William James

My “chicken sexer” argument for why you should pay me

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If you teach anything worthwhile, here’s my 4-part “chicken sexer” argument to persuade people to pay you for what you teach:

#1. In the poultry industry, there is a profession known as a “chicken sexer.”

A chicken sexer’s job it is to classify newly hatched chicks as either male or female. A chicken sexer will typically classify 1,000 chicks per hour, in only half a second per chick.

#2. An expert chicken sexer is accurate 98% of the time.

#3. A naive chicken sexer is no better than random.

4. There is a “critical cloacal structure” on a newly hatched chick that is slightly different in males and female (“convex vs. concave or flat”).

This structure is tiny (the whole chick is tiny), and odds are that most people would never notice the difference even after repeat viewings of male and female chicks.

But after having just this one distinction pointed out, a novice chicken sexer’s accuracy will rise from “no better than random” to a level comparable to that of experts.

I’ve been reading William James’s Principles of Psychology. Says James:

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Men have no eyes but for those aspects of things which they have already been taught to discern. Any one of us can notice a phenomenon after it has once been pointed out, which not one in ten thousand could ever have discovered for himself. The only things we commonly see are those which we expect to see and the only things which we expect to see are those which have been labelled for us, and the labels stamped into our mind.

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So if you teach people anything worthwhile, that is your argument to get people to pay you for what you teach.

The fact is, people might go out and try to do what you teach on their own.

The fact is, they will most probably fail to see the “convex or concave critical cloacal structure” that spells the difference between success and failure.

They might spot it with repeated tries, or they might not. Because like James says, “not one in ten thousand could ever have discovered it for himself.” But you have discovered it — however that happened — and you’re willing to share it, for a modest investment, of say, $97.

Which brings me to my Most Valuable Offer training, happening live this Wednesday, just two days from now.

The basic idea of a Most Valuable Offer is:

1. Pick a topic for a live paid training, and announce a date to your list when you will hold the training

2. Promote this offer to your list over the course of a few days and a few emails

3. Hold the live training when the date comes

Simple enough. But several “critical cloacal structures” about which topic to choose, about how to sell, about what to deliver and what not to deliver, can make the difference between a successful Most Valuable Offer and a Most Valuable Offer that lays an egg.

I’ve discovered these “critical cloacal structures” because of an enormous amount of Most Valuable sexing education and experience. I’ve paid for and attended live trainings by other course sellers… I’ve bought and studies courses on teaching and info product design… I’ve studied influence, copywriting, and email marketing… I’ve run a dozen or more Most Valuable Offers myself… plus I’ve coached a bunch of coaching clients to run their own successful Most Valuable Offers.

If you want to learn the most important distinctions when it comes to running a successful Most Valuable Offer, I will cover those on Wednesday’s training.

The Most Valuable training happens at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, this Wednesday, September 2.

Yes, there will be a recording if you cannot make it live. But you’re sure to get more out of it if you can join me on the actual call.

Your investment, should you choose to join me, is $97 today and $2/month ongoing, because, as moons pass, I will be continuously updating the Most Valuable Offer SOP and sharing my Most Valuable Offer results and the results of clients I am helping on this.

If you’d like to sign up and learn how I run Most Valuable Offers that won’t lay an egg, and how you can too:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer

Summation of stimuli

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Here’s a personal defect on the scale of Derek Zoolander’s “I can’t turn left”:

I am particularly bad at coming up with “hot takes.”

The way I’ve gotten through life in spite of this defect has been to skip the news and consume things nobody else is consuming, because then even the most lukewarm take still tingles.

That’s how I’m currently making my way through a 574-page behemoth titled Principles of Psychology, from the year 1890, by a man named William James.

It’s slow going. I imagine it will take me till the end of this year to finish at the pace I’m reading.

But it’s been worth it already. On page 39 I came across the following idea, which James call “summation of stimuli.” Even though it’s extremely lukewarm on the surface, it still made me tingle. Says James:

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The law is this, that a stimulus which would be inadequate by itself to excite a nerve-centre to effective discharge may, by acting with one or more other stimuli (equally ineffectual by themselves alone) bring the discharge about.

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No? That doesn’t make it clear? I told you the book is slow going. James goes on to explain in slightly clearer language:

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The natural way to consider this is as a summation of tensions which at last overcome a resistance. The first of them produce a latent excitement or a heightened irritability; the last is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

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Maybe that doesn’t help either. James fortunately gives a concrete example:

Take a dog (19th century scientists loved doing experiments with dogs).

Apply a weak electrical current to a nerve in the dog’s leg.

The current is too weak to set the dog’s leg to twitching.

But repeat the same weak current enough time, at a close enough interval, and somehow, even though none of the currents was enough to set the dog’s leg a-twitching, a-twitching is what you get.

“Ok,” you might say, “thank you for that lukewarm take on dog leg twitching. I gotta g-”

Wait! There’s more.

Because this isn’t just about dogs getting stimulated and starting to twitch. This is the basic neurology that underlies… pretty much everything, or at least a lot of human psychology and mental life.

I mean, I don’t have proof for what I’m about to say, because I’m only 15% through James’s psychology book.

But my guess is that this “summation of stimuli” is why one of the most fundamental techniques of persuasion, repetition, actually works.

If I say “I’m the best,” that doesn’t make it so.

But if i say “I’m the best,” every day, for years and years, and you’re forced to listen to me, then somehow, even though each individual claim is as hollow as every other one, the summation of them all turns into something with substance.

Maybe I start to genuinely believe I’m the best. Maybe you start to believe it too. And if we both believe it, then it does make it so.

Now let me make this practical to you:

In my Daily Email House community, a discussion sprang up today (ok, I sprang it up) about whether email marketing is dying.

I sprang that discussion up because I’ve seen “RIP Email Marketing” a surprising number of times in the past week alone.

The conclusion among House members was that email marketing is doing fine, but in any case, it was never about email marketing, not really, but about having a great relationship with your audience.

And the first step, and the most fundamental step, of building a great relationship with your audience is… summation of stimuli.

Showing up regularly, ideally every day, and ideally in different formats. Such as daily emails… and a community.

Speaking of, if you’d like to have your say in the conversation about email marketing and whether it’s dying or not, my Daily Email House is now accepting new members. If you’d like to spring up and join us:

https://bejakovic.com/house

I believe you’re a 10

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Last night, I finished my second reading of Dave Sandler’s book, You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar.

As you might know, Sandler was a sales trainer. His book is about his sales system, which Sandler developed after having something close to a nervous breakdown, day after day, trying to make sales using the old-fashioned approach of tried-and-tested sales techniques — “Would you prefer it in red or in blue?”

Curious thing:

The first real teaching Sandler does in his book is not about the initial step of his sales system, but something he calls I/R theory.

Sandler sets it up with a little exercise. You can try it yourself, right now.

Imagine you’re on a desert island, and you’ve been stripped of all your roles.

In other words, imagine yourself without any professional skill or accomplishment… without family relations and responsibilities… without local, national, and religious affiliation… without all your hobbies, talents, and memberships.

Imagine yourself completely isolated and stripped down to just your identity — your sense of being you.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you evaluate that identity?

Many people, says Sandler, rebel at this exercise, and claim that without their roles, they are nothing. Zero!

Many others give their identity a 3 or a 4, or maybe a 5 or a 6.

And yet, Sandler insists that everybody’s identity, yours and mine included, is always a 10, regardless of the roles we play and how well we play them that day.

Sandler gives some sort of argument to make his case. A baby supposedly has a “10” identity… and by induction, it must hold for adults as well. “How could it be otherwise?” Sandler asks, waving his arms a little.

Now, Bejako bear being a particularly skeptical species of bear, chances are good I would have simply rolled my eyes the first time I read this.

But it just so happened that at the same time I was first reading Sandler’s book, I was reading another book also, called The Will To Believe, by American philosopher and psychologist William James.

James gives a rational argument why believing stuff — even without any rational argument for believing it — can make a lot of sense in a lot of situations.

I won’t repeat James’s argument. It doesn’t matter tremendously. Just for me personally, it reminded me something I had realized before.

If you ask me, belief is not something that happens to you. It’s not done to you from the outside, by somebody putting facts and arguments into your head like they put leis around your neck when you arrive to Hawaii.

Rather, believing stuff is a personal, creative act, much like seeing is a personal, creative act.

Remembering this in the context of Sandler’s I/R theory was enough for me to honestly say, “Fine. Let me choose to believe I’m a 10.”

I choose to believe you’re a 10 too.

But why does it matter? Numbers are kind of arbitrary. Why 10? Why not 11, like the guitar amplifier in Spinal Tap?

You can label the numbers how you will. The important thing, says Sandler, is that you will find ways to make your role performance — in his case, sales success — fit your identity, your self-image.

So if have a self-image of, say, 6 out of 10, and if things in your life go bad, down to 2, you will find a way to get back to normal, back to 6.

On the other hand, if things go too well — a 9 or a 10 — you will find a way to get back to normal, too.

And if you’ve ever wondered why things never stay too good for you — why they never stay at a 9 or a 10 — maybe this is an explanation why.

Maybe try imagining yourself on a desert island, just you without any roles you play, and choose to believe you are in fact a 10.

If you do give it a go, let me know how it works out.

And as for making sales, and connecting with people, and writing day after day without quitting because things have gotten too uncomfortably good, you might like my Daily Email Habit service. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

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I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.