Daniel Throssell

Did I live up to my 2025 “themes”?

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Each January 1, I write an email reviewing my (usually failed) goals of the past year, and setting several new goals for the year to come, which I will then… well, let’s take it one step at a time.

Rewind back to January 1 2025. I wrote then that I’m kind of over goal setting, but for the sake of an interesting email, I chose 3 goals, or rather “themes,” for 2025:

#1. Recurring income (it’s clear enough what that means)

#2. Less of me (meaning, getting better at making offers that don’t rely entirely on my personal authority and charm to sell)

#3. Tech (developing software tools that I could sell or give away or use myself)

How did I do?

On the tech front, absolutely nothing. If anything, I’ve become even more of a Luddite than I was a year ago.

Once upon a time, I worked as a software engineer, but I’ve realized dabbling in programming and software development a waste of my time now. Instead, if a good opportunity comes along, I will partner with people who want to fiddle around with code.

As for my other two themes, I actually did pretty good.

I had a good chunk of my income this year in the form of recurring income (both via payment plans on high-ticket offers, and via continuity products like Daily Email Habit).

As for “less of me,” I’ve learned a lot and implemented a good amount about making offers that are attractive even to people who don’t really know me and love me via these emails. Ironically, I think the success of my “I endorse YOU” auction, with the $31k winning bid, was proof of that.

Now fast forward back to the future, specifically, to today. What about the coming year, 2026?

Over the past days and weeks, no clear theme or two or three for 2026 came to my mind. So this morning, I sat down and made a list of 10 things I want to get done with my Bejako Business in 2026. Here they are:

1. Publish a new book

2. Make $1M in auction revenue (selling my stuff and others’ stuff, to my audience and to other audiences)

3. Develop a series of high ticket offers that actually sell, like [censored] etc.

4. Stick to a monthly schedule of 1) newsletter ad or list swap, 2) in-house offer, 3) zero-delivery offer

5. Keep building up Monetization Mastermind (my invite-only group of list owners who want to partner up on various deals)

6. Keep experimenting with Daily Email House

7. Grow the list to 8k

8. Build up my status more

9. Partner with more people

10. Keep uncovering new bubbles of people and connecting them to each other

That’s a lot. Some of it is pretty reachable, or at least has fuzzy enough criteria of success to sound like it.

Some of it is ambitious, or even very ambitious.

Is it all possible to do it all, or a large part?

I believe it is. I’ll tell you how:

Double up and triple up. In other words, make everything do double or triple work, and feed into other things that I want to do.

For example, the new book I want to publish is directly connected to the high-ticket offer I am currently working on. The two will feed off each other.

Having a new book, as well as a high-ticket offer that sells well (inshallah), will be status-boosting.

And all this can feed into more auctions and partners and connections… and and so on.

You might say this sounds like the best-case scenario, and not like the worst- or even likely-case scenario.

I agree. So how to improve my chances?

How to actually double up and triple up, consistently, throughout the year, as I keep working on different projects, and as life starts getting in the way, and I as a person change?

My answer to this, which is the one point of today’s email, finally, which can be relevant to you, is:

More planning and research and preparation.

Specifically, I heard somebody smart and successful recommend recently to schedule “regular thinking time,” and to treat it like a non-negotiable meeting with yourself.

So if there is a theme to my 2026, “thinking time” is it.

And as for whether I will reach my 10 goals… or fail on most or on all counts… stay tuned, and maybe you will have the opportunity to nod and smirk in case you see me struggling… or nod and smile if you see me succeed.

Also, I got an offer for you today:

On the one hand, I believe “thinking time” is best done alone.

On the other hand, it’s inevitably true that other people can help keep us accountable in ways that we cannot keep ourselves (well, most of us, Daniel Throssell is an exception).

Maybe more importantly, other people can immediately spot and point out blind spots in our own thinking that we might never spot.

So here’s my offer to you:

Would some kind of organized and shared “thinking time” be useful to you?

