Bond Halbert On The Power Of A Big Idea and The Gary Halbert Letter All Stars

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Okay, so in just a few moments, I'm going to bring on Bond Halbert. Bond is the, he's the son of marketing copywriting legend Gary Halbert, who is one of the, you know, the foremost legends in the entire business that he's been copied, he's been swiped, he's been studied and it is somebody that, if you've never heard of Gary Halpert, you're definitely going to want to listen closely to this and to Bond and you're going to want to check out some of the resources on the show because if you have any business that is in the business of persuading people to buy your stuff, there was really nobody better at it than the late, great Gary Halbert. And I'm very honored to have his son Bond on the show today. Bond, are you with me, buddy?

Yes, I am. And you gotta excuse me if you hear the landscaper outside, but that's something I can't control at the moment.

That's quite alright. I like it. So as I mentioned in the introduction, Bond, you walk around with a very famous last name in marketing circles, of course, outside of the world of especially direct response marketing and copywriting, etc. A lot of people may not know who you are, but your name is somewhat royalty in a lot of marketing circles. Your dad was really known for his copywriting expertise and some of the most amazing direct response letters, campaigns and promotions. And I want you to tell me a little bit, actually tell the audience a little bit because I'm pretty familiar with the legend that your father was about some of the accomplishments. But then I want to dive right in because this really isn't as much about your dad. I want to get into you as well and some of the things that you've soaked up and learned from him and how you've applied it and are applying it right now, along with some of the cool things you're working on as it applies to your father in the audio series. But what was it like to grow up with a guy who really broke records in this business, but also the circle of friends and influences that I'm sure you've been privy to?

From an early age, well, I was definitely privy to the circle of influences that are now considered to be the legends of marketing. Not only was my dad welcomed in those circles, circles, but he specifically took me to go meet with them and learn. And he would show, he would tell me on the way to these meetings, this is what I want to accomplish. And then we would go through the meeting, I would be there to experience it. And on the way he'd give me his assessment of what went on. So he basically was also teaching me how he thought and he, you know, he singled me out to do this. So I really started learning marketing and copywriting from an age of about 10 on. And then everybody knows that he wrote a very famous series of letters to me, teach me marketing, which is like the only proof I had that I had this early education letters. Yes. And I was 15 when he wrote those. And so. And I had already been being mentored for a while and I was already, you know, being a protege who's really, you know, like his first. And he would. But let me tell you the. I'll give you some stuff I haven't explained to other people before publicly. I'd heard the other day, Sam Markowitz, good friend of mine, was talking about my father and saying that he was pretty much a social scientist where he would go around and try little things with people and see what would get them excited, what would motivate them, what would anger them. I mean, he just played with people, not in the. And not in a mean spirited way. He really wasn't cruel enough.

Find out what makes him tick.

Absolutely. And he would. So he. But he was willing. But what made him a big success is, you know, he was not only willing to try these creative things, but it was his willingness to get back up and keep doing it even when stuff didn't work. So what this meant for me personally was he was really willing to push the envelope. And so this is my father. Now I'm going to take you back into late, I think it was like 1990 or early 80s. No, still, I mean late 80s. My dad, this is back before the Internet. My dad takes out a full page ad to run a personal ad looking for a girlfriend.

I remember reading this. This is great.

Okay, now it's a fantastic ad that's filled with all kinds of great humor and it says all. I mean it's so popular. Everybody, you know, people, you know, read it. It's actually read. And inside the audio series that we're going to mention later. But the, you know, this is out. And imagine in your local paper in the 1980s when the only people who run tiny little personal ads are all considered to be social pariahs and losers, right? And here's my dad with his picture. And, and actually, no, I don't actually remember if the picture's on it, but he runs this full page ad and it's so hilarious and thought provoking that the guys on the radio stations are calling him up that morning and reading excerpts of the ad to their audience and into calling him and he calls in and they're interviewing him and stuff, you know, and I'm like, I'm like 16. It's just the most embarrassing thing in the world to me. Right.

Yeah.

And so, but that, that's really what it was. You know, my father was doing all this social experimentation and you would have these things that would turn out to be proudful. But here's the takeaway from that, the financial takeaway and marketing takeaway. You start to learn that what his genius was, what made him considered to be one of the greatest of all time, the reason his copy is copied more than other people's is because he was willing to push the envelope and try different stuff and keep, you know, tinkering. It was his attitude of will, it was creativeness to create that cool kind of stu, but it was also his willingness to do it.

Okay, now I'm going to break away from the recording with Bond here just for a few minutes because during the interview we lost a few minutes of audio and I just wanted to interject so that we can pick up where we left off. Now Bond is about to talk about his newest and most exciting project. You see, Gary Halbert's greatest living legacy, besides his sons and students who carry on his work, is something that he created called the Gary Halbert Letter. It's a collection of newsletters that are available to read for free online at the Gary halbertletter.com It's one of the best educations in all marketing and has inspired thousands of people, including me. I seriously encourage you to go read every single one of these that you can. Now. Recently, Bond and his brother Kevin embarked on a really cool project to see if they could enlist the world's greatest copywriters to record themselves each taking a letter and not only reading that letter and recording it, but offering their own perspective on the lesson that Gary shared. And these are copywriters and marketing experts like Dan Kennedy and Gary Bensivenga, etc. And you'll hear Bond talk all about that here in just a moment. Now, this is called the Gary Halbert Letters All Star audio series, and it's available at thegarryhalbertletters.com stars. I highly recommend you check it out after the episode and there will be a link in the show notes. Now, Bond had just introduced the concept on the show and the audio went out on us. I mean, such as the nature of home podcasting. Right. But we're about to pick up here in just a second, and he's going to tell you how he and his brother started this project and where it's going next. So let's jump back in with Bond.

I was doing what I call a project exercise, which. Where I. It helps me refocus my energies because I list all the different projects I could do, and I put them through a formula with these variables, and it tells me exactly which one I should be working. And I been doing this, and then I remembered the project and I put it in there and it shot right to the top. It was like, you shouldn't be doing anything. But this first, it's evergreen. It's, you know, the probability of success is 100%. You can get it done and all this. So I just. And fortunately, everybody started doing podcasts, so I knew that a lot of these guys could actually had recording equipment and were set up to do that. So Kevin and I just said, let's. Let's mail a whole bunch of people and hope we get a. You know, we get half of them back. We got way more than half of them back. And what we got back was incredible. And, you know, when we, you know, when, you know, when we got Gary Benzavinga coming out of retirement, you know, to read one of my dad's letters and add commentary to it, it was fantastic. So we threw in a letter. The letter written read by Scott Haynes is actually. So it was only put out in the print version. And because sometimes my dad would, you know, maybe give a recommendation that he was no longer willing to make or something like that, and that's why a letter wouldn't get reposted, or he felt that maybe it said it better in a different letter or something like that. But there were some unposted letters that were really good, and we decided to throw that one in there. So people who don't even like audio, the audio version, and people who, you know, don't want to hear from anybody, and they're just. Gary only fans have something. And of course, all of us normal people who want to hear Ben Zavinga and Dan Kennedy and Carlton, David Deutsch and David Garfinkel and Schramko and Dale and all these people reading the letters really got a treat. And we have got nothing but rave reviews back about from people who've listened to them. They pop them in and get addicted.

Yeah, I'm going to be listening to them right away. So that's awesome. So to kind of sum that product up, you've got the Gary Halbert letter read by the all stars of copywriting and marketing in their own voice. But reading your dad and then adding their commentary to it, I mean that alone is so powerful because I guarantee they're finding the nuances and the little things that they took away from it. Like, yeah, if you're learning from Gary Vancabanka, if you're learning from Dan Kennedy or anybody else, these are all people who've been inspired and influenced or taught by your dad. It's so great to hear.

Yeah.

The genesis of some of their marketing.

