Dune

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Mood is a thing for cattle and loveplay, not selling

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Last night was the first time I’ve ever walked out of a movie theater.

I nervously edged forward in my seat… I clutched my jacket and my backpack… I waited for the end of the scene… and then I gritted my teeth and pushed through the long row of legs and their groaning owners and the boxes of popcorn these leg-owners were holding.

Once I had tripped and stumbled over all these people, I made my way through the darkened theater, out the emergency exit, and out into a world of light and air and freedom.

I asked myself later what had happened to me. After all, I’ve suffered through worse movies than this, the 2021 version of Dune. Why did I decide to bolt this time?

Maybe it was the fact it was my first time in a movie theater in over two years.

Maybe it was the movie itself. After all, compare the same line from the mysterious 1984 version, which I like a lot, to this present, lifeless version:

“Not in the mood? Mood’s a thing for cattle and loveplay, not fighting!”
— Dune (1984)

“Mood? What’s mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises, no matter the mood!”
— Dune (2021)

So yeah, there were those reasons. But I realized what the biggest reason was simply:

I had gone to see this movie by myself.

I’m in transit between two cities. I had some free time, and a few people had recommended this new Dune. So I decided to go to the movies, even though I had no one to go with.

It turned out to be a rare blessing.

I didn’t have to bribe, convince, or beg anyone to agree with me. I didn’t have to look over to my movie partner, look imploringly at the exit, and then look back, trying to see if the person next to me understood that now’s time to get up and get the hell out, and avoid wasting two more hours of perfectly good life.

In my experience, that’s often not the case. Not when it comes to movie going. And not when it comes to life in general.

I recently wrote about the many hooks that keep people stuck in the status quo. Even when the status quo is dull, sepia-toned, and threatens to drag on endlessly, like this new version of Dune.

Well, other people are the most powerful of these hooks, both directly and indirectly.

That’s an unavoidable fact of life. And it’s something you will have to deal with in your marketing.

So my point for you is this:

Many marketing gurus will try to sell you new tricks to help you agitate the spleen out of your prospect. The idea being, once you get somebody in the right mood, he will finally take action.

A dangerous mistake, I say.

In the words of Jonah Berger, instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already.

And if you are trying to get your prospect to take real-world action… or make a transformation in his life… or just make a really big purchase, which might end up helping him… then think about other people in his life. And somewhere in your marketing, equip your prospect to deal with these other people.

​​Give your prospect a buying system, not a mood. After all, there’s a world of light and air and freedom at stake.

Now, in a moment, I’ll give you a chance to transform your life, by signing up to my email newsletter and getting a steady stream of valuable persuasion and marketing ideas.

But you might think how your spouse, kids, or wife might react if they see you reading yet another newsletter on your phone, when you should be paying attention to them.

When they try to make you feel guilty about it, tell yourself, and them if you like, that it’s a temporary sacrifice, so you can build a better life for all of you.

But that’s all assuming you sign up to my newsletter. It’s not for everyone. But maybe it is for you. If you want to find out, here’s where to go.