Kieran Drew

Mandatory vacation day

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This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I concluded the White Tuesday event that promoted my almost 4-year-old Copy Riddles program.

I ended up making 20 sales of Copy Riddles over 6 emails and 36 hours.

I offered a payment plan as a key part of the White Tuesday promo, which means I collected $2,848 so far (one person paid in full) and will be getting another $17,056 over the next 10 months as the payments roll in, for a grand total of $19,940.

In my small, modest world, with my small, modest list, this counts as a good result — $9,970 per day, $3,323 per email, when all the money is in.

This, by the way, is not any kind of “HOT: Work Just 2 days A Month!” bizopp pitch. In fact, it’s the opposite.

I always do a review for myself of a completed promo and list 10 conclusions. I did the same this morning.

My key conclusion was about the reason why this promo was a success, and that’s because of perceived real value.

Copy Riddles sells for $997. The $2k Advertorial Consult I gave away as a free bonus I really got paid $2k for.

Except, for either of those to really matter, to feel real, it took constant work over months and years leading up to this promo. Selling and promoting Copy Riddles… selling and promoting and delivering my other offers… doing consulting and coaching and client work (back when I still did)… featuring testimonials… talking about case studies… going on podcasts… dripping out my experiences writing advertorials… writing these daily emails, from home, from airports, and at train stations.

A couple days ago, Kieran Drew wrote the following in a review of his own successful promo:

“Sure, courses have little-to-no fulfillment cost. But I now have over 3,000 customers and let me tell you, there is no free lunch. Products are not ‘true’ passive income—especially if you send thank you videos to every customer and reply to every email (I recommend both).”

Not “true passive income” is not a problem for me any more.

Five years ago, I published my 10 Commandments Of A-list Copywriters book. Commandment VI I got from Claude Hopkins, who wrote that love of work can be cultivated, and that for him work and play are interchangeable.

I put that in the book as an interesting and possibly useful idea. At the time, it definitely was not a belief I had managed to adopt. But over the years, maybe because I wrote it down then, it’s gradually taken hold in my head.

Today I work, don’t mind working, and in fact have slowly turned work into a kind of game that I can actually enjoy.

Except even games need a break now and then — body and brain need to rest and recover.

And so I’m taking a mandatory vacation day today. This email is the only thing I will do, besides replying to previous Copy Riddles buyers who asked for the bonuses I offered as part of the White Tuesday promo.

Meanwhile, I can only recommend you read or reread my 10 Commandments book. Looking back over it after 5 years, all the commandments are still supremely valuable. In fact, I only wish I myself would follow them more regularly. Maybe you too can benefit from reading them or being reminded of them? For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The Shoshal Media Redemption

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In my 13+ years of trying to make money online, I have had precisely ZERO success in creating an audience on social media. But I do know somebody who’s had a lot of success with it.

It’s my friend Kieran Drew. Since 2021, Kieran has built up an enviable one-man business on the back of a 250,000-person audience across Twitter and LinkedIn.

A couple days ago, Kieran launched a new product, and in promoting it, he wrote:

===

Because I don’t know about you, but I became an entrepreneur for freedom.

I want to spend my days doing what I love because I choose to.

But social media?

It’s a prison in disguise

You have to post every damn day and slave away in the comments. And if you stop, you fade into obscurity within weeks.

You’ve basically made an algorithm your boss.

And the crazy part?

You don’t even own your audience. You rent it. And they can rip away the keys whenever they’d like.

===

Maybe, like Kieran, you’ve had success on social media.

In that case, maybe you can empathize with what he says. Maybe you’ve had your fill of constant posting and replying… and fighting off dwindling reach… and crack-like addiction to notifications.

Or…

Maybe you haven’t yet had success on social media. Maybe you’re hoping to build an audience there, and you are looking up to people like Kieran.

In that case, maybe Kieran’s message above gives you a taste of what’s waiting for you in case you get what you think you want.

But let me pay off the Shoshal Media Redemption subject line.

If social media is a kind of Shawshank Prison for Kieran, with its loss of autonomy and control… then what’s the equivalent of the little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where you can live life on your own terms?

Like Kieran says in his new promo, it’s having your own engaged email list.

Sounds great, except… how do you build up an email list if you don’t use social?

I’d like to propose a way that doesn’t involve years of hammering through the thick wall of indifference on LinkedIn… or crawling through a mile-long sewage pipe on Twitter.

That way is to pay, specifically for ads, more specifically for engaged subscribers to grow your email list.

Sure, ads cost money. But wouldn’t you pay money to stay out — or get out — of prison?

If you’re at least open to the idea, I’d like to remind you that I have started a new list. And in the next few days, I’ll start building it up via ads.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497. If that doesn’t totally deter you, hit reply and tell me so. I can get you the full details of my daring escape plan, and you can decide if you want to join me, or if Shawshank Prison doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Do you have a newsletter or FB group?

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A few days ago, I read how my buddy Kieran Drew bought another newsletter to absorb, like a growing metropolis absorbs a quaint village nearby.

The owner of the other newsletter decided to go pursue some other project. He wasn’t interested in running the newsletter any more.

So Kieran paid him per subscriber who stays on after 2 weeks. They did a kind of handoff, where the new subscribers were introduced to Kieran, and given many chances to unsubscribe, and at that point they were merged into Kieran’s list.

As far as I know, the experiment is still ongoing. It’s not clear yet whether Kieran has already made his money back or whether this buy can be considered a success. (In case you’re interested in hearing how this experiment ends, it’s worth getting on Kieran’s list at kierandrew.com.)

This made me wonder.

Do you have a newsletter, a Facebook group, or a Skool group?

Is it made up of an audience of coaches, business owners, or people interested in making money online?

And, in case this group or newsletter is not something you enjoy running and managing, have you thought of trading in the login username and password to the group, or the Excel export of newsletter contacts, for a neat stack of $100 bills?

If you find yourself a little intrigued or curious right now, write me and let’s talk.

I might be interested in buying what you have.

​​And even if it’s not a fit, I might know other people who might want to buy what you have.

​​Just write me now because — well, why not? It doesn’t cost you or oblige you in any way. And it might take this off your mind sooner rather than later.

You are most probably a cat person

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Yesterday at 3:55pm, I stacked two books under my laptop for a more flattering camera angle, did one final check of my hair, and fired up Zoom.

I was doing a call with Kieran Drew for people who bought his High Impact Writing course.

​​This part of Kieran’s birthday bash series, where he interviewed five people who make their living by writing, including 8-figure course creator Olly Richards, email marketer Chris Orzechowski, and A-list copywriter David Deutsch. And me. ​​

The conversation with Kieran ran for more than an hour. I really enjoyed it.

I will tell you one bit that came up early, and kept coming up in various guises, because it’s probably relevant to you.

Kieran said how social media, in spite of the success it’s given him, drives him crazy.

​​I said how I, in spite of managing my little email business without the help of social media, get pangs of envy when I see how well Kieran’s doing thanks to Twitter and LinkedIn.

And so it goes.

I know agency owners who want to become high-ticket coaches. High-ticket coaches who want to become course creators. Course creators who want to start up an agency.

Legendary curmudgeon Dan Kennedy once summed it up by saying, “People are like cats. They always want to be in the other room.”

At this point, you might expect me to get all preachy and say, ​​”You gotta be happy with whatchu got… you gotta keep your nose down and persist at what you’re doing… you gotta stop yourself from getting distracted by the greenness of your neighbors lawn…”

But like another famous curmudgeon, William Shakespeare, once said, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

There’s nothing inherently bad about the fact we’re always looking for new opportunities, improvements, or simply a change from what we already have.

It’s just a part of life.

And rather than saying that’s not how it should be, it makes more sense, to me at least, to accept it adjust to it. To be aware of the drive to go into the other room, to be selective about when you respond to that drive, and to realize that the same drive will most probably crop up even in that other room.

And if you want, you can start practicing that right now.

Because until tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST, I have a special, free, other-room bonus if you buy my Simple Money Emails course.

The bonus is the “lite” version of Matt Giaro’s $397 course Subscribers From Scratch. It will show you how Matt grew his email list, with high-quality subscribers who paid for themselves, via little newsletter ads.

