Royalty Ronin

Why I won’t promote your paid community

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Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, a paid community. A reader who also has a paid community wrote in to ask:

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Ronin is $111/mo. Mine is [a similar price]. If I invite you to be a lifetime member and provided you like what I’ve built inside, would you consider promoting it?

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I appreciate the offer, and the answer is, I would not consider promoting this dude’s paid community, or really, anybody else’s paid community.

The fact is, it’s close to impossible to promote somebody else’s paid community with any success. Because of this, the promise of money isn’t much of a promise at all. I only keep promoting Travis’s thing because I’m a true believer, because I’m in the community myself and get a lot out of it.

If I did promote somebody else’s paid community primarily because I was hoping to get paid, I would do it the way Travis is preparing to auction off a recurring affiliate offer now inside Royalty Ronin.

Travis will be offering people a “Hero Package,” which provides a sexy outcome and overcomes all or most of the objections people might have when they are promised that outcome.

He’s gonna sell that Hero Package, rather than the continuity offer. He will make the continuity offer simply the condition for getting what people really want.

Of course, this model is well-known.

The magic is the way that Travis puts together his Hero Packages so that people are willing to pay 5x, 10x, 20x of whatever the underlying subscription might cost.

If you would like to observe Travis in action as he does this, and learn something you can use to promote recurring offers, whether your own or from affiliates:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Creating value out of things that others would never think of

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I’m at the airport as I write this, on my way to Budapest, my former home, for a reunion with friends I had when I lived there a long time ago.

Right now, I’m sitting on a tiny stool at an airport restaurant, about to bite into a refrigerated airport sandwich, crowded on the one side by a pushy French couple and on the other by cleaning woman with a large broom.

That’s the good part of my current trip.

The bad part is that I just spent 25 minutes waiting in line for the privilege of paying 48 euro to get my boarding pass.

I’m flying low-cost, and I didn’t check in online before the three-hours deadline mandated by this low-cost airline. When I tried to check in online a few hours ago, I was told I would have to do it at the airport, and pay.

It’s annoying when this happens on a low-cost flight, and yet it is instructive.

The fact is, all kinds of things can be turned into value that normally aren’t.

It feels petty when low-cost airlines do it, but it can be done in ways that don’t feel petty, but in fact feel the opposite — generous, exciting, convenient.

Imagine you’re buying a house.

Nominally, you’re paying for the keys and the right to move in.

You can buy a “low-cost” house, which gives you the keys and the right to move in, but which doesn’t have lightbulbs, windows, or running water, and you have to pay extra for those.

Conversely, can buy a “premium” house, which gives you not just the bare keys and the right to move in, but which has been furnished by an interior designer, comes with a concierged security service, and has a fridge stocked with food from Whole Foods.

Ultimately, it’s the same business practice, the only difference is the positioning of your business as upmarket or downmarket.

Maybe you’re munching on your own refrigerated sandwich right now and mumbling, “Right right…”

… but maybe you don’t see how this idea from real estate and the airline industry can apply to what you do, specifically to creating offers that you can sell to your audience.

For that, I’d like to invite you to sign up for a trial to my perennial recommendation, the Royalty Ronin community.

Travis Sago, the guy who runs Ronin, is the best person I have ever seen at creating value out of things that others would never think of.

Right now, Travis is preparing to auction off a year of a SaaS, which he is promoting as an affiliate.

In other words, Travis will ask people how much they would pay… to have him pay their bill for a year of this software service.

How do you possibly auction off something not unique, with a known and fixed value? And how do you auction it off for 5x, 10x, 20x of what it is currently selling for on the website of the SaaS company?

For that, I invite you to sign up to Ronin, and to follow along as Travis proceeds to build up his premium offer, out of elements that might seem like air to you right now:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

How to grow a Skool group to 500+ members in 14 days

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Yesterday, I sent out a handraiser email asking my readers if they have a Skool group with 500+ members. Results:

A handful people replied to tell me NO.

Precisely ZERO people replied to tell me YES.

I found that surprising, because a few weeks ago, I sent out similar handraiser email and asked my readers if they have an email list of 5k+ subscribers.

I got dozens of people replying YES to that.

Maybe some of my readers have Skool groups with fewer than 500 members. Maybe they have groups on other platforms than Skool. Or maybe folks on my list are primarily concerned with email, and have no interest in running a group, on Skool or anywhere else.

About that last option, back in 2025, I wrote the following:

“The people who do a good job running communities will have the same advantage that, say, a business that emails its customers regularly with interesting emails and desirable offers has over a business that emails stupid coupons at holiday time with nothing else in between, except maybe a ChatGPT-generated listicle.”

I still stand by that. In fact, I’ve doubled down on it, and now I have two Skool groups, rather than just one. Each of my Skool groups has made me tens of thousands of dollars over the past year.

The thing is, there is plenty of genuinely valuable info on how to write emails and make money from an email list.

There is not so much info on how to manage people in a group, get them engaged, and get them to gladly and even eagerly hand you money.

Yes, there are a bunch of new-baked Skool experts promising to teach you how to be Skool experts, if you would only join their Skool group for would-be Skool experts. so they could finally have some proof to show their Skool-expert system works.

But there’s not a lot from people who have been running groups for, say, 10+ years, who have made millions of dollars per year via groups, who have spun up dozens of new groups and made them successful.

And with that, it is now time for me to once again promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community, of which I am a card-carrying and paying member myself.

Travis has been running groups and communities for 10+ years.

Out of everybody I have seen manage groups, nobody is as good as Travis in terms of 1) engagement and interesting group content 2) the ability to pull money out of a group.

Travis’s Royalty Ronin community is a paid group of about 500 members. Last year, Travis pulled out more than a million dollars out of it, and the majority of that was not through membership subscriptions. Rather, it was by partnering up with members, licensing his courses to members, and by running auctions to sell his new offers.

Last month, Travis ran an auction where the offer on auction was a brand new community that Travis would create, stocked with 500 members, which the auction winner would run and monetize with Travis’s help.

Two days ago, the winner of that auction posted the following inside Ronin:

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$540 monthly recurring. 519 members. 15% conversion.

From scratch. In 14 days.

That’s what Travis Sago’s Netflix Method did for Leads on Demand, the Skool community we built from zero (I say we…Travis is building…I’m doing the documenting!)

If you’ve got a community that’s gone quiet, or you’ve been putting one off because you just don’t know where to start, this is the step-by-step.

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… and then came the step-by-step (part 1 of 4).

I am going through this step-by-step carefully, and I am going to be applying it to my groups.

If you’d like to go through it yourself, Travis offers a 7-day free trial to Ronin (the “Netflix Method” is currently pinned as the top post inside). If you are interested in growing, running, or monetizing a Skool community, and you want to learn how the best that I know is doing it:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Fantastic copywriting skills considered harmful

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Point 1:

A couple days ago, I asked people in my Skool group what offer they want to make to their list in the next week.

Many of the folks in my group are copywriters, and many of those who aren’t copywriters by trade still know a lot about copywriting because they do marketing for their own businesses.

When I asked about offers, there was talk of things like:

* 1-1 coaching

* Courses, full or condensed

* A research system

* Longform sales pages

* 5-minute trainings and hour-long workshops

* Order bumps

Point 2:

Today, I went into Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community.

I am a paying, card-carrying member of Ronin. I’ve been making a habit of promoting it, and and easy way to promote it is simply to go in there every week and see what’s up.

Today, I saw a post by Travis about auctions, specifically about a recent auction that made $50k in 24 hours. Here’s the relevant bit, relevant to that offers discussion above, and relevant if you sell online:

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Because the Fun Auction…

Does NOT require fantastic copywriting skills.

The CORE is…

Get ______________! Bids start at $1.

The BLANK is something they REALLY, REALLY WANT, which is worth far more than $1.

It’s funny to me…

That TRAINED copywriters fuck this up more than newbies.

