Gene Schwartz

12 sticky disciples to get your message out into the world

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If I ever launch my AIDA University, a 4-year, overpriced curriculum teaching people how to persuade, the mandatory reading for the first semester will include the book Made To Stick.

In that book, authors Chip and Dan Heath tell you how to create a message that sticks.

Basically, they say that you should turn your message into a simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional story.

Which is all good and fine but— are simple, dramatic stories really the only kinds of sticky messages?

Clearly no. I imagine that, in the interest of making their own message sticky, that is, simple and concrete, the Heath brothers decided to stick to teaching just one sticky format.

But I’ve been keeping track of different kinds of sticky messages. Today, I’d like to share them with you.

If you have an idea you want to go out into the world, then here are 12 ways, 12 little disciples, that can preach your message from the housetops:

1. Story, particularly drama

Well ok, yes, this is familiar enough, and it’s what Chip and Dan Heath talk about as well. (Bear with me. I have different ones after this one.)

2. High stakes

Classic example: Stansberry’s “The End of America” video sales letter, which was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.

3. Visuals

Here’s one that made Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto stick:

Rich Schefren's Internet Manifesto | Tyrone Shum | Flickr

4. Exercises

The first thing that comes to my mind is the following old chestnut, used as a sticky message to illustrate lateral thinking or the absence of it:

Say we have a pen and a piece of paper with 9 evenly spaced dots (as shown). How do we draw 4 straight lines through the 9 dots, without ever lifting our

5. Quizzes

Is your “fat loss type” an I, G, C, or T? What’s your Myers-Briggs? Are you a Pisces or a killer whale? Take our quiz to find out what this says about you as a marketer.

6. Metonyms

A metonym, as I learned once but keep forgetting, is “a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government.”

A great pop culture example of using a metonym to get the point across and to persuade the other side comes from the movie Ford v. Ferrari.

In that movie, Matt Damon, playing car designer Carroll Shelby, is explaining to Henry Ford III why Ford’s sports driving team sucks.

Damon points to a little red folder that one of Ford’s underlings is currently thumbing through (the folder is the metonym, albeit nonverbal) and says:

“As I sat out there in your lovely waiting room, I watched that little red folder, right there, go through four pairs of hands before it got to you. Course that doesn’t include the 22 or so other Ford employees who probably poked at it before it made its way up to the 19th floor. All due respect, sir, you can’t win a race by committee.”

7. Parallel case studies

… which are a subset of dramatic stories, but which occur often enough and are successful often enough compared to regular stories, that they warrant including.

A famous example is the Wall Street Journal “Two Young Men” sales letter, though wise marketers (eg. Andre Chaperon) have been using the same format online as well.

8. Authority (scientific research)

Scientists from MIT report that this kind of message is very sticky, in fact 38% stickier than the average.

9. Demonstration

“It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries.” Good if you get to see the demonstration on TV… better yet if you see it live… best if you can actually experience it directly on yourself.

10. Outrage/saying the “wrong” thing/playing against type

This is what a huge chunk of classic direct response headline complexes are about. Think “Lies Lies Lies” by Gary Bencivenga… “What THEY Don’t Want You To Know” by Eric Betuel… or “Why Haven’t TV Owners Been Told These Facts” by Gene Schwartz.

11. Rhyme, alliteration, or co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind

This is a broad category but it all comes down to wordplay of one sort or another that our brains seem to enjoy:

– “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”

– The “Big Black Book” series of big Boardroom blockbusters

– “The Plague of the Black Debt,” which along with the End of America above, is another of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time

12. Metaphor or analogy

An analogy is like a listicle, in that it organizes under one umbrella a number of related points, some of which are strong, and others, which can be disguised and hidden among the stronger ones.

If you have other good categories of sticky messages, write in and let me know. I am putting together a new book in which this kind of stuff will feature. I will appreciate your help, and maybe what you send me will wind up in the book.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, you might enjoy my most recent book,

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

In that book, you can find lots of simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional stories.

But you can also find demonstrations (check out the very first sentence of the intro)… outrage (that’s the whole point of featuring con men and pickup artists in the title)… co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind (“10 Commandments”)… authority… quizzes… high stakes… and even visuals, at least such as can be done with words (specifically, the opening of Commandment V).

For all that, and more:
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https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The magnificent obsession that produces A-list copywriting skills

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This morning, I sent an email about a great endorsement for Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine. That endorsement came from the world’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga.

(Gary: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

A lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine costs $997, but I’ve made a deal with Lawrence so I can offer it for free as bonus for my Copy Riddles program for this week only. Except…

It’s nice for Lawrence and Ad Money Machine to get this great endorsement from Gary Bencivenga.

But what about Copy Ridddles? Where’s the shining endorsement there?

Unfortunately, I cannot count Gary Bencivenga as a Copy Riddles member. (Gary, if you’re reading, hit reply and we’ll fix that.)

I therefore do not have a glowing testimonial for Copy Riddles the way Lawrence does for Ad Money Machine.

However, I do have the following curious story from Gary.

Once upon a time, a young Gary had to compete against Gene Schwartz, the legendary copywriter and author of the cult book Breakthrough Advertising.

Gary wrote up a first draft to try to beat Gene’s control sales letter. But when Gary compared what he had written to the control, he got depressed — his bullets were so much weaker than Gene’s.

So what did he do? In Gary’s own words:

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I said, the only way I’m going to have a way of competing with Gene is if I figure out what he’s done to get these bullets.

So wherever his bullets came from, I would read the same page. I would learn from him just by mimicking what he had done.

So I said, “This bullet that he came up with came from chapter 3, page 4. What is the original source of this?”

And he taught me so much, just by studying his copy and by looking at the product itself.

I was able to beat him, but it was really his package too in a way, because I learned the technique.

===

That process Gary describes is exactly what Copy Riddles is about.

Copy Riddles gets you competing with A-list copywriters, starting with the original source material they used, and allows you to compare your final result with their final result.

The goal is not to match word-for-word what the A-listers did. It’s certainly not to get depressed about how your copy is so much weaker than theirs.

The goal is to find out what A-list copywriters zoom in on, what they chose to leave out, how they take a dry and technical fact and make it sexy and exciting.

Do this over and over, starting with different source materials, and subtly and quickly, the A-listers’ instincts become your instincts, their tricks your tricks, their skills your skills.

Of course, you don’t need Copy Riddles to do this. You can follow the process and do all the work yourself. Start by digging around the Internet and collecting A-list sales letters…

… then stalk Amazon, eBay, used book sites, and online repositories to find the books and courses they were selling, most of them out of print…

… and when you finally get both the sales letter and the out-of-print book in your possession… go bullet by bullet… and tease out how the A-list copywriter turned lead into gold.

This magnificently obsessive process will 100% work.

I know because I’ve done it. All in all, it took me about three months of time and maybe 100 hours of work.

Of course, if you these results but you want them more quickly and more easily, then that’s what Copy Riddles is for.

Copy Riddles is a fast, fun, mostly-done-for-you ride that allows you to own A-list copywriting skills, following this Gary Bencivenga-approved process.

It’s a process also approved by the couple hundred people who have been through Copy Riddles before you, who say things like:

#1: “There are very few copywriting courses that offer this level of practical value”

#2: “The best course I’ve ever taken, bar none”

#3: “I literally use what I learned in Copy Riddles every day”

#4: “I think most people should start learning about copywriting this way”

#5: “One of the best copywriting courses I’ve done”

#6: “The entire course is an a-ha moment”

#7: “Worth every dollar/minute/page”

If you’d like more info on Copy Riddles, or to grab it before the Ad Money Machine “Unannounced Bonus” disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Reinforcement training

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I thought I was saved:

Age 20, I was lurking around the university library like all normal college freshmen do on a Saturday afternoon.

I flipped over a book that somebody had left on a table. It turned out to be an instructional manual for cognitive behavioral therapists.

As night started to fall, I read it. It blew my mind.

I recognized all the distorted patterns of thinking that the book described, which lead to anxiety and depression. I knew them all from my own head. Now I had labels to identify them, and techniques to challenge and redirect them in the future.

For a day or two after, I walked around on a cloud, feeling my life was transformed. I had finally found a way out of the gloom that had formed around me in my teenage years.

Except it didn’t last.

