Harry Houdini

Shady and petty, or smart personal positioning?

by

In 1906, magician Harry Houdini started to research an ambitious book he planned to call The Encyclopedia of Magic.

But the more Houdini worked, the more maniacal and single-minded his focus became — to discredit Robert-Houdin, the great 19th-century magician that Houdini had originally modeled himself after, down to the name.

Even the title of Houdini’s book changed. ​​First it became Robert-Houdin’s Proper Place in the History of Magic… and then, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

Robert-Houdin was a hack, Houdini was effectively saying. Robert-Houdin had managed to fool magicians into thinking he was something great and original, when he was not.

Yesterday, I wrote an email about how negotiation coach Jim Camp snubbed his mentor Dave Sandler.

Sandler was a sales trainer who had influenced much of Camp’s thinking — take a look at their published works — but Camp never seems to have given due credit to Sandler for his influence or ideas.

You might call that — along with Houdini’s attack on Robert-Houdin — petty, shady, or simply inevitable human ego that crops up even among great men.

You might call it that.

But I might call it smart personal positioning.

Hear me out:

It’s undeniable that being unique, new, distinct, never-before-seen is a tremendous advantage to your personal positioning.

The trouble of course is that you’re probably not unique, distinct, or never-before-seen, just like the other 117 billion humans estimated to have ever lived.

​​We’re all quite similar to each other, and we’re all really the outgrowth of our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, mentors, living and dead.

That might be true. But like I said yesterday, it’s not really what the human brain responds to.

The human brain responds to contrast. That’s the basis of cognition.

And what bigger contrast is there than saying about yourself, “There was darkness upon the face of the deep… and then there was light.”

So there you go. If you’re looking to improve your personal positioning, work on being more distinct, unique, new.

That’s given.

What you might not have thought about is to make yourself distinct and unique at the expense of the people who helped you get there.

It might seem like one of those unsavory and pointless things done by people who have made it to the top… but I disagree. At least about the pointless part.

People who get to the top often do things that seem unnecessary or even self-defeating — if you’re not in their place.

Anyways, that’s just an idea for you to consider.

I realize today’s message might seem a little dark, but that’s what happens if you want to reach into all corners of human nature. Some are nice and cheery… others are dark and disturbing.

If you are willing to face the dark and disturbing corners of human nature, and maybe even figure out how to work with them to your advantage, then I have an entire sub-training all about that.

That sub-training is Round 19 of my Copy Riddles program. It deals with the dark psychological things that are present in the best sale copy, which go deeper than mere self-interest.

For more info on Copy Riddles, from Round 1 to Round 20:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

An evergreen way to create a spectacle

by

At 10 minutes before 12 noon today, I hurried down my street and turned to the Rambla del Poblenou.

It’s Sunday today, and people were out and about, strolling down the sycamore-lined street.

​​As I neared the main intersection in front of the Aliança de Poblenou building, which is the very heart of the neighborhood, the strolling crowds grew more dense and then jammed to a stop.

I stood around for a couple minutes, waiting expectantly.

Then at noon exactly, I saw a group of about two dozen men get in a circle, facing the center of the intersection. ​​All were wearing the same uniform — blue shirts, white pants, black sashes tied tightly around their waists, yellow and red bandanas around their wrists.

The men formed two rows. The ones in the outer row were pushing the ones in the inner row towards the center of the circle. The ones in the inner row were holding up their hands into a kind of team salute.

And them, four other men started climbing up — first up the backs of the outer row men, then over the inner row men.

The new climbers scrambled onto the shoulders of the inner row and then stood up, their arms on each other’s shoulders for balance.

Meanwhile, one more set of four was already clambering up the backs of the people on the first storey… up onto the shoulders of the men in the second storey… and then standing up to form a third storey.

This repeated until the team had formed a human tower, six storeys high, with men at the bottom, young women occupying the middle storeys, and kids wearing helmets at the top.

It’s a Catalan tradition, the castell. Since this weekend is the Festa Major de Poblenou, the yearly celebration of the neighborhood, it was a good time to perform the castell.

Today’s performance reminded me of two things:

First, I thought of Harry Houdini, dangling upside down from the building of the town’s main newspaper at 12 noon and writhing to escape a straightjacket… and second, I thought of Claude Hopkins, dreaming up the world’s biggest cake on the fifth floor of a newly opened department store in Chicago.

In a word:

I thought of spectacle, which happens to be one of the more valuable marketing skills you can have.

So how do you create spectacle?

Some of it is operational. Again, today’s castell happened on Sunday at 12 noon, on a central intersection, and was well advertised. A spectacle is no spectacle unless there are people around to see it.

But once you take care of the operational stuff, you still have the “content” of the spectacle.

How do you do that? How do you create something spectacular in content?

​​I will only point out the obvious from today:

Imagine two storeys of human beings… maybe three.

​​Ho-hum.

But six? And kids up top, 30 feet in the air, looking mildly terrified as the whole thing sways and shivers under the human tonnage?

If you think about that a bit, you will be able to extract a reliable, evergreen way to create the intrigue necessary for the content of a spectacle, which will work even if you’re not Catalan and don’t have a team of castellers to form a human tower.

But on to my offer:

If you want me to spell out this way to create intrigue, you can find it inside Round 3 of my Copy Riddles program. And you can find many more such ways.

Because Rounds 3-6 of Copy Riddles are actually all about creating intrigue.

It takes that many rounds, because this is a big part of what marketing and copywriting is. Most things are not spectacular on their own. It’s the marketer’s or copywriter’s job to take mundane elements, combine them in predictable ways, and create something sexy and new and intriguing.

If you go through Copy Riddles, you will start to exercise your own spectacle-conjuring faculties.

​​Plus, you will see how some of the best copywriters in the world dun it, and learn a thing or six from them.

​​For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The power of preparation for perplexing performances

by

“Tell me Sir, was this real… or was it humbug?”

Houdini was shocked at the power of his own show. He couldn’t believe that the man standing across from him — respected, intelligent, worldly — could be asking him such a question.

“No Colonel,” Houdini said with a shake of his head. “It was hocus pocus.”

The year was 1914. The place was the Imperator, a ship on the Hamburg-New York line, sailing west across the Atlantic. Houdini was traveling on the ship as a passenger, but he agreed to perform a seance act for the large and rich ship’s company.

Houdini walked around the audience, giving out pieces of paper and envelopes, telling people to write down a question, seal it in the envelope, and then put it in a hat that Houdini passed around.

But one of the audience members was particularly distinguished and highly reputable — Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, former President of the United States, traveling back from the UK. Roosevelt had just finished promotion of his new book about an adventure trip he had taken to Brazil the year previous.

“I am sure there will be no objection if we use the Colonel’s question,” Houdini said during the seance, tentatively walking towards Roosevelt. The audience murmured assent.

Then Houdini took out two little slate tablets, which were blank. After appropriate buildup and mystery, he asked Roosevelt to place his envelope, with the question inside, between the two tablets.

“Can you please tell the audience what your question was?” Houdini asked.

“Where was I last Christmas?” Roosevelt said.

Houdini opened up the slate tablets. They were no longer blank. Instead, they now showed a colored chalk map of Brazil, with the River of Doubt highlighted, where Roosevelt had spent the Christmas prior.

The effect of this on the crowd, and on Teddy Roosevelt himself, was immense. Roosevelt jumped up, and started laughing so hard and slapping his legs until tears ran down his face.

And then, the very next day, Roosevelt buttonholed Houdini on the deck of the ship. Roosevelt asked, in a hushed voice, whether Houdini truly had connections to the spirit world.

Houdini did not. It was hocus pocus, and he was ready to admit it.

So what lay behind his spectacular performance?

I won’t tell you the exact details. Like all tricks, it’s underwhelming when you find out the truth. But I will tell you the powerful underlying principle, in a single word:

Preparation.

An immense amount of quiet background work… research… setup… as well as thinking up and making plans for all possible contingencies.

Like I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to put together a new book. Working title — and maybe final title — is “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

Some of the commandments I have in mind are clever techniques. Others… well, they’re stuff like this. Research. Preparation.

Few wanna do it. Few take it seriously. But the ones who do are eventually seen as having supernatural powers, while everybody else — ah, it’s not too bad, but I could do the same.

I already have a lot of this book ready, thanks to emails like this that I’ve already written. But it’s still gonna take me a while to pull everything together and get the book published.

Meanwhile, if you want a similar book, with a similar mix of stories and often unsexy but extremely powerful ideas, take a look at my other 10 Commandments book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

I am wired for story… from a trusted, liked, famous source

by

A non-personal but true story:

Late into his career escape artist Harry Houdini started cutting some corners in his stage show.

Houdini was injured and physically exhausted, and it was hard to put in the same level of shoulder-dislocating, suffocating, skin-tearing escapes he used to put on.

Sure, Houdini still did some of that, but he minimized it. Instead, he filled up the empty time on stage with some magic tricks and with talking. About himself.

One viewer was shocked and disgusted.

This viewer was the newspaper critic for the local paper in Nottingham, England. So rather than simply firing off an outraged email to Houdini to say how the show isn’t as good as it used to be and to demand to be unsubscribed, this critic wrote up the following review and published it in his paper:

“Why on earth should Houdini imagine that any audience would be entertained by hearing a long and uncalled-for account of what he has been doing during the past six years… people go to a vaudeville house to see a performance… not to hear a diatribe on the personal pronoun around ‘the story of my life, Sir.”

Truly, who would want to hear a diatribe on the personal pronoun? Certainly not the critic.

​​But the audience?

Turns out Houdini broke all attendance and earnings records that year. He earned the highest salaries of his career, pulling down $3,750 a week — about $60,000 a week in today’s money.

Now at this point your brain might jump ahead and conclude, That’s the power of personal stories and reveals! Almost $60k a week! Let me get on it!”

But I’ve made the point before, and I will make it again:

Nobody cares about your stories and personal reveals. Not unless you already have real authority and even fame.

When Houdini changed up his show to be more personal and story-based, he had already been performing his stage show for decades. He didn’t change the core of his show during that time, and it’s probably a good thing. It’s what the crowds wanted and expected.

But then Houdini went to Hollywood. He made a couple of hugely successful movies, rubbed shoulders with Hollywood celebrities, and became a truly international star himself, beyond just the vaudeville stage.

That’s when people wanted to hear Houdini’s stories and the details of his personal life — and that’s what he was talking about on the stage. As Houdini himself put it, “Blame it all on the fact I have been successfully in the movies.”

So tell your stories and share your vulnerabilities — after you’re known and respected and even admired. People will love it then.

Before then?

Well, before then you might be interested in my Most Valuable Email training.

Most Valuable Emails never required I have any status or authority.

These emails make it 100% clear I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

As a result, Most Valuable Emails helped me build up immediate and unquestionable authority — even when I had no standing in the industry. ​​

And I claim Most Valuable Emails can do the same for you. In case you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Sexy firefighters running around for nobody’s entertainment

by

It’s 8:45am as I start writing this email. Right now, off my balcony, I can see a tremendous show.

I live next door to a fire station, and the firemen are doing a public demonstration on the street in front of the station.

​​They are dressed up in their sexiest firefighting suits and they are running around two smashed up cars, one of which is burned to a crisp. The cars were placed there earlier in the morning, inside of a fenced-in area, so the firemen could show how they cut a car open and rescue somebody inside.

Like I say, it’s a tremendous show. Spectacular. My 6-year-old self would have given up a year of eating KitKats in order to see it.

And yet, as I watch this show off my balcony, there’s a total audience of about a dozen adults gathered on the street.

I mean, it’s 8:45am. People are either at home or on their way to work or stuck in the prison of school. Besides, it’s not a busy street. And as far as I know, this demonstration was not advertised anywhere — again, I live right next door.

You’ve probably heard the words of the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins. Hopkins said, “No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration.”

True, but:

The most famous example of a dramatic demonstration was Elisha Otis. Otis changed the landscape of American cities when he demonstrated his crash-proof elevator — to the masses milling about the New York Crystal Palace Exposition, which attracted 1.1 million visitors.

When Claude Hopkins himself created the world’s largest cake to promote Cotosuet, a kind of early margarine, he made a deal with a giant new department store which had just opened in Chicago.

​​The cake would go smack dab in the middle of the grocery department on the fifth floor. ​​Hopkins then ran big ads in all the Chicago newspapers to advertise the fact.

​​Over the course of a week, 105,000 people climbed the four flights of stairs to see that cake.

And when master showman Harry Houdini did his straitjacket escapes, while hanging upside 150 feet in the air, with only his feet tied to a pulley on the roof of some building, he made sure to hang off the building of the town’s main newspaper, guaranteeing a front page story the day before his show. Houdini did all these public escapes at exactly 12 noon, when lunchtime crowds could assemble.

Point being, as Gary Halbert might put it:

Advertise your advertising.

But maybe you say, “Yeah yeah but how? How exactly do I advertise my advertising?”

I gave you three examples right above. If that ain’t enough, here’s a fourth:

The waiting list for my future group coaching program on email copywriting. The waiting list serves as a waiting list, for sure. But it also serves as advertising for the actual advertising I will do when I do make that group coaching available. Very meta.

If you are interested in writing emails that people actually like reading and that they actually buy from, then you might be a good fit for my future group coaching. Or you might not. ​​In case you’d like to find out more about it, the first step is to get on my daily email list. Click here to do that.

66 1/2 minutes of getting your money’s worth

by

At the start of the evening, the mustached gentlemen at the Boston Athletic Association held on to their top hats and leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide open, all of them focused on the same point at the front of the room.

It’s not every day that you see a living man voluntarily handcuffed, wrapped in chains, placed inside a coffin, and then sealed inside like a corpse.

It was novel and dramatic.

But after a few minutes of intense staring at the unmoving coffin, the audience’s attention started to drift. The members of the athletic club began lighting up fine cigars, talking about sports, the news, and business, chuckling and chattering and catching up.

And then, 66 1/2 minutes after the show started, the coffin crashed open.

The living corpse inside sat up and then stood up, panting, sweat running down his temples, his hair in a mess, his frock coat rumpled. He held the handcuffs in one hand and the chains in the other — he was free.

The gentlemen in the audience broke into applause and cheers. Harry Houdini had done it again. Another amazing and improbable escape.

So far, so familiar. But here’s what gets me:

66 1/2 minutes of sitting and watching a coffin. Many of Houdini’s sold-out shows were like this. They were long — often many hours’ long — and for much of it there was nothing to see, because Houdini performed his handcuff and manacle and chain escapes in a closed cabinet or behind a curtain or inside a coffin.

66 1/2 minutes of nothing happening on stage. What was going on with the audience during all that time?

Was it just a pre-TikTok era, and were audiences happy to sit and zone out for an hour or three, like a cat staring at a blank wall?

Or did people just enjoy being close to danger and death, and was that palpable even if it couldn’t be seen?

I’m sure there was a bit of both to it.

But what gets me in the above story is how the gentlemen of the athletic club started lighting up cigars and having friendly chats about sports, business, and the news.

Maybe that was really what they had come for.

Maybe Houdini’s spectacular escape was really just an occasion to mark out the rest of the audience’s lives. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house, to do what they like to do anyhow — which is to chat and chuckle and gossip — but to do it in a slightly novel and exciting setting.

There’s a good chance you aren’t sold on this point yet. That’s okay. I have more to say about it to try and persuade you. And if you do get persuaded, I have some novel and exciting advice for how to apply this to copywriting and marketing, even today, in the TikTok era, without engaging in daring feats that risk danger and death.

But more about that in a couple days’ time.

For today, I just have a very simple offer for you. It’s my little Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​I used to refer to this as my “10 Commandments book.” I’ll have to stop that since I’m working on a second 10 Commandments book, and I have to distinguish between the two.

Anyways, Commandment III from ties into what I’ll talk about in two days’ time. It’s also the easiest commandment of the lot in my book.

​​This Commandment III takes just 5 minutes to follow, but it can suck your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened. It was first unearthed during an exclusive, closed-door seminar, which cost almost $7,700 in today’s money.​​

In case you’re curious, the secret behind this and all the other A-list commandments in my book are behind the locked door below. The ticket to unlock the door is but $4.99. If you feel you’re ready, step right behind this curtain:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments