Simon Black

Plan Horse: Text-based opportunities

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News item one:

A few days ago, I got a text message that said, “You’re off the waitlist! You can now download Artifact.” So I did.

As you might know:

Artifact is a new service built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who founded Instagram before selling it to Facebook for $715 million. Their new project, Artifact, is something like TikTok, except not with video, but with text content.

News item two:

Just this morning I read that Meta, aka Mark Zuckerberg, is developing a new decentralized social network. Details are scarce, but what is known is that the new network will also be text-based.

Not-a-news item:​​

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than a few days, then you know I am wary of late-breaking internet opportunities. I like to get my late-breaking opportunities from books, preferably books that have been aged and cured for at least a few hundred years.

At the same time, even I find it undeniable that tectonic plates have been shifting for the past few years, with surface effects becoming visible maybe today, and for sure tomorrow.

Facebook is aging. Google search is terrible. AI now produces filler content better than 90% of professional content writers.

That’s what’s been rumbling underground for years. What will the surface effects be?

“Sovereign Man” Simon Black has this concept of a “Plan B” — a strategy for when shit hits the fan, which also benefits you if things just keep inching along as they always have.

I’d like to suggest to you a kind of inverse of Simon Black’s Plan B. We can call it Bejakovic’s “Plan Horse.”

Plan Horse is to find a new opportunity to latch onto, but in a way that you will come out ahead whether the opportunity drops dead or delivers as hoped.

Because you will eventually get to the inn if you just keep taking step after step along the highway. But you will get to the inn much faster and easier if somewhere along the way, while you’re walking, you “find yourself a horse to ride,” as Jack Ries and Al Trout put it in their book Positioning.

So keep reading this newsletter, because if I come across any interesting text-based opportunities, I might let you know about them.

Meanwhile, I continue to promote my Most Valuable Email. This course is really about taking those step-by-steps along the highway, while keeping an eye out for the galloping horse you can jump on the back of, Legolas-style.

Most Valuable Email is based on a fundamental of human communication and persuasion, one that’s been around for millennia. And yet, to many people in the Internet world, Most Valuable Email is a revelation. As freelance copywriter Van Chow said after going through MVE:

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I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.

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For a persuasion technique that will work both today and tomorrow, check out MVE here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Puerto Rico

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I don’t know much about Puerto Rico except two things:

1) It gets regularly flattened by hurricanes

2) “International Man” Simon Black praises it as a good place to do business

Neither of those makes me really want to visit the place.

But I’m reading David Ogilvy’s “On Advertising” right now. Ogilvy is famous in copywriting circles for his Rolls-Royce ad:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

Along with Rolls-Royce, Ogilvy also wrote copy for many other massive corporate accounts. ​American Express. Shell. IBM. But he didn’t do advertising for products and companies only.

Ogilvy also sold countries.

His advertising agency produced big tourism campaigns for England, France, and, most famously, Puerto Rico. As Ogilvy says in his book:

“The biggest obstacle to tourism in Puerto Rico was its image. Research showed that people believed it to be the dirtiest, poorest, most squalid island in the Caribbean. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and this I demonstrated in advertisements. Tourism increased by leaps and bounds.”

Ogilvy created ads for Puerto Rico that captured attention… overcame objections… told a story… and most important, created a vision.

Do you want to see how?

Then check out the following ad for Puerto Rico from 1958, and see how Ogilvy creates vision, both through copy and through the image (taken by famous penny-pinching photographer Elliott Erwitt):

4 daily email newsletters you might like

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I’m subscribed to several dozen daily newsletters.

Reading most of them is a chore.

In part, that’s cause they all come from Agora or Agora-like companies.

And they either deal with stock tips and gold rush advice…

Or health information about diseases I haven’t heard of, at least yet. (Macular degeneration, when you arrive, I will be ready.)

I slog through these emails each day because email marketing is my job.

But among these dull but important emails, there are a few email newsletters, which arrive daily or even multiple times a day, that I actually open up and read with some personal interest. Here they are:

#1. Simon Black

“America is going to shit and you better have a plan B for when it happens”

That’s the summary of International Man, run by Simon Black.

The thing is, Simon writes interesting emails. There’s always some little history lesson, written as a simple story. I find myself intrigued and educated.

Word to the wise: Simon’s subject lines are pretty dull and too matter-of-fact. Try opening up his emails even if the subject line doesn’t catch your attention.

#2. Newsmax

I mentioned Newsmax a few days ago.

It’s a giant newsletter about news from a conservative standpoint.

All of the stories in Newsmax will get your blood pressure up, whether you vote left, right, or not at all.

Plus, you will get links to some of the most shameless sales letters running on the Internet right now.

#3. Ben Settle

Ben settle didn’t invent daily emails. But he did a lot to make them popular.

He did this by being surprising and polarizing.

Even after many years of reading Ben’s emails, I still open and read them each day.

#4. James Altucher

I only started reading James Altucher several months ago.

He is multimillionaire former hedge fund manager and failed entrepreneur.

He writes long blog posts that get sent as emails as well.

His emails are personal, funny, and interesting.

But James also seems to be backed by some Agora company.

So the interesting and personal stuff that he writes is interspersed with cutthroat sales copy for getting rich off marijuana penny stocks. Just so ya know.

#5. That’s actually it. The above 4 are the only daily newsletters I enjoy reading.

​​But while preparing to write this email, I typed “daily emails” into Google. And I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I had never heard of before:

– Uptown Messenger (about where to buy drugs in New York City?)
– the Skimm (possibly about the milk industry)
– PRSUIT (of missing vowels)
– Londonist (about things to do in London, where I don’t live)
– and something called “A Season of Grief,” which apparently sends you inspiring daily emails to help you cope with a death in the family

I can’t wait. I’ll keep you updated. But before you go, there’s one more:

#6. Your recommendation.

Do you follow any newsletters (daily or not) that you actually enjoy reading? (Besides mine, of course.)

If you do, please let me know.

This is not just an engagement tactic. I’m planning on putting together a weekly (not daily) newsletter about email marketing soon.

So you’d be helping me out. And I’d give you due credit in the first edition of that upcoming newsletter.

Just click here, and if you’ve got a hit tip for me, send me the juice.