Rich Schefren

Is your list too small for list swaps?

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For several decades now, I’ve been recommending list swaps as a way to grow your email list.

(List swap = you promote somebody else to your list, in exchange for them promoting you to theirs.)

The #1 objection I hear is:

“My list is too small to make it worth anybody’s while.”

How small is too small?

4 people?

100 people?

200 people?

I was recently on a call with a list owner who has a list of 1,500 entrepreneurs. He said he’s worried his list is too small to do list swaps!

That dude asked for my advice about approaching people for list swaps. What I told him is:

1. A fantastic lead magnet and solid emails will go a long way.

Right now, I’m doing a list swap with somebody who has a list of 150 people… because he’s willing to custom create a lead magnet I know my audience will get value from. Plus his emails are solid.

2. You can always offer to make things right.

If somebody’s list is bigger than yours, you can offer to promote them multiple times, now and then again in 6 months or in a year etc. (In the end, that’s the deal I ended up striking with the guy in point 1.)

3. Money can plug the gap. You can always offer to both promote the other person AND to pay them something to make the exchange more equitable.

So?

Are you convinced now?

Are you gonna rush out and start doing list swaps?

I hope so.

But if not, I gotta tell you my dark-psychology conclusion here:

I don’t think list size is really what’s holding people back from doing list swaps.

Rather, I think it’s the same old culprit that holds back pretty much everybody, pretty much all the time:

Fear of rejection.

Putting yourself out there… and having somebody tell you no or ignore you… and feeling so small and worthless because of it.

If that’s your situation, then I’d suggest, in the words of business coach Rich Schefren, that you put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.

It would be great to not care about being rejected, or to just do stuff in spite of this fear.

But while you work on that, it can make sense to look for alternate routes to achieve your business goals.

I’d like to point you to an opportunity to do so right now.

Maliha Mannan, who runs the Side Blogger and who is a member of my Daily Email House community, has a list of 9,000 online creators and business owners and people who want to become such.

Maliha is auctioning off a classified ad spot in every Sunday edition of her newsletter… FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR.

Bidding starts at $2.

More info here:

https://www.skool.com/anthill-club-6065/your-official-invitation-to-my-basementbackyard-party

Become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills

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A bit of Bejako background:

I went to high school in a rich suburb of Baltimore, Maryland (we weren’t rich, but ok).

All the other kids in my class were ambitious and smart (one girl’s dad later won the Nobel Prize in chemistry). They worked hard their entire high school days. They ended up going to schools like Princeton and Stanford, and became lawyers and doctors and architects.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Bejako had zero drive to go to college, and had no idea what kind of work he might ever want to do.

His best guess — the only option that kind of turned him on – was the idea of moving down to Annapolis, Maryland’s small, quaint, maritime capital, and becoming a reporter on some local newspaper that covered state politics.

Fast-forward to the present, and switch back to the first person:

While I never became a small-town reporter, the same lack of ambition and non-entrepreneurial nature I had in high school has stuck with me throughout life, now into middle age.

I am really not motivated by money, try as I have to change that. I’ve also never thought of myself as an entrepreneur or online business owner. And yet, that’s kind of what I’m doing now, and what’s more, I’m not really qualified to do anything else.

I’m telling you all this because a couple nights ago, I was reading a book about direct marketing. It said the following:

“Understanding your ultimate prospect has nothing to do with creativity. It requires relentless, investigative salesmanship. You need to become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills.”

“Hm,” I said to my pillow. “An investigative reporter on the salesmanship beat? That’s something I can imagine myself doing.”

And in fact, the very next day, I told myself to treat what I’m doing as investigative reporter. I started collecting data about offers I had made, successful or unsuccessful. I came up with theories about why things turned out as they did. I started trying to write up a story that makes sense that fits the data to the theory.

It’s been fun and it’s getting me to do things I should have been doing all along.

My point is not that you specifically should start treating your business as an investigative reporter.

My point is that, if “value-creating entrepreneur” or “small business owner” doesn’t really feel like a suit that fits you, there lots of other suits you can put on, including ones that you like the look of. And it will still be you inside the suit.