I’m imagining it as a regularly scheduled call with myself and other people, where we can all share what we’re working on and how we’re thinking about proceeding.

But it doesn’t have to be like that, and maybe you have better ideas.

In any case, if organized, structured, regular, and shared “thinking time” might be useful to you, write in and let me know to say so, and what it could help you with, and how you imagine it looking.

Thanks in advance.

Would you bid at least $2… to get me to ENDORSE you to my audience?

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A couple weeks ago, I sheepishly asked if you would bid at least $1 to have me promote you to my audience.

I got a goodly number of people saying YES.

But my ego craves approval and encouragement something fierce… and frankly my ego was not satisfied.

So I went away… locked myself in my laboratory… and experimented and researched and toiled until…

I CREATED IT!!!

V2: My new prototype auction offer.

The stakes are bigger this second time around.

And that’s why I’m asking if would bid, not just $1… not even $1.50… but at least $2 (two whole dollars) for the following:

#1. I will ENDORSE you to my audience

I have a unique level of credibility with my list, and more broadly, in the email marketing and copywriting space.

I have been emailing for years, and I’ve had readers stick with me for years… I don’t really hard-sell and I don’t ever sell out… I’m always looking to only promote things I feel good about because I believe they are genuinely valuable to my list.

As a consequence of these long-standing policies, I regularly turn away lots of people who would like me to endorse them or their offers.

But when it comes to you?

I will endorse you 100% to my audience.

In other words…

I will transfer my credibility to you, both so you can hit the ground running with my readers when they become your readers… and so in the future, you can go around and say, “I got endorsed by John Bejakovic therefore hire me/read me/buy from me.”

Maybe that sounds like a paradox? Or like I’m finally selling out?

After all, how can I endorse you congruently, without even knowing who you are or what you do?

Glad you asked:

#2. I will work with you to create the sexy and valuable offer I will promote in my newsletter

We will work together.

The goal here is both for me to get to know you, so I can figure out what your unique strengths are, and so I can credibly endorse you…

… and so we create something I will feel great about promoting to my list, and that my list will find both valuable and sexy.

Ideally, we can start with offers or content you currently have. But if that’s not an option, I will help you create something from scratch.

(I can even contribute some of my own content or offers, and give you rights to give that away.)

I will also work with you on the ad copy and the landing page copy.

You will get as much 1:1 with time me and even my hands-on help as needed (though as little as possible).

And then, optin bribe done…

#3. I will also work with you to come up with a thank-you page offer

This is an offer you can make to new subscribers on day 0, as soon as they sign up.

This is the secret to both making money immediately… and to turning free subscribers into first-time buyers, who are dramatically more likely to buy from you down the line.

(Once again, we will work together on both the offer and the copy.)

#3. I will then send a dedicated email to my list and create a post here in Daily Email House, to promote and endorse you and your optin bribe, and…

#4. I will GUARANTEE you will make 100% of your money back

If you don’t make 100% of your money back on day 0, with the first email and post I create to endorse you, I will keep promoting you… and endorsing you… and sending new subscribers to your list… for as long as it takes for you to make back 100% of your money.

I will also keep working with you to tweak the copy or offers (or come up with entirely new ones) if that seems to be the issue.

UNOFFICIALLY, my goal is to take the winning bid here, and have the winning bidder make 10x his or her investment, over the next year, as a result of this offer.

I honestly think it’s very doable, because an email list has tremendous value if you keep mailing it, and because first-time buyers are likely to buy future offers you create.

But also, I think 10x in the next year is very doable because of a couple…

BONUS IDEAS

#1. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin”

After you get my endorsement and my readers become your readers, I will help you take the same funnel and put it in front of other creator’s audiences.

I will give you valuable paid resources and, again, my personal help in finding, negotiating, and reducing the price of ads in other newsletters, so you can keep growing your list at breakeven or at a profit, regularly, month after month.

(And yes, you can approach these newsletter owners and tell them, “I already got John Bejakovic to endorse this offer… and his audience loved it.”)

