Plutarch

6 things I’m reading now

by

Comes a question from long-time reader Illya Shapovalov, on the trail of my email yesterday:

===

Hey John,

Slightly off topic:

You always find some curious and interesting things to share in your emails. Can I ask you what publications do you read or are subscribed to? I really struggle finding just interesting things to read on the Internet, something that’s not sensationalistic or opinionated like most news outlets.

===

The only non-work publication I’m subscribed to is the New Yorker. It’s a print magazine that arrives to my physical mailbox with the frequency of a baby panda birth in captivity.

As for interesting things to read on the Internet, I find most of those via Hacker News.

That’s a kind of bulletin- or news-board, curated by lots of smart people and moderated by a few, specifically to not be sensationalistic or opinionated. Much of what’s on Hacker News is tech news and articles that I frankly don’t care about, but there’s other interesting stuff always.

But why limit yourself to things on the Internet?

In my experience, books are the greatest repository of human insight and funny stories, better than courses, better than coaching programs or communities, and certainly better than blogs or websites.

Nobody asked about my book reading habits. But I’ll tell ya.

I read books in four categories, one book at a time in each category:

1. “Something from a previous century.” Currently, I’m finishing up the fourth and final volume of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, which I started back in December 2021, almost three years ago.

2. “Religion.” This can be about actual religion, or about the human mind, or the nature of reality. I just started A Life of One’s Own, by Marion Milner.

3. “Fiction.” I’m reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

4. “Work.” (Copywriting, marketing, psychology, etc.) I’m reading I’m Okay, You’re Okay by Thomas Harris, since it’s one of the upstream sources of both David Sandler’s sales system and Jim Camp’s Start With No.

Bigger point:

You can combine the enjoyable and the useful.

I read these things because I find them interesting… but also because they can provide fodder for these emails and for other projects I’m working on.

Combine the two, enjoyable and useful, and you can have something you can stick with for the long term.

Smaller point:

There are lots of places to get possible ideas for daily emails.

I personally feel it’s more important to have a way to decide among those many ideas, a litmus test to help you decide if an idea is a good topic for your email today.

If you’d like to find out what my personal litmus test is, the test I recommend to coaching students who have paid me thousands of dollars for the advice, and to hundreds of people who have bought my courses, you can find that inside my Simple Money Emails program. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

“… and I am also of the opinion that Epstein didn’t kill himself”

by

Let warn you straight out, if you are a conspiracy lover, that this email is not about Jeffrey Epstein.

​​Instead it is about that meme, from a year or two thousand years ago, of tagging “… and Epstein didn’t kill himself” onto any conversation.

For the past six months, every single day, I’ve been reading Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a collection of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. It’s part of my attempt to force a change of perspective on myself.

And it’s been working. It’s fun and fascinating to see how some quirks and problems we think are unique to our own time existed a couple thousand years ago in other complex societies.

So in ancient Greece, there was a powerful and influential man named Alkibiades, who seems to have been the ancient version of Trump.

​​Alkibiades cut off his own dog’s tail to get people horrified and outraged. “Good,” he said, “at least they aren’t talking about the really bad stuff.”

And in ancient Rome, there was Marcus Cato, a politician and general. Cato was a war monger, and late in his life, he constantly tried to get the Romans to attack the city of Carthage in North Africa.

Whenever Cato got up to speak in the Senate, on any topic, internal or external, before sitting back down, he would always sneak in, “… and I am also of the opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.” Mic drop.

Cato did get his way in the end. The Romans became convinced that Carthage was a threat, and they launched the third and final war on the Carthaginians.

​​They leveled the city of Carthage, enslaved its population, and destroyed Carthaginian culture and empire forever.

Was it all Cato’s doing?

No, of course not. But Cato’s insistent nagging probably did contribute.

​​I imagine it started ringing in the heads of other influential Romans, who began to feel that “Carthage must be destroyed” was their own thought and not just something they’ve been hearing over and over from a persistent and cranky old man.

So here’s my point:

In this newsletter, I talk a lot about proof, persuasion, infotainment, building vision, concrete facts, and specificity. It’s all good advice, and it has the added benefit of sounding sexy.

But that sexy and beautiful bamboo pavilion is built on plain but powerful concrete foundations that are rarely talked about.

The fact is, a plain old claim, repeated over and over, a propos of nothing, will in time wear people down, get them curious, and even make them believe. Even if you do nothing else. And if on top of that you add in some proof or a story or some surprising and stimulating facts, all the better.

So there you go. My advice for you for today. Just append, “… and I am also of the opinion that my offer is amazing” to the end of each of your marketing messages.

Speaking of which:

As this email goes out, I will be starting my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

And I am also of the opinion you should have already signed up to attend this amazing presentation live.

But in case you didn’t, you still have a bit of time. You can either join live, or you can at least get the recording when it’s over.

I’ll be disassembling the optin once the presentation ends later tonight. For now it’s still active, and all you gotta do is click on the link below and fill out the form on the next page:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation