Dan Kennedy

A hard-to-swallow fact about gold and influence

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Imagine the unlikely scenario that you are Marco Polo, the 13th-century Venetian trader. Humor me for a minute.

Say you’re Marco Polo. And you decide, against your mother’s begging and pleading, to set out and seek your fortune in a faraway, exotic land, two continents away.

You pack up your entire life’s savings — an impressive treasure chest filled with gold — and you set off on the difficult and scary journey into the unknown, over stormy seas, vast deserts, and rugged mountain passes.

Finally, you make it. You arrive to the great kingdom, China.

The next morning, you head to the marketplace.

You open up your treasure chest. You take out your gold. You proudly stack it up in front of the Chinese silk merchants.

This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for, that you worked so hard for.

You wink at the Chinese silk merchants, and you tilt your head at the gold you’ve stacked up.

But instead of the silk merchants showing surprise and delight in their faces, unrolling bales and bales of silk for you to choose from, and bickering and fighting over you, they just stand there and stare at your gold.

“What is that?” they ask.

“It’s gold,” you reply with a tinge of irritation, “the most valuable and prized form of currency!”

The Chinese just shake their heads. “Not here,” they say. “We use silver here.” And then they start to scatter, their interest drawn elsewhere.

That’s a little allegory I heard a few days ago, in an interview with John Bodi, a pickup artist.

Bodi said he uses this allegory to explain some important facts to men. The currency that trades in Man Land, the currency that many men have been accumulating their whole lives — car, career, bicep curls at the gym — is simply not the currency that they trade over there, in that exotic and distant land, where women live.

Is that true?

It doesn’t really matter. This is not a newsletter about pickup.

I wouldn’t even have shared this allegory with you, except that the day after I heard it, I was listening to a seminar by marketing guru Dan Kennedy. And Dan said the same exact thing, minus the allegory:

“A very hard to swallow thing, but I think necessary to swallow, is that these traditional credentials, this attempt to influence by resume and qualifications, or concern about the lack thereof, is completely irrelevant to influencing people.”

Dan was not talking about pickup. He was talking about writing for influence, so you can make money while running the kind of lean and profitable business you want to run.

If you have gold, says Dan, think twice about trotting it out, because it’s not what impresses your audience. And if you don’t have gold, that’s no reason not to seek your fortune as an influence merchant.

Maybe you find this hard to swallow.

All I can say is I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m just sharing an idea that might be useful to you.

It would be a shame to set off on a journey to the Kingdom of Influence, only to find you don’t have the currency they trade there.

The only bigger shame would be not to set off on the journey at all, and to deny yourself the adventures, fame, and fortune that can result, just because you mistakenly believe you need gold to trade there, and you don’t have any on hand.

“Quit teasing Bejako,” I hear you say. “Let’s say I entertain your idea for a minute, which I’m not saying I do. So what is the currency that they trade over there?”

For that, I will only point you to my Daily Email Habit service.

Each day, it gives you daily prompts or “puzzles” to help you consistently write a daily email newsletter. But these are not random, arbitrary prompts.

Instead, I choose the strategically, for the exact purpose of building up your currency of influence online.

Qualifications are not required. Neither is a resume.

And what is needed, that you already have.

In case you’d like to find out what it is, or even start building up your influence treasure chest today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

You’re one mediocre, unread sales letter away from charging 40x more than the competition

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Comes a long but interesting question about magic words that bring you riches:

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Im asking you this for two reasons: A) Your Course on Bullets and B) You’ve been on Ben Settles List, who I’m going to reference.

Long story short I saw a marketer reference a Book and said he was thinking about summarizing and making a Course, that he could probably charge upwards of $300 dollars for.

I have been re-reading ” Ogilvy on Advertising” and was thinking, it’s $25 New on Amazon and is recommended by virtually every top copywriter, marketer etc… Yet Ben Settle and many other sell their info ( and I’m not saying their info is not good and maybe worth every penny they charge ) for MUCH More Money. But on the surface aren’t even in the conversation with the Ogilvy’s, Hopkins’ and many others whose works are supposed to be the Holy Grail.

In your opinion, What’s the difference? Is it Positioning or could it simply be the use of Bullets to create curiosity and build value that allows them to charge So much more?

I mean back to Ben Settle, do his $800 to $1000 products have more useful info in them than ” Ogilvy on Advertising ” or many of the other so-called classics? Im guessing NO

Could the ability to charge so much more just come down to the power of a Good Sales Letter?