#2. Membership inside my Monetization Mastermind

The Monetization Mastermind is a small, invite-only group I’ve set up for list owners, with the goal of forming JV partnerships and doing list swaps.

I won’t name names here, but the Monetization Mastermind features the who’s who of list owners in the email marketing, course creator, and copywriting worlds — about 50 of us in total.

(The fact these busy and influential folks are inside a community I organize goes back to my unique credibility in this corner of the Internet.)

This group is exclusive, invite-only, and highly vetted.

But once you will have my folks on your list as a result of me endorsing you… and a working offer funnel as a result of me working with you… you will belong inside the Monetization Mastermind, and you will be able to take the funnel we’ve created and use it (or tweak it slightly) to do list swaps with other successful list owners.

(Once again, the fact that you have been endorsed and promoted by me, and that you have an optin bribe that’s been proven to be interesting and valuable to readers will make this an easy and natural sell, unlike if you were simply to approach these same people out of the blue.)

#3. OTHER BONUSES???

As a final idea, I’m open to offering other bonuses based on ideas you throw at me.

Special status within my Daily Email House… an interview I do with you and post within either Daily Email House or Monetization Mastermind or both… a spot on a RECOMMENDED PARTNERS page on my site… a link to your optin bribe inside my book bonus flow… help with email copy to build up your status and standing further…

… what extra inducement would make this auction offer worthwhile or exciting or sexy for you?

Lemme know and if my liver can handle it, I will make it happen.

AND NOW…

I’ve done my research when crafting this V2. That’s how I know:

Fellow email marketer Daniel Throssell says he “literally built his entire business off” an ad he ran to Ben Settle’s list.

(That was a time that Ben was selling one of three spots in his newsletter for $500… without any kind of personal help and certainly without any endorsement.)

Daniel claims he got a 10x return on his ad spend, and I can well believe that’s an understatement if you could really see what those newsletter subscribers have paid Daniel over the years.

AT THE SAME TIME:

Another would-be list owner who ran an ad in Ben Settle’s newsletter (same as Daniel) got NO CLIENTS and didn’t make his money back. This guy wrote:

“I bet if I had offers in place and knew what I was doing that I would’ve made that money back in one sale.”

As part of this V2 offer, I’m offering help with your optin bribe and the rest of your funnel.

In my research, I’ve seen somebody offering a “newsletter ad” funnel like this for $5k.

Yeah, I’m also offering that.

But I am also offering… not just to put your ad and your list in front of my audience… not just to help you with the offers and the funnel to monetize that ad… but I’m putting my name and endorsement on the line for you, so you benefit from the credibility I’ve built up over the years.

It’s very very rare to get somebody to go full-in and endorse you to their list.

The few times it’s happened as an offer, made by credible people with real standing in their industries, it ranged all the way up to $34,000 on the high end.

And in all the cases I have found audience owners offering an endorsement, there was NO guarantee that you will make your money back.

And yet, a 100% guarantee is something I am offering with this new and improved V2.

So with all that said?

Would you bid $2 for all this — for my help, audience, endorsement, and personal guarantee?

Vote away below… and your votes will determine if this auction happens… or if I skulk back to my lab because I laid an egg.

​Me likey, I’d bid $2!​

​Good golly, I’d bid at least $200!​

​I play big! I’d bid at least $2,000!​

​I ain’t playin’! I’d bid whatever it takes to WIN!​

My final call for ChatGPT Mastery and my $297 bonus

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Today is the final day I will be promoting Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery. Gasper’s promo goes on until the end of this week, but if you want the $297 bonus I’m offering (more info on that below), you will have to act today.

This, by the way, is an idea I picked up from email marketer Daniel Throssell.

Back in his famous or notorious 2021 Black Friday campaign, Daniel was promoting a bundle of products that were also being promoted by a bunch of other list owners.

Daniel did a lot of clever and effective things with that Black Friday campaign, but a particular one was that he didn’t abide by the deadline of the promo.

Instead, he cut his promo short. Because why not?

Daniel made just as many sales as he would have had he dragged his promo out, and probably more, by taking sales away from other affiliates. He made his job easier and the promo more exciting. And did a favor to his audience, by concentrating his selling, and by being able to move on to the next useful and exciting offer to promote.

You too can do the same.

The info marketing world is ultimately a world of turning air into money, cloud-like ideas into real-world results. There are practically no rules that you cannot bend or change.

You can set a different deadline… or use a different sales page… or not use a sales page at all, and close people in one-on-one conversations… or offer bonuses… or change the offer altogether…

It’s something to keep in mind if you are just getting started with info marketing, and to keep doubly in mind if you are already seeing success with it.

And now, if you want it before it disappears for ever, here are a few details about ChatGPT Mastery and the $297 Love/Hate AI bonus I am bundling with it:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, earlier this year.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. Gasper, the guy behind ChatGPT Mastery, is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around his new home in Mimizan, France, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you, though I might use it to help if I start working with partners). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. Some of the topics include competitor analysis, market intel based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it.

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $297.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. To make sure ChatGPT Mastery is effectively free for you on day 0, I am also adding in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value. It’s a training called Age of Insight, which I sold for $297 when I gave it live a couple years ago.

Age of Insight has nothing to do with AI. Instead, it’s complementary, hence the Love/Hate AI name of this promo:

If Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery helps you eliminate the parts of your work that you hate, Age of Insight will help you be better at things you love to do, at least if you’re anything like me — things like influencing and impacting people, often with written words alone.

The deadline to get Age of Insight along with ChatGPT Mastery is this Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or to get it now and get Age of Insight for free:

​https://bejakovic.com/gasper​

P.S. If you decide to get ChatGPT Mastery, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and I’ll get it to you.

Disconnect at my first FC Barcelona match

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Yesterday, for the first time ever, and after three years of living in Barcelona, I, a total non-fan, went to my first football game ever. And it was super exciting.

FC Barcelona, one of the most dominant and richest teams in the world, was playing Girona FC, a total underdog and second-to-last in the league standings.

The reality of the match:

Barcelona scored early. Girona equalized with a bicycle kick shot. There was lots of attacking and chances on both sides. And then, in the last minute of extra time, Barcelona scored the winning goal.

Honestly, it was the best possible way to see a real live football game for the first time ever.

But what really got me is the feeling of disconnect.

This match happened at the small Barcelona Olympic stadium, where FC Barcelona is playing while their main stadium is being refurbished.

There was almost no advertising anywhere, no flashing jumbotrons, no announcements, no fireworks.

There were lots of empty bleachers because this old Olympic stadium is not really good for watching football, plus apparently some fans are simply boycotting the games since this place is not the real “home” of Barcelona.

As a result, the entire atmosphere felt like watching a local under-17 practice more than some super consequential world-class match… featuring supremely skilled athletes chosen from millions who tried very hard to be worthy of appearing on this same stage… with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line in terms of possible sponsorships, injuries, transfers, etc.

It also felt weird to know that every consequential and inconsequential moment I was witnessing was being streamed all around the world, and that countless photos, reels, writeups, analyses, and stats from this event would appear billions of times on phones and laptops and TVs in the coming days.

I’m not sure what happens when something real, like a bunch of dudes running after a ball on a grassy pitch on Montjuic one afternoon, passes into the symbolic realm, like articles and photos and stories that can live forever.

But something happens.

It’s a very strange and powerful thing, something so strange and powerful that we usually like to shrug it off because the truth of it makes us uncomfortable and forces us to face things about ourselves that we’d rather ignore.

I realize this is all getting a little vague and philosophical.

Rather than waffling on more, I will simply point you to an email I wrote a long time ago.

This old deals with this topic, and in fact talks about a sociological theory that has to do specifically with this. But it’s not just theory. This old email also gives you a practical takeaway for your marketing and writing and branding, if those are the kinds of things you engage in.

By the way, after I wrote this email years ago, I got the following kinds of replies from readers:

“Glorious”

“This is a profound message John. Just a message of appreciation.”

“Daaaamn good!!!”

“The greatest crime you commit is not selling something in your emails. You have the best marketing insights of ANY list I’m on…”

That last comment came from “Australia’s best copywriter,” Daniel Throssell. In case you’re curious what Daniel and my other readers liked so well, and how you can use it in what you do today, here’s the email in question:

https://bejakovic.com/more-real-than-real/

Anti-proof #1

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A couple days ago, I wrote an email about an unused form of proof, namely testimonials and endorsements for the person selling, rather than for the product being sold.

I first spotted that in the super successful infomercial for the George Foreman Grill. Half the testimonials in the infomercial are for the grill itself. But the rest are for George Foreman himself, like this:

“If George is behind anything, that will be the best thing for America. George would never advertise nothing that’s not good for America.”

After I wrote that email, I got message from copywriter GC Tsalamagkakis, who wrote:

===

I’ve seen a lot of people doing it. And I’m sure it works.

But it would have to be executed in a natural way.

Looking at my own reaction (and I may very well be the only one), when I just see those 2 types of testimonials mixed together, it makes me think that the person is desperate to add more social proof and will use any remotely-related testimonials they can find.

===

GC’s comment made me think. He’s definitely not the only one to feel like this.

I have myself seen sales pages where only a few lukewarm testimonials are for the offer itself (“quite an acceptable sandwich”)… while the rest of the sales page is padded with other testimonials either for other products by same person (“amazing French fries!”), or just endorsements for the person selling (“the greatest fast-food visionary of our generation”).

On sales pages like this, extra endorsements don’t help much and can even hurt.

I know I have personally felt that such extra endorsements act as a kind of anti-proof element, as a red herring that’s more likely to put questions into my head than lull me into buying.

I asked myself what makes the difference. Why do “seller endorsements” work in the George Foreman infomercial… and don’t work on many sales pages?

I don’t have a clear answer. My best guess is that in one place the extra testimonials are coming from a position of strength, and in the other they are coming from a position of weakness, and that’s something we humans are good at sniffing out.

Maybe you have a better answer. If you do, I hope you will hit reply and enlighten me.

And if you want one more example to help you make you delve inside this profound mystery, I can point you to an effective sales page that features seller endorsements along with product testimonials.

The sales page in question is one for my Most Valuable Email course, and I say it’s effective because I’ve sold many, many copies of this course via this sales page.

The endorsements on this sales page, for me as someone who writes daily emails, come from people like Joe Schriefer of Agora Financial, Bill Mueller of Story Sales Machine, and Daniel Throssell of the Australia Throssells.

On the other hand, there are also a dozen product testimonials, which I’ve picked from a larger batch of positive customer feedback.

I’ve chosen to feature those specific testimonials either because they are particularly enthusiastic (“amazing,” “incredible,” and “more importantly, writing an MVE is fun”) or because the copywriter or marketer benefited from applying the MVE trick in their own or their client’s emails. A sample:

“My inbox is flooded with applause”

“The highest-converting single-email campaign sent to the non-buyers of all time”

“… made me make 5 times more the investment in MVE”

If you wanna see how I integrate both kinds of testimonials into my MVE sales page, take a look below. Just be careful that you don’t get sucked into buying the course itself. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Announcing: Live personal positioning cohort

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Yesterday, inside a small group of list owners that I have set up to help with affiliate deals, marketer Justin Blackman posted, as a kind of afterthought, that he has an exciting and cool new offer, that, by the way, it’s live now, and, oh, that it’s only available until the end of this week, or maybe not even that long.

The offer is called Different On Purpose.

You can find the full details of it at the sales page below. But in the interest of getting you to click through to that sales page, here are some intriguing facts about Justin’s “now you see me, now you don’t” new offer:

# Who it’s for

Freelancers, coaches, and service-based business owners who feel they’ve lost their mojo — thanks to AI, competition, and simply stuff that used to work not working any more.

(No judgment here, by the way. As Justin says on sales page, he himself has been wrestling with these issues for the past year and a half.)

# What it is

A live cohort that runs from September 25 – November 19. Small groups that Justin will be heading, with frankly a crazy list of 15 guest trainers to add in unique expertise, including Todd Herman, Daniel Throssell, and Chris Orzechowski.

Deliverables and outcomes are both new and different personal positioning… plus assets to support and communicate that… and, thanks to the guest trainers, strategy to get those assets and message out into the world, so as to regain that lost mojo.

# Why you might wanna sign up now

Two reasons:

First is that this is the first time Justin is offering Different On Purpose, and his strategy is to underprice it and overdeliver on it. (See the complete list of 15 guest trainers if you don’t believe the “overdeliver” bit.)

Second is that, this being a live cohort which Justin will head, it’s limited to 30 people.

I don’t know how many of those spots are already taken.

I do know Justin is promoting Different On Purpose to his list… I’m guessing at least some of the guest speakers who have lists totaling hundreds of thousands of names will promote it as well to their lists… and maybe others in that group I set up will promote it too.

All that’s to say, if you worry about where your service or client business is going… if you feel like your personal positioning is taking on the nice ochre color of a brick in the wall… and if you wanna do something about it now rather than in 2035… then Different On Purpose is something to consider.

To find out more about it, before those 30 spots are filled and the decision is no longer yours:

https://bejakovic.com/different

Still on the fence? Discover Daniel Throssell’s arguments for saying “YES” to Copy Riddles

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I’m wrapping up my “Unannounced Bonus” promo for Copy Riddles. Right now, I am partnered with Lawrence Bernstein on Copy Riddles and nobody else. In the past, though, I have had a few other affiliate partners.

One of these was Australia’s best copywriter Daniel Throssell, who had the following to say about Copy Riddles, and his experience promoting it to his list:

===

There are few other courses I fully and wholeheartedly endorse as strongly as one of my own. Copy Riddles is one of them.

It’s the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen… literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you copywriting.

I have literally never had so many people write to me after I start promoting something, offering unsolicited & gushing feedback on it!

===

(Incidentally, that’s an illustration of round 11 of Copy Riddles, “A-list copywriter trick for amping up desire and belief at the same time.” The only difference is that I’ve taken the idea described in that lesson, and applied it not to a sales bullet but to a sales email. But emails are really just expanded bullets in my view.)

Maybe if you don’t take my word for how good and valuable Copy Riddles is, you will take Daniel’s word. Or maybe you’ll take the word of one of the two dozen or so sparkling and winking testimonials I’ve got up on the Copy Riddles sales page.

If you are still on the fence about Copy Riddles, it makes sense to take a moment or three right now, and decide whether you want to firmly come off the fence to the NO side.

If you do decide to say NO, that’s ok.

If, on the other hand, you decide to say YES to Copy Riddles before 12 midnight tonight, here’s what you are saying yes to:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

How?

By drilling into you mechanical do-or-die skill of writing sales bullets, and giving you feedback from A-list copywriters, who wrote their own sales bullets starting with the same source material as you did.

(This feedback process is why past customers have called Copy Riddles “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, until tonight only, you can break up payments for Copy Riddles over the course of three months.

Again, this “Unannounced Bonus” event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to say YES to this offer before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How to push-pull prospects on your list

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A few days ago, long-time reader and personal development coach Miro Skender sent me a message with a highlighted passage from my new 10 Commandments book which says:

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Expose human beings to anything constant — even incontestably good things like compliments, security, or money — and people soon stop responding. Like Macknick and Martinez-Conde say, we need contrast to see, hear, feel, think, and pay attention. Otherwise the world becomes literally invisible.

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Miro then said how he knows this fact of human psychology well. He knows how to apply it in his work with coaching clients. But he doesn’t know how to put it to use with prospects on his list. Do I have any ideas?

It’s a good question.

Prospects get bored and leave if you expose them to a constant stream of the same — even if it’s good, valuable, well-written same. But not only that. You make fewer sales with the prospects who stay, because your emails are simply less persuasive than they could be.

I thought of how best to answer Miro’s question in an email. Should I give an example from my own previous emails? Or from a sales letter written by an A-list copywriter? Or would a metaphor be needed to really get the point across?

There are benefits to doing each, I thought. So why choose among them and risk doing a sub-optimal job?

I soon realized that answering Miro’s question properly would involve a ton of work, way too much for a daily email.

Fortunately, I remembered I had done it all already, and more, inside my now-retired Most Valuable Postcard #2, code name “Ferrari Monster.”

The background on the Most Valuable Postcard is that it was a short-lived, paid, monthly newsletter I ran back in the summer of 2022.

It was short-lived because I found it was way too much work and stress to write up something as in-depth and researched as I wanted to make each of these monthly guides to be.

I pulled the plug on Most Valuable Postcard after the second issue, but not before I got glowing reviews from a group of initial subscribers that I let in.

For example, email marketer Daniel Throssell, who was one of those early subscribers, wrote me to say after the first issue:

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Seriously though, dude, I know it’s issue #1 but this program you’ve created is amazing. You’ve honestly made me pause and reconsider some ideas about how I want to do my own newsletter because this is just so excellently executed. I love pretty much everything about how you’ve done this, from the format to the content to the value you deliver in your insights. Really impressed.

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I don’t make back issues of Most Valuable Postcard available regularly. Most Valuable Postcard #2 wasn’t available yesterday. It won’t be available tomorrow. But it is available today.

If you’d like to find out more about what’s inside, and how you can use it to push-pull the prospects on your list:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/

Why I collect personalization data I never use

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Bridget Holland, a marketer out of Sydney, Australia, who runs a content marketing agency called NoBull Marketing, writes in with a question:

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I did a presentation for a business networking group yesterday about email marketing, and I used one of your emails as an example. (Frequency, formatting and results more than content. I was comparing it to a nicely formatted monthly email with stacks of articles, and arguing that either could work but you have to find out what was right for you and your market.)

For the first time ever – oops, embarrassing – I realised that you don’t use those first names you collect when people subscribed. (I had to go check that you collected them!) That you have no opening greeting at all.

So the question is:

* Why don’t you use greetings? Did you ever? If you did and you’ve stopped, has it made a difference? Either for the entire list, or for new subscriber behaviour?

* Why don’t you use personalisation? And since you don’t, why do you collect first names?

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I never used personalization in my emails because, like I wrote a few days ago in the context of calibration, it feels fake to me.

I don’t like it when people do it in emails I read, particularly in the body of the email. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

In the words of David Ogilvy, “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Or your mom, or your college roommate from UC Santa Cruz, or your ex-flatmate from Budapest, or an ex-girlfriend.

(The only person I’ve seen using personalization well is Daniel Throssell, who gets creative with it. However, in order to make that work, you have to police new subscribers to make sure they put in their real name when they sign up, which I don’t feel like doing.)

So like Bridget asks, why still ask for a name, if I’m never going to use it in an email?

Two reasons:

1. Most people do fill it out, and honestly. I make an occasional habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers, and this bit of info can be helpful.

2. Filling in a first name is a commitment and give for those who choose to make it. It’s a tiny commitment, but I figure it’s important. The work of training strangers of the internet to become dedicated readers and customers starts early, with such baby steps.

With all that said:

I remember the early days of my own marketing education. I put a lot of time and thought into topics like “First name on optin form, or no first name???” I now largely feel it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. Really, it’s just personal preference, and then inertia.

I’m not sure if anybody will profit from this in-depth discussion. But Bridget wrote in to ask, and I figured others might be wondering the same. In any case, I’m grateful to Bridget for sending in her question, and I wanted to highlight it here.