Within a couple days, the CBT stuff had largely slipped from my mind. So it was back to catastrophizing, and black-and-white thinking, and overgeneralization.

Apparently, I’m not unique in this. A few days ago, I was reading an article about the promise of AI for treating mental illness. The article mentioned CBT, and how effective and popular it still is — IF. From the article:

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When [Alison Darcy, a psychologist at Stanford] was in graduate school, she treated dozens of hospitalized patients using C.B.T.; many experienced striking improvements but relapsed after they left the hospital. C.B.T. is “best done in small quantities over and over and over again,” she told me.

===

I’m telling you this because in my still-catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and overgeneralizing head, this connected to another thing I was reading a few days ago.

This other thing was a book by sales trainer David Sandler.

Sandler had came up with this amazing and low-stress sales system. He wrote it up in his book. He taught it to beaten down, despondent salesmen during live seminars.

The salesmen went out of the seminar walking on clouds, certain they had been saved from ever again being bullied by prospects or ashamed of selling.

Except it didn’t last.

That’s why Sandler’s book is called You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. From that book:

===

Of course, people want instantaneous impact change. They want to see positive, enduring changes immediately. But our experience is that that kind of change is going to be sustainable over time only if you create a solid ongoing reinforcement program to back up the learning.

===

Maybe this is true of all really effective but unnatural systems.

You hear such a system described. It makes sense. You get energized, follow through for a couple days.

Eventually though, you revert back to the mean.

The solution: small doses, over time, with regular reinforcement.

Yes, I know this is the exact opposite of what typical direct response offers promise (Gene Schwartz’s publishing company was called Instant Improvement).

But this reinforcement learning approach has its appeals as well:

It’s easy to get started with something when you know it only requires small doses, rather than a drastic change.

And with reinforcement training, it’s easier to get committed to starting today, rather than starting later AKA never. That’s because since change will take time, and reinforcement, rather than a one time big bang that you can get with the flick of a credit card, every minute that you delay ends up costing you down the line. Best start today.

It holds for CBT… for sales training… and for the effective but unnatural habit that is writing a daily email for your business.

For CBT reinforcement, you now have AI apps to talk to you and offer to correct your distorted thinking day in and day out.

For sales training, you have David Sandler’s President Club, which reinforces his sales system during weekly meetups for a modest $12,000 a year.

And as for daily emails, you have my Daily Email Habit service, which nudges you to write a daily email every day, and gives you a puzzle to mull over, and even some hints to make sure what you write is effective.

Daily Email Habit doesn’t use AI, and it doesn’t quite cost $12,000 a year, at least yet. If you’d like more information on it, today, when it’s best to get started:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Boredom Therapy

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I remember one time as a kid, I was home alone, sitting in one part of the apartment.

“All right,” I said to myself. “Time to go sit in the other part of the apartment now. Let’s go.”

But nothing happened.

Because I was at home, and alone, it was a very low-stakes situation. So I just kept sitting there, and observed the strangeness of it.

“Let’s go now,” I said again to myself.

Still nothing. So I sat and waited, knowing that eventually something would happen.

And sure enough, at some point a little later, my body, on its own, without any seeming command from me, got up and moved to the other room.

I’m reading a book now called A Life of One’s Own. It records the experiences of one woman, Marion Milner, who decided to keep a close eye on her own mind, what makes her happy, what she really wants out of life, what she can do to get more of it.

Last night, as I was reading this book, I came across the following passage:

“The function of will might be to stand back, to wait, not to push.”

Milner wrote that for much of her life, she thought there were two possible paths through life. One was the path of the whip, of using her will to force and push herself to move. The other path was a kind of negation of the will, a cow-like acceptance of whatever happens.

But in time, Milner realized there might be a third path. That’s what the quote above is about.

Maybe it’s not about sitting around like a cow… or of whipping yourself until you finally act… but of using the will in some other way, to stand back, to wait.

This reminded me of something else I read recently, about “free won’t.”

You might know about neuroscience experiments that show our actions and choices are detectable in the brain a good fraction of a second before we become consciously aware of them — ie. before we consciously “decide” on them.

This has led some people to conclude there’s no such thing as free will.

What you might not know are some equally interesting neuroscience experiments, in fact by some of the same neuroscientists as above. These other experiments show that in that fraction of a second from the time that our brain decides to do something to the time it actually happens, the conscious mind can veto the decision, and stop it from being carried into action.