I’ve tried this strategy myself in the past, and it worked great for me. I got hundreds of new subscribers, and most often they paid for themselves on day zero.

So if you are sick of social media as a means of growing your list, or if you never wanted to get on social media to start with, then Matt’s course can show you a real alternative.

That said, this newsletter ad approach has its own downsides as well.

Like all other means of growing your list, it will require some work to set up.

Like all other means of growing your list, it will require some work to keep going.

And unlike many other means of growing your list, say Facebook ads or even social media, newsletter ads won’t ever get you tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

But if you want to get a few dozen or a few hundred new subscribers at a time, and you want to get subscribers who actually read your stuff and buy your offers, then newsletter ads can be a good option.

And Matt’s course will show you how to do it.

Again, you get it as a free bonus if you get Simple Money Emails by the deadline, tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/​​

P.S. ​​If you bought Simple Money Emails previously, this offer applies to you as well. So does the deadline.

​​You should have gotten an email from me with instructions on how to claim Matt’s Subscribers From Scratch Lite. If you didn’t get the email, then write me and I will sort it out.

Birthday bash offer

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I wrote a long email just now. Until I realized I was burying the lead.

So I told myself what I often tell coaching clients – split up the damn thing into two emails. One for today, one for tomorrow.

Here’s one for today:

Today is my buddy Kieran Drew’s birthday.

As you might know, Kieran is a big name in the online creator space. He has a Twitter following of 205k people, a newsletter audience of 30k people, and 6-figure launches every few months.

To celebrate his birthday, Kieran has prepared a special bundle of his most popular offer, High Impact Writing, with his second-most popular offer, the Viral Inspiration Lab.

I imagine that anyone on my list who wanted to get High Impact Writing got it back in March when I promoted it. But I’ve been wrong before.

If you don’t yet have High Impact Writing, I endorse it fully. And now is a good moment to get it because you can effectively get the Viral Inspiration Lab for free.

Plus!

Over the next month, Kieran will also hold a series of private interviews as a special thank-you gift for people who buy HIW now, as well as people who have bought HIW before.

The interviews will be with five successful writers Kieran knows, including A-list copywriter David Deutsch… email copywriter Chris Orzechowski… and yours truly, Bejako the Slow.

If you’re interested and you want to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw​​

How to get free coffee for six

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I’m in Lisbon. For the second time ever in my life. ​​I’m here for a meetup organized by Sean D’Souza. For the second time ever in my life.

In case you don’t know Sean, he is a marketer who’s been online since before Google went public. And he’s still at it.

​​Sean and his wife Renuka run Psychotactics, a genuinely unique and genuinely valuable website, blog, email newsletter, and podcast.

Sean and Renuka decided a long while ago that they wanted to cap their income — the last I heard, they make $500k a year and that’s it.

On the flip side, they take three months of vacation a year — work three months, travel for one month.

They normally live in New Zealand, but last year during one of their vacation months they traveled around Spain (the first meetup I went to was in Seville).

This year, they are traveling for a month around Portugal. And that’s how and why I am Lisbon today.

Yesterday was the the meetup. There were six of us:

#1 Sean…

​​​#​2 Renuka…

​​#​​3 A Portuguese entrepreneur with a miracle household product she is trying to get onto a world market…

​​#4 A German fitness trainer and app creator…

​​#5 An English bass guitar teacher who has been selling courses online almost as long as Sean has (and who had actually heard of me, via Kieran Drew, and via my love of the Princess Bride)…

​​#6 Me.

Not in attendance, but somebody who was supposed to come until the very last minute, was Internet marketer André Chaperon. That would have been a kind of thrill for me, because André was how I got into copywriting, and his AutoResponder Madness was the first email copywriting course I ever went through.

Anyways, let me jump from the intro to the outro:

​​After three hours of sitting in the cafe of Sean and Runuka’s boutique hotel, and talking about all kinds of things business, marketing, and persuasion, we got up from the cafe and left without paying.

I didn’t know anything about it. I assumed Sean had paid for our coffees, but he didn’t. Instead, we just smiled at the two waitresses who had been serving us, thanked them, and walked out.

The coffees we had consumed didn’t go on any kind of tab. The waitresses knew we didn’t pay. And yet they didn’t complain, and in fact were happy with the situation.

The question then is, how do you get free coffee for six?

I would tell you the answer, but I’m afraid you would groan and say, “Oh come on.” Because the answer is very simple, very obvious, and you’ve probably heard it as advice a million times before.

But maybe you’re still curious, and you really would like to know how to get free coffee for six, even if the answer is simple, obvious, and familiar.

If so, I’ll make you a deal:

Write in and tell me a frustration you’re currently having. It can be big or small. It can have to do with business, marketing, persuasion — or it can have nothing to do with any of those things.

I’m not offering any kind of solution to your frustration. But I am curious, and I am willing to listen. And in exchange, I’ll write you back and I’ll tell you how to get free coffee for six.

The lucrative opportunity of Twitter ghostwriting

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I recently found out about the shadowy world of Twitter ghostwriting. In the shell of a nut:

People will write on your behalf on Twitter, if you pay them well. They will pretend to be you, so you can grow your audience and business and status.

I was actually considering hiring somebody to do this for me. Not for this newsletter, but for my health newsletter.

I asked around how much it would cost.

The answer came back:

$5k-$6k per month, if you want somebody to genuinely tweet newish content on your behalf day in and day out.

I also had a business owner who employs copywriters in other capacities quote me (“at cost,” he said) $500 a week just to take my existing newsletter content and repurpose it into 10 pieces of Twitter and LinkedIn fodder.

Quite the racket, I think. ​But it wouldn’t exist if somebody wasn’t getting value out of it on the other end.

​​In fact, Alex Lieberman of Morning Brew, who I wrote a lot about last week, feels so confident about this Twitter ghostwriting opportunity that he recently started an agency providing just this as a service.

But back to work:

You can pay somebody $5k per month to pretend to be you on Twitter. Or you can pay Kieran Drew just $297, one time, to learn how to be yourself on Twitter, or something close to yourself, and to have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people follow you, listen to you, and ultimately buy from you.

Kieran should know about this. He’s succeed at it himself, and he’s taught and coached a small country’s worth of other people to succeed at it as well.

But the opportunity is disappearing.

Not because Kieran has spilled his secrets on social media writing. There’s enough audience out there for all of us, because only 1 out of approximately 714 people will ever write a single line of online content.

But the opportunity is disappearing. Because later tonight, specifically at 12 midnight PST, Kieran’s High Impact Writing is going back in its secret silo, somewhere in the north of England where Kieran has his lair.

If you’d like to get Kieran’s High Impact Writing while it’s still available, and while the price is still an attractive $297 rather than the explosively higher price it will be in the future, then I suggest you act now.

I also suggest you act now if you want to get the recordings of my Age of Insight training, which sold for $297 when I put this show on a little over a year ago.

Age of Insight shows you how to write in an insightful-sounding way, even if you have nothing very insightful to say.

I’m offering these recordings for free as a bonus to Kieran’s High Impact Writing. But that’s only if you act before the deadline.

If you’re interested, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw

10 minutes to get big Twitter accounts to follow you

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Once every 24 hours or so, I get asked a variant of the following question:

“How did you build up an email list without being on social media?”

My answer is always the same. I did it by being stubborn and stupid, by sending daily emails into the void, without anybody reading what I was writing. I did this for years before things slowly started to turn around.

The problem, by the way, was not that I was not on social media.

The problem was that I was and continue to be unsociable. Even in the world of email newsletters, even among people whose emails I read every day, I never thought to speak up, get introduced, put myself on the radar or sonar of a person with an audience bigger than mine.

Until the end of today, I am promoting Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing. That’s Kieran’s course to teach you how to write for influence and growth on Twitter and LinkedIn.

But here’s the truth:

As with email, you can write for years on social media without anyone taking notice. The shortcut to success on social media, the royal road, is the same as in the world of email.

You gotta start making connections. You gotta start engaging with people who are more successful than you are. And you gotta do it in a way where they actually take notice and respond.

People often reply to my emails and write things like,

“Loved it!”

“😍”

“Great email!”

While I appreciate any and all reader feedback, there’s really nothing for me to reply to here. There’s nothing for me to grab onto, nothing to get curious about, nothing to make the reader stand out.

So what to do instead?

Back to Kieran’s High Impact Writing. Sure, he teaches you writing for social media. But he also teaches you the other stuff, the connecting and network building in a way that actually works.

In the one of the bonus modules (Social Media Made Simple), Kieran gives you an example of a twitter DM that got him to start following a smaller account. And then he gives you a step-by-step template that he’s since used to get his favorite accounts to start following him.

It takes all about 10 minutes to do this.

And I can tell you, it works in the world of email as well. I know, because people have written me similar things, and I’ve taken notice and then got on their list. (I still remain unsociable and I rarely reach out to anyone, even in email. And I’m paying a price for it. I don’t encourage anyone to do like I do.)

High Impact Writing goes offline today at 12 midnight PST. After that, when it does come back, the price will be explosively higher.

Also, if you act now and get High Impact Writing before the deadline via my affiliate link below, you get the recordings of my Age of Insight.

Age of Insight was a training I put on about a year ago and sold for $297. It shows you how to write in an insightful sounding way, even if you have nothing very insightful to say. Simply forward me your invoice for High Impact Writing and I will get you the recordings of Age of Insight.

Assuming, that is, that you decide High Impact Writing is right for you, and that you act before the deadline. In case you’re intrigued, go here for more details:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw

When orcs were real

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Three years ago, I read a viral, trending article titled, “When Orcs Were Real.” And three years in, I’m still thinking about it.

The article starts like this:

All cultures have stories of creatures that are like humans but more beastly, frightening, strong, and cruel than us, and that live by night instead of day.

Gotta scare the kids with something, right?

The question is why this story in particular is scary.

According to the argument in that article, it’s because this story taps into some kind of genetic memory in us.

There was a time, says the article, when orcs were real.

The orcs were bigger than us. Stronger than us. More brutish than us. They were the night to our day.

We, the race of men, were at war with the orc.

For a long time, the orcs’ strength and size meant they were winning. In fact, the orcs came to a rusty scimitar’s distance of wiping out mankind.

But for reasons we can only guess at today, the tide shifted. Men started to win the battles with the orcs. And then we won the war and wiped them entirely, to the point where now they only exist in our nightmares and on our Netflix viewing history.

Now here’s the kicker. This isn’t just some kind of evolutionary psychology handwaving to explain scary bedtime stories.

The orcs were real, and this is backed by the latest archeology and genetics research.

There was in fact an orc race that lived in the shadows, alongside men, for tens of thousands of years.

From what we know of them by their remains, they were like us but bigger. According to their skeletons, they were packed with muscle, and were several times stronger than the strongest of us.

Based on the shapes of their throats and mouths, it seems they couldn’t speak the way we can, but they could communicate in grunts and snorts.

They had a snout-like nose, large teeth, powerful jaws. Going by the size of their eye sockets, they had enormous eyes, meaning they lived by night. Most probably, they were covered in thick fur.

From their dwelling places, we know these orcs were experts in the use of short- and long-range weapons. They fed mostly on raw meat. They were deadly even to the most deadly animals — mammoths, wolves, cave lions.

They were also cannibals. And along with eating their own filthy kind, they hunted and ate men.

Who were these monsters? Today, we know them as the Neanderthals.

When I read that article and I got to the part about the Neanderthals, I said, “Whoa! Never knew that! Or never thought about it that way!”

The little that I knew about Neanderthals before, and what I learned about them through this article, suddenly snapped together into a new consistent picture, which fit what I had experienced first hand — which was about 10 hours of Lord of the Rings movies and a few months’ of reading Tolkien books when I was a teenager.

“So that’s why it’s so intriguing and dramatic,” I thought to myself.

When Orcs Were Real is an example of what I call insightful writing.

​​The article produced that feeling of insight in me — and not only me. That’s why the article went viral online, getting hundreds of likes, reshares, comments, and even YouTube videos being made after it.

I had this article in mind when gave the Age of Insight presentation a little over a year ago.

In fact, call 2 of that training (there were three calls in total) was all about the how-to of writing for insight using the underlying technique that’s there in the Orcs Were Real article.

That technique is the same technique that you can find in the “American Parasite” video sales letter by Craig Clemens, which went so viral that Joe Rogan tweeted it, not realizing he’s pushing a 40-minute ad to his audience.

The same technique is also there in the End of America VSL, which brought in something like 500,000 new premium subscribers and doubled Stansberry Research’s revenue.

But let’s talk turkey.

Until tomorrow, specifically until Monday, March 4, 2024, at 12 midnight PST, I’m promoting Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing.

​​High Impact Writing shows you how to write on LinkedIn in and Twitter to build an audience and grow your business.

As a free bonus to High Impact Writing, I’m also offering the recordings of Age of Insight.

​​Age of Insight shows you how to have something insightful-sounding to say when you do get on Twitter or LinkedIn.

High Impact Writing sells for $297 until tomorrow night. Age of Insight sold for $297 the one and only time I offered it before.

So you buy one, you get one free. But more importantly, with these two trainings together, you get influence skills and techniques that can change the trajectory of your life and your business for life.

For the full info on High Impact Writing:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw

Awkward in real life, funny in print

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I just watched a short, very awkward clip of Silicon valley multimillionaire Bryan Johnson, being interviewed by comedian Andrew Schulz.

Johnson has made a lot of headlines over the past year. He’s spending a couple million of his own money on his anti-aging regimen. He has done a great job publicizing that on his social media, and so people have taken notice.

Schulz, on the other hand, is a white dude whose shtick is talking about race in a way that white people aren’t supposed to. He opens the interview like this:

“First question. Do black people age better?”

Johnson lets out a little gasp that he modulates into a nervous chuckle. He looks around for help. And then he retreats to the saferoom deep inside his mind, and he replies,

“There’s data showing that different people, in different circumstances, in different environments, have different clocks.”

Andrew Schulz nods in understanding. “The one time black people are slower,” he explains to the audience. To which Johnson nervously guffaws again.

Here’s why I thought this was notable.

I follow Bryan Johnson on Twitter. He gets a lot of hate and mockery there for his rejuvenation quest.

And yet, his tweets are uniformly funny and crisp. He agrees-and-amplifies like a master. He diffuses attacks. And he works trolls to his own advantage, all with a smirk that you can somehow feel in those 180 characters.

On the other hand, whenever I’ve listened to Johnson speak, he sounds exactly like he did while talking to Andrew Schulz. Abstract. Humorless. Pedantic.

I don’t know whether Bryan Johnson manages his own social media. Maybe he has somebody else write for him. It would explain a lot.

But whether or not he writes his propaganda himself, the following point still stands:

You can be an entirely different person in your writing. You can be smarter, better, funnier than you ever could be in real life.

And like Bryan Johnson’s case shows, you can build up a large audience this way, and create a lot of influence, and have your ideas and your offers reach millions of people, who you could never reach otherwise.

And on that note:

Until this Monday, I’m promoting something to help you get there yourself. It’s Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing.

High Impact Writing is a course that takes you by the hand from what you are now — no judgment — and turns you into an inspiring, funny, influential presence on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Kieran, by the way, has some authority when he teaches this. He has succeeded in building up his own presence on social media to an audience of over 200,000. He’s built a million dollar-personal brand as a result, with course launches that bring in $100k-$200k over a few days (like right now).

Also, if you buy Kieran’s High Impact Writing via my affiliate link below, I’ll give you a free bonus. It’s the recordings of my Age of Insight training, which sold for $297 when I actually gave this training live.

Age of Insight shows you how to write in an insightful way, even if you’re not very insightful and you have nothing particularly insightful to say.

I, by the way, have some authority when I teach this. People regularly tell me my emails sound insightful. And yet, in all honesty, I think of myself as rather shallow-minded in real life, very pedantic and very formulaic. Again, you can be somebody entirely different in print.

The cart for High Impact Writing closes this Monday at midnight 12 PST. The next time Kieran offers HIW, the price will explode to never-before-seen levels.

If you’d like to get it before then, and grab my Age of Insight training as a free bonus, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw