The Most Surprising Copywriting Panel You'll Ever See

This. How many of you would really like to learn how to increase your sales, clients, leads, etc. Okay. If you cannot get something that could be transformative, a huge dominant out of the next session, you probably need to check yourself into rehab or something. This is going to be good. So we're going to do a copywriting panel. And I believe this is the greatest panel of brilliant, world renowned, proven track records up the Ying Yang group that's ever been put together. Ying Yang is a copyrighting term, by the way. I'm going to have this done with me with Jennifer Houdy, who's amazing. So I want to give you just a real quick intro of who Jennifer is. So Jennifer Hooty has the top copywriting training and company agency called Conscious Copy and company that helps service based entrepreneurs and clients like me, Dan Sullivan, Cameron Herold, Evan Pagan, and there's probably more people that are in this room and she's going to do this with me. So I want to bring up Jennifer. Jennifer, come on up. All right, so what I'd like you to do first is explain what this copy is all about, why are we doing this sort of thing and whatever we have prepared here.

Absolutely, Ms. Hoote. All right, so I want you all to just take a moment and think about a problem that you currently have in your business or life that you'd like solved. Okay? So raise your hand once you have one of those in mind. Okay, great. So by the end of this next panel, you will know what you need to do to solve that problem. We have put together the greatest panel of sales letter writers, copywriters, wordsmiths, problem solvers of all time. Copy is written words that sell or persuasion in print. It's the most important skill that will help you solve any problem, build a successful business and create the impact that you want to be able to write is to write persuasive copy or understand the power of it so you can hire and direct the right who to help you. Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech is a sales letter. The Declaration of Independence is a sales letter. So that problem that you'd like solved, that result that you'd like to create, or the message that you like to spread, any of those can be solved with the right sales letter. So I want you to think about that and the problem that you'd like solved while listening to this panel.

Yes, exactly. Thank you. All right, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to do a really short intro. There's so much that could be said, but it would eat up a ton of time if I was just to give you the credentials of all these people. So I'll say their name, then I'll ask them to come out. So the first person is Craig Clemons. In the last five years alone, his promotions have brought in over a billion in sales, turning unknown experts into household names, brands into category leaders, and books in the New York Times bestsellers. Give it up for Craig Clemons. Okay, thank you, brother. Take a seat. How are you? The second is John Carlton, who I've known for many, many years. He's often referred to as the most ripped off writer on the web and the most respected writing teacher alive. Give it up for John Carlton. And then Paris Lampropolis. He lives with Batman. He's the secret weapon behind several eight and nine figure businesses. These businesses hire him to go up against their best performing ads and beat them. Give it up for Paris.

Yeah.

What y' all trying to do?

Brian Kurtz, now the founder of Titans Marketing, has overseen the distribution of close to 2 billion pieces of direct response promotions over the past four decades while helping his former company, Boardroom Inc. Grow to over 150 million a year in revenue. Give it up for Brian.

I got a condo in Manhattan.

Baby girl, what's happening?

And last but not least, Richard Vigory, who's been transforming politics since the 1960s by pioneering the use of direct mail, which helped get a US President nominated and elected in shaping some of the most defining political moments of the 20th century. Give it up for Richard Viggory. So awesome to have you here. Thank you, sir. Here you go. All righty. So let's first establish, since there's a panel here, and panels are always a little weird thing, which one of you is truly the smartest one? Who's the best copywriter here on the panel?

I gotta go with Richard.

Richard, what's this? Who's the smartest one? So, yeah.

So best copywriter.

Yeah. Of the panel here.

Well, me, of course.

Okay, good.

I probably haven't written one package in 25 years, but I built my company based on my copywriting ability. And when I wrote copy back in the 1960s, 1970s, I had a small company then, and I would write a package. I needed $25,000 to finish the week for payroll, rent, et cetera. And I would write a package, and it would maybe be a $10,000 package. I'd literally tear it up, and then I'd go and write another one. 15, 20. And I kept writing until I got to $25,000. And I tell my team that I think I'm always going to be step ahead of them, because when I wrote copy, I was writing to save my life. Literally every day, there are millions and millions of races between rabbits and foxes, and the person, the one that runs most of the races is the rabbits, because the rabbit's running for his life. And when you're writing copy and you're writing for your life, you know, you can write copy at a level other people can't.

Not bad. Not bad. There you go.

I'm the worst writer because I'm the copywriter want to be. And when I wrote that, I got all these people on my list and they said, what are you talking about? You're writing like all these things with scarcity and all the different techniques that all writers use. And I realized after that, that and this will be good for this panel, is that we're all copywriters. It's just to what level we are. And that it's really important that the best copywriters, and I think they'll agree that they have their people that they go to for feedback loops and people that they go, you can't write copy by committee, but you can write it and then check your premise and check with other people. And the people who aren't copywriters need to write something and then go to somebody who can check their work. So I think there's a. I would tell you that you're all copywriters, because I am.

Well, you know, and by the way, one of the things, because I'm thinking about the audience here, some people would love to learn how to write copy, what your process is. We'll ask you some of those questions. But there's a lot of people here that they just want to hire him. Right. How do you hire a great copywriter? What do you look for? How do you even know? And you have hired some of the greatest copywriters in the world.

Yeah, on this panel, too. I mean, Paris, for example, I mean, we made millions of dollars together. And it was. I won't say it was a combined effort. It was mostly him, but. But I did the list work, and without the list, he can't do anything. So I think that. And if you look at, like Halbert and Gene Schwartz, if you look at them and say, you know, and you ask them about their copy and how they write copy, they're going to talk about lists and offers first. And once they have the list and offer, then you do the copy. And it takes Everything to a new level. But if you don't have your list work in place or you don't have your offer work in place, the best copy in the world isn't going to do anything or it'll do something, you'll make some money, but you're not going to get to that level. And I've never seen any situation in almost 40 years that copy wasn't the single. It's actually the least important part of your promotion until it isn't. And when it is, it takes your. You know, the biggest lifts I ever had in all my career were all due to copy and all. But it was after I had the list and the offer dialed in.

Well, I want to ask you all like a just as simple of a question as I can. What's your definition of copy? Like, what is copy? Because if you say it to a non marketer or even people that think they understand marketing, I think the biggest challenge is people underestimate the importance of marketing. And so I wanted to ask you, how would you even describe it?

Yeah, I'll try that. It's a sales conversation. I've always said I've taught a lot of people and entrepreneurs how to write copy. And I've always said I'd rather take a streetwise but illiterate salesman and turn him into a copywriter than Someone with a PhD in English and turn them into a salesman. It starts with the salesmanship, with the idea of the conversation. You have to convince people to persuade people. And then, you know, one of the easiest ways we've been teaching people how to write is if you know how to sell. If I can put you in front of someone face to face and you can sell them on what you have, then we can transcribe that. You've already got your first good sales piece already written. You just need to transcribe it and then clean it up and get going. So it's a conversation. It always has been good.

And if you guys want to add anything to that, great. If not, I'll let Jennifer ask the question.

Yeah, I see copywriting as taking that story that is in your prospect's hand. You know, do you guys do like the customer avatar thing? Do you guys all kind of know who your customer is or have you thought about that? Like, you know, our customers have these stories in their head of like what their life is like and how it's going to be. And then when you grab a great product or service, the copywriter's job is to tell a story around that and I see copywriting as the intersection of those two stories and being able to intersect them in a way that when the customer comes along to your product or service story, they think, wow, my story can become a little bit better if I jump on this.

Yeah. It reminds me of the quote by Robert Collier, Enter the conversation that's already going on in your prospect's mind. You're going to want to write that one down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then you don't have to read Collier, which is a tough book.

There's a new book by Scott Adams, who writes Dilbert, and he's written a book called Winn Bigley. And he makes a lot of. He's talking. He's a liberal Democrat, but he's talking about. He admires Trump's marketing ability. And he makes the point that Trump has brilliantly identified a conversation that's going on in people's head, and he joins that conversation in terms of marketing. Joe, long before you write the copy, I think you've got to do a lot more thinking and analysis. And I talk, I've got something I identify as Vigory's Four Horsemen of marketing. And you've got to get these four things right. And if you do, life is downhill, wind to your back. Get one of these four things wrong, and you're not going to succeed. And not only applies to copywriting, it applies to, you want a spouse, you want a job, you want a raise, you know you've got to do these four horsemen. Position, differentiation, benefit and brand. Position is nothing more than a hole, hole in the marketplace, a private decision you make. Think of MSNBC and Fox. Both of them have a hole in the marketplace. They privately decided they want to occupy. Differentiation is what they did to advertise, let everybody know their position and differentiation. And that was for MSNBC, Rachel Maldau, Chris Matthews. For Fox, it's Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Fox and Friends. Benefit is obvious. You get benefits from if you're a liberal, from watching NBC, msnbc, not if you're a conservative. So if you lose on that one, you lose conservatives, Fox, the same thing, you lose conservative. Brand is the ball game. That's everything. It's a combination of the other three, and it's what makes you singular. It's a very, very hard concept to grasp. I have a hard time with my team members thinking about that. But just think of Seth Godin's purple cow. It's what makes you unique and different. And many of the people that I've talked to here the exhibitors, et cetera, don't have. They think they've got a brand, but they don't have a hold in the marketplace. There's nothing that differentiate them from anybody else. United, American Airlines, Delta, no brand. It doesn't matter to most of us which airline we fly. We want to arrive at a certain time, leave at a certain time. JetBlue, Southwest, Virgin, they've got brands.

Awesome. Okay, Jennifer.

Yeah. And I know what some of you in the crowd are probably thinking. There's one person that really, really sticks out here on the panel. Joe, you realize you're the only non copywriter on this panel, right?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

I got a question for whoever feels compelled to ask. First is what are some of the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs make when it comes to copywriting and also in hiring copywriters?

So a mistake, and this is going to sound awfully self serving coming from a copywriter, but I'm not looking for clients. The mistake is going cheap and is going bargain basement. This is like one of the most difficult skills to find because first of all, you're looking for somebody who can write and you just eliminated 80% of the population there, then that person has to be a salesperson, a good salesperson. And most writers are introverts. So to find an intersection of those two circles, you've already limited a lot. And then the third thing they have to have is some element of creativity because very often they're being called upon to find the 101st way to sell something that already has been sold a hundred different ways. So these are like, again, we're not touting our own horns here, but in general, these are unicorns you're looking for. And the difference between good copy and great copy, it could increase your sales tenfold. Right? The difference between a dollar bill and $100 bill, they're both the same piece of paper, they both have the same ink, but one of them's worth 100 times more than the other. And the same thing with good copy. So the number one mistake I see is people looking at it as a cost rather than an investment, because it really is an investment.

And I'll add to that that, you know, this is not self serving because I hired a lot of copywriters, but the thing that I see is that I still get probably, you know, two, three emails a week. You know, Brian, do you know a good copywriter? And that is like the wrong question because you have to, you know, if you want somebody to just write some copy for you and you know, Just, you know, done for you. You can do that. But to find somebody, it's obviously someone who's really creative, but it's got to be somebody who's really cut their teeth in a particular category, in a particular. They have a passion for your product or service. I mean, there's, you know, you should research copywriters, not just grab one off the street. And it's not a commodity. And that, you know, it sounds kind of simplistic for me to say that, but it's amazing that. The biggest mistake that I see. Your question was, the biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs make is that they see copywriting as, you know, once they decide I'm going to do some good creative. Now that it's a commodity and it's not. These are incredible. I mean, the people on this panel are just. They move people to action, and you don't do that without putting in. If it's not 10,000 hours, it's 8,000 hours. If you don't have curiosity, if you don't have passion, if you don't know basic direct marketing principles. I mean, there's, like, certain things. And I've actually, I've outlined seven things that I see as, like, I won't go through them now, but seven things that were evident in every great copywriter I ever hired. And it was. It was unanimous. Like, you know, and so here's one. And he. He qualifies. I check off the boxes. You know, hunger, passion, direct marketing knowledge, humility, all those things. And so I just want to. I guess the biggest mistake is that they. They don't take it seriously enough.

To put a cherry on top of that, my team, the Washington Nationals, the World Series champions, has the second highest payroll in baseball. If you want to win, you've got to pay. Have. Pay the money. You got to pay.

And just. I'm sorry. Craig. There used to be a saying that there's a shortage of copywriters. Well, unfortunately, right now we have a glut of copywriters because there's all this copywriting training out there that says, oh, you know, work from the beach and live the good life and sucks people in to want to become copywriters. So we now have a glut of copywriters, but we still have a shortage of good ones. So you have to do your due diligence. You have to find out what else they've written, how well it did. And one little trick is very often when they show you their samples, and by the way, this goes for graphic designers, it goes for any kind of talent you want to hire, their samples are going to look great. But very often the reason the samples look great is because the client rewrote it. So I always ask them to see the first draft that they submitted to.

The client as well and make sure I get the results. Because. Because sometimes the results aren't that good either. Even though it looks pretty good.

You got to ask him how well it did.

To add to Paris comment, I've said for 50 years I would not dream of flying in an airplane with a pilot who had the skills of the average person in marketing. And I'm 86 years old. I spend two to three hours, six days a week studying marketing. And I don't know of a competitor, about a half that spends two or three hours a month studying marketing in my niche out there. Study, study, study. Read, read, read. You know, you don't have to. None of us have to play Lewis and Clark. Giants have come before us. You know, just read those. There's hundreds and hundreds of good marketing books out there. I focus on about 15 to 20 of them, and I read them over and over and over.

Yeah, yeah. To piggyback on that, the biggest mistake I think entrepreneurs make is bringing the copywriter in too late in the product design so they'll come up with a great idea. You know, we all have great ideas that we're really passionate about, but I think it's important to either bring a copywriter in early before you finalize that product idea to make sure it's something that people are going to want, or at least get the basics down yourself. And there's three books I recommend that I think anyone should read before they take a product out to market. First one is My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins, which tells the story of how he created brands back in the 1920s that are still around today, like Goodyear Tire, Pepsid toothpaste, Hoover vacuum cleaner. The other book that I think is a must read is Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Rise, Positioning the battle for your mind. And that'll tell you how to tackle that horseman that Richard was mentioning. Getting that fit in the prospect's mind so you can enter a new category and create your own space there. And then the third is Triggers by Joe Sugarman, who I think Joe is here right now.

Where is Joe?

Yeah, yeah. And that book is brilliant because it shows all the. All the triggers that make people buy, that make people excited about a product or service. And if you read those first before you finalize your product or service, you can build that into the product or service. Because I tell you what, if you do that before you hire the copywriter, you risk making something that isn't desirable. At the same time, if you design the product with those triggers in mind, with that positioning in mind, and with what Claude was a master of, was that like, you know, combining all four of those horsemen of the brand, then the copywriter has a chance to really hit it out of the park because you did your homework and made something great for them to sell.

In fact, some marketers actually have the copywriter write the piece first and then design the product completely around that. So that's a really good.

And Craig does this all the time.

Time.

Craig basically has no competitors in his niches because he's done such a good job of differentiating the product and branding it. And in the book positioning, they say, create a new ladder. Like most. Like, if you look at soft drinks, right? Coke and Pepsi, those are the top two rungs of the ladder. You try to go up against Coke and Pepsi in the cola business, you're dead. So you create a new ladder. Energy drinks, Red Bull. Boom. The guy became a billionaire.

So let me ask you guys, so what is your process, step by step, for strategizing and writing winning copy?

Oh, I'll start. I want to interview every. If I have a client, I want to interview the client and get the whole story from him. But more importantly, I want to interview everybody else around him, because often the owner loses track of what is why people are buying his product. So I want to talk to the feet in the street salesman. I want to talk to the secretaries. I want to talk to his secretary, and I want to talk to the people in customer service, find out why people are returning because they'll hide that information from the owner. Often, and I call it being a sales detective, you got to just interview people and really dig deep into what the truth is about the product and the market. And again, I've seen this just. It's endemic. As an owner, you will start to lose track of why people are buying your stuff. You get protected from the hard truths of why numbers are going up or down.

That's good.

I think when an owner or an entrepreneur hires a copywriter, they just figure, okay, this guy will just. Or this woman will just do the copy for me. And you've got to. Even if you don't want to be involved, you've got to be involved. So as John says, you know, you not only. I mean, I think the best copywriters I'VE ever met have been the best interviewers. They ask good questions, they're curious, and then they go the next step. And, you know, to not bring them into the company, I think that's really important, you know, to sit down with all the people in the organization. That's a. You know, only the best copywriters do that. And that's why there are so few great ones, because they don't spend the time and effort to really get deep into the business. And if the owner is a writer and wants to write something, and if the business is really their passion, let them write a version, you know, but, you know, then give it to the copywriter and let them, you know, create the poetry. But, you know, I think it's a team effort. And any. Anybody who just gives it to the copywriter is making a big mistake. And the copywriter's gotta be, as John says, a detective.

You can tell the good ones from the bad ones by the amount of stuff they ask you for, because the game is won or lost during the research phase. And if the guy's being such a pain in the ass of thorn in your side for asking for all this stuff, or the gal, that means that he or she is probably really good. Whereas if they're not really asking you for a lot of stuff, it means they're probably not very good. And so the different things you want to have, you want to give them all the advertising that you've run for your product in the past, winners and losers and results. You want to give them competitors, advertising what they've run. You got to give them, like, kind of a history of what's been working and when. You gotta give them everything you have on the product. The features, the benefits, any studies that have been done, any specifications, any of that stuff. You want to tell them everything you can about the audiences, who you've marketed to, what lists work, what lists don't work. In the old days, we had, you know, literally mailing lists. Right now we have email lists. Now we have audiences on Facebook. We have all that kind of stuff.

I used to eliminate copywriters who. Who didn't ask me for a list history. Like that should be one of their first questions. And they would just go off and do it. And, I mean, I was a list guy, you know, I'm not. Again, I'm not writing promotion soup to nuts like these guys. But I've learned a lot from working with these guys. And, you know, but you've got to know the list. You've got to. Yeah. It's amazing how little they ask. And then, you know, that they're not probably great copywriter.

Well, you know, so what? Sorry, Richard. So obviously the theme here is doing research, right? Because a lot of people, if they just hear copyrighted, they think, oh, I'm going to pay a bunch of money to someone to write words, not realizing the setup that is needed in order to do that. And then I've always referred to, you know, marketing as applied psychology. I mean, because when you have the message and then you're connected to the right list, and if you're not willing to even understand or think through that, how do you expect, you know, a campaign to be a smashing success unless you just get really lucky?

So, Richard, you ask, how. What do we do before we write the package? I'll spend 15, maybe 20 hours studying, you know, the project. And I am one with my client. Bill Buckley famously said he was a conservative, but was not of the breed on Saturday night. He didn't want to hang out with people like me. He wanted to hang out with the beautiful people in New York. But I am one with my audience. I can go to any conservative meeting, sit on the front row. I know when to stand, when to boo, when to applaud. And I'm just one with that audience there. And that is just so important. Also, I've learned very little about what I know in marketing, fundraising, copywriting from nonprofit community. The vast majority of what I've learned, I learned from the commercial world, world. And I studied Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins back in the 60s, etc. And one of the things I learned, all successful packages that mailed in millions and millions and millions seemed to have something in common. That was a technique. It led with a technique. And so I transferred that idea to the nonprofit community. So when you get fundraising letters that have surveys, we were the first to ever do that when you have a coin dollar bill. And that's. We were the first to do that back in the 60s and 70s. So I've had. I've written hundreds, if not thousands of packages and mailed 4 billion plus letters. And I think one letter, maybe two at most, did not lead with a technique. And the number one technique in the 1960s and 1970s and is still highly used now, was sweepstakes. And nobody ever got a letter from Reader's Digest asking to subscribe to Reader's Digestion. You want to win a million dollars, you want to win a new home, a boat, a car, you know, and then at the end of the appeal, they can subscribe, but start with a technique, and it makes all the difference in the world. In the nonprofit world, they'll have name and address labels or a coin or some kind of a free gift, but it's all about the technique. And Robert Caledon that you'll have here tomorrow talks about in pre suasion. You know, you give people a gift, and you give them a gift ahead of time.

You.

It makes the going a lot easier.

Yeah. Oh, and by the way, I keep saying Sunday, it's actually on Monday is when Robert Cialdini is going to be speaking. Awesome. Thank you.

I think it's also critical that you know where the world is in regards to your product. So giving you guys an example, who here is familiar with probiotics? Who knows what probiotics are? Okay, so we got into the probiotics market in 2013, and back then, most people had no idea.

So.

So our banner said the root of all stomach problems, because everyone knows what a stomach problem feels like and they want a solution for it. And then we would tell the whole story of, hey, you have these bacteria that are living in your body. There's 25 trillion of them. They make up the microbiome. And probiotics are beneficial bacteria you could add to help those bacteria out. Flash forward to 2017, when probiotics are on every ship at the register of whole foods and chocolate bars and drinks and probiotic chapstick and pizza and all that shit. You know, our banner ad says, before you buy probiotics, watch this, because there's so many people now buying probiotics or aware of probiotics that they are going to click on that banner to find out more information. So that was an example of just knowing where the market is. And then I also think it's important for any writer to know where the consumers of the previous sales are. And the best way to do that is reading testimonials that come in. Or if you guys have a call center and you can let your writers come and listen to the calls that are happening so they hear the customers expressing their problems, concerns, and big wins they've had from your products in real time. That's when they can, like, really get into the customer avatar because they're actual customers that they. They're getting that direct download from.

No, get the words, too. I mean, you know, you were saying that if they call in and they can hear, you know, just you said stomach problems. You know, stomach problems is. Before probiotics, it was stomach problems. And so I think that Knowing the language of your audience is so important. I mean, one thing that a lot of writers do, I know if they can find either a forum or they go on Amazon and they, they do. Like, if it's an Amazon book that you think your audience is reading, you go to the 5 star reviews and the 1 star reviews and you get a lot of language and a lot of ways that people talk because, you know, if you are off in your language, you could be off like one or two words and you lose them. So you really got to be precise. And it changes. I think what Craig is saying, it's going to change over time too, right?

The word stomach versus the word belly, the word baldness versus hair loss. These things make a difference. You know, just that simple word choice can, can make like a 20% difference in the, in the pull of the ad. So if you're reading, if you're using the customers and prospects actual words and you're just saying it back to them, it's like magic.

You know, Gary Chapman, who wrote the Five Love Languages, like I was having a conversation with him probably like 10 years ago, and he said, if you want to know what your partner's love language is, listen to what they complain about. And I actually think it's a good thing for the marketplace. What are people complaining about? Where's Rossi at? Where's he at? Richard? Yeah, he has this great line where he says, you know, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. And so I think copywriters really know how to zoom in on what the market, what do they need to hear?

Know most people who are not professionals think, you know, what's the big deal about copywriting? I learned to write in the first grade. I know where they sell postage stamps. What's the big deal? Well, it is a big deal. It is deviant behavior. Like doctors, you know, to lay people on a table and cut them up. You know, so it's what we do is deviant behavior. And this is learned behavior. And I say on a good day, on a really, really good day, I've got 10 seconds to get them to, you know, write me a check. Average is four or five seconds. The Internet, you're looking at one or two seconds in it, but is deleted. So this is difficult stuff. It can be learned, but you don't learn it by going to a few seminars, reading a few books. So this is tens of thousands of hours.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. I'm glad that you brought that up, even just with that tension spot, because I believe the last Research showed that our humans attention spans is now less than a goldfish. And so we are getting thousands of marketing messages coming at us every single day. And so I'm curious, marketing looks very different with social media than it did five, 10 years ago. And even with the giants that we all learn from, when they wrote a piece, they had to spend thousands of of dollars and mail it out. And then it would take a while to get feedback, whereas now we can get feedback immediately. And so what are some of the biggest changes you've seen when it comes to copywriting and what do you predict will change over the next couple years with social media?

This is something Craig and I were talking about at lunch. So you know, looking forward, it's changed so much already that I'm not sure you can predict what's going to happen. But it will all get back to how humans communicate with each other. So I think some of the best social media advertising speaks like social media. You're not taking them out of what they're already reading. And it's shorter, it's punchy, there's a different patois to it, but you're still underneath all of that trying to persuade. So it's a little different than reading Aunt Margaret's history of her trip to Florida because at the end you're going to try to sell, but you got to slip it in. You can't have an abrupt change from what the reader is already engaged in getting back to that conversation already in their head. It's kind of like you can't use frontal assault in copy. One of the best tricks I ever learned was coming in through the side door, I call it. And you kind of, you don't try to force someone to listen to you. You don't force anything. It's a very smooth process and it's a welcome voice in their ear. And then you get into the conversation.

When I did my pioneering work in political direct mail direct marketing back in the 60s, I didn't have to play Lewis and Clark. Giants had come for me, Claude Hopkins, you know, and Dick Benson and others, and Gene Swartz, et cetera. But we all had to play Lewis and Clark with the Internet. We haven't figured it out yet. Direct marketing and direct mail is a very mature business. Not so with the Internet. And we might solve it maybe this afternoon, maybe, maybe five, ten years from now. But we all have to play Lewis and Clark. We're still trying to figure the Internet out, quite frankly.

Well, you know, one thing, he doesn't like being identified is this. But the highest earning online copywriter in the world is sitting on this panel. So we won't say who that is. The thing is that it is a very. I'm so curious of this question myself, just what you guys are saying. So.

Yeah, yeah. What Richard just said is so true. I think the biggest difference between the direct mail newspaper days and the current days is it used to be that if you had an A list writer write you a great letter, you were done and you could just mail the shit out of that for years. And now there's so many more variables that it's like only half the battle having the great letter. You need to have a media team that knows how to split test creative, constantly split test different openings, constantly split test different video montages, like maybe an animation versus like a live action sequence. You know, we all find huge conversion differences between things like that and it makes it a little bit difficult to hire outside writers in our business because of the way to pay them because you can't really like justify the royalty the same way because once we get it, that's when the real work begins and. And it's all our in house media team optimizing the letter, optimizing the price points, optimizing the upsell funnel, optimizing the creative that shows on all different websites. You know, you need special creative for Facebook, then it's gonna be different than Google, which is gonna be different from Taboola. And it's just like such a bigger game now because of all these variables that your media buying team is crucial. And unfortunately that's another hard hire, right?

Yeah. So like everybody's been saying in the old days, somebody had hired me, I'd write a sales letter, we'd mail out to 10 million people and we'd all get rich. Now I got to write a sales letter that becomes a landing page and I got to write seven Facebook ads and I got to write seven. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying the complexity, to answer Jennifer's question, Brian, is there's a lot more complexity. There's a lot more moving parts. Everything like Craig was saying, has to be be optimized. There's different messages to different audiences and all of that. And I think it's just going to get more and more that way. You ask for prediction. None of us can predict the future. But there's always new platforms coming up, new technologies, new ways of snooping on.

People knowing don't follow Paris on TikTok. You guys are missing out.

You know, I would Say that the, you know, and just in terms of length. So, you know, in direct mail it's not that longer copy always beats shorter copy, but from a great writer, an A plus writer, the longer copy was going to be good because it was compelling. It really gave away a lot more of the. It used to always be only give away the sizzle. It had a little stake in it, but you had the three things and the other four were in the book and that kind of thing and that kind of moved toward launches and Facebook and everything else. And you can't do that kind of direct mail or that kind of sales letter. But you can, I think, and I've seen a lot more of it. You've got to be shorter, you've got to be sweeter, you've got to get their attention a lot faster. But if you can get them into something that is compelling long copy, maybe second or third generation of that prospect, I think you're going to get a customer for life. And that's always how you set is how they respond. So if they're responding to a two line ad in Facebook and then you're going to sell the crap out of them immediately, you may make some sales, but you're not going to have the lifetime value. If you can get them into a, I hate to use the word funnel, but it's a funnel and you get them into a funnel that includes long copy and compelling copy. The idea is that you can get them then on the second and third product then now you've, you know, now you're talking about lifetime value in the discussion here. And I think I'm not making predictions either. But you have to keep going with it. And then the compensation is really tough because, you know, you have a control every 15 minutes online, whereas in direct mail, Paris would be a pig and he'd be, you know, keeping the control for like three years and not a pig, but you know, you know what I mean? That was an affectionate pig.

Can I just put a. I'm sorry, playful banter? Yeah, what's that?

I said a little playful banter.

I just want to put a fine point. That's right. Brian and I, we have a history copywriter mud fight. So to just put a fine point on what you were saying, right. There's. I want to dispel the myth that you can't use long copy anymore because people have short attention spans.

Right.

How long is the average Marvel Comics movie? Two and a half, three hours. Right. How long were movies? 20 years ago? An hour and A half. If people's attention spans are getting shorter, why are movies getting longer? The answer is you can make it as long as it needs to be if it's compelling. Right. The Facebook ad or the native ad or the Google Ad is going to be short. But that's just a lead generator, in essence is what it is. It's just, you're just selling the click. You're not expecting anybody to buy the product because you only have this much space. What you're getting is you're getting them curious to click to learn more, and then they get into your long follow sales letter or your video. How long are your videos, Craig?

Well, we have found shorter things working lately for the first time ever. That said, our biggest winners have all been between 45 minutes and an hour and five minutes.

Right.

And that includes winners running today.

Yeah. And people will sit there and they will watch all of it, just like they'll sit there and watch Captain America or Spider man or anything like that. You have to be compelling. You have to constantly have interesting, exciting things. There's got to be movement in the video. It can't be static because it's all the lizard brain. Right, the lizard brain. Our brains are trained to ignore 99% of stimuli that come their way. Right. We pay attention to specific things, like Brian Scudamore was saying before, the reticular activating system. Right. So it's basically your lizard brain from caveman times. If something's moving, it could be dangerous. I could be eaten. I have to pay attention. So you want movement in your videos, you want newness, you want, want novelty. When you have new novel things, it creates a dopamine dump in the brain and you keep giving them those dopamine hits and your copy literally becomes addictive. It's like being at a slot machine pulling the lever. So you use short copy to get the click and you use longer copy to make the sale.

Let me just add that one thing. You should keep in mind that often your prospect is in some level of trauma. There's a reason why they're even in your target market. They need something, they're hurt, they need some answers, they need solutions. And that's a different mindset than you're usually in. When you're kind of relaxing, you know all the answers because it's your product. So you have to understand that the sense of trauma that people are in and they, you know, somebody who has a problem is going to listen, listen to a lot of information, trying, trying to get the solution. So it's a. It's a very important place to start. You got somebody in trouble, you're going to fix it.

Yeah, we had an investment banker come in and was like, you know, meeting with us to give us a loan or some shit, I don't remember. But before we got into the trenches, he was complaining about how his house in Nantucket, he was building a pool and it was May, he was getting it ready for summer. And the city inspector came by and was like, hey, wait a second. Those palm trees on the plan are on this side of the pool. And you put them on the far side. You're going to have to resubmit these plants. And he's like, oh, I'll just move the palm trees. Like, no, no, no, you need to go resubmit the plans to the city. And he knew if he had to resubmit, it was going to take like three to four months and he was going to miss his pool for summer. So he was bitching about this before he came into our business. And then he starts looking at the stuff and he's like, these videos, they're too long. Like, who's going to watch a long video like this? I said, well, Alex, let me ask you a question. You just told me about this situation with your pool. If you were to go online and research and an ad popped up and it was like, here's how to get plans approved in Nantucket in 24 hours or less. Even if the city inspectors are up your ass causing to make permanent changes, you're going to learn it all in the next 45 minutes. Would you pay attention to every word of that video? Yeah, of course. You know, it's like what John said. When someone has an urgent, pressing problem and you're speaking to them about something that they really care about, about their dreams, hopes and desires in a way that resonates with them. As Paris was talking about using those words that resonate with them. They're going to pay attention as long as you keep giving them that tasty information. Yeah.

Let me. Can I say something to this? Because it's such a good point. So our buddy Halbert, yeah, John was like Halbert's best friend. I think me and John have done more to put Halbert's knowledge in that crazy bastard's knowledge out into the world than probably anyone since he passed. One of the things that Craig is saying here, you will continuously have people that will give you opinions disguised as, like, know how and advice that have never even read a marketing book. Trying, you know, rarely does Someone go to a brain surgeon who's done brain surgery like a thousand times, ten thousand times, and starts telling him what scalpel to use or how to actually do it. But they do it to marketers all the time. They have no respect for the amount of effort that you guys have put into learning this craft. And one of the things that I want to just emphasize here is one of the biggest detriments to your success with copy is listening to all the horseshit that other people are going to actually tell you about what works and what doesn't work. Not based on any evidence of testing, but just their opinion of what they think. And how about would say the most expensive information in the world is bad information. And even if that information or that advice, the most expensive advice in the world is bad advice, even if that advice is free. And so when people are giving you marketing advice, really only listen to people that have the chops that have been there, done that and can back it up because there's so much incompetency that is shared. And frankly, most people don't respect marketing. They don't understand it, but they have opinions about it. And they take well intentioned business owners trying to build and grow a business. They will say something in a way that believes them, oh, let's follow that advice. And they don't do it.

And they say it with such conviction too.

To follow up on that, those who want to be copywriters, those who want to be marketers, in addition to doing what I said earlier, read, read, read, study, study, study. And particularly the masters. I think it's critically important to go to the top of your game to have mentors. I was very fortunate to have four giant mentors. Unfortunately, three of them have passed away. One is very much alive and he's honored us with his presence today. Dan Sullivan and I just owe Dan so very much. All of us are turtles on a stump. You're walking out in the woods where I live and you see a turtle on a stump, you know something, somebody's come along here recently and put him there. So I certainly am where I am because of my mentors, including Dan Sullivan and many others there. So seek out mentors in your life. It'll make a huge difference.

Is this helpful so far? Learning some stuff? Yeah.

Good, huh?

So this may be an interesting question, but what has copy marketing or sales taught you about life and humanity?

Oh, a ton. Everything you learn as a copywriter extends to everything else in your life, whether it's getting an upgrade, free upgrade, you know, from the airline or the hotel or how to deal with difficult people or how to find a life partner. I mean, it's just. It's all copywriting. It's all persuasion. Yeah. And I always tell my. My writers that everything's like copywriting. Copywriting's like everything. And there's a copywriting lesson everywhere.

You know, the. The best copywriters, too, that I've known, and I've known most of the top ones lead vigorous, exciting lives where they do a lot of stupid things when they're young, learn the lesson from it, and then go out and do it again just to make sure they didn't miss anything and apply it. Copywriting, actually writing in general, it's life lived large. People think about writers being in their garret, typing away all alone, isolated from the world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I think most of us are introverts up here, but we know how to operate in the extroverted world. And, you know, we're kind of like from the outside looking in, but we look very, very carefully and we learn this stuff very, very finely. So that, yeah, learning how to write is learning how to live better. I think all the way down the.

Line, we did a webinar on, you know, being mindful of everything around you and. And never getting writer's block because life is so. It's so exciting to be. You don't know where you're going to get the next idea. You don't know. And so there's an expression, I think. I mean, he didn't invent it, but Dan Kennedy says marketing by walking around. And so I'll go on the marketing side that if you can just always go out, like, if you know where your customers are, if they're at Walmart or they're at Target or they're at. At some exclusive store, go out and just observe. Observe the world. So that might not get you a sales letter and it might not get you copy for a blog, but it's going to enhance your energy in the world. And I'll tell you, I just keep on storing those things that I learn, and then they come out somehow in some other way, whether it's, you know, in a consulting thing or, you know, in a discussion. And I actually, you know, I thank John because he basically said these simple words, just always be mindful of everything around you, and you'll never get writer's block.

You know, I want to mention one thing, too. Where's Alex Mendozian? You over there somewhere? Is he here? Oh, he's drinking and smoking again. All right. We were just last week over, Alex put a thing together at Wizards Academy with Roy Williams, who's just a great ad writer. And he made this comment that, you know, the media doesn't make an ad work. The ad makes the media work. You know, and it was a very interesting thing about, oh, you know, people constantly say, should I try Facebook? Should I try Instagram ads? Should I? And it's just like, as if the media is somehow going to make their thing work when in reality. What are you asking actually putting there?

Never adapt your technique to the idea, Mike. Never adapt your. Never adapt your technique to the idea. Adapt your idea to the technique. That was from Bill Bernbach that you say you want to be on Facebook. It's huge, but that's not a reason to be on it. And maybe your ad is going to be good for direct mail, or it's going to be good for print, or it's going to be good for search, but you want to get the idea and the concepts down first and then get a great media buyer. And I guess Craig's point about, you know, that hiring for an amazing media buyer is now as important as. That's probably one of the differences, too, that, you know, you didn't need. You needed a good list broker. I had Fishman, so that was good. But, yeah, he was the best ever. But, you know, I, you know, but the list brokers were a little bit more commoditized over time when, you know, in direct mail. But right now, I mean, advertising opportunities are infinite. I mean, I had that. I got that from an investment banker in New York. He said, you know, that if you're going to go to one agency to handle all of your online marketing, you're nuts. You know, you want a Facebook expert, you want a search expert, you want. And now some people can do more than one. They definitely can't do them all. And they're certainly not going to do the offline media, which is not dead. But you have to, you know, work it all in. And the idea is to buy it a la carte. So that's a really important point.

Yeah. And you were going to say about the. What you've learned about marketing from Joe.

To answer your earlier question, does marketing copywriting helping you in life? You know, if you understand those four horsemen I've talked about, position, differentiation, benefit, and brand makes most all of life so much better to stand. You want to, as I said earlier, you want to raise, you want a spouse, you want A job, you, you want a customer. You know, how do you separate yourself from all that competition out there? And the fact that you're quicker, better, faster, that's not a differentiation. You know, what is it that really differentiates you in a concrete way? And what's the benefit? What's the purple cow? What separates you from everybody else out there? And not a lot of people understand that concept, but those four principles are the secret to life.

Can I say this, too? I have an amazing video of you speaking at our 100k group going deep on the four horsemen. And so it's. I'll make sure that everyone in Genius Network gets access to that on the membership site. Because it's unbelievable. I mean, Perry Belcher, when he first watched, he watched it like three times. And then I introduced you guys and now you're, you're buddies. Every single person up here, I have either videos or interviews with all of them going deep into, into this. And even Clayton Makepeace, who was going to be on this panel, but he had a family member that is ill, so he couldn't come out. But he said he would be happy to do a webinar for everybody related to this. And I'll probably hit all of you guys up because I know there's. I mean, we could talk for a week just on so many things that me and Jennifer could ask you guys. So I just wanted to mention that.

Yeah, I just wanted to say copywriting really is life in a way, because it's a conversation that you're having with someone. And my favorite way to start a sales letter, I learned from John. Speaking of mentors, I was luckily, you know, John had put out his material around this time I started learning. So I got to study all of his stuff. He is the most ripped off copywriter alive, in good part because I was ripping off all this stuff back in the day. But I'll never forget what you said, that if you're struggling on how to open, open a piece of copy, imagine you're sitting at a bar and someone comes up and sits next to you and they tell the bartender about a problem they're having. And it's the exact problem that your product or service offers the solution to. And then you turn to them and what you would say to them is the way to start the letter. And I still think about that with every sales letter I write.

Yeah, we will do this. And then these will be short ANSWERS because in seven minutes we're going to do 15 minutes again, Q and A with the audience but that might only include one or two questions because if everyone gives their input. But go ahead, Jennifer.

Oh, yeah. So you're gonna ask me earlier of like, what has it done? Even in my personal life, I'll never forget, Joe shared with me the Gary Halbert quote. Every problem can be solved with the right sales letter. And so earlier this year, there was an example where I wanted a sale. Sell my car and put it online. It wasn't selling. And then I just got this download one day. Oh, yeah, just rewrite the ad and rewrote the ad. Within two days, my car was sold for over the market value price. And then I was like, well, we're moving into a new place on Tuesday. Found the perfect place. First thought was, I'm going to write them a sales letter. And so with any problem going on, it's not just in marketing, but looking at it through the lens of how can I write and really sell the person that I'm trying to sell, whether it's the new vendor that you have, of course, your prospective clients or customers. But that every problem can be solved with the right sales letter is always playing in the back of my mind because it's entering that conversation that that's going on in the other person's mind and then getting on the same page with them to show that you can help them in some sort of way.

Another quick Gary Halbert comment is life changing. Don't build a better hamburger. Identify a hungry market and that can be life changing.

Yep. Yeah. The whole starving crowd thing, which is if you had all of the ingredients to have a successful restaurant, Gary would say, you know, people would say the best food, the best location, the best employees, you know, on and on. And he would say, well, give me a starving crowd and I will beat you on every one of those things. Which is why, you know, if you have, yeah. If you have supply and demand on your side, you don't need great marketing. The analogy I would use is, you know, if you're healthy, you know, if you're a healthy eater and you're going to go to a ball game right after you, you know, work and you don't have time to go to dinner and you go to like a ball game or something and they just don't have any healthy food. It's like hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy and pretzels and snicker bars and stuff like that, you know, you're not going to maybe, yeah, you're like, yum. You're not going to maybe eat all of that but an hour goes by, two hours go by, you end up eating this because you're starving, right? They don't need to be great marketers. It's a supply and demand. And if the world supply of toilet paper evaporated tomorrow, you don't need to be a great, you don't need a big social media following, right? You just need a cardboard sign, put it in your front yard. I've got toilet paper, $50 a roll, you'll sell it out. But if you don't have supply and demand on your side, this is where all of this marketing and that's where.

Like online today, that you've got people who, you know, they've got all this stuff dialed in. They have an affiliate program, the guy's, you know, promoting their product and they've got a great offer. And you know, if creative is just, if the copy and the creative is just, you know, mediocre, they're going to make some sales. I mean, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to make some money. But if, you know, if you reverse that, you just can't get there without the audience. But then once you have those two things, I said this before, then the creative is the most important thing, but you can't start there.

I want to say something like that. Ted Nicklaus, I think most of you guys were friends with Ted Nicklaus. So years ago, probably 20 years ago, when I first started doing interviews, I interviewed him for, at the time it was the Joe Polish Superstar Audio Tape of the Month club. Remember that? You were actually on one of those and so was Brian and Marty Edelston on cassette tape.

I have the cassettes, I can't play them.

Yeah. And Ted had sold like a couple hundred million dollars worth of information products. And he said that he would spend, he'd have these 200, 300 page books and courses. And he said he would spend sometimes five to ten times more time on the single one page ad than he did creating the 300 page course. Because it doesn't matter how good the 300 page course is if he couldn't sell it. So he would put all this emphasis on the ad instrument. So he had a policy in his company where he said people would come to him giving him ideas. We should sell this, we should sell that, we should try this. And he came up with a policy where he said, don't bring me any ideas unless you write it in the form of an ad. Because if you are going to suggest we're going to sell Something we're going to have to write an ad to sell that thing. So his way of training his team, do not present me with ideas, present me with ads. And it would get everyone thinking in the form of an ad. And I think that's a great piece of advice. There's little things like that could totally change the way that we operate. Just like Dan Sullivan has, don't bring me free flow thoughts. Bring me an impact filter. So one of the things with their team is, like, in strategic coaches, you fill out an impact filter first before you present something. Then most of the time, they figure out how to do it on their own, because they did that. So I just wanted to bring that up.

Actually. Gene Schwartz used to. We used to give him a book to. To write a promotion for. And then his first question was, what's not in the book? And then he would come up, he'd look at some things in the book and say, there was something about diabetes, but it was kind of flat. And he'd say. He'd go to the editors and say, go back and tell those editors to get me something juicier so I can write the copy for it and then add it into the book, because it's not in the book already. So that was like a big, big thing.

Or put it into bonuses, you know, additional. Sell the bonuses, and the book comes.

Paris did that with Stengler. We had a newsletter, and he said. He said. I said, paris, would you write for this? And he said, no, it's too boring. And he said, go to the doc. He said, let me talk to the doctor, the guru. So he talks to the doctor and he has all these ideas. And Paris goes, wow, these are great. Where are they? They're on the floor. And they're on the cutting room.

Floor.

Floor.

Because your editors had nixed them. So then we went back and Paris went to the editors and said, this is the importance of the copywriter being involved in your marketing. Then he went to the editors and say, which ones can you back up? Now, they couldn't back them all up, but they were able to get a lot of those things. And your lead was one of those things. And then the only way I could get him to write for me. So that was a way to get you to write for me.

That's awesome. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We will take 15 minutes of Q and A. But here's the thing. You have to go up to the mic. You have to say who you are, what your question Is. And we have to cut it in 15 minutes because they will rip me off stage if I don't do that.

So.

Tucker. Max.

Yes.

I have a question. I hope I don't regret asking this.

So I'm a really good writer.

Like, I've sold millions of books. I helped Tiffany Haddish, David Goggins write their memoirs. Like, I can write the shit out of a book.

Oh, wait, Tucker, let me say this for the audience that doesn't know you. There's only now four authors in the world that have had three books. Number one New York Times bestsellers and three books on New York Times all at the same time. It's Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Renee Brown, and Albert Abrams.

Yeah, right. So anyway, so when I started my career.

So you're a good writer.

Yes. No, but hold on. It's gonna get bad for me in a second. So when I started my company helps people write books, I thought, well, I'm a great writer. How hard could copy be?

Right?

And so turns out my copy was a flaming garbage fire. It was the worst. And then I got, I think, mediocre now. But, like. So aside from having immense respect for copywriters, my question is, even though I'm a great writer, maybe it's harder for me.

I don't know.

I'm having such problems. I feel like getting over the hump and becoming even a decent copywriter. You guys kind of covered this a.

Little bit, but would you give me.

Just the same advice? Hey, go read those books. Keep practicing.

No, get a mentor like Richard was talking about. Get some coaching. Get some hands on coaching. Hopefully you develop a relationship, get that mentorship going and do with a couple of different people, and find one that you really gel with, has the same kind of style, you have the same worldview, the same sensibilities. And when you click, that's often a lifetime connection that you'll have that'll solve everything. That will. You know, you're trying to do this yourself, and none of us did this ourselves. We all had mentors.

I doubt it was. And I doubt it was a dumpster fire, as you say. So there might have been something because you were writing from your heart, from your passion, from something. So there probably was salvageable pieces of what you were writing. I wrote the direct mail piece, so I thought I was writing the promotion for the Titans event back in 2014, and I wrote like, nine pages in, like, you know, three days. And I say, this is great. And I sent it to David Deutsch and David Deutch says to me, you know, Brian, you're really good at lists and all kinds of stuff, but, you know, maybe he's like, basically telling me, I got a dumpster fire. But I took that copy, gave it to a copywriter that I was aligned with, that I really felt I could partner with on it. And he just. I mean, if you ever saw the letter. I don't know if you saw the letter, but it was an amazing letter. And people said, wow, you're a great copywriter. I said, no, I'm not. But I was able to get the ideas down to a certain point. And then if it's a mentor, if it's a partner, whatever you want to call it. But there's a way, and if you don't want to do it, don't do it. But I have a feeling there's salvageable things. I do want to do it.

Because the thing is. You're right, John. You nailed it. I was trying to teach myself.

I've actually become a much better writer.

With books because I've been working on copy.

It's made my language sharper.

It's made me cut out a lot of excess.

I've become a better, way better writer.

In fact, I think it's improved my writing more than my copywriting, which is both annoying and awesome at the same time.

Yeah. I want to make a distinction, too. With writing and content, often, the goal is for them to understand you. In copy, the goal is for them to feel understood. So that's a shift. The goal, content, writing, goal is for them to understand you. With copy, the goal is for them, the buyer prospect, to feel understood. So you got to put on a different hat when writing.

Now.

That's. That's excellent. I was totally not trying to make.

Them feel understood at all. Having said that, though, I would encourage you not to give up copywriting because it will continue to make all of your writing better.

Yeah.

No. So find a mentor as the consensus. Awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Let's do this too for questions so we can try to get to the people that are at the mic, which may be tough.

Neil.

Yeah.

Firstly, thanks, guys.

As we're looking for copywriters and employing a copywriter, how has it changed from.

The point of view of compensation, do copywriters?

I mean, it's critical and it seems to be the source of everything. So copywriters, should we expect to be paying revenue shares, percentage of profits? Is that world changed? And what might any of us expect if we were to be employing a great copywriter?

Around a bazillion dollars.

Yeah.

Kidding.

It depends on a lot of things. It depends on your niche. For one. If you're in a niche where the supply demand thing is so skewed in your favor, well, you know, you can wipe your ass on a piece of paper and mail it out and people will send you money. But if you're in one of these mature niches where, you know, everything that's. It's been sold a thousand different ways and you got a million competitors and all that kind of stuff, then only the. That's how basically I made my living for many years. They would pay me a king's ransom because they knew they. They had to. You know, they're basically screwed if they didn't. So that's one of the things. The other thing is how much is the copywriter doing versus how much is your media buying team, your testing, you know, what are they doing? So like Craig was saying, in his organization, they're doing most of that stuff in house. They've got it dialed in. They're split testing stuff all the time, and the writer didn't have anything to do with it, so he shouldn't get paid the same as he would get paid if he was doing all that stuff.

You know what? It's a really good question about how do you, you know, what do you pay? How do you charge? Because a lot of people there, I think, would really like to know the answers to that. If any of you are willing to just do a short call talking about that, I'll compile it all and share it with everyone. That would be, I think, really valuable.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks, guys.

Go over here.

Hi. Fernando Cruz. I'm a managing partner at Legacy Research.

Real quick.

So right now I currently employ about 25 copywriters. We pay them a small base, and then there's a royalty component, plus any kickers for hitting milestones. It's pretty straightforward. I think, at least in our industry, which is the financial newsletter, they usually. They have to have some chops before they start getting royalties. No or no.

They.

They'll get royalties from day one, but yeah, obviously, yeah, it takes on average about eight months to eight to 12 months to start making some level of royalty for a lot. A lot of our new guys.

The question I had, it kind of relates to compensation.

Are you guys. And I think, Craig, you mentioned it, but is there now a level of taking those royalties and sort of structuring deals with media buyers and with other marketer types, or are you sort of looking at it? As two different sort of pools to.

Pull from in terms of compensation.

Yes. So it's been a challenge and we're still, still working on it. But what we found is a system that pays the writers when they come in there on an hourly as they're training and learning to go up the ranks. And the ranks for us is starting out with email newsletters on our brands that aren't doing as high a volume to where they're getting up to where their newsletter copy quality can work for a brand like Gundry MD or one of our bigger brands. And then their next rung is launches. And so if they can write a successful launch, they get higher salary plus bonus depending on how the launch does the next level up. The highest level is writing a front end converting piece. And the way we do that, if someone's writing a front end converting piece, they're typically a six figure salary earner. But we also give them a bonus depending on the initial roa of the thing they write. When it first tests like, you know, if it's doing well out of the gate, it looks like it's going to be a little bit less tweaking on the media team, they're going to get a higher bonus than if when we put it up for the first run of tests. It's like, you know, barely breaking even or losing money on ad spend. And then we also have a very lucrative company wide bonus structure where everyone in the corporate office can get an extra week of pay if the company hits certain KPIs that we designate at the beginning of the month. And that bonus goes out to everyone from the attorneys to the valet tenant and the corporate office.

We're all entrepreneurs and we respond to incentives. Why wouldn't the top copywriters respond to incentives? You want the best pay for it. Awesome.

Thank you.

Thanks Mike.

Thanks guys. What I'm curious about is we live in an increasingly short attention span environment where like you guys, I started off doing long form, then long form video, then shorter form video.

Even getting people to show up for.

Automated webinars is increasingly difficult. So I've been experimenting now with automated LinkedIn for example, or bots.

And I'm curious if, if you've seen.

Any really good models with short attention span copy and content that translates into sales or how you're breaking down a sales message to work that way.

So whether it's small video nuggets or.

Engagement practices and techniques that you've seen.

Work continually, have you seen any models that are working or are you working on Them now? Yeah, I've had a couple. The one that comes to mind was for a magnetic eyelash. We partnered with the woman who created the world's first magnetic eyelash. She had brought it on the Today show. And that ad was just a few minutes long. It showed the lash being demonstrated on the Today show. So you got all of that proof, not only social proof, from being on the Today show, but the proof of demonstration with the woman on the show putting it on, being like, wow. And then you can see how great it looks. And so that product, I think, had an advantage because it was easier description than was it you, Paris, you just said, like, you know, something that's been beat to death, like, say, a weight loss pill or.

Right. And something that needs more explanation. What you just said is self evident. Everybody knows what it means. Whereas if you're selling, like an investment newsletter, right. Agora is a $1 billion plus company, and Bill Bonner, the. The founder of the company, says, nobody wakes up in the morning saying, oh, I need a newsletter today. Nobody says to their spouse, honey, we're out of newsletters. Can you go pick up more newsletters? So, you know, every product has its nature, as Joe Sugarman says in his writings. And so some things, it's like, you know, the 62nd movie pitch. Oh, I get it. And you don't need longer copy for it. But apart from that, I'm, you know, the whole botch thing and all that, that's out of my realm.

Yeah.

That said, I think the game is changing a little bit. As we were saying before, the biggest winners we've had are still long form. That said, we had a promotion that Facebook made us chop down because Facebook really doesn't like negativity. And there was the free content in this was some foods to avoid at breakfast time, and they didn't like that. You know, you can't be telling people what they shouldn't eat for breakfast. Weird, right? But we chopped it out and we thought that the letter was going to tank because it was such a big chunk of the letter, and it actually converted better when we cut it down. And it was, I think, cut it down from like 40 minutes to 18 minutes, something like that.

You touched on something that we haven't talked about yet, which is Facebook compliance. And they're a pain in the ass. There's all kinds of things you're not allowed to say. Like, the most important word in sales is you, and you're not allowed to use use it in Facebook because they'll feel singled Out. Well, of course they're singled out. That's Facebook's whole reason for existence. But after, you know, they got nailed on it, they threw everybody else under the bus and now they say, oh, you can't do this, you can't do that. So you got to stay on top of that. And so I think what you're talking about, Craig, is it's better to have weaker copy that's Facebook compliant than to have stronger copy than it's not Facebook compliant because then you're just not going to be able to put it out there.

That's true. But this actually improved conversion rate when we chopped this out. And it was a little letter I wrote. And that mystified me even more because I was like, the fuck have I been wasting my time these last few years writing all of this informative, informative content that I thought was high value ad and they don't want it. I don't know.

All right, so Facebook's a pain in the ass. Google's a pain in the ass. The native platforms, they're getting harder to. But YouTube is still the wild west. So you could do whatever the hell you want on YouTube.

Right on.

Thanks. By the way, we only got two minutes left, so this is a tough one. I mean, I can't do both questions. Who was first over here? Okay, we'll take one and just. Hey there.

It'll be short. Hi, guys. I. Great panel. I work in the dating space and being single is very competitive. You talk about attention spans and for a lot of people, it's the difference between swiping right or left.

On Facebook dating, you can only send.

One message and if they don't reply, that's it. Your only shot.

Curious to know what would be included.

In your copy if you were trying to attract your mate?

Just have one of you answer. That's all we have time for.

So the. I don't think this might fit into what you're. I've been wanting to say one thing here before we leave.

And how long have you been married now?

What's that?

How long you been married?

57 years.

Yeah, there you go. If you had to do it all over again, what would you slide in the dm?

What was that?

Slide into the direct message. You're going to show them that if.

I had to do it all over again on a. On a short list of do's and don'ts. When you married 57 years, you got a lot of regrets. Wish we hadn't done this, this and that, or done we had done this or that. But number one, we wish we had had more children because the reason you have children is for grandchildren and that's where grandchildren come from. So I encourage all young people have children because you'll have more grandchildren and that's what life is all about.

Not good for a dating site.

So good.

Any of you want to answer any?

I would say do a split test. Do like an, what we used to call an nth name. So let's say you come up with four different messages that you're going to send out and the first guy gets message number one, the second guy gets message number two, the third guy message number three, the fourth guy, message number four. And you keep alternating until you've sent out enough to get some reasonable idea of which one's the winner and make.

Those four ideas pretty across the board. I mean, just be as far away as possible.

It's the perfect opportunity for Dean Jackson's nine word email. Are you still interested in finding your soulmate question mark?

Yeah.

You can also sit in grandchildren.

Yeah, you know, I'm happily married. My wife Sarah is in the back there. And you know, the newest platform like Snapchat came out just in the last couple years or whatever. But if everyone remembers, Snapchat became a billion dollar company based on a dating message that had no words. It was simply a picture of the junk. So I don't know, I never tested that, you know, but like if you're going to be split testing things in today's day and age when everyone has experience, camera in their pocket, close to the junk, and now there's a platform that makes it disappear after you send it. Yeah, Joe asked me to say that backstage, by the way. He's like, make sure you include sending pictures of junk on this panel or the genius 2019 won't be complete.

You're welcome.

Joe, I appreciate you saying something that did not happen. I cannot end this panel on that. So very quickly, final words of wisdom, piece of advice, anything. You would have to send these people off in the direction. And it does not even necessarily have to be about copyright. And it could be a favorite quote, it could be any piece of life advice, something really beneficial. It's like motivational is what I'm looking for. You're all copywriters, come up with something.

Write every day. How many people keep a journal right now? Yeah, keep the journal and write like even though nobody's going to read your journal, write like somebody's going to read it after you're dead and you're going to be judged completely on what you're saying. So write seriously. Use critical thinking and edit just all the time. Never use the same verb twice on one page. Force yourself into some discipline when you're writing. America is full of very sloppy writers and that's because of the educational system. And if you, you're not a sloppy speaker, if you're a good salesperson. So don't be a sloppy writer.

Great.

Study non copywriting stuff. Study documentaries that have blown up. Those usually have a very catchy intro. Study effective PR like watch the movie Century the Self with Edward Bernays who was called the founding father of pr. Read sales books like Spin Selling by Neil Rackham and a positioning book I mentioned by Jack Trout and Al Rise is a amazing as well. I think that'll give you an edge over the people who are just studying copywriting stuff because it's a bigger picture now. And when you can capture all part of that. No Snapchat joke here, but you're going to zoom into their inbox a little bit more effectively.

Just taking what Craig said a step further, just you want to be a student of everything. You want to be an insatiably curious person. You want to read on a wide variety of topics topics. Because this is going to create this cross pollination of ideas in your head. One of the longest lasting controls that made me the most money ever. I got the idea for a headline. It was a headline about Warren Buffet. But I got the idea from the headline from something I read in the National Enquirer about Cher, you know, Cher the singer actress. And it just sat in my head for like seven years. And then this other thing came by and boom, the two things went together and gave me that idea for the headline. What was was the headline was never before revealed Warren Buffett's cockroach strategy for beating the stock market. And it talked about how cockroaches have been here since before humans. They survived nuclear wars, they survived all this stuff. Well, Buffett buys companies that are like that, like Coca Cola. And it just listed all these businesses and it said like since these businesses were founded, we've had two world wars, we've had foreign currency collapses, impeachments, you know, all these disasters and all this stuff. Yet these companies continue to grow their earnings year after year in making money. And the thing that I had read in the Inquirer was a joke that said if there's a nuclear war, two things will survive cockroaches and share. And so I remembered that joke. And when I was doing my research for the thing that just bubbled to the surface and I said, oh, I'm going to call it the cockroach strategy, because no one's ever heard of that before. They've heard a million things about Warren Buffett, but nobody's ever heard them say that Buffett uses a cockroach strategy.

I would just say briefly that think that differentiation, which we touched on is so important in whether you have a unique product or service that you can differentiate, or if you were in a crowded market, really spend a lot of time going through the things that differentiate it, even if they're not as obvious. So, you know, like with long distance service, I mean, it's really hard, for example, but I think that there are ways to, to find something and maybe it's to call it the cockroach phone service, but you really need to look for all those differentiation and it's, you know, it takes time sometimes that you don't get it right away.

Maybe six very brief things. Have a plan for your life, a written plan. If you don't know, have a written plan for your life. You know, any train will get you there. Tagline. We all talk about how the fast things change. And four or five seconds for postal mail, one or two seconds for the Internet. You need a tagline that differentiates you from everybody else out there. Energy. You'll find that most of your competitors don't have the energy that you have. Bring that and make it a unique ability of yours. An unfair advantage. As Dan would say, tell stories, write to one person, build a relationship, not a transaction with your customers.

Awesome. You want to say anything, Jennifer?

He said peace out.

Awesome. So I hope you all feel a lot more capable to either write copy, do better marketing and advertising, or hire the right people.