Effective Copywriting and Lead Generation With Dan Meredith - I Love Marketing Episode #210

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And welcome to I Love Marketing. So, Dean, we got a special guest. You want me to tell everyone who it is?

Here we are.

Yeah, of course we should.

Okay, well, this is going to be a fun episode. At least I believe it will be. We'll see. His name is Dan Meredith. And the story on Dan, I'll give you a little bit. A little over 18 months ago, Dan was surviving on around $40 a week. He's in the UK and food is a lot more expensive and he's a 240 pound power lifter. So he struggled a lot. So as a rule, Dan would weigh up whether he needed food or fuel that day and he would forgo the one he felt he could live without. Now, fast forward to now. Dan has a thriving marketing agency. He has a copy team, chief editor, Doberman Dan, who he'll talk about, that specializes in the health, fitness and supplement space and they work with some of the biggest names in the industry. He also has his own coaching business and accountability group that he started called Coffee with Dan. And he's about to launch his own supplement line in the very near future here. And so Dan's goal is to help show people the power of taking charge of your own life through entrepreneurship, entrepreneurism. And in his opinion, that's the secret to a happy and fulfilled life. And before we got rolling, Dan, I asked you off the record, you know, how would you describe yourself? You said something that I thought was so damn funny, that to whatever degree you could be politically correct or you could say whatever the hell you want. For people who may not be familiar with you, who you are and what you do, who are you?

I'll give you the quick version. So my name's Dan. I am a functional alcoholic, caffeine addicted, rugby playing meathead from Britain who has discovered 18 months ago that after several years of sort of beating myself over the head with a sales stick, that quite frankly, I decided to make the online world my bitch.

Well, the functional alcoholic. You know my thoughts about recovery today? Look, I struggle with the addictive mindsets and things myself. The more I learned about these crazy entrepreneurs and the obsessive ones and the self destructive stuff is literally just coping mechanisms and the ones that become functional figure out how to try to parlay that into something useful. So I'm always fascinated with the entrepreneurial brain.

The beautiful thing about being British is, for starters, it's associated with us. So we've got that one. So that makes it socially acceptable. And secondly, signing up with your good self, A few other people in the industry who I've worked with, we're down to something which has become a little bit legendary in my group called Vodka Tuesdays, where you set yourself utterly impossible goals with people that you don't think will ever speak to you. You have a succession of Vodka in very quick, one after the other kind of fashion and then you ring them up or send them emails and you just do it. So, yeah, it's been a bit of a crazy ride. A few people have done it with me, but it's actually generated some of my best success yet, which is a bit worrying.

Yeah, well, yeah, we're going to talk about all that. I'm going to ask you some, a lot of questions and all that. But what were you going to say, Dean? Sounds like you're going to say something.

I was going to say it sounds like he's been able to parlay his Fiverr gig as a Steve Sims impersonator into an online world here.

Well, for people that have no idea what the hell you just said, one thing that I always have to do is try to define things for our listeners because they don't know who Steve Sims is, who's the founder of Blue.

Of course they do.

They do not. They do not. And we should do an episode with Steve too. But anyway, without going completely off track here, we're going to ask you about sales, we're going to ask you about marketing, about success, some of the mistakes, blah, blah, blah. I got a whole list of things that topics I want to discuss with you. But what the hell, like what made your life not work for a good period of time where you were surviving financially, I mean, obviously you were working out, you were exercising. So there are different areas of life where people may have a handle on, but getting a handle on the business stuff. And now you've, you know, you just exploded. I mean, you recently, you know, joined genius network, my 25k group and you gave a talk that I thought was awesome, you know, here with all the entrepreneurs and you're just doing some cool shit. So I mean, I'd like to talk though for, you know, I think it's instructional for everyone listening like, you know, where the hell were you and what flipped the switch? And talk about kind of your past.

Yeah.

So past has split between the fitness industry, sort of quite high level personal training and headhunting. That's the two things I was pretty And I had reached the six figure level through basically brutal hard work. So we're talking 90 to 120 hour weeks before got there. That was always my goal. You know, my father comes from modest means and that was always like you said, you know, once you make six figures, you've made it. And I'd make it a couple of times and I'd burn out and make myself really, really ill. And I ended up doing that in London when I was a personal trainer. Moved back home to spend some time with my family and just help out home a little bit and saved up a few pounds and bought myself a 1500 square foot gym and personal training studio. So I sunk well, put it in dollars. So about $60,000 on my credit cards, all my savings into buying this gym, kitting out. It's kind of a high end one. So it kind of looks like half gym, half Apple store. It's a bit ott but that was the clientele we were going for. And yeah, I realized one day that, you know, fortunately I had a sales background to fall back on and I was prepared to do some pretty unusual things to get the business up and running. But I remember, I mean I'm 35 now, which is 33, so just under two years ago, just sat there on the sofa looking around, thinking at the four walls. You know, I was proud of it. I've wanted a gym since I was 18. I mean I spoke to you at 25K. You know, quality for life was the reason I got into training in the first place. So it's kind of a, you know, always wanted to do it since I was a young man and I thought to myself, is this going to be my life? Stuck on a business park, you know, nice location. But nonetheless I just kind of thought to myself, there's got to be more to life than this. And that was the, that was the turning point. Literally sat there one morning about quarter six in the morning waiting for my first client. Just thought no, I can't do this forever. And that was the, that was the point.

Wow. You know, were you at a, were you at a place of anger, sadness, frustration? Just like, like how did, how. Because I always wonder at what point does someone say I've had enough or I'm going to shift. And usually it's in my experience with entrepreneurs it's not coming from a really wonderful, inspired, encouraged place. It's usually being so fed up or so frustrated that you're forced to force yourself to go in a different direction or new direction or just Abandon your past and say, fuck it, I'm going to create a new future here. Well, I mean, how did that work for you?

It was a combination of two things. I think. The first thing was I'd achieved what I'd wanted since I was 19 years. 18, 19 years old when I first started training, and which was having my own place. And after three months, I realized, you know, I've actually achieved the one thing I wanted my whole life and it wasn't quite what I wanted. But the second thing, which is more personal is that I went home to see my mum and dad and I've got a little sister, she's quite badly mentally disabled. And in the time I'd seen my parents, till I saw them again, because I was working so much and was like, work, work, work, they'd aged and my sister's illness had got worse. And I just realized, you know, I'd always help the family out and try to support with my time and finances, but I've always. I'd come from quite a scarcity mindset. Like I try and save money, try and hoard money, you know, put stuff aside for a rainy day. And I spoke to my mum and dad and I said, look, realistically, the only chance of, you know, us having an amazing future is me. You know, my parents are in the 60s, sister, you know, she can't do. So I just said, I asked really for their permission to say, as you said, just fuck it, throw everything to the wind, Max out every single friendship leverage, you know, financial option. I sold a few of the things that I treasured to get a bit capital together. And I just, you know, put it in a gambling parlance. I just went all in and I backed myself to make it work because I had no choice. My thoughts were, the worst that can happen is I go bankrupt and I have to, you know, in my 30s, crawl back home with my tail between my legs and, you know, sleep on the sofa for a few months. But I thought if I didn't do it now, whilst I still had the energy, the drive and, you know, a skill set that was still quite useful, I'd never do it. So that was the turning point for me.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

So, well, Dean. Yeah, I'm gonna ask him some questions about business and stuff, so. But before I do that, I want to.

Well, you know, it's so funny.

Yeah.

I mean, part of it is, one of the things that Dan Sullivan's been talking a lot about lately is this idea about courage and commitment. And it sounds like that's, you know, you're following exactly that pattern that the first thing you did, you made a commitment and then it took courage to, you know, to go all in, just like you said. And I think it's going to be really interesting to hear the story of what happened over the last 18 to that. You got the confidence after having taken that courage and now you've got capabilities. So it's just more support really, for all the things that Dan's been really bringing to the surface here lately too.

Yeah, totally. Totally. So what happened, Dan? I mean, you started a. You have a coaching business called Club 5. You have a copywriting and marketing agency. You coach a mastermind group, you know, you're doing. You have the coffee with Dan. I mean, what, what, what kind of break it down. What is all this stuff that you're doing and how come to place not. And I'll ask you some, you know, questions in between to bring out some specifics.

Cool.

Well, I. So I didn't know what copyright. So I can tell you the date. It was December 18, 2013. That's when I found out what the word copywriting meant. I thought it was people who copyright, you know, stuff so people wouldn't steal your intellectual property. That's what I thought it was. I was always really good. So I closed some really, really big deals via email when I was a headhunter. Also, I had a little stint on match.com when I was single for about a month and I did really well with emails. I was always really good with the written word and I didn't realize someone would pay you to write words for them. I didn't know what it was. So there's a guy called Paul Moore in the UK who was a fitness marketing guy. I got his newsletter, became friends with him. He then introduced me to Ben Settle and Andre. And I didn't have much money at this time. So whatever time I would close a deal or get client, I would take the profit and reinvest it straight back in. So my first, you know, hundred bucks I got spare. I got Ben's Email Players. Then I got Andre Chaperone's autoresponder Madness. Then I got something called the Copy Hour. So teach myself how to write copy, give you an idea you're supposed to do hand write out a piece of copy every day for a year. I did a year's worth in three months. So I was doing five hours a day of handwritten copy as well as doing 12 hours a day in, in the facility. And I needed the money, and I remember I was on. It was on Ben Settles and Andre's email list and there was a job opportunity for a copywriter and it was $30,000 a year part time to write emails. I thought this could be fun. It's for Ryan Levesque.

Who?

Our mutual friend. And with all of five weeks experience, I thought it was appropriate to apply for that position. Having no experience whatsoever having written commercial copy ever, I got through to the top 10 on my own skills, but I didn't, you know, basically I wasn't going to make the cut, but I really needed the job like I needed the money because it would fit nicely between clients and I could care for my sister and kind of not being horrible, she could just sit there and watch TV and I could just have a laptop open and write. So I dived in and applied for it. And then I thought to myself, do you know what, let's go one better. And I wrote a piece of direct mail and I got a friend of mine in the States to find his home address and posted it to him. And the day he was going to email me to say, sorry, you know, you made the top 10, you didn't make the top three, he got that and he threw me in as a wild card. And that pretty much is the start of everything that you now know. Wow.

I mean, you know, it's, it's just a lot of drive and a lot of, a lot of effort and also, you know, just accumulation of it reminds me of Robert Ringer's book Winning Through Intimidation, which is still one of my all time favorite books. I was talking to Robert about two weeks ago about helping him with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that book, the first version of it I think he wrote in the late 70s.

Frogging, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He wrote in the 70s, it's called winning Through Intimidation. They retitled it To Be or Not to be Intimidated because a lot of people misinterpreted the title of the book, thinking it's going to teach you how to intimidate people. When in reality the message was your success in life has a lot to do with your ability to not be intimidated by many people that will try to do that to you in the business world. He has a leapfrog theory which Dean just mentioned, and it's where you have no, you know, legal or moral obligation to go along the ranks in order to reach a particular level. You can leapfrog over an entire industry or whatever, for one, if you've got the chops and secondly, if you don't allow yourself to be intimidated. And also you have talent and skill. I mean, very many, there's no incompetent people unless they're extraordinarily lucky that, you know, leapfrog. They may appear that way temporarily, but long term success. I mean, but you basically, you just put yourself into that leapfrog theory. It's exactly sort of in a different, you know, I mean, in a whole different world. When I was starting out the carpet cleaning industry, I'm this young guy with a ponytail and I learned these marketing strategies and no one else seemed to really know or understand this. And I kind of did. And I tried sharing it with some people and, you know, they didn't. The ones that actually implemented it got results. The ones that just kind of looked at it and tried to give their opinion didn't understand it at all. Which we all know what that's like. Someone looks at something and gives an opinion on it versus someone that actually does it. But I leapfrog an entire industry and that book in that mindset was instrumental. And I think this interview with you and people hearing this hopefully will be that catalyst for many people out there that may just have fear or may think, oh, I'm not good enough or I need to spend two years doing something. You just said, I'm going to throw myself in there and, you know, getting the good news.

I mean, the good news about marketing and copywriting is that it's definitely a results economy situation. So if you can get the results, it doesn't matter whether, you know, people think that you've paid your dues or, you know, put in the time. If you get the results, there's nobody stopping you from appointing yourself to the position of being a copywriter or being a marketing expert. As long as you can get the results, that's what matters.

Yeah, like. Well, what I was going to say is, is I, you know, I'm a, I can't spell very well.

I'm.

Grammar wise, I'm terrible.

I.

This is going to sound like I'm making it up and it's. I'm not. I have to stare at words sometimes. If someone was to ask me what is a verb, a noun or an adjective, I don't know. Half the time I'll sit in and be like, I mean, literally, it's that level of stupidity in that arena. But it's irrelevant because I have written words and I have orchestrated the writing of words by hiring copywriters that have generated tens of millions of dollars. And, you know, More than that, it's just so a lot of people really have this belief that there's a certain level of professional writing or whatever. No, it's what you said, your ability to produce a result. Can you create something that actually produces results for. So, Dan, talk about what your perspective is on sales, sales versus marketing, Because I know you had a sales background and are they complementary or are they different? How would you think about sales versus marketing since that's kind of the world you're in right now.

Yeah, so my whole background, I mean, I used to see. I'll explain why in a minute. I used to see the marketing department as kind of this fluffy, wishy washy people who I couldn't see. So this one was my corporate role.

Yeah.

I couldn't see the direct sort of ROI they would bring into the business. As far as I was concerned. I'd be hitting the phones, going to meetings. You know, I could see if I did X amount of calls and closed X amount of people, I'd make this much money for the company and myself. But what I realized was, is that the marketing that I'd been exposed to certainly wasn't direct response marketing and was very vanilla. And the kind of stuff you get taught in a marketing degree, for example, it's not the kind of stuff I see as like battle tested and in the streets. And when I eventually found direct response and this world that I'm now in, I realized I'd actually been doing a lot of it naturally anyway. But I realized how many businesses are just missing a trick by not getting their marketing right and just simply not using direct response? It's amazing how many people I see have these wonderful images, classy graphics, they'll spend all this money on fancy imagery, yet it doesn't tell you to do anything. So for me, it was a big eye opener to sort of find this world. And then I realized how much I love it. Because if you do it right, you can change someone's business in a matter of days. It's that simple.

Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. So what, so what are. Since you have grasped this really well in a very quick period of time, and you've really just put a lot of stuff out there and you said a couple of things where it's not direct response. And a lot of people, we talk about direct response constantly. So hopefully all of our listeners are familiar with what direct response is. If you're new to I love marketing and you just happened to be like the first episode you've listened to. I Mean, we've got so many hours of in depth training on direct responses. Go back and listen to previous episodes and stuff. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people make in their copy and what are maybe some fixes for them since you are so focused on writing copy?

Yeah, I think the biggest mistake I see constantly and every time I speak to anyone who's not versed with this world, it's the first thing they're doing wrong. They might have what they feel is the best product, service, digital download, membership, site, whatever it is, but they think as themselves, as in they think about what's best for them, what they want, and they don't often consider the perspective of the customer. So when I first started learning copy, I tried to learn the traditional way. I got a lot of Gary Halbert stuff. I got a lot of the traditional books, the direct response ones from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and I learned one of the things that I taught it a few times in events and places speaking at is a lot of people seem to miss that research stage where they will build out a customer avatar and they don't really walk a mile in someone's shoes. So people are always looking for the shortcut. What easy online way can I do to find data? And I'm just like, well, if you want your business to really fly, then you really should put in a little bit of hard work, especially at the front end. And I will say if I'm doing something for a client or myself, I will, I'll run focus groups, I'll have coffee with people, I will arrange meetings, I'll let people down for a day, put on a little event and then kind of, you know, get feedback as the day goes on, I'll be doing surveys and I will use this to build out like my ideal customer. And then that's the person that I market to. And you know, a lot of companies try and just market to, well, try market to everyone. Whereas with the copy I write, with the stuff I do in my various groups, I'm always trying to speak just one person. And that one person is my deal. And you know, when I launched my coaching business, I pitched it to the exact type of person that I wanted to work with. And I've got, you know, 25 people in my private group. Nowhere near your level, Joe, but each one of those people, totally different careers, but yet they're all the same type of person because I just spoke to that one person and it resonated with them. So that's kind of the thing I see that most people get wrong if they just don't understand their market at a deep enough level and especially on the emotional level as well.

Yeah, that's a huge point. I mean, the whole part you said about creating an avatar and speaking to one person walking a mile in the ideal prospect's shoes, that's all really, really valuable and hardly anyone does it for years. I understood early on that if I was going to be effective selling something, I need to understand the mindset of the person that I'm trying to sell to. And I always say that one of the reasons I was so successful, and to this day, we're still the largest seller of how to marketing advice to professional cleaner and restorers people in the restoration industry, is I just understood them because I was one of them. And even if I wasn't one of them, I would have read, studied, hung out, done everything I could to learn about their fears, to learn about their opportunities.

The interesting thing, what you were saying there is that's the next level of what you're doing. The first place to really learn is to apply marketing, is learning to apply it to your own business because you understand that more than anything else. That's what you did with carpet cleaning, that's what I did with real estate. And you know, you start to think then about a little differently when you're thinking about marketing to other people who do what you do. See, we were both taking things that we had figured out for our own business and then helping people just like us, just really showing them, hey, look at these results that we're able to get here and transferring that to somebody else. And Dan, that sounds like, you know, a lot of you gravitated immediately to the fitness world because that's what your, that's what your background was. Did you find that kind of the first place to start?

Yeah, and I did it on my own business first. I mean, I see a lot of, you know, just say, I'm going to use the term coaches very loosely coming out of the woodwork nowadays because, you know, there's a, there's an adage, you know, and I love teachers and you know, we spoke about, you know, the pay of teachers before, I think at 25K. But you know, those that can't, there's a phrase that those that can't do, teach and part of education, you know, I'm a big fan of them and we can't get in without them. But equally there are people who are teaching, coaching, mentoring who have no right to do so for Example, I spent thousands and thousands of pounds on basically getting it wrong in my own business, in other businesses first, before I even dared to say to someone, well, let me show you how to do it. And you know, you see people who've had, you know, a little bit of success, and they then dive in and say, yep, I put my hand up, I can show you how to do that. I'm going to charge, you know, $10,000 or whatever. And it's like, well, you haven't really earned the right because you haven't tested it on yourself first. You haven't proven concept. And that's what.

There'S a saying we.

Have over here, Dan.

It says a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an idea. That's the thing. If you've had an experience, that's a whole different thing.

Yeah, you know, I really want to emphasize what he said too, because I really think there's a world of difference between someone that has actually gone out there and learned marketing because they actually had to sell something or went out and actually sold something versus. Versus someone that gets a glimpse of it or holds himself out as an expert. Because there's a lot of people I've seen over the years that try to become niche marketers and go into really lucrative niches in areas and arenas where people really want certain things in certain categories. I always remember that I had to figure out how to successfully sell something that nobody wanted to buy, which was my first initial venture into entrepreneurship of running a carpet cleaning business and struggling immensely. But the fact that I went through having to figure that out put me in a whole different arena than. I mean, I have had literally over 100 people take an attempt at trying to knock off what I've done in the cleaning and restoration. They never did what it is that I did. I mean, they would buy my program, they would see what I was doing, they would read a few books, and then they would throw together like a course called marketing expert or how to double your business or whatever. They would just try to knock off all. But they never did it even 1% at the level that I was able to do it and have do it simply because of just. I think having just been there and done that. Yeah, I agree with that. What are some of your best money making and prospect getting copy strategies and techniques that you use, Dan? Because I'd be really interested in kind of getting gritty of.

Yeah, this is probably my favorite one. I mean, I'm. I'm a big fan of you know, sort of semi intimate events and masterminds. I mean, I spend a fortune on them. So I don't spend, I invest. Because every single mastermind, every event I've ever been to, the minimum I've made back is four times my investment so far. And, you know, I, for example, one of my great ones, I mean, obviously I do, you know, a lot of things now I've got the supplement stuff coming up with the coaching, but you know, just in the coffee world, I want this, I say this to people, like a lot of people fish where the fishermen are. So in other words, if you're a copywriter, they go hang out with other copywriters. I'm like, well, you ain't gonna get much money from those people. So I go as a, so I work in, so health, fitness, nutrition, that's my kind of niche. So I go to events for health professionals, fitness professionals, nutrition professionals. So I sat in a room in Chicago two months ago, but a supplement mastermind, obviously I was looking to get into the supplement industry. 30 people in there and I just say, you know, we go in the room, what do you do? And I said, yeah, I'm Dan, I'm a fitness copywriter. I write high converting copy for, you know, the health, fitness and nutrition sector. And just 29 heads turned around and I had eight leads that day, which turned into two, 120 grand a year contracts by the end of the weekend. No stress, no drama, done over beers, handshake, job done. And every time I've gone to an event that, you know, I spoke at a fitness event, you know, for fitness professionals, I said, yeah, this is what I do. I write words. You know, my event was the most simple title event ever. It's called right Words get paid. And I just taught people for an hour how to do some simple coffee tricks. Sat at the back at the end, three people came up to me, three new clients.

Some.

Right words get paid.

Yeah, I couldn't think of any. That was it. You write some words, you make some money. That's straightforward.

Exactly. It really is. It is, it is printing money legally though, I mean, it's, it's kind of like you just write words and, and you, yeah, what you can do is words. And I love that. I love the line you said is fish where the fish are, not where the other fishermen hang out. Go a little deeper on that.

Yeah. So what I, you know, this is a phrase I've learned from your wonderful country. So forgive me if anyone's offended by this was the Term circle jerk, which is something has been applied to various industries new to me. Not a phrase we use in Britain. But everyone seems to hang out in their little groups. You know, all the traffic guys are all hanging out together, all the copyrights are hanging out together and they all go to their events and I'm just like, well, I'm going to go where the customers are because I get to learn what pains and what things are up to. I get to learn what words they're using, what phraseology, anything new and I'm of use. So yeah, I just kind of, I deliberately look where my audience goes and I go to those events. I did it when I was back in my headhunting days, I used to go to industry events. I mean I had a really unsexy stint in the FMCG sector in the meat sector, which doesn't sound very exciting but it's actually one of most profitable categories in your grocery store. And it was the meat awards which sounds ridiculous for all these multi million pound producers and there's 500 of them in the room. So I just got a seat at the table, I'm sat with, you know, the guys who run these companies and I came home with 16 new pipes. So I never really understood why people kind of hang out with like almost like their direct competitors. I'll just go hang out with my customers.

It is such, such a great point. I mean it really.

That's an I love marketing first right there. First, yeah.

Which is what?

That's an I love marketing first.

What? Hang out with your customers. I'm trying to think if it's. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, it's. I was talking, I'm trying to see. I was doing a conference call with my team the other day and we're going over targeting people for sponsorships for this year's Genius Network annual event. And part of it is I gave a strategy. I was like, look, you know, just go through. I was talking to the guy who's in charge of sponsorships of the company. I said, you know, go and identify the people that are already spending money trying to generate business from entrepreneurs that are high level entrepreneurs. And I say go to these magazines and I listed some magazines, I go find out who's spending X, find out what you know, I mean you can do all this shit with a Google search but it's not that difficult. I mean what Dan said is it's not that difficult. But he's absolutely right. I mean with Genius Network, I like the fact that I started it with a bunch of people in the marketing world. And a lot of people view it as a just a marketing group when it's where there's a heavy emphasis on marketing. And I do have a lot of the world's top marketing quote unquote gurus, but I also have a lot of people that are in a whole variety of different businesses. And frankly, I actually like those. Those people I find more interesting because many of them make 10 times the amount of revenue that some of the top, you know, book authors and speakers and coaches and seminar people make. But they also really appreciate stuff that the people that are always the magicians, you know, they're always looking for a new trick and a lot of times they quit. They forget about just basic principle based things that work. And you take a newbie and when I say newbie, a newbie who's a successful business owner but new to direct response or new to education based marketing, or new to lead generation or conversion, and you show them something, they're like, oh my God. And then if they implement it, I mean, it could be worth millions to them. And I see that all the time. And so that's a really, really great point for acquiring clients. So what would be one marketing lesson above all others that you could share that would increase the results of everyone listening to this episode? Dan, if that's even doable.

Yeah, I mean, it's probably why I was attracted to Genius Network in the first place. It was something that Brian Kurtz is actually at that dinner where we met the first time. And I was chatting to Brian about this before he came in and he was explaining to me I'd never heard it for the concept of social capital and obviously the strength that's in your network. And my thoughts is I've been very fortunate due to working very closely with Ryan and other really high level, very successful entrepreneurs. I get to speak to a lot of people and I'm fascinated. I read autobiographies of successful people all the time. I love hearing people's stories. And if you ask them for their story, most of the time are in a good mood, they'll tell you. And it seems like there's a lot of people so not so much at the very top of them, but say like, you know, the medium sort of level, it's kind of feast and famine. They'll launch a product, you know, they have a feast and a famine kind of approach and they'll go back and then you've got to do it again and again and again. And what I'VE realized if you've got a really strong network, you know, you've invested a lot of social capital. Like, for example, I did. I spent close to a year working for free for Ryan, doing favors, helping people out, connecting people. So, yep, you need a copyright. Hit this one. Oh, you need a great Facebook ad person. Yeah, let's get that for you. And I did this naturally. This is just what I do. And it's only when someone says to you, that's actually an incredibly valuable thing. And when I started to do my own business stuff and make my own moves, I realized that it's just paid back dividends. And one of the things that I say to people about it is that people say, oh, yeah, I worked really hard today, sat at a laptop doing this thing. And I'm not in any way taken away from that. But one of the things I did at the start of this year, which is when my first actually genius event was I'm a British it. I'm only allowed in America for a certain amount of months a year. So it was very careful with that. And I was just carrying on luggage. Went to 14 states. I think I counted it as 47 meetings, three masterminds, and the event in 27 days. So I basically went old school. My dad's a sales manager. I used to sit in the car with him, but my sister wasn't well, so mum would look after I go with that. And I would watch him do sales calls. You know, he would drive, meet people. Drive meet people all day long. And I realized that was kind of lacking a little bit in the online marketing world, and I decided to just copy my dad. So I got on the road and literally every other day I was on a plane and just hopped America, meeting people and saying hi. And to be honest with you, that month broke me and it made me quite unwell and tired and, you know, gain weight. And I was not feeling too fantastic when I got back to Britain, but that month has set me up for the entire year.

Wow.

So I wish. I wish Dean would work that hard at least once in a while. Imagine you could make something if. If you modeled that behavior, Dean, for just like a month, you could. You can make something yourself.

Let's just look at my last month. Where have I been the last month?

You've been to the uk.

I've been in London. I've been.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

I'm heading to Colorado.

I'm going to Australia. Exactly. I wish Dean would travel a little more, too.

No, no, I'm not Talking about traveling. Anyone, anyone could travel. You miss what? You miss what he said. No, I'm not at all. 14 states, 40 something plus meetings, three masterminds and all that in 27 days. You're just freaking floating around doing nothing, taking pictures of your feet like in front of like a pool or some shit that you always post on Facebook.

No, that's.

That's awesome, Dan. So. So in the process of all this education and all of this stuff that you've been doing, who are your marketing heroes or who is. Who has influenced you the most in all of this?

Well, okay. When I was at an event, my first event I went to was actually given a book called Ready, Fire, Aim, which is obvious. I know you've spoken about that before. So that approach, that. It's one of my. That and the book you recommended me at Titans War of Art, like the two. I tell everyone to just without fail, just buy those, go away, come back.

When you read them at all.

But anyway, side point. So yeah, I mean, you know, I'm speaking to you for a reason, Joe. You know, I love what you do. Without you being behind the as, I wouldn't literally be the man I am today. It's a thing that changed my life. So when I realized you were the guy behind it and you had, you know, I didn't know this world until two years ago, I realized, you know, I had to get in to the group because I knew how valuable would be. I remember emailing you and saying, okay, what do I need to hit? What are the targets I've got to get to? And that was my goal. So you know yourself, not blowing smoke up your ass, but it's. There's a reason why we're talking today. The guy who's been most influential is, I mean, I'm probably sound borderline obsessive how much I talk about him is Ryan Levette. I mean, he is genuinely one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. It's scary how clever he is, but he's also kind of a Downsworth guy as well. He comes from a normal background, just incredibly hard working. And I identify with that a lot. And you know, still to this day, I don't know why he picked me. I'm not too sure what he saw, but he gave me. He literally gave me, if I'm honest, he gave me back my life. He introduced me to people, he trusted me. You know, it sounds really old fashioned, but I will literally break my back for that guy and I'll do anything. I mean, he, he changed my life. So he's, he's a big one, you know, for just someone who kind of stood up, stood out to me and said, yep, you know what? I'm gonna give you an opportunity. So that guy, you know, I love him like a brother. There's a couple with his threesome coming up here, which sounds a bit dodgy, but Brian Kurtz, Doberman, Dan, Ben, Settle. These are guys who have all coached me at periods of time from skills, you know, like direct response to email to you know, proper, what I call proper copy advertorials and newspapers, which I actually have made most of my money from is old fashioned, as it were, copy, which I loved writing. You know, Brian was invaluable in kind of just guiding me as a businessman. So those guys just. Yeah, I still have all their products. You know, I love their stuff. And then finally the guy, not a lot of people know or they may know, this guy called Dexter Abraham. He's a. He runs my note taking Nerd as well as all kinds of. He's like super successful, but he's kind of a cartoon, so don't know who he is.

He runs.

Say what?

He runs.

Again, my note taking Nerd Calm is brilliant, absolutely brilliant site. It's just note versions of seminars and events. It's kind of like almost like a digest of all these big events. And that's how I came across him. We've become friends. And yeah, he's. I mean, he's been kind of helping me out, you know, just as a person, you know, he's just a guy who I've kind of learned a lot from. And just by following him on Facebook, I've Learned more in 10 weeks than I have in months, years with some people. There's a few in there, so there's not really one. So sorry about that. But if I were to just say one person, it wouldn't be doing them justice because that core group of people has done a lot for me.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yep. Well, there you go. So, Dean, without me dominating the conversation, I've got.

Yeah, sure. I'm always interested in your people's first successes. When you realized, wow, I think I'm onto something here. What was the thing that you figured out? Somebody asked me that in London the other day, and I was reflecting back on the first direct response postcard that I sent out and the transition from, you know, being a cold call guy would make 100 cold calls a day. And then I was learning Direct response and starting to apply it to my own real estate business. And the first time that I sent out these direct response postcards offering a booklet on how to buy your first home to apartments. I remember exactly the moment that we got back the replies. I used a little business reply card that people could fill out because there was no, no Internet back then. This is 1990 when I was doing this and I remember that moment being the moment that I never made another cold call again. I knew that this direct response was the thing and I was all in on, on direct response. Do you remember the thing that was like the first success that you had in doing?

I do, yeah. It was for my own fitness business and we had 300 pounds. I say give or take $500. That was all we had, that was it. And you know, my girlfriend and my kind of team were just like, what do we do with it? So you know, my old attitude would have been to save it. And I thought, no, screw that. And I found what we have like in the uk, it's like a, like a local glossy magazine. So it's quite up market, bit of advertising, but it's kind of like the community high end magazine. And I bought myself a full page advert in there and I remember I was sat with email players. I was sat with like all my Dovid Madan newsletters. I was sat with. What else did I have in there? I had basically all my stuff and I crafted this 1200 word advertorial, got the image matched all over and I thought to myself, I've got it tattooed all the way down my leg. Death or glory, like we've got no money if this doesn't work. So I thought, right, screw it all in. And that generated £22,000 worth of personal training sales. And I was like, oh my God, like some words. So for me that was the kind of aha moment. Like, you know, I'm in a small town, I mean, you know, it's about 20,000 people. The whole town is not big, you know, mixed, it's not overly affluent, just a normal town in the uk. And I was just like, oh my word, this is unbelievable. And then I continued every month I was getting, it was like first of all the full page and it was a double page and it's like just, I just went crazy. I just literally, just, literally put in adverts in newspapers. I was doing postcards. And to be honest with you, I teach this to a lot of people, like Facebook ads, you know, Google Ads, all the, all the Fancy online stuff you can do in the world. Of course it works. It works like gangbusters. But I built up my entire business without a single Facebook ads, the single thing online. And, you know, I love what I call traditional coffee because no one's doing it nowadays. So when I work with a lot.

Of cards and print.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I mean, I'm gonna launch my supplement business in a newspaper and in magazines because I know what I write will work. So, yeah, that was my big aha moment. I was like, this stuff is just awesome.

It's exciting.

I mean, Joe, I imagine same thing.

For you with your.

The first time you ran the consumer awareness guide, huh? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Running a lead generation ad and people are calling up and they're not asking me, how much do you charge? They're asking me, you know, send this thing over. And then I start running free recorded messages. And even J.J. virgin, you know, text me today. She's like, who do you use for free recorded messages? What? You know, because I, you know, I spent a day consulting with her a couple weeks ago and, you know, just showing all of these things. And then I just sent a bunch.

Of.

Volleyballs out with handwritten free recorded messages on the side. Literally mailing like these lightweight beach balls to people. And they're giving them to their kids, of course, but hope, but hell, we did. We did a mailing with a hundred and, I don't know, like 105 balls. And it's already, I mean, we're talking about $16 each is what it costs to do all the work. Because we're using a service that, you know, postage, applying the free recorded message, mailing it, taking it to the post office, you know, because it's not easy to fit a, you know, a bunch of beach balls in the back of your car or whatever. But basically, you know, I mean, the total cost on this was like 1600 times about 16, $1700 and it's already generated over 20 grand. So pretty good return because no one.

Does that shit, right.

And so now I'm trying to figure out how we're going to nail like a thousand of these things and then up it even more. But Dan's absolutely right. So let's talk about swipe files. And of course you would be the first to say, Dan, that you don't want to, you know, stealing or plagiarizing, which is definitely not. We're talking about. There's a term in marketing for people that aren't familiar called a swipe file. Which copywriters, before the Internet ever existed, they would have like files of different controls which are, you know, letters, campaigns, ads that worked and they would be used to give them ideas and reference things. And so. So how do you recommend copywriters get their ideas? Do you use swipe files or swipe sources or how do you keep track of the different jumping off points for whenever you're going to write, copy or sit down and create a campaign?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, for me, the general process with me starts with say if I. Because I'm quite niche down. I've actually got a bit of a head start on some people who don't have a niche because I understand it quite deeply. Anyway, first part I'll do is I'll spend just a week or two just immersing in the subject, reading books, reading blogs, you know, just basically getting involved, understanding everything there is to know about the subject if I don't already know it. And then what I do in my swipe and then I'll just, I'll basically just, I'll leave it maybe a few days. I won't even touch it. I'll just let my subconscious kind of percolate things and, you know, come up with some ideas. And then what I use with my swipe files is I just, I will just sit with a coffee for maybe an hour and I will just idly flick through them and I will let my eyes, my eyes will naturally pick out headlines, ideas. I come across them and I like, I write it down. But you know, equally I've got a group, a group of us copywriters and marketers who get together once a week. We chat about copy that we've seen, ideas that we've seen. So that's really, really useful. And something I recently, I got the idea from, I can't remember the book I was reading about, but I was reading about Andy Warren and he had, he called his ideas box. And he used to do this every month. He would basically take anything he saw that inspired him, whether it's physical, printed, you know, whatever, put it in a box at the end of the month, he dated and it would be stored. So we ended up with like hundreds of these boxes of just ideas and stuff. And I've now got, I call it my man tin. It's just in my, on my desk and it's anything I see in magazines, if I see a thing, if I see a gadget or maybe it could be, you know, given some sort of key ring, it could be anything. But anything I see that kind of inspires me thinks, oh, that could be useful one day I just go in there. So between my mountain and my mountains of flight files, I just flick through there for inspiration. And generally it could be as simple as one word or one phrase or one headline and I've got the idea.

And I can run with it.

So yeah, a couple of good resources. I joined the CoffeeHour.com which is actually a training resource but they send over a year 365 pieces of high converting crop coffee coffee copy. So I've kept all of those, printed them off, they're brilliant. I mean, I don't know if you don't, if you remember Joe, but the swipe files I got from Titans is enough to last me a lifetime. I mean that was $200 in shipping just to get that home. I couldn't carry it. Every time I see something good, if it's online, I'm very old fashioned in the fact that if I see something, say if I see like an online ad that I like, I'll still print. I like having the physical copies in my hand and I just group up. So I've got my fitness stuff and my health stuff, my nutrition stuff, then I've got general copy and if I need, excuse me, inspiration, I just dive in and have a look. Simple as that. But no, never swipe as in steel is naughty.

No, I agree. Yeah, I mean plagiarism versus, you know, there's this whole thing of, you know, S and D which started out with steal and distribute, then it became slight swipe and deploy and you know, trying to sugarcoat the words but it's, it's just flat out plagiarism in some cases. A lot of amateur marketers and people that obviously don't know what the fuck integrity means will take someone's work and they will just make it their own. And it's just not a cool thing. I mean it's just not a cool thing. Sometimes it may start someone out, but I learned early on, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down. And you don't want to run around stealing stuff from marketers that are doing good stuff. Develop a relationship with them. What's funny, you were talking about social capital earlier, which my real world is just built around relationships and being useful to other people and stuff. If you develop relationships with people, you'd be surprised if you're like, hey, can I have this?

They will just give you Stuff a.

Lot of people's attempts of. How do I get this? Sort of just develop a relationship with them and sometimes that may mean you like hire them and pay them and go to their events but just be really valuable. Just don't knock stuff off. Yep. All right, let me see here. What about the best lead generation or opt in or front end strategy that you've seen or that you've used?

Well, I mean I'm very fortunate enough to have kind of worked on them as well as learned from the master himself. And I spoke about this obviously genius earlier this year. Ryan Levesque survey funnel. I've never seen anything quite as clever as that. It is a beast. There's a lot of moving parts in there but it's quite frankly one of the most clever intuitive marketing systems I've ever seen. The fact that from a simple quiz that a customer thinks a bit of fun, giving them a tailored answer to their particular problem or issue or need need. It generates custom emails, VSL offers the works out the back end. It's just really clever.

I love.

Took me a while to get my head around it because it's an intelligent system but once you do, I mean the people I've seen implement it just make crazy, crazy money off it. It's awesome.

And you can be hired to help people put one of those things together, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We still work for Ryan so I kind of, I still work with Ryan on the agency and we can do those there. They're not. Let's put it this way, if you want it done within a week, it's probably not going to happen but if you've got a couple of months there then yeah, we can do one for you. Because they do take crafting. It's very much a combination of art and science. There's a lot of tech that goes involved and if anyone's ever worked with me, they'll know that Dan is not good at tech. Hence I have clever people that I work with who are good at that.

Great. What's the best upsell or back end offer you've. You've ever seen or used?

This was on. I won't name names, just don't spoil the surprise anyone gets there. But it was a membership kind of subscription that I bought and there were a few different offers and products and I'm like if I'm already buying it, I'm the easiest person to upsell to. I'll just keep clicking. Yes, just give me all the stuff. But was. Is that the final was. I probably Say it was a downside, you know, the chap in questions, you know, rate for a coaching call was he said between like 750 and 1,000 per hour. But he said he was going to do 30 minutes for 30 bucks and I thought that's a bargain. But then when I got on the call, it was amazing. Call me really useful, incredibly valuable. Actually went on longer than 30 minutes. You know, I'm kind of understood it was the over delivery thing. I got a full hour out of him and then he didn't even pitch. He just did a great job. And I found myself after the call, finished thinking, well, I want more of that. And then I approached him saying, hey, how do we do this again? What's the call? And he said, yeah, I do do one to one coaching. I've got nothing for two weeks but if you're keen to start, then awesome. I just signed up on the spot and obviously looking back now, brilliant. Upsell or down to however you want to call it. But it was glorious. I happily walked straight into it with no knowledge that I'd even been told to.

Brilliant.

That's great. That's how it should be.

Okay.

Yeah. What are a few of your favorite copy phrases or words that work consistently since you talked about, you know, right words, get paid. Do you have any? How would you think about that one?

I did write this one down actually because I mean I was thinking about this earlier today, just thinking in case this question come up. But I don't really have a favorite. But I think since I've gone into this world full time, it's like you see a lot of the same things coming up. So when I see direct response copy what I call in the real world. So when I'm in like a grocery store or just reading a magazine or on a billboard, it makes me smile because I don't often see it. And my favorite phrases are the words discover secret. The phrase what they don't want you to find out or they didn't want you to know or the secret they don't want you to know.

Know.

And if you can combine all of them, you'll literally see me walking along laughing to myself because I love spot. Anytime I see that discover the hidden secret that the scientist didn't want you to know. That's my killer phrase. I see that. I'm just giggling because I see it all the time. I love it.

Yeah. Awesome.

Discover. Yeah. You know, people don't want to learn shit, they want to discover shit. Alright, so. So what are you, what are you most excited about in terms of, you know, what you're working on now?

Well.

It'S my Facebook group at the moment, which is called Coffee with Dan. It was a complete accident. I generally tend to do my best work and since I work with a lot in America, kind of I start my best work about 1, 2 in the afternoon and finish about 9. And I thought to myself, well, if I could drag my ass to the coffee shop for like 9 o', clock, just for a couple of hours, I could get, you know, two, three hours worth of productivity. So I set up this little group, did no promotion, there's no advertisers. Like, hey, you know, I'm gonna set up this little accountability group. We all go to a coffee shop. So there's not really any entrepreneurs really where I'm based. You know, we all log on, you see what we're gonna do. We post up, we turn out, you know, turn off Facebook, come back two hours later. So we did because, yeah, but I wanted about 15 or 20 people. And mainly it was a selfish thing. I wanted them to keep me accountable because I was gonna be the one who was posting about it. And now closing on, I think about 900 members. And that was eight weeks ago. So it's gone a little bit crazy. I'm getting an average 10 to 20 messages a day from people. It's changing their lives. They're achieving things they've never done before.

They're free of fear.

You know, it's just stuns me. I mean, lives, mindset, bank balances. It's insane the things that I hear from. I really don't know what it's going to become. I call them my little band of lunatics. And now I know we can swear that their focus is on getting shit done. And I'm a big believer in panic or overwhelm or fear. Just by doing things, you can often get yourself out of that. And yeah, it's, you know, we've combined that with a sense of fun and safety. So people were free to share, you know, the highs and the lows without judgment. And it's just become this really awesome group of entrepreneurs who just want to change not only their lives, but others. And it's, it's, it's fantastic. I mean, I literally love going in there every day. It's just a cool place to be.

We've created an environment where people can just jump in and, and know that there's other people. They're doing the same thing. For this next two or three hours. It's cool.

Yeah.

So Dean, do you have anything else you want to add? Because I'm going to ask, we're going to wrap up and I'm going to ask you, Dan, to, you know, where people can get more info from you. But I wanted to see if you had any other questions or any, anything. Dean.

What would be your one big piece of advice for people to sum up what we've talked about so far?

Okay.

Sitting in the same situation, knowing that, I mean you think about it, knowing that you've really flipped the switch and in 18 months you say, you know, you've kind of turned things around and you know, I guess, you know, what would be the summary there for people?

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a, it's another, the short, you know, sound bite answer would be the COVID of a Steven Pressfield book, which is just do the work.

Do the work.

Ever since I stopped thinking about what may or may not happen. So stop caring whether people like me, didn't like me, you know, was worried if I offended people and I don't set out to do any of that. But ever since I stopped caring and just did the work, my life has changed like every time I, you know, I still to this day have your day on crap. You know what, all those wrong I just stop, do a couple of pictures, hit the phone, send some emails, do some Facebook posts and you know what, Miraculously my mood changes and money comes in. So I would say just nutshell, bite size portion. If in doubt, do the work. It's that simple.

Yeah.

Love it.

Great, great advice. Well, awesome Dan. Really, really great. So if people want to learn from you or work with you if possible. I don't know to what degree you're taking on personal clients, but what should they do and where should they go?

Okay, so best place to find me where I'm usually pottering for at least a couple of hours a day is my Facebook group. So if you go to the search bar at the top, put in coffee with Dan, you'll see a bearded 240 pound guy holding a very, very small red cup. That's me. Request to join the group. Say hello, join.

Say hello.

Say hello and join in. I've also got a blog called Death, Glory or Disappointment, which is kind of my ramblings. And if you want to email me, it's Dan Im the fitness copywriter.com I literally I reply to everyone. I love talking to people. I put time aside in my day to do it. So yeah, I mean I have some really good people like yourself, Joe, who spoke to me. And I don't say this in a self depreciation when I was relatively no. 1 in this world. And I'm keeping that spirit alive. So, you know, I like to help people who are on the up or struggling or just need a hand. I try to make myself as available as I can. Yeah, no, awesome.

And I'll say that in case people cannot understand with your accent, you know, unless of course, they're in the UK. Death, glory or disappointment.com and dan@iamthefitnesscopywriter.com so, yeah, you know, this is really. This is really great. There was just a lot of really great insights. And more than anything, it's always inspiring to me to just hear. And I learned. I always learned so much just hearing, hearing other people's stories and what they do and how they do it. Which is one of the reasons me and Dean do the podcast. Because we're able to share these stories and these conversations and these skills and resources and individuals as people. And at the same time, we benefit because we get to listen to all this and facilitate it. So really, really good. Any famous last words from either one of you?

Right. Wine will be swearing.

Yeah, right here.

Send email. Get money. So what were you gonna say, Dean?

That's what I said.

Right.

Stole it, I follow. Yeah, that was Dean's. I got excited when he said it.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, that's it.

And it will be jfdi. And you can work out what that means.

Yeah, just focus and do it. Or just effing.

Yeah, got it.

Got it. Awesome, dude. Well, thank you so much. And to all of our listeners, share your comments at. I love marketing.

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