Hence, even if we don’t have free will… we might still have “free won’t.”

I don’t know what this all neuroscience really means in practical terms. But the first part, about actions and choices coming from somewhere outside our consciousness, meshes with my life experiences, such as the one I had as a kid, telling myself to move, and having nothing happen.

The second part, about the power of the conscious veto, meshes with what Milner is saying, and some of my other life experiences.

In fact, I wrote an email almost two years ago, back on March 23, 2022, about how I’d started taking 7 minutes to do nothing before I got to work.

My 7-minute productivity hack involved just sitting and staring and allowing myself to get antsy. When the seven minutes were up, I found I was ready and eager to start work, instead of having to force and push myself.

At the time, I didn’t make the leap that this could be more broadly useful. But it’s something I’ve realized over the past few months. I call it Boredom Therapy. Here’s an example session:

1. Say I sit down to read a book like Milner’s. It’s going great for a couple minutes. But suddenly I get the idea, “Let me check my email. Maybe there’s something exciting waiting for me!”

2. If I catch that thought early enough, it’s easy to stop myself, at least once, from going and checking my email. But here’s the crucial part.

At this point, I don’t just force myself to go back to reading, even though my thoughts are clearly elsewhere, and even though the email-checking idea is almost bound to pop up again soon.

Instead, I put the book down, and I just do… nothing. I allow my thoughts to run as they will, and I just sit there.

3. In time, my thoughts get spent, and I get eager to read the book again.

I still wait a moment to make sure this is not a trick my thoughts are playing on me — another form of restlessness.

If it is a little trick, then I just keep waiting and doing nothing. Otherwise, I lift the book off my chest (I tend to read lying on the couch), and I pick up reading where I left off.

I used the example of reading a book to show how I use Boredom Therapy. But Boredom Therapy is just as good for getting work done… or for exercising at the gym (when I think, “I’m not feeling it, let’s go home”)… or, if Milner is right, for living your life in general, the way you want to, and enjoying the process.

I realize this might all sound vague or fluffy or even a little suspicious. After all, you’ve probably never heard of Marion Milner before, and you don’t know why you should listen to her. And as for me, I have a long and public track record of magical, impractical, and even nonsensical thinking.

So let me tell you one last story. It has to do with an A-list copywriter, Gene Schwartz.

Schwartz had enough time in his life to write several books about copywriting, including possibly the greatest book in the field, Breakthrough Advertising.

He was also a published biblical scholar.

And of course, he wrote hundreds of sales letters for himself and for his clients, which paid for his Park Avenue penthouse, his world-class art collection, and his Manhattan millionaire lifestyle.

Schwartz did all this by working just three hours a day.

He famously had a kitchen timer that he set for 33 minutes and 33 seconds. He worked in these half-hour blocks, and then he took a break.

These 33:33 time blocks are what people today tend to focus on. But if you ask me, it’s the wrong thing to focus on.

The right thing is exactly what I’ve been telling you, Boredom Therapy, because Schwartz practiced the same. In his own words:

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I have no goals for the next 33.33 minutes except to work on the copy.

Okay, I don’t have to work on the copy. There is absolutely no necessity for me to work on the copy.

I can sit there. I can stare. I can drink the coffee. I can stare some more, drink some more coffee.

I can do anything in the world except… not get up from the desk, not even write my own name. I just sit there.

Sooner or later, I’ll get bored. My boredom comes in one or two minutes.

Then, I begin looking at the copy. As I look at the copy, I begin paging up and down, and as I do that, something reaches out from that computer and grabs me, and says, “Hey, aren’t I beautiful? Hey, aren’t I powerful? Hey, start with me.”

===

By the way, that quote is part of a talk that Schwartz gave at Rodale Press.

To my knowledge, Schwartz’s talk is not available anywhere for free. But it is available as a free bonus if you buy Brian Kurtz’s book Overdeliver, which sells for $12.69 in Kindle format on Amazon.

In fact, this Gene Schwartz talk is part of a dozen bonuses, which sold for hundreds of dollars worth of real value in their time, which Brian has been giving away to buyers of Overdeliver.

