In this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we're talking about how con men, pick-up artists, magicians and yes, copywriters, use psychology and persuasion to get readers to pay attention and change their behavior. My guest is copywriter John Bejakovic who has just published a new book on the topic. If you want to be a better writer, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
Stuff to check out:
The 10 Commandments Book
John's first interview
The Katelyn Bourgoin Interview
The Sarah Levinger Interview
The Richard Armstrong Interview
The Parris Lampropouos Interview
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
The How to Write Emotional Copy Masterclass
Transcript:
Rob Marsh: Looking for non-obvious ways to be more persuasive? Today we’re talking about the ten commandments of con men, pick up artists, comedians and others. This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve interviewed a couple of guests about psychology and persuasion… on episode 447 I talked with Katelyn Bourgoin and on episode 448, I spoke with Sarah Levinger. In both of those interviews we talked about using psychology and principles from behavioral economics and neuroscience. Today’s episode covers similar ground in a very different way.
My guest is copywriter John Bejakovic. John runs one of the best daily email lists out there, sharing his throughts on marketing, sales, and persuasion. He recently published a book about these topics called, The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters. It’s a long title for a short book that covers a lot of ground. I wanted to talk to John about the ideas in his book, but more than that, I wanted to discuss the ethics of using these kinds of tactics to get our readers and prospects to take action.
If you want to be a better writer or a more effective communicator or simply want to help your children or customers or friends use information to make better decisions, I think you’ll like this episode.
These topics really appeal to me. Not just as a writer or marketer so I can use these techniques myself, but also as a consumer. You can’t avoid the con men who use these tactics unless you understand the tactics and how they use them. Being smart is not enough to avoid responding positively to the ideas we talk about on this episode.
Before we jump into our interview, a little while ago I recorded a masterclass to show copywriters, content writers and other marketers how to write “emotional” copy. Everyone says emotions sell, but how do you actually write emotional copy? I walk through more than a dozen examples in this masterclass and give you a proven process for figuring out the right emotions to focus on as you write… and how they change as you make your pitch. The masterclass includes several bonuses on storytelling, using A.I. to find dominant and transformational emotions, and much more. You can get this masterclass at thecopywriterclub.com/emotion
And now, my interview with John Bejakovic.
Rob Marsh: Hey, John, welcome back to the podcast. You were here, I think it was literally two years ago, Episode 365, where we talked about a lot of different stuff, and people maybe can go back and listen to that, but catch me up on what's been going on in your business, and this new book you've got.
John Bejakovic: Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I was thinking about that. It's been about two years since I was on the podcast last and I think we talked about email and things like that, because that's kind of my bread and butter. And then at the end of that podcast, you were kind of asking me, what I'm what am I working on? And I was working on this book at that time, and the plan was to have this book, which is a kind of an intersection of different disciplines and the commonalities between disciplines like sales and copywriting, but also things like con artists and pickup artists and stand up comedians and screenwriters. And at that time, I already had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to write in the book, and I was very, very enthusiastic and thinking, I'm going to get the book out in the next few weeks, month or two. And it took me a long time to get the book out, and I finally managed to do it this spring, so, or maybe a little more than a month ago. So the book is out, and it's exactly what I was planning on being in. You know, you helped me out with, actually, some of the final edits and so on. So that's kind of the main thing. Otherwise, I'm still very much just focused on email and writing daily emails and writing about persuasion and marketing and copywriting, but the book is the one significant achievement advantage in the past couple of years.
Rob Marsh: I love this book. I actually sent an email to my list, sharing it with people and talking about something that Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote the book Big Magic, talks about in her book. There, she mentions this experience that she has where she had an idea for a book and she was noodling on it for a while. And didn't really do anything with it. And then she had lunch with another friend who had the exact same idea come to her, and she basically said, hey, when you know ideas move from person to person, and if you don't take it on, somebody else will. And I think I told you this, you know, maybe shortly after we talked on the podcast, I've been thinking about writing this, almost this exact same book. Your your title is a little bit more comprehensive. You know, I was thinking of, you know, the persuasion secrets of con men and charlatans and copywriters. And you've literally written the, not exactly the way I would write it, but it's literally the book that I wanted to write. And I don't know if the idea hopped for me to you, or occurred to us both simultaneously, or it's just this idea that needed to happen, but you brought it to life. And I think it's a fantastic book.
John Bejakovic: Thank you. I think it's something that's in the water because of the people that I'm profiling in the book are all of the disciplines. There's a lot of people. That's something I didn't really write about in the book. There's a lot of people who started out in one of these disciplines and then who moved to another one, who spotted the same commonalities. So, you know, I think the most famous in our little world is maybe Dan Kennedy, who talks about how all the best copywriters had direct door to door to door sales experience, you know, and all the copywriters that he knows who really became excellent copywriters, they started out going to door to door and how, you know, so many of the the mindsets as well as the techniques from sales apply to copywriting. And I think, like Gary Bencivenga was also famous at that Gary Bencivenga never did the door to door stuff, but he definitely talked about how one of the the secrets to being, you know, a successful one of the secrets to his being such a successful copywriter, is that he went back and he studied what salesmen were were doing. But it goes the other way around. So again, going back to some of these disciplines. So, you know, I'm profiling pickup artists in there, and one of the most famous pickup artists, this guy named mystery, who wore this big top hat, and he was on BH one, well, he started out as a magician, right? So he was like a club magician, before he started approaching girls in clubs. And I don't know how consciously he brought in some of the ideas from that into into that pickup, seduction world. But it was definitely there. And likewise, for hypnosis, I feel like there's people who have noticed that there's a lot of commonalities in these things. So I think it was, I think, I think a lot of people who are, who have been in parts of this world that I'm talking about, I've noticed the commonalities is just that, because I already had that concept of the 10 Commandments, and I wanted to have 10 separate disciplines, I went and I really looked at 10 separate disciplines that have some sort of an overlap, or that have a significant overlap. And I think there might have been one or two more that that I skipped just because they wouldn't have fit within the umbrella of 10 Commandments, but, um, but, yeah, I think it's, it's kind of just in the water.
Rob Marsh: It's good. I'm holding up the book for anybody who's listening. But it, The book is called The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-t-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand up Comedians and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters. Yeah, let's talk about some of these commandments or secrets. The last time we talked, I mentioned a book by Darren Brown that you pointed out we're not actually like. It's one of the supposed secret books that sort of passed around underground amongst copywriters and everybody says, don't talk about it. It's, it's one of those secrets. People can go back and listen to that episode if they want to know what book that is. But Darren Brown happens to make an appearance in this book, as well as one of these experts, persuasion. I don't he's not a con man, necessarily, but he exposes a lot of cons, you know, in his shows and stuff. So, yeah, let's talk about some of these commandments.
John Bejakovic: Darren Brown appears twice in the book, and I don't know, for people maybe, who don't know Darren Brown. So he's, he's kind of a stage performer. He's done hypnosis, he's done mentalism. He's also had a bunch of TV shows in the UK where basically the kind of stuff that I cover in this book is the kind of stuff that he talks about in his shows, but he actually puts it into practice. And so when I was writing this book, I did.
