Dan Kennedy

Selling drugs to kids

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IN ONLY SIX MONTHS, that formerly desperate man bought a $385,000 house with half down, and became a millionaire in less than a year. He also bought a vacation house, put away enough to cover his kids’ college educations, easily stopped his bad habits, and attained complete personal and financial freedom… all accomplished automatically, without effort or willpower!

That’s the back envelope copy from a direct mail sales letter written by one Jeff Paul.

​​Jeff was a student and protege of Dan Kennedy, and this sales letter is actually selling Dan’s Psycho Cybernetics program.

I’m sharing this copy with you for two reasons:

First, because I want to point you to Info Marketing Blog. It’s got a few decades’ worth of brilliant direct response ads, and smart and interesting commentary. And if you need proof of that, the guy who runs Info Marketing Blog, Lawrence Bernstein, was called out as a valuable resource during Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar by Gary Bencivenga himself.

Second, there’s a masterful marketing and copywriting lesson in those two sentences of copy above. It’s right there at the end:

“… automatically, without effort or willpower!”

When I look outside at the people I know… and when I look inside, at my own feelings and frustrations… I find this is what we all really really want, deep down.

Peace. No effort. Definitely no struggle, and no demands on our willpower. No opportunity for it to go wrong. Instead, all done automatically, by some mechanism outside of us.

That’s why smart marketers like Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul, and millions of others like them, make those promises.

And if you want to sell, in big numbers, at high prices, you should make these promises too.

Only be careful those desires you stimulate in your sales copy don’t seep into your own subconscious.

Because in my experience, life is all about effort, about exerting your willpower, about getting things done yourself instead of sitting around and wishing they could be done automatically.

How exactly do you reconcile selling something to people that you wouldn’t consume yourself? It seems a little like going down to the elementary school each day to sell drugs to kids, while being religious about never allowing that filth near your own family.

I don’t have a good way to reconcile these things for you. But facts are facts. And if you want to see some market-tested facts, here’s Jeff Paul’s complete sales letter. It’s worth reading. So much so that I’ll even talk about it tomorrow.

Sign up for my email newsletter if you want to read that when it comes out. And here’s the link to the sales letter if you want to get a head start.

https://infomarketingblog.com/wordpress/jeff-pauls-greatest-story-selling-ad/

The bad news opportunity

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“It’s easy to give lip service to, as well as to try to be entertaining about it… but it’s really a very serious point. And the people I’ve been around, who really have the Midas touch when it comes to money, they’re really very good at this.”
— Dan Kennedy, Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs seminar

The ancient Greeks believed in a goddess named Nemesis. Her role was to punish people who’ve had an excessive run of unbroken good luck.

The Greeks knew, just the same as every other people in history has known. Just the same as you know right now:

You can’t have an infinite run of good luck.

Maybe. Not unless you make your own.

I talked a couple of times in the past week about Joe Sugarman. And I’ll keep talking about Joe, because there’s a lot more to the guy than just the hundreds of millions of dollars he made with his orange-tinted BluBlockers sunglasses.

One thing was that Joe saw every problem as an opportunity.

For example, one time when he ran an ad in the WSJ, selling a calculator, Joe screwed up. The price in his ad was cheaper than retail. The manufacturer was furious.

“I have dealers all over the country calling me and complaining,” the manufacturer screamed at Joe.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said, “I’ll fix it.”

So he ran a second, smaller ad announcing the mistake, raising the price, and giving consumers just a few days to respond at the old price. The new ad outpulled the original ad.

That’s what Dan Kennedy is talking about above.​​ People who have a skill for making money — like Joe — have really quick recovery when something bad happens.

​​After all, everything can ultimately be some kind of opportunity, they figure, and looked at in the long-enough term, all news is good news of some sort. Might as well see that sooner rather than later.

Sounds impossible?​​

Last year, I decided to try this idea out for a week.

“Have quick recovery,” I told myself. “All news is good news.”

As I made that decision and wrote it down in my journal, I felt an unpleasant sensation, like I got hit by a big wave. Something was wrong with me physically, and I felt like I might suddenly pass out. I have no idea what happened, and it was gone the next moment.

Normally, if something like this happened to me, I would get concerned, maybe hesitant, maybe look for signs something else bad is about to happen.

Instead, this time, I just shrugged my shoulders, smiled, and got curious. “What good is going to come of this?” I wondered.

Try it yourself. It’s liberating. Plus you might have good ideas come from it. You might even make some money that you wouldn’t have made otherwise.

Make the decision, right now, that for the next week, whenever something seemingly bad happens, you will remind yourself that something good will come of this. You might not see it yet. But what are some ways it could happen?

Maybe it will happen by you signing up to my email newsletter. Or maybe not. Only one way to find out.

The blood-drive bobblehead bonus

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A friend of mine once gave blood because the Red Cross was giving away bobbleheads.

If you’re not American, you might not know what a bobblehead is—

A little figurine, plastic or ceramic, with an oversized head on a spring. Tap the head and it starts bobbling around, hence — bobblehead.

My friend normally never gives blood. And his experience giving blood this time was particularly slow, painful, and scary.

In the rush and push of the big blood drive, the nurses forgot about him. He looked on in panic for what seemed like a long winter, convinced that air bubbles were coming up into his veins.

And yet, he did it, for the bobblehead, because he’s a big baseball fan.

My friend staggered out afterwards, clutching his bobblehead of Brooks Robinson, the legendary third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles.

“Please take me home,” he said weakly.

So I gave him a ride back to his place, where he spent the next three days sleeping and recovering, with the Brooks Robinson bobblehead next to his pillow.

My point being, you can sell a lot of unsellable stuff by giving away a free gift.

​​But you probably knew that already.

So let me zoom in a little and point out that you can sell a lot of unsellable stuff by giving away a completely unrelated free gift.

Most bonuses in the DM world tend to be relevant to the main offer:

“Order a ThighMaster NOW and get FREE a ButtMaster plus a copy of Suzanne Somers Toning System™ workout video!”

But a free bonus doesn’t have to be related to your core offer. And in fact, it might work better if it isn’t.

The blood-drive bobblehead is just one example.

I also remember hearing Dan Kennedy give a couple of other examples.

The magazine Advertising Age, which sold subscriptions with a bonus mug. No relevant bonus could outpull the mug.

And Omaha Steaks, which sold steaks, from Omaha. Their best-performing free bonus was a calculator.

Why?

​​Who knows. Just know this:

If your current offer is as much fun as giving blood… then your free bonus doesn’t have to be a kidney removal.

And now, please sign up for my email newsletter. If you do, I’ll send you a free bonus, a picture of the cover of Breakthrough Advertising, with Gene Schwartz’s name blocked out and your name pasted in.

The secret to writing subject lines with the word “secret” in them

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I’ll tell you about the subject line secret in just a second. But first, here are a few funny-if-fake headlines, supposedly written by legendary marketer Dan Kennedy:

Who Else Wants To Discover The Secret
To Writing Headlines
That Begin With The Words ‘Who Else’?

——

“Do You Have What It Takes
To Write Powerful Headlines
Which Have Quotation Marks
And Are In The Form Of A Question?”

——

Everybody Laughed When I Used
​An Old Headline Template To Create My Headline,
But When I Put It At The Top Of My Sales Letter…

In case it’s not clear, that last one is a play on John Caples’s famous ad, “They Laughed When I Bent Down To Pet The Cat… But When She Started To Hiss!”

Dan’s point was that there’s a lot more to copywriting than templates and formulas.

If it weren’t so, then businesses wouldn’t be willing to write obscene paychecks to A-list copywriters like Dan himself.

Why would they?

If templates and formulas were where it’s at… then businesses could just get any monkey with small, nimble fingers to stick “Who else wants” at the start of an uninspired or unbelievable promise… and they would still make all the sales they want.

This can either be good news or bad news, depending on your perspective.

It’s bad news because it means making money with sales copy is more involved than you might have been told at first.

It’s good news because it means there’s a natural moat around the high castle of good copywriters. And maybe more importantly…

It means copywriting can become a pursuit you can explore for a long time, and still find new and deep insights. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

But back to that secret I mentioned in the subject line.

If you want to learn how to write fascinating subject lines, rather than relying on the crutch of calling every can of tuna a “secret,” then you can learn that inside my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is built around the practice of writing sales bullets. And bullets just happen to double as great subject lines.

Also, you might like to know:

Copy Riddles is not in any way focused on bullet formulas and templates. In case you don’t believe me, here are a few relevant words from marketing consultant Khaled Maziad, who went through Copy Riddles last year:

Man, this is the best course on bullets I have ever seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot.

