.

In any case, this simple email must end here. But if you want to read more simple advice, read my 10 Commandments book.

​​I’ve worked hard to make the simple advice in that book sound profound and impactful, even though it’s just a book, and not a live person talking to you.

Will any of the 10 pieces of advice in this book sound profound or impactful to you? Only one way to find out:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Reader hopes I can understand why he unsubscribed

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My email yesterday got a high number of unsubscribes. The normal is 1 or 2 but yesterday’s email got 5. One unsubscriber wrote:

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I do LOOOVEEE the emails and I just want them to keep coming ALWAYS. But the thing is I’ve subscribed to A LOT of lists already and I’m consuming a lot of content than I should. In fact, I’m at the point where I’m inches away from getting the infamous “information overload”. So most of the time I just skip some emails to let my brain rest. Unfortunately, very very unfortunately, I have to let your email list go (FOR NOW). But I need to get those emails in the future so kindly don’t put me on your blacklist. It’s temporary. Hope you can understand.

===

Here’s a free and valuable email marketing tip:

Don’t apologize. Don’t explain yourself. Don’t hedge or flip-flop.

Email is a wonderful medium because you can control any neediness you might feel.

​​You can be however you are in real life. You can even write like that. But then you can take a moment to distance yourself from what you’ve written to cut out any unasked-for apologies, waffling, or attempts to lessen the insult that your message wasn’t going to cause anyhow.

As for the guy above, he has been placed on a blacklist. Not out of any malice. Active Campaign does it automatically whenever somebody unsubscribes.

I used to occasionally go in and purge that blacklist so unsubscribed readers could get back on my list if they so choose.

​​I don’t bother any more. I do get on occasion somebody writing to me to say they signed up but are not getting my emails, in which case I will add them by hand.

Famed negotiation coach Jim Camp used to say negotiation is a series of decisions. You can’t tell people anything. The only thing you can do is help them see and decide for themselves.

My email yesterday got a high number of unsubscribes. I’m sending a new email today because you only ever get people off your list when you a send a new email. You also only ever get people reading and opting in and PayPaling you money when you send a new email.

Negotiation is a series of decisions. You can only send people emails to help them make those decisions for themselves. ​​If that’s something you can see for yourself, you might decide to start applying it. You certainly don’t need my help to do it. But in case you want it, you can sign up for my email list here.

A secret only elite master persuaders know

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This past January, I wrote an email about my “5-year rule.” Before starting any new project, I simply ask myself:

“Would I be ok working on this for the next five years?”

If my answer is, “No way!” or “Really, I want to do this for a year or max two and get out,” then I don’t allow myself to even start.

To which, I got the following response from a reader:

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Where were you two years ago with this advice John?! Really – you’re late to my party!!!

Seriously, thanks for this. I remember your earlier email about this and it made sense then, and it makes just as much sense now.

Is it ridiculous to say that I still don’t really know what I would like to be doing in five years? Sigh.

===

Like I told this reader, I wouldn’t stress about it — I feel most folks, myself included, don’t really know what they want. But we do know pretty well what we don’t want.

That’s why massively successful opportunity offers are so often really not about the promise, but about implied escape:

* Lazy Man’s Way to Riches [DON’T WANNA WORK, EVEN IF IT’S TO GET RICH]

* Four Hour Workweek [DON’T WANNA WORK]

* 7 Steps To Freedom [REALLY JUST DON’T WANNA WORK OR HAVE PEOPLE TELL ME WHAT TO DO]

So there you go. If you’re searching for your prospects’ deepest desire, maybe it’s just to escape. If so, it makes sense to call it out, or even put it in your product name.

But maybe escape is not your prospects’ deepest desire. Maybe it’s something else. In which case, I got some good news, some bad news for you.

The bad news is, as with escape above, your prospects are rarely ever going to tell you their deepest desires straight out. The fact is, they probably don’t know themselves. At least not consciously. And if they do know, they won’t admit it when you ask them.

The good news is, there aren’t all that many of these fundamental desires to go around. So you can just make a list of them, and then test them out against each other with your audience, and see which one gets a best response. For example, by putting different ones in your subject line.

If you want a list of deepest desires I myself assembled, you can find that in round 19 of my Copy Riddles program. I call this list the Dirty Dozen.

I didn’t pull this list out of thin air or my deep understanding of human nature — my understanding ain’t that deep.

Instead, I pulled the Dirty Dozen together by looking at what top copywriters were really doing in their copy — beyond just selling the main promise and showing the proof for it. Sometimes — not always, but often — there were other, hidden, emotional appeals in there. Deep stuff, dark stuff, dirty stuff, which I ended up putting into that list.

Anyways, maybe I’ll go ahead and take my own advice. And if you’d like to do the same, you can find the Dirty Dozen, and much more stuff that nobody’s ever told you about, inside my Copy Riddles program here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

A record month

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Up until today, my best-ever month in terms of income was November 2020. At that time, I was chest-deep in copywriting client work, plus I was getting a sizeable profit share on two big email lists I was managing.

As this email goes out, 28 days into March 2023, I’m about $200 over what I made in November 2020. And there are still a few days to go this month.

I sat down this morning and made a list of possible explanations for this new record in income.

Was it inflation?

Some part, yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inflation has risen like smoke between then and now, 16%. But I still have one more new offer to make to my list this month. With it, I might have a record month in inflation-adjusted terms also.

Was it client work?

I’ve largely escaped from client work over the past couple years, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to get to a new record month. If I was chest-deep in client work in 2020, I’m ankle deep in it now. I have one client — easy work, good money, and exposure to what’s happening in the industry. It’s nice to have but not a major part of my total income.

Was it sales I made to new subscribers from the classified ad I ran early this month?

So far I’ve made $4k in sales to new subscribers who came from that $1k ad, a 3x return. That’s a nice result and definitely good to have. But again, it’s not a major part of my total income this month.

So what was it then?

Well, I will just deny any rumors you may have heard:

I did not walk through Barcelona’s Gothic district late one night this past December, and I did not come upon a crossroads, where a man in a fedora was leaning against a door and smoking a cigarette.

Furthermore, I did not engage in conversation or debate or deal-making with this man, and I was not as a result offered any occult or supernatural knowledge regarding persuasion or influence, nor did I strike a fearful bargain with said man, up to and including the sale of my soul or that of any firstborn child I might one day have.

No, none of that. If I do have any secret, it’s not supernatural or occult.

I won’t lie and say my big secret, if there is one, is out there for all to see, and available simply by reverse engineering.

But as Tony Robbins likes to say, success leaves clues. And secrets leave footprints, especially on the written page.

And with that, I’d like to recommend to you my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It’s based on this very idea — success leaves clues, so why not collect them and put them into quick and easy little Kindle book. As one highly critical (4-star) reviewer wrote:

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excellent book

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

===

You’re now at a crossroads. If you decide to take the path that leads to reading this book, here’s where you can buy it:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

BIG secret about peak emailing

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Three days ago, direct response copywriter Stefan Georgi sent out an email, “Big Secret About Peak Productivity.”

I like big secrets and I cannot lie. Besides, according to Stefan’s website, the man has sold over $700 million via his sales copy. So maybe he really does have some big secret? I opened the email to find out. This was it:

And yesterday was one of my most productive days in a long-while (like I CRUSHED the day).

Alright, so why am I sharing all of this?

Because there’s a stupidly simple lesson here:

When you feel tired, burned out, or like you just don’t want to work…

Then you should take a break.

After I read this, I shrugged, smiled at my own gullibility, and closed down Stefan’s email.

​​I didn’t feel enlightened. I didn’t have an a-ha moment. I didn’t learn anything new or really even anything useful. And yet, the next time Stefan Georgi sends out an email, I will still open it and at least skim it.

And even if it’s another bland breakthrough like the one above, I will still stay on Stefan’s list, and still give him the benefit of the doubt with the email after that and then some.

So here’s my BIG secret about peak emailing:

Your status is more important than your content.

​​Sure, if your content is truly atrocious all the time, you will drive people away. I remember some years ago signing up to Dan Kennedy’s “email newsletter” which was clearly not written by Dan, and which was just an autoresponder on repeat to let you know about various GKIC subscriptions and offers and lead magnets. I opened a few of those emails, and then unsubscribed.

