Rich Schefren Archives - Page 4 of 6

Why I unthinkingly watched a 2-hour documentary, and how you can use this to sell more without selling

May 31, 2021 by John Bejakovic

“‘Violets always mean man,’ said one girl to another in a Broadway florist’s recently. ‘If a girl wears violets once, it may be accident; twice coincidence; after that it means a man.'”
— New York Sun, May 7, 1905

It might mean “man” even at just two violets. For example:

Last night, I went on YouTube. On the front page, I saw a thumbnail for a 2-hour-long documentary about Gordon Ramsay. I clicked to watch it immediately.

Trust me, there’s a reason why you might care about this. And it’s because of the big question:

Why?

After all, I’ve never seen Gordon Ramsay’s TV show. I have no emotional attachment to the man or his public persona. And I don’t care about celebrity chefs or celebrity cooking.

So why did I unthinkingly click and watch this 2-hour documentary?

The reason is a podcast I’d listened to the day earlier. It was all about how Gordon Ramsay’s TV show is a great illustration of control techniques.

If you’re curious about those control techniques, I will tell you my big takeaway about them tomorrow.

My point for today is simply this:

Two seemingly independent sources can often get compliance where one source can’t, regardless of the amount of persuasive arguments.

I bet that last sentence is as clear as a marble wall. So let me give you an illustration of what I’m trying to say:

A couple of years ago, I found out about a new email newsletter. It was called Daily Insider Secrets, and it was about Internet marketing.

I signed up. And that’s how I first heard the name Rich Schefren. Rich was one of the guys behind the newsletter.

I kept reading the emails. I found them interesting. And then came the pitch:

A big campaign, trying to sell me something, using a multi-day launch, hours of video, thousands of words of copy. Many, many persuasive arguments, which I didn’t even look at. (Silly me right? It’s kind of my job. But I’m slow to learn.)

Anyways, here’s the climax:

A few months later, a copywriter whose emails I read did an interview with Rich Schefren. And I decided to watch the interview, because I already knew Rich’s name from the Daily Insider Secrets emails, which I found interesting.

Forty minutes later, after I finished watching the interview, I was pulling out my credit card to buy Rich’s offer. The same one I had completely ignored earlier. Even though Rich only mentioned it in passing during the interview.

Coincidence? I’d say “man”.

Because Rich doesn’t just do these interviews for kicks or as a way to kill time. He does them to get his name out there, in multiple formats and multiple channels. And that’s my point for you today:

If you’re trying to sell something, get your name out there, in two channels, or three, or more.

You will reach more prospects, sure. But you will also convert prospects you’ve already reached, but who wouldn’t buy from you otherwise. And you won’t even have to sell hard to do it.

Because your prospects will just think it was all just a happy coincidence. You and I will know the truth, though. We will know it was man.

Now here’s something that’s probably not going to work:

I have an email newsletter. You can sign up for it by clicking here. I don’t expect you to do it, because odds are, this is the first and only channel you’ve seen my name so far. But maybe I will get you later, in some other format.

My shame-filled run at becoming a U.S. Park Ranger

May 27, 2021May 26, 2021 by John Bejakovic

I used to be a real sucker for direct response offers. For example…

One day in high school, I was leafing through the classifieds in the local paper. And one ad made my eyes pop out:

“Get a job as a U.S. Park Ranger. Beautiful work, solid pay. Results guaranteed or your money back.”

For context: I hated high school. I had no ambition of going to college. And I didn’t like people.

“So you’re telling me I can get paid to commune with bears among the hush of the redwoods?” I squinted at the ad. “Hell yes!”

If I remember right, the cost to become a U.S. Park Ranger (as per the classified) was something like $60. That was money I didn’t have… but I begged, borrowed, and stole enough to get it. What did it matter? I could pay it all back with my first U.S. Park Ranger salary. It was guaranteed.

A few weeks later, my “Become a Park Ranger” kit arrived in the mail.

It consisted of a thick binder with study materials and instructions on how to apply for the 3x/year government test procedure that was the first step to becoming a park ranger.

Huh?

A thick binder? Studying for a test? On the off chance that maybe in a year, I could get paid to walk around Yosemite, away from the horrors of high school?

My heart sank. This is not what I had signed up for. And my beautiful $60… where did it go? I called up the company, and with a trembling voice, I asked if I could get a refund.

“Did you take the Park Ranger test already?” the other end asked.

“Uhh… no?”

“Well, that’s the condition for our refund guarantee. Take the test, and if you don’t pass, we will give you your money back.”

I think I buried my “Become a Park Ranger” kit in the back yard that night, so it didn’t remind me of my shame, failure, and lost money.

But who knows. Maybe I will still get $60 worth of story out of it. Because it’s a good illustration of an idea I recently got from marketer Rich Schefren:

“Your offer is not only ‘You pay me x and you get y.’ It’s also what your customer has to do with y to get the outcome.”

Maybe that sounds trivial. After all, the first thing you’re taught in copywriting school is that people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole in the head. And nobody wakes up at 3am, sweating because they don’t have enough newsletter subscriptions, right?

Well, it might be basic. But how many of us actually abide by these rules when we create offers?

Of course, one way to use this is simply to promise the redwoods and the bears, and to make no mention of thick binders and exam procedures.

Trouble is, you need a real sucker to fall for that. And even then, it’s hard to build a repeat business.

So that leaves you with the other option. Which is to actually reduce as much as possible the time and effort that your customer has to invest, post-purchase, to actually get the result he is after.

Not only will this make for an easier sell… not only will it produce satisfied customers who come back for more, over and over… but it also means folks will pay much more, right up front. Even if they have to beg, borrow, and steal to do it.

Anyways, here’s my offer to you:

Do you want to become a better marketer or copywriter? Tough, isn’t it?

Well, if you sign up to get my email newsletter, I take all the weight off your shoulders. I do the research about the best ideas… I find the entertaining and appealing stories that make these ideas slip easily into your brain… and I package it all up and send it to you every day.

Best part?

You don’t even have to read anything! Just open up my emails when they arrive and stare at your screen for a few seconds. Your marketing and copywriting IQ will increase automatically. Results are guaranteed. To sign up, please send me $60 in cash and then follow the instructions given here.

Beware “spiritual” and “heart-centered” customers

June 6, 2021May 19, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Time for a personal revelation:

I went to college in Santa Cruz, California, a place filled with weed-smoking, patchouli-burning, beatific-smiling hippies. And I remember talking to my roommate at the time about the following paradox.

As a group, hippies claim to be all about peace, love, and understanding. But at an individual level, they tend to be some judgmental, closed-minded, and often nasty people.

Bah. Who knows. Maybe I was just projecting.

Anyways, I remembered this today because of something I heard Todd Herman say.

I’d never heard of Herman until today. Apparently he’s a big deal. He works with Olympic athletes and became a success in spite of his dyslexia. And now he runs successful online programs teaching you how to peakify your performance.

These are quality programs, says Herman, with low refund rates. But some people do refund, and Herman wanted to see if there are any patterns here.

So Herman tracked down the social profiles of the refunders. He wanted their Twitter and Facebook self-descriptions. He took these and dumped them all into a big file, and then put this into some software for creating a tag cloud.

And what came out? Who were the people who were buying and then returning these programs, which Herman says most everyone else is thrilled with?

Well, draw your own conclusions. But according to Todd Herman, two phrases kept cropping up in these social profile bios:

1. “Heart-centered”

and

2. “Spiritual”

This personally confirms my previous biases… but even so. If you sell anything online, it might be good for you to know, and might save you some frustration.

And now, here’s my (qualified) pitch to you:

I heard Todd Herman talk about this during his Steal Our Winners segment.

