Sean D’Souza

Keeping my streak alive

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I’m on the couch as I write this, under a blanket, with my eyes closing and opening every few seconds. I’m more tired than I’ve been in years.

I picked up some kind of sickness yesterday. All night long, I was running a fever and generally feeling awful.

So I will keep today’s email short, but I wanted to send it out nonetheless.

For one thing, I know that at least a few people look forward to my emails, and write me in rare cases my emails don’t arrive on time.

For another, I am now selling a service called Daily Email Habit, so I figure I should practice what I preach.

Finally, I have an interesting article to share with you.

It’s by Sean D’Souza, an online marketer who’s been at it since before YouTube was created.

Sean runs his business in an unusual way. It’s just him and his wife Renuka. They purposely cap their annual income at $500k so they can take three month-long vacations each year, travel around without doing anything for their business during those vacation times, and see the world before returning to sheep-covered New Zealand where they live.

Sean can do this because he has an understanding of the fundamentals of persuasion and online business, on a deeper level than most other people I know of. The article I’m about to share with you is proof of that.

If you’re interested to find out why negotiation regularly fails in the real world, in spite of “negative striplines” and “yes ladders” and BATNAS, you might find this interesting:

https://www.psychotactics.com/why-negotiation-fails/

Riveting, personal story to fill my mistake quota

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Hold on to your seat, and prepare to be riveted by the following true and very personal story:

Two days ago, I meet up with my friend Adrian. Adrian suggests we go out to dinner tonight, just him, me, and my dad. (Adrian is also friends with my dad.)

I say fine.

Adrian and my dad and I text yesterday to confirm the place and time for the dinner. We quickly agree.

But then it turns out Adrian’s wife would like to join also, along with their 3-year old daughter. Oh, and can we move dinner three hours earlier because of his daughter’s bed time?

I’m not thrilled by the idea — the early dinner, the wife, the kid. I honestly tell Adrian the earlier time doesn’t work well because I also have a family lunch to go to in the afternoon.

He says he’ll check with the wife.

Throughout the rest of yesterday, there’s more tussling over WhatsApp. And then finally, in the early evening hours, Adrian decides to go back to the original plan, the original time, and the original company for the dinner.

TA-DAAA! The end.

Now that you’ve read this, I want to apologize. I know this story was only riveting in how stupid it was.

​​But how else to get the following point across in a way that sticks?

A couple months ago, I bought a book called Suddenly Talented by Sean D’Souza.

Sean you might know — he’s an Internet marketer who’s been in the game since before Google, and I’ve written about him often in this newsletter.

Sean is best known for his unorthodox marketing ideas. But he’s branched out also — to courses and workshops about cartooning, photography, and learning and skill acquisition, which is what Suddenly Talented is about.

I actually haven’t read Sean’s book yet.

​​But there’s a WhatsApp group for everyone who’s bought the book, where Sean holds court and explains his ideas about how to get good at anything, and quick.

One idea will probably be familiar to you — it’s to get okay with making mistakes, whether you’re drawing, learning a new language, or trying to write a daily email.

But Sean takes it one step further.

​​In his own workshops, he actually gives his students a mistake quota.

​​​In other words, he tells his students that they have to actively and consciously make a certain number of mistakes before he will let them even attempt to do the thing right.

Result? I don’t know, but I can guess:

1. People loosen up. They realize that a mistake is not as fatal as it might seem in their imagination.

2. People actually learn something, by actively dancing around the “right” thing to do. In the words of Claude Debussy, music is the space between the notes.

“Fine fine,” you might say, “enough with the poetry. Does this really work?”

I don’t know. But it sounded interesting enough to give it a try. That’s why I opened with the pointless and uninteresting story above.

Don’t open your emails like I did.

Or do. Do it to teach yourself that hey, even a terrible email doesn’t really cost me anything, and hey, maybe I’ll even learn something by doing things wrong.

Are you convinced? Are you not convinced? It’s okay either way.

But in case this email triggered something in your brain, you might want to check out my Most Valuable Email training. It comes with a swipe file of 51 interesting ideas, many of which have proven valuable to me and to the people who have gone through MVE, sometimes even paying for the entire course.

If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to write a better cold outreach message

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Today, I got an email from somebody I don’t know with the subject line, “Need an intern?” I opened it. It read:

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Hi John,

I think I originally came across you via a Google search after reading Peter Tzemis’s blog. I like your writing style, and I was curious if you need anyone to help you with anything? I want to get hands on experience with direct response.

I currently write on [link to guy’s personal musings Substack]. Let me know if this is of any interest to you.

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I heard marketer Sean D’Souza say a smart thing once.

If you have a problem in your business, says Sean, don’t work on fixing it. Instead, work on fixing somebody else’s business.

Somehow, we’re all blinded by our own unique circumstances. It makes it hard to see the right thing to do.

It’s much easier when looking at other people’s circumstances. Figure out how to help others, and you figure out how to help yourself.

I’m telling you this because maybe you would like to connect with people you don’t know.

Maybe you’re looking for clients, or for an opportunity to get your message out, or you’re just trying to build your network.

Cold email can open lots of doors. But maybe it’s not opening doors for you right now.

So here’s your chance.

Figure out how you might fix the approach of the guy who wrote me above.

I can tell you I didn’t take him up on him on his intern offer.

​​In fact, I didn’t even respond to his email, and I make a habit of responding to almost everyone who writes me.

What could he have done differently?

Think about it, and maybe you can help yourself. And if you like, write in with your best idea, and I can tell you my opinion on whether it would have made a difference or no.

How to get free coffee for six

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I’m in Lisbon. For the second time ever in my life. ​​I’m here for a meetup organized by Sean D’Souza. For the second time ever in my life.

In case you don’t know Sean, he is a marketer who’s been online since before Google went public. And he’s still at it.

​​Sean and his wife Renuka run Psychotactics, a genuinely unique and genuinely valuable website, blog, email newsletter, and podcast.

Sean and Renuka decided a long while ago that they wanted to cap their income — the last I heard, they make $500k a year and that’s it.

On the flip side, they take three months of vacation a year — work three months, travel for one month.

They normally live in New Zealand, but last year during one of their vacation months they traveled around Spain (the first meetup I went to was in Seville).

This year, they are traveling for a month around Portugal. And that’s how and why I am Lisbon today.

Yesterday was the the meetup. There were six of us:

#1 Sean…

​​​#​2 Renuka…

​​#​​3 A Portuguese entrepreneur with a miracle household product she is trying to get onto a world market…

​​#4 A German fitness trainer and app creator…

​​#5 An English bass guitar teacher who has been selling courses online almost as long as Sean has (and who had actually heard of me, via Kieran Drew, and via my love of the Princess Bride)…

​​#6 Me.

Not in attendance, but somebody who was supposed to come until the very last minute, was Internet marketer André Chaperon. That would have been a kind of thrill for me, because André was how I got into copywriting, and his AutoResponder Madness was the first email copywriting course I ever went through.

Anyways, let me jump from the intro to the outro:

​​After three hours of sitting in the cafe of Sean and Runuka’s boutique hotel, and talking about all kinds of things business, marketing, and persuasion, we got up from the cafe and left without paying.

I didn’t know anything about it. I assumed Sean had paid for our coffees, but he didn’t. Instead, we just smiled at the two waitresses who had been serving us, thanked them, and walked out.

The coffees we had consumed didn’t go on any kind of tab. The waitresses knew we didn’t pay. And yet they didn’t complain, and in fact were happy with the situation.

The question then is, how do you get free coffee for six?

I would tell you the answer, but I’m afraid you would groan and say, “Oh come on.” Because the answer is very simple, very obvious, and you’ve probably heard it as advice a million times before.

But maybe you’re still curious, and you really would like to know how to get free coffee for six, even if the answer is simple, obvious, and familiar.

If so, I’ll make you a deal:

Write in and tell me a frustration you’re currently having. It can be big or small. It can have to do with business, marketing, persuasion — or it can have nothing to do with any of those things.

I’m not offering any kind of solution to your frustration. But I am curious, and I am willing to listen. And in exchange, I’ll write you back and I’ll tell you how to get free coffee for six.

Gift-box theory of marketing

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A few days ago, I bought the ticket for my second-ever Sean D’Souza meetup, this coming April, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Sean, as you might know, is an old-school online marketer who has been selling info courses about marketing since 2002.

The first meetup of his I attended, in Seville in Spain last year, was great.

I met a Hungarian who runs a dental clinic in Budapest, Hungary. We bonded over the fact that I lived in Budapest for a long time and had only good things to say about the place.

I guess he was grateful. Because in return, he told me his story and opened my eyes as to what marketing really is and how powerful it can be.

I’m about to share a part of this guy’s very clever marketing strategy for his dental clinic.

I can’t overstate how valuable and cool it is, at least if you’re into marketing.

What I’m about to write is worth reading closely, and remembering, and pondering. Here goes:

For years, the Hungarian ran a highly successful dental clinic doing dental tourism. He built the business on Google ads. Swiss or Brits came in to get their teeth fixed at a discount while enjoying a fancy hotel in Budapest.

And then, corona came. Lockdowns. Travel shut down entirely, as did most businesses.

After a few weeks, dental clinics in Hungary were allowed to reopen. But international travel to Hungary remained closed, which meant dental tourism was out. The Hungarian’s dental clinic had all these fixed costs, and no patients.

So he paced the floor of his empty clinic… he paced… and paced… and he came up with a plan.

He decided to create an entirely new dental business serving only locals. And how.

Within six weeks, he filled the entire practice… without running any ads, which had become super expensive because all the other clinics were running them… without tapping any prior customers or network… without begging masked people on the street to come in for a free cleaning… without creating content… without becoming a social media influencer… without paying other such influencers to promote him.

Pause for a moment.

Ask yourself.

How would you do the same?

How would you get dozens or hundreds of new patients, ready to pay you large sums of money, within just a few weeks, starting with nothing, except the tools of actually delivering the service, and your knowledge of human psychology?

Here’s how the Hungarian did it:

He started approaching the offices up and down the busy street where his offices sat. He would ask to speak to the CEO or to some other top exec and say:

“I have a dental clinic nearby. I’m going to write an email to promote my clinic to your employees…”

So far, so bleh. But this next part is not:

“… and I want you to send it, in your own name. It’s a pandemic outside. People are scared. Even small infections could compromise their immune system, and could prove to be deadly. So I want you to say that you, Mr. CEO, were thinking about your employees, and you reached out to us, and fought to get us to offer a special deal, a huge discount, to your employees to check if they have any dental problems. This is about healthy teeth of course, but in the present moment, it can keep your employees from getting sick or dying. You are doing it because you care.”

Pretty good, right? ​​

​​Good, but not a sure shot. ​​Mr. CEO might want to look good to his employees, but he might also have bigger, more pressing problems to deal with.

​​So the dental clinic owner continued with his pitch to Mr. CEO:

“Because of the lockdowns, your business is not operating right now. You are not making money. The fact is, when your employees come to us for their checkup, most of them are sure to have dental problems that will require further work. We will charge them a fair price for this work. And we will give you 10% of these fees to help you out, so you have cash during this hard time, while your business is frozen.”

Result?

Like I said, an entirely new business, a full clinic, highly profitable, in just 6 weeks time.

After the Hungarian told me this, I marveled for a while. And I came up with what I call gift-box theory.

Imagine a collection of beautiful gift boxes. Imagine the small lump of coal you want to sell.

Your small lump of coal might not be very attractive on its own (“I want you to promote my business to your employees”).

So you put your lump in one gift box (“be a hero to your employees”). But no need to stop there. You can then put that gift box into a second gift box (“… and make money at it too”).

Each market has its own set of beautiful gift boxes that they care about, that mean something to them, that tap into their emotional responses.

Your small lump of coal probably means nothing to your prospects. So it is your job as marketer to identify the gift boxes that your market responds to, and then to stack a combination of them in such a way that the entire experience — lump of coal inside a sequence of gift boxes — thrills your prospect.

Actually, there was more to the Hungarian’s story — more gift boxes, more smart and clever and free marketing they continued to do after this initial effort, which grew their business even larger.

But I’ve already shared too much. I wouldn’t normally write so long or share this much how-to information. But I profited from that Sean D’Souza meetup. I’m sure to profit from the next one. And so I wanted to give you something valuable as well.

That said, what I’ve just done is not a good sales email. It’s not what I recommend doing in my Simple Money Emails course. Therefore, I do not expect you to buy anything from me today. But if you want to prove me wrong, here’s more info on everything I offer right now:

https://bejakovic.com/showroom/

What everybody should know about this fixing problems business

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Going back to the imposter phenomenon article I wrote about a couple days ago:

Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes are two psychologists who first coined, defined, and publicized the idea of imposter phenomenon, which later grew in the public mind into imposter syndrome.

What can you do if you want to get rid of those feelings of being a fake? The Internet is full of advice. Here’s what Clance and Imes themselves found to work in their clinical practices:

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Clance has seen clients healed not by success but by the kind of resonance she found with Imes. Bolstered and sustained by group therapy with other women — it’s easier to believe other women aren’t impostors — they can then bring this recognition of others’ delusion back to themselves.

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In other words, if you feel like a fake, and you don’t want to feel like a fake no more, then the answer is not to push on even harder. The answer is— well, let me get into the marketing and business advice now.

Last week, I went to a meetup in Seville hosted by Sean D’Souza. The meetup lasted for three hours and lots of ideas came up. At the end of it all, I decided to take just four of those many ideas and remember them. One of those four is exactly that Clance and Imes realization, but applied to your business.

If you have a problem in your business, says Sean, don’t work on fixing it. Instead, work on fixing somebody else’s business.

This isn’t a matter of being altruistic, or of “serving” others as a means to getting what you want.

It’s simply a fact of human psychology: There are different pathways in our brains that go into thinking about ourselves and what belongs to us, and thinking about others and their stuff. We know this because some unlucky bastard in 19th-century America got a metal stake driven through his eye socket, taking out a large chunk of his brain. He lived on without seeming harm. But he became terrible at making decisions in his own life — all while still being able to give perfectly sane advice to others.

It also works without the metal stake in your eye socket.

Like Clance and Imes found, so has Sean D’Souza found – it’s easier to see what other businesses could do better — and then bring this recognition of others’ opportunities back to your own business.
​
So try that.

And now, since I’ve already referred to two topics I’ve written about over the past week, let me end with a third such topic:

Three days ago, I ran a little poll in this newsletter. I asked readers which of three group coaching/workshops they might be most interested in.

The results are in. And the winner, both in terms of the total number of votes, and in terms of being most in line with what I want to do with this newsletter, is a group coaching/workshop on email copywriting.

I’m not offering this group coaching/workshop yet. I also haven’t decided when I will.

But if this is something you are interested in, then the only way to get in, once I do offer it, is to be on my email list. To do that, click here and sign up.

One more day

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I had today’s email 90% written this morning before I went to for the meetup organized by Sean D’Souza. ​​Now, after the meetup, my head is swimming so I decided to put finishing that email on hold. Instead, let me share just one surprising idea I heard today.

“When are you traveling back to Barcelona?” Sean asked me. I told him, tomorrow night.

Sean explained. “The value of a meet up or conference is in the plane ride home. There are always people who leave right after the event and I always tell them it’s such a waste. Better to take an extra day, stay in that place, walk around.”

Sean’s point is that when you go to a conference or a meetup or an in-person course, you get exposed to dozens or hundreds of ideas.

It’s possible you knew many of these ideas before, but somehow they have more impact now. They are presented in a new setting, when you’re out of your routine, when you’re paying more attention, when you’re more able and willing to be influenced.

But which one or two of the hundreds of new ideas should you focus on? And how to make them relevant in what you specifically are doing?

That’s work for your brain to figure out, while you enjoy and relax and sight-see and keep yourself out of your routine for one more day.

And then, on the plane ride home, something emerges, like Excalibur in the hand of the Lady of the Lake, rising above the surface that separates your conscious awareness from all the dark and deep brain processes underneath.

So that’s what I’m gonna do. Maybe tomorrow, on my flight home, I will experience some sort of breakthrough or moment of insight. Or maybe not. In any case, Seville is very cute, almost unbelievably so. I’m going to go enjoy it today.

Meanwhile, if by chance you need or want copywriting skills, you might be interested in what I offer inside my Copy Riddles course. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

I fly to Sevilla to meet Sean D’Souza

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I’m on the plane as I write this, wedged into the middle seat, surrounded by dozens of conversations in Catalan and Spanish, waiting for the plane to take off. ​​I’m flying from Barcelona to Sevilla. The occasion is a meet-up organized by Sean D’Souza.

Sean is literally a legend in my world. Because Sean is an online marketer, and because he was already successful back when I was just getting started and knew nothing about nothing — except that there are successful people like Sean.

But even now that I know something more, Sean is still worth looking to and learning from. Because he does things differently from everybody else.

I remember a talk Sean gave for Ken McCarthy’s System Club. Over the course of an hour, Sean laid out his counterintuitive but effective, consumption-over-conversion way to run his info publishing business.

At the end of the presentation, somebody in the audience raised his hand. “This all sounds great Sean,” the audience member said. “But do you have any numbers to show your consumption-first approach works better than what we are all doing already?”

Without any bluster, Sean said, “I’m not trying to prove anything to you. If you find this consumption idea works for you, use it. If it doesn’t work for you, no problem.”

By the way, I’ve found that to be a great attitude to take whenever people ask me to explain myself. It doesn’t have to be confrontational, and it doesn’t have to be stated explicitly. ​​But anyways, let me get back on track:

I’ve largely taken Sean’s consumption-first message to heart.

​​It informs how I write this newsletter and how I run my own little info publishing business.

​​And it’s part of the reason why today, some five years after I first heard Sean’s System Club talk, I am willing to get on a plane and fly to another city, just because I like the idea of having coffee with Sean and having a person-to-person conversation with him.

Maybe, like that guy in Sean’s audience, you say that sounds great — for me. But maybe you prefer hard conversion rates and sales numbers and certainty that what you are doing is the proven way to success in marketing.

In that case, let me point you to my Copy Riddles program. It’s all about proven sales numbers and hard conversion rates.

Copy Riddles is the pinnacle of the Darwinian evolution of direct response copywriting, reached through millions of dollars in tested advertising, and boiled down to improbable but highly potent combinations of just a few dozen words, also known as bullets.

If you feel like running a numbers-based, conversion-first marketing business, Copy Riddles can quickly get key copywriting skills into your head.

On the other hand, if you like running a fuzzy, numbers-optional, consumption-first marketing business, it also make good senses to get those key copywriting skills into your head, and early.

It’s what I’ve done, and it’s what Sean did also. If you read his his blog or his paid products, you will see frequent reference to and use of copywriting principles and ideas, taken from A-list copywriters and marketers.

In any case, I’m not here to prove anything to you. But if are interested in Copy Riddles and in getting copywriting skills into your head, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

7 minutes to productivity

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Let me tell you how I prepared to write this email:

I set a timer on my phone for seven minutes.

Then I sat down at the kitchen table, put my head in my hands, and started to press my thumb against my teeth. ​​I stared out the window… I stared at the sad house plant across from me… I tapped my fingers on the chair. I played the Bee Gees “You Win Again” in my head, and I realized I don’t remember the lyrics. I gradually got more and more antsy, tapping my foot on the floor, looking out the window and trying to peek into the neighbor’s house.

Finally, just as I was ready to jump out of my skin, the timer rang, and my seven minutes were up. ​​I got to work right away.

And that’s the idea I want to share with you.

I once read an article by marketer Sean D’Souza. Sean was talking about how he organizes his work day. He separates his tasks in different blocks. And in between each block, he takes a special kind of break:

He gets down on the floor, puts two books under his head, and just lies there.

I tried Sean’s system exactly, including the two books. But each time, within a minute, the same thoughts raced through my head:

​​​”What the hell am I doing? Why am I lying here? I’m not tired. If I want a break from work, fine. But let me go read a magazine for a minute or check my email or at least wash the dishes.”

That was a mistake. Because whenever I did go do something, well, that would often stretch out into 10, 15, 30 minutes. And at the end of my “productive” break, I’d have to force myself back into work.

I realized only later the essence of Sean’s system.

It’s to do nothing.

​​Even seven minutes of doing nothing drives me slightly insane. I find I’m eager and thrilled to get to work.

​​Plus the fact that I haven’t done anything — well, except playing the Bee Gees in my head — this usually allows all kinds of surprising ideas to bubble up. Ideas which would have been suppressed had I gotten external stimulation, even if that meant washing the dishes.

Perhaps this won’t be useful to you.

After all, perhaps you’re not like me. Perhaps you have a deep and broad capacity for work because of ingrained self-discipline. Or perhaps you genuinely look forward to the work you do.

I find I actually enjoy the work I do. Even so, I always feel resistance to getting started, and getting re-started after a break. In my experience, expectation is nothing like experience.

That’s why taking short do-nothing breaks has worked great for me. I get my work done sooner. I do better work, because I get more use of that time of day where I’m good for anything. Plus I find it very easy to convince myself to start doing nothing, and I find it even easier to stop.

So that’s my productivity idea for you. Try out my do-nothing breaks. Or think up your own tricks to work harder, with more focus and intensity.

Because working harder is the difference between huge success and failure.

​​If you have nothing else going for you, can go far simply by working harder. The good news is, like Gene Schwartz said once, working harder doesn’t mean working longer. In fact, it can even mean working shorter. Or doing nothing at all.

Are you still here?

This email is done. In record time. But if you’d like to read more essays I write about marketing, copywriting, and personal change, sign up here for my newsletter.

The Dan Kennedy box from hell

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I opened the box. A look of disgust must have washed over my face because my dad’s wife, who was in the room, started laughing at me.

“Not happy with what you bought?” she asked.

Months earlier, I’d gone on eBay and ordered a big box of Dan Kennedy stuff. I finally got to opening the box this past weekend. My face dropped when I saw the reality of what I’d ordered.

Dozen of old newsletters. 30-40 CDs and DVDs. Brochures, binders, and booklets, totaling hundreds of thousands of words of content.

What was I thinking when I bought this? How many years would it take me to give this even a cursory run-through?

I closed up the box and moved it aside. I tried to ignore it as it sat in the corner for a day. Then I put it in the closet, so I don’t have to look at it any more.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you about marketer Sean D’Souza’s fringe view of marketing.

The mainstream view says marketing is made up of two equally important parts:

1. Traffic

2. Conversion

Sean says that leaves out a third, equally important piece:

1. Traffic

2. Conversion

3. Consumption

Sean likes using restaurant analogies. He explains:

Your business tends to be like a buffet. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re selling products, or services, or are a trainer. You’re going to want to run a buffet.

You’re going to want to dump all your information; all your skills; all your blah-blah Powerpoint slides on your customer at one go.

And like a buffet the customer is going to eat hungrily. Then go from hunger to greed.

From greed to indigestion.

Forty five burps later, your customer is now sick of your ‘buffet’.

“That’s nonsense,” I hear you say. “I see people all the time buying stuff they never use. It doesn’t stop them from buying more stuff they will never use.”

Maybe so. Like Sean likes to say, I’m not trying to prove anything to you. If you find this consumption idea works for you, use it. If it doesn’t work for you, no problem.

Personally, the way I look at it is:

I can’t make sure people will profit from what I sell. I can’t even make sure they will consume it.

But I can make pretty sure they won’t consume it. And my personal philosophy is to avoid selling in a way that causes my customers to reflexively bring up their hand to their mouth, because their stomach starts churning each time they think of the last time I sold them something.

That’s why I only provide one serving of marketing and copywriting nutrition each day. Light, tasty fare. Zero buffet. If you’d like to sample it, here’s where to go.