On the other hand, if you’ve built yourself up as somebody important and successful, like Stefan has done, then you can allow yourself a lot of slack.

​​One email in three, one email in four, five, has to deliver something — something. The rest can be “big secrets” about taking a break when you’re tired… or about the importance of hard work… or about doing the right thing. And people will still read.

Actually I have something more to say about this, the BIG secret about peak status. But I feel I’ve shared enough big secrets with you in today’s email, so I will save that big secret for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have no status yet, or you have status but for your own stubborn reasons you refuse to exploit it, then you might find some big secrets to help you inside my Most Valuable Email training.

Like I say on the sales page for that monster:

Most Valuable Emails never required I have any status or authority. Instead, they’ve helped me build up immediate and unquestionable authority — even when I had no standing in this industry. These emails make it 100% clear I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

So what’s the big secret of Most Valuable Emails? You can find that out here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The devil sells me a coffee and gets me addicted to buying more

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I just got back home from a visit to a new and devilish coffee shop.

It opened maybe 3 weeks ago. It’s a typical “AirSpace” place, cool and yet warm, shiny in parts, subdued in others, stools for sitting, with colorful and well-designed boxes of teas, bags of coffee, and assorted overpriced cups, mugs, and water bottles for sale. ​​(One of the water bottles sells for 50 euro. I guess you put in water and it turns into gin.)

Point being, this new coffee shop has everything to predispose me to go there on occasion.

​​On occasion, but not every day — there are other good options for coffee around my house as well. But this new coffee shop, devilish place that it is, has just taken care of that as well.

The story:

Two weeks ago, I went there and ordered a pastry and two coffees. I went to pay. The girl rang me up and said, “It will be 6 euro for the coffees. The pastry is free, since it’s the first day we opened the bakery.”

“Oh that’s nice,” I beamed. I thought no more of it.

Since then, I’ve ordered a pastry on a few occasions. I had to pay for it each time.

Then there was this morning. Similar story — a couple coffees, a slice of lemon cake. But it happened again.

“The coffees are 6 euro,” the girl said. “The lemon cake is free.”

My heart almost melted. And through my tears of gratitude, I saw exactly what will happen in the future. I will be going back to this place regularly — screw the other coffee shops around, even if they served me well before.

You might think I’m telling you to give stuff away for free, to build some sort of reciprocity.

That’s a part of it, but it’s not enough. On its own, it can even be dangerous. You don’t want to train people to expect stuff for free. They will get used to it quickly, and they will start to feel entitled.

But surprise people on occasion with some stuff for free — or with any other kind of reward — and their hearts will melt.

​​Do it rarely, sporadically, unpredictably, and you literally create irrational addiction. There have been hundreds of science papers written to prove this fact, but perceptive people have known it for ages. From Cervantes’s Don Quixote:

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… beguiled by a purse with a hundred ducats that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil is always putting a bag full of doubloons before my eyes, here, there, everywhere, until I fancy at every stop I am putting my hand on it, and hugging it, and carrying it home with me, and making investments, and getting interest, and living like a prince; and so long as I think of this I make light of all the hardships I endure.

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And on that note, I would like to remind you I am giving away a purse with a hundred ducats for free tonight. Well, it’s a purse filled with info products, which are worth a hundred ducats, or maybe more.​​

I’m running an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. The ad will go out in Daniel’s email in a little more than an hour.

​​To get the purse full of info products, for free, you will have to be on Daniel’s list when the email with the ad goes out. Here’s the link to Daniel’s website if you want to get on there in time:

https://persuasivepage.com/

The core idea in this email is not new but that’s exactly the point

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As I sit down to write you this email, an old pop song, the Smiths’ How Soon is Now, is playing loudly in my head.

That’s because earlier this morning, I read about a new AI project, called Stable Attribution.

The point of Stable Attribution is to try to figure out which human-created images were used to train which AI-generated images.

The motivation, according to the Stable Attribution site, is that artists deserve to “be assigned credit when their works are used, and to be compensated for their work.”

That’s a waste of time, if you ask me, and a focus on totally the wrong thing.

A few days ago, a friend sent me an article about guitarist Johnny Marr.

Marr took a few different songs and sounds — most notably Bo Didley and a rap song called You’ve Gotta Believe – and co-opted them. The result was How Soon is Now, which became the most unique and enduring of Smiths’ songs.

Michael Jackson once ran into Darryl Hall in a recording studio. Jackson admitted that, years earlier, he had swiped the famous bass line for Billie Jean from Hall & Oates’s I Can’t Go For That.

Hall shrugged. He told Jackson that he himself had lifted that bass line from another song, and that it was “something we all do.”

Artists and songwriters co-opt and plagiarize all the time. It’s only in exceptional cases that we find out about it.

But this isn’t a newsletter about drawings or pop songs. It’s a newsletter about business, and marketing, and copywriting.

So let me tell you I once heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos on the David Garfinkel podcast.

Parris pointed out how a subhead from one of his million-dollar sales letters was the headline of an earlier control sales letter he didn’t write. That earlier headline worked, and Parris knew that. So he co-opted it, or if you like, plagiarized.

Marketer Dan Kennedy once talked about Bill Phillips, the body builder and fitness coach who built an info product empire.

Dan said Phillips is a pack rat who can pull out fitness ads and promos going back a hundred years. Knowing the history of his industry — and co-opting or plagiarizing it regularly — was a big part of the success Phillips had.

Even the core idea of my email today, of plagiarizing for long-term business success, isn’t new. I got it from James Altucher, who got it from Steven Pressfield. Who knows where Pressfield first heard it.

Fortunately, there is no Stable Attribution for human work. Nor should there be.

So my advice for you is to go back. Study what came before you, and what worked. Integrate it into your own work.

Give attribution if you like, or don’t.

Either way, it’s sure to make you more creative, and more successful at what you do.

And if your work happens to be copywriting, selling, or more broadly persuasive communication, then take a look at my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles will show you the work of some of the most successful copywriters in history, Parris Lampropoulos above among them. But not only that.

Copy Riddles will get you practicing the same, so you can co-opt the skills of these effective communicators and make them your own.

Maybe you’re curious about how that might work. If so, you can read more about Copy Riddles, and buy the program if you like, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Standing on stage, holding an award, to applause from colleagues and clients

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Last month, I got an email with a subject line in all caps:

“THANK YOU JOHN!”

Inside the email I found a picture of a young guy in a sharp suit, standing on stage, holding a microphone in his left hand and some kind of glass trophy in his right.

Behind him on the wall, projected in large letters, was his name, Carlo Gargiulo. That’s who was writing to me. Carlo had this to say:

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Hi John,

I am writing this email to say thank you.

Last night was one of the most important nights of my life.

I was awarded in the company as the most productive copywriter in the company where I work.

I was awarded for constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.

As for productivity, I really want to say thank you because I started writing much more quickly after taking the Most Valuable Email course.

Studying and re-studying the course and re-watching the video of your critique of my email several times was critical to my growth.

Despite the award and applause from colleagues and clients, I still feel like a copywriter eager to grow and improve!

I look forward to learning so much more from you and taking it to the next level!

Thank you for the valuable insights, information, and techniques you tell us about every day in your emails and in your amazing courses.

They are invaluable to me 🙂

Carlo

===

Obviously, this testimonial serves me very well. But can you possibly get anything out of Carlo’s message above?

Well no. At least not if you are looking for the secret shortcut to the Cave of Treasures, preferably a shortcut which doesn’t involve any walking.

On the other hand, if you are still reading, then let me repeat Carlo’s longcut to success:

“Constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.”

If the sound of constant study and the application of new techniques doesn’t make you cover up your ears in horror… and if you like the sound of great results generated by your emails, then consider my Most Valuable Email course.

It might be the first step on your path to the Cave of Treasures.

And who knows, maybe like Carlo, you will find MVE helps you write much more quickly, be more productive, and even win awards and applause from colleagues and clients.

For more info, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Remembering David Ogilvy

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Today is November 29th, which is neither the birthday nor the deathday of David Ogilvy. Still, I thought it might be a good idea to take a moment and remember the great man.

Because, as with another copywriting legend, Gary Halbert, the greatest promotion that David Ogilvy ever did was in promoting himself.

Today, more than 50 years after his heyday, Ogilvy remains the most famous ad man in history, and is really the only copywriter that a normie off the street might have heard of.

Why is that?

What lies behind Ogilvy’s enduring fame?

The way I figure, it comes down to three things.

​​Some part of it secret personal charisma.

Some part of it is luck.

And some part is the actual work Ogilvy produced.

Charisma and luck cannot be taught. Well, they can, but this is not that kind of newsletter. This is a newsletter which focuses on work — and how to make the work that you do more impactful, influential, long-lasting.

So what exactly did Ogilvy do? When I think of the man’s work, three snapshots come to mind:

1. The Rolls-Royce ad, “At 60 miles an hour…” That campaign shows you the value of being associated with a top-tier product, which largely writes its own advertising.

2. The man in the Hathaway shirt. The eyepatch. That shows you the power of creating a spectacle, of being instantly perceived as unique.

3. A 7-word soundbite Ogilvy wrote once, which I will not quote here, but which I bet you have heard before.

I bet you’ve heard it because I’ve quoted it before in this newsletter, and so have 99% of people who write about advertising, whether they knew it came from Ogilvy or not.

There’s some magic to this soundbite that makes it stick in people’s minds and that makes them want to repeat it — even though Ogilvy wrote it as just a throwaway in the middle of a 12,000-word ad.

Maybe you know the 7-word soundbite I have in mind.

Maybe you even know the magic that makes it stick in people’s minds beyond the millions of other words that Ogilvy wrote in his 50-year career.

And if you don’t know, but you think it might be in your interest to know, then you can find out all about it during the third call of my upcoming Age of Insight live training.

Registration for Age of Insight closes tomorrow, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST. But I am only making this training available to people who are on my email newsletter. If you want to get in on the training, then hurry to get on my newsletter and pray that you are in time.

How to predict the future without being smart or highly educated

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I’m spending this weekend in the mountains, in a pretty ski village which is mostly dead because the ski season hasn’t started yet.

Along with me in the house are three smart, highly educated, grown-ass women who spent a fair part of the weekend discussing and also watching a Netflix show called Dynasty.

Now I’m old enough to remember that Dynasty was a 1980s soap opera.

The Netflix version is a remake from 5 years ago. It’s glossy, cheesy, and oversexed. Here’s a bit of dialogue from the season 1 trailer, when a brawny black chauffeur picks up a white bombshell socialite from her private jet:

BBC: How was Denver?
WBS: I miss the heat.
BBC: Trust me, it wasn’t as hot without you here. Straight to the manor?
WBS: [smirks] I’m open to a detour.

Like I said, the women I’m with this weekend find no shame in watching TV shows like this.

That’s a change.

As James Altucher pointed out on a recent episode of his podcast, there was a time, not long after that initial Dynasty came out, when watching TV was considered shameful among smart, highly-educated, grown-ass people. Some quotes from that not-so-distant past:

“My kids will never watch TV”

“TV rots your brain and destroys your community”

“We would all be better off if television got worse, not better.”

But that’s all gone now. Among the people I know, there are few who don’t spend a good part of the week watching some TV — and feeling no shame about it. I bet it’s similar with the people around you.

Which begs the question, which things that we are so scared and horrified of today will make a shame-free comeback in a few years’ time?

James Altucher thinks it might be social media. Maybe we will still be heavily using social media in 20 years’ time, in spite of all the current hand-wringing about the IQ loss and attention-fracking and shallowness that Instagram and TikTok cause.

Whatever. James Altucher is a smart and highly educated guy, and his predictions are based on a lot of thinking and research. Too complicated.

Here’s a simpler, more general way to predict the future:

Don’t count on moral outrage or good intentions to create change. Only new technology — considered broadly — will change people’s behavior.

And speaking of new technology:

Have you heard of email? I’ve only recently found out about it and I’m very excited by the possibilities. So much so that I’ve started writing a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. A few thousand people have signed up to get daily emails from me and they seem to be enjoying it very much. In case you’d like to join them, click here and follow the very non-technical instructions.