You gotta do certain things to see success if you have an email list and want to make money with it. Selling is one of them. Understanding your audience is another. Creating new offers is still another. But there are lots of ways to get yourself to do those things, including things that align with your own natural motivations and ambitions.

Or in the words of Internet marketer Rich Schefren, “Put your business goals of your self-development goals.” It’s much more likely you will see success if you work with your own psychology, rather than trying to change it.

So much for Monday Morning Mindset.

For some specific strategies on how to take your existing skills and interests and turn them into money, enough to pay for a house:

https://bejakovic.com/house

“The Bible of persuasion” (was $1,997, now $0.99)

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Boy I got something hot for you.

Super hot.

It sells for $1,997 right now… is worth millions if you apply it thoroughly… but you can get it today for $0.99.

Thanks to Daily Email House member Anthony La Tour, I got clued into an amazing fact earlier this morning. In Anthony’s words:

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So recently, I’ve been getting things ready for a road trip from Oregon to California tomorrow for Thanksgiving with my wife and the kids (wish me luck… this is their first time). As I was scrolling around Audible for something to pass the time on the road, I came across two new “audiobooks” from Dan Kennedy:

Mind Hijacking & Magnetic Story Selling

These are NOT audiobooks. They are recordings from the seminars he gave. In the case of Magnetic Story Selling (which is HIGHLY useful for writing emails), multiple seminars.

Magnetic Story Selling is currently being offered at $1,997 just for the physical book. The price of the seminar ticket alone for Mind Hijacking was over $7,000.

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For the purposes of this email, I just wanna focus on that Magnetic Story Selling book (print version) that Anthony mentions.

I checked, and sure enough, it’s selling for $1,997 online right now.

Also included as bonuses are several Dan Kennedy seminars, including one called Influential Writing.

I first heard about that training some five years ago from Internet Marketer Rich Schefren, who said it was one of Dan Kennedy’s two best trainings.

I got my hands on it after that (don’t ask how).

I’ve since gone through Influential Writing many, many times.

It’s on my phone and I used to listen to it while walking on the beach. It’s shaped my ideas about writing an email newsletter more than just about anything else has, outside Ben Settle’s initial advice to get started and to make your emails “infotaining.”

And now, if what Anthony says is right, you can get the recording of the Influential Writing seminar as part of the Magnetic Story Selling audiobook… not for the ~10k that it cost initial attendees… nor for the $1,997 that it costs as part of the “multimedia book” being sold on Russell Brunson’s site… but for $33 on Audible, or for $0.99 if you sign up to an Audible subscription.

I wish I had known about this last week, because I would have definitely included it inside my Black Friday Bundle Collector’s Edition of amazing and secret deals. As it is, it’s too late, and too good for me not to share.

If you want to influence people via the written word, then Influential Writing is, as one of the testimonials says, “the Bible of persuasion.” Nothing else comes close. And if you wanna get this audiobook version, which apparently includes it:

https://bejakovic.com/mss

Announcing: My Love/Hate AI event

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Starting today, and ending Thursday at 12 midnight PST, I’m promoting Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery.

ChatGPT Mastery is a 30-day, email-delivered course that teaches you how to use AI to eliminate the work tasks you hate.

In my email yesterday, I wrote about a study that looked at AI use in a business setting.

That study found that telling people to “be more productive” using AI didn’t translate into any effect. On the other hand, telling people to use AI to “eliminate the parts of your job you hate” produced great results.

The fact is, I don’t use AI for much outside of research, as a replacement for awful Google search and for sifting through fluffy, overstuffed, and often irrelevant web content (it’s saved me hundreds of hours there).

But that’s because I have managed to build up my little online business, if that’s what you can call this email newsletter, into a collection of activities I’m either okay doing, or that I even love doing (such as, for example, writing this email).

I have been able to do this because 1) I write exclusively about things that interest me personally, such as influence and psychology and 2) because I apply those ideas in my writing in a way that lights up my readers’ brains, at least some of the time, and gives them a feeling of insight, of something new learned about themselves and their place in the world.

This feeling — because insight is a feeling — makes it dramatically more likely readers to buy when I have an offer that’s right for them, and keeps them coming back to read more. And that translates into a business that’s easy and fun to run.

But back to Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery.

It sells for $297.

If one small idea inside ChatGPT Mastery saves you just one hour of hateful work a month, ChatGPT Mastery easily pays for itself in the next month or two alone. After that, it turns into an investment that keeps paying you time and freedom dividends, without you having to lift a finger.

But to make sure ChatGPT is effectively free for you on day 0, as soon as you click the “buy now” button, I will also add in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value.

It’s a training I’ve given live to a group of a few dozen marketers and copywriters, and only sold once before, for $297, the same price that Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery sells for.

This training is called Age of Insight, and it’s about the influence and psychology that go with the feeling of insight, which you can create with written words alone.

This is a topic I have been interested in for a long time. I have written about it many times in these emails. But I never pulled together everything I know, everything I saw smart marketers like Rich Schefren, and Travis Sago, and Stefan Georgi doing, into one cohesive system, until I gave the Age of Insight training.

You might wonder how Age of Insight is related to AI.

It’s not.

In fact, it’s quite opposite and possibly complementary to it. Hence the name of this little promo, the Love/Hate AI event.

I love writing about the topic of insight, and I love applying insight techniques in what I write.

Maybe you will feel the same after you go through this training.

Even if not, being able to create that feeling of insight is supremely valuable, and that’s not just me saying it (those multimillionaire marketers I listed above have all said it in one way or another.)

But enough hard selling.

If you are considering ChatGPT Mastery, to take away the parts of your job that you hate, and if you’d like my Age of Insight training as an equivalent-value free bonus, then here’s Gasper’s sales page with the full info:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

P.S. If you decide to buy via this affiliate link, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and it shall be done.

12 sticky disciples to get your message out into the world

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If I ever launch my AIDA University, a 4-year, overpriced curriculum teaching people how to persuade, the mandatory reading for the first semester will include the book Made To Stick.

In that book, authors Chip and Dan Heath tell you how to create a message that sticks.

Basically, they say that you should turn your message into a simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional story.

Which is all good and fine but— are simple, dramatic stories really the only kinds of sticky messages?

Clearly no. I imagine that, in the interest of making their own message sticky, that is, simple and concrete, the Heath brothers decided to stick to teaching just one sticky format.

But I’ve been keeping track of different kinds of sticky messages. Today, I’d like to share them with you.

If you have an idea you want to go out into the world, then here are 12 ways, 12 little disciples, that can preach your message from the housetops:

1. Story, particularly drama

Well ok, yes, this is familiar enough, and it’s what Chip and Dan Heath talk about as well. (Bear with me. I have different ones after this one.)

2. High stakes

Classic example: Stansberry’s “The End of America” video sales letter, which was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.

3. Visuals

Here’s one that made Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto stick:

Rich Schefren's Internet Manifesto | Tyrone Shum | Flickr

4. Exercises

The first thing that comes to my mind is the following old chestnut, used as a sticky message to illustrate lateral thinking or the absence of it:

Say we have a pen and a piece of paper with 9 evenly spaced dots (as shown). How do we draw 4 straight lines through the 9 dots, without ever lifting our

5. Quizzes

Is your “fat loss type” an I, G, C, or T? What’s your Myers-Briggs? Are you a Pisces or a killer whale? Take our quiz to find out what this says about you as a marketer.

6. Metonyms

A metonym, as I learned once but keep forgetting, is “a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government.”

A great pop culture example of using a metonym to get the point across and to persuade the other side comes from the movie Ford v. Ferrari.

In that movie, Matt Damon, playing car designer Carroll Shelby, is explaining to Henry Ford III why Ford’s sports driving team sucks.

Damon points to a little red folder that one of Ford’s underlings is currently thumbing through (the folder is the metonym, albeit nonverbal) and says:

“As I sat out there in your lovely waiting room, I watched that little red folder, right there, go through four pairs of hands before it got to you. Course that doesn’t include the 22 or so other Ford employees who probably poked at it before it made its way up to the 19th floor. All due respect, sir, you can’t win a race by committee.”