And since I’m busy writing my upcoming and new and still highly unfinished book, and since my self-imposed March 24 deadline is nearing, I would like to invite further reader questions.

Because answering reader questions makes for particularly easy and yet engaging emails.

So if you got small questions, big questions, questions about influence, copywriting, or how to style your hair, then I invite you to hit reply and let me know.

There’s a fair a chance I will answer your question in one of these emails over the next week or so, and will be grateful to you in any case.

It’s not an OPEN loop, it’s an OPENED loop

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A while back, marketer Daniel Throssell wrote an email pointing out the nonsense of the term “open loop.”

An open loop, as you might know, is a technique in copywriting where you start a story and then cut it off to talk about other stuff, basically leading the reader on and sucking him deeper and deeper in.

I was a tad irritated by Daniel’s calling out “open loop” as nonsense, because I always thought the term sounded somehow poetic. But really, I had to admit I couldn’t make sense of how an “open loop” makes sense.

Well, I found out yesterday where “open loop” actually comes from and what it actually is — a corruption of a term from computer programming.

Computer programs have constructs known as loops — “for” loops, “while” loops etc. – where an instruction is executed over and over while some condition holds true. So you open, say, a “for” loop within a computer program, and then you specify what happens next. (What happens next can actually include opening a new “for” loop — so you end up with a hierarchy of embedded “for” loops, one within the other.)

This analogy between computer program loops and a technique of communication was first made by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the creators of neurolinguistic programming or NLP.

In the 1970s, Grinder and Bandler were at the University of California Santa Cruz (my alma mater), a school that combined such interests as computer programming, linguistics, and dropping acid. It was natural that Bandler and Grinder would make the loop analogy, not only because it was in the water at UCSC, but because of the nested nature of both kinds of structures.

Ultimately, Bandler and Grinder got the idea for this technique from psychotherapist and hypnosis innovator Milton Erickson, one of the most effective therapists of all time. Bandler and Grinder sat at Erickson’s feet and recorded Erickson’s unique patterns of communication, which then became formalized as NLP techniques.

This really gets to the core of this email. The core is my answer to the daily puzzle from my Daily Email Habit service, which you can sign up for at the link at the bottom. Because one thing that Bandler and Grinder noticed was that Erickson would often embed suggestions in the middle of a story.

Embedded suggestions supposedly work better than if you just tell people to do something outright. And if you tell a bunch of nested stories, and embed a suggestion at the center of them all, it supposedly works even better.

Who knows though? Maybe it just worked for Milton Erickson, because the guy was unusually skilled, observant, and charismatic.

Besides, Erickson enjoyed constantly experimenting and inventing new techniques and new means of allowing people to make the changes that they wanted to make. He didn’t seem to be particularly wedded to any one technique, which is something I admire him for, and a credo I live by myself.

Grinder and Bandler, on the other hand, took Erickson’s improvised, free flowing, one-time experiments and formalized them into set rules and templates with catchy names.

Rules and templates with catchy names tend to sell well, which is why NLP ideas, effective or not, have become so widespread and influential, from corporate training, to copywriting, to pick up artists.

Along the way, of course, a lot has been lost, and even more has become corrupted. Which brings me back to the term “open loop.”

Now that we know where the term comes from, it’s clear it’s not really an “open loop.” Rather, it’s that you “open a loop,” or maybe you have an “opened loop.”

In Ericksonian hypnosis as in computer programming, you eventually have to close your loop to have a program that’s syntactically valid. (And if you’ve nested multiple loops, one within the other, you have to close each one, in reverse order to how you opened them.)

All that’s to say, I have to admit that Daniel Throssell was right and that the term “open loop,” poetic though it sounded to me, doesn’t really make sense. And now you know what term really does make sense — an OPENED loop — and maybe you’ve learned something else along the way.

And as for that link I promised you, it’s below. Maybe it could be valuable for you to take a look at it now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh