Dan Kennedy

To all my dog trainers, pottery instructors, and professional alpaca whisperers

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Yesterday I got a question from Liza Schermann, the original “Crazy Email Lady” and current head copywriter at surging startup Scandinavian Biolabs. Liza wanted to know:

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Why so tempting??

I promised myself never to click through to the sales page of Daily Email Habit. It’s too good an offer not to buy, but I knew I wouldn’t commit. Yesterday, I gave in and clicked against my better judgement.

Anyhow, now I’m wondering:

The example you provide on the sales page is very specific to online marketing. Are most of the prompts geared towards this crowd? Or is it a mix, and people can adjust as they see fit for their own purposes?

I happen to be in this crowd, so it makes perfect sense to me. But maybe there’s a dog trainer, a pottery instructor, or a professional alpaca whisperer on your list who’s scratching their head wondering what to do with a prompt about daily emails (or something similar).

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I got variants of this question all week. In a nutshell:

Daily emails, like the kind Daily Email Habit gets you to write (including the sample prompt on the sales page) will work in any business or industry. The only caveat is you must be willing to put yourself (or some sort of avatar you write behind) as the face of that business.

In fact, that’s the point of daily emails, unpleasant though it may sound.

You’re ultimately selling yourself as the product, rather than whatever your “product” officially is. In the words of Dan Kennedy, a direct marketer who has managed to sell himself for millions and millions of dollars:

“The higher up in income you go, the more you’re paid for who you are, rather than what you do.”

So now the question becomes, are daily emails, the way Daily Email Habit helps you to write, a fit for you?

Only you can decide that.

Maybe you don’t like the business of selling you, even for a premium, and maybe you want your products or services to stand for themselves, at competitive market rates.

That’s a fine decision. In this case, don’t go the daily email route, because the relationship and authority you build up will only interfere with people buying from you on the strength of your product or price alone.

On the other hand, if you want to charge higher prices… or surround yourself with a moat that’s not easily crossed by marauding neighbors… or have a ready source of income whenever your business or personal life needs it… then daily emails work great.

And Daily Email Habit will help you write them, in an effective and (relatively) painless way, whether you are a dog trainer, pottery instructor, or professional alpaca whisperer.

But that doesn’t change the cruel truth:

The price for Daily Email Habit is going up tonight at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to an obscene $50/month.

If you’re considering getting in before the price increases for ever and ever, and you want the full info on DEH:

https://bejakovic.com/deh/

Sneaky guru model for getting the most out of a pool of prospects

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If you’re the enterprising sort, here’s a direct-response recipe for getting the maximum value out of a pool of prospects:

1. Run a campaign featuring a guru who is promising an outcome, say, big stock market returns.

2. Make sales of your offer to people who respond to that campaign.

3. Take all the people who didn’t buy (or who bought once, but then canceled a subscription offer) and put in front of them another, entirely different-seeming offer, with a different guru, which actually makes the exact same promise as the offer in step 2.

4. Go back to step 2, and keep going back, with still another guru and another different-seeming offer, repeating until everyone has bought.

I once heard direct marketing expert Dan Kennedy talking about this sneaky multiple-guru model, which is actually very common among high-level direct response operators.

This strategy is obvious enough that in what behemoths like Agora are doing, but it happens in less obvious ways in many other businesses.

Some direct response businesses have low/mid/high variants of the same underlying product, all behind different brands that are impossible for prospects to see through.

Other businesses simply partner with related businesses who make the same promise but with a different feel, tone, or face to their message.

The point being, some people might not like you or your style. But if they’ve raised their hands to say they want the outcome you promise, that’s real value.

Sooner or later, somebody somewhere will sell these folks an offer to help them get that outcome. That somebody might as well be you, and that somewhere might as well be right here, right now, using the recipe above.

And with that, let me remind you one final time of the free training that email marketer Chris Orzechowski is putting on tomorrow, Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST.

Chris is gonna be sharing his “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

I haven’t seen Chris’s training, but I do know his business model and his philosophy.

The fact is, it’s very similar to what I do, to what I preach in these emails, and to what I sell in my offers.

But — maybe you don’t want to hear this from me. Or maybe you have heard it from me, for a long time, and while you like hearing it, maybe it still hasn’t clicked, or hasn’t moved you to action.

In that case, Chris’s free training — and the 8-week coaching program he will be launching on the back of it in the coming weeks — might just be the fix.

If an email-based, flexible, profitable, and even fun business is an outcome you would raise your hand for, then here’s a free offer to help you get there:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Ben Settle & Dan Kennedy both said it — but who was the original source?

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Here’s the history of the men who influenced me to be where I am today, writing you this email:

Patient readers know my susceptibility and fondness for the phrase, “The only real security is your ability to produce.”

I read that idea in a Ben Settle email back in 2017, which got me to sign up to Ben’s Email Players newsletter, which eventually convinced me to start sending daily emails myself.

As Ben wrote in that email, he himself got the “ability to produce” idea from an even older Dan Kennedy newsletter. I thought it stopped there, even though I always felt that “ability to produce” is an odd phrase for Dan Kennedy to invent. (Perhaps that’s why it stuck in my mind so.)

But, as I found out only last week, this phrase is not a strange Dan Kennedy construction.

The quote about “ability to produce” actually goes back to Douglas MacArthur, one of only five 5-star generals in the history of the United States.

MacArthur’s quote, such as I could trace it, was “Security lies in our ability to produce.” MacArthur was speaking quite literally, about national security and the importance of industry and agriculture to that.

But I’m not here to talk tariffs. I’m telling you this because this is a newsletter about ideas, specifically insightful ideas, even more specifically, insightful ideas that you can apply and bring into reality and profit from.

And on that note, I have a new offer for you. It’s a $3.99 ebook called Click Send Earn.

This book is written by Igor Kheifets. I’ve known Igor for a while. Back in 2021, I gave a presentation inside his List Building Lifestyle mastermind, which eventually turned into my Simple Money Emails course.

I bought Igor’s book last week because, frankly, I was curious about the funnel he was using to sell it.

But I read the book as well. And I was surprised, in a very positive sense.

As Igor said somewhere (in private, not inside this book) he could charge $97-$297 for the info that’s inside. And I believe it. So I reached out to him and asked to promote his book, for the following three reasons:

First off, this book is very clearly written by Igor, not by AI, not a ghostwriter.

Second, it lays out how Igor walked the familiar rags-to-riches route — which in his case was literal, because he used to clean toilets at a hotel once upon a time, and now makes millions a year via email.

The book lays out lessons learned along the way and gives you the business blueprint that Igor uses today, and which he teaches others, for how to build and grow and monetize email lists.

Third, this book has ideas in it that were new and insightful for me. For example, it was early in Igor’s book (p. 11) that I learned that that “ability to produce” quote is not from Ben Settle or even Dan Kennedy, but from Douglas MacArthur.

Like I said, when I bought Igor’s book, I bought it out of curiosity around the marketing.

But I thought my audience — “MY audience is different” — is too sophisticated when it comes to email marketing to profit from a book titled Click Send Earn.

Well, like I said, I’ve since read the book. I’ve learned new things and gotten value from it. I can get behind and endorse everything he teaches inside this book. That’s why I asked Igor to promote it.

And that’s what I’m doing right now, recommending it to you.

If you’re looking for a proven (by Igor, and his students) blueprint for a successful email-based business, then buy this book, read it, apply it, and profit. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/clicksendearn

A tabloidy factoid about Dan Ferrari and Ning Li

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A few weeks ago, copywriter Tom Baines wrote me to say:

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Anyway, I’m excited for your new book, and here’s an interesting tabloidy factoid you may already be aware of: Dan Ferarri and Ning Li have both talked openly about how they first connected in a pickup artist subreddit, where Dan initially mentored Ning as a pick-up artist before eventually bringing him over into copywriting and helping him build his career here… I think it’s a fun little overlap.

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I’m sharing this as a bit of gossip in case you have connections to the copywriting industry. Ning and Dan are both well-known figures there. I never knew the background of how they met, even though I was in Dan’s small and intimate coaching program 5+ years ago.

Beyond gossip, anything worthwhile here?

I heard direct marketing legend Dan Kennedy say on multiple occasions how the top copywriters he knows all have years of “nose to nose, toes to toes” sales experience. And if you look at the famousest copywriters, from Claude Hopkins to Gary Halbert on down to Dan Kennedy himself, all started out in direct or door-to-door sales.

But I think today the “nose to nose, toes to toes” connection has weakened, in large part because door-to-door sales has become a much rarer endeavor.

On the other hand, I know more successful copywriters who have experience with pickup than I can count on my two hands and 10 sticky fingers.

In part, that’s because equivalent social shifts — things like the Internet — which caused d2d selling to drop have also made info about pickup and seduction available to a large pool of eager men.

But it’s more than that.

There are ideas, skills, and attitudes that translate from pickup to copywriting, and vice versa, same as from copy to d2d sales, and vice versa.

All to say:

1. You might have valuable skills and experiences you are not aware of right now.

2. If you want to find out some of the connections between copywriting and d2d sales and pickup, and also seemingly unrelated but deeply connected fields like hypnosis and stage magic and standup comedy, then you might like:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The fiction business

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The last week or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time obsessively checking how my new book is doing on Amazon. This morning, in a bout of such checking, Amazon offered to show me its “Movers and Shakers: Our biggest gainers in sales rank over the past 24 hours. Updated frequently.”

This is something I had long wished for but didn’t know existed — a kind of first derivative of sales, what’s selling better lately, what’s moving up in the ranks quickly?

I checked the Kindle store. Unfortunately, there are just two pages of movers and shakers for the entire Kindle store, as opposed to movers and shakers across subcategories.

And what is moving and shaking in the Kindle store?

The same damn stuff as always.

Out of the 100 top movers and shakers, 99 are fiction books, mostly romance novels and literotica. Exactly one is a non-fiction book, Mark Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which, based on its promise alone, might as well be classified as fiction.

This made me think of something I heard Dan Kennedy say in one of his closed-door, multithousand-dollar, info marketing seminars. Said Dan:

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Many people make the mistake of thinking we’re in the non fiction business. Big mistake. We’re in the fiction business. First of all, remember that most of your customers never do anything with most of what they buy from you, therefore, their experience is fictional, not non-fictional. [The small audience of top info marketers laughs, but Dan continues.] Laugh if you want. I’m being very serious. They’re having a fictional experience. They actually believe they’re doing something. they are not, but they think they are doing something.

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If you sell information online, this is a very bitter pill to swallow, and in fact, it’s one that I keep refusing to swallow.

Which is dumb, because why argue against Dan Kennedy, who basically made everybody who has been successful in the info publishing business?

But I keep hoping and in fact working on getting people to not just buy my stuff, but to actually consume it, and ultimately, to put it to use and to benefit from it. It’s slow going, but it gives me hope and a goal to look forward to.

Anyways, as I say in the conclusion of my new 10 Commandments book, I hope you will apply the 10 principles I share in that book in your own business and personal life.

I’ve worked hard to make the book both interesting and practical, with new distinctions to help you actually get traction, putting to work good ideas that you may have heard of before but haven’t done anything with. Of course, you might also come across commandments that are entirely new to you. Put those to work as well.

And on that note, I’ve gotten a few more reviews after writing my dirge about having just one review a few days ago. Here’s a review from Maliha Mannan, who writes over at The Side Blogger:

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As someone who makes an offer almost daily via email, it’s essential that people like me, and also buy from me. This book is full of ideas for doing just that. I read it too quickly, so I plan to read it again soon (it’s a tiny book but packed with curious ideas that you should take a minute to fully comprehend, appreciate, and implement). I see it becoming one of those books I read at least once a year. It’s that good!

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In case you too would like to get a copy of my new non-fiction book:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The death of infotainment

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A few days ago, an interesting comment popped up in my Daily Email House community. Gasper Crepinsek, who helps entrepreneurs adopt AI, wrote about his current content strategy:

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“So for now… whenever I feel like sharing value, I just share it with my audience directly (despite the current thinking on X that VALUE is bad, INSIGHT is king). I have actually found that people are converting even when I do make a “value / tutorial” sequence paired with soft selling approach. But that is the topic of another post.”

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This caught my owlish eye. It made me think back to the old Dan Kennedy chestnut — whatever becomes a norm leads to normal, average results… and normal, average results put you right at the poverty line.

There’s no denying that infotainment — stories, analogies, insight — has become the norm. Maybe not in every niche just yet, but among course creators, coaches, Internet marketers most definitely yes.

Curious fact:

Gasper is not the only one defying the infotainment norm with success.

As another example, take marketer Derek Johanson, the creator of the CopyHour course.

Derek has been at the Internet marketing thing for a long while, 12+ years.

I know for a fact Derek can write typical infotaining emails because he has done it in the past.

But a while back, he moved to writing very how-to, practical, almost tutorial-like daily emails, which run in series that cover different topics from week to week. I’m guessing it’s because it’s working better for him.

My own consumption of newsletters and marketing advice bears out this move from infotainment.

I’ve noticed I practically never read the infotainment part in the newsletters subscribe to any more. Instead, I just scroll down to see the practical takeaway, and maybe the offer.

Granted, I’m a rather “sophisticated” consumer of email newsletters (meaning, I’ve been exposed to a ton of them, particularly in the copywriting and marketing space, over the past 10+ years of working in this field). Still, that just makes me a kind of owl-eyed canary in a coalmine, and maybe points to a bigger trend that will be obvious to others soon.

But I hear you say, “A craving for fun and entertainment is a fundamental of human psychology! It can’t ever die, you silly canary!”

No doubt. Just because infotainment is dead, or at least dying at the moment, doesn’t mean it won’t come back, like a feathery fiend out of its own ashes.

From what I’ve seen, the mass mind moves in a pendulum, a swing between two poles, in this case infotaining and how-to content. Right now, I think we’re on a down-swing away from the infotainment pole.

That said, I realize I have been violating the very point I’m trying to share with you, by telling you this observation in the context of a story and my own predictions, instead of telling you how to to write how-to content yourself.

Old habits die hard.

I will fix that tomorrow. For real. I’ll tell you how to write a how-to email in an age where ChatGPT can adequately answer any how-to question.

Meanwhile, I would like to remind you of my ongoing, but not for long, promotion of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership.

It’s finally time to bring this promotion to a close. I will end it this Sunday, April 6, at 12 midnight PST.

I will certainly promote Royalty Ronin again in the future, maybe even every month. So you might wonder what exactly this Sunday deadline means.

I have been giving a bonus bundle to people who signed up for a week’s free trial of Ronin. After Sunday, this bonus bundle will go away, or rather, it will go behind the paywall. I will no longer give it to people who do the free trial, but who end up signing up and paying for Ronin.

If you’d like to kick off a week’s free trial to Ronin before the the trial bonuses disappear, you can do that at the following link:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. My bonus bundle, which I have decided to call the “Lone Wolf and Cub” bonus bundle, to go with the “ronin” theme, currently includes the following:

1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.

2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.

3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.

I say “currently includes” because I will probably add more bonuses to this bundle, once I remove it as a bonus for the Ronin free trial and make it a bonus for actual Ronin subscription.

But if you sign up for trial now and decide to stick with Ronin (or you’ve already joined based on my recommendation), I’ll get you the extra bonuses automatically in the course area.

The Bejakovic principle

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“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure ought and six, result misery.”

I recently finished reading David Copperfield, a book written some 175 years ago by Charles Dickens.

I read David Copperfield based on the strength of that quote, which is spoken by a character named Wilkins Micawber, and has become popularly known as the Micawber principle.

The Micawber principle pretty much sums up my own attitude to money, try as I have to care more about getting rich for the sake of getting rich.

But today’s email is not about money. Rather, it’s about influence.

Dickens introduces Wilkins Micawber by saying the man had “no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg.”

Micawber’s clothes were shabby, but he carried a “jaunty sort of a stick” and a quizzing-glass (something like a monocle) on the outside of his coat. (“For ornament, I afterwards found,” Dickens adds, “as he seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.”)

As becomes clear throughout the book, Mr. Micawber loves pompous language… swings between despair and perfect cheerfulness in the span of a meal… and is always in debt, and is always running away from his lenders. Hence the Micawber principle, which Micawber advises others to live by, but cannot follow himself.

But let me get to the point of this email:

I hadn’t realized this before, but Charles Dickens is famous for his characters. In fact, he might be the most famous novelist of all times, in all languages, when it comes to distinct, memorable characters.

Besides Mr. Micawber, there’s Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, Tiny Tim, the Artful Dodger — dozens and dozens of famous characters, many of who have passed into popular culture and even the English language.

So what?

So I’m telling ya, read Dickens for character… and then apply the lessons to yourself.

As Dan Kennedy said once, the basis for influence is invention.

Specifically, Dan said that people who write for great influence — he was talking about people who write for business purposes, as he does — turn themselves into personas, into fictional characters.

And by the way, Dan adds:

“The good copywriters are frustrated fiction writers and read fiction.”

So read Dickens. Or read some other fiction, which is built around distinct, memorable characters.

And then, add a quizzing glass to your outfit, even if you seldom look through it and cannot see anything when you do… and even if it’s only there in your writing, and not in reality.

Now here’s the Bejakovic principle:

“Twenty four hours, one email written and sent out, result happiness. Twenty four hours, no emails written or sent out, result misery.”

Only difference is, unlike Mr. Micawber, I manage to live by my own principle. And if you’d like my help in achieving lasting happiness, and maybe in turning yourself into a fictional character in your emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It can’t go on for long like this

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I once took a class on “health economics,” which is just what it sounds like.

One thing that’s stuck with me from those lectures is how back in the 1980s, the best and brightest political scientists in the West had no clue that the Soviet Union was about to collapse.

The only guy who was confidently predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was some low-profile economist who was looking at the rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths in the USSR.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they were sky-high. A major part of the Soviet working-age population was either chronically drunk, sick from drinking, or dying from drinking.

It couldn’t go on for long like this, that economist predicted. And sure enough, it didn’t.

I thought of this a couple days ago while forcing myself to read an article about the U.S. Army’s recruiting shortfalls.

The U.S. Army’s recruiting woes are not a topic that I am personally interested in, but I’m glad I read the article. Among many other interesting things, it taught me the following:

“According to a Pentagon study, more than three-quarters of Americans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are ineligible, because they are over-weight, unable to pass the aptitude test, afflicted by physical or mental-health issues, or disqualified by such factors as a criminal record.”

I wanted to get a baseline.

A bit of perplexitying told me that during World War II, “nearly half” of men were deemed ineligible to serve in the army… during the Vietnam war, that had risen to “more than half” (though many eligible men were exempted for being in college)… by 2017, the number of ineligible men and women, ages 17 to 24, had reached 71%. In the most recent study, in 2022, that number had gone up to 77%.

In other words, in the span of about 50 years, the share of the “ineligible” has gone up by more than 50%… and the share of U.S. citizens, in the prime of life, who are not significantly compromised by health, mental, or behavioral issues, is now barely 1 in 5.

I don’t know what the future of the U.S. is. But the trend certainly isn’t good. It can’t go on for long like this.

Now that I’ve dug a six-foot-deep hole for myself so far in this email, let’s see if I can clamber out.

One idea I’ve personally found very inspiring over the years comes from Dan Kennedy.

I only know this idea as it was retold by Ben Settle in one of Ben’s emails. In fact, it was this email that got me to sign up to Ben’s paid newsletter.

The idea is the “myth of security.” Because, says Dan, there is no such thing as security. Not really, not if you look close.

There’s no security in the money or investments you already have in the bank… in the job that you have now… in the business that you might own… in the current method you have of getting customers or clients… even in your personal relationships, your community, or even your nation (or your nation’s army).

All of that can disappear, from today to tomorrow, or from this year to next year. It’s happened before, and it can happen again.

The only security you have? According to Dan, it’s only in your ‘ability to produce.’ In a few more of Dan’s words:

“… you had better sustain a very, very serious commitment to maintaining, improving, enhancing and strengthening your own ‘ability to produce’, because, in truth, it is all you’ve got and all you will ever have. Anything and everything else you see around you, you acquire and accumulate, you invest in, you trust in, can disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Another valuable idea I’ve learned, this from “Sovereign Man” Simon Black, is that of a Plan B. A Plan B is a plan that works in case things go bad… and that also works and brings in value even if things stay as they are.

Dan Kennedy’s idea of a very serious commitment to your “ability to produce” falls into this Plan B category.

I don’t know what you can produce.

I’ve personally decided to focus on producing effective communication — on putting together words that can motivate, influence, and guide others, and getting better at doing that, day after day.

I figure if nothing ever changes, and things stay exactly as they are, those will be very valuable skills to have.

On the other hand, if things change drastically tomorrow, those will still be valuable skills to have — and they may prove to be the only things that still have value.

If you’d like my help and guidance in developing your own ability to produce, starting today, so you can be prepared for tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The 4 faces on my Mt. Rushmore

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Direct marketer Brian Kurtz, who used to be a VP at DM behemoth Boardroom, once named his Mt. Rushmore — the 4 greatest copywriters he ever worked with and learned from.

Inspired by Brian, I had the idea to name my own Mt. Rushmore.

Who are the four people who have influenced me the most?

Fortunately, I didn’t really have to think.

I have an objective measure of who has influenced me the most:

On my website, where I archive these emails, I tag people I’ve mentioned in the emails. That means I can simply go by people I have quoted most often, whose ideas I have referred to the most, who have appeared in these emails, and I guess in my head, the most.

So here they are. The four faces on Bejako’s Mt. Rushmore… along with just one, biggest, most important idea I got from each (it wasn’t easy to choose):

Mt. Rushmore #1: Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy tops the list in terms of number of mentions in this newsletter.

As a result, I had the most trouble picking just one idea that I got from him.

I made a list of a dozen ideas, and picked one that truly was revolutionary in my formation.

It was this:

“Infotainment” is not telling readers a fun or touching story and then trying to twist that into a sale.

In Dan’s world, everything is strategic, and is done for a reason. It took me a long time to learn that, and it’s something I’m still trying to fully internalize. As Dan puts it:

“I’m not Harry Dent or Warren Buffet, not an economist or a pundit; I don’t get paid for financial analysis, and I rarely do anything I’m not paid to do. I’m putting this out there to serve my purposes, to stir up and keep stirring up angst about the economy’s hazards and ills, that being with me protects or insulates you from. And again I make the point that this is not news or simply ‘current events.’ […] The sky is either falling or soon to fall, all the time.”

Mt. Rushmore #2: Ben Settle

Ben was my first exposure to many ideas and names in the world of direct response marketing.

He was also my gateway drug — the introduction to many of the legends in the field, including two of the other names on this Mt. Rushmore.

But since I’ve got to pick just one idea for Ben, it’s got to be daily emails.