7. Parallel case studies

… which are a subset of dramatic stories, but which occur often enough and are successful often enough compared to regular stories, that they warrant including.

A famous example is the Wall Street Journal “Two Young Men” sales letter, though wise marketers (eg. Andre Chaperon) have been using the same format online as well.

8. Authority (scientific research)

Scientists from MIT report that this kind of message is very sticky, in fact 38% stickier than the average.

9. Demonstration

“It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries.” Good if you get to see the demonstration on TV… better yet if you see it live… best if you can actually experience it directly on yourself.

10. Outrage/saying the “wrong” thing/playing against type

This is what a huge chunk of classic direct response headline complexes are about. Think “Lies Lies Lies” by Gary Bencivenga… “What THEY Don’t Want You To Know” by Eric Betuel… or “Why Haven’t TV Owners Been Told These Facts” by Gene Schwartz.

11. Rhyme, alliteration, or co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind

This is a broad category but it all comes down to wordplay of one sort or another that our brains seem to enjoy:

– “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”

– The “Big Black Book” series of big Boardroom blockbusters

– “The Plague of the Black Debt,” which along with the End of America above, is another of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time

12. Metaphor or analogy

An analogy is like a listicle, in that it organizes under one umbrella a number of related points, some of which are strong, and others, which can be disguised and hidden among the stronger ones.

If you have other good categories of sticky messages, write in and let me know. I am putting together a new book in which this kind of stuff will feature. I will appreciate your help, and maybe what you send me will wind up in the book.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, you might enjoy my most recent book,

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

In that book, you can find lots of simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional stories.

But you can also find demonstrations (check out the very first sentence of the intro)… outrage (that’s the whole point of featuring con men and pickup artists in the title)… co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind (“10 Commandments”)… authority… quizzes… high stakes… and even visuals, at least such as can be done with words (specifically, the opening of Commandment V).

For all that, and more:
​
https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

1 week, 1 review

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One week ago, I published my new 10 Commandments book. Since then, I’ve sold around 200 copies. I’ve also gotten exactly one review, a five-star one from email copywriter Anthony La Tour.

I’m grateful to Anthony for his review. He did what he could for me.

But one review? It don’t look good to have a book with one review. What gives?

A part is that this new 10 Commandments book is longer than my previous 10 Commandments book. It’s taking people longer to read. Maybe more reviews will come when a few more people finish.

Another part is that Amazon is slow to approve and propagate reviews.

A couple people have written me that they’ve submitted reviews that Amazon has not yet published. And in the UK Amazon marketplace, two good souls, copywriter Andrew Harkin and craftsman writer James Carran, both gave me nice 5-star reviews, which are not yet shown in the US Amazon store.

And finally, still another part is that effective email marketing is to blame.

About a dozen of my readers who have audiences of their own have promoted my book to their lists, which is a kind of review that doesn’t show up on Amazon. Plus another dozen or so people have replied to my daily emails to tell me that they like, love, or adore the new book.

I’m grateful to everyone who has written me or promoted my book or reviewed it.

Now let me share with you my favorite review, which has come not from a copywriter, not a list owner, not a direct marketer, but from one of my best friends, Sam.

Sam and I have known each other for 20+ years from our time subsisting on popcorn and beer while studying computer science at the birthplace of NLP, the University of California at Santa Cruz.

During those 20+ years, Sam and I have mostly maintained a kind of dry, sarcastic, bantery interaction with each other, which tends to shy away from emotional confessions and naked sincerity. But here’s what Sam wrote me yesterday:

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I just finished your book. I love it. Yes, yes, just like your mom’s praise you think I’m saying this because you’re a good guy and a better friend but it is really fucking good. I am impressed that you finished it and impressed by how good it is. The stories are great, the pacing is great, and even people that didn’t know anything about it would find it intriguing. I’m imagining if we came across it in the UCSC library return cart or at an Airbnb we would be intrigued enough to crack it open and captivated enough to finish it. BJ all around! [“BJ” is Sam’s shorthand for “brilliant job.”]

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I’ve confessed before how to my non-entrepreneurial brain, praise from readers is more much meaningful than sales made. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it is a fact.

(I’d be much more successful if I only cared more about money, but like Rich Schefren says, you gotta put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.)

Sam’s praise was particularly meaningful. And in case you’re wondering whether this might possibly have anything to do with you, except being a shameless plug for my new book, here’s the basic idea:

Ultimately, most people care about the praise and respect of others above almost all other things. Even the people who care much more about money than I do really just care about money as a means to get that praise and respect.

Maybe this is obvious to you, or maybe it seems trivial. What might not be as obvious or trivial is how this very fundamental human need for praise and respect translates into specific episodes of influence, across various disciplines ranging from boardroom negotiation, copywriting, screenwriting, and yes, confidence games.

In case you would like to dig into this topic a little more deeply, so you can apply it to your business or everyday interactions, you can find it drilled and fracked inside Commandment I of my new book. Commandment I, because it’s that fundamental. To find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

More staff?

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This morning, I got a reply from a reader who wrote:

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Great insights, btw do you need more staff? Thanks

Have a good day!

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I guess it was a great pattern interrupt because it made me blank for a full five seconds.

“More staff? What… where… how much staff do I have now?”

In the past, I’ve hired people for one-off jobs, such as creating book covers or converting an email-based course into a website-based course.

But I’ve never had an employee and frankly I don’t ever want an employee.

In fact, at one point back in 2020, I wrote down 10 characteristics of the kind of business I would like to have. Number 2 on the list was:

“I don’t have to manage people. I can do it all myself or outsource parts of it that I don’t feel like doing.”

I’m telling you this while being fully aware it’s nothing to boast about, and is even rather stupid.

As every reasonable and successful person can tell you, hiring people takes the mushed peas off your plate, allows you to focus on the stuff you like to do and are good at, and makes you more money overall while leaving you more free time.

What’s not to like? I don’t know. I should have an employee. Maybe I should even have two.

But I don’t want one. I don’t want two or more either. And in the words of business coach Rich Schefren, in the end the only real option is to “put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.”

Rich’s point is that it takes a long long while to change the person you are — like the rest of your life, and even then, you might not be all that different than you are today.

It doesn’t make sense to wait for that.

You might as well figure out how to live your life and run your business and make money with what you got, instead of telling yourself that you should have some other stuff in your pocket, or you should be a different person in your head, and then you will be ready.

What’s made it so that I’ve been able to survive in spite of refusing to hire or manage anybody is pretty simple. It’s daily emails.

In fact, my entire business now is really built on the back of writing an email to my list every day. I started writing daily emails as a way to get better at writing copy, back when I was working with clients. Then it became about potentially attracting clients. Then, after I stopped working with clients, it became about selling products.

At every step of the way, the common thing was simply writing an email each day about something that I found interesting and valuable, and (most of the time) tacking on some kind of an offer.

Not only does it pay the bills these days but it’s transformed my life — I’ve learned a ton of stuff about what I do that I would never have learned otherwise, I’ve become a better writer and marketer, and I’ve even developed a low level of star status in a very niche industry.

I don’t think I’m particularly unique in being able to do this. The main thing is to start, and to stick with it for the long term.

I’ve created something that can help you both get started, and stick with it, if that’s what you’d like to do. To find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

What now?

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Back when I used to watch TED talks — what happened to them? — I saw one by Elizabeth Gilbert, the Eat Pray Love woman.

Gilbert’s talk came soon after she had published the book, which immediately went on to became a raging, runaway, international bestseller-to-be-made-into-a-movie-starring-Julia-Roberts.

Gilbert’s TED talk was about what now. What does she do now that she’s gotten everything she ever worked for? She seemed nervous, and she admitted to being afraid.

Weird, right?

Gilbert was probably set with money for the rest of her life. She had achieved more than 99.9% of people who ever dream of being a writer will ever achieve. She had endless amounts of praise and recognition.

And yet, what now?

This is a common thing. It happens whatever you’re after, not just with writing but whatever achievements you’re working towards, even with small goals.

Trivial though it sounds, it happens to me whenever I end up concluding a launch.

What now?

Usually I’ve been working on this thing for a while, building the actual product, preselling it, then there’s the climax of the launch promo. If it all goes well, I feel elated. For a bit. And then, what now?

I’ll tell ya.

I learned a long time ago that the answer is, now you get to work on the next thing, which is really where the satisfaction lies. As business coach Rich Schefren says, goals are there to get you excited to take action. That’s really their only purpose.

So this email is for you if you have recently completed a project or achieved a goal, and you’re wondering, “What now?”

Since I help getting people started with writing a daily email, maybe your next project could be writing, building a personal brand, or simply seeing what happens if you consistently send an email out each day into the world.

Because in my experience, the process of writing and publishing something every day is a micro-goal in itself.

It takes some work to do it. It’s satisfying to have done it. And then it starts all over again tomorrow. But again, that’s really where the satisfaction lies.

In any case, if you’d like my help with daily emailing as your new project:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

I tried to cover up my failures, but a loyal reader caught me

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In reply to my January 1st email, which had little to say about New Year’s resolutions, goals, or themes, I got a reply from long-time reader, occasional co-hostess of my live trainings, and infamous Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann. Liza wrote:

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What happened to your annual New Year’s email where you look back at the old year and set goals for the new one? I always look forward to reading it, especially this year.

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As Liza says, the past four years, on January 1, I always sent some kind of email about how my past year has been, what I managed to accomplish, what I am planning for the next year — all fit inside the latest personal development hack I’d fallen in love with.

But this year, I quietly decided to skip it.

The fact is, I had three themes for the past year.

A theme is like a vague and fuzzy goal, a general direction to move in rather than a destination to arrive to and a time to arrive there by.

Themes worked well for me in years past.

​​But in 2023, even with fuzzy themes in place of hard goals, I found that I had only made any meaningful progress in one half of one of my three themes. And that’s in spite of regularly revisiting those themes, and putting in thought and work into pushing each of them forward.

One half of one out of three is not something I particularly wanted to crow about. And I was sure nobody would notice, until Liza called me out on it.

Now, here’s a bunch of personal stuff that you may or may not want to read. It explains how I got to where I am, and what I’m thinking for the future.

I started as a freelance copywriter in 2015.

I worked for years with the aim of building up my skills, creating a name for myself in the industry, and making the kind of money that AWAI sales letters promise you.

And the crazy thing is, I got there. It took me about five years.

Then I decided that really, I don’t like to work with copywriting clients. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just do something on my own like create courses or do coaching and consulting?

And I managed to do that as well. It took me about two years.

Last year, back in March 2023, I had my best-ever month in terms of income.

Over the course of the entire calendar year of 2023, I also had my second-best-ever year in terms of income, only following 2020, when I was neck-deep in client work, and when obscene amounts of money were flowing in to me via commissions and royalties.

But last year, I had practically no client work. I was free to do what I want, when I want, with who I want, and I still made good money.

And yet, in spite of my apparent success in reaching my goal of independence…

… a few months ago, around September or so, I found myself working for much of the day, every day, and not getting a lot of work done.

It wasn’t because I was overwhelmed with the heavy burdens of the online solopreneur.

All I really had to do was to write a daily email, do a bit of research and work for my health newsletter, and do something to actually make money — put together some sort of new training, or course, or promotion.

And yet, the work stretched from morning to night, and projects barely inched forward.

To make it worse, it felt like things had been that way forever, and would go on forever.

I believe the technical term for this condition is boredom, or maybe aimlessness, or sloth.

Perhaps it was initiated by my actually achieving what I was working towards for so long.

I tried to fight it via willpower, and that’s how I ended up working pretty much the whole day, without getting much done.

And then, some time in late November, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, where Dan talks about the hidden psychology of the people he sells to. Says Dan:

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Most small business owners are doing enough not to go out of business. That’s where their level of ambition has settled.

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I realized that’s exactly where I am. I also realized that it was the cause of my feeling of malaise, my struggle to move things forward in spite of working.

And I realized the fix for it, which is simply — ambition.

Because it’s more fun and enjoyable to have ambition, rather than to do just enough to not go out of business.

So in case you’re curious, that’s my theme for 2024. Ambition.

I invite you to keep reading my future emails to see how exactly this will play out over 2024, and then in a year’s time I can have another recap.

For now, I can tell you that things have already started moving. New offers, new partnerships, new sources of income — and most importantly, a new feeling of being motivated and optimistic.

This email is getting overly long. The only reason I allowed myself to write this much and this intimate is because 1) it helps me sort out my thoughts and 2) as business coach Rich Schefren likes to say, what’s most personal is most general. ​​So maybe you’ve found some worthwhile ideas in what I just wrote.

A few weeks ago, I said I would create a page on my site where I collect all my current offers for sale. I’ve done that.

In the future, I might even create a Dean Jackson-style “super signature” where I link to this in every email.

But for now, if you’re wondering what I have for sale, and why you might want it, and how it can help you in 2024, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/showroom/

The psychology of misdirection

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Today I meant to write an elaborate email about the sales page for my Simple Money Emails course.

But against my better judgment, I got roped into chauffeuring a friend of my father through stop-and-go traffic in the middle of the city.

While my blood pressure has largely returned to normal, the 45 minutes that that unnecessary drive ate up cannot be replaced. So the SME email will have to wait until tomorrow.

As for today, let me tell you something acute that one of my readers wrote in with a few days ago, after I wrote about my 10 jaw-dropping email deliverability tips. My reader wrote:

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#5 – Links at the end of almost every email
I noticed that most of the time it is either an offer or an affiliate offer. Very rarely do you link elsewhere, unless you invite engagement like right now.

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That’s very true. I almost always link to something I am selling at the end of my email. I never link to, say, the Red Cross website or to a cute ferret video.

On the one hand you might say that’s only natural — it’s what most daily sales emails look like, because their goal is to make sales.

But at the same time, I don’t have a huge list, and I don’t have surprising new offers every day. In other words, I am not necessarily sacrificing sales by not plugging the same well-trodden offer in each of my emails, day after day after day.

Plus, I remember a time when I first got onto Ben Settle’s list, circa 2012.

After a few weeks, I dismissed Ben because each of his emails at the time followed the same format: promise + tease + CTA to sign up to his print newsletter. I gradually got bored and I unsubscribed.

It took a conscious effort a few years later to get back on Ben’s list and start listening to him again, and I only did that because there still wasn’t anybody else talking about email regularly.

So when you put those two things together, you get the following heretical conclusion, heretical at least in the direct marketing world:

I can see good business sense in occasionally linking to stuff that won’t make you any money, but that can benefit, surprise, or delight your audience.

As Rich Schefren said once about the length of his own emails, you want to keep people guessing. You don’t ever want to give them a reason to dismiss you out of hand, before they’ve even had a chance to see your message.

I figure there must be some optimal rate of “public service emails” that keeps the interest of a large number of readers, while still allowing sales emails to predominate, and while maintaining or even increasing total sales. I don’t know what that rate might be, but I’m guessing somewhere around 10%-15%.

All that is really a long open to the following close:

When I decided to write this email today, I asked myself what was the most valuable resource that I don’t sell, but that I could share with readers on my list.

One thing popped up in my mind immediately.

It’s a book. I discovered it a few weeks ago. It talks about the psychology and neurology of misdirection.

Misdirection isn’t a great term, by the way — because what it really is is the control and focus of attention, along channels that serve the purpose of, say, a magician… or, say, a marketer or copywriter.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been devouring this book and taking pages of notes on it.

I was planning on hoarding all this knowledge for myself, and profiting from it all by myself.

But you gotta keep people guessing.

At the same time, to make myself feel better, I tell myself not one person in a hundred on my list will actually get this book, and even fewer will actually read it and apply it. But in case you’re curious, here’s the naked, non-affiliate link of a valuable resources that I do not sell:

https://bejakovic.com/misdirection