If you ask me, it’s the absolute best deal in direct marketing land.

Not because you pay $12.69 to get hundreds of dollars’ worth of books, trainings, and courses.

But because the direct marketing wisdom in these books, trainings, and courses, much of it not available anywhere else, like Schwartz’s talk, has directly been worth tens of thousands of dollars to me so far… and will be worth much more in time, as I continue to revisit, rediscover, and apply the ideas in these free bonuses.

if you want to benefit from this incredible collection also, here’s where to go:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

Problem: There’s nothing happening in my brain

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It’s day three after my flight back from North America to Europe. Jet lag skipped the first night, but kicked in last night.

I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 1am, lay awake, got up, read for a while, went back to bed, tossed and turned some more.

I’m guessing it was 5am by the time I finally fell asleep again. I slept until 10am and woke up like I was emerging from a month-long coma.

I’m telling you this because it’s now a few hours later. I’ve gone outside to clear my head. I’ve had breakfast. None of it has helped.

It’s time to write my daily email. But because of this disturbed sleep and resulting confusion, and because it’s very late for writing by my usual standard, there’s absolutely nothing happening in my head.

No new ideas for today’s email.

Nothing good based on recent reader replies in my inbox.

Nothing in my extensive journal that sparks any kind of miserable light in my mind.

In situations like this, I have enough experience that I can brute-force my way and write something acceptable. And that’s what I started to do today as well.

But then I caught myself.

I realized that the fact that nothing is happening in my brain today is my topic for today’s email.

I recently listened to an interview with a stand-up comedian, Chris Grace. Grace was talking about what he does when things are not going well, when his jokes are falling flat, when the audience isn’t responding. He said:

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My main tool is that I never pretend that it’s not going the way it’s going. And I think this is a pretty common standup tactic, which is just to call out exactly what is happening in the room.

​​I think the skill level here is how aligned you can be with the exact energy of you plus the audience. So if there is a certain tone happening or if there is a vibe, the closest you can get to accurately naming that vibe and building from there, it can help you unify the room sometimes.

===

I heard somewhere that the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz threw out all of his winning sales letters and ads.

Schwartz didn’t have a swipe file to consult. He didn’t have templates. He looked at each sales situation as unique. And he tried to align himself and call out the exact vibe of the market he was writing to, right in that moment. This is how he paid for a penthouse on New York’s Park Avenue… a world-famous art collection… and an all-around ritzy Manhattan lifestyle.

It works in dating, too.

​​I once went on a first date with a Norwegian girl. She was a very smooth conversationalist. I believe she was a psychologist, or maybe a therapist.

Through her professional training, this girl kept the conversation on our date going without the slightest hitch. She made me feel she is very interested in my life story… what I’d studied in my many years of college and grad school… what I think about turtles, life, and the universe.

I kept talking and talking. Gradually, panic started to build inside me. I realized I was drowning in quicksand.

So when the Norwegian girl smoothly transitioned from one waning topic and opened up yet another avenue of promising scientific discussion, I cut her off.

“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” I said.

“We’re not?” she asked. “Why not?”

“Because we need to do some first-date stuff.”

She laughed. “What do you have in mind?”

“This is the moment during the first date when you and I have to work together. We have to see if we can create some kind of sexual spark between us.”

The girl’s eyes sparkled for the first time that night. And the conversation shifted to much more promising waters, about the strange hookup culture in Norway, about how dating worked in Hungary where I was living at the time, and about the kinds of things she found attractive in men.

I’ll leave off that story for now. And I’ll just remind you of the power of calling out the vibe, whatever it is — particularly if it’s not working in your favor.

That’s free, highly specific advice on persuasion and influence.

For paid, more widely useful advice, specifically a framework for owning persuasion and influence skills of all kinds, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Is the daily email marketplace glutted?

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I’m on the Amtrak from New York to Baltimore, sitting the wrong way, away from the direction of travel, bouncing up and down as trees and warehouses zoom by me. It’s not a great time to write a daily email.

​​Fortunately, a long-time reader fed me a good email prompt a few days ago. He wrote:

===

For a while now, I’ve been feeling like I’m inundated with emails from copywriters, marketers and direct marketing companies.

Until a few months ago, I took pleasure in reading everything.

Now I don’t anymore.