I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet.

This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

It’s like going behind the scenes and watching David Copperfield reveals every single magic trick in the book… without losing interest.

So if you want to find out some magic tricks that make real money appear:

https://copyriddles.com

If they pirate, they pay attention

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Here’s a confession from a once-broke, today-very-rich Internet marketer:

I was living in an apartment that cost $250 a month.

And I had about a month’s worth of living expenses left.

So I couldn’t afford to shell out the $2k it cost to buy any of Dan’s courses.

So I did something I’m not very proud of these days – I went to the dark parts of the web and torrented his stuff.

I found his advanced sales letter course…

His Wealth Attraction course…

Lastly I downloaded his holy grail – Influential Writing – which in my mind is the greatest information marketing course ever made.

I went through all of these on repeat for months.

Anytime I was working, I’d be listening to a Dan Kennedy course.

Maybe you know who wrote this. It’s Justin Goff.

Justin wrote that email a couple years ago, the day the whole direct response world thought that Dan Kennedy had died.

Justin also thought Dan was dead. So he wrote an ode to Dan, and said Dan was his “greatest mentor.”

And I can believe it.

I can also believe that it was Dan’s stuff that helped Justin get successful. That without it, Justin might not have made it, at least not as quickly and as richly.

In the marketing world, it’s popular to say, “If they pay, they pay attention.”

It’s also popular to mock those who pirate, steal, and share paid content. Here’s a recent bit from Ben Settle on the matter:

These criminals all end up fetching peoples’ coffee or begging for change for a living eventually. Bums to the end. Irony is, if they spent half as much time working on themselves & a legit business as they do pirating products, they’d be multi-millionaires many times over.

Writing this makes good business sense for Ben.

But obviously, not everybody who pirates stuff winds up begging for change (see Justin above). And vice versa.

Many people who honestly pay for stuff get nothing from their purchase except the rush of handing over their money.

And in case you’re wondering what I’m getting at, let me tell you a personal story:

A few days ago, while surfin’ the Internet, I surfed upon a membership site that claims to have the recordings of the Influential Emails training I held last November.

I don’t know whether this site actually has a copy of the recordings and resources I shared with people after the training ended… or whether they just copied my sales page and are baiting people into handing over their credit cards.

And I don’t really care much to find out.

Because I feel I’ve done right by the people who paid to join me for Influential Emails. Those who joined me, who paid attention, and who end up implementing the ideas I revealed… will profit much more than what they paid me.

At the same time, I respect the fact that they gave me their money. That’s why I don’t entertain requests for free copies of my paid stuff… or even offer discounts on the current price.

But on the other hand, if there is somebody out there who does pirate my stuff… and ends up profiting from it also… well, I won’t set my hair on fire about it.

​​In fact, I imagine I will still somehow benefit from it, in some unseen or indirect way, somewhere down the line.

So my point for you is:

Pirate all you want.

No, wait, that’s not actually my point. My point is:

Pay attention to the good information out there, whether it’s available to you for free or whether you have to pay for it. And then — key point — put that information to work.

Or don’t. Because maybe you’re ok with fetching other people’s coffee. Of course, maybe that won’t happen to you.

In any case, let me make you a free offer right now:

My Copy Riddles program will be re-launching later this month. I’m trying to get a few more people to find out about it before it gets pirated and shared into oblivion.

And if you help me get the word out, I’ll give you something in return.

This free thing will only benefit you if you consume it… and then put it to work.

But if you do that, it could lead you to self-respect, ongoing client work, and thousands of dollars in your pocket. For the full details:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

My menage a trois with a jilted old ex

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In spite of my subject line above, there’s nothing lurid about today’s email. So if you are expecting sex and drama, it might be best to stop reading now.

On the other hand, if you’re in that small minority of people who get all hot and bothered by personal development topics, then it might be worth pressing on.

If you’re still with me, then let me set the scene.

Two years ago to the day, I wrote an email with the subject line:

“Why goals and I broke up and are no longer talking”

In that email, I wrote about how I’m ghosting goals. They never worked for me.

Instead, I decided to move on to a new relationship with what James Altucher calls “having a theme.” It’s a general direction you want your life to move in, without specifics, numbers, or deadlines.

Then exactly a year ago, I wrote an update with the subject line,

“2021 un-goals”

In that email, I gushed that my new relationship with themes was going great and was getting serious. I had moved forward significantly in each of the three themes/directions I had set for 2020.

But was this just the happy honeymoon period? Or would my new love affair last?

As I wrote a year ago, there was only one way to find out. Back then, I decided on three new themes for 2021, and I promised to write an update when the time comes.

Well the time is now.

So if you’re curious, I’ll tell you about my past year, and and how my relationship with themes developed. And maybe more importantly…

I will also tell you the fundamental mental shortcut I use to decide on many of life’s difficult questions. It might give you a new perspective on some important topics.

First the update. Here are the three themes I had for 2021:

1 Partnership. In a nutshell, I decided to stop doing everything myself. Instead, I wanted to partner up with other people and businesses… contribute what skills and resources I have in abundance… and let them do the same.

Without getting bogged down in details, let me say I got all the partnership opportunities I could want. And none of them led anywhere.

But I ended the year with a new partnership agreement — something that has the potential to be big. I’ll write more about that in the coming weeks and months.

2. Ability to produce. This is Dan Kennedy’s idea, which I heard via Ben Settle, that the only security you have in life is your ability to produce. As for my ability to produce in 2021:

I wrote 365+ of these daily emails… ​I created the 8-week Copy Riddles program… ​I held the Influential Emails training…

… ​​and that’s along with various bonuses I recorded and a few podcast appearances I made and a mastermind coaching I did. ​​Plus there was client work for 2 primary clients and a few odd jobs, here and there.

3. Redacted for being too personal and revealing. I seem to be building an online reputation as a hermit who’s afraid of divulging personal details. So I can’t disappoint you by sharing too much about my real life right now. Let me just say this third theme/direction was personal and went absolutely nowhere. In fact, it went backwards. A complete failure.

So to sum up:

Like with every other relationship I’ve ever had, year two of going steady with themes turned out to be a mixed bag. A few great moments… a few bitter fights… and a lot in between.

Which leads me to that mental shortcut I mentioned, or rather, a lens through which I view the world. Before I reveal it, let me warn you:

This is not something that sells very well. You won’t hear me preaching it for the rest of the year. But I believe it to be true, and since today is January 1, I am willing to admit to it. It is this:

Long-standing questions don’t have simple answers.

For me, this applies to many areas of life. But specifically, it applies when trying to decide which path is the right one:

Is it better to be flexible or disciplined?

Does real success come from self-acceptance or self-development?

Is freedom the greatest good or is it comfort and safety?

My brain wants simple, black-and-white answers to these questions. It would save me so much thinking.

But the truth is that deciding between these opposite poles is an ongoing struggle. It requires attention, effort, and care. And ironically, by accepting that fact, I often save myself a lot of grief and wasted time.

And this brings me to 2022, and that menage-a-trois I mentioned in the subject line.

Themes and I continue our relationship. We are trying to make things work.

But I’ve invited that old jilted ex, goals, back into my life. I want to see if somehow the three of us can live happily together.

So I have three new, general themes for my 2022… and I’ve also set two specific, quantifiable, deadline-based goals.

Will this polygamous relationship work out? Or will it end in plates being thrown and my clothes getting tossed out the window? And what exactly are my themes and goals for 2022?

Only one way to find out:

Like I did on January 1 2020… and January 1 2021… and now, today… I will write another email in a year’s time about this personal topic. And if you can wait that long, sign up for my email newsletter, and you will find out the whole story then.

Well, except for any revealing, personal info. That will have to be redacted. I have my hermit persona to protect and develop, after all.

Breaking the code of the highly successful person

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The sun is shining, I have an egg sandwich and a bottle of water for the road, and I’m ready to get in the car and drive across three countries in about as many hours.

But before I can do that, I have to finish this email and two more things. And that’s my point for you for today.

I recently read Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs.

​​I long resisted doing so because the very words “time management” sound repulsive to me, a throwback to the time of Fred Flintstone slaving away at the rock quarry until the foreman yanks the pterodactyl’s tail to signal the end of the work day.

But boy was I wrong.

Dan Kennedy’s book is fantastic. I recommend it to anyone who is a driven go-getter (it will help you focus and get more done) or, like me, a lazy layabout by nature (it will still help you focus and get more done).

Anyways, towards the end of the book, Dan quotes a bit of wisdom he heard in his young days from success speaker Jim Rohn.

Dan says that, for him, this bit of wisdom broke the code of the highly successful person. It took all the mystery and mystique away. And here it is:

When you look closely at highly successful people in any field, you walk away saying to yourself, “Well it’s no wonder he’s doing so well. Look at everything he does.”

That’s what Jim Rohn used to say. To which, Dan Kennedy adds, “… and look very closely at the one thing or two or three things he gets done without fail, every single day.”

So there you go. My point for you for today. Figure out one or two or three things you will get done each day, without fail.

Perhaps you’re curious what my “without fail” things are.

Like I said, this email is one. Another, which i started only recently, is working on a new offer. And the third, which I’ve been practicing for most of my life, is reading. Because reading is really the fuel that drives any achievements I’ve had.

I’m not telling you to pick up these specific daily habits. Make your own choices.

​​But if reading is something you want to do every day, both for your sanity and for your success, then, again, I can recommend Dan Kenendy’s Time Management book. It’s a smart investment right now, because it will pay so much in time dividends tomorrow.

In case you want to check it out, you can find the Amazon link below:
​
https://bejakovic.com/time-management​​

The most tastless and offensive Christmas song ever?

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“I’m not singing that line. I’ll sing anything, but I’m not singing that line.”

“You have to. That’s the line I saved for you. That’s the one that’s going to make them hurt the most.”

Here’s a potentially offputting and offensive Christmas eve story:

Some 37 years ago, on November 25 1984, dozens of British and Irish pop stars gathered at 10 Basing Street in London.

The event was Band Aid:

An attempt to record a hit song in just one day and get it to the top of the charts before Christmas. All proceeds were to help relieve the crisis in Ethiopia, where drought had put 7 million people at risk of a slow and miserable death.

Against all odds, Band Aid turned out to be a success.

The song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” became the fastest- and biggest-selling single in UK history. It raised some some $25 million outright. It also spawned later efforts like Live Aid and USA for Africa, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars more.

In spite of all this, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” has had many critics over the years.

People hate the song for different reasons, but one strain can be summed up by the disgust at the line that fell to Bono of U2 to sing.

Bono initially refused to sing the line.

But Bob Geldof, the organizer of Band Aid and a personal friend of Bono’s, was too persuasive and won out in the end.

And so at the end of the first verse of “Do They Know It’s Christmas”… after contrasting the world of British plenty to the world of dread and fear in Ethopia, Bono belts out:

“Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”

Was this necessary? Would the song have worked as well without it?

We won’t ever know. But going by how much controversy, attention, and outrage this one line has caused over the years… it’s possible it tipped the scales of guilt and shame needed to stir action.

So that’s the rather harsh and out-of-season message I have for you tonight.

You might feel reluctant to offend, to say something that people might find provocative, shocking, or tasteless. You might put it off and say, “It’s not the right moment now. I’ll do it after the holidays… in the New Year… once corona passes… when the Cleveland Indians win the World Series.”

Sooner or later though, this attitude means you will miss an opportunity to make a real difference.

So Merry Christmas. And let me sum up my message with a few words by the original Grinch of direct marketing, Dan Kennedy:

“There is never any need to be or behave like a prick in order to be successful, but you must be okay with some, possibly many, people thinking of you as an insufferable prick.”

And on that note, I’d like to advertise my email newsletter. It’s been praised by many people in the direct response industry… and it’s been ignored by others. If you’d like to check it out, you can sign up here.

Don’t read this if you can’t stand harsh glaring lights

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“It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or what you think, and certainly, it has no interest in what you want and don’t want.”
— Werner Erhard, founder of est

Last week, after I sent out my Copy Koala Millions™ email, a reader named Lester wrote in with this interesting point:

“The one other thing I remember from Carlton is how in almost all business segments, the customers want easy/painless/low effort results. BUT the body building/fitness guys want the opposite. You have to sell how fucking painful and hard it will be with what you are selling.”

It’s true — 99% of sales copy promises quick/easy/foolproof results, preferably accomplished by an external mechanism, which you activate by pressing a large red button that reads “INSTANT RESULTS HERE.”

But like Lester says, not every market is like that. Bodybuilders for one… maybe also small business owners and entrepreneurs.

For example, yesterday I wrote about Dan Kennedy’s “#1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.”

Dan promises that this one discipline can make you successful beyond your wildest dreams.

But honestly, I didn’t need that promise to buy what Dan was selling. I became hypnotized as soon as I read the words “powerful personal discipline.” At that point, I was 86% sold already.

That’s why I said yesterday that I don’t need to sell this idea to you either. Because if you feel the twitching of this same drive for overcoming inside you… you probably perked up just because I kept stuffing the terms “self discipline” and “personal discipline” a dozen times in what I wrote yesterday.

The fact is, there’s a very real need inside most people for occasional struggle, suffering, and proving their own worth.

Suffering and struggle might not sell in front-end copy going out to a cold list of people who are already suffering and struggling with a problem.

But it definitely does sell, including in sister markets to direct response. Such as the seminar business, for example.

Werner Erhard, the guy I quoted up top, ran est, the biggest personal development product of the 1970s. est consisted of two weekend-long seminars where people would literally piss themselves because they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom — in a giant hall filled with hundreds of strangers.

On day two, attendees would go through the “danger process.” From the book Odd Gods:

“A row of the audience at a time would go on stage and be confronted by est staff. One person would ‘bullbait’ all of them, saying and doing things in order to get them to react. Other volunteers would be body catchers for those who fell, a common occurrence.”

Like I said, this went on for two weekends in a row. In other words, people would show up one weekend, get humiliated and brutalized, and come back the next weekend for more. When it was all said and done, people found it transformative, and enthusiastically recommended est to their friends and family.

My point is simply a reminder. We are no longer living in the world of one-off sales letters pitching a book of Chinese medicine secrets. Today, there’s plenty of money to be made by being strict, demanding, and harsh. Yes, even in your sales copy.

… well with one caveat. I’ll get to that in my email tomorrow. Read it or fail.

The #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world

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Today, I want to share with you the #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.

It struck me like lightning a few days ago when I came across it in Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management book.

Dan says everybody he has ever met who sticks to this discipline ends up hugely successful… while everybody who doesn’t stick to it eventually fails.

In other words, this one discipline is the difference between the winners and the losers… the Bugs Bunnies on the one hand, and the Daffy Ducks on the other… the Jerry Seinfelds and the George Costanzas of the world.

So with that intro, would you like to know what this discipline is? Get ready:

It’s punctuality.

“Gaaaah, come on!” you say. “Next you’ll be telling me to brush my teeth and make my bed each morning!”

Keep yer shirt on. I’m not telling you to do anything, tooth-wise or punctuality-wise.

I just want to share what Dan says about punctuality. He makes a big case for punctuality being a proxy for trustworthiness. According to Dan’s research into the brains of the rich and successful, the higher you go up the wealth ladder, the more people will judge you based on your punctuality.

Even so, maybe punctually genuinely is not an issue for you.

It’s never been an issue for me. I show up to meetings on time, I deliver client work at agreed-upon deadlines, I do stuff when I tell people I will do it.

But here’s the lightning bolt that struck me when I read Dan’s praise of punctuality:

I realized that while I’m punctual in my contracts with others…

I’m not at all punctual in my contracts with myself. Rather, I’m very sloppy and lax with myself.

The fact is, I’m lazy by nature. I take advantage of working on my own, with no evil boss standing above me with a big wooden ruler, ready to rap me on the knuckles as soon as I start to lag.

So I show up to work when I feel like it. I take long lunches. I pay no mind to the clock. Why would I? It’s the benefit of working for myself, by myself.

​​Here’s Dan Kennedy again:

Good news. bad news.
Good news! You are now your own boss!
Bad news! You are a lousy boss with one unreliable employee!

So all I want to tell you is that I’m now taking punctuality a lot more seriously. Yes, even when I’m by myself. Even when no one around to judge me or distrust me or make me feel unprofessional.

I can tell you I’ve been more productive as a result while spending less time working. And more importantly, I feel better. I also feel a little morally superior to that undisciplined sloth who lived in my skin until just a few days ago.

Normally, this might be the point in my email where I suggest the same change of attitude to you.

I certainly won’t advise you against taking up the personal discipline of punctuality. But I won’t advise you to take it up either.

Because I don’t have to.

If you’re curious how I can be so cavalier and confident about your self-discipline habits and your future success… well, sign up for my newsletter. My email tomorrow will explain everything. I’ll send it out at exactly 8:37 PM CET.