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that once a month, I plug Steal Our Winners. That’s because each month, Rich Schefren manages to get six or seven top-level marketers to share a tip or trick or even strategy that’s working really well for ’em right now.

In a normal month, I find at least three or four segments to be really interesting.

But not so this month. This month, I only found Todd Herman’s part interesting. Herman talked about a clever system he has for getting his customers to reveal their deep seated motivations, in their own words.

It might not sound like breakthrough stuff… but if you do do it, it will make your audience say, “Wow… it’s like you’re reading my mind. How did you do that?” And that’s good for sales… as well as your relationship with your audience.

So that’s my qualified pitch for Steal Our Winners. Most months, you get at least 3 or 4 good and genuinely new ideas. Some months though, you might only get one.

But however many good ideas you get, they won’t be worth anything unless you implement them. On the other hand, if you implement even one, it will certainly be worth much more than the low, low price of a Steal Our Winners subscription.

How low are we talking about? Actually, I don’t know. I signed up for a lifetime subscription a while ago, and the price may have gone up since.

But I do know you can try out Steal Our Winners for one month, and listen to Todd Herman’s interview if you like, for an unthinkable fee of $1 (yes, one dollar). In case you’re interested, here’s where to go:

https://www.bejakovic.com/sow

“Worse is better” marketing

May 10, 2021May 8, 2021 by John Bejakovic

A-list copywriter Carline Anglade Cole doesn’t put a lot of effort into many of her email subject lines. On Thursdays, she sends out an email with the subject line “Carline’s Copy Thought.” Tuesdays are “Trade $ecret$ Tuesdays,” and Fridays are “Flashback Fridays.” And the next week, it all repeats.

Mark Ford, the multimillionaire copywriter and marketer who helped make Agora a billion-dollar company, went through a period where each email he sent out had the same one-word subject line. “Today.” That was it. Over and over.

Is this just a shocking example of laziness that top marketers practice when promoting their own stuff?

Or…

Could it be a case of “worse is better”? Where doing less gets you better results than doing more?

Well consider this. I always open Mark Ford’s emails, even if they say “Today” for the 10th day in a row.

On the other hand…

Today I got an email from an A-list copywriter. I won’t name him, but I’ll tell you I often open his emails. But I didn’t open his email today. I read the subject line and I said, “Oh, I know where this is going. I don’t need to read it.”

The fact is this:

Even people who are perfect prospects for what you’re selling will often dismiss your message instantly. They will use any little excuse to say, “No no, this is not for me, not now.” Even if your offer could hugely benefit them. Even if it’s exactly what they need.

Why are people like this? I don’t know. My guess is it has something to do with why taking out the trash is so hard.

Of course, one way to deal with this is the usual direct response light show, with flashing neon promises and blaring warning sirens.

But if you’ve got enough credibility with your audience, then you can do what Carline and Mark do. And you might actually get better results. And if you’re not convinced yet that “worse is better” can get you better results, let me give you an example with some hard numbers:

Marketer Rich Schefren once offered an upsell he called “Mystery Box.” Once you bought Rich’s front-end product, a video popped up with Rich holding this box and saying something like,

“Do you trust me? I promise you that what’s inside this box is worth 100x the $49 price I’m asking for it. Get it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree with me, you can always get your money back.”

Rich says his typical upsell converts at around 30%-40%. The mystery box? No excuses to say no? That converted at 75%.

Twice the sales. For less effort. Might be worth a try in your business as well.

And since you’ve read this far, let me ask you a question:

Do you trust me? I promise you that the free offer that’s waiting at this link is worth 100x the price I’m asking for it. Try it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree, you can always get your entire investment back.

A transparent but effective marketing ploy (thanks, Jay Abraham)

April 28, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday I heard marketing coach Rich Schefren tell a “How did he get away with that?” story about the first time he bought a Jay Abraham product:

The product was supposed to arrive in a month.