For years, I had heard Ben talking about how daily emails turn you into a leader. I nodded, and did nothing.

Even after I had started working as a freelance copywriter, and writing emails for clients, years more passed before I had the idea to write daily emails for myself.

Eventually, I paid Ben a few hundred dollars for a book on getting copywriting clients. The book boiled down to the idea, “Write daily emails.”

Somehow, finally, it clicked. I started to write daily emails for myself.

That was back in 2018. I’ve been writing ever since and my life has transformed as a result.

Mt. Rushmore #3: Gary Bencivenga

When I wrote my little book, 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters, the first chapter was about Gary Bencivenga.

It was about Gary’s emphasis on proof, which is what he’s best known for.

But there’s one more specific idea I’ve learned from Gary, which has influenced me on a deep level.

It’s to look for offers that have killer proof baked in, rather than offers where you have to somehow conjure up, dig up, or invent proof, which often means it’s second rate.

That’s powerful advice for product creation. But I’ve taken this idea and applied it to content writing as well.

I often get readers telling me how they like my writing, or how I write well.

I appreciate the compliment, because I like to write and I like to think of myself as a good writer.

But really, I don’t like to rely on my writing ability to make my writing good. And when I do rely primarily on my writing ability, I find that the result tends to be lousy.

Instead, I write about things that are inherently interesting — at least to me — and that are easy to write well about as a result. To my mind, this is the same thing Gary was talking about, just in the email and in the book, and not just on the sales page or the order page.

Mt. Rushmore #4: Gary Halbert

Gary Halbert was my very first exposure to direct marketing.

I read the Boron Letters. I didn’t really get it.

Then I started reading the massive online archives of his multi-year print newsletter. I still didn’t really get it.

But at some point I read an issue of Gary’s newsletter titled, “The Difference Between Winners And Losers.” The ideas in this issue have influenced me on a deep level both for business and otherwise. In Gary’s words:

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I’ll tell you something: This issue of my newsletter is going to make a lot of my readers very uncomfortable. Why? Simply because I know the difference between winners and losers and, in this issue, I’m going to put the choice right dead square in your face. I’m going to give you an extraordinarily simple set of instructions and, if you do what I say, your chances of becoming extremely prosperous are going to be magnified by a factor of at least 1,000!

But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions. I know that already from past experience. And I even know already the reasons you’re going to give for not doing what I suggest. These are the same reasons everybody (including me) nearly always gives for not doing something which will make our lives better.

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Gary says that the difference between winners and losers is…

“Movement! Winners go out and get going before they know all the answers or even most of the answers. Losers will study a problem endlessly to make sure they don’t do anything ‘rash.'”

Fortunately, this came early in my marketing education. As a result, I decided to start blindly doing what I’m told to do, by people who I have decided to trust, like the names on my Mt. Rushmore above.

The results have been inevitably good. I only wish I’d have done it all sooner (like with Ben’s advice about daily emails) and more thoroughly (like with Dan’s stance on “infotainment”).

So now you know my Mt. Rushmore. And now for my offer:

Yesterday, I offered a guide I’ve put together, “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.” It’s a series of posts I’ve written in my Daily Email House community about the evergreen strategies that have grown my list over the years.

You can get this guide as a free bonus in case you join my Daily Email Habit service by tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST.

And in case you’re wondering why you might want to join my Daily Email Habit service:

I’ll help you do infotainment in a purposeful and effective way, as Dan Kennedy does…

I’ll help you start and stick with writing daily emails, so you can become a leader in your field, as Ben Settle promises…

I’ll help you dig up inherently interesting things to write about, so you don’t have to rely on any extraordinary word magic, as I’ve learned to do from Gary Bencivenga…

I’ll help you actually take action and move, instead of continuing to read, and plan, and put things off, as Gary Halbert warned against.

Again, the deadline to join Daily Email Habit and get “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6” as a free bonus, is tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight.

Here’s the link:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

by

One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​