[…]

Lately, I enjoy reading newsletters about what is happening in the world, novels, history books, detective stories, and business history textbooks.

I hope this metamorphosis of mine is normal.

===

My reader’s message sums up the concept of the sophistication of the marketplace, as described by legendary marketer Gene Schwartz, in the experiences of one person.

A man will enter a specific marketplace. He will be new, interested, and engaged by just about everything there.

In time, he will become more selective, more skeptical, or even leave that specific marketplace altogether.

Is this a problem?

​​Is it a vote against ever starting a business in general?

​​Or is it a vote against starting a daily email newsletter right now?

Of course not.

The fact is, there are uncountably many humans alive on the planet right now. You only need a tiny number of them to be interested in what you are writing or selling right now to do very well for yourself and your business.

It’s much like a direct mail sales letter, which will typically only get a 2% response rate, even when mailed to a highly qualified list of prospects.

98 out of 100 targeted, pre-selected prospects won’t get the sales letter… or won’t bother to read it all the way to the order form… or won’t be persuaded to buy.

Only 2 out of 100 will actually respond and send in any money.

And yet many big fortunes over the past century have been built on those 2%.

The same applies to you today, with even more extreme numbers.

That said, it is undeniable that different formats – email newsletters as opposed to video courses as opposed to books — will attract different kinds of people, and in different mindsets and stages of sophistication.

In my experience, he more serious and successful people are, the more likely it is that they read books.

So if you do write a regular newsletter, it makes sense to adapt your best content, and turn it into a book. You will often reach great prospects who might be among the 98 out of 100 who would never read your newsletter, at least not today, before they really know you and trust you to have something worthwhile to say.

That was one of the motivations for my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book.

​​That book was quick to write. And yet it’s one of the best thing I’ve ever done for my standing in the industry and for attracting quality readers to my newsletter — readers who might never have read otherwise.

For more info on this quick and yet worthwhile book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

My first 1-star Amazon review

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It finally happened. I finally got my first 1-star Amazon review.

I wrote back in May about how I had gotten a 1-star review of my “10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters” on Goodreads, a book review platform.

That review was in Serbian, a language that I understand. The gist of the review was an attack on direct response copywriting. “Outdated!” “Cringe!” My poor book, which has the word “copywriters” in the title, apparently attracted somebody who loves to read about a topic they hate.

That’s okay. Because I wrote an email about that review and I profited from it.

But I’m not sure I can profit from my first 1-star Amazon review. Because a while back, Amazon started allowing reviews that don’t say anything, but simply just pick a number of stars.

What precise and profound comment did my reader mean to express by choosing a single star for my book?

Perhaps the reader had some genuine gripe or even a legitimate critique of the actual content.

But perhaps he or she read the book and thought it was great, and wanted to reward me for writing it: “This book is so good it reminds of my home state of Texas! Here’s a lone star fer ya.”

Or perhaps this reader thought the book was too valuable to share, and wanted to discourage others from reading it and getting good ideas from it also.

Unfortunately, we will never know.

Instead, in order to profit from this zero-content review, let me tie it up with something more substantive. And that’s a message I got last week from Kieran Drew.

As you might know, Kieran is a bit of a star in the creative entrepreneur space. He has close to 200k followers on Twitter. He also has a big and growing email newsletter, with over 25k readers.

Earlier this year, Kieran launched a course about writing, High Impact Writing. Over the course of two 5-day launches, he sold over $300,000 worth of this course to his audience.

But back to the message Kieran sent me last week.

​​It simply said, “hope you’re well mate, continuing to spread the good word.”

​​Beneath that was a screenshot of a tweet that Kieran wrote earlier that day:

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Copywriting is the most important skill for any creator.

My 5 favorite books (if you’re a beginner, read in this order):

1. Adweek Copywriting Handbook
2. Great Leads
3. Cashvertising
4. 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters
5. Breakthrough Advertising

===

I’ve never read Cashvertising. But the others I have read, and multiple times each. It kind of tickles me to be included on a top-5 copywriting list along with Joe Sugarman and Mark Ford John Forde and Gene Schwartz.

I’ve been pushing my 10 Commandments book pretty hard over the past few days.

Today is last day will be pushing it for a while.