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That last part of the question is a reference to a supposed quote from famed direct marketer Gary Halbert, which goes something like, “You’re one good sales letter away from never worrying about money again.”

I don’t know if that was ever true, even for Gary.

I doubt it’s true for anybody today.

One thing I’m sure of, as sure as that the moon is in fact made of cheese:

There’s no “one good sales letter” that will allow you to sell a book for $1k in any mass-market way.

I’ve bought Ben Settle’s stuff before, including books he charges hundreds of dollars for. I never once read the sales page when I bought, except as much as was unavoidable to locate the “Buy Now” button.

Why did I pay Ben so much? Particularly since he makes a big deal about the fact that none of the stuff he teaches is secret or new? Without me even bothering to get the full details of what I was buying?

Positioning, if that’s what you want to call it. But not positioning of the product itself. That’s secondary or even unimportant here.

Rather, it was the gradual, patient, and strategic positioning of the person selling. As Dan Kennedy writes, “The higher up in income you go, the more you’re paid for who you are, rather than what you do.”

That’s the psychological effect.

The mechanism to get there was daily emails.

Emails that, day after day, month after month, year after year, built Ben up as somebody to listen to and respect… put him in a marketplace of one and gave him a mini-monopoly… and did enough teasing of his product to allow me to ignore the fact that there’s nothing new or secret in there, and probably nothing that a careful reading of Robert Collier’s book couldn’t give me.

Ben sums it up himself:

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Don’t get me wrong, sales copy is important.

But if I had to choose between having the world’s best copywriting skills or having top notch email skills, I’d choose email every time. It’s made me (and certain clients who hired me for emails, when I had clients) far more money.

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Email is how you charge 40x more than the competition.

It’s how you can sell at a premium with a mediocre sales page, or even no sales page at all.

Ben’s done it… I’ve done it… maybe you’d like to do it too?

If you would, and if want my help in getting there, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Did I live up to my 2024 “theme”?

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Every January 1st, going back four years now, I have a tradition in this newsletter:

I review my previous year and I make some plans for the coming year. Well, last year I tried to skip it, but then a long-time reader called me out on it. This year, I’ll walk the line.

My “theme” last year — theme being a kind of fuzzy goal — was ambition.

Was I ambitious in 2024? Did I live up to the year’s theme? And what was the result?

Well, in 2024 I did a bunch of stuff:

I launched a group coaching program… started a continuity offer… ran a dozen promos… put on some live trainings… had a job for the first time in I don’t know how many years (coaching in Shiv Shetti’s mastermind)… partnered with a couple people on side projects… came second in an affiliate contest for a Dan Kennedy offer that I only wrote about tongue-in-cheek… got on stage once to talk in front of a sizable crowd… appeared on a handful of podcasts… delivered a couple trainings inside other people’s private masterminds… almost finished writing my new book… launched a community… and overall had my best year in terms of income.

Sounds like I done a lot! But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

Early in 2024, I wrote down a list of a dozen+ items of what ambition means to me.

Looking back on that list now, I see I didn’t get anywhere close to achieving any of the dozen+ items.

And not only that, but stuff I did achieve back in April or August doesn’t feel like it counts for anything today. “What have you done for me lately?” some devil inside me is asking. Who knows, maybe that’s what ambition sounds like.

The natural conclusion to all this — not achieving my goals, for the third year in a row — might be to stop setting goals and to learn to be happy with what I got and what I’m doing now.

But I’m not a natural kind of guy. In fact, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.

Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that humans need both, goals AND acceptance, cow-like satisfaction AND ambition and yearning.

Besides, it would be kinda boring if I ended this email and simply said, Michael Corleone-like, “Dear reader, you can have my answer now. My goals for 2025 are this… nothing. Not even to make a million dollars, which I would I appreciate if you would contribute to my bank account personally.”

No, I won’t do that. Instead I got some real live themes, or goals, of whatever, for 2025:

#1. Recurring income

After 10+ years of learning and in some ways practicing direct marketing, I’ve finally accepted that most basic direct marketing truth, that recurring income is where it’s at.

At the tail end of 2024, I launched a little continuity offer, and I happily offered people long-term payment plans to get them to take me up on some of my more expensive offers.

I’ve also started keeping track of what share of my income is recurring income. In 2025, I will be looking to grow that.

#2. Less of me

In 2025, I wanna make more offers that are less about me, my results, my authority, my charming personality, and more about, “Does this sound sexy and credible?”

This isn’t about “Taking myself out of the business” or a fantasy about scaling to cold traffic.

Rather, it’s a desire for competence. Frankly, it’s fairly easy to create an offer that sells well to people who are basically buying YOU. It’s much harder to create an offer that sells based on its own merits. I just wanna get better at it. (Like I said, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.)

#3. Tech

I’m a luddite by nature, though at some point in my life I was a good software programmer. I wrote code for a decade or more and I even enjoyed it much of the time.

I don’t wanna go back to my old career. But like I’ve been saying lately, it’s never been easier to get little tech tools created for you with the snap of your fingers.

I’ve ignored technology for a long time. But in 2025, I wanna do more of that finger-snapping for my own benefit, and who knows, maybe even build something that can be useful to others.

So there you go, my three new themes for 2025. Let’s see how I manage to live up to them in the coming year.

There’s one final January 1st tradition around here. This is the only day of the year that I remember to link to my “Store” page, which lists all of my currently available offers.

Over the 6+ years of running this daily newsletter, I’ve written and created many courses, books, and trainings.

Here are the ones that have stood the test of time and that I continue to proudly sell every day:

https://bejakovic.com/store/

Coffee and guilt at 10:40am

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It’s around 10:40am as I write this, and a beautiful, sunny, warm, Barcelona December morning outside. So far today, I’ve only taken a stroll to Starbucks to buy a new coffee mug — the old one mysteriously shattered last night after I poured some hot water into it.

Now I’m sipping my coffee, from my new mug, sitting at my living room table and getting down to writing this daily email, and I feel…

… really guilty.

A popular routine for many marketers — I’m thinking of one guy in specific, but the sentiment is common — is to hype up the promise of “morning coffee + daily email and my work day is done!”

My guess is that most of the people who sell that dream in their marketing are actually working or thinking about work for much of the day… and if not, then they previously spent decades of their life working or thinking about work all day long, in order to get to where they are now.

The fact is, I have way more autonomy today than I did 10 years ago, the last time I still had a proper job. I have way more autonomy today than I had even a few years ago, when I still regularly worked with clients, had deadlines, meetings, etc.

But the more autonomy I have, the more time I spend working, or thinking about work. And if I catch myself slacking off, or getting to work super late like today, well, I feel guilty. Like a joke in Dan Kennedy’s Time Management For Entrepreneurs says:

GOOD NEWS! You are now your own boss!

BAD NEWS! You are a lousy boss with one unreliable employee!

I’m not sure who needs to hear this or why. The only thing I can tell you to reclaim some of the dream is that I wouldn’t trade the autonomy I have now for the ability I had 10 years ago, to show up to the office, hung over and useless for the day, and not feel guilty about it, because after all, they are just paying for my time.

Plus, I even like I what I do now. Yes, sometimes it takes a bit of prodding to get me to work. But then again, it takes a bit of prodding to get me to stop work also.

If you’re willing to work, and to even enjoy working, but you need some prodding like I do, then you might like my Daily Email Habit service.

Daily Email Habit will help you start and stick with writing daily emails.

No, a daily email is not a business in itself — there’s other things that need doing, and doing regularly, to make it work. What can I tell you? That’s the truth.

But if you still like the idea of writing regularly, of building something for yourself, and in sharing your own insights with the world, so the world can give you something back, then maybe check out Daily Email Habit, before the day runs out on you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The first time I tried it, I didn’t last very long

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Dan Kennedy has a joke that goes something like, if we all stopped doing a thing in case the first time didn’t work out well, the human race would soon die out.

Get it? Get it? Wink wink, nudge nudge?

It’s about sex.

I bring this up for two reasons:

Reason one is that the first time I tried it — meaning writing emails, get your mind out of literotica section please — it didn’t work out well. Or actually I just didn’t last very long.

I believe this current newsletter, which has been running for 6+ years day in and day out, is something like my third or fourth attempt to stick to emailing consistently.

Reason two is because I want to share with you a case study I got from a reader named Jakub Červenka.

Jakub runs an online business called Muž 2.0. From what Google tells me, that translates from Czech into into Man 2.0. Because Jakub’s business is teaching men self-development stuff, specifically how to fix various bedroom problems.

Now, I happen to know from having exchanged lots of emails with Jakub over the years that his main thing is running ads on Facebook to a webinar that sells his core program.

But lately, Jakub gave another shot to daily emailing, even though it didn’t work out well the first time around. Jakub reports:

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I had been sending emails daily and then stopped for a good part of this year mainly due to feeling burnt out and feeling like I was riding on a dead horse, writing emails about the same topic.

With your service, this block is gone. I like to see the puzzle and then read in your email how you personally used it. It’s great over-the-shoulder learning experience.

I also noticed how not wanting to break the streak is motivating me – even more so than I don’t know, say making potentially money from making a sale to my list… that’s crazy. I am ashamed to admit it, as it is completely irrational, but it’s the truth. And probably not so surprising to anyone in the copywriting world, we know we are not rational beings, but still, this surprised me.

Also, I used a few of your prompts in my Black Friday promo. I made crazy good offer to my list, (20 of my flagship courses for 40% of the price) due to some messed up technical stuff ended up selling 23, which with some up/cross/down sells brought home close to $20k in 3 days… my best Black Friday yet.

So it was a good offer, but I was not promoting it in any other way than by e-mails and your inspiration was part of it, so you can say that your service contributed to this result. Which is true and it restored my resolve to write daily.

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The service Jakub is referring to is my Daily Email Habit. It makes it easier to come up with a daily email topic every day, plus it has an in-email streak counter to keep you accountable.

Like Jakub says, why the streak counter works is not particularly rational… but it can be very effective.

And the results?

Jakub already had a successful business, and he had all the pieces in place. Reintroducing daily emails helped him make another $20k last month that he might not have made otherwise.

Your particular situation? Only you can really answer that question.

One thing I’m sure of, if you’re planning to ever or restart daily emails, the sooner you do, the sooner you will see results. Yes, even if you tried it before and it felt like riding on a dead horse.

For more info on Daily Email Habit, and how it can help you start and stay consistent with daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Industry gossip you shouldn’t care about but probably do

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Yesterday, I exchanged a couple emails with the “The World’s Most Obsessed Ad Archivist,” Lawrence Bernstein.

Along with a few decades and deep connections in the direct response industry, Lawrence has the distinction of being one of only a handful of people to be called out as a “valued resource” by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, at the climax of Gary’s legendary Farewell Seminar.

I promoted a little offer of Lawrence’s a couple months back. Lawrence was good enough to tell me yesterday that the 150+ sales of that offer that I helped make were slightly more than he got from his own house file.

That’s gratifying to read. And considering I only have a modest-sized list, it’s proof of the effect of daily emailing done right. But wait. There’s more.

Lawrence then went on to say how this compares to big-marketer results he’s been privvy to recently:

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By contrast, and I realize this isn’t apples to apples…

There are/”were” some BIG marketers who thrived on the affiliate merry-go-round of ubiquitous as they are shallow $2K courses, usually backed up by webinar selling.

That model hasn’t had much of a pulse — at least as far as I can see — for a year or so. One of my subscribers and friends, who writes for one of the big financial outfits wrote me this last February, regarding those $2K offers:

“Been on a massive downslide ever since the FTC stepped in against Agora Financial – and in general the most recent “home-runs” have been more like inside-the-park home runs. They rarely work externally… and they’re mostly just milking house files with backend launches.

I’ve seen groups repeatedly run promo’s bringing in names at 10% of BE just because they had nothing else…

I’ve seen huge affiliate pushes for webinar launches that resulted in 750,000 names on a hotlist… and the sales were so low the affiliates payouts were ZERO…”

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Let me repeat that last number because it’s so crazy: 750,000 qualified leads… and effectively ZERO in profits.

I read something similar in an email from Shiv Shetti recently.

Shiv shared stuff he’s heard inside private masterminds, gossip about specific flashy gurus in direct marketing-related niches.

These are guys who are publicly making millions and living a Floyd Mayweather lifestyle… who are in private broke, nearing bankruptcy, or are facing revolt from the customers and clients they have managed to rope in.

Maybe you’re not in the direct response industry. Still, I’m telling you this in case you ever find yourself looking around, and seeing that everyone else is doing so much better than you are… maybe even including people who got going well after you did.

You can’t really know anybody else’s full reality. And if you’re like me, you don’t even want their reality, even if it’s not all rotten.

From what I can tell, the insecurity about how well others are doing is simply a way to focus the general human desire for ANYTHING BUT WHAT I HAVE NOW.

“People are like cats,” says Dan Kennedy, “they always want to be in the other room.”

The trouble is, this kind of “But look where everybody else is!” comparison is such a fundamental part of human nature, or at least my own, that there’s no easy, quick, and permanent fix for it.

But certain things do help. Awareness of it… inquiry about what’s really going on, and if the surrounding thoughts are true or not… focus on your own work, instead of gawking around.

And maybe the following exercise.

It’s quick, it’s easy, and it might just give you a permanent fix, at least a partial one in your business, and maybe even in how you feel about it.

If you have a couple minutes and an open mind:

https://bejakovic.com/things-worthy-of-compliment-in-12-of-my-competitors/

Czech Russell Brunson’s uncreative success

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A couple days ago, I asked readers what subscription or continuity offers they be payin’ for. I got a number of responses to that email, featuring some familiar offers, and some that are entirely new to me.

For example, a long-time reader from Czechia wrote to tell me about a mastermind he signed up for last month, centered around a “Czech copycat of Russell Brunson.”

“Copycat!” I hear someone saying. “That’s rrreprehensible!”

And yet, this Czech Russell Brunson is clearly seeing success. This made me think back to the real Russell Brunson’s mentor, Dan Kennedy. Dan likes to share the following quote, attributed to McDonald’s CEO Ray “Killer” Kroc:

“Creativity is over-rated. Most business success comes from doing boring, diligent work. From developing a system that produces consistent results and sticking to it.”

Developing, I might add, or swiping…

Anyways, my long-time reader from Czechia finished his message about Czech Russell Brunson by saying:

“I am interested in seeing if you are cooking some continuity of your own, maybe not a postcard this time around 😂“

That’s very on point. I am cooking up — or more like shopping for ingredients for – my own continuity offer.

I want to make this new continuity offer, well, continuous.

Instead of having 10 people sign up and stay signed up for two months each, I’d rather have one person sign up and stay signed up for 20 months.

Also, I want to cook up this new continuity offer sooner rather than later, simply because I am impatient.

Enter my 3rd Conversion training, which I announced in a bit of a hurry yesterday, without much fanfare, buildup, or teasing.

The promise for this 3rd Conversion training is that I will show you how to make your paid info products — whether courses, memberships, or paid newsletters — more likely to be consumable and enjoyable, with the goal of turning one-time buyers into long-term repeat customers.

(Hence, 3rd Conversion.)

I can tell you honestly, I am putting on this training as much for myself as for you.

I’m thinking about all the ways people have gotten me to stick around and consume their products… as well as techniques I’ve used to achieve the same, wittingly and unwittingly, in my own info products like Most Valuable Email and Copy Riddles.

After some pondering, I managed to group all these techniques into three broad categories. Using the analogy of a restaurant, these categories map broadly to 1. Kitchen 2. Table Service 3. Ambiance.

In each category, I have several specific techniques in mind, each backed with a few case studies.

Frankly, I might not be able to cover all this in the 3rd Conversion call on Thursday, not without violating my own rules of consumption. I’d rather make the call more enjoyable and useful than to comprehensive and nausea-inducing.

But I can promise you that, if I don’t decide to cover all the techniques I have in mind on the call itself, I’ll get them to you afterwards, most likely in some written format.

And in case you’re wondering:

Some of the techniques I have in mind would no doubt be familiar to you if you could see them now. Others, on the other hand, are almost sure to be new.

Frankly, even one or two of these techniques, whether you know them or not already, would instantly make your existing products more consumable and enjoyable for buyers.

That means that, if you were to implement just one or two of these techniques right after the call on Thursday, you could reasonably have a few extra sales by existing buyers by the end of the week. That’s likely to be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars right away, and probably, much more down the line.

And yet, I’m pricing this 3rd Conversion training at $100.

I’m offering it at this firesale price is because my primary goal is just to pull all this information together, and to do it now.

My secondary goal is to get feedback live from people once I share these techniques on the call. Maybe that will be you as well.

Last I can tell you that, if I ever make this training available again, it won’t be as a recording of this workshop… but as a proper course for $500 or more.

The 3rd Conversion call will happen this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to sign up for 3rd Conversion now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Is Dan Kennedy secretly reading my emails?

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One week ago, last Friday to be exact, I wrote an email about the “quiet eye,” in which I said:

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One problem I’ve seen over and over is that people ask themselves the question, “How can I sell what I have?”

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I sell what I have,” ask yourself, “What do they want to buy?” Keep that question trained in your mind for longer than is natural. Do some research. Don’t jump ahead to what you’d like to happen, which is for people to buy what you are selling.

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Then this past Wednesday, just two days ago, marketing legend Dan Kennedy wrote an email about constructing offers, in which he said:

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Too many business owners focus on their product first. They think, “I’ve got all these thermoses, how do I sell them?” But the truth is, you should never start with the product. You start with the customer. Who’s most likely to buy your thermos? What are their desires, their needs, their pain points?

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Dan Kennedy, the marketing master who has influenced generations of marketers both online and offline… saying the same thing as I said a few days earlier… using much the same rhetoric?

Could it be that Dan, who famously has no cell phone and a “no Internet” policy in his home, secretly gets his assistant in Phoenix to print out and fax him my emails each week… so he can read them in his Disney-memorabilia-filled basement with a few days’ delay, and be inspired and reminded of great marketing and persuasion ideas?

I’ll let you decide.

But I can tell you something like this has happened to me a few times already.

People I learned from and think of as authorities in the field — people like Dan — end up writing the same thing as I do, a short time after I write about it in an email, sometimes using much the same language.

That’s an inevitable consequence of producing an abundance of ideas by writing daily.

All that’s to say, if you don’t yet write, start.

And if you do write occasionally, then start writing more often.

Keep it up, and you will soon be writing words that others, even legends in the field, will be repeating and discussing next week and next month and next year, whether they actively copied you or not.

And of course, along the way, there’s other benefits to writing. Like building a devoted audience. And making sales, too.

And speaking of sales, you might be interested in my Simple Money Emails program.

It will show you how to write daily emails that make sales.

I’ll give away a part of the secret, because it’s not much of a secret at all. Simple Money Emails teaches you to write emails that 1) say something interesting at the start and 2) that transition into an offer.

You probably could have guessed that much.

What you might not guess is the central, most valuable idea inside Simple Money Emails, one which I repeat over and over throughout the program — a kind of litmus test for choosing which “something interesting” to open up the email with and which ones to discard.

This litmus test is actually something I learned from Dan Kennedy, and I credit him for it inside Simple Money Emails.

Because even though Dan doesn’t read or write emails (with the possible exception of my own), he long ago mastered the kind of story- and news- and pop culture-based sales messaging that works well in emails.

If you’d like to master it too, the following guide can help you get there:

​https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Dan Kennedy’s “stealth tactic” for client attraction from scratch

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Yesterday, I got on Skype. I live in Spain, I have a Croatian phone number, and Skype is my only way to dial an American landline and not pay ridiculous charges.

Skype connected.

“Hello?”

“Hi Steve. It’s John Bejakovic. We were in contact on LinkedIn. Is now an okay time to talk?”

“Hi John. Yeah, absolutely. I was expecting your call.”

Last week, I cold-contacted this guy. We weren’t even connected on LinkedIn but I sent him a message out of the blue.

Earlier this week, I guess he finally opened up LinkedIn because he replied. We exchanged a couple more messages. At the end of it, I got him to agree to a call. He sent me his home phone number.

We did the call yesterday. ​​I was asking questions and he was willingly answering. ​At the end of the call, I also got him to give me his home address.

Now, this wasn’t a business-getting call. But… it coulda been.

The same strategy I used to get on a call with this guy and to even get his home address is one I heard Dan Kennedy advocate in his Business of Copywriting Academy.

Unfortunately, that training is hidden inside the ancient infrastructure at AWAI. That means it’s hard to buy, and impossible to promote as an affiliate. It’s a shame, because the training is really interesting and really valuable.

One idea that’s stuck with me is a kind of Trojan horse for client getting, something that Dan says he would use himself if he needed to. In his own words:

“Let me give you my stealth tactic. Here’s what I would do if I was starting from scratch, right now, and I wanted some clients in Cleveland. If and when I retire and I decide to spend six months out of the year in Orlando, if I then feel I want a couple clients, I will use this strategy exactly as I’m about to describe it to you.”

Dan is famous for 1) never leaving suburban Ohio and 2) for never using the Internet. ​​That’s why he’s talking about using this strategy locally in Cleveland and Orlando.

​​But the same strategy works online too. Again, I used it just yesterday on LinkedIn and Skype, though I wasn’t looking for client work.

So I got a deal for you:

As I wrote yesterday, I’m considering putting together something new, a kind of offer research service that tracks unique and effective offers. In particular, I’m interested in offers that are 1) working now, and that 2) don’t rely on authority or a personal brand.

Have you spotted any such offers recently? Or better yet, have you bought any such offers recently?

If you have, write in and tell me about it.

If the offer you tell me about is unique and actually matches the two criteria above (working now, not relying on authority or personal brand), then I’ll reply to tell you Dan Kennedy’s client-getting stealth tactic — what he would do if he needed clients today.

And by the way, Dan’s stealth tactic is not limited to getting copywriting clients. It’s relevant if you want clients of any kind, or partners, or just connections for your own ends, like what I was doing with the guy I contacted on LinkedIn.

In other words, this tactic can work whenever you really want a connection with a specific person or profile of person.

​​And if that sounds attractive to you, then think of an offer that matches my criteria above. Write in with it, and I’ll tell you what Dan would do.

A grateful reader succeeds in making me blush

by

Last night, I got an email from marketer and copywriter Shakoor Chowdhury, who wrote:

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Hello John,

I wanted to take a moment of my day to say “thank you”!

Besides Dan Kennedy, you have played the most impactful role in growing my revenues every single day

most of my NEW cashflow can be directly attributed to you and your courses “MVE” & “influential emails”…

I write emails daily now and they always bring more money or book appointments with high ticket clients…

This year I decided to focus on building relationships with my customers and not just ‘direct selling’ one time…

And I have to say, nobody is able to teach the concepts of email marketing better than you have…

It is simple, straightforward and teaches the FUNDAMENTALS of what it takes to be an email copywriter

I am a lifelong fan and customer.

Hope many more people and great things find their way to you, you are a bit of a ‘best kept secret’ in the copy world

which is perhaps why you are the best… the mystic ‘guru at the top of the mountain’

I found you because OTHER copywriters spoke so highly of you

===

Like I said in the subject line, Shakoor succeeded in making me blush, and I’m blushing now having to write about it. So let me change the topic immediately.

I recently heard business coach Rich Schefren say that he often gives presents to his mentor Mark Ford, because Mark doesn’t like to be in anybody’s debt, and so he always gives presents in return.

Let me do the same with Shakoor:

Based on what little I know of him, he sounds like a guy who gets things done and would probably have been successful one way or the other.

Last October when Shakoor and I first exchanged a couple emails, he was already working with a number of clients as a kind of full-service marketer for ecom businesses.

With just one of those clients working on a performance deal, Shakoor was taking in $10k+ per month. Overall, at that time, he was driving $300k+ in sales for his clients each month.

Somewhere along the line, Shakoor also had time to run his own dropshipping businesses, one of which got up to 100k+ buyers.

All that’s to say, after Shakoor decided to build up his personal brand and to start writing daily emails, I’m guessing he would have been successful with Dan Kennedy or without Dan Kennedy, with me or without me.

That said, I do appreciate Shakoor’s kind words.

​​I also do appreciate that I have been able to help occasional people learn something about direct marketing and copywriting… and even make transformations in their lives, whether that meant making more money, or getting going with daily emailing so they can build a personal brand and stop relying on cold outreach.

And on that topic:

I’m not currently selling the Influential Emails program that Shakoor was referring to. But I still am selling my Most Valuable Email program.

Most Valuable Email pulls back the curtain and shows you, in less than an hour, how to perform a specific email copywriting trick, one I use regularly in my own emails.

Emails using this trick are different from emails you might be familiar with, like story emails, or “hot takes,” or how-to emails, or personal reveals.

Unlike those other kinds of emails, Most Valuable Emails happen to work well whether you have authority or not, whether you’re just getting started with your personal brand or you have had a following for years.

And yet, none of that is the reason why these kinds of emails are most valuable.

The real reason is that Most Valuable Emails make daily emailing fun and educational for me personally, and easy to stick with for the long term.

And it seems for others like Shakoor also.

Maybe for you too?

I don’t know. But if you’d like to find out more about MVE, and see if it makes sense for you:

https://bejakovic.com/mve