But it didn’t arrive in a month. Or in two months. Or three.

When it eventually did arrive, some six months later, it came with a letter written by Jay. The letter said something like:

“Here is the product that you ordered from me and boy, are you lucky I decided to hold off on releasing it! This extra time allowed me to add in all these extra case studies and valuable modules and colored streamers that will do x, y, and z for you!”

And for the record, today, many years after this first experience, Rich counts Jay as one of his two biggest mentors.

My point being:

Jay’s ploy may have been transparent. And yet, just like canned laughter on a TV sitcom, it still served its purpose.

In fact, what Jay did illustrates one of the essential functions of marketing. So let’s see if I can do it:

You’ve probably heard me mention my book 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. This book is short, only 40 pages. And if I could have, I would have made it even shorter and even easier to read.

But I needed at least this many pages to cover all 10 of these commandments, the best you-won’t-find-em-on-Facebook copywriting strategies I’ve come across so far.

And since I wanted to make each of the commandments crystal clear, I also included 3 supporting real-world examples to make each comandment stick in your mind. So 40 pages really was the minimum to do all that.

Anyways, if you haven’t yet seen this book, you might find it both valuable and a quick and easy read. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The most “dangerous” idea in America?

April 17, 2021 by John Bejakovic

“I worry that I should be doing something bigger with my life.”

I have this friend. Many years ago, he came to America on a work-and-travel visa. He stayed and he built a little business. Through this little business, he made the 4-hour-workweek a reality in his life.

Ever since, he’s been making good money each month by sending a few emails and making a few phone calls. The rest of the time, he travels the world, has fun, and chases women.

“But I worry I might be wasting my time,” he told me when we spoke. “Maybe I should be working to save the children or make the world a better place.”

My answer to him was that there’s value in thinking small, and that leading a life of modest impact is a virtue. And vice versa. I believe that thinking big is flat-out dangerous.

Maybe you find that thinking perverse or even repugnant. So let me give you a few examples to back up my case:

1. The Soviet Union. From everything I’ve read, the people who laid the groundwork for Bolshevism were the best and brightest and most humane of their generation. They thought they were building a better world. And yet the result was a monstrous machine that took decades to dismantle.

2. Google. Just today I read how the Federal Court in Australia ruled that Google has been willingly misleading consumers. Google continued to track consumers’ locations, even after they had turned location tracking off.

Of course, Google didn’t start out being a power-hungry, inhuman monolith. Not long ago, it was just two PhD students, whose motto was “Do no evil.” They were looking to improve access to information, and make the world a better place — on a big scale.

But maybe you don’t care anything about Bolsheviks or Google’s surveillance. Maybe you just want your own big business that makes big money. So let me tell you why smaller might still be a safer bet.

It’s something I heard Pete Coyne say a few weeks ago.

As you might know, Pete started out as copywriter at Agora. He then became a publisher there, which means he ran an entire division. He built up this division from scratch to over $100m.

In short, Pete is a smart guy, and somebody who knows more about building big businesses than most of us ever will.

And yet Pete said the following:

“A lot of people chase scale. They want to scale their business. And I feel there’s a lot of gross number porn out there. 7 figures… 100 million… 500 million. That’s not really a great thing a lot of times. Usually, your headaches explode with your revenue… your exposure to lawsuits and regulations goes up.”

Instead, Pete said there is a magic number for yearly revenue. Once you get to it, you’re better off spinning up a new business than trying to grow what you’ve got.

Not only will this save you headaches and lawsuits, says Pete, but you might actually net more money in the end.

And this is not only thing I heard Pete share.

He also talked about three “monetization events.” He calls these “gray labeling,” “demographic jumping,” and “USP flipping.”

Each of them is a quick, low-risk way to create revenue bumps in your business. And none of them requires doing anything very different from what you’re already doing. Just make sure you don’t shoot past the magic number.

Maybe you’re getting tired of the teasing. So let me get to the point:

I heard Pete say all these things in this month’s Steal Our Winners.

Once each month, I push you to check out Steal Our Winners. Because in my opinion, it’s the best value out there if you are interested in direct marketing or have a business that uses direct marketing.

In a nutshell:

Each month, Rich Schefren interviews a bunch of high-profile marketers like Pete Coyne. Rich gets these marketers to spill valuable ideas and information. There’s no fluff or self-promotion. Just valuable ideas, most of which you can apply immediately.

And it’s all available for an unthinkable monthly price. Plus you can even get a low-risk trial month, for a $1 entry fee.

So in case you’re curious, you can find the $1 Steal Our Winners offer at the link below. And if you act fast, you can probably still get the Pete Coyne segment. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow

The trick behind the magic in Gary Halbert’s unbeatable copy?

June 6, 2021March 25, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Do you believe in magic? Maybe you will after the following story:

After Gary Halbert died, a former client of his approached Dan Kennedy. The client wanted Dan to try beating a control that Halbert had written.

To Kennedy’s eagle eyes, Halbert’s control certainly looked beatable. There were obvious things that Kennedy could see to attack. Besides, the control was written years or decades earlier, and was starting to fatigue.

So Dan Kennedy, expert copywriter that he is, tried to beat Halbert’s control — and he failed.

Looking back on it, Kennedy said there was some magic in Halbert’s copy. You couldn’t see it… but it was there, and customers responded.

Do you believe that? The magic part? In case you do, let me tell you a second Halbert story, which might shoo the magic away:

Back in the 2000s, Halbert got into daytrading. He was making money daytrading online. And being a direct marketer, he naturally started selling his expertise to people who wanted to learn daytrading also.

And get this:

Halbert went to daytrading school. Even though he already knew what they would teach him. In other words, he paid some guy a lot of money and went day after day… month after month… to hear stuff he already knew and was already doing.

Why would he possibly do something so silly and wasteful?

According to Caleb O’Dowd, who apprenticed as a teenager under Halbert, it was an act of undercover copy detective work. Halbert went to daytrading school so he could hang out with all the other would-be daytraders, and talk to them, and hear their stories and fears and motivations. Day after day after day.

Maybe that’s how the magic got into his copy.

Caleb said this is the kind of thing very few marketers are willing to engage in. But those who do inevitably wind up at the top of their market. They don’t just succeed, they have breakthroughs, and they make millions.

Anyways, this was one little snippet I heard during Caleb’s segment in this month’s issue of Steal Our Winners. Caleb’s segment was about how he goes into markets where he has no business being, and how he quickly rises to the top in spite of established, bloodthirsty competition.

If you want to know how he does it, I’ll tell you:

Caleb comes up with offers that overcome his lack of credibility, and which can compensate even for poor advertising.

If you want to know the full details of the offers Caleb makes, I suggest you check out his Steal Our Winners segment. From what I understand, the issue is still available, for a grand investment of exactly one (1) of your dollars.

You can find out more at the link below. But first, a warning:

The link below is an affiliate link. That’s because last month, I wrote an email promoting Steal Our Winners with no affiliate link, since I think what they’re doing is so great.

And then Rich Schefren and the good people at Agora got in touch with me and offered to give me a cut of your $1, should you choose to wager it.

Perhaps take that into consideration when deciding whether you truly want this information. In any case, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow

An inspiring case study plus Dan Kennedy’s best stuff for cheap

March 22, 2021 by John Bejakovic

Today I want to share an inspiring business case study with you, plus how you can get Dan Kennedy’s best teachings for cheap.

First the case study:

I’ve followed the writing of a guy named Glenn Allsop for years. Glenn writes about SEO and business opportunities. He’s very smart and very dedicated and very willing to share just about everything on his blog.

And Glenn just came out with a big new post titled, Generating Six-Figure Profits from $40 SEO Audits.

It’s just what the title says — amazing when you consider that an SEO audit is something most people can’t give away, much less make a business out of.

There’s a ton of valuable ideas in Glenn’s post, and if you’re offering any kind of service (copywriting, design, video…) it’s worth reading in full. But today, I want to share just one thing that I found most striking out of the whole case study.

Because really, why would a highly successful guy like Glenn waste his time doing tiny $40 jobs, even if it did result in decent profits? He has other business ventures that could earn him much more.

But here, from Glenn’s article, are a few things that came out of all this $40 work:

I’ve advised CMOs at billion dollar brands. Audited the official site of a major European football league (one of the big five). Directly connected with the owners of multi-million dollar per month affiliate sites, and spoken with the founders of dozens of TechCrunch-featured companies.

A $40 audit started our interaction, but then so many more things came as a result of these. Especially when people see how I look at their websites and point out things they just hadn’t thought of.

This brought to mind something I heard Rich Schefren say he heard Dan Kennedy say:

“Put your best stuff in your lowest-priced stuff.”

Glenn took this to an extreme, by actually doing per-hour, custom work for people. You may or may not want to do that. If you don’t, you can still create some kind of low-priced offer — a book, a course, a 10-minute sample of what you do — and make it absolutely amazing.

You never know who will take you up on your bargain-basement offer… or how much money they will be willing to spend with you after. That’s how Dan Kennedy got a lot of his clients, according to a recording I heard of him recently. And that’s why, if you want the best stuff that Dan has to offer… you will find much of it available for a few bucks a piece, right on Amazon.

Perhaps that’s not what you were hoping to hear. In that case, I can tell you you won’t like my email newsletter, because it’s filled with obvious value, rather than “secrets” or urgent opportunities.

However, if you are a reader, and you’re patient, then my email newsletter might suit you better. If you’d like to give it a try, here’s where to join.

How to get free consulting from high-paid experts

March 1, 2021February 13, 2021 by John Bejakovic

I was just listening to January’s issue of Steal Our Winners, where Rich Schefren somehow gets top marketers to share what’s working for them right now.

So today I listened to a guy named Seth Greene, who is new to me but apparently has deep roots in the Internet marketing community.

Seth made a throwaway comment that I thought was very valuable. And since it was a throwaway comment, and not the main topic of the presentation Seth was making, I think it’s ok to share here.

In a nutshell, Seth revealed how he gets free consulting from high-paid experts.

High-paid? Like who?

Like Russell Brunson, the face and CEO of ClickFunnels. Russell charges $10,000 for lunch (“to pick his brain,” according to his site) and $1M if you’d like him to get up out of his La-Z-Boy and build a funnel for you.

Those rates might sound outrageous, but they make sense. Because Russell’s ClickFunnels did $100M+ in 2020, and is valued at over $1B. In other words, this guy’s time and expertise is valuable.

And yet, Seth got two separate consulting sessions with Russell for free. Seth got to ask all sorts of questions that were relevant to his own success… and had Russell thinking hard to come up with the best and most valuable answers.

And maybe I didn’t mention this enough, but this consulting was all free. So how did Seth do it?

Easy. He invited Russell onto his podcast.

This is a new spin on the value of a podcast I had never thought about. Maybe it’s new to you too, and maybe it’s something you can use starting today.

“Yeah right,” you might say. “Even if I had a podcast, which I don’t because who would listen to me, how would I possibly get Russell Brunson on my show?”

Well, that’s a part (just one part) of what Seth shared in his Steal Our Winners segment, which is titled, “How To Recruit A Cult Of 50 Evangelists To Promote Your Brand For Free.”

Make no mistake. Seth’s system will take work. And it will take time. But it’s doable for anybody, even if you don’t have authority, charisma, or a deep budget.

And I think that if you head over to Steal Our Winners now and sign up, you can still get the January issue, and Seth’s presentation inside it. In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow