Rob Marsh

Live, rushed, potentially typo-riddled, but fresh email from London

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Last day of The Copywriter Club live event in London.

This morning, I decided to skip the 7am writing of this email. Instead, I walked the streets and parks of London till it was time for the event to start.

Then a full day of presentations, workshops, lunch, and a live podcast episode followed.

Event concluded, everyone still standing joined for a farewell Hop On Hop Off bus tour of the Westminster City and the City of London.

The bus came to Trafalgar Square and it was time for a group photo.

Linda Perry, TCC’s mindset coach, turned around in her seat towards me. “Were you even in the picture?” she asked. “Are you hiding back here?”

Rob Marsh, co-founder of TCC, also turned around. “John’s taking notes,” he said. “This will probably be in an email next week.”

Which brings me to a reply I got from a long-time reader in response to my rushed email yesterday:

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Great points as always John.

I’m curious if you ever write your emails in advance? I find it’s much easier to batch content. That way I can get into a creative zone and work faster, and also not have to think about making more content for a while.

Seems like it could make your life much easier during big events like The Copywriter Club? What am I missing?

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I think it’s smart to write a bunch of emails instead of one — if you’re a copywriter working for a client.

But I don’t do it for my own emails for two reasons.

First, I like the tiny bit of excitement and danger involved in finding the time to write an email each day and a fresh, current occasion or idea to write it around.

(I’m writing this at the London Bridge train station, waiting for the train to take me to Gatwick airport, which will hopefully result in me getting back to my own bed in Barcelona later tonight.)

The second reason I don’t write my emails ahead of time is more practical, and certainly more relevant to you, at least if you are interested in having your own email newsletter:

One big reason people read email newsletters is for that feeling of freshness, immediacy, novelty.

I know I quickly lose interests whenever I realize I’m reading an autoresponder email, however clever and useful it might be (I’d rather just read a book).

My prediction:

The value of rushed, typo-riddled, and yet fresh emails will only increase in a world where you no longer need to batch or schedule your emails ahead of time, or even put then into an autoresponder, because an email or 20 can be generated on the spot by glossy, generic Claude or ChatGPT.

The fact is, much of the value I provide with this newsletter is that I’m here every day, and that I happen to be human.

Just something to consider:

There are certainly days when you might not be able to write a new email. There might also be days when even if you do write a new email, it’s not obvious to your readers that it’s really new.

But if you:

​​1) make an ongoing effort to do write a new email every day and

​​2) make an effort let your audience know it’s new… then this will give people a strong added reason to read your new email tomorrow as well, beyond any fun stories or insightful takeaways you might share.

Time for me to travel. So one final point.

Whether you decide to write a fresh email each day, or you prefer to batch a bunch of ’em in one go and then take a long break, consider my Simple Money Emails course.

The core promise of it is a simple method to write an email that makes sales today, and that keeps your readers reading tomorrow.

​​If that’s something you’d like to do:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

People lie, so what good is a survey?

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A couple days ago, I sent an email surveying my readers whether they would be interested in a paid mastermind all about publishing, growing, and monetizing a newsletter.

I got a few dozen responses saying, yeah… why not… sure… maybe… can’t wait… keep me in the loop… it depends… absolutely!

Now what?

What do I do with this feedback?

The classic direct response argument is that only sales count and that talk is cheap, because people lie, both to themselves and to others.

No doubt there’s some of that always going on. I know it from living in my own skin.

Lots of times I have good intentions that never turn into anything… I feel enthusiasm that peters out… I provisionally agree to stuff, only because I know I will never be called upon to deliver it.

So again, what does that mean for my proposed newsletter mastermind?

Well, I’ll tell you a secret:

That survey from a few days ago was not really the first bit of data I collected on this mastermind idea.

First off, there’s my own interest in the topic of publishing, growing, and monetizing a newsletter, which is high, and which I use as barometer of what others might be thinking, since I’m not all that unique.

Second, I’ve seen hundreds of other people starting newsletters over the past year or two. New services, websites, and quite a bit of money are flowing into the space.

Third, I see interest whenever I do write an email about my health newsletter, about growth strategies, about monetization plans I have.

Fourth and finally, there’s an anecdote involving Kira Hug and Rob Marsh of The Copywriter Club.

As I wrote yesterday, I agreed with them a couple of weeks ago to do a presentation at their live event, happening in London next week.

I came up with a few different proposed ideas for that presentation.

One was “Building a newsletter brand in your spare time,” all about my experiences building my health newsletter this year.

Kira voted for that one — because, as she said, it’s a personal interest. She would like to create a newsletter brand herself.

My ears perked up at that. I filed it away as another bit of data supporting the fact that newsletters continue to be a hot opportunity.

In spite of Kira’s personal interest, the newsletter presentation idea didn’t win out, because another topic — writing for insight — seemed to be more in line with what Kira and Rob’s event is about.

So insight is what I will be presenting about in London next week.

But if you are there, I’m happy to talk off-stage about anything — insight, that time I tried to kiss George Soros, or newsletters, if that’s your particular obsession. It certainly is mine, and so I will be creating that newsletter mastermind, most likely starting in January 2024.

But more about that soon.

For now, The Copywriter Club London event happens next Wednesday.

​​I realize that’s a tight deadline and not much warning.

But in case you can make and want to make it, here’s how to get yer ticket so you can join me there:

https://bejakovic.com/tcclondon

I’ll be in London next week, maybe you’d like to join me

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I’ll tell you about London in just a sec, but first, here’s an important question:

What’s your mental image of how the year looks like?

Is it a line, a calendar, a circle?

And if it’s a circle (the way it is for me), then where do the months go? Is summer on top or winter? Do the months flow clockwise or counterclockwise?

Two weeks ago I did a podcast episode with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug of The Copywriter Club.

Podcast episode over, Kira said as a throwaway, “I know it’s a long shot, but since you’re in Barcelona, we have an event in London at the end of this month. And in case you’d like to present something…”

I got excited and immediately said yes.

I gave them a couple of possible presentation ideas, and we agreed my presentation would be on the topic of insight, specifically about one repeatable, powerful way to create feeling of insight in readers.

I thought about that yesterday because I came across an article titled, “This is what the year really looks like.” It reported on a survey that basically asked the questions I asked you up top.

Some 75k people participated in the survey voluntarily… hundreds of thousands read and shared the resulting article online… and the article keeps going viral, on its own, every few years, even though it was originally published in 2018.

Why? How?

My claim is that it’s because the questions and the article manages to stir up the feeling of insight. So that’s what I will be talking about in London next week.

Now a disclaimer:

I am a terrible self-promoter, and am at best a very shoddy businessman, at least as far as this newsletter is concerned.

I did that podcast episode. I agreed with Rob and Kira to go to their event in London and present. But I didn’t ask to promote the event to my list — because… who knows why.

And then, only two days ago, Rob wrote me to say they have a few seats left over, and I could promote it to my list if I like.

The fact is, I do NOT like the idea of promoting this London event to my list. Because it’s now too close to the date, and that exposes me as being a bit incompetent.

But that’s not really a great reason to keep you out of this event in case you would like to attend, and are actually close enough geographically to be able to get to London by next Wednesday.

In case you’re interested, you can find the full details below, including the dates, times, prices, and my handsome mugshot photo:

https://bejakovic.com/tcclondon

Maybe I can help you publish a book fast

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Yesterday, I got on a call with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug of The Copywriter Club to record a new episode for their podcast.

To kick off the interview, I repeated my Peter Parker origin story, of getting bitten by a radioactive spider and becoming imbued with incredible copywriting powers, and then squeezing into a tight red and black spandex outfit, and renaming myself Spider-Bejako.

What’s that? I hear you groaning?

Fine. What I actually told Rob and Kira was my origin story, but it looked more like the following:

1. Nine years ago, I quit my IT job to write content on the cheap as a no-contract freelancer for The Motley Fool.

2. Things were going smoothly for the first two months, at which point they suddenly got rough. From one day to the next, the work disappeared forever due to changes inside the MF business.

3. I sighed and said, “Well that sucks, now what.” After making a list of my options to make money now, I decided to start a new career, writing tiny alternative health books and publishing them on Kindle, one or two or three per month, which is what I did for a year.

Whenever I tell this story to other writers, their ears always perk up and they ask me for more on my experiences writing little books and self-publishing them on Amazon.

I always tell them the same, as I told Rob and Kira yesterday:

I managed to sell a lot of books on Amazon, but I couldn’t make it work as a business because I was an idiot.

Back then, I knew nothing about marketing, email, back-end offers, all the stuff I take for granted today. I was selling hundreds of copies of my books each month, but I didn’t build a business out of it.

That’s why I eventually dropped the self-publishing and got into copywriting for direct response clients, which is the path that’s led me to where I am now.

Which brings me to my offer to you today:

I still think self-publishing on Amazon is an incredible opportunity. There’s cachet to having a published book — even self-published — that cannot be replicated by anything you do on your website. Besides, book readers are the highest quality leads you could ever get. Plus Amazon is free traffic — or even traffic that makes you money.

That’s why I have my “10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters” on Amazon, and why I’m putting together a new 10 Commandments book, tentatively titled, “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

But back to my offer:

Odds are, you knew some or all of this before. You knew it’s good idea to have a book out there… but you still might not have one.

Perhaps you have no time to do it, or you have some other hangup that’s keeping you from creating a book, even though you realize it would be valuable for the authority you’re trying to project, for the product or service you’re trying to sell, for the business you’re trying to grow.

My offer is simply to help you get this all done fast — book, optin, emails. Or even to do it for you — in case you already have good content that could be combined, molded, and repurposed into a book.

I don’t have a formal offer defined yet because I want to first hear if there is any interest in this, and if there is, I want to hear what your situation is.

So if you have a business, or better yet, if you have a business and a bunch of content you’ve created — videos, podcasts, blog posts, emails, courses — then hit reply, and we can start a conversation about where you’re at and and how I might be able to help you.