James Altucher

“Pharma Bro in contempt”: Everything going to plan

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I’m signed up for the Federal Trade Commission newsletter, because I like to get news of marketing scams, pyramid schemes, and other skulduggery that can be useful for business. So a few days ago, I got a press release with the unlikely but highly satisfying headline:

“FTC Asks Federal Court to Hold ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli in Contempt”

You probably know Shkreli. He’s a young guy who caused mass outrage a few years back. He bought a pharma company that sold a lifesaving drug, and then raised the price of that drug 55x, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Shkreli then schemed to suppress competition, to make sure desperate patients were forced to pay the new 55x price for his drug.

When this became international news, Shkreli smirked at cameras, and said the one mistake he made was that he didn’t raise the price even higher.

“Why are people coming after you?” asked one interviewer.

“It might have something to do with me being very handsome,” Shkreli answered with a smile.

People were fuming.

“Martini Shkreli,” said one irritated TV announcer, doing what he does best: looking like a real slappable prick.”

So the FTC headline is very clever and very fitting. The new news, by the way, is not that Shkreli is now officially contemptible — which is what the headline makes you think, and which is what most people feel — but that he disobeyed court orders, and is therefore himself “in contempt of court.”

Whatever. Point is:

Maybe Shkreli is a natural-born “slappable prick.” Or maybe it’s an act he’s putting on for reasons of his own.

Either way, I think Shkreli’s behavior is worth studying — and even emulating.

“Whoa whoa hold on there,” I hear you saying. “John, you don’t want to go down that road! There are many better ways to get attention than to become contemptible. It’s not worth it!”

No doubt. And I’m not actually planning on getting into the pharma business, or doing anything to taunt the FTC, or playing around with people’s lives.

But that doesn’t change the fact that specific strategies Shkreli is using — whether instinctively or consciously — can be very valuable if you run a completely above-board, highly moral, or even noble business.

That’s something I will write more about in a future book on positioning, which I’m working on now.

But to twist the advice of James Altucher:

“The best way to promote your next book? Get people to read your current book.”

And so let me remind you of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​Get it now if you want, because tomorrow I will be raising the price of this baby to $200 for the ebook and $250 for the paperback — the highest prices Amazon will me allow me to charge. You can watch the price increase at the page below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

My miserable 2022 reading list

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Back in January 2021, I wrote about an ugly observation that James Altucher once made:

You have maybe 1000 books left in you to read, for the rest of your life. The math checks out.

After facing this ugly realization, I started keeping track of the books I’ve read, and how many per year I’ve read.

​​Turns out my math is even worse because I am such a slow reader. Over the past 12 months, I managed to finish just 18 books:

1. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Wizard of Earthsea

2. Michael Masterson & John Forde’s Great Leads (re-read)

3. V.S. Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain

4. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

5. William Shakespeare’s King Lear

6. Claude Levi-Strauss’s Myth and Meaning

7. Eric Hoffer’s True Believer

8. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

9. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, vol. 1

10. Claude Hopkins’s My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (re-read)

11. Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons

12. Michel Houellebecq’s Elementary Particles

13. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

14. Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind

15. Joe Vitale’s There’s a Customer Born Every Minute

16. David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything

17. John Cleese’s Creativity

18. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (re-read)

And that’s it. 12 months, hundreds of hours of daily reading, and yet, a miserable 18 books — and one of those was John Cleese’s Creativity, which weighs all of 90 pages.

At this sorry pace, I will have to live for another 56 years if I hope to reach Altuchers’ 1000 books.

Still, I better stop complaining, and I better keep my nose down and peeled to the inside of a book. I mean, what else is there?

There’s been a lot of agonizing lately whether AI is consuming the world. And it really might be.

It’s genuinely not clear to me whether anything you or I can write will be more interesting to people than what AI will produce, whether today or in a year’s time.

But one thing is clear to me:

And that’s your best shot at security.

If there is any way to prosper and profit, now and in the future, I figure it’s to think and to take action, to find or come up with new ideas, and to put those ideas into practice.

And the best way I know to prime that process is to read interesting books, to take notes of valuable things I come across, and to connect those to projects I’m working on.

Which brings me to my offer. It’s simply to sign up to my email list. I often share interesting ideas I come across in books with my newsletter readers.

Who knows, one of my emails might expose you to a new and insightful book you’d never have heard of otherwise, which might end up changing your life, or at the least, the success of your business.

In case you’d like to get my emails daily, click here, and fill out the form that appears.

I’m not worried about my email from last night — really

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My email last night about James Altucher drew a surprising number of thoughtful and emotional responses…

#1 “If that’s what got James Altucher to stop, that’s really sad. I too enjoyed his writing.”

#2 “Great email. I always enjoyed James Altucher’s writing, too. It’s so quirky and off-beat.”

#3 “So… your email couldn’t have had better timing.”

#4 “I appreciate you sharing the email you never sent and hope he finds his confidence again someday.”

… but what my email yesterday did not do is get any sales. And in fact, it also didn’t get almost any clicks to the sales page – not compared to what I’m used to seeing.

To which, all which I can do is give a Gandhi-like smile, shrug gently, and then hiss through clenched teeth:

“Come on people, don’t you realize I’m trying to run a little business here? Buy something or move on.”

But a little more seriously, such is the world of not-really direct response marketing in daily emails.

Last night’s email drew a lot of engagement, but seems to have been worthless for business. But maybe not.

I’ve sent similar emails to this list that made me multiple thousands of dollars. In fact, I might collect all such emails into a course one day, which I will call:

“Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline — And You Can Too”

The truth is, if you have a daily email list, and you’re not just spamming people with random affiliate offers, then it’s often the cumulative effect that makes people buy.

And even when people are mostly “sold” by a single email, it’s often not the email from which they clicked through to the sales page.

So the way I see it, it doesn’t make too much sense to stress over an email that seems to have been worthless for business.

Likewise, it doesn’t make too much sense to celebrate the emails that did make sales (except my “Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline” — more info on that exciting course coming up soon).

So what does make sense?

I can only tell you the four things I do:

1. Keep an eye on sales over a longer time – like a month. Things tend to average out over a month, and hidden effects become less hidden.

2. Do worry if the total sales over that longer period are not going up. (If the total sales are going up, then still worry, but less.)

3. Do make new offers — again, keep your eyes peeled for my “Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline — And You Can Too”

4. Follow Gary Bencivenga’s advice about getting 1% better each day. Except 1% better each day seems like a lot to me. So I aim for more like 1% better each week.

Which brings me to my offer:

It’s not new. And it’s certainly not the only way to get 1% better each week. But maybe it will be the difference that allows you to get better, regularly. Sign up for my email newsletter, and get more emails like this, every day.

Hot takes are dead… here’s why

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About six months ago, I wrote an email that for some reason I never sent. In that email, I wondered what had happened to James Altucher’s writing.

The background is this:

James Altucher is an online personality, a podcaster and also writer who used to write daily.

James is one of few people whose daily writing I enjoyed reading. Plus I’ve gotten multiple really valuable ideas from James that have transformed how I work.

James used to write regularly on his own site.

But his last post there came on June 15 2021. Since then he’s published a few pieces on other sites including LinkedIn, but his writing has largely disappeared.

There aren’t many people online that I would miss if they got swallowed by a sinkhole.

But James Altucher is one, largely because I’ve found his writing both insightful and valuable.

So I was wondering what happened to his writing and wishing somebody could tell me.

Well, I found out. James revealed it himself on a recent podcast.

Back in August 2020, he wrote an article titled, “New York City is dead forever… here’s why.”

James lived most of his life in NYC, but in that article, he predicted the death of the city based on the effects of the corona pandemic.

That article went very viral. It got a huge amount of readership, and also a huge amount of blowback.

And maybe most painful to James, who used to own a comedy club, “The New York is dead” piece got Jerry Seinfeld to write a trolling response in the lying New York Times in which he only referred to James as “some putz on LinkedIn.”

With all that blowback, and the personal attack by Jerry Seinfeld, James gradually retreated from writing. Maybe he will get his courage back to write daily. Or maybe he won’t.

I’m not sure what my point is. I guess there are many.

Such as, it’s harder to not care what people think that most of us would like.

Such as, don’t pick on people who are known to be combative (New Yorkers as a group, who knew about Jerry Seinfeld).

Such as, writing hot takes can burn you as well. And putting your own attitudes into your writing makes you vulnerable to personal attacks.

If you agree with me on these points, then what can you do?

Well, develop a tougher skin… only pick on people who will take it… or find some other way to get readership and attention than by writing hot takes and sharing your own personal attitudes.

I can’t help you with the skin part or with finding meek targets to pick on.

As for that last part, about other ways to get readership and attention, I can remind you of my Most Valuable Email trick.

A few of the emails I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick have gone semi-viral — they got unexpected forwards and shares in the small direct marketing community.

And using the Most Valuable Email trick allows me to write in a way that’s separate from what I believe personally. And yet my readers don’t mind this lack of “authenticity” — in fact, they even seem to enjoy it.

Maybe it’s not too clear how this can possibly be true.

If you’re curious, try out my email newsletter and witness it for yourself. Click here to sign up.

Stolen ideas are worth more than fine gold

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Incline thy ear unto my sayings:

Over the past day and night, I’ve had an unusual influx of new subscribers. I went to check my website analytics.

There was nothing unusual except extra traffic to a post with a weighty and smooth title:

“The 7th pillar of influence”

“Huh?” I said. I couldn’t remember ever writing this. I had no idea what it was about. But I did find the title intriguing so I looked it up. It turns out the “7th pillar of influence” is an email I wrote in very earliest days of my newsletter, back in 2018. I won’t tell you about the content of that email — you can look up the 7th pillar on my site if you like. But I will tell you about that title:

The 7th pillar of influence was a play on T.E. Lawrence’s 7 Pillars of Wisdom, his memoirs of serving in the Arab revolt. I read that book some time ago, but I never did figure out what the 7 pillars of wisdom are. I checked just now. It turns out Lawrence’s title was itself a reference — to the book of Proverbs, chapter 9, verse 1:

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”

Now I betcha that this Old Testement reference in Lawrence’s title is one good reason why we are still talking about his book today, one hundred years after it was written. And perhaps it’s the reason why my email from 4 years ago, archived in the chambers of death that is my website, got some surprise visits today.

James Altucher called this practice plagiarizing.

​​And what else can you call it? Stealing from another text, word for word, without giving credit. And yet, James himself has stolen in this way many times, for the following reason:

Because out of the thousands of documents written over the past 5,000 years, this document has survived. Thousands didn’t.

Religions and philosophies sprung from it. Millions worshipped it.

The text is somehow primal to our experience as humans.

So let me reveal a secret to you:

If you want to instruct or influence people, and you want to find an attractive way to package up your message, then dig through the Book of Proverbs. Find a formulation that has survived thousands of years, and stuff your message in that box.

Perhaps you think it’s foolish for me to reveal this secret. But I find that the more I scatter good ideas about, the more they increase.

On the other hand, the Book of Proverbs also promises blessings to those who sell. So let me sell you a spot on my daily email newsletter. It’s worth more than fine gold. You can pay for it by clicking here.

How a nobody can get on a podcast with an audience of millions

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I care little about the news and even less about crypto. But even I couldn’t escape the news this past week about the fraudulent FTX crypto exchange and its owner Sam Bankman-Fried.

I couldn’t escape the news because of the half dozen people I follow online — in the health, marketing, or being alive niches — all talked about it in some way.

That must mean there are hundreds of thousands of people online right now, analyzing and pontificating their best and hottest takes on FTX and SBF.

So here’s a riddle for you:

Who did James Altucher bring on his podcast yesterday to talk about FTX and fraud?

Who did James Altucher — who has an audience of millions, and who normally interviews “billionaires, best-selling authors, rappers, astronauts, athletes, comedians, actors, and the world champions in every field” — think was interesting and competent enough to comment on the current moment?

It wasn’t a world champion in any field.

It was just some no-name guy. Ok, the guy has a name. It’s Antonio Reza, but that’s not what got him on the podcast.

Reza got on the James Altucher podcast because he wrote a prescient and insightful Twitter thread a few weeks ago.

The thing is, Reza wasn’t writing about FTX and how it was bound to collapse.

Instead, he wrote about Enron, the big corporate fraud from 20 years ago, and how all frauds are really alike in key ways.

So hold on to your stomach, because here’s the recipe for how to get on a podcast with an audience of millions, even when you’re a nobody:

Write something insightful and prescient, connected to the current moment, but also from a different perspective than everybody else has.

I hear you groaning. But wait, I’m just getting started. Since I’m on a roll with giving advice, let me also tell you how you win the lottery:

First, you pick the winning numbers. Then you buy a ticket with those numbers, and then you collect when the numbers are publicly announced. Easy!

And yes. Getting an opportunity to speak in front of an audience of millions, when you yourself are a nobody, even an insightful nobody, is much like winning the lottery.

The thing is, having something insightful to say dramatically improves your chances that somebody somewhere, with an audience bigger than yours, eventually plucks you out of obscurity and says, “Wow! This guy has something really interesting to say. Let me share it with my audience!”

At least that’s how it’s been for me, on multiple occasions, in multiple niches, even when I was a total nobody. I wrote something that sounded insightful, and I got rewarded for it.

There are techniques and writing tricks to doing this. Maybe you can spot them if you read more of my writing. If you’d like to do that, click here and sign up for my daily email newsletter.

How to predict the future without being smart or highly educated

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I’m spending this weekend in the mountains, in a pretty ski village which is mostly dead because the ski season hasn’t started yet.

Along with me in the house are three smart, highly educated, grown-ass women who spent a fair part of the weekend discussing and also watching a Netflix show called Dynasty.

Now I’m old enough to remember that Dynasty was a 1980s soap opera.

The Netflix version is a remake from 5 years ago. It’s glossy, cheesy, and oversexed. Here’s a bit of dialogue from the season 1 trailer, when a brawny black chauffeur picks up a white bombshell socialite from her private jet:

BBC: How was Denver?
WBS: I miss the heat.
BBC: Trust me, it wasn’t as hot without you here. Straight to the manor?
WBS: [smirks] I’m open to a detour.

Like I said, the women I’m with this weekend find no shame in watching TV shows like this.

That’s a change.

As James Altucher pointed out on a recent episode of his podcast, there was a time, not long after that initial Dynasty came out, when watching TV was considered shameful among smart, highly-educated, grown-ass people. Some quotes from that not-so-distant past:

“My kids will never watch TV”

“TV rots your brain and destroys your community”

“We would all be better off if television got worse, not better.”

But that’s all gone now. Among the people I know, there are few who don’t spend a good part of the week watching some TV — and feeling no shame about it. I bet it’s similar with the people around you.

Which begs the question, which things that we are so scared and horrified of today will make a shame-free comeback in a few years’ time?

James Altucher thinks it might be social media. Maybe we will still be heavily using social media in 20 years’ time, in spite of all the current hand-wringing about the IQ loss and attention-fracking and shallowness that Instagram and TikTok cause.

Whatever. James Altucher is a smart and highly educated guy, and his predictions are based on a lot of thinking and research. Too complicated.

Here’s a simpler, more general way to predict the future:

Don’t count on moral outrage or good intentions to create change. Only new technology — considered broadly — will change people’s behavior.

And speaking of new technology:

Have you heard of email? I’ve only recently found out about it and I’m very excited by the possibilities. So much so that I’ve started writing a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. A few thousand people have signed up to get daily emails from me and they seem to be enjoying it very much. In case you’d like to join them, click here and follow the very non-technical instructions.

The Pope and Anthony Fauci are using this “Millionaire’s Secret” to create products that look, feel, and sell like blockbusters

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A few weeks ago, I was listening to an interview that James Altucher did with Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins. And right as I was about to fall asleep, Tony said:

“Peter was going to go to the Vatican… where, believe it or not, every two years they have this regenerative medicine conference that the Pope actually hosts.”

“Woof,” I said, suddenly wide awake. And I lifted my nose up in the air, like an Irish setter that scents some game in the bushes.

It turns out there really is such an event. It’s called the International Vatican Conference.

The last one, which happened last May, was attended by the Pope himself, along with Anthony Fauci, the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer, Ray Dalio, Chelsea Clinton, Cindy Crawford, David Sinclair, Deepak Chopra, and of course, aging rock star Steven Perry, the lead guitarist of Aerosmith.

Unfortunately, this latest International Vatican Conference was virtual and not held in real life​. Otherwise, you could write a Dan Ferrari-style lead, and paint the picture of the Pope walking down the soft red carpet in the gilded Hall of the Blessing, exchanging secret handshakes with Chelsea Clinton and wink-wink-nudge-nudging Ray Dalio.

I’m telling you all this for two reasons.

Reason one is that it’s a cool story I hadn’t heard anywhere before or since. If you’re looking for a hook for a VSL, now or in the coming months, I figure you can’t beat the intrigue of the Pope and Anthony Fauci and the CEO of Moderna in an invitation-only, world-shaping event held inside the Vatican.

Reason two is that maybe you don’t have a product to promote. Or your product simply doesn’t fit this Dan Brownish Vatican conference, and you’re struggling to find something equally intriguing.

In either case I would tell you, drop whatever you’re doing right now. And seriously consider creating a new business or at least a new product, built around this Vatican conference.

Because, as master copywriter Gary Bencivenga said once, great products are “those with a clear-cut, built-in, unique superiority supported by powerful proof elements.”

Gary’s advice was that you should create a product around a strong proof element to start, rather than create a product, and then start truffling out proof to support what you got.

Which is great. Only one thing I would add:

If you can additionally make your foundational proof dramatic and intriguing — again, think Dan Brown — well, then you’re really in for the kind of gold haul that would make the Vatican sit up and take notice.

So there you go. That’s my generational-wealth-building idea for you for today.

And when you do create your Vatican-scented regenerative essential oils, or whatever, and it ends up turning you into a multimillionaire, just remember me and send me a small finder’s fee. I’ll be grateful to you. And I’ll use it to take a trip to Rome and visit the Vatican — but just the outside.

Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter. You won’t believe the secrets and intrigue that are hiding inside.

Let’s see if I can make you watch the SuperBowl

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A few days ago, I was listening to an old episode of the James Altucher podcast, and I learned this curious fact:

A person who bets any amount of money on a game is 11x more likely to watch the game.

I’m not sure if this means that you can get people to watch a game, just by getting them to bet. But I’m willing to find out.

Because there’s an old marketing idea that I’ve long thought is super clever.

As far as I know, nobody today in the DM world is using it, at least not online. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can correct me.

Here’s the idea. It comes from direct marketing legend Joe Sugarman, the guy who made BluBlocker sunglasses into a $300M brand.

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

Like I said, I’m willing to test this idea out.

So I just checked. The Superbowl is in 8 days.

And I happen to be working on a new offer. It’s called Copy Zone. It’s about succeeding in the business part of copywriting — getting started, finding clients, managing clients, performance deals, upleveling.

I am planning to get Copy Zone out by the end of this month. And I’m planning to sell it for $150 to start. But I’ll make you a wager:

If you pick the winner of this Superbowl right — Bengals or Rams — you get my Copy Zone offer for 50% off, or for $75, during the launch window.

Of course, you gotta buy a ticket if you want a piece of this action.

Fortunately, the ticket to play this game is free. But it is time-limited.

So if you want to play this game of chance, you’ll need to get on my email list first. Then just hit reply to my welcome email and pick this year’s SuperBowl Winner.

Bengals. Or Rams.

You have time to enter until I send out my email tomorrow, Monday, Feb 7 2022, at 8:24 CET.

​​Call — or rather, email — now. Our bookies are standing by.

The man who kept falling out of bed

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In the middle of the night, a man in a hospital bed kept falling out of bed.

Each time, the orderlies came and picked him up off the floor. They helped him get back into bed.

And then, a short while later — THUD. The man fell out again. The reason why is pretty incredible.

Today is the last day of my denial mini-series.

Over the past five days, I’ve showed you different ways that people deny unpleasant things in their lives.

I’ve been doing this A) because this denial stuff is fascinating… and B) because it’s something we all do all the time.

So my claim is that if you know how denial shows up in life, it can help you understand yourself better. And it can help you understand other people too, including the ones you want to get something from.

And now we’ve come full circle.

Because today’s final denial mechanism is projection.

I wrote about that recently. An Internet stranger sent me an email to accuse me of name-dropping in this newsletter… and in that same email, he rattled off the names of a bunch of copywriting gurus.

But that’s kind of fluffy, isn’t it?

There’s no way to prove that it’s really denial-by-projection that’s going on in such a person’s brain.

That’s why I’m telling you the story off the man who kept falling out of bed.

This story was reported in the book Phantoms in the Brain by Vilaynur Ramachandran. He’s the neuroscientist who studied people with paralyzed limbs.

Ramachandran found these paralyzed-limb patients sometimes engaged in ridiculous, obvious, impossible denials… in spite of otherwise being perfectly sane and rational people.

Like the guy who kept falling out of bed.

The doctor on the hospital ward asked him why he kept falling out of bed.

The falling man looked frightened. “Doctor,” he said, “these medical students have been putting a cadaver’s arm in my bed. I’ve been trying to get rid of it all night!”

In other words, this guy couldn’t admit the paralyzed arm belonged to him. So he assigned it to a cadaver.

And he kept pushing it away (rightly so, who wants to sleep next to a cadaver’s arm). But each time he finally got the arm out of the bed, he found himself pulled after it down to the floor.

You might say this denial borders between rationalization (my email yesterday) and projection (my email today).

Fine. Ramachandran has more straightforward projection stories.

Like the woman who claimed the paralyzed arm next to her was too big and hairy to be her own.

“Whose arm is it?” Ramachandran asked her.

The woman thought for a second. “It must be my brother’s,” she said.

So that’s all I got for you for denial and projection. Except one more quick story.

It’s by James Altucher, about an encounter he had with one of the most infamous people of this century.

James’s story features projection by that infamous person. ​And it might save you from making a huge mistake at some point in your life.

​​So if you’re curious to read the story, you can find it below.

But before you go, you look like the kind of person who wants to get more email subscribers. Am I right? Maybe I’m just projecting. Sign up for my newsletter in any case. And then here’s James’s article:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/im-the-worst-judge-of-character/