For the last three days, I’ve been promoting John Bejakovic’s new book.
If you’ve somehow missed it, John’s book is 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.
Now, perhaps you’re thinking “sounds a bit shady Tom”.
If so, I get
it. Some of the characters name-dropped in the title aren’t exactly known for their squeaky clean reputations.
So are the tricks and techniques in the book a step too far? Is it the sort of book you'd hide from your grandma?
It’s a good question.
To answer it, let’s take the workplace as an example.
A big part of my banking job is bringing people with me, persuading my colleagues to do things and navigating my way
through all the red tape.
There’s lots of ways I could go about this.
I could speak louder than all my colleagues, interrupt them mid-sentence and keep pressing my point until I drive them all crazy.
I could create a 79 slide Powerpoint presentation and bore persuade my colleagues with figures, graphs and tables.
I could even use phrases like “this project is code red critical. It needs to happen RIGHT NOW!”
But that’s not how I go about it.
Most of the time, I’ll just have a chat with someone. I’ll show I understand where they’re coming from, I’ll call out some mutual benefits and I’ll make sure what I’m saying is clear. Occasionally I
might even try buttering a colleague up or using a bit of humour (god help us all).
Techniques like these inevitably work.
It doesn’t matter if I’m an introvert or an extravert, part of the team or a total outsider,
or more senior or less senior than whoever I’m talking to. I just need to know a bit about how people tick, then I can use that to get results.
So is steering the ship like this unethical?
Not in my
book.
Not just because these tools help move things forward.
But because “tools” is exactly right. Persuasion is a tool, just like Excel or Powerpoint. And tools can’t be unethical (or ethical too, for that
matter).
What matters is how you use them.
Which means if you don’t have persuasion in your toolkit and you’re trying to get someone from A to B, your toolkit is missing one of the best tools for the job.
Especially at work. Workplaces are social systems, after all.
This takes us full circle back to John’s new book.
As John describes:
***
Influence professionals rely on common human psychology to move people from A to B, without force or threats. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they keep rediscovering the same principles, structures and
techniques.
***
Techniques which have been honed over decades by people who simply had to get results.
John sets out ten of these techniques (or "commandments", as he calls them) in his book. A book which I happen to be promoting until 5pm UK time today.
If you order the book and send me your receipt by then, I’ll also send you a bonus 41 minute masterclass where I grill John on how to use daily emails to write and publish a
non-fiction book.
More details on that below.
In the meantime, here's how to get your hands on the bonus:
- Go to your local
online Amazon branch
- Search for John Bejakovic’s new book, 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
- Buy the book (kindle or
paperback)
- Send me your receipt before 5pm UK time today
Just make sure you email me your receipt before the deadline if you want to grab the bonus.
That's about 6 hours from now. Time is ticking...
p.s. here’s a small taste of what’s inside the bonus recording:
*** The copywriting technique that makes it almost impossible for readers to put
your book down (this method pulls readers in on page one and keeps their eyeballs glued to every word until the very last page... even if they started reading just to "take a quick peek")
*** The surprising reason John avoided a big launch event for his new book
*** The traffic source that’s dropping book sales into John’s lap every day – for free! (you don’t need a newsletter, a website or an audience to put this source to work)
*** How John mines his archive of 2,000+ daily emails to build his books
*** The “Sudoku Puzzle” trick that gave John's new book its razor-sharp structure and helped John connect the dots across wildly different topics
*** The curious reason books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and How to Win Friends and
Influence People are still flying off shelves 50+ years after being published
*** When to put on your “copywriter’s hat” and when to doff your “author’s hat” instead
*** Where to dig up original stories that perfectly
prove your points (plus the specific resource John uses to find long-forgotten stories from 100+ years ago)
*** How to turn your email list into a real-time feedback lab for your book. John shares his strategy for testing ideas, sharpening insights and spotting what makes readers lean in
*** A sneak peek at John’s draft third book
*** Plus lots, lots more…