William Goldman

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Even better than getting rid of cliches

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“The good salesman combines the tenacity of a bull dog with the manners of a spaniel. If you have any charm, ooze it.”

— David Ogilvy, The Theory and Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker

You ever find yourself spewing cliches? I know I do, particularly when I write a quick first draft. But I hate cliches, or rather, I hate being seen as a person who speaks in cliches.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix in writing. That’s what second drafts are for. You can always take a cliche out and replace it with something less cliched.

But better yet, in my humble opinion, expressed from my humble couch in my humble home, is to take the cliche and somehow extend it, exaggerate it, subvert it. I believe the term of trade is “hang a lantern on it.”

A couple more examples, with the cliches and lanterns highlighted for you. From Gary Gulman’s “the best joke in the world”:

“All you have to know for this is that we have fifty states in America and they each have a two capital letter abbreviation. But that wasn’t always the case! Up until, I WANNA SAY, 1973… [beat] and so I WILL.”

From William Goldman, I believe in the Princess Bride though I can’t find the original quote:

“It had SEEN BETTER DAYS (or at least ONE BETTER DAY)…”

There’s nothing quite so funny as explaining a joke, so I will end this email here without killing yet another funny example for you. But I hope you get the point. In the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:

“I used to say that a good writer throws out the stuff that everybody else keeps. But an even better test occurs to me: perhaps a good writer keeps the stuff everybody else throws out.”

Today’s email is brought to you by my Daily Email Habit service. It forced me to write an email I wouldn’t have written otherwise. And it turned out to be useful, for me at least.

Maybe this practice could be useful for you as well? If you’d like more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Contrast positioning for your high-priced offers

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A couple years ago, I read a screenplay by William Goldman for a pirate movie that never got made.

It was very instructive.

The screenplay opens up with a big gruff sailor on board an 18th-century trading vessel. The big gruff sailor is a strong and normally brave man.

But right now, the sailor appears unsure of himself. That’s because he sees a deserted, aimless ship on the horizon.

Could it be pirates?

“It might have been the plague,” the sailor mutters. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.” He looks away from the deserted ship nervously, and looks to his captain.

The captain, on the other hand, says nothing.

Unlike the big gruff sailor, the captain is not scared of ghost ships, and he’s not scared of whatever evil secrets they hide, pirates included.

The captain keeps his eyes trained on the deserted, nearing hulk, ready for whatever it may bring.

And then there’s the switch.

Because on board of the deserted ship that’s getting closer and closer, a figure appears.

The figure is large. It’s black. And it seems to be… on fire?

The figure starts to growl in an inhuman voice that carries over the waves:

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The normally calm and collected captain, who is so much braver and cooler than the big, gruff sailor, turns pale. He turns and immediately signals to have the white flag hoisted.

Because the captain knows.

That’s not just any pirate ship that’s nearing.

And that’s not just any pirate.

That’s Blackbeard.

I’m telling you this because Goldman’s storytelling strategy applies as well if you sell online. It’s good for building up the main character of a movie… or for building up value for your high-priced offers.

In a few more words:

If you want to make Blackbeard — or your offer — sound important, unique, immense, you can jump straight in, and pile on the adjectives, promises, and threats.

That’s what a lot of business owners do.

At best, it works if you grit your teeth and keep piling on the adjectives, promises, and threats, and if you don’t charge all that much.

At worst, it doesn’t work at all, even when you start dropping the price.

A much better strategy is to do what Goldman did above.

Build up one thing, such as the big gruff sailor… use that to build up a second thing, such as the cool collected captain… and then finally use all that built-up power and contrast to immediately communicate the importance, uniqueness, and immensity of your third thing, say, Blackbeard.

That’s my perceived value tip for you for today, at least if you sell stuff online.

My offer for you today is my important, unique, and immense Daily Email Habit service. It can be useful and hard-working on board your own trading vessel. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

When ROUS were real

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If you’re a fan of The Princess Bride the way that I am, then you’ll know the fire swamp.

The fire swamp is a place in the kingdom of Florin, where The Princess Bride is set. Nobody has entered the place and lived to tell the tale.

That’s because the fire swamp holds three perils.

The first is sudden bursts of flame from the ground. Those aren’t so bad, because they make a deep popping sound right before they explode.

The second is Lightning Sand. It swallows you up and sucks you in, like you’re falling through a cloud. Lightning Sand is very dangerous but rare.

The third is ROUS. In the words of Westley, the protagonist of The Princess Bride:

“Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”

… but of course they do. Right as Westley says that ROUS are just a matter of legend, a giant, pig-sized rodent launches itself at him and a deadly struggle ensues.

I thought this was all just a wonderful bit of fantasy. But like Westley, I thought that ROUS don’t exist, not really.

It turns out they do. For real. William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, was a compulsive researcher. He probably found out decades ago what I found out just a few days ago.

There’s a place in the Amazon where ROUS live, right now.

The locals call these beasts ariranha, and Spanish-speakers call them lobos del río. They grow up to 1.5 meters in length, with an additional 70cm for the long and thin tail. While they aren’t technically “rodents,” they are carnivorous, they look very much like the ROUS in The Princess Bride, and for all I know, they love the taste of human flesh.

At this point, it would be wise to tie this into some lesson about copywriting and marketing.

The fact is, I really just wanted to share this fact, that ROUS really exist. I think it’s wonderful that there are large mammals I have never heard of, and that fantasy and wonder still exist in the world.

But let me work a little, and try to make this relevant to you too.

Yesterday, I wrote an email in which I tied in a snippet I had heard from marketer Ryan Lee into my own offer, which was looking for a partner for my longevity newsletter.

A bunch of people wrote me about the partner offer.

But a couple people also wrote me about the email itself. They liked how I had managed to connect the Ryan Lee quote with my own offer. How to do that? And do I have a system for it?

I actually do have a system. I even created a training out of it, called Insight Exposed. But I only rarely sell that training because I suspect that, while this Insight Exposed system has been tremendously useful and valuable to me, it’s not something that I can actually transfer to other people. At least that’s the my sense, based on the feedback (or lack of it) I’ve gotten for Insight Exposed, compared to my other trainings like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email.

So I decided to do something different.

Next Tuesday, August 20 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/9am PST, I will hold an AMA — Ask Me Anything — about the topic of research, notetaking, and “creativity.”

The AMA will be live on Zoom. You can register for it simply by clicking the link below.

There won’t be a free replay. If you cannot make it live, I can give you the first step of my system, which is simply to keep an eye out on your own reactions. “ROUS? Are real? That’s wonderful!” Write that down, and you never know when you might be able to use it.

Maybe that’s enough to get you going. But maybe you sitll have questions. If you, you can get me to answer them on the AMA. Here’s the link. Click it, and I’ll let you into the Zoomery when the time comes:

[Get real, you gotta be on my list for this. If you wanna sign up: https://bejakovic.com/]

People like you better when you taste something awful

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Opening scene:

Private investigator Lew Harper lies awake in bed. He stares at the ceiling.

His alarm goes off. He knocks it with his fist to turn it off.

Harper gets out of bed, pushes the still-on TV out of the way, and pulls up the blinds on the windows.

It becomes clear that Harper’s bedroom is actually Harper’s office. He isn’t sleeping there because he was working late, but because he doesn’t have a proper apartment.

Harper goes to the fridge, gets an ice pack. He walks over to the sink, dumps the ice in, and fills it up with water. He puts his head in the ice-filled sink and holds it there.

Finally, Harper goes to make coffee.

He folds a coffee filter. He folds it again. He gets ready to put coffee into the filter but — the coffee can is empty.

Harper hangs his head in defeat.

Then he thinks for a minute. He doesn’t like what he’s thinking. But what to do?

He goes over to the trash can and opens it.

There’s yesterday’s coffee filter with yesterday’s coffee, looking up at him.

Should he? Shouldn’t he?

He does.

Harper takes yesterday’s coffee out the trash. He makes a new coffee with it. He takes a sip.

And, in a moment that launched a giant Hollywood career, Harper shudders from how bad the coffee tastes.

So now, let me ask you, how do you feel?

Let me change how you feel for a moment, by sharing with you a really repulsive negotiation lesson. It comes from negotiation coach Jim Camp, who said:

“The wise negotiator knows that only one person in a negotiation can feel okay, and that person is the adversary.”

I’ve read this lesson 100 times. I accept it on an intellectual level. But I still find it impossible to accept emotionally, and that’s why I say it’s so repulsive.

Camp advised his coaching clients to make their negotiation adversaries feel okay. To make them feel smart, important, respected.

“Fine,” you might say, “that’s pretty obvious.”

That’s what I said too.

But the part that’s not obvious is that Camp says that okayness is a positional good. If you have it, then I can’t have it. And vice versa.

That’s the part I still can’t accept.

Whether or not Camp’s 100% right, the truth remains, if I make myself a little unokay, you will feel more okay.

And as proof of that, let me finish up the Harper story.

Harper was the first screenplay ever written by my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman.

The movie went on to be a big success. It launched Goldman’s career in Hollywood. It led Goldman to dozens more movies, a couple Academy Awards, and even a few million dollars.

None of it would have happened had Harper been a flop. But Harper was a success from that opening scene. Goldman wrote about the reaction of people who saw Harper when it launched:

===

Whenever anyone talked about Harper to me in the weeks that followed, that was the moment they they remembered — drinking that horrible stuff. And the laugh that went along with it, that was a laugh of affection.

What that coffee moment really turned out to be was an invitation that the audience gladly accepted: They liked Lew Harper.

From that moment forward, the script was on rails.

===

In entirely unrelated news:

Yesterday, I asked readers what todo items are waiting for them that they are dreading. I got a number of people responding with dreadful todo items.

In situations like this, whenever I get a number of good responses, I always like to repeat the offer. There’s sure to be people who didn’t see it the first time or who got pulled away before having a chance to respond.

So here goes:

What’s one thing on your todo list for today that you’re dreading?

It can be big or small. Important or trivial. The only thing that counts is that you’re not looking forward to doing it.

Let me know. Maybe I can figure out or find a solution to help you get rid of this troubling todo item. Thanks in advance.

How to launch offers that almost never fail

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Last week, I was talking to Steve “License to Quill” Raju. Steve’s a very smart guy who has over the past year transformed himself from a direct response copywriter into an AI consultant for big corporations.

Steve was telling me how he used AI to augment his problem-solving ability.

​​For example, the problem of direct response offers that fall flat.

Steve wanted to see if there’s a way to reduce the risk of offers falling flat. So he asked the AI if this problem has already been solved in other industries.

“The AI came up with the TV industry,” Steve told me with some enthusiasm, and he went on to explain how the TV industry apparently makes sure its shows are hits.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I had my doubts. Not of Steve, but of the AI’s advice.

From what I know, the TV industry is riddled with failure — pilot episodes that never get picked up, shows that get canceled after the first season, spinoffs that go nowhere.

​​Same thing holds in the movie industry. (William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”)

Ditto for the publishing industry. About that:

A couple days ago, I read a 4,425-word article that summarized a 1194-page book called The Trial.

The Trial itself summarizes a yearlong antitrust case that came up when Penguin Random House tried to buy Simon & Schuster, and reduce the Big Five publishing houses to the Big Four.

As part of this antitrust case, the heads of all the major publishing companies testified, and revealed the failure-ridden and frankly sad state of the traditional publishing industry.

For example, only half the books published by these companies make any money. A much lower percentage actually pay back the money advanced to the author, and make any kind of profit.

However!

There are two categories of books where the odds are much, much better.

​​These two categories do not quite guaranteed successes. Failures still do happen. But these two types of books are as close to guaranteed as it gets.

The first are books by celebrities. Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan.

The second are franchise authors. Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson.

Of these two categories, the franchise authors produce far more reliable successes. And no wonder.

Franchise authors have already built up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific character or concept. This audience remains highly dedicated and forgiving, as long as the author keeps giving them more of what they already said they want.

When I put it in these terms, the lesson is hardly surprising.

But surprising or not, the fact remains that, in spite of literally hundreds of years of experimentation by established billion-dollar industries, this is still the best recipe for new offers that are an almost guaranteed success:

1. Build up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific promise, product, or persona…

​2. ​​… and then give them more of what they already said they want.

​​Of course, you don’t have to write books. Short emails will do.

And if you want to see how I’ve done this using short emails, in several different industries, from supplements to pet supplies to high-ticket coaching and courses, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Advanced email copywriting tricks for sale soon

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This week I’m promoting my Influential Emails training. This training is something I’ve made available only once before, live, back in 2021, the Year of the Ox.

But starting next Thursday, and lasting at most until next Sunday, I will make Influential Emails available once again.

Over the y​​ears, by keeping track of when and why I’ve bought from other people’s via email, I discovered it makes good sense to send out regular emails telling your audience what exactly it is you are selling, without any frills, funniness, or flippancy.

​​So here’s whats inside Influential Emails:

​
1. The recordings of the three Influential Emails live calls, which all lasted around 2 hours.

2. Edited transcripts of all the calls, in case would rather read than listen to me talk.

3. Call 1 covers 5+ of my advanced email copywriting tricks, including the “Five Fingers” storytelling strategy, S. Morgenstern transitions, and the “Sophisticated Slapstick” structure that makes trivial or even silly things sound funny or profound.

4. Call 2 breaks down four emails I wrote to this list, shows you how I wrote them from snout to tail, and highlights the techniques from Call 1 in action. This second call also includes a lighting-round training, 15 Unique Things I Do To come Up With Ideas and Create Content.

5. Call 3 includes brutal and merciless copy critiques of a dozen emails I got from attendees of the original Influential Emails training. You see what I thought was good in these emails, and more importantly, what I would change to make each email more effective for 1) making sales and 2) being more influential/interesting/memorable.

6. There are also two bonuses. The first is “Mystery Screenwriting Insights For Copywriters.” The core of this is a special, never-produced screenplay from my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman, overlaid with my analysis of the writing tricks Goldman used, and how copywriters can apply the same.

7. The second bonus is “My 12/4 Most Influential Emails.” This is a micro swipe file, including 12 of my most influential emails, along with the background of why and how each email ended up influential. Plus, I’ll give you the four more emails, written by mysterious others, which had the biggest influence on me.

Over the coming days, I will have more to say about Influential Emails, specifically who it’s possibly for and who it’s definitely not for.

If you do decide you want to get Influential Emails, you will have to get on the waiting list. And in order to get on the waiting list, you will first have to get on the list to get my daily emails. Click here to do so now.

If this email makes me any money, I still won’t really get it

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I read a story a while back about a man named John Clauser.

Clauser studied physics but he struggled with it. That resonated with me, not because I studied physics, but because I studied math, and I struggled with that.

Anyways, Clauser had to take a grad-level course in quantum mechanics.

He failed. Twice. Eventually he managed to pass but he never really “got” it.

Some time later, Clauser decided to design an experiment to disprove quantum mechanics. His advisors told him not to do it. Clauser insisted. Maybe his ego was on the line.

Clauser carried out his experiment, which was meant to falsify a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Instead, to his disappointment, Clauser demonstrated quantum entanglement, just as the theory predicted.

Last year, Clauser won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work. He said, “I confess even to this day that I still don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz compared copywriters to atomic scientists. Gene argued that both copywriters and atomic scientists work with primal forces of nature. They cannot create those forces, but they can harness them and use them.

I’d like to extend Gene’s analogy. It’s not just that we can’t create those primal forces. We can’t even understand them, not really, not using our everyday human intuition.

Nobel-winning physicists still don’t understand quantum mechanics. ​​A-list copywriters still don’t understand human desire multiplied.

A few decades into his career, Gary Halbert put a lot of money into a weight loss product with a great proof element — a high school student who lost almost 600 lbs. “Without hunger! Without pills! Without low energy! Without giving up good food!”

Gary flew down to interview and record the guy. He created the product. He wrote and ran the ads. He put in dramatic before-and-after pictures and a money-back guarantee.

The ads bombed.

Nobody wanted this thing. Why? Nobody knows. You would think that a weight loss offer with a strong proof element and copy written by Gary Halbert would be a sure shot.

As screenwriter William Goldman once said — about those other people who cater to human desire, the Hollywood crowd — “Nobody knows anything.”

My point is not to depress you, by the way. Gary Halbert made millions of dollars and lived in Key West and fished all day long. William Goldman won a couple of Oscars. John Clauser got his Nobel prize. All that, in spite of not understanding how the damn thing works on a basic level.

The key of course is to keep generating ideas, to keep working, to keep taking a new step every day. And the day after, and so on until you drop dead. Great things can get accomplished in this way, and small things, and everything in between.

All right. I hope I haven’t inspired you too much.

I now have my Most Valuable Email training to pitch to you. I doubt you will be interested. You have probably heard me talk about this training before, and you have probably decided already it’s not for you.

That’s fine. But in case you want to find out more about Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you keep writing a new valuable email each day — and maybe even make money with it, God knows how — then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Dr. Bejako the sadistic dentist goes to work on the “mystery box” bonus

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Long-time readers of this newsletter might know I’m a big fan of screenwriter William Goldman. Goldman won two screenwriting Oscars, one for Butch Cassidy and another for All The President’s Men.

​​He also wrote The Princess Bride.

​​And of course, Goldman wrote Marathon Man, which starred Sir Laurence Olivier in the role of the sadistic dentist Dr. Szell (“Is it safe?”).

I thought of Dr. Szell because I’ve never before been compared to a dentist, but it finally happened today.

​​Author and copywriter Angie Archer, who not only took me up on my Most Valuable Email offer, but was one of the first to take me up on the free but valuable, time-limited offer included inside MVE, wrote me to say:

This feels like a trip to the dentist.

I know it’ll be good for me, but…

Here, before I talk myself out of it, is [Angie taking me up on my ‘mystery box’ offer].

You might not know what a “mystery box” offer is.

It’s an idea I got from marketer Rich Schefren. Rich once offered a “mystery box” upsell for $29. He didn’t say what was in the box, only that the buyer should trust him, and his claim that the box is worth at least 10x the asking price.

Rich’s “mystery box” upsell converted at a crazy 78% — 2x or 3x what a typical upsell will do. What’s more, Rich says the offer got zero negative chargebacks, and ended up forming a segment of his best customers.

So a mystery box might be worth experimenting with in your own marketing. You just gotta be firm, and not give in, and not tell people what’s inside the box.

That’s what I won’t tell you what my MVE “mystery box” offer is. I will just say it is very valuable, more so than the price of this course, and that it’s something I probably won’t keep up for very long.

So if you are interested in taking me up on the Most Valuable Email and the free but valuable, time-limited mystery box offer it contains, it might make sense to act now.

​​The launch period is coming to an end in a few hours time, at 12 midnight PST tonight. After that deadline, the price will go up. If you’d like to get in before then:

https://bejakovic.com/mve