NOBODY WANTS a proven system, coaching, 1:1, orthodontist services, drills or an AUCTION BTW!

If what’s in the blank…for $1…doesn’t make their HEART do a flip…find something that will squirt dopamine into the lizard brain.

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Travis is saying you don’t need fantastic copywriting skills to sell VIA AUCTION, and that copywriting skills might even be harmful.

I’d add that this goes way beyond auctions.

I’ve seen people with a lot of copywriting skill, whether professional copywriters or business owners, who have spent tens of thousands of dollars to learn copywriting, do a terrible job of selling online.

Most often, the reason why they are so terrible at selling is what Travis says above. They focus on couldn’t-care-less deliverables rather than outcomes that make people’s heart do a flip. (I’ve made this mistake myself, btw, plenty of times.)

Point 3:

Last December, I ran an auction in my Skool group that pulled in $31k in 24 hours, and that could have legit pulled $70k+ had I just taken the money that was offered me.

The reason that auction popped was, like Travis says above, the BLANK that people REALLY, REALLY WANTED.

When I polled for interest in my blank, I got about 50 people saying they would bid to get it, with 6-7 people saying they would bid whatever it takes to win. A couple of people even said they might take out a zero-interest credit card to be able to bid enough to win (I discouraged this, even if it was said in jest).

Lemme wrap this up.

If you have an audience and a working offer, my ongoing offer is to help you run an auction, and do everything:

* Craft a HEART-FLIPPING auction offer

* Come up with post-auction offers that move those deliverables you got and focus on, the 1-1 coaching, the courses, the 5-minute trainings and hour-long workshops

* Write all copy (I’ll keep my fantastic copywriting skills in check)

* Run and manage the auction itself

* Sell, sell, sell after, to the people have raised their hands by bidding

IMPORTANT: I charge nothing up front. For every $10,000 I send you in sales, shoot over $2500 to me AFTER the money is in your bank account.

If you’re interested, hit reply and we can talk more.

And if you don’t have an audience or a working offer, specifically if you’re a working copywriter…

… you would be served well by seeing how Travis creates and presents his own offers.

It will make you into a more valuable copywriter, and clients will be willing to pay you much more, and will fight to keep you working with them… instead of you having to chase them for a little gig here or maybe there, today and maybe again in five months’ time.

But more important, if you get good at creating offers, then when you try to sell your own stuff, you will have a real shot of getting 50 people to reply YES and even a few people who say they will pay whatever it takes… rather than hearing crickets, seeing tumbleweeds, and feeling the chill of a desolate wind.

I’ve learned more about offers from Travis than anybody else.

If you wanna learn something also, Travis offers a 7-day free trial to Royalty Ronin. 7 days is not long, but it’s enough to pick up one or two good ideas that you can implement for your client (or yourself) today, and it can give you a sense if Ronin is for you. If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Likes are cash, but better

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A while back (and now for all I know), there was an online business guru who built his brand on the slogan:

“Likes ain’t cash”

Except, likes are cash, or actually better, at least if you know where to look.

Today is Monday, which is quickly turning into my day to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community, of which I myself am a paying member, and have been a member for over two years.

Travis’s Ronin community is about making money online.

It’s very engaged, just as it is, even though the entire group is only about 500 members. People post and comment a lot every day, as does Travis.

And yet, Travis will soon be running a month-long contest to get members to post even more, to comment even more, to engage even more.

The winners will be determined by — you guessed it — likes.

As for the prizes, they will come in the form of licensing rights to Travis’s IP (most of his courses and trainings sell for $2k+), in the form of distribution to Travis’s audiences (I’m guessing Ronin, plus Travis’s other Skool communities, and maybe his email list), as well as Travis’s help running the campaign.

In other words, the winner will get a product to sell… an audience to sell it to… and Travis’s help in selling it. And frankly, I don’t know anybody online who is as good at running sales campaigns as Travis is.

Insert a saying here about how you cannot lead a horse to water, but you can teach him how to fish—

—you know what I mean. Cash is nice. But cash + evergreen assets + newfound knowledge on how to sell those assets is much nicer.

Of course, there’s great value in winning Travis’s contest even without the official prizes.

If you don’t know what that value is, then you must be less of an egomaniac than I am.

All I can say is, I myself keep swinging back and forth between the idea of not participating in Travis’s challenge (I have enough to do already, without competing in a contest that involves lots of posting and commenting) and participating in it (I would love to win, just so I can inflate my ego, and the prizes genuinely sound nice).

Anyways, I’m telling you all this for two reasons:

1. Reason one is to promote Ronin. Maybe you are curious to see this contest unfold. Or maybe you yourself want to go into Ronin, and start implementing some of the stuff that Travis teaches there, and report on your results. In my experience, that kind of content always gets the most likes. If you dedicate yourself to it for a month, you have a legit shot at winning, and you have a legit shot at making tens of thousands of dollars even if you don’t win, simply by implementing what Travis teaches.

2. Along with being an expert in running sales campaigns, Travis is also an expert in community management. This challenge idea is one that you can try for your own community in order to boost engagement and to get a ton of content generated for your group for free. (Travis has more such ideas inside Ronin.)

Anyways, Travis’s contest kicks off in a few days. If you’d like to try out Ronin, either to observe the contest from the sidelines, or better yet, to participate, Travis offers a free 7-day trial, which you can find here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for the trial to Ronin and then write a post inside the group to introduce yourself, write me a message and let me know. I have several bonuses with your name on them.

Fumbling and bumbling to $10k+

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Over the past week, I’ve fumbled and bumbled my way through the Hogwarts of Influence promo, up to and including the cart close email, which never came, because yesterday I wrongly scheduled it to go out at 4pm my time today, which is 7 hours after I’ve actually closed the cart.

I was on vacation the entire time of this promo.

That means I didn’t revamp the offer page as I had planned.

I didn’t write more emails, particularly ones crowing about sales I had made along the way.

I didn’t come up with a better process to upsell the people who had gotten either the Hermione or Snape levels.

As a result of all this, Hogwarts of Influence was not a smashing success.

Even so, it looks like when all is said and done, it will bring in north of $10k, which is not too shab for selling a bunch of offers I have already been promoting for 5+ years, literally hundreds of times, to my small and frankly not-really-growing list.

This morning, one of the folks who asked to join at the last minute wrote:

“Btw, what’s the big idea anyway with not just having a regular sales page? Interesting!”

The background is that I had an offer page, where I listed the offer, and then asked people to write me via email instead of just linking straight to ThriveCart as is usual.

There’s a reason for this, a money-making reason, something I picked up from marketer Travis Sago.

I sat down right now, and I wrote up 7 elements of this Hogwarts of Influence promotion, which I can trace directly to Travis and his teachings.

I have made the claim before that following the stuff that Travis teaches has has led me to $100k+ worth of income that I wouldn’t have made otherwise. It looks like I can stack another $10k to that.

My ongoing offer stands:

The best place to learn from Travis is inside his Royalty Ronin community on Skool.

You get to watch Travis work live. You get a library of Travis’s expensive courses, all for free. You get a bunch of smart and successful marketers, myself included, in the group to talk with and learn from and do deals with.

Travis offers a 7-day trial for Royalty Ronin. If you’d like to see if it’s for you:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for the trial and then decide to stay on past the 7 days because you can see the value for you inside Ronin, write me a message and let me know. I have several bonuses with your name on them. I’ll also share with you the list I just made of 7 of Travis’s sales teachings that I integrated into my just-closed Hogwarts of Influence event.

How to make direct marketing FUN for yourself

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OLD, DULL WAY OF DOING DIRECT MARKETING

You get bombarded with direct response ads, whether via Facebook, in your inbox, or via your physical mailbox. And if you’re anything like me, your reactions as you flip trough these ads is…

“Not for me… not for me… God this is ugly… this COULD be for me except they are talking to me like I’m an idiot… not for me… not for me…”

On the flip side, you bombard others with direct response ads, whether actual ads or emails or sales letters. And if you’re anything like me, you dutifully stuff your ads full of the old DR chestnuts you have read about in books and courses:

“Buy now… amazing… secret… our warehouse manager just called… my accountant says I’m crazy… maximum money… minimum time…”

FUN, NEW WAY OF DOING DIRECT MARKETING

You open up a new text file. And when you get bombarded with DR ads, you treat each one like a riddle, a puzzle, or a scavenger hunt. You look for curious or interesting patterns or phrases. You write down any that you find in your text file.

“Why isn’t this number lower”… “You can’t buy anything here”… “A month from today, you can be nothing more than 30 days older”… “It costs you nothing to learn about this opportunity…”

On the flip side, you take your curious or interesting patterns and phrases from your text file, and you find ways to test them out in your own marketing.

“Will it work for me, I wonder… and if it doesn’t work for me, I wonder why that other ad was using it and if it worked for them… and if it does work for me, I wonder how else I can use it…”

I’ve done this in many forms, with many ads, over many years.

When I just got started with copywriting, I did it with sales letters my clients wanted me to model.

Later, on my own, i did it with emails. (I went for a month in 2019 reading Ben Settle’s emails not for the content, but with an eye to patterns in the hooks he was using and the offers he was promoting.)

And just yesterday, I started doing it with Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin group.

I’ve been promoting Ronin regularly, because I’m in it and because I’ve profited mightily from being in it.

If you’re not as much into Ronin as I am, you might not realize that Royalty Ronin is basically one big direct response ad. I mean the content inside the group.

Travis Sago, the guy behind Ronin, is a master of direct marketing. And everything he does inside Ronin is done with a purpose, and that purpose is selling.

Ronin, for all the education, inspiration, and value it delivers along the way, is effectively a giant, ongoing, direct response sales letter for various of Travis’s new offers.

Some of Travis’s direct response experiments work. Some don’t. Some he ends up codifying and sharing with others, often in the form of an expensive new training. Some he keeps to himself for years, or maybe forever.

For my own benefit, and in order to make direct marketing more FUN for myself, yesterday I sat down and started looking for phrases and patterns inside Ronin that caught my eye.

I made a list of 10 ideas, looking over just a few of Travis’s recent posts.

One of these 10 ideas, a subject line Travis used, led to the offer behind my email yesterday, about an auction to get investors to purchase your newsletter or group.

Other ideas I spotted I might use in other emails, or in sales letters, or on live workshops, or maybe in one of my communities.

So my advice for you is to do likewise.

Make direct marketing more FUN for yourself.

Turn it into a game, and you will enjoy yourself more, and make more money. (In minimum time!)

I also got an offer for you:

Try out Ronin yourself. Travis offers a week’s free trial. If you find it’s not for you, you can cancel before the week is out and get charged nothing.

If you do sign up for a trial of Ronin, forward me your welcome email from Travis.

In turn, I will send you a list of the 10 valuable ideas I noted in Ronin yesterday, along with how I am planning to apply a few of them.

I’m making this offer good until tomorrow, Tuesday Jun 9, at 8:31pm CET.

If you’re interested, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Going it on your own

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Yesterday, in a restaurant in Barcelona’s Eixample district, I organized a “direct response dinner.”

6 people (ok, 6 guys) where there, all of whom work in direct response.

There was a copywriter for an ecom retention agency… there was the owner of a big dropshipping business… there was the head of ops for a lead gen agency… there was the owner of a dating info biz… there was Thom Benny’s business partner Elmo… and there was me.

Over fish curry and ground beef, we talked about what’s up in life and business.

Halfway through the dinner, we switched seats to switch up the conversation.

At the end, everybody stood around outside the restaurant and talked some more and exchanged contacts. I announced I would make this a regular event.

A few years ago, I gave a presentation in Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL group. After that presentation, Brian and I exchanged a couple emails, and he invited me to join Titans myself.

