Parris Lampropoulos

I write hooks for a living, and I’m telling you to stop writing them from scratch

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Yes, I do write hooks for a living. And yes, I am telling you to stop writing them from scratch. Or don’t stop. Make up your own mind. Maybe this will help:

Yesterday, I started promoting Vasilis Apostolou’s Million Dollar Hook Machine. This is a system for instantly producing a few dozen scientifically crafted, magically inspired hooks.

Million Dollar Hook Machine is infused with Vasilis’s professional training as an in-house copywriter at the highest levels (5+ years at big DR outfits like Agora and now Advance Bionutritionals)…

… with his years of being mentored in an exclusive and private setting by Parris Lampropoulos, one of the winningest copywriters alive…

… and with Vaslis’s own daily work (this Million Dollar Hook Machine is the system he uses regularly, and it has popped out hooks behind ads and sales letters that have made $1M+, hence the name of the offer).

Yesterday, I filled up the Million Dollar Hook Machine with gasoline, jump started the engine, and as the thing was purring along, I fed in the details of Vasilis’s own offer.

After a few seconds of puffing, clanging, and beeping, the Million Dollar Hook Machine popped out its output.

Specifically, it gave me 23 fresh, steaming hooks.

I looked over them. While I thought many of them could work well for ads or a sales letter… they were NOT a fit for emails like this.

Fortunately (I probably would not have thought of it myself), the Million Dollar Hook Machine also asked me:

“Where will these run: your list as an affiliate promo, Vasilis’s own launch emails, or paid ads? That changes which angles I’d push hardest.”

I located the “emails” knob on the side of the Million Dollar Hook Machine and turned it to 11. And after a few more seconds of puffing, clanging, and beeping, the thing popped up a new list of hooks, from which I pulled out the following, all of which are legit hooks for emails:

#1 “The Million Dollar Hook Machine: a push-button system built from the hooks behind $1M+ sales letters.”

This was pretty much my email yesterday.

#2 “Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cub just released the hook system he uses at Advanced Bionutritionals.”

Good idea. I might have to write an email during this promo specifically about Parris, and how much I’ve learned from the guy both directly and indirectly, and how this is your best chance to get some of the man’s wizardly knowledge, without signing your life away for the next five years to be one of his Copy Cups, the way Vasilis has done.

#3 “The hardest part of a daily email isn’t the email. It’s the first line.”

I’d say “hook” in place of “first line.” And I’d work to somehow hint at the distinction between “daily email” and “daily email that make sales.” Yes, the Million Dollar Hook Machine sometimes gives you hooks ready to go. Other times, you gotta polish or twist a bit.

#4 “I write hooks for a living, and I’m telling you to stop writing them from scratch.”

Well sunnuva gun…

Like I said, stop, or don’t stop. Make up your own mind. For full transparency, I can tell you this:

I will not be using Vasilis’s Hook Machine for my own emails outside of today, but that’s because I enjoy writing these emails from scratch, and because there’s value to me in writing beyond simply producing an email that goes out.

On the other hand, if I were writing for clients, or if my own business were less enmeshed with my own psyche, you can bet your sweet iphone that I’d be using this to churn out hooks for emails, ads, sales letter leads, and Christmas card greetings.

#5 “First time it’s been sold. Last day is Monday.”

Yeah about that:

Vasilis just released Million Dollar Hook Engine, and is running a launch for it until Monday. As part of the launch, he’s including a bunch of sexy bonuses.

One of the bonuses will take hooks like the above, and turn them into full ad scripts.

Another will take hooks like the above and turn them into a headline complex.

A third bonus rejiggers the Million Dollar Hook Engine specifically for the financial market, which is unique in the hooks it needs.

All these bonuses are going away after Monday.

But you know, Mondays are busy. You might miss my final email before the deadline in the Monday rush.

Then there’s tomorrow, which is Sunday. Sundays for many people are a day for family and rest, and away from the computer. Sundays are not a good bet if you’re counting on having time to come back to this tomorrow.

That leaves today, Saturday.

If you think you might want Vasilis’s Million Dollar Hook Engine, why not look at the sales page below and decide whether or not it’s for you, right now, while it’s on your mind… before life gets in the way… before the sexy bonuses disappear?

The early bird snatches the cookie, but maybe more important, the early bird is free of worry and stress of thinking about food for the rest of the day, and also avoids the bitter regret of having missed out on a very attractive meal once the cookie is gone.

If my bird- and cookie-related metaphor speaks to you, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mdhm

Announcing: Million Dollar Hook Machine

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Today, I would like to announce the Million Dollar Hook Machine. It is a kind of push-button toaster:

You pop in a description of a product or an offer. Out pop a few dozen scientifically crafted, magically inspired hooks you can use to promote your product or offer, whether in emails, ads, sales letter leads, VSLs, advertorials, postcard campaigns, or book titles.

A hook, as you probably know, is the key idea behind an ad or an email or a sales letter lead.

Phrased well, a hook becomes your headline.

Overall, your hook is the thing that’s most responsible for the success or failure of a piece of copy, outside of your offer.

You might think you’re already good at coming up with hooks, or that Claude or ChatGPT can pump out some hooks for you.

Of course. You are good, and they can. But why not do better, and get bigger results than you might get just by yourself, or that your AI generic and untrained minions can generate for you now?

Million Dollar Hook Machine was created by my friend Vasilis Apostolou.

“My friend” is a term very loosely thrown about in affiliate promos (and this is an affiliate promo).

But Vasilis and I actually are friends. I’ve known him for 5+ years. Most of that time I’ve known him online — we used to get on Zoom calls regularly to share industry gossip and talk copywriting. But then we actually roomed together when we both went to an IRL copywriting conference in Poland a few years ago, where we also shared industry gossip and talked copywriting.

That’s to say, Vasilis has my personal trust and endorsement. But do you really care about that? Maybe not. So here are some hard-hitting facts about the man:

1. Vasilis started out at Agora, the biggest direct response publisher out there (billion dollars+ a year, the last I checked). He was trained there using the bloody and brutal Agora copy bootcamps. He ended up training other copywriters, and on this specific topic, hooks.

2. Vasilis is now an in-house copywriter at Advanced Bionutritionals, an 8-figure truly direct response supplement company. When I say “truly direct response,” I mean Advanced Bionutritionals have a suite of doctors as gurus… send out paid print newsletters to customers… and actually produce 40-minute, big-idea VSLs they run on cold traffic. This is not your daddy’s CBD gummies.

3. For the past several years, Vasilis has been directly mentored by the great Parris Lampropoulos. Parris, as you might know, is one of the biggest A-list copywriting names out there. Parris has been in the biz for decades, and has made many tens (or hundreds?) of millions of dollars for others and himself. Over the years, he has mentored a small number of copywriters 1-1. Vasilis is in this small and exclusive group.

4. Vasilis uses the Million Dollar Hook Machine in his own work. This same push-button toaster has been responsible for ads and sales letters that brought in $1M+, hence the creative and accurate name, “Million Dollar Hook Machine.”

Vasilis has just released Million Dollar Hook Machine for the first time ever. He’s running a launch for it until next Monday, with several sexy bonuses that will disappear after the launch.

Possibly the most interesting among these is the Million-Dollar Script Generator, which takes hooks and produces fully-formed ad scripts that you can edit and then test. (Says Vasilis, I’ve seen it produce drafts that are stronger than many scripts written by working copywriters and creative strategists.”)

Just yesterday, I wrote an email with a job advertisement for exactly this kind of work. The fact is, big direct response businesses are hiring right now for copywriters who can come up with good hooks for existing products, and they are paying good money for it.

If this is the kind of work you do or want to do, and you want to be faster and more successful at it, while working less, then Vasilis’s current offer is worth a look, particularly now, with the sexy bonuses attached. Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mdhm

Announcing: Age of Insight for 36 hours only

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Starting today and lasting for 36 hours only, I am selling my Age of Insight training.

Age of Insight shows you how to generate the feeling of insight in your audience, with the ultimate goal of generating a feeling of satisfaction in your belly as you watch $$$$ pile up in your bank account.

I don’t normally sell Age of Insight, but I decided to do so today, because a few days ago, I got a pretty fantastic testimonial about it from Vasilis Apostolou.

Vasilis is a former Agora copywriter, who then went on to work with A-lister Parris Lampropoulos, to mentor copywriters himself, and to write copy as an inhouse copywriter at another big DR brand.

Here’s what Vasilis wrote inside my Skool group a few days ago:

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I’ve bought almost all John’s trainings. The one that has made the most money for me and my clients is one he no longer promotes.

The training I’m talking about is Age of Insight.

Seriously, nothing boosts your copy’s persuasive power like giving your readers a new insight.

You can sell stuff without a big idea or a unique mechanism if you deliver a new insight.

Recently, one of my sales letter passed $1 million in sales. This letter starts by giving readers a new insight. More specifically, insight type number 2 from John’s training. (So consider this post a thank-you to John.)

Also, I’m coaching a bunch of creative strategists who work for 8- and 9-figure brands. When I review their work, I often notice that the creatives that scale are those delivering new insights. Usually the winning creatives use insight type number 1.

There’s also an insight type number 3. Which is harder to pull off but it might be the most effective. In fact, the idea that landed me a job at Agora as a newbie copywriter was an insight of that type. (At the time I didn’t know of John, so I just developed this idea instictually. But now that I’m aware of this type of insight, I can develop these ideas more often)

Anyway…

If you want to make more money from your marketing – or make your content more interesting – beg John to start selling Age of Insight again.

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When I first sold Age of Insight, I sold it for $300. It’s a price I am honoring still, and to make it even easier to take me up on it, I am offering you a zero-punishment payment plan during this 36-hour window, only $100 today and two more monthly payments of $100.

The deadline to get Age of Insight is tomorrow, Friday, 11:59pm PST. If you wanna get in before this rare and priceless opportunity disappears:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/age-of-insight/

The (yes, THE) secret of storytelling

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A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos likes to tell the story of how he became a copywriter. I’ve heard him tell this story multiple times, mostly online, and once in real life as well.

I forget the details of how it all goes, but there’s one detail that I never forget.

At one point, Parris was working at a real estate office, and the office manager at the time, in a fit of fury and impotence, punched his hand through a window.

And now comes the bit I always remember, which I’ve heard Parris repeat every time I’ve heard him tell this story:

There was a thin trail of blood on the floor, from the broken window to the elevator, as the manager walked out of the office, never to return again.

And that, in a snapshot, is THE secret of storytelling.

In a few more words, from an article I read about Irving Thalberg, a movie producer who was called the “Boy Wonder” of Hollywood, and who invented and popularized many Hollywood tropes that we now take for granted as elements of effective storytelling:

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The real reason for the enduring Thalberg myth has less to do with any of this than with that perennial idea, which fascinated [F. Scott Fitzgerald, who worked as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1930s, and who wrote a novel with a fictionalized Thalberg as protagonist] as it does us, that there are secrets of storytelling, to which a few are privy.

Yet good Hollywood films have more or less a single story. Raise the stakes, place insuperable obstacles before the protagonist, have the protagonist somehow surmount them while becoming braver and better. What works for Dorothy works for Rocky. In truth, we may follow stories, but we respond to themes; the story is just the tonality in which those themes are played. […]

No one can recall the ins and outs of Salozzo’s drug scheme in “The Godfather,” but we remember Pacino’s face in closeup: we come for the story, stay for the sublimations.

===

I don’t really know what the guy behind this article is talking about when he talks about “themes” and “sublimations.”

I do know that few stories are memorable… that the structure of storytelling, hyped up as it is, is often irrelevant… and that what actually makes a story work is not the rags-to-riches, or riches-to-rags, or hero quest skeleton underneath… but a few dramatic and memorable snapshots:

The “kiss of death” that Michael Corleone gives his brother Fredo in the Godfather II; Rocky running up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the thin trail of blood from the broken window to the elevator.

So if it’s not the structure but the memorable snapshot that is the secret of storytelling… then how do you come up with memorable snapshots?

I hate to break it to you, but if that were a knowable secret, then every Hollywood movie would be a forever-beloved blockbuster. Which is clearly not the case.

The best you can do is to come up with the best snapshots you can, and then to test them out on your audience. See if the audience oohs and aahs, if they feed you back the same snapshot days and weeks and months later, and if they come back for more. Then double down on what works, and discard the rest.

And since I gotta sell you something, let me tie this into the topic of writing daily emails, because daily emails make for a particularly easy and fertile way to test out new ideas and ways of presenting those ideas to an audience.

I’ve written books and created courses that people buy and enjoy and then come back for more of. One secret of how I make such info products is that I repurpose my daily emails, or rather, the emails that worked — ideas and snapshots that I field-tested on my audience, and that I got positive feedback on.

If you want to start writing daily emails of your own, and if you want a field-tested guide for how to do that well:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Double-checking the windows of sales escape

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A true story, I mean, analogy:

A couple weeks ago, I was walking around town when a freak thunderstorm set in. I was only about a couple hundred yards from my apartment, but there was no braving this.

First, hurricane winds picked up, then a torrential downpour, finally large hailstones started beating down.

Along with a few dozen other people, I huddled in the metro station tunnel while the gods wore out their fury.

“Good thing I closed all the windows at home,” I chuckled to myself, as ominous music swelled in the background.

I got home and sure enough—

In the middle of the living room, a ficus ginseng plant, which banker and email-writing career coach Tom Grundy had sent me last year, was lying toppled over on the floor. Soil from the plant was all over the room.

“How did this happen?” I asked, possibly out loud. I walked around the apartment and came across a large puddle. One of the bedrooms was entirely flooded, including the mattress, which had soaked through.

It turns out that the window in that room was shut, but it wasn’t shut tightly enough. The furious wind blew it open, and then the rain and hail flew in, flooding the room, soaking through the mattress, and knocking over the plant in the living room and tossing the soil everywhere.

(The plant survived, by the way. It’s looking at me right now.)

I’m about to try to spin this story of emergency and disaster into a copywriting lesson, if you can handle one of those.

Last night, I hosted one of the Q&A calls for Copy Riddles, as part of the last-ever live cohort I will run of that program.

Several skilled copywriters and marketers submitted their bullets for the weekly CR bullet contest, including the following:

“How you could double your child’s IQ with this doctor-recommended breakfast switch. Page 17”

It’s a great bullet. It’s got a big promise I imagine most parents would respond to… a simple and intriguing mechanism… and proof in that phrase “doctor-recommended.”

There’s only one niggling thing, and it’s that, to my mind at least, the reader could read this and say, “Oh, great to know such a doctor-recommended breakfast switch exists! I’ll ask my pediatrician about it the next time I take the little monster in to see him.”

In other words, there’s a small, minor, minuscule chance, however unlikely, that the reader can be sold entirely on the promise of this bullet… and still won’t buy.

And that’s my analogy for you.

“You gotta close off all the windows and doors of escape for your sale” — maybe you’ve heard that advice before.

I know I did, but it didn’t really sink in for a long time.

In any case, knowing it is not enough, because really you have to know your audience as well, and keep learning about them, and keep shutting off all their paths to escape, including new ones that pop up.

Otherwise, even a seemingly shut window (bear with me here) can blow open unexpectedly, and then you have the sales equivalent of a mess in the living room and water all over the place and a mattress that’s been soaked through.

In other words, you have a lost sale, with good work put in and nothing to show for it. So it makes sense to double-check and triple-check the windows and doors of sales escape, using everything you know already and are learning about your skeptical, guarded, and inert prospects.

All right, analogy over. As for my offer:

While this is the last-ever live cohort for Copy Riddles, this program remains alive as an evergreen training.

Several of the people currently going through it have been through it three or more times already, on their own.

I also have it from a reputable source that Copy Riddles, even without the Q&A calls, is the best way to gain the money-making skill of writing sales bullets, short of being one of Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cubs. (I heard this from Vasilis Apostolou, formerly a copywriter at Agora, and now one of Parris’s copy cubs.)

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How I conceived and delivered my first online course

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Four score and six months ago, I brought forth on the Internet a new offer, conceived in Columbia but delivered back in Europe, for what I called my “bullets course.”

I sold this new offer to a group of about 20 “beta-testers” who came via my email list. These beta-testers were willing to pay me for up front for this course, based simply on the info I shared in an email, without a sales page, sight unseen.

That’s just as well, because the course didn’t exist at that point yet. I only had the idea for it.

Since I managed to get the number of beta-testers I was looking for, I delivered the course over the next 8 or so weeks — via an email each workday, which I was writing day-for-day.

This way of creating a course turned out to be very low pressure and yet very productive for me. Meanwhile, it also provided accountability and a cohort feeling for the participants.

During those 8 weeks, I got feedback, corrections, and testimonials from that first group of students. I collected all that, integrated it into the second iteration of the course, which was largely the same, except it now had a higher price tag, and a new name, Copy Riddles.

I have been selling Copy Riddles ever since and have made — well, I won’t say exactly how much, but enough to buy several metric tons of glazed donuts.

That in a nutshell, is how you create value out of thin air.

If the way I told that story makes me sound like some kind of agile and entrepreneurial wizard, that’s not my intent.

The fact is, the only reason Copy Riddles was a success was that pretty much nothing I did was my original idea.

As I’ve written many times, the core idea for Copy Riddles content came from direct marketer Gary Halbert, and was drilled into my head via a training I had heard from A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

As for the structure of Copy Riddles — the fact I presold it and then delivered it via email, one day at a time — that came from me spying on course creator Derek Johanson, specifically, the way Derek created and delivered his CopyHour course.

I’m telling you this because Derek is currently launching a course, delivered daily by email, that gets you to launch, sell, and deliver a course that people want to pay for, in 30 days, all via email.

Derek’s course is creatively called “Email Delivered Courses” and it gets you to do what Derek did with CopyHour.

You certainly don’t need to buy Email Delivered Courses to launch your own email delivered course. Derek lays out the high-level process on his EDC sales page, which I’ve conveniently linked to below. And like I wrote already, I reverse-engineered and hacked many of the details myself, and that’s how I did Copy Riddles.

I’m still telling you about Email Delivered Courses for two reasons:

1. Maybe you don’t wanna do what I did, and spend weeks stalking Derek and reverse-engineering what he does. Instead, maybe you are happy to pay Derek to simply tell you what to do each day, so you come out 30 days from now with your own completed, desirable, and sales-validated course.

2. The real question is not whether you could figure out what Derek did, but whether you actually will do so, and whether you will then put it into practice in the next 30 days, and have an asset that you can sell ongoing, and buy yourself many metric tons of glazed donuts.

Derek’s launch for Email Delivered Courses closes at the end of this week. If you’d like more info, or to join before the doors close:

https://bejakovic.com/edc

Don’t rely on copy for this

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Yesterday, I got an interesting course creator question from Gasper Crepinsek. (For context, last week I promoted Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery, which is delivered as a 30-day email-based course.) Gasper wrote:

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How do you go about writing cliff hangers to the next email (that open curiosity loop)?

We already have a pretty high completion rate on the course but I want to make it even bigger. And this seems like a way that could potentially help.

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This reminded me of a time I heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos during a Q&A. Somebody in the audience asked, “What kind of copy would you write to address the objection, “I need time to think about it?'”

Parris, who is as skilled and as knowledgeable a copywriter as there is, said he wouldn’t rely on copy to do this. Instead, he said he’d use the structure of the offer itself – a deadline, a limited number of spots, etc.

And so it is with my answer to Gasper’s question.

Gasper is ultimately how to tease content in a sexy way ie. how to write sales bullets.

I have an entire course about how to write sales bullets. It’s called Copy Riddles. It’s great. If you want to learn how to tease people so they pay you for the information you’re selling, then Copy Riddles is the way to go.

But when it comes to the much harder task of getting people to consume how-to info they’ve already paid for, or to complete a course, or to watch a training all the way through — and to actually get value out of it — then I wouldn’t rely on sales bullets, or on open loops, or on copy in general.

Instead, I’d rely on the structure of the course or info product itself.

I created on a training last year all about this.

It’s called 3rd Conversion, and it’s about turning one-time buyers into long-term customers by getting them to consume and digest your info products.

I’ve only offered 3rd Conversion once before, as a live training last November.

But if you like, can get your own copy of 3rd Conversion right now.

Taking a page from Parris’s book, there’s a deadline, tomorrow, Sunday at 12 midnight PST to act. After that, 3rd Conversion goes back into the vault to wait for the next four-planet alignment.

If you need some help making up your mind, here are a few comments I got from people who attended the 3rd Conversion training live.

#1. From Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

#2. From Folarin Madehin, freelance copywriter:

“The 3rd Conversion call was great, John! But I already expected that going in. I know you said to look at the training as more than a checklist, but that’s what was most on my mind, lol. ‘Here’s a list of stuff I can check to make products more awesome!'”

#3. From Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

#4. From Shakoor Chowdhury, digital marketer:

“I gotta also say the way you [a list of stuff I’ve done in the past to get people to consume my courses and trainings] makes you an effective teacher and I think there is a lot to be said about the way you teach compared to traditional schooling which teaches us nothing because there is no incentive to listen and no incentive to use it or use our own initiative to ’test ourselves’ like you have done…”

“I normally get bored easily, but you were able to keep my attention throughout the entire training with minimal distraction, mainly through [some of the techniques I used inside the actual 3rd Conversion training to encourage people to consume it]… perhaps the ’tiktok generation’ has some hope after all.”

#5. From Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter:

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

If you’d like to get 3rd Conversion, before it disappears:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

Where it’s at: Two narrow columns and a PDF

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One of the rare daily email newsletters I read more often than not is by Jason Leister.

Jason used to be a direct response copywriter. He used to write about getting and managing copywriting clients. He’s since moved into stranger waters, where he talks about raising his 10 kids, living off the grid, “unplugging from the matrix,” and manifesting your desires.

All right up my alley, minus the 10 kids.

But let’s talk turkey:

Each Monday, Jason sends an email called Monday Hotsheet. It’s a bunch of curated resources — interesting articles, tech, videos that Jason has come across.

That’s pretty normal.

What was weird is that Jason used to send the Monday Hotsheet as a PDF that he’d link to in his email. Even weirder, the PDF was formatted in two columns, like some insurance brochure.

I liked to read through Jason’s Monday Hotsheet but I always chuckled at the experience. Who does PDFs any more? And in two columns like this?

Well, I guess I manifested something myself, and I should have been more careful about what I asked for.

Because Jason for some reason recently switched Monday Hotsheet to be simply delivered in his daily email, and in just one measly column.

I found myself disappointed. From one week to the next, Jason’s Monday Hotsheet looked cheaper, much less valuable and interesting.

Suddenly, I asked myself if I need another weekly email the curates useful and interesting resources online? I feel like everybody from Arnold Schwarzenegger on down has one of those. I ain’t got time for all these curated valuable resources.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos once got a tin pot and a wooden spoon. He then started banging on the tin pot with the wooden spoon while jumping up and down on his couch and chanting, “Format beats copy! Format beats copy!”

(Fine. The part with the wooden spoon and the tin pot I made up. But all the rest of that story is true, except the jumping up and down.)

Parris was specifically talking about the format of sales copy.

Once upon a time, you could take a proven sales letter, format it to look like a magazine or an article or a newsletter issue (the print kind), and you might get a 2.5x bump in response. Format beats copy: Ain’t no copy in the universe that’s gonna get you that kind of a bounce, not when you already have top copywriters working for you.

This holds just as well for info products, whether you give ’em away or charge thousands of dollars for them.

Yes, people should only want the truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes, it shouldn’t matter whether you deliver the truth on a 3×5 index card, or in a 3-ring binder, or a never-to-be-repeated secret performance in an amphitheater in the middle of some remote forest.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does matter.

So my point for you today is, think about the format in which you will deliver your truth.

And if you’ve already delivered your truth, and nobody much cared, or they cared at first and then they dropped off… then think about format again.

Rather than coming up with a new message, you might be able to keep the message and simply deliver it as a 2-column PDF, or whatever else feels unique and different and valuable in your industry.

And sometimes, simple word choice is enough to change the format. Or at least be a major part of it.

Take for example my Daily Email Habit service. At bottom, it’s delivered as a daily email. I could have simply said, “Hey, would you like to sign up for a new set of daily emails, and pay me $30 a month for the privilege?”

Maybe some forward-thinking people would have taken me up on this. But i don’t think it would have worked nearly as well as calling Daily Email Habit a service, which happens to be delivered by email, for your convenience.

Speaking of Daily Email Habit, if you’d like to find out more about this valuable service, or even try it out yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The next big business opportunity

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Yesterday I talked to my friend Will, who recently started writing a newsletter for a prediction market.

Prediction market?

You know… go online, and stake a little bit of money on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, or the chance of war between Israel and Iran.

​​If your prediction comes true, you get paid, just like if you had bet on red and that’s how the roulette table ended up.

Will and I were spitballing content ideas for the newsletter. I told him to interview the “super forecasters,” the guys making the most right bets on the marketplace.

Turns out Will had already done that. He said that one of the top guys on the platform was making $70k per month forecasting the future.

So here’s my own forecast:

We will see a successful business opportunity offer in the next 6 months, featuring a “super forecaster” as a guru, telling you how to collect up to $2,333 each day, from the comfort of your own couch, by watching CNN and Fox News.

I realize I am perhaps influencing the future, and helping make it happen, by giving away this idea and sending it out to thousands of readers of this newsletter, many of who are marketers and offer owners.

But I really do think this has a unique shot to be successful.

Many business opportunities out there are clouded by the fundamental unfamiliarity of the core thing.

Commodities trading? VR content creation? Direct response copywriting?

“I don’t know… maybe it’s legit and maybe there’s even good money to be made there, but it sounds complicated. I don’t really get it.”

Compare that to real estate… or vending machines… or yelling at the TV.

Everybody can understand that. That’s why real estate and vending machines are bizops that have been around for a century or longer… and that’s why I think that future forecasting has legs as well.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m giving this idea away instead of running after it myself, since I think it’s so hot. It’s a fair question. My answer is long and distinguished, so I’ll save it for another email.

Meanwhile, if you are reading this newsletter, I can only assume you have already been pre-sold on the business opportunity that is copywriting, or at least on owning fundamental copywriting skills, whether you use them for your own business or for a client.

And so I have a little bizop brochure I’d like to show you. Here’s the top of the brochure, a quote by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, who only works on 2-3 projects each year, but still makes millions:

“So do what Gary says. You [will possess one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter]. And you’ll make lots of money.”

If you want to read the rest of this brochure, and understand what Parris is saying will make you lots of money, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The business of selling “feeling good”

by

This morning before heading out for coffee, I thumbed through the pages of my Kindle and read a passage of Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent.

​​Dan was talking about those colorful patterned dress shirts, the ones with a second colorful print on the inside of the cuff. And he said:

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The shirts are very popular in the Southwest with the rodeo crowd, rich oil men — one of whom has “collected 130 different designs” and spent so much money, the 2014 “collection” includes a design named after that customer, and quite a few GKIC members. The shirts go for $225.00 to over $500.00, and are sold direct, in catalogs, at Nieman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, high-end country western shops, and in several Las Vegas stores.

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“I wanda,” I said to myself as I raised my nose in the air, “I wanda if this brand of shirts is the one that Parris Lampropoulos buys.”

As you might remember if you were reading my emails back this past May, I went to a copywriting conference. Multimillionaire A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos was the star there.

The first night, Parris worked the room. As he did, he kept showing off his colorful, patterned shirt. “It’s a Robert Graham,” Parris would say to anyone who expressed interest. “I put his kids through college.”

I brought my nose back down to the pages of Marketing to the Affluent. Sure enough, Dan Kennedy was talking about Robert Graham shirts. And he had this to say:

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The brand’s owner, Robert Stock, calls customers “connoisseurs.” He says he is in the business of selling “feeling good” — getting favorably noticed, getting compliments, getting bragging rights.

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My point is that old chestnut, that you are not in the business that you think you are in. At least, that is, if you want people bragging about how much money they spent on a collection of your stuff, instead of treating your offer like a commodity or at best a necessary occasional expense.

That’s all I got for you today. Except for an encouragement to read No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent if you haven’t done so.

It’s a valuable book, and I wish I had read it earlier.

If you wish to read it now, here’s where you can get it:

No B.S Marketing for the Affluent