Claude Hopkins

Only open this if you play Wordle

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For much of his life Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled with a gambling addiction. He played roulette obsessively, and would lose huge sums of money, and be driven into debt and self-loathing as a result.

I’m no Fyodor Dostoevsky, either in terms of writing or in the depravity of my addictions. Where Dostoevsky wrote Crime And Punishment, I wrote an advertorial for a dog seat belt. Where Dostoevsky played roulette, I play… Wordle.

This email is really only for you if you play Wordle as well. If you don’t, or have never even heard of Wordle, then you are a better or luckier man than I.

Wordle has been a daily addiction for me for the past three years or so, pretty much since I discovered it.

I tell myself Wordle is a tool I use to relax and reward myself for a job well done. But the the fact I play Wordle first thing in the morning, when I’m neither stressed nor when I’ve done any job, well or otherwise, exposes my reasoning as a lie.

The fact is, I like word games, puzzles, brain teasers, clues that tell me if I’m on the right path, the brief flash of insight when a solution comes together.

And then the added features of Wordle — the fact that it’s simple and limited in scope, that there’s just one puzzle a day, that it tells you how many days you’ve kept up a streak of guessing the day’s Wordle puzzle right…

Well, you play also. You can understand me.

Really, Wordle is harmless. It’s also useless, at least in any adult view of the world. But in the words of Claude Hopkins:

“The love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable. What others call work I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we like best.”

These be profound words.

The same motivations and drives — love of word games, narrowing in on a solution, a flash of insight when it comes together, a streak you don’t want to break — can be put to some adult use.

It’s why I’ve been writing these daily emails even longer than I’ve been playing Wordle.

And unlike Wordle, these daily emails have been very valuable to me, personally, professionally, and metaphysiologically.

My point for you being, see what you already like to do, and see how you can take elements of that and make it a part of something that pays you.

Nobody was ever going to pay me to play Wordle professionally — THE WORLD IS UNFAIR — but writing daily, in a short format, keeping a streak up, getting some kind of feedback always, is the next best thing, and in some ways, even better.

All that’s to say, if like me you play Wordle, you might enjoy writing daily emails.

You might also enjoy my Daily Email Habit service, because I very consciously introduced elements of Wordle into it — the hints, the streak, the unique once-a-day puzzle.

You can see an example of a daily email puzzle at the page below, or you can sign up to start playing the game yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Mandatory vacation day

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This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I concluded the White Tuesday event that promoted my almost 4-year-old Copy Riddles program.

I ended up making 20 sales of Copy Riddles over 6 emails and 36 hours.

I offered a payment plan as a key part of the White Tuesday promo, which means I collected $2,848 so far (one person paid in full) and will be getting another $17,056 over the next 10 months as the payments roll in, for a grand total of $19,940.

In my small, modest world, with my small, modest list, this counts as a good result — $9,970 per day, $3,323 per email, when all the money is in.

This, by the way, is not any kind of “HOT: Work Just 2 days A Month!” bizopp pitch. In fact, it’s the opposite.

I always do a review for myself of a completed promo and list 10 conclusions. I did the same this morning.

My key conclusion was about the reason why this promo was a success, and that’s because of perceived real value.

Copy Riddles sells for $997. The $2k Advertorial Consult I gave away as a free bonus I really got paid $2k for.

Except, for either of those to really matter, to feel real, it took constant work over months and years leading up to this promo. Selling and promoting Copy Riddles… selling and promoting and delivering my other offers… doing consulting and coaching and client work (back when I still did)… featuring testimonials… talking about case studies… going on podcasts… dripping out my experiences writing advertorials… writing these daily emails, from home, from airports, and at train stations.

A couple days ago, Kieran Drew wrote the following in a review of his own successful promo:

“Sure, courses have little-to-no fulfillment cost. But I now have over 3,000 customers and let me tell you, there is no free lunch. Products are not ‘true’ passive income—especially if you send thank you videos to every customer and reply to every email (I recommend both).”

Not “true passive income” is not a problem for me any more.

Five years ago, I published my 10 Commandments Of A-list Copywriters book. Commandment VI I got from Claude Hopkins, who wrote that love of work can be cultivated, and that for him work and play are interchangeable.

I put that in the book as an interesting and possibly useful idea. At the time, it definitely was not a belief I had managed to adopt. But over the years, maybe because I wrote it down then, it’s gradually taken hold in my head.

Today I work, don’t mind working, and in fact have slowly turned work into a kind of game that I can actually enjoy.

Except even games need a break now and then — body and brain need to rest and recover.

And so I’m taking a mandatory vacation day today. This email is the only thing I will do, besides replying to previous Copy Riddles buyers who asked for the bonuses I offered as part of the White Tuesday promo.

Meanwhile, I can only recommend you read or reread my 10 Commandments book. Looking back over it after 5 years, all the commandments are still supremely valuable. In fact, I only wish I myself would follow them more regularly. Maybe you too can benefit from reading them or being reminded of them? For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Confidence kills

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This morning, I saw a chocolate Labrador run up to a couple at a streetside cafe.

The couple — a man and a woman — were sitting in the sun and having coffee and sandwiches.

At first, I thought the dog knew the couple. He frolicked around them, wagged his tail excitedly, and let them pet him.

But it turned out no. This was their first-ever meeting.

The dog’s owner came up, leash in hand, apologizing to the couple, and tried to collect the dog.

The lab evaded the owner. He ran to the other side of the table. And then he put his entire head on the actual table, right next to the sandwich the woman was eating.

The woman started to laugh. She wagged her finger and in a mock-educational tone, she told the dog, “La confianza mata!” Confidence, as in trust of others, kills. I’m not 100% sure, but I think she slipped the dog a little piece of jamón from her sandwich as the owner yanked the beast away.

Maybe there’s a persuasion lesson in there?

Maybe. Let’s see.

Dogs trust strangers instinctively.

Humans don’t.

“Confidence kills!” That’s what we tell ourselves, our kids, and even those same dogs, though we can’t beat it out of them.

This lack of confidence is a problem, particularly if you want strangers to trust you and to do as you want.

Solution:

Do as the dog did.

Trust people first. Even if they are complete strangers.

This is what master persuaders, the ones who have persuaded thousands or even millions of strangers, have found to work the best. In the words of one such master persuader, Claude Hopkins:

“Ask a person to take a chance on you, and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him, and he might slip you a piece of jamón.”

And now, can I ask for your help?

The fact is, I don’t have any offer to promote today. Maybe even tomorrow.

So if you’re okay with it, can I ask you a rather personal question? Here goes:

What’s one thing on your todo list for today that you’re dreading?

It can be big or small. Important or trivial. The only thing that counts is that you’re not looking forward to doing it. ​​

Let me know. Maybe I can figure out or find a solution to help you get rid of this troubling todo item. Thanks in advance.

Exciting update about my No B.S scarcity emails

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Three weeks ago, I wrote three emails making fun of Dan Kennedy’s ongoing, scarcity-mongering “Shutdown livestream” campaign.

At the end of those emails, I included an affiliate link for you to sign up to that campaign.

In part, I did this because the campaign had been effective on me (I signed up both to the livestream and to Dan’s newsletter).

In part, I also did it because I’ve learned a ton from Dan Kennedy, and I would promote his stuff for free, and I have in the past.

But let’s get back to the present.

I sent out those three emails three weeks ago. I had a good chuckle with readers who wrote me back about Dan’s scarcity tactics. And then, I forgot all about it.

Until last night.

Because last night, I got an email with the subject line, “Exciting Update: NO BS Shutdown Campaign Leaderboard Revealed!”

The inside of that exciting email said:

===

Now let’s dive into the current top 5 on our Leaderboard:

1. Tim Hewitt
2. Travis Lee
3. John Bejavoic
4. Frank Buddenbrock
5. Frank Andrews

===

I don’t know if there’s a French-Canadian marketer out there named John Bejavoic. I’m guessing not. Instead, I reckon this is only time #64,171 in my life that somebody’s mangled my last name.

No matter. Because it means that, for the first time in my life, and in spite of my absolute lack of effort and my three tongue-in-cheek emails, I am now in the running of an affiliate competition.

The email described the prizes for the top 3 affiliates:

* Third place is a 6 months free of Dan Kennedy’s newsletter
* Second prize is a box of Dan Kennedy faxes
* First is a ticket to the No B.S. Superconference in May

The first two prizes I don’t need. The third prize I don’t want (who wants to travel around the world from Barcelona to Dallas TX).

And yet…

As I read through this “Exciting update” email last night, I found myself paranoid, spinning around, and looking over my shoulder.

Would somebody swoop in and take my 3rd place position?

I was like a dragon, guarding my wealth, suspicious somebody will take it away from me, and slyly thinking how I could increase my gold stash — even though I don’t really want the gold.

It brought to mind the following passage by another master of direct response marketing, Claude Hopkins. Hopkins wrote a hundred years ago:

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Many send out small gifts, like memorandum books, to customers and prospects. They get very small results. One man sent out a letter to the effect that he had a leather-covered book with a man’s name on it. It was waiting for him and would be sent on request. The form of request was enclosed, and it also asked for certain information. That information indicated lines on which a man might be sold.

Nearly all men, it was found, filled out that request and supplied the information. When a man knows that something belongs to him – something with his name on it – he will make the effort to get it, even though the thing is a trifle.

===

So now I’d like to invite you once again to sign up to Dan Kennedy’s free livestream campaign.

The livestream will happen March 1st, two days from now. It will feature Dan Kennedy, being interviewed in his basement, where he works, by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnnels. The topic will be why Dan has decided to cut off new signups to his No B.S. Letter “for the foreseeable future.”

I’d like to invite you to sign up for this livestream for three reasons:

First, because like I said already, I have learned a ton from Dan Kennedy. Odds are good that you too will learn something valuable, if only you sign up, and even more so if you actually watch the free livestream.

Second reason is that you would help me do better in this stupid affiliate contest, which I am participating in against my better judgment, simply out of loss aversion and blind greed.

Third, because I have a trifle with your name on it.

It really is a trifle. But it’s yours.

​​It has your name on it.

And you can claim it, if only you sign up to the Dan Kennedy free livestream campaign, forward me your confirmation email, and tell me a physical address where I can mail your trifle.

And in the spirit of this entire No B.S. scarcity campaign, I have to mention this named trifle is only for the first 15 people who take me up on this offer.

To get started, here’s the first step, where you can sign up for Dan’s free livestream:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

An evergreen way to create a spectacle

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At 10 minutes before 12 noon today, I hurried down my street and turned to the Rambla del Poblenou.

It’s Sunday today, and people were out and about, strolling down the sycamore-lined street.

​​As I neared the main intersection in front of the Aliança de Poblenou building, which is the very heart of the neighborhood, the strolling crowds grew more dense and then jammed to a stop.

I stood around for a couple minutes, waiting expectantly.

Then at noon exactly, I saw a group of about two dozen men get in a circle, facing the center of the intersection. ​​All were wearing the same uniform — blue shirts, white pants, black sashes tied tightly around their waists, yellow and red bandanas around their wrists.

The men formed two rows. The ones in the outer row were pushing the ones in the inner row towards the center of the circle. The ones in the inner row were holding up their hands into a kind of team salute.

And them, four other men started climbing up — first up the backs of the outer row men, then over the inner row men.

The new climbers scrambled onto the shoulders of the inner row and then stood up, their arms on each other’s shoulders for balance.

Meanwhile, one more set of four was already clambering up the backs of the people on the first storey… up onto the shoulders of the men in the second storey… and then standing up to form a third storey.

This repeated until the team had formed a human tower, six storeys high, with men at the bottom, young women occupying the middle storeys, and kids wearing helmets at the top.

It’s a Catalan tradition, the castell. Since this weekend is the Festa Major de Poblenou, the yearly celebration of the neighborhood, it was a good time to perform the castell.

Today’s performance reminded me of two things:

First, I thought of Harry Houdini, dangling upside down from the building of the town’s main newspaper at 12 noon and writhing to escape a straightjacket… and second, I thought of Claude Hopkins, dreaming up the world’s biggest cake on the fifth floor of a newly opened department store in Chicago.

In a word:

I thought of spectacle, which happens to be one of the more valuable marketing skills you can have.

So how do you create spectacle?

Some of it is operational. Again, today’s castell happened on Sunday at 12 noon, on a central intersection, and was well advertised. A spectacle is no spectacle unless there are people around to see it.

But once you take care of the operational stuff, you still have the “content” of the spectacle.

How do you do that? How do you create something spectacular in content?

​​I will only point out the obvious from today:

Imagine two storeys of human beings… maybe three.

​​Ho-hum.

But six? And kids up top, 30 feet in the air, looking mildly terrified as the whole thing sways and shivers under the human tonnage?

If you think about that a bit, you will be able to extract a reliable, evergreen way to create the intrigue necessary for the content of a spectacle, which will work even if you’re not Catalan and don’t have a team of castellers to form a human tower.

But on to my offer:

If you want me to spell out this way to create intrigue, you can find it inside Round 3 of my Copy Riddles program. And you can find many more such ways.

Because Rounds 3-6 of Copy Riddles are actually all about creating intrigue.

It takes that many rounds, because this is a big part of what marketing and copywriting is. Most things are not spectacular on their own. It’s the marketer’s or copywriter’s job to take mundane elements, combine them in predictable ways, and create something sexy and new and intriguing.

If you go through Copy Riddles, you will start to exercise your own spectacle-conjuring faculties.

​​Plus, you will see how some of the best copywriters in the world dun it, and learn a thing or six from them.

​​For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Sexy firefighters running around for nobody’s entertainment

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It’s 8:45am as I start writing this email. Right now, off my balcony, I can see a tremendous show.

I live next door to a fire station, and the firemen are doing a public demonstration on the street in front of the station.

​​They are dressed up in their sexiest firefighting suits and they are running around two smashed up cars, one of which is burned to a crisp. The cars were placed there earlier in the morning, inside of a fenced-in area, so the firemen could show how they cut a car open and rescue somebody inside.

Like I say, it’s a tremendous show. Spectacular. My 6-year-old self would have given up a year of eating KitKats in order to see it.

And yet, as I watch this show off my balcony, there’s a total audience of about a dozen adults gathered on the street.

I mean, it’s 8:45am. People are either at home or on their way to work or stuck in the prison of school. Besides, it’s not a busy street. And as far as I know, this demonstration was not advertised anywhere — again, I live right next door.

You’ve probably heard the words of the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins. Hopkins said, “No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration.”

True, but:

The most famous example of a dramatic demonstration was Elisha Otis. Otis changed the landscape of American cities when he demonstrated his crash-proof elevator — to the masses milling about the New York Crystal Palace Exposition, which attracted 1.1 million visitors.

When Claude Hopkins himself created the world’s largest cake to promote Cotosuet, a kind of early margarine, he made a deal with a giant new department store which had just opened in Chicago.

​​The cake would go smack dab in the middle of the grocery department on the fifth floor. ​​Hopkins then ran big ads in all the Chicago newspapers to advertise the fact.

​​Over the course of a week, 105,000 people climbed the four flights of stairs to see that cake.

And when master showman Harry Houdini did his straitjacket escapes, while hanging upside 150 feet in the air, with only his feet tied to a pulley on the roof of some building, he made sure to hang off the building of the town’s main newspaper, guaranteeing a front page story the day before his show. Houdini did all these public escapes at exactly 12 noon, when lunchtime crowds could assemble.

Point being, as Gary Halbert might put it:

Advertise your advertising.

But maybe you say, “Yeah yeah but how? How exactly do I advertise my advertising?”

I gave you three examples right above. If that ain’t enough, here’s a fourth:

The waiting list for my future group coaching program on email copywriting. The waiting list serves as a waiting list, for sure. But it also serves as advertising for the actual advertising I will do when I do make that group coaching available. Very meta.

If you are interested in writing emails that people actually like reading and that they actually buy from, then you might be a good fit for my future group coaching. Or you might not. ​​In case you’d like to find out more about it, the first step is to get on my daily email list. Click here to do that.

My 11-inch Stonehenge now for sale for $12.69

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The similarities are uncanny:

On the one hand, you have the members of Spinal Tap, the hard rock bank, standing on stage, cowls over their heads, smoke billowing around them, eerie lighting from underneath.

​​They are supposed to be druids. As a mysterious guitar riff plays, a reproduction of one of the Stonehenge pillars is lowered onto the stage.

The pillar was meant to be monumental — 11 feet high. Except, due to a typo in the blueprint, the pillar is only 11 inches high. It’s lowered onto the stage, and is below the knees of guitar player Nigel Tufnel.

And similarly, this morning:

You have me, cowl over my head, lit up eerily from underneath, laughing a villainous laugh, going into my Kindle publishing account and raising the price of my 10 Commandments ebook from $4.99 to $200 — as high as Amazon will let me.

“What a spectacle,” I exclaim in triumph. “The whole Internet will soon be talking about me and my $200 40-page Kindle ebook.”

And then, a few minutes later, I go on Amazon to see my 11-inch Stonehenge lowered onto the stage:

Digital List Price: $200.00
Kindle Price: $12.69
Save: $187.31 (94%)

It turns out that, even if you set a ridiculously high price for your Kindle ebook, Amazon won’t actually honor that. They will sell your book for what they like, not for what you like.

I guess there are many lessons to draw from this.

But for today, I just want to say this is a fitting example of the chasm between spectacle conceived and spectacle delivered.

Lots of business owners think their marketing stunts are groundbreaking, terrific, sure to go viral among prospects and non-prospects alike.

The reality is an increase in price from $4.99 to $12.69.

Oh well. It’s just an opportunity to learn something and try again, with some new sensation. Because what else is there?

I’ll leave you with the following story from the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins, after he first tried and failed to make it as a marketer in Chicago:

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That night after dinner I paced the streets. I tried to analyze myself. I had made a great success in Grand Rapids; I was making a fizzle here. What were the reasons? What was there I did in the old field which I could apply to Swift & Company’s problems?

At midnight, on Indiana Avenue, I thought of an idea.

===

Hopkins realized that in Grand Rapids, he had created sensations. So his new idea was to create the largest cake in the world to advertise Cotosuet, a margarine sold by Swift & Company.

Result?

105,000 visitors to see the world’s largest cake… thousands of new Cotosuet buyers… and the start of a very long, very successful, and very influential advertising career for Claude Hopkins.

That’s a valuable Claude Hopkins lesson. But not as valuable, in my opinion, as the Claude Hopkins lesson I write about in Commandment VI of my 10 Commandments book.

You can find that, along with a generous discount that Amazon has decided to provide for you, on the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Contradicting and fulfilling the most effective thing ever found in advertising

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This morning, I woke up to find a bunch of different emails in my inbox from a bunch of different marketers, all on the same topic.

All these people are promoting a run of webinars, which will happen tomorrow, staggered two hours apart, to be given by Rich Schefren.

You might know Rich as “the guru to the gurus” — the guy who coached big-name Internet marketers like Russell Brunson, Ryan Deiss, and Todd Brown.

So now Rich is promoting something, and he has enlisted a bunch of other people to promote him. Which is proof of something written by the “godfather of modern advertising,” Claude Hopkins, some 100 years ago:

“The most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”

So that’s the harmonious part one. Here’s the clashing part two.

I don’t know what the content of Rich’s webinars tomorrow will be. But I have an idea.

Because speaking a few years back about what really made his messaging and marketing powerful — what made his 40-page reports like the Internet Business Manifesto go viral and bring in millions of dollars of new business — Rich had this to say:

“I really experimented with a lot of different approaches over the years. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best core concept is a paradigm shift on their problem and your solution to their problem.”

Now let’s put our two pieces of music side by side:

Part one is Hopkins saying, 100 years ago, that the “the trend of the crowd” is the most effective thing he has found.

Part two is Rich saying, today, that a “paradigm shift” is the most effective thing he has found.

Those two claims might sound contradictory, and rightly so. After all, if your prospect forms his beliefs based on what others think and do… and if you are giving your prospect a paradigm shift… then you are by definition going against the trend of the crowd.

So maybe it really is a contradiction. Or maybe not.

Maybe, paradigm shifts — insight techniques as I call them — are not here to abolish the old laws of advertising, but to fulfill them. After all, that’s what Rich’s own marketing seems to show.

The fact is, like promises, like social proof, like urgency, creating a “paradigm shift” in your prospect’s mind has been around as long as prospects have been around, or maybe as long as minds have been around.

Giving people a new perspective has always been a powerful way to influence people and move them to action.

​​It’s just that until now, it hasn’t been mandatory. But that’s changing, thanks in part to smart marketers like Rich, who are consciously creating paradigm shifts and aiming to create feeling of insight in their prospects’ minds.

Now here’s a promise for you:

Insight techniques is something I have been thinking and even writing about for a long time. If you’d like to know how you too can consciously create paradigm shifts in your prospect’s mind, then as a first step, join a lot of other smart marketers and entrepreneurs, and sign up to my email newsletter.

Promiscious upgrading is a very bad plan indeed

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A Copy Riddles member named Paul writes in:

Hello John,

I purchased Copy Riddles some months ago.

Will you give me (and all previous buyers) access to the member’s area now that the program is delivered on a website?

The answer is yes and no.

I definitely gave Paul access to the members-only area of my site where Copy Riddles is now hosted.

Hence the yes part in the “yes and no” above.

But I won’t do the same for all previous buyers — not unless they write me and ask. ​​Hence the no.

The reason I am not giving access automatically to all previous buyers is that I have to do it manually, and that takes some time and effort. And why go to that expense for someone who might not appreciate it? ​​In the words of the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins:

I consider promiscuous sampling a very bad plan indeed. Products handed out without asking or thrown on the doorstep lose respect. It is different when you force people to make an effort.

As it was for bars of soap a hundred years ago, so it is for the new Copy Riddles today.

If you have gone through Copy Riddles previously, in its old, email-based form, and you’d like me to upgrade you to the new, web-based form, just write me and ask. I will do it, as Joe Sugarman used to say, promptly and courteously.

And if you haven’t yet gone through Copy Riddles yet in any form, here’s what Paul (same Paul as above) had to say after I upgraded him to the new Copy Riddles:

What you offer in the “Copy Riddles Course” is a very clever and powerful way to improve our copywriting skills. It’s based on the work of the greatest copywriters. But it’s the kind of practical value you wouldn’t generally find in the books they wrote. In fact, I think there are very few copywriting courses that offer this level of practical value. Best of all, yours is very affordable. Thanks again John. Oh, and by the way, my mother tongue is French and I find that everything you present is clear and well explained, even though I am not a native English speaker.

In case you’d like to join Copy Riddles before the price goes up:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Play and game are not the same

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Today is October 25, the 58th anniversary of the biggest mistake in NFL history.

Now, I really don’t care about American football, or any other nation’s football, but this mistake was pretty spectacular. Let me tell you about it quickly:

The date, like I said, was October 25.

The year was 1964.

The place was San Francisco.

The teams were San Francisco 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings.

During a play, the 49ers quarterback fumbled the ball.

If you don’t know anything about American football — it’s much like any other football. Each team is trying to advance the ball towards one, and only one, end of the field. A fumble is when one team drops the ball midfield — a bad thing.

But what happened next was much worse.

Jim Marshall, a Vikings player, picked up the fumbled ball, and started running down the field.

The problem was, Marshall was running the wrong way.

He triumphantly ran all the way to the end zone, unopposed by anybody, thinking he had just scored a touchdown for his team. But in fact, he had scored a couple points for the other guys.

A 49ers player was the first to run up to Marshall and say, “Thanks Jim.” Marshall stood there frozen as his teammates stared at him in disbelief, as the opposing team’s players laughed, and as tens of thousands of 49ers fans erupted in cheers around the stadium.

I watched an interview with Marshall about the incident. It was recorded decades later.

Marshall still seemed sheepish. The memory clearly still brought him pain.

But in time, he turned his mistake into something positive. He kept playing the game, and playing well. He said fans and other players have given him a lot of respect for continuing to do his best even after such a colossal mistake.

But hold on.
​​
Colossal mistake? That still stings decades later? Football is just a game, isn’t it?

Here’s why I’m telling you about all this. One idea that’s been rattling around my skull for several years is a quote by Claude Hopkins:

“All the difference lies in a different idea of fun. The love of work can be cultivated just like the love of play.”

The “difference” Hopkins was talking about is the difference between success and failure, riches and poverty. And maybe something more. Maybe the difference between feeling good about how you spend a large part of your life, and feeling miserable.

But even though I’ve done a lot of trying, I have not yet been able to cultivate the idea that work is fun.

​​Sure, there are moments when I enjoy what I do. And sometimes I even find it hard to tear myself away from what it is I’m working on. But never, not once, in the 7+ years of working as a copywriter and marketer, have I woken up in the morning and jumped out of bed because I was so eager to open up my laptop and start working.

Maybe like Hopkins says, this can be cultivated. It certainly seems worthwhile.

And that’s why I’ve been thinking and collecting ideas about what work really is, and what play is, and how the two are different.

​​That’s why I was interested in the Jim Marshall story above. It shines a bit of a light on how consequential and work-like mere games can become, and how perhaps a game is something different from the play that Hopkins was talking about.

I’m not sure if this is of any use to you. It probably isn’t, not unless you’re like me, and you have to force yourself to work each day.

if that’s how you are, well—

You might get some more ideas about how to make your work more play-like, and how to get to riches and success, in other emails and essays that I write. In case you would like to read those as they come out, sign up to my daily email newsletter.