I wrote Brian to say thanks, that I can see Titans is a good group, but that I know from past experience that I don’t function well or last long in groups. I said that even though I know it’s not smart, I always end up going it alone. To which Brian replied:

“Not that I need to teach you anything, John…but whether it’s my group or someone else’s (or one you manufacture on your own), “going it on your own” is a huge mistake.”

That has stuck with me for years. It was a key motivator for why I decided to create my Daily Email House community, and later, why created the Monetization Mastermind. It’s also why decided to organize the dinner last night.

I’m kind of weird and awkward whenever I’m invited to other people’s stuff. I don’t really participate. I look for any excuse to skulk out.

I could tell myself that’s silly, and wait for myself to change and become a better, more sociable, more well-adjusted person.

Or I could simply work with what I’ve got, and figure out how to do something with it. In my case, that’s meant following Brian’s advice, and “manufacturing” groups and communities of my own.

I’m telling you this because maybe it applies to you as well.

Maybe what applies is the specific idea that, if you don’t function well in other people’s groups, then you should manufacture one of your own.

Or maybe what applies is the broader idea to stop waiting for yourself to become a better person in order to get what you want. (Business coach Rich Schefren phrases this as, “Put your business goals ahead of your self-development goals.”)

Final point:

I personally knew everybody I invited to dinner last night, with the exception of James, the head of ops for a lead gen agency.

I had never met James before or interacted with him in any way. I invited him because he is inside Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin group, and I figured anybody who is in Ronin is ok in my book and is worth meeting. (James turned out to be great.)

Royalty Ronin is the only group I’m a member of in any meaningful way, and the only group I’ve managed to stick around in for more than a few weeks. (I’ve been in Ronin for over two years now.)

That’s not because there’s magic inside Ronin that makes me into a chipper and regular participant. (I rarely post and I comment even more rarely.)

Rater, I stay inside Ronin and I keep lurking there because I’ve learned so much from Travis Sago, both via the ton of expensive trainings that he makes available for free inside Ronin… and via observing Travis and what he does. (This is stuff that might or might not make it into future expensive trainings, but it’s yours free if you only pay attention.)

If you wanna see if Ronin could work for you, whether you participate in groups or not:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Emotional reactivity in email promos

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Last Wednesday, I started a new, possibly doomed email promo.

My goal was to get 5 people into the 1-Person Advertorial Agency Cohort.

My offer was help with copywriting, help with getting clients, up to and including making $10k from advertorial work.

My price was $5k.

Like I said, I started promoting this on Wednesday.

By about Friday, I was hating it.

A few dozen people had responded to express interest, most of them before I had publicly announced the price.

After several days of email back-and-forth, nobody had signed up. Some people had opted out. Some had stopped responding. The others had questions, doubts, or concerns. The nerve!

I spent a part of my Friday fantasizing of simply closing down this whole thing, and focusing on writing my own advertorials rather than trying to persuade anybody to join me. “I’ll show them!”

Fortunately, I have been here before.

Instead of lashing out at the world, I simply kept promoting the offer to my list, answering questions from the people who had expressed interest, and honing the 1-1 sales process bit by bit.

On Saturday, one person joined. Yesterday, four more people joined, including one guy (a long-time reader and buyer) who only responded to the “Final Call” email I sent out.

In sum:

I wanted 5 people. I got 5 people. $10k collected over the past two days, with another $15k due when I get people to the result I promised.

I’m telling you this because, besides running this advertorial cohort, I’m also coaching several business owners on how to make money with their email list. And making money with your email list means email promos.

I’ve recently seen, on a couple different occasions, people getting frustrated due to a lack of results, shutting down their promo after just a day or two, and scrapping the offer.

I know how it feels. I’ve been there. In fact, like I just told you, I was there last week, ready to shut down my own promo and scrap the offer.

Maybe now that I’ve told you that it happens to me, you will be able to recognize it in yourself as well.

It’s helpful to label it. (“Emotional reactivity” is not a very elegant term, but it’s what I call it.)

It’s also helpful to remind yourself that, now that you’re in the middle of the promo, it’s probably not a good time to make dramatic decisions, like killing the offer, or slashing the price, or promising tons of new deliverables that you hadn’t planned on initially.

Rather, the middle of the promo is a time for talking to your audience, clarifying your offer and your positioning, and making the best out of what you’ve already got.

From time to time, I like to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community. From time to time, I like to reiterate that Travis’s Ronin is the best deal in Internet Marketing right now. From time to time, I cite some cool or fundamental thing I’ve learned from Travis.

The fact is, this entire “advertorial cohort” promo wouldn’t have happened without the many things, big and small, I’ve learned from Travis and the courses and trainings and regular posts he puts up inside Royalty Ronin.

Everything, from the very concept of this promo, to the offer structure, to the pricing, to how I promoted it, to the fact that I didn’t give up in frustration after a few days of no results… all of that comes from stuff I can trace directly to Travis.

Travis offers a week-long free trial for Royalty Ronin. I’ve gotten a metric ton, and 100k+ worth of income, due to what’s inside Ronin. Maybe you will too. If you wanna give it a try:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Solopreneurs suck

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Before you get out your pitchforks, tar, and feathers, maybe hear me out:

A few years ago, I joined the paid membership of a business coach.

I won’t say the guy’s name, but he’s well established in the DR world, he’s been in business for decades, and he’s somebody I’ve mentioned in this newsletter on a few occasions. (Though if you think you know who it is, you probably don’t.)

My first day in the membership, I was scrolling through some of the posts. In one of them, another member was getting advice on a new business he was setting up.

The business coach asked who the target audience was.

The member replied it was solopreneurs.

To which the biz coach replied:

“Solopreneurs suck.”

I felt a bit hurt this, being a solopreneur myself for 12+ years now, and generally determined not to hire.

The business coach gave his explanation, that solopreneurs make for bad customers, and that it’s much better to go after people who have a small team of two or maybe three people.

There was truth to it. I forget exactly what the coach’s arguments was, but as a solopreneur myself, I can tell you that solopreneurs…

1. Are too tightly controlling

2. Are paradoxically willing to accept lower quality on many things in their business (design, copy, marketing, customer service) as long as they do it themselves

3. Are slow to implement big and important changes thoroughly

4. Are fickle, and will change direction and follow new whims and ideas, but since they have no ballast, will often change direction too quickly, and then change again

Put all these things together and you find that solopreneurs have serious limits to income, limits to growth, limits to the value can get out of anything you sell to them, and therefore the money they can pay you.

On top of which, the fact that solopreneurs have no employees makes it easier for them to simply up and leave from one day to the next, particularly in today’s world, where most solopreneurs’ tangible assets consist of a Macbook and maybe a Nespresso machine.

I’m just putting this idea out there.

Like I said, I myself am a solopreneur.

I don’t know if that will change.

Maybe it will. (I’ve convinced myself with my own emails before.)

Maybe it won’t. (Even with all the arguments above, I find myself resistant going back to point 1 above.)

In any case, I will tell you something I have figured out as a stepping stone out of the solopreneur swamp.

It’s the idea of partnering with the right people, rather than hiring.

I’ve done it already with one major project.

I’m very likely do more partnerships as I spin up my new “advertorial agency.”

If partnering with people resonates with you, and you want to find people to partner with, and you want more advice on how to do it right, both from an “inner game” and an “outer game” perspective, then I have a recommendation for you.

It’s Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community.

Travis’s Royalty Ronin is made up of a bunch of people who have the solopreneur mindset, who want the simplicity and freedom of solopreneursip, but who at the same time have realized that you can only do so much and go so far by doing every damn thing alone, and that there are real costs to solopreneurship, in terms of both income and free time.

(Btw, Travis is not the biz coach I talked about at the start of this email.)

If you wanna find out more about Ronin, there’s a free 7-day trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.