Ideas they turned around. And we have a top copywriter himself who was our intro man, Kevin Rogers. And he was the only other guy besides Kevin and I that was privy to the recordings because we had to make him so he could figure out what he wanted to write or say for intros because we gave him a lot of leeway. Just fantastic. Any case, so he writes back to me and says, you know, these letters, it's like experiencing the whole thing all new over again because they, as they explained what their take from the letter was, you have a whole new take on the letter and you see everything in a different light because you see it from a different perspective. And you know, some of the guys shared stories that give you more in depth understanding of my dad and his personality. Other people added, you know, a bunch of lessons and how in translation how this, you know, the, this lesson they put it to use in their marketing today. You know, you know what, the input that came back was kind of all over the map. And so it's kind of like a great grab bag as well because you don't know if you're just going to be hearing a funny story or if you're going to get some really incredible, you know, marketing tactics and tips added or new insight or, you know, brand new way of looking at things. It is the only marketing or copyright copy related product I've ever, when I started listening to it that ever gave me goosebumps. I mean, I, you know, I've been around copywriters and copywriting material since I, you know, for over 35 years now. I am, you know, pretty much done to death with, I mean, I. Copywriting system. Like, are you kidding me? You want me to spend six hours looking for the one or two thing that you might say that I don't know, that's different.

Yeah.

You know. No, and it's not that they don't have different stuff. They do. It's just that I have seen so many. I have to go through a lot. And so I still do find great stuff in, you know, that I don't know, in other people's material. It's just that I have to go through so much of it. Not true. With this one. This is one where, you know, the. I've never been this excited about any copywriting or marketing related product ever. And I'm very, very, very proud that, you know, my, I'm part of the team that brought it out and put it, pulled it together.

Oh, for sure. And you know, the funny part is you've, you've grown up with these letters. This is not new to you, but it's the, it's, I guess, revisiting it in a way and with the nuances of everybody else that's, that's really cool that you can take something you're really super familiar with and get something brand new again.

We, this is the only, this is the only way we found out that you could actually improve the Gary Halbert letter. Yeah. You know, you leave it alone and you just add to it. And in some cases, you know, like even Joe Sugarman even disagreed with my dad on a point or two. Which is great because it shows you how candid and free and open these guys are. And they're, you know, surprisingly, they're just doing it to honor our father. So it's not like a pitch every single track or anything. There is none. You know, every, you know, maybe at the end they'll tell you how you can get ahold of them, but that, you know, everybody did this and came out to honor what my dad gave to the copywriting community. And you know, so I mean, you know, we, we're just glad to be a part of it, you know, And I always, I always joke, I say it's 13 of the world's greatest marketers and copywriters and me because, you know, these guys are just, you know, they're so fantastic and so great and, you know, I mean, if I was creating my dream team, that would be it.

Yeah.

These guys would be on it. But the other thing I want to point out this is just the beginning. This is really important because, you know, if you haven't seen favorite copywriters that we're intending to invite that don't even know they're on my list to invite. Okay. Because I have a lot. What we wanted to first do is make sure this batch was a hit, and it is. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, it was very well received, which it was. Or. Excuse me. Which it still is. And, you know, then we were going to. I have a batch of copywriters on deck that. That I just need to send letters to now that I know that it works. And now I'm going to start sending out invitations to people who. You know, some of the people. I don't even know them. I've never. Never met them or worked with them, but, you know, because of their work is so good, they're getting an invite. And that's the other thing. Back to, you know, being about the consumer. There are people on here I would love to invite that are, you know, that are professionals in their market and very good. It's just that if I can think of somebody who's better at this or knows more and can add better commentary or more for the. For the consumer, because I don't need. You know, this thing will sell itself. Yeah. You know, you could throw in a bad. You know, a bad commentary. As long as you're reading a Gary Halbert letter, it's gonna work. And, you know, people are gonna buy your album just because, you know, you got Kennedy or Carlton or Benzavinga or Michael Gerber. We got Michael Gerber.

Yeah. From the E. Myth.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, so it's not. It's not about. It's about making it as best as it can possibly be for the person who puts that disc in, you know, puts it on their ipod or puts the disc in the car. And, you know, and that's one of.

The ways to get it is. And I. I'm not wrapping up the conversation yet, but I definitely want to give people when they're like, crap, how do I get this? Right now, you can get it on from the itunes store. Is that correct?

Well, we made it available two places. This is one of those learning curves. We found out that not everybody's on itunes, so. But. But first, you can go to itunes, and it's not a podcast. It's under music and spoken word. But you just type in the Gary Halbert letters, and you will see all of it. Now there's two albums. They. They have a similar color at last minute we didn't know this, otherwise we would do it. The future versions will just have a different color background but by part one and two. And if you can also buy them straight away and get the portal to it@thegaryhalbertletter.com you'll see where to do it there. And if you buy both the part one and part two, then that will end and you go through my brother's convoluted bonus section that will entitle you to get a full copy of the other unreleased Gary Halbert letter called Tugboats. Okay, so we actually so this. So once you get, if you get both, you actually get two unpublished gear unposted. They were only published to a few people when it was in the print version. And then also we add bonuses to that. Jay Abraham just gave us a bunch of content. He's going to allow us to give away his bonuses to people who buy as well. So as we add bonuses to that bonus page, anybody who's ever bought in the past will be entitled to them. So do that now. If you do not like itunes because they charge you twice as much when you're in Australia or you have an Android phone, you want to go to halbertizing.com with an S H-A L B E R T I S I N G.com and that's where you can just download it direct from our site and you know, without going through itunes.

Nice. And I'll, and I'm definitely going to put links on the show notes and you know, on the, on the website so you can, folks can go get it. And I definitely encourage you to. I'm going to be listening to these. I know what I'm going to. This is going to be my drive time entertainment from now on, at least for a while until I get through them. But I want to, I want to digress over to another topic real quick. And you had mentioned right before we jumped on the phone how one of the things your dad like, he's known for copywriting and whatnot. But what his, what he always thought was the most important thing, the thing that he felt biggest about and you agreed as well, is the big idea. And I'd love for you to explain a little bit more to the audience about the importance of the big idea and your concept. Because the Big idea is like kind of a nebulous term. How can, what does it mean to you? How can people use that in their own business?

Okay, it's really, it's pretty simple. Concept. I'm going to explain, give a lesson that my dad gave, because, you know, my dad gave. I sat there and watched. My dad gave this original lesson to me and then refine it after years and years. And he just got these lessons down to such a degree that you really can't improve upon it. But here's, here's in essence what it is. You know, people would come to my dad and try and learn copywriting and he would give them a wordsmithing lesson and tell them, you know, how to begin their copy or how to close and stuff like that. And pretty quickly, when they felt like, okay, I'm getting some of that, he would start to teach them what was important. And what was important was not that it was the big idea. In fact, I had since I started the project, I had my choice of letter. I was the very. I could choose any letter I wanted for my participation in the project. And the one I chose was the big. I feel that that's the most important lesson my father taught. Now, there are other ones that he put it so well and creatively, people understood it so good that the lesson became more famous. Okay, but that was the lesson that I took to heart the most. And it was basically this. Your message in the copywriting is two separate things. Your message is the big idea is in your offer, your unique hooks and in your ideas and your spin and things like that. But it's not actually the way that you word it that counts as much as the message itself. The example my dad would like to give is imagine a guy, his wife is pregnant and he's really excited about this. So he, you know, he's got a special cell phone just to be called for that. And he's, you know, he's even using an old school pager and he has everybody in office and all of his secretary and assistants know that they're supposed to page him right away if there's any news on the front of his wife having kids and his mother in law's got all the numbers to, of every place that they're supposed to call and, and so that he can be found 24 hours a day. And he's sitting in a boardroom meeting, but the baby, unbeknownst to him, the baby was born or he became a new dad. And the assistant comes bursting into the room. And the assistant, he says, hey, guess what? Your wife just had twins. Or hey, buddy, your wife gave birth to two kids or you're twice a father. It doesn't make a difference how he puts that the news is what's going to get him to stand up and go, hurrah and shake it up. So it's the big idea. It's the concept that is actually the most. The message and the offer are far more important than worrying about the exact way that you word things. One of the hardest things that newbie writers learn to do is write things and keep writing, even though. And not to try and rephrase and reword the last sentence over and over again, because you just get stuck there doing that. But as you learn to write copy, you go, okay, I'm just going to keep writing and getting that message out the way that I would speak it and the way that I would say it. And then I'll come back and edit it and smooth it out and do all of the other good stuff. And like I said from the beginning, all your power in your copywriting comes from the research and knowledge. That's where the big idea comes from. And the example I like to give is, look at Domino's Pizza. They understood that their market is sick and tired of not knowing if their pizza is coming in 15 minutes or 45 minutes. So they started the campaign, you know, 30 minutes or it's free, right? And they could have said half an hour or it's on us, you know, you know, under 30 minutes, or you get it for free. You know, they could have worded that any way that they wanted to. It didn't really make as much of a difference as the creative offer these guys made. That was the big idea that made the entire company what it is. They don't do it anymore. But that campaign built Domino's Pizza, and it was the big idea. And the big idea came from the research and understanding the market. Now the professionalism, the talent comes in, taking all that info and that research and being able to see a really good spin or a hook. For example, I did the boron letters. I wanted to promote them one time to my list. I wrote an email, and the subject of subject line was, thank God my dad went to prison, right? And then I said, you know, explain. Look, my dad was teaching me marketing early, early on. And if it wasn't for these letters, I wouldn't have proof of this incredible education I got so early in life. So I tied it in, and then it told them all about the letters and promoted the bar on letters. It was, you know, that opening rate on that was really insanely high. And it was creative, right? But it was the. Here was the big idea. It was that spin on it right now. I could have reworded and played around with the best wording I could on the inside, you know what I'm saying? But it really wouldn't have changed the overall effect that that campaign had. And so the, you know, the talent will come in, taking that information and all that stuff and coming up with a really cool new twist and hook. And you can just, you know, like I said, like, we're going back to what we said. If you're newer and you're just working on your business, you can borrow a hook from that. You've seen otherwise.

So let's say, let's say I was sitting down and I was coming up with a. With a. Trying to come up with a big idea for a new product that I'm coming out with. And I'm sitting there, pen, pen in hand, paper on the desk, and I'm trying to begin to formulate the big idea. Do you have a. Do you have a rule of thumb or general formula that you start off with in most cases in order to begin the process of finding a big idea? Because, I mean, that can take years to be, to be really proficient at. But is there a way for somebody who's kind of just starting out to say, okay, this is how I'm going to. This is where I'm going to look for my big idea.

Okay, I will give you some tips and I will give you some guidelines. And the one thing I do want to say, though, is you're, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I don't mean to sound egotistical at all, but I grew up with my focus being the big idea because everybody. I sat there for years listening to people say, hey, Gary, how would you promote this? And I would say, okay, he's going to say this or that. And I would eventually became the best in the world at predicting what he would say and far better than anyone else because I knew him and the way he thought and it was so in depth. But when it came to big ideas and seeing things and it comes, you know, because I started that so early, it's kind of like asking Michael Jackson, how do you come up with beats to your music? Because it's like, you know, after a while, it became so natural. It was hard for me to answer this question, but I have figured out ways to help answer it.

Cool.

Okay. One is get off, off your desk. That is the last place you're going to discover a marketing idea or have a brilliant brainstorm. You're better off taking A shower. You're even far better off going for a walk and getting your, you know, exercising and all that. My dad would train people to take all your research in, suck it all up, absorb it and then try and forget about it. Go do your laundry, go boating, go do something else.

Let your subconscious work on it.

Absolutely.

You know, real quickly when you just said this shower thing so. Because that's like a lot of people, that's where I do my best brainstorming. And I bought the coolest little shower gadget. It's called Aqua Notes.

Oh, brilliant.

Have you ever heard of this?

No, but I can tell you just from seeing the names. Good enough. I know exactly what it does.

Yeah. And it looks like, it looks like a post it pad, like a big post it pad and a pencil. But the pencil writes perfectly under the water. It erases. It is amazing. And then you can peel them off dries super quick. Take it with you. Yeah, you can buy them on Amazon. Aquanotes. It was like the coolest invention ever anyway.

No, but it's absolutely true because in the shower you're distracted enough but you're not. So you know, you can't, you're not going to have a great brilliant idea in a brainstorm in the middle of a really exciting, fast action paced movie. Right. You want. So the other thing I'd like to add or is that you should do something that distracts you but allows you to think like walking along the beach. The thing that I would say is there's a little cheat you can do which is look for them in other industries. Because see, in direct marketing we could. You know, I use this example all the time. If I created a campaign called the Wealthy Bastard that's just a ripoff of the rich jerk. Right. Okay. So. And you see people doing that kind of, that kind of thing and it doesn't have that unique flavor to it anymore when the guy's just like, look, I'm a, you know, I'm a proud prick, you know. And they, and I still see people doing it now, but nobody. But it's not getting the traction that the rich jerk did. And, but if you turned around and you take some of the things that you see in other campaigns or in other medias and you see, start applying it, you start to see things and it opens up a world that of like goodies. It's like a, you know, that you can pick off of like fruit off of a tree. So if I'm driving in the radio, you know, and I hear on the radio I heard some advertisement or not an advertisement. It was actually a, like a commentary or, you know, the guy was speaking, it wasn't an ad. And the guy said, you know, it's better than free cash. And I was like, that line's great. I love it. You know, And I'm like, I can use better than free cash because what's better than free cash and giving you something that just automatically helps you make cash? And so that I incorporated into something and you see that. But with hooks and big ideas, it's a similar thing. So, for example, let's go with the 30 minutes or less or it's free. What if you can turn around and say, look, in my industry, copywriting, a lot of people, they don't want to wait. They want to know when the piece is done and you have to deliver and stuff. I'll have your, I'll have your copy camera ready in two weeks or it's free. Okay. I'm not saying that's an example I give in my commentary, but it's not the perfect hook, but it certainly sounds a lot more unique and better and something interesting than the stuff that you're hearing everybody else redo and everybody else is doing the same thing. Hey, I just got three spaces left in my group or just opened up. They're all identical. How about pick up something that somebody else did? How about, you know, go get a, you know, our space was, you know, you know, you can charity auction off one of your spaces in your mastermind group, you know, or we opened it up just for that reason because half the money is going to this charity give a different hook, a different angle that's, you know, from something else that you saw. That's a good way to borrow it without, you know, and the other thing is it's not going to really upset the other person that you've got borrowed it from. You know, the dominoes gonna get very mad when you start doing the half an hour delivery of their pizza or it's free. They don't care about it if it's a book, right?

Yeah. You're not, you're not even doing it with food. You're not doing it there. I love doing cross industry brainstorming and doing exactly that. Like, I get a lot of my ideas from doing the exact same thing.

I get pulled in as an idea guy in masterminds all the time and paid to do them. And I'll tell you if, if you're in business, you should have two different kinds of mastermind groups to be in one should be everybody who's in the exact same business. You are the answers to problems that you are already going through right now. Somebody in there has figured out how to get a good merchant account that's stable. Somebody in there has figured out how to target the local market better than the international market. These people have figured out solutions to problems. You have. But the other group you want to be in is in a group of people where nobody's in the same industry because they will share ideas that are brilliant and great and working and you know, proven to have some kind of power that the other people in your industry have not even paying attention to. And so you want to join, you know, you want to have. I think it's more important to have, you know, to be in those two types of groups and understand those two relationships because you know, when you're, like I said, when you're in a group with everybody's, you know, in the same business and everything, you know, nobody wants to share the super big idea that's making them the dominant leader. You know, it's competitors, but they will share the. Oh, I solved this by doing that.

It's funny, I was having this conversation with somebody two days ago about masterminds and we were talking about exactly that and we're talking about, you know, there's a, there's very niche or very focused masterminds where you know, recently invited to one that it was just for people like information marketers in the personal development niche or folks in the real estate investment niche. They have all real estate investors. A friend of mine runs the collective genius and it's four times a year and it's all real estate investors doing big deals. And that's great because they get exactly like you said, they get the information that is very, very pertinent to them. But unless they're in something else, they're only going to get that narrow sliver. They're not going to be able to get those, you know, strikes lightning.

There's no. Yeah, the thinking out of the box comes from masterminding with different types of people. You know, thinking out of the box comes from traveling and going outside the norm. And it goes, and it goes from experimenting and throwing stuff against the wall. That's, that's, that's a big, big key.

One of my, one of my favorite books is you can get it on Amazon. It's called Borrowing Brilliance. And it really, it's like a six step process on how to, you're really combining the ideas of others in order to Solve your problems. But he goes through a six step process. I don't remember the six steps off the top of my head, but it really is okay. This is the challenge I'm trying to have. Well, who else and what other industry may be having that challenge? And who else and what other industry may have this other solution? How can you mix, match, combine? And he's like, so many companies, so many major, major brands have innovated by borrowing brilliance. You know, everybody, Microsoft, you name them.

But you don't stand out when you borrow from your, your competitors brilliance as much as when you borrow brilliance from somewhere further off. And it's, it's. You know, my dad, you know, I always feel bad because my dad used to call it swipe files. When he would say, you know, take that, swipe it for your file. He was actually talking about swipe it out of the paper and stick it for your file. Not swipe and steal the copy.

Yeah, don't just swipe it and sell it. It's.

Well, yeah, no, people came to him and they would say look, check this out, I swiped your copy and you know, I just re changed, change the name of the business and all this. My dad would cuss them out. Yeah, and for good reason. You know, no, you're just intellectual property thief is what you're doing there. And also again, you will not. You know, that's going to work a lot better than, that's going to work better than I sitting down. I'm sitting down. I've never written it out and I don't know what I'm doing. Never even been through a course. But it is never going to be as good as the original innovator of the idea. But it's unnecessary. And you know what my dad was really trying to explain was look, you inundate yourself with all these headlines and all these different closing ideas and angles and different bullets and takeaways and different orders and structures. My favorite thing is people who go seeing people use one single theme with the same flow for every single thing they ever write. They're really, it's like they're just mad lib copywriters and they get a modicum of results but they, they never get the massive one because you know, the human brain is the best spam filter seen there done that without you even thinking about it. It's a subconscious thing. You know, my dad taught to get your email, your mail open. You know, you don't want a window envelope and a bulk rate stamp or anything that was telling your human Brain, the spam, human spam filter of junk mail. That this is garbage, right? That this isn't something you want.

Yeah. It immediately knows. It immediately red flags it. That's.

Yeah. For me, the minute I see. The minute I see a standard, you know, and I'm not knocking them because it's a great way to. Great place to begin, but a standard WSO sales letter, you know, it's. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find the real price, scroll into the middle of the bullets to see what it's about. And that's where everybody's going. And then every, you know, and, and that, and I'm not against that. I still put in what it's about, subheads and bullets and things like that in the copy that I do. But I mix it up. I don't even try and look like my dad all the time. So, for example, you notice on the sales page for the All Star audio series, which is garyhalbertletter.com stars, you'll see that I have the biggest titles are actually questions moved over to the left. And it's more like an article, who was Gary Halbert? Why? What makes the audio series so special? You know, things like that. So that if you're already Gary Halbert fan, you don't care about who was Gary Halbert. You scroll right down to the information you want. But it's a lot less than the, you know, it's, it's not formatted the same way that I format most of my stuff for the way my dad formatted his stuff. And it's because, you know, one thing I will disagree with my dad on is I don't believe there are absolutes in marketing. There, you know, there are some cases where jingles were brilliant, some of them were lame, you know, and I did an experiment with a friend of mine. I said, you know, hey, they said, I'm gonna give you two jingles and I want you to tell me what the products are for. And I said, okay, you know, what's Plop plop fizz fizz?

Alka Seltzer.

Alka Seltzer. What's. I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

Oh, you're so right. I can hear it. I can see that.

You know them both really well, but you can. But so, so some of. So you know, the plop plop fizz fizz. Oh, what a relief. That jingle was worth millions of dollars to that company. Because whenever, whenever you think about, oh, I need, you know, what are those tablets where people drop Them and then you put it in the water and you go. Everybody goes and gets Alka Seltzer. It's so well done, right? Okay, but the other one, the other one is in your brain, but it's useless. Dollar wise.

What is it? What is it? You're killing me, man.

I'd say that, to be honest with you. And I don't even remember I actually met the guy who wrote that thing. But I can't remember if it's Tums or Alka cells. I can't remember. In fact, I'd have to Google it. And you know what? But I don't want to know simply because I can still tell people to this day. I don't know. But the point is, you remember the jingle, but it didn't add value to it, right? And I saw somebody else and they got really mad at me because, you know, David Ogilvy did this great ad and I, you know, well, I think it's a great ad on Rolls Royce. You know, why you would buy a Rolls Royce? And he, you know, the copy, I read it and I thought the copy is really, really good. But the only reason I say I think it's good is I've never heard number on it, right? I've never heard them say, you know, And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that if he could say this increased rolls Royce's business 200% that year, he would make that claim, right?

That's great.

When he says it's one of his greatest ads and biggest successes, there's one thing that's true. It was one of the ads that was very successful in getting him more ad accounts. Now, I'm not saying, don't send me the hate mail. I think the ad is great. I do. But the difference between thinking an ad is great and knowing an ad is great is in the numbers you see, right? You know, and it's comparing that ad to what else they could have put in that paper for a Rolls Royce ad at the time. And so I remember one time, it was like on a forum or something, I'm like, you know, but how do we know this is great? You know, I mean, has anybody seen any numbers on it and stuff like that? And you know, that just, you know what may, you know, it's like when you say one of those things that makes people think of it in a new light, but in a true way that they hate, you know, they just hate. They come back with you with all this anger. But the fact is, you know, you didn't know whether or not it was a, it was a true winner or not. But I think, you know, I mean, I looked at the copy and I was like, it's brilliantly written. There's no, there's no doubt about it. But it, you know, and this is a, you know, just because something goal is to get sales, right? Your goal is to make sure that you pull in a lot more money than you invest. When you're buying trash, that's when you really have a business, you know, that, you know, if I get leads with this kind of target demographic and I can get them for this amount of money or less, then I can drive the traffic and they will convert to this. And this is the bottom dollar I can expect. You know, when you build a system like that, it's about the numbers. You're in the numbers business and the psychology is about, you know, you know, the proof is you have an idea, you test it, and the proof is in that number and how it comes out. So when you don't see that number, nothing means anything really. You know, that this, that ad was very successful for David Ogilvy. I have no doubt it was. I do not know how successful it was for Rolls Royce. I do believe it was successful. Again, no hate mail. No hate mail. But it's the numbers that make the difference. And tell me the truth. And so, you know, but again, I don't. I disagree with my dad on a lot of some things, like. And I don't believe that there are absolutes and, you know, I think plot, plot, floppy fizz fizz, you know, has made a lot of people switch and choose Alka Seltzer and choose that in the supermarket than other than their competitors, I don't even know they're great competitors. But I believe it's, it's about the end result and it's measuring that and you find what does work. And again, back to what we were saying in the middle of this is, you know, you find out what works, you dissect why it works, you try and replicate it. And if it replicates and it does work work, you did do it right and try, you know, so when you go out and you look at other industries and you know, you're borrowing an idea from the auto industry to apply to your info business, it feels a lot fresher and looks a lot fresher to all the prospects because the human body is, you know, the human brain didn't just filter it out then say, well, you know, I like that jingle, but I really don't Care about that other message so that your brain didn't filter that out. And so it looks fresh and it has a. And it's got some sort of proof that it works because it worked as a selling technique. Now it's not definitive proof, but it's a good indicator. So if you're going to borrow brilliance, borrow it from outside of your industry. Now the other tip that I'm going to give you is this. Dig into your stories. I create basically a questionnaire that is who, what, where, when, why and how that you first ask about your, you know, the client, the product, the industry and its origins, its development, its failures, everything. So you know to dig out until you find some interesting fact, you have to dig it out of clients. Now for me, I just go through building a product and I've discover stuff like I'm going through putting the Gary Halbert Letter All Star audio series together. I'm like, hey, wait a minute. This is the largest collection of copywriters I've ever seen in the world. There's a hook, right? Hey, these guys give. Kevin Rogers tells me about this, giving it a whole new dimension. It's like experiencing the first time again. Credit him. And I got another hook. They come up like that. But I'm on the lookout or sensitive to it. When you are doing it, you need to ask these questions about your product. And. And then the key is to ask the same questions again about those answers. So if you say this industry, who was it started by? Okay, this is who started the industry? It was Claude Hopkins or Thomas hall or something. Why did he start it? Oh, okay, well, Thomas hall did. Where did he start it? It was back in thing when and how. And then you find out this is when he started it. Well, why did he start it then? You know, I mean, and you can't fill these all out out. The goal is not to fill them all out, but the deeper you dig and dig and dig into the facts and the assets and the development and the industry and the results and the clients and their experiences and the reviews and you dig all of this stuff out and you start applying that insane curiosity to everything you will eventually find on some pretty unique and cool fact, right? So the other tip I gave you is for more or less like creating good offers, right? You know, borrowing good offers from other industries as well. This would be more for hooks and angles. The other thing I will teach people is go to the news and you know, you have to apply a marketer's thing, but the news will come up with Stories you would never even think about. There was a groove, you know, I hate to say it was a gruesome story I just heard about, about a guy in New York City who, you know, who offed himself in the most weird way. He wrapped a chain around a pole and then got into a convertible, wrapped the chain around himself, his own neck, drove. And again, I don't mean to be total. I don't live on the dark side, but he picture he decapitated himself this way. And I just read about it, right? I mean, like yesterday or the day before, about it. That's why it was on my mind. And it's like, wow, you know, I mean, and the, you know, and the. The whole idea could then spawn this concept of, you know, of a drawing. I'm not talking about a sick drawing about somebody hurting themselves or killing themselves, but a sick drawing where a guy is trying. Not a sick drawing, but a drawing of where a guy is trying to get somewhere on his horse or driving and he. And his neck is still tied to a pole. And you say, you know, does it feel like every time you're trying to get somewhere that you're just hurting yourself further, you know, or ever get this feeling, you know, and then you go into, you know, this is how to not knock. Keep knocking yourself. That's a great image thing, right? And I'm, by the way, I'm just ripping this off the top of my head right now. The idea is that would be a very compelling image for, you know, to grab attention as long as you can, you know, hook it into something. But the point I'm trying to make is news comes up with these most unique, insane, dark side, you know, appeal to human nature type of stories that when you can model those, as opposed to modeling the editorial of an ad, you know, real stories, you know, you get a lot, a lot of new ideas for hooks and angles and headlines, right?

Well, in the news, love it or hate it, that's one thing. They've been, you know, for the past 150 years, or however long they've really been. Newspapers is they work on angles and getting viewers and getting eyeballs and getting your attention.

You know, I won't tell you all of them, but there is. I put together a product one time with a friend of mine. He just recorded me explaining this. But there's the news sources are not all created equal. And I'll give you one that's really good. Go to the National Enquirer and go to their celebrity section, okay? And you'll look at their, their headlines that are about their celebrities. Now, these aren't. There are other sources that are better for businesses in general and different campaigns, but this one is particularly good for any businesses that are centered about a human being branded around a person or even just a brand. Okay. And it's. And if you follow them, they will, you know, they'll say something like, you know, the, you know, Jennifer Aniston shocking Summer Vacation Expo, you know, confession. Right. And so, you know, this turns into, you know, Bon Halbert shocking email confession. Right. You get the curiosity that comes off from that. Now that again, I'm not looking at the site right now on my computer or anything, but, you know, then you will add marketing techniques to it. So, for example, with subject lines, I like curiosity and some sort of. I like to add numbers to everything. Yeah, right. So, you know, you know, bon halberd shocking 2014 email confessions, you know, confessions of his email marketing in 2014, or the three main confessions and stuff. And I like to take things on the dark side is too, which is what the news does.

You know, it's what I mean, they say sex sells, but really, I mean, the dark side, people have a macabre sense of curiosity and it's. Is it awful?

I'd still go with sex over the macabre.

But I mean, it's those things that, that get somebody's attention. And that's really the first thing you have to do is you have to, you have to get their attention. You have to stop them in their tracks and get them to pay attention to you before you take them anywhere.

Else and to understand that you have to admit to yourself stuff that you don't want to admit. So, for example, nobody, you know, every. The truth is I could tell you the seven, you know, seven breakthrough email marketing techniques I developed in 2014, or I could tell you, you know, the seven incredibly shameful things I learned in two while I spent2014 in prison. You want to know about what I learned in prison and it doesn't benefit you at all. The fact is you have to understand that. So back to that. So what test we were talking about when you're applying that. So what test you have to be that honesty helps there because you turn around and say to yourself, well, yeah, this is what they care about more. And you have to be honest and say, look, I care about gossip. You know, you. The. If you're on Facebook, the posts that you look in and check the most are the ones where people are fighting.

Yep. It's Just human nature. It's the way we work, it's the way we are.

If you can admit that that's how you are. I always tell people, I said, I am not arrogant and I'm not. I just think that everybody else is as screwed up as I am the way I believe. So I don't, you know, I. So I have no problem saying, oh, you're gonna love this. Because it's all gossip and dirty and salacious. Because I like dirty and salacious gossip.

I think, you know, most people's lives, even people that you see, is probably having the most exciting lives. We all face the mundane and usually our lives are very mundane. We go about our daily business, we do the things. And it's those things that aren't mundane. It's those things that are either shocking or, you know, extremely curiosity inducing. Whether it has to do with sex or the macabre or something, something just outrageous that you've never heard of before. It's. It's what grabs eyeballs and you can't.

The incongruent. Yeah, you know, you're, you. It is what stands out. You know, if you're on a freeway, there's two cars that you pay the most attention to, the one that's dead stopped and going 20 miles an hour while everybody.

120.

Yeah, well, everybody's doing 70. It is the different. It's the difference that gets the attention. It is, you know, and so that's what it is. So, you know, for a while, everybody's agreeing with, you know, some guru and then somebody comes out and, and wants to, you know, bashes them and they get a whole bunch of attention. All of a sudden, pretty soon people pick up on that and they go, hey, let's go. You know, guru bashing. And then it gets so old and lame. He pays attention to them.

Yep. Years ago, I had a information product in the general dating advice industry. And I was brainstorming with another friend of mine and I came up with. I never did anything with this, but I always was trying to zag when everybody else is zigging and came up with a hook that I thought would be fun, which is like, you know, like dating advice or pickup or seduction advice, whatever, for good looking guys who don't need it, that general concept, you know, like, because normally it's going, hey, listen, this will work for you if you're fat, bald, ugly, overweight, all this other stuff. I was like, well, what if we came up with one that was like, you know how to pick up Chicks for great looking dudes. Because my theory there was, number one, nobody wants to admit, admit to themselves that they're ugly or that they're not worthy. I mean they may feel that way but they don't want to admit it, number one. Number two, nobody's marketing to this group of good looking guys. And if somebody buys this, like if I don't consider myself attractive but I buy this, it's almost like I'm getting to peer into this. Or maybe I get to be considered a good looking guy too because I'm buying it and the whole thing is really like, yeah, just don't be a douchebag. You've already got everything else you need. Don't drop the ball. It's a one page, it's a one page info product. Don't talk too much.

Well, but let me ask you this. How many of the guys who think, oh, I'm really good looking, how many of them do you think don't pick up women who are interested in it, you know?

So that was one of my biggest, that was one of my other biggest reasons because I've got some buddies of mine who I guess are married now, but they were really good looking guys, but better looking than myself. And we'd go out and girls would actually approach them because they were good looking but they had absolutely no game, for lack of a better word. They would either just talk about themselves, they would be meatheads or whatever and they would drop the ball. More importantly, when they saw a guy, they were, I guess, vain. When they saw a guy who wasn't as attractive as them, maybe they had a balding hairline, maybe they were a little overweight and they had a girl that they wanted, they would get pissed. It would just dig at them like, what's he got that I don't have? Oh, he must be rich, he must be this. And they took it really, really personal because they felt I'm a really good looking guy, I should be able to get any girl. And it would be so easy to just twist a knife, you know, in that one. Like, hey, listen, you've got everything you need, you've got everything. But there's one thing you're missing and that's what's causing all that pain. But I really, I thought about using that as a big idea is going after, you know, a product for guys who consider themselves great looking simply because nobody else was doing it.

I'm going to agree and disagree. One, I think that particular angle is a terrible idea.

Another reason I didn't do it. But we were talking about zigzag.

Let me give you a spin on it though. I think that might work.

Yeah.

Which is this. It's, you know, you can, you can't get. See somebody might say I think I'm good looking or they might think I'm, you know, I'm very smart or I'm clever, I'm, you know, this or that. But it's something that there are things that people will not admit to themselves even though they really do believe it or think it or wish it was true. There are, you know, for example, I use Rolex watches for these examples. For these examples, if you're spending, you know, like I did, I went out and bought a Rolex watch one time. That's I think it was 3,600 bucks. Right. And if you're spending $3,600 on a watch, it's not just to know the time, the clock works. Well, in a way, you're sort of showing off. There's no doubt about that. You're also.

I do wear a Rolex, so I'm happy to say I'm happy when people notice it. So.

Well, the reason, one of the reasons everybody picks a Rolex there it's so popular is if you're into it, you start to, you know, people know that, you know, nobody knows what the other watches are. They don't. They, you know, you could wear a hundred and fifty thousand dollars Patek Philippe and nobody's gonna recognize what you've got on your wrist.

Everybody knows. A little bubble on the glass.

Yeah. And they know, they, you know, the Submariner, you know, was a very popular watch. And you know, I felt I was leaning towards the Submariner. What happened with me was I was actually looking at a Rolex watch I owned that my father gave me and I was marveling at how beautifully well made it was. And I was like, you know, I'd really like a really nicely well made watch like this that's not all gold. And a beacon, you know. And I wear mine, my all gold beacon watch too, because I'm proud of it. My dad gave it to me, but so I went and bought the Submariner. My name being Bond. It seemed like the opposition. Great freaking excuse, right? But the point is this. You learn in the watch industry, you don't learn to say, you know, get this, because all your friends will know that you've got money. You don't say that. What you do is you, you know, you spin it in a way that says, you know, and My dad did a great job of this. He actually wrote a newsletter about it, which is, you know, when people see the fact that I'm wearing a Rolex, they don't try and think they can buy me for a hundred bucks.

Okay, very subtle difference.

Okay, well, yeah, it's very subtle difference. That makes all the difference in the world.

I mean, a very subtle touch. That's, I think what I wanted to say. Touch that makes all the difference.

That's what the talent part is, you know, that my dad had. And I, you know, I actually, I was, I. When John Carlton, I told the story the other day once, but John Carlton was, we were talking about it when I bought my Submariner and he's like, you know, why would you spend so much money on a watch? And I instantly came up with what I think is the very best on the fly piece of BS I've ever come up with, which is I turned around, I said, because having an expensive watch reminds me that my time is valuable. I was like, I was like, oh, that should be in an ad.

I like it.

Yeah. You know, the truth of the matter is I have to recognize and realize that, you know, the stage it makes to other people is more important. Now, the statement, there's a lot of statements it makes. Some of them are far more egotistical than my statement that I want to make. And some of them are a lot more legitimate than the egotistical statement I might want to make. But the point is you need to understand the market and then what the true goal is and what the people will admit to themselves, what they won't admit to themselves. So if you're selling a role, actually have to say, look, 400 working man hours went into this in the precision, Unlike, you know, 99% of all mechanical watches, these are accurate to within five seconds a day. And you don't need a battery, you know, which won't die on you in the middle of your dive trip or, you know, and you create all of these excuses that the prospect can now give to his wife and his friends to defend his purchase at the bar. So you think, you know, understanding the prospect on that level is going to really help and you know, the talent's going to help you come up with the hook and the angle of it. But I think the, you know, I think when it comes down to, let's take your example of the good looking men, if you turned around, I think you would have something with. If you turn around and say, how to know when a woman is hitting on you okay? Because now I don't have to admit that I. Well, you know that I don't have to admit that I'm good looking. And even bad looking guys who aren't looking great, they eventually like them and they were just oblivious to it because they were insecure and thought nobody liked them. So you get a wider swath, but you're also attracting that group of guys because good looking guys find out later that some girl was hitting on them. And the reason is my mom taught me this. Good looking people get invited to parties and don't have to develop a personality as much as people who aren't attractive or shorter or people who feel insecure about the way they are, they work harder on a personality. And that's why so many pretty people are boring as hell. It's not that they're stupid, they're just boring. They never had to develop that skill, that character trait. Yeah, they don't have to develop that. And so, but it, but so a good looking guy who gets hit on by women is going to find out later that oh, that girl liked you, as other people pointed out. And one of the things they want to know is how to know if a girl actually is really into you or not. Right. So they even that book how to know if they're into you or he's not just, you know, he's just not into you. That's the angle of it. And then actually you just, excuse me, you come up with a quick solution for that. So the big idea of that, I actually have told somebody. This one time somebody asked me, I forget it might have been. Anyway, one of my friends asked me, how do you tell if a girl is interested or ready to be kissed or something? I said it's actually pretty simple. Human beings have a natural comfort zone that you have with people. So you'll find somebody's very touchy feely and they're just touching everybody's arms when they talk to them and they hug everybody and everybody gets a kiss and everything. And then other people are like, you know, three feet is my comfort zone. If you get closer, I'll back up. Right. When a girl is ready or open to you, she will allow that distance to close somewhat. Okay? So you can't, you know. So if a woman is always basically standing two feet away from almost everybody she talks to, but she's within six inches, guess what? She's into you. If a woman is putting her hands all over everybody, that means that you do not have a green light to, you know, to Start making out with her.

Yeah.

And this, I don't mean I'm speaking from the guy side. This is of course true with men as well, ladies, you know, but the relationship thing. And see, that's what, you know, being a marketer is about understanding and being a student of people. And my father was a great persuader in person and I turned into a pretty good persuader in person. I could get people at the DMV to break rules for me and do things for me. There were, you know, stuff like that. And people will tell me, oh, you can schmooze anybody. Well, that's, you know, copy is just telling people what I'm thinking or saying or would be saying if you were in front of my face.

You just have to understand people what makes it tick, how to push the of buttons, in what order. Yeah. I mean, it applies to both copy as well as interpersonal relationship and how.

They'Re different, what they care about and all this other stuff. You know, when I put together the Gary Halbert Letter All Star audio series, I pull out all the stops to get these guys to say yes. I put in, you know, I give them very clear instructions that make it so that their part will take it, be as easy as possible to fulfill. And a lot of them are just doing it to optimize my dad and just because, you know, he's a good guy. Yeah. Loving the fact that they're getting branded next to some of the legends and some of them love the fact, you know, but the point is I pull out all the stops so that everybody on the series has a really good reason to do it beyond just the normal reason. And. And I don't know what percentage do what, but I know that I'm doing my best to cover all the bases and go for all the angles for why, if I was one of them, I would want to do it.

Yeah. That's amazing.

Marketing is anything where. I'm sorry, but marketing is anything where you getting somebody else help or to do something is going to benefit you. So it's about human relationships. It's not just writing.

Yeah. And it's. Yeah. The more you understand the other person, the more you can empathize, put yourself in their shoes, the more you can understand how to build that persuasive architecture. That's not about manipulation. It's not about, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, the best marketers in the world, they're not manipulators. People have gotten bad names for, you know, some pretty shady tactics in the past, but the at the end of the day, like you said, it's about human nature. It's about understanding what makes them tick.

Yeah.

Giving it to them. So, you know, a couple more questions here, you know. Well, number one, when you are building a. Because I'm always curious about this from other copywriters. I. I'm not a professional copywriter on my own, but I've copywritten all of my own stuff and it's been one of the areas that I, I do enjoy and hate at the same time. I think all copywriters have a love hate relationship with it. But when you sit down to, to craft out copy for yourself, do you start, do you kind of have a general ritual? Do you start with bullets like I've heard some copywriters do? Do you start with the headline? I mean, obviously the big idea, if you can come up with, with that in the beginning. But are there any tricks of your trade?

Personally, I have to have the big idea in my head.

Yeah.

I do this completely opposite of the way that my dad did it for different reasons. My dad was actually old school. So back in the day you had to go and have your copy or your first draft typed out by a very expensive typist. And then to do revisions was lengthy. Took a lot. You know, took all day to, to get the revision back. This before word processors. So he learned to perfect his pitch, the entire thing in his head. So when he sit down and write a piece of copy, it required like two or three edits, right? Yeah. Well, it took 30 days to perfect that pitch. And he could only work on really one masterpiece at a time. The way that I do it is I get the good, the big idea and I get the message of what I want to tell somebody. And the offer, you know, the offer I want to make. And I just sit down and just start writing and start pumping it out right from the very beginning. I. Not always. Sometimes the headline stands out, sometimes I'm doing that without the headline and the headline I know is going to come out like later. And then so I pump out that first draft, which will look radically different from my final piece. And the bullets are something that I actually work on completely separately and add into now. Bullets are already in my head because they're in my nugget notes, which is the whole research process. So before I sat down to write, all of those would be already rambling around in my head and those thoughts. And if one of them looked like it was a good headline, it would be the headline. And any points that they were making might be incorporated in the copy. But I just sit down there and I start writing and writing and writing and I write it to, you know, and I write in the, you know, feel the rhythm and all this other stuff. And you know, you keep going and then you get to the end of the piece and then I put it in and I go through a very long formulated editing process which will include reviewing the notes and seeing what points I may have not slipped in there, rearranging the timing of things, you know, and I have. I mean, I really should do a course on this because the editing process is where all the professionalism in your copywriting comes from. Amateurs will have a great piece of copy that starts off and falls apart because they don't edit in a complete pass. What they do is they start reading and then they find an error and they correct it and go back and start reading again from the beginning. And then by the time they get to the bottom, the top has been looked at and reviewed 20 times and the bottom has got. Twice. Yeah, still got typos in it. So the. But anyway, so. But there's a long process that. And some of it's stuff that I do. I know I'm the only one that does it. And the other stuff is stuff that all the real pros do, like read their copy aloud to find the spots where it doesn't flow and you know, do a. That hunt and you know, go and remove like 90% of the instances where they use the word that and breaking up sentences and you know, finding a, a word that's of a. That's of a more base level vocabulary and all that kind of stuff. So I will write. So I will go and get my nugget notes, do my research, walk the beach, do all these things till I get a really. The good idea, the big idea. Then I will sit down and start pounding out that copy and I will refine it, go over it, refine it, you know, edit and keep doing that up until deadline time. And you know, again, that's, that's my process. Now as far as my, you know, the real question I think that you're trying to answer, Ask. Which everybody wants to know about is your routine and how you get into the mode, you know, to write. And the, the answer is a routine. The one thing you'll find all professional copywriters who do a good amount of work do is they have a routine. And the routine and what they start to realize is, oh, I can't work right now. My mind isn't on fire. Why is that? How do I cure the writer's block and all this other stuff? And there are cures for the writer blocks and quick start tricks and so forth. But the best thing is you start to realize that my body is all affected by the stress and getting irritated by watching the news and having it piss me off. Or the phone rings and the distractions come here. Or this is when I'm tired and you know, this is when I'm actually too happy. And you go, happy, go lucky, you know, and I need to be more Machiavellian in my copy. And they just find that eventually they find, figure out, okay, this is the time where you can get me the best. And so right now I gave you the best time to get me mentally, which is 10:00am My time.

Yep.

Okay. Because that's, that's me, John Carlton. It's the middle of the frickin night. And you know, you know, you can't get him or Kevin up before, you know, 10 or 11 in the morning. So for everybody it's different. But what they do quickly figure out is this is the time where I can usually rely on me being in a pretty good mood. And then they start to find out how the entire rest of their week and what they're doing affects that. Okay, so now what they're doing is, you know, I'll give you examples. I don't check my. I have all my mail go to a mailbox and I give all. Nobody, nobody who can possibly, you know, other than a family member. Nobody can call me and give me bad news. You know, I don't give my home phone number out to, you know, the IRS or, you know, and I come on Friday. I never check my mail because, you know, I might get some kind of message that I don't want to hear about that will ruin my weekend. And I can't do anything or get back to anybody because it's the weekend. So I don't check mail on Fridays. You know, I plan out for when I'm going to deal with the, you know, the annoying things. So I always check my mail on a Monday or on a Monday because Monday sucks anyway, right? So the thing is, you get to a they, you'll see this pattern with them. And one is they have a pattern of exercise. I go out for these long walks with my dog, Mike Morgan goes out for long bike rides a lot of times with his wife. They'll have usually an exercise regimen. And you'll see people either talking about health and exercise, playing Guitars. These are common themes you'll see amongst all the copywriters. But what they really have in common is keeping their body in a regulated state so that they can know exactly and can rely on being in that good mood at the right time that when they're probably going to need to write. So and then they'll say, okay, and if I'm not writing copy for an ad because I don't have a client at that moment, I'm actually going to be creating content for my own products or something. It's like their creative time. And the only way that they can maintain to be sure that that's always going to be on fire at that time is a routine. So the only thing that I see common amongst all these serious professional copywriters is they really get into their routine and it's balanced off onto this is when I play guitar, this is when I let it all go and go get drunk. This is when I, you know, I go out to the track and jog and they, they just do all of these things so that they can monitor their system. And that way they do, they have to do less warm up tricks and you know, there are, you know, I'll give you a couple examples like if you know, humans are need a hack and I hack my brain all the time to convince myself, you know, to look at things the right way or to motivate myself to move forward when I'm feeling insecure about something. But if I was, I haven't because of my routine, I this in years. But if I was just like, how do I, you know, I need to get some work done and I'm just not in the mood to work. I will pick up my laptop, throw it in my briefcase and I will go down to a reference library. And because everybody in the library is doing reference work, I cannot, we're such social creatures. I cannot be in a reference library hearing other people like working and working on computers and writing and doing business and stuff like that and not be in that mode.

Yeah, that's a great point. You put yourself in the place where that vibe is already kind of going and you sink into that.

Yeah, you need to be, you need to be in a creative mode. What you need to do is go hang out with a whole bunch of creative folks that are in a room of creatives. That's why that works so well. Now it's more important for a comedian because with a copywriter you can get a routine like I did, where I don't really need to do that. Right. But that hack will work for me in a pinch, and I know it's there. And there are other hacks that I have that, you know, help you. Like, one of the things I do is monitor how well my brain is working. Because your brain does not work at super efficient levels all the time, in the same level all the time. You're getting me right now at a pretty good time to talk about marketing. Friday night's probably not the best time. Just for me, other people it is. And being able to monitor and measure that, you start to see the difference. And the way that I monitor and measure that is actually with Sudoku puzzles, I can finish an evil, really super tough rip through the Sudoku levels when my brain is on fire and all the synapses are just working really quick. But there are times when I'll go through it and I'm like, wow, it's like my brain's in a fog and this is taking me 20, 30 minutes to do it or something like that. And I know my brain is not fired up. And so it's knowing when to quit as well. The very first, you know, you know, one of a lot of the copywriters, one thing you'll see also amongst them is a lot of them will have a similar story about how they had, you know, they got up, the four things went wrong, and they said screw it and went back to bed, just went to the movies because they're like, I'm not on fire. I'm just going to save it to when I am. But yourself is really key. In fact, the very first line in the James Bond book that my dad always quoted and remembered was, James Bond was tired and he always, you know, he paid attention and was aware of such facts because he knew how it affected his performance. It was something along those lines. And that was something, something my dad was very tapped into and, you know, I picked up and do as well, which is, you know, if you're ongoing professional copywriter that has to put out a certain amount of work and you have to rely on being in a good mood, a good writing mood. Often your, your routine is going to become, you know, you, the copywriter's family knows, you know, don't mess with them, then yeah, you know, they, this is, this is, you know, and don't mess up that their routine. Even outside the copywriting window.

Yeah, no, it is, I mean, copyright. It's very. Especially the professional ones who. This is what, you know, they do their primary living. It is very much an art form, just like Any other performance piece, whatever. And like you said, the routine. I love that. I love the hacks. I love the. I mean, and the really understanding how to structure your entire week around that and knowing where you're at, Those are the hallmarks of a true professional. And yeah, I know I can. I know I'm always trying to introduce new routines and new habits into my life that foster those. You know, those. That high performance.

But. But you're also monitoring how they affect you. Yeah, that's. That's the key. You know, there's the. The tweaking of your routine doesn't stop. It's. But you know, what you really do is you. There's the. You. You eliminate the bad forever. Yeah. I turned off cable news just because, you know, I mean, I don't care what side you're on it. That. That thing is, you know, damaging your brain. And I don't mean it like it's making you dumb. I'm saying it's just, you know, your mood, you know, who. Who turns on any cable news and I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. Who turns on any cable news and turns it off and goes, oh, man, I feel a lot better now.

No negativity. But people feet. Yeah, that's. Like I said, people feet feed on some of that negativity occasionally. And.

But when you can't work because of that, because you got up, you were heading off to write your copy in the morning, turn on the news, it blew your. Your mode. And instead. Instead of writing that copy, you're now ranting about something, right? And you know, you're pounding out a rant and stuff like that, and then pretty soon you're like, okay, wait a minute, I'm not doing anything until I'm done with the copy. And then you compartmentalize it. And then when you try and experiment. Now when I cut off cable news and I just. I did it as an experiment to see if it would improve my routine, and it did such a good job that I refused to have it. Have it in my house and even in. By the way, before anybody thinks I might be attacking on their cable news network. I started doing that more with regular news, too. You know, like, even the local news.

The news in general is. Yeah. I mean, you can't escape it. That's the.

But any little experiment, you know, you monitor the results and you're trying. You know, I think the goal of a copywriter is to get himself into the perf. The whole life routine, you know, and only break it for those few times when you need a, you need a break in the rhythm.

Yeah, I agree. And what are you Bondi kind of switching topics as opposed to just marketing and copywriting advice. Which by the way, this, I mean I mentioned at the very beginning of the show that my goal for this is always for this free podcast to never feel like it's free. I mean there you've shared some stuff in here that is absolutely worth paying for. I appreciate that. But I want to know more about what you, besides the audio series. What are you doing in your life right now? Are you writing copy for your own stuff? Are you working with clients? Are you consulting?

What I actually I'm one of the, I consult a lot and I'm, you know, the, the reason is I'm, you know, the best use of me is to actually say, hey, I'm, you know, like for example, the best use is to say here's my idea and then me to tell you like you, you know, share with me your idea about good looking men. Right. You know, and my, my forte is turning around saying no, this is how to spin it and this is how to solve the problem and here's how to deliver your thing. And so I do do quite a bit of consulting. I've, you know, my brother has taken on a few clients that I actually write for now. But I, you know, trying to dissuade him from doing it because I really, for the most part you, you know, don't like working for clients or with clients because for a number of reasons. One, I don't like taking on the stress of making your business work as well as making my own work. Yeah, the, because I take it very personally and I care very much and I don't just, you know, pump out an ad that looks very similar to everything else I wrote, hand it to you and saying good luck. You know, I take, I do take it very personally. So, and I don't like it for that to do client work because I can be more creative experiment. I don't have to convince you that a double your money back guarantee is a good idea. I don't have to convince you to try this or try that, that I can just do my own thing and experiment and get bored and move on to something else all the time. I focus on doing a couple of things. One, I am a consultant so you can to go over your ad and tell you how to improve it and fix it or go over your business and give you the big ideas. But one of the Things I'm doing for my own type of evergreen stuff is I'm taking what my dad taught me and then taking the stuff that I added onto it and then creating my own products and my own stuff, which is what I'm working on. So I take my dad's marketing concepts and apply it to email marketing. And I just finished putting together the elements for an email marketing course that's basically a series of these webinars I gave and. But I doing that with everything. So I'm taking at the same. I'm killing several birds with one stone by taking my dad's stuff and updating it. So I'm refreshing the value of his stuff and making, you know, and helping his legacy at the same time. People then get the stuff that I add to it that is different from my dad's, you know, that, that he never taught me. So there are, for example, editing tricks and, you know, sudoku, you know, monitoring my brain and never did. But I still do everything my dad did. So I'm. I'm kind of turn and I'm teaching my daughter, by the way, copywriting and all of these products and stuff are about teaching others to become to marketers and to how to be, you know, how to be better and make more money at what they do. And I like it that way. Better than client work. Now I've done client work and built websites just to prove to my. And successful just to prove to myself that it's not just running on the Halbert name, you know, that. So I would do the. Yeah, so I do it. And I've saved a lot of businesses and got all those success stories. But what I really enjoy doing is, you know, things like what we're doing now, teaching people about marketing and teaching people new ideas and stuff that, that you can't really get everywhere else because. And I'm not knocking people for this, a lot of the gurus and stuff, what they will teach you is like 95%, you know, Gary Halbert or somebody, you know, somebody else's techniques and teachings and stuff like that, you know, reformatted. And it's. It's this. It's information that is true and good. Like, you know, your headlines need curiosity and benefit. You know, things that if you don't, if you're missing that you would be missing an element. But they're basing it on one or two kind of new ideas that they had. Right? Is the. Is the. Is the nugget of newness that they build it all around. I get those a Lot I get, you know, I take, you know, just the other day when I threw up the issue of the Gary Halbert letter and said, I'm gonna, you know, raffle this off to everybody, spreads the link, knowing that people would read the first page and want to read the rest of the letter. So they would go to the link to the letter. The link to the letter actually has a small pitch at the bottom, but it drives the traffic to the site, which is, you know, what I wanted to do, getting the action I want. You know, you're doing those, you know, hey, I got this cute little idea and I'm going to try this. And hey, I got this cute little idea trying that, like what I did with the Amazon books and stuff. That is what I'm particularly good at. And so I like to play with my own way. And one of the tips I'll give you and everybody else, it's a learning tip. When you learn somebody or something and somebody tells you something, go try it immediately. Don't try and go through, through an entire course. Go through the first thing you learn that's new or different that you think might be of use. Go put it into action just on a small scale. See if that works and has any effect. If it does work, that lesson will be burned into your brain. If it doesn't work, then you're not going to spend a lot of time building up this campaign and preparing all summer for your big Pinterest launch and then finding out there's no money there for you. So what you want to do is. But anyway, back to the original question. What I like to. So what I'm doing now is updating my dad's stuff and trying to, you know, continue making the Halbert legacy an institution where people can continue to learn direct marketing advice for really cheap. That's why the audio series is so inexpensive and through and showing that and then doing the tinkering and stuff like that, and then consulting, because I really do like consulting. So I do. I do, you know, go to brainstorming and mastermind sessions. I get paid for that. I get paid for critiquing and get paid for consulting. I have taken a couple clients. I really am not looking for those and will probably turn you down if you call. And I'm updating my dad's legacy and I'm cementing it in a way that. In an evergreen way. So that right now, with my dad's stuff, I'm planning on doing the audio series until we run out of letters, you know, and that's, you know, that what I'm basically doing is an ongoing creating the greatest, you know, audio series on writing, Writing for sales ever created.

Yeah, I love it. I can't wait to dive into it and listen. Every single one of them. It's just listen to all day long.

You know, it's great when your list starts with Gary Benzevan, ends with Joe Sugarman and, you know, Kennedy in the middle and Gerber, you know.

Yeah, no, as I said, I'm gonna recommend every single person listening to this, go grab it. And it's. Is it the gary halbert? It's thegarryhalbertletter.com stars. To find out how to get it, you can go to the garyhalbertletter.com and grab everything else. I'll have all the other show notes. It was, you said it was. It was Halbertizing.

Yes, yes. We own the S and the Z, but the S is. And that's, you know, if you want to get the Android version and stuff like that, it'll be moved over later. But that's usually where, when we experiment and play around with my dad's stuff, if we augment it, that's usually where we'll put stuff. So we've done, you know, we've broken down my dad's ads and explained the hidden psychology and the, you know, why he chose word by word, you know, for a lot of his big masterpieces. And if we ever do anything like that, you'll find it at Halbertizing.

That's fantastic. Well, you know, you listening to this right now, listening to myself and Bond talk about this, I hope this has been extremely helpful for you. I know it's been a, it's been a trip for me. Bond has been. You've been so generous with all of these just nuggets that you picked up from your father, from circles of influence you've been in and from a lot of the experience that you've just had in the trenches. Putting it to the test as well.

Guys.

If copy and marketing are not part of your business, they should be. It's said that the number one most important thing that any entrepreneur can do is sell their business. It's your job to sell what you. You've got. And whether or not you do the copywriting and the marketing from all of it or you have a team, it's really important to understand the principles behind it, what you're doing, how you're doing it. Even if you're only studying this stuff to recognize great world class Marketing. There is no better source than the Gary Halbert letter. He's a legend that is inspired countless of the top entrepreneurs and marketers out there. And you would be doing yourself a disservice not to dive in and just go through every single one of these. I know I have. I've read through the letters, I've read pretty much everything that I can find that Bon's father has ever put together and a lot of the people that he's talked about. And these are the only ways you really improve yourself and the only ways you really up level in your business or your life is to learn from those who've gone before you. And this is definitely an instance of standing on the shoulders of giants. Go big cup. You know the GaryHubertLetter.com stars so crazy cheap. I'm looking at the price here. I'll let you guys go see how cheap it is, but I really think you're probably underpriced in this. But I understand the way you're doing it.

I think it comes out to six cents a minute, right? It's absolutely crazy. Guys who get paid thousands an hour.

Yeah, no, it's crazy, but extremely valuable. Bon, this has been awesome. Loved having you on the show. If there's anything I can ever do for you, please let me know. And you as a listener, if you have any questions about this, if you have any advice and you've got any strategies that you'd like to send back to me or you have any other guests that you'd like to be featured on the show, any other topics, or you just like a second opinion on your own business or marketing strategy. Feel free to shoot me an email to ask bradakenwrapbusiness.com and I appreciate your listening. I appreciate all the five star reviews we're getting on itunes. Please give us some more. And bond, thank you very much for joining us on the call today. It's been crazy, crazy fun and I can't wait to chat with you again sometime soon.

Thanks for having me and thank you for the ongoing support of my father's work.

Yeah, by all means. By all means. Well, everybody else have a great day and we'll see you next time. Sam.