Of course, you can choose to buy it today or you can choose not to. There’s no urgency, beyond the fact that people who care about writing and know about online business success think that what’s inside this book is valuable.

It might be so for you too. If you’d like to stake $5 on it to find out:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How I changed myself from lazy and aimless to disciplined and motivated

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I was talking to my mom a few days ago, and right before we got off the call, she paused.

​​”You know,” she said, “it’s really great you’ve become so disciplined and self-motivated.”

I grunted.

“I remember this one time,” she continued, “when you were 18 years old. And you said that the only hope for you is either the army or prison. That you needed that kind of outside structure.”

I don’t remember ever saying that, but it sounds about right.

For the longest time in my life, well beyond age 18, I was aimless, floating about from place to place, from habit to habit, as the days flipped by.

To top it off, I’m very lazy by nature. My big ambition in life was not to work. No wonder I concluded my only hope was either the army or prison.

So. How did I go from there to where I am today, being relatively disciplined, hard-working, even successful… with no army or prison along the way?

Honestly, I don’t know. ​​Time, small steps, and seeing the example of others definitely helped. Like I wrote a few days ago, when we’re unsure, we ping our environment for references.

I’ll say more about that in a second, but first, on to work:

Yesterday I started promoting the Infostack copywriter bundle. 14 ebooks and courses and trainings by copywriters, about various aspects of copywriting. The reason I’m promoting it is because I’m participating in it — my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters is one of the 14.

I said yesterday I will go through the bundle myself and tease the best individual content.

What in the hell was I thinking?

It takes a ton of time to do that, or at least to do it well. Gene Schwartz took weeks to build his “vocabulary” — to go through the book he was promoting and to underline all the interesting bits.

I have no time to do that with all these books and courses, and certainly not by Friday, which is when I’m ending this promotion. So I will just tell you the following, and then you can make up your own mind.

Much of the bundle, about half, is real newbie stuff:

Four Weeks to Freelance Writing… Stop Aspiring, Start Writing… How To Become A 6-Figure Content Writer… Get Paid To Become A Freelance Copywriter…

Sure, these guides have specific advice for you. How to motivate yourself, how to get going, how to get your first client, how to get paid that first $100 or $1,000.

But really, if you are a newbie, then I figure the actual value in this bundle is likely to be the example of a dozen different copywriters who have made it, who are doing what you would like to do, showing you that it’s possible, and maybe getting you to finally take that first step yourself.

Do you need to pay $49 for this encouragement or motivation?

Certainly not.

On the other hand, if that finally does click in your head because one of these copywriters connects with you, and encourages you to take that first step, and the step after that, then it will be worth much more than $49.

As for the how-to info in this bundle, again, I cannot speak to any of it because I haven’t gone through it. But I can speak to the four free bonuses I am offering if you do get this bundle.

I want to guarantee this bundle is worth your $49 even if you don’t go through a single one of the participating trainings, courses, or ebooks (except my 10 Commandments of course, do read that because it’s great). And so I’m offering you the following four bonuses:

1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets ($97 value)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free if you take me up on my Infostack offer, which also includes my…

2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters ($100 value)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this guide once before, as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

And finally, my bonus stack also includes…

4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document, which has until now only been shared with Dan and his coaching students.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid to Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

So there you go. If you want the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Stack for its $555.86 worth of value and inspiration, yours for just $49…

… or if you want my add-on bonuses for their $25,197/∞ value, yours free…

… then here’s what to do:

1. Buy the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Bundle at https://bejakovic.com/infostack

2. You will then get an automated email from ThriveCart with a link to a special, members-only page on my site where you can access the four free bonuses above.

Important:

Infostack’s bundle offer is live now and will go on for a week, but I will only be promoting it until this Friday at 8:31pm CET.

That’s how long my offer with the bonuses above is good for. Your gotta buy this bundle before Friday at 8:31pm CET to get my bonuses. So if you know you want them, why not get them now?

Is this the most immoral email ever written?

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Or is it the most sensible, the most practical, the most revolutionary thing you will read today?

To find out, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Is your business or career a source of annoyance or frustration instead of a source of pleasure and fulfillment?

2. Have you become tense and irritable because of the incessant, nagging demands made upon you by others?

3. Do you remember my email from last week, the one where I had a little story from Drayton Bird, about how he and Gene Schwartz independently wrote the exact same ad headline, word-for-word?

Well I tracked that ad down. By the tone of it, I guess it’s the Gene Schwartz version.

This ad sells a book — “the most immoral book ever written?” — which was initially published in 1937, then went through a lot of reprints, then went out of print, and was finally resurrected in the 1960s by Gene for his mail-order book-selling empire. Gene is still supposed to be the guy who has sold the most books by mail in history.

I invite you to check out the full ad on the page below. If, after 10 days, you do not believe that Gene Schwartz’s masterful cold reads can dramatically transform your marketing, you may return the ad and owe nothing. Otherwise I will bill you for $0.00 plus postage. Click the link below and then read the page that opens up:

https://bejakovic.com/most-immoral

Serves me right for soliciting wishes

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Last month, I sent out an email about a training I want to put together, on how copywriters can create their own offers. I’m still planning to put that training together, and I will have it out later this month.

Anyways, in that email, I asked for input. What’s your current situation… what’s holding you back from creating your own offer… what questions would you wish that I answer if I put this training together.

I got some good responses. But one reader got greedy. He decided to treat me like the genie of the lamp, and he wished the forbidden wish:

“Tell me how to create an offer that’s guaranteed to be irresistible!”

Upon hearing this, I bounced around like an angry djinn, exploding into a million little exasperated stars. “That’s like wishing for more wishes! ‘Guaranteed’? ‘Irresistible’? It cannot be done!”

But then I rematerialized into my human form. I scratched my blue genie head, pulled on my genie beard, and thought for a moment. I reached back into my ancient genie memory, spanning thousands of years, thousands of copywriting books, and thousands of sales campaigns.

I realized there is a way that’s almost guaranteed to produce irresistible offers.

​​At least, I found there’s a common element to all the offers I’ve created which ended up successful. On the flip side, I also found this element was lacking in all the offers which fizzled.

I won’t spell out what this magical element is — not here. It’s something I will reserve for my Mystical Cave of Secrets, aka that training about offers I will put on later this month.

But I can give you an idea of what this element is, using my most successful offer to date, Copy Riddles. If you pay close attention to what I’m about to say, you can figure out what I have in mind.

Here goes:

Copy Riddles is built around a simple bit of advice by the legendary, multimillionaire copywriter Gary Halbert.

Gary’s bit of advice has been endorsed by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said that if you follow Gary’s bit of advice, you’ll learn to write copy and make lots of money. And Parris should know — because he himself followed Gary’s advice, applied it, and made lots of money.

Parris isn’t the only one. Marketer Ben Settle also admitted that he followed Gary’s advice and profited as a result.

And another Gary — Gary Bencivenga, who has been called America’s greatest living copywriter, said he managed to beat a control by Gene Schwartz as a result of following this same approach that Gary Halbert advised, though he arrived at it independently of Gary Halbert.

And what is that bit of advice?

It’s​​ simply to look at sales bullets from successful sales letters, and to compare those bullets to the source in the book or the course or whatever that the sales letter was selling. That’s how you can spot the “twists” that top copywriters use to turn sand into glass, water into wine, lead into gold.

So that’s what I did.

I tracked down both the source material, and the bullets that sold that source material. But not just any bullets. Bullets written by A-list copywriters — including the two Gary’s, including Parris, including many more like David Deutsch and John Carlton — who were all competing against each other in the biggest big-money arenas of sales copywriting and direct marketing.

And then, rather than just creating a how-to course based on the tricks and tactics that I saw these A-list copywriters using in their sales bullets, I created a fun, immersive, exercise-based experience that I summed up in the title of the course, Copy Riddles.

Result? Here’s marketer Chew Zhi Wei, who went through Copy Riddles a while back:

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By the way just wanted to thank you for such an amazing course. This might be one of the most valuable courses that I have ever have the privilege to attend. So much so that I even feel that you’re underselling how much value you’re actually gifting away. Thank you so very very much.

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Is it clear now how to make an almost irresistible offer? I hope it is. And if not, you can find it discussed in more detail in rounds 6-12 of Copy Riddles, with round 11 being particularly relevant.

If you’re curious about all that, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr