[RTB:E15] "Selling 9-Figures with Emotion (w/ Chris Haddad)" - Road to a Billion with Stefan Georgi

Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Georgi, and I'm glad to have you with me here today. The Road to a Billion is a call in style radio show podcast where you can ask me questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, funnels, relationships, money, and more. The reason for the name is double entendre. I am in the process of hitting a billion dollars in sales for both my own products and those of my clients. And I want to make an impact in the lives of billion people in the next 10 years and a direct impact on their mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, well being. The way it works is for people who want to ask questions. You can put them into the Q and A part of this here on Zoom. And Ed will go through and select people's questions and we will answer a bunch of them. Ed, Ray, you want to go ahead and also give a quick introduction who you are and how amazing you are?

I wouldn't go that far, but good morning.

My name is Ed, and I help make people's funnels Facebook compliant so they can scale fast and furiously and collect some of those Zuck bucks.

Love it. Gotta get the Zuck bucks. And we are of course joined today by Mr. Money Fingers himself, Chris Haddad. Chris, it was funny. I thought about asking you for like a bio, but then instead, yeah, I'm just gonna wing it. So, like, you should wing it.

Yeah, why not?

Chris is a lot of things. A direct response copywriter, a marketer, a business owner, probably the best emotional copywriter in the world. He is someone I looked up to as I was first getting into. Not really. Honestly, when I first got into direct response copywriting, I didn't know who you were, Chris. But when I first started getting good at copywriting, that's when I knew who you were. Because my mentors would be like, study this guy. And then I'd read your copy and I'd be like, oh, shit. Like that's how. Like that's what good copy looks like. And then that's from studying you is when I got exponentially better. So I had a huge influence on me. I know you've sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff. We both laugh about how hard it is to actually the actual number.

I would have to call so many people to find out and be like, can you send me your taxes from the last 10 years to see how much money I made you?

Yeah, yeah, I know. For the article. One of the articles I just had come out for like CNBC or something. Cause I got PR people doing PR stuff. And they were like, you're like, oh, the 700 million number. Can you sort of. Can you verify that? And I was like, it's gonna be super fucking hard. And I started reaching out to different clients. And it was funny. Cause some clients were like, yeah, sure. And they would send me stuff and it was great. So one person's like, oh, $100 million. And another one was a couple. It was really cool. But then some people were like, no, we're super private. We don't want to have that out there. And then I'm like, well, they'll do it completely off the record. Like, it's fine. They're not going to say anything. And they're like, nope, really happy for you. Aren't going to do it. So it makes it really tough to. Even if you could. People don't necessarily want to be on record with how much money they gross. Especially if they're like a direct response company selling clickbank offers and things like that.

I think that's for a couple of reasons, though. One is the numbers don't mean anything.

You know this.

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares how many millions of dollars you've actually sold?

It's a good marketing thing. That's why I say it.

I mean, it's great. It's great. I mean, part of the job is being a narcissist, right? Part of the job is getting out there and being like, here's how awesome I am. Which I become less comfortable with as I've gotten older. So something I'm trying to figure out. Because to make money, you have to say, like, here's all the money I've made. People will give you more money. Because that's how it works.

Yeah, exactly. 100%, but yeah. So either way, Chris has made a lot of money, though, and grossed a lot of money and kept some of his money, so. So hence why he's not dead. And. Yeah. So Chris is gonna be joining me today. And Chris, you know, if you want to do, give yourself a better introduction than what I just gave you, you know, if you feel free to share a little bit.

I'm Chris, Mr. Moneyfingers hat at. Or at least I was in a different life. I started off my career when I was 28. I started as a direct response copywriter. Before that, I had always thought that direct response copy was the scummiest thing in the world. Who reads these long letters you get in the mail? It's impossible. Blah, blah, blah. And then I got sick of being dead fucking broke. And I heard about direct response copywriting. And I went from making $30,000 one year to making 200 grand the next year, which was insane to me at the time. It was like, the biggest thing in the world. I became such a narcissistic fucktard because of it. Because I was like, I'm making money now, so I have self worth as a human being. Looking back now, I was dealing with a lot of undiagnosed mental health stuff that made that even more intense. And then after four or five years of writing freelance and making, you know, good money, making a couple hundred, two, three, 400 grand a year, I did something for Jay Gibbolt that I talked about on stage. We did one called Mobile Money Machines. And jay paid me $25,000 to write a sales letter. It took me two days to do because I worked damn fast, kind of like you, except for when I don't. And they made a lot of money on it. They sold. I think I wrote them at one point. I'm like, hey, Jay, how's that offer doing for you? And he said it made, like, $10 million in sales. Sales. And I was like, that's fucking awesome. You should send me a bonus. And the short version is, he sent me a $5,000 bonus in the mail. And I will never be a person for whom $5,000 is not a lot of money until inflation makes it not a lot of money, but still five grand. You're making 10 million. And that's what kind of motivated me to say, fuck it, I'm done as a freelancer. Being a freelancer is. I mean, it changed my life. It got me from nowhere to living a nice life. But it's not the way to make all the monies unless you're Gary benched, and get people to pay you out the nose for years and years and years. And so I started my own offers. I did one called Text the Romance Back. And I went on the Rachel Ray show as my alter ego, Michael Fury, who does not have a mustache. And that was. We were off to the races at that point. Built a business that was doing eight figures in the relationship advice space. I started making several million dollars a year, which is pretty cool, but maybe even more of a douche for a while, because, as you know, and when people start making money in this business, they become douches for a while, because you have to. And then hopefully you get pulled back and become a decent human being afterwards. And that Business is still going. That business paid my bills for most of the last decade, which is really good because I got hit by Lyme disease. I dealt with really bad back problems for a long time from a car wreck in my 20s. And then I had divorce. And then I had what it can only be described as a massive mental breakdown from undiagnosed bipolar 2, which I had for 40 years, which sucks, but made me a pretty good copywriter because it makes you very intensely emotional. And then for the last. I got diagnosed three years ago this week, actually. My birthday is tomorrow. It was right before my birthday. And I spent the last two of those last years kind of becoming a stable human being again. You saw me during some of that. And now over the last year or so, I'm finally. God, it's been brutal. I'm finally getting some work done again, finally actually writing again in some way and not feeling overwhelmed by anxiety and self loathing like I was for so long. And I get to watch young fuckers like you suddenly become a big deal. I'm like, I disappear for a while. I was a big deal. I was like, Chris, Mr. Moneyfinger's had people told me I was the best copywriter in the world. And then I'm like, who's this fucker? Who's this guy? Who's this kid who tells me he learned from me and he's so young and whatever, but actually, I'm very, very impressed with what you've done. Um, it's wonderful and I'm really glad we become friends. And I'm happy to be here.

Awesome, man. Happy early birthday, by the way. Excited?

43 motherfuckers.

Look at you, man, and don't look a day over 42.

That's my joke. No, Stefan, the better joke, the better joke. So when people ask me, say, like, how old they are, I say one of two things. Usually, if it's a woman, I will say, you don't look a day over 16, because that's kind of creepy. It freaks them out a little bit. And if it's a guy, you would never do this to a woman. But if it's a guy, like if you said you were, I think you were, 36 or something like that, 34. I would say you don't like a day over 35.

Yeah, like that.

Yeah, exactly. It's a little more of a twist.

That's solid. That's really good. One thing. So again, we'll get to questions in a few minutes here, but what I've. What I've And I'm still creating the format for this. Cause, like, you know, I just sort of started doing this whole podcast because it seemed fun, and the questions stuff is really fun. So I do want to get to that. But I think when I have guests on, like, you and I did this with Amber, I want to chat for a few minutes first and. And then we'll go to questions. And I don't actually have a question for you, but one interesting thing. I think people should know that, you know, with your new. The weight loss offer you recently did. And, you know, you were. You had asked me to take a look at it, and some other people want to take a look at it. And then you, like, shot me, like, a message after it was launched, and you're like, you know, it's not making sales. Am I, like, should I just retire? Like, am I a fraud? And I thought it was so amazing because, like, I feel the same way if I launch something that doesn't do well either. And so I want everyone who watches this and looks at us and says, wow, these guys are really good copywriters. And I think we are good copywriters. But we still have the demons, the insecurity never, never leaves, right? And I think.

And I think it's incredibly important to be public about that personally. Right? Because you know how it is. Like, even when I was making millions, because I don't. I don't. I don't make millions of dollars a year for several years because I've been dealing with really intense shit and coming back. And luckily my ego is not attached to that anymore the way it used to be. But I always got so fucking annoyed in our business. Cause it's all like, we're crushing it at all fucking times, right? It's like you launch something and it's always funny. People are talking about crushing it, and you're promoting their shit, and you're like, this is 20 cents a click, motherfucker. This isn't crushing it. The worst part is when people, in the past, in relationship advice space, people would be getting 20 cents a click, and they're bragging and they're like, that's really good for us. I'm like, okay, that's. That's great. Yeah. But that particular offer, I worked really hard on it, and of course, it took way longer to get out the doors than we wanted it to. We tested it and we got zero. So we got like a thousand clicks. And our first thousand clicks, we got zero sales. And I went spiraling, as you do, because that's what we do as writers. We spiral. And eventually we figured out that it was a problem on the cart page. Because I started digging into the data, I'm like, why are we getting 5% cart conversion? Why are we getting 5% cart conversion? Because we usually get 15 to 20 is kind of our normal thing. And we eventually figured that out. So now the card is converting at, like, 30% now instead of 5. But we're only getting, like, 1% conversion on the thing, and we think it's because of the lead. We'll talk about this. People are asking how I come up with those opening lines. Well, this is a case where the opening line isn't hitting the way it needs to, because we're watching the Wistia data, and it's like, people are dropping off too quickly. So the next thing we're going to be testing is rewriting that lead. My wife's going to help me with that because she's awesome and a great copywriter, too.

That is awesome. Yeah.

And.

But. But I love you sharing that. And I know some people already saying that they appreciate that, and. But I agree, man. I mean, yeah, I just had feedback from a client for something I did that I thought was really good. And same thing as you. It's in the male space. It's not like a. It's like. It's like not even testosterone. He was actually really didn't want to do that. It's like energy and vitality. It's like a mitochondrial support supplement that helps you have, like, energy and all that. And it's like a really great product. And I think a lot of copy is good, but, you know, it's converted about 1%, which is, again, like, okay. Right. But it's like, not enough to hit out of the park, and you can't feel that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he mowed me and shared, like, I think, you know, he's like, I honestly feel like part of it's a story because I went with a story about a kind of older guy dating a young, younger woman. And the younger woman basically said that, you know, like, I like older men, but you're like, more like, I have daddy issues, but you remind me more of my grandpa or something like that, which I thought was, like, a really good line. I thought, it's not bad, but I.

Would go with it and miss it.

So. Yeah. Well, just the point being, though. Yeah, it's like. I think. And you know, and he pointed this out to me. He's like, yeah, I think a lot of Guys in my market, they don't want to date a younger woman. They're like, that could be a lot of work. That's like, not for me. My phase, they have, like, wives, they have relationships, all this kind of stuff. And it was like, oh, shit. Yeah, those are all really good points. So I didn't, like. You know, the way I thought about it was, okay, I can. I can do a different lead, a different angle. Cause I got this sort of from a forum. Like, I do. Right. I shared that story. But there's plenty of other stories. But I think the important thing, too, is to. We all have those moments of like, oh, God, I suck. But it's like. Then when you come back to reality, you're like, no, I don't suck. I just need to tweak it. Like, I missed. I missed the mark on it. And I can. That's an opportunity now. And that's one of the most important things, I think.

But that used to be impossible for me. Right? So here's the issue that I ran into. Because. Just because the way my brain works. Because I'm a little bit crazy, you know, back in the day, when I was hitting it really hard, literally every fucking thing I did for like three or four years, every single one. First draft killed it. Every single one. I think there was one that didn't. For whatever reason. It wasn't really, but whatever. Every single one. And that was the worst fucking thing that ever could have happened to me. Because I didn't learn how to work it. Right? I was like. I was like, oh, well, you know, like, I would just write a letter, I put it out, I'd go to the beach or something, and all of a sudden millions of dollars would show up. And then when that started not happening, because marketing got harder. Like, marketing got harder over the last 10 years. I couldn't just put something out and have affiliates come flooding in, especially. Cause I was in the middle of my mental stuff. I didn't know how to handle it. I had a couple offers. I did. That didn't go right away. And I look at them, I say, a couple of weeks of work, they would have been crushing it. They would have been great. But I just couldn't do it at that point because my ego was so attached. Just really one really quick thing. I think what you did wrong in that letter is making it about the younger woman thing instead of making it about competition with younger guys.

Yeah.

Because that's where it is. I did an offer. I did a consult with Mike Westerdahl. Years ago. And it was a testosterone thing. And the hook I gave him was, you're half the man your father was and half the man your father was. And it was about the greatest generation. And it was about how those were fucking men, right? They went to war, they fought, they were stoic, they were protectors, and what the fuck are you now? Right? And that's where we went from there. But I really feel like, because I'm 43, I'm not the youngest guy anymore, but that I. Even when I saw you coming up, right, like, you're this younger guy coming up doing great, there is that part of me that's like, what motherfucking bullshit is this? And that's.

That's.

That's what everybody feels. Even the nicest people in the world are going to feel that as you're an aging male and you're losing your vitality and using your vigor. So that's what you did wrong, you multimillionaire, you.

I know. No, that's actually great insight. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna casually write that down as we're talking. But you're totally right.

Yeah.

And that's why, too, I didn't bounce that one off really anybody. And to the point of when you were writing yours and reaching out, and I tend to do that too. I think another thing for people who watch this to know is I will reach out to people and have asked for their opinions on copy that I'm writing. And I know you do the same thing. And that never changes. I mean, part of the reason Copy accelerator is valuable not to like, the full version, which is. Which is full. Is full is a waiting list. So I'm not trying to plug it on this call. But one of the values of that is, like, that feedback. Right. And even on the Lite version, there's a group for the Lite members where they can give feedback and peer review. But that is. It's so easy to feel like you're on an island as a copywriter when you write stuff and you have no idea if it's good or not. Or you're like, I think it's good. And then the stuff you think is good doesn't go as well as you thought. And the stuff that you think isn't that great, like, crushes it. And you're, like, sitting there. Yeah, like, what is happening? But yeah, just having that support network is super important.

One quick thing on that, though, is like, because you're at the level now where it's the same thing. Nobody wants to tell you your shit sucks anymore, right? Like, you get to a level where you have a big name and it's like, oh, it's a Stephen George Ilider. It must be great. Which is why I call people like you, or I call people like Carlton or like, other guys who I know who are really fucking good and have been on that ride are willing to say, yeah, well, this part sucks, okay? It's like. It's all right. It doesn't mean you suck. It just means this part sucks and you can fix it.

Yeah, that's a really good point, actually. And I think about that, too, because even with the feedback we give in Copy Accelerator, and I try to still be really honest and raw about it. And Justin's really good about that, because Justin is not super cognizant of people's feelings. You know?

It's true.

He'll be like. He's like, this part's really bad. Change it. And you're like, oh. But it's actually like, thank God he does that. Right? Because otherwise, if he's just like, super, you know, like a rah rah cheerleader the whole time. Sam Novak said he's super helpful. Yeah, exactly. So, Chris, I mean, you have, like, the. You have your offer on clickbank. I'm blanking on the name right now. The relationship one. I.

Make it more severe.

Yeah, make it more.

I heard that I was at the Titans Mastermind last week, the virtual one, which was great because I could sit in my basement and play Original Sin 2 while going to a Mastermind, which was awesome. Instead of playing Mario on my Nintendo while I'm actually at the thing. Yeah, I heard you picked that letter apart.

In a good way. In a good way. It was all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Emily. Emily texted me and said, hey, if your ears are burning, here's why. Oh, no, that's so sweet. That's such a nice thing.

Yeah, it's a really good one.

But. Yeah. Yeah, that one we're mostly running cold traffic to, you know, back in the day, with Language, Desire and a bunch of other ones, we just did almost pure affiliate traffic. And we just had affiliates come running and made a lot of money on it. And then when we tried putting out this one, we just couldn't get the affiliates the same way. I think it's partly just because the affiliate base for the relationship advice niche isn't what it used to be. I think it is. This sounds egotistical. Maybe it is. But I do think that part of it is that when I went away for a while, there was really nobody pushing that niche the same way that I had been for so long because I was putting out offers all the time and I was really. I had the people that I kind of convinced to follow me in all these ways. And then I disappeared. And I think that kind of caused things to go down as well. But that might just be me thinking I'm more important than I actually am.

No, it's interesting. We've actually talked about this before in a conversation too though, how like when you left, like in the relationship, like, no one really came into your place and that surprised them, right? Like with like the weight loss stuff in clickbank right now and like research is at the top and then there's proven and there's these offers and now every offer owner, business owner I know who does stuff in health is trying to create their new. Like, it's like everyone's trying to pile into it, right? And. But like it didn't really happen with the relationship stuff as much. And why do you think that is? I am curious why nobody tried to.

Well, when I entered, when I entered that niche, the reason that I was able to go from 0 to 100 in that niche, besides having a PR agent come up to me after I spoke at Jeff Walker's event and say, I want to put you on television. Which was like, for what? They're like, well, you're so charming. Whatever. I'm like, okay, cool. I can be charming on stage. Sure. Was that I came from hardcore make money online, right? Like the offers that I wrote earlier in my career were. I mean, I did the language learning one for Dan Woitman actually, which made a fuck ton of money. I did some the Power for home, one for Chris Fox, which made me a lot of money and he made a lot more money than I did on that and a bunch of others. But largely I was doing real estate investing stuff and I was doing IM stuff and I did some health stuff, though I've never had passion for the health stuff the same way I do these other. But I came into the relationship niche and I was like, why the fuck is everyone just copying Evan Pagan, right? Because everyone was just copying Evan Pagan. It was all Craig Clemons, very early structure and Craig's fantastic. I would never take anything away from him. But this is much earlier in his career and everybody was just doing the exact same formula letter. It wasn't video at all. And I came in from IM where things were much more cutting edge and all of A sudden I was getting, you know, Mark Ling told me he mailed text and romance back, and he was getting several dollars a click when he was used to getting 50, 60 cents. Right. And so I was able to just kind of blow things up at that point. And I think part of the issue was, like, Jordan hall, who's a good friend of mine, he's been doing very, very well on that niche for ages, though it's largely due to his cold traffic. He has one offer that's done really, really well, and he was never able to really make another one, but he has that one offer that does incredibly well. But Jordan's a more reserved character. Right. He's just not going to be as boisterous as I am and leading in that same way. So I think there's nobody. A lot of them just aren't really marketers. They're content people. They're people who are passionate about helping people with their relationships and have learned marketing as opposed to being a marketer who has come into the niche and said, okay, I want to know what I can sell, and then I'm going to create products that are based on what I can sell instead of writing. Here's what I really want people to know.

Right.

Like, it doesn't matter what you want people to know. It matters. People actually want to buy and have the emotional drive to actually buy. That's my theory on it. I could be wrong.

No, that's really interesting. And one more question on that. Cause I know Justin has brought this up, and I agree with him when it comes to him and I. It's like we're both kind of marketers who have. And entrepreneurs happen to be really good at copywriting, and I probably would. I think that's a fair assessment. I mean, I really do enjoy writing copy when I'm in the zone and when the muses are singing to me and all that. Do you consider yourself when you're not.

Like, splitting your wrists while you're doing it?

Yeah, when I'm not putting it off. Even literally, even today, I woke up early to, like, write copy for this project. Put it off for, like, two hours, and then finally for like, an hour before this wrote to a billion episode, I started doing it. And I'm like, this is so fun. Like, why did I just put it off? Like, two and a half, like, doing all these other dumb things. So that never goes away.

Sometimes it's like, I'll write the whole letter in two days, but I'll put it off for a month and A half.

So crazy. But I was curious, you know, are you. Do you consider yourself the same way? Do you feel like you're an entrepreneur or a marketer who happens to be really good at copy? Or do you consider yourself and your kind of core identity as a copywriter that's part of your idea?

Not that you're neither. Um, neither at this point, you know, several. Again, for a while there, all of my self esteem was built around being a great copywriter, or quote, unquote, the best copywriter, a world class copywriter, et cetera. Partly that was mental illness stuff, partly that was whatever. These days I just think of myself as Chris Haddad, who happens to be pretty good at selling things online. And I'm more. And that's a better way to be, right? Yeah, that is a way to be a human being. I had the experience of going from being at the very top or very close to the top to not. And I had to learn how to adjust from being a big deal to a lot of people to. And I thought I disappeared. I was so surprised when I showed up again and people still knew who I was because I was like, I haven't done shit in years. Like, what the fuck, man? But I think of myself as. I think I'm primarily a writer. You know, I've always been a writer. That's kind of what I did. And then I eventually figured out that I'm good at combining writing and the art aspect of it, the dramatics that I used to do, playwriting, I used to do screenwriting, things like that, and combining that with sales. My dad was a pretty hardcore sales guy. He died a long time ago, but he was very, very good at it. Entrepreneurship, you know, years ago, I used to have ideas all the time and I just wanted to create things all the time. And then for the last several years, I've kind of been just. I'm not driven in the same way as I used to be. I didn't have any motivation at all for a long time, which was probably because I was dealing with some really personal stuff. And it's slowly coming back. But I've never been one of those guys who thinks entrepreneurship will save the world. I think that's bullshit. I think that's largely people who want to feel really good about making money. And you should feel good about making money, but don't think you're in direct marketing. You're not really, like fucking, like changing the world in a positive way, no matter how much you want to tell yourself you are. I think I'm largely a writer, and I happen to have learned how to make money off of that. It's very. I can't imagine getting into a project where I wouldn't at least be involved in the copywriting or at least in the ideation and the brainstorming aspect of it, because that's my biggest assets, I think, professionally, are quick thinking and ideas. And then I can be pretty funny on podcasts if I need to.

So a little charming, too. I think. Amber put on the Facebook live that you know how charming you are. And if you're charming, Amber, you know. Yeah, I love that girl.

She's like my sister. She's great. I know.

Amber, Amber, if you're still watching, I saw your text about tacos this Saturday, but we're going to Vegas on tonight, so that's why I didn't respond about coming over for tacos. But I love you, Amber. That's why. I know. And I should just not go to Vegas.

Let's talk more about Amber. Even though it's my episode.

Amber. Yeah, I know. I know, dude. So, yeah. All right, so I want to get to questions in a second. I mean, let's do it. Let's answer a couple. So the way it works is Ed will pick questions, he'll kind of read them off a little bit, then we'll let the person kind of come on live and ask the question, provide context, and we'll give insights. And, like, you know, it's not. I think I told you. It's like, I try to be really clear. Sometimes I have a really good opinion that I think is really valid. And sometimes I'm like, oh, you know, I don't know. Here's what I would do. But it's like, we have all the answers, of course. But it's fun to just be able to talk through and use our experience to provide unique insights to people. So with that, by the way, I know. Poor Ed Ray has been so quiet here. We love you, and time for you to unmute and come say what up? And then let's answer some questions.

Can I scurry out of my hiding cave now? Is that cool?

I'm just surprised you're wearing a shirt, frankly.

But, yeah, I wore a shirt before I came on the call. Can you believe that?

That was a game changer. Well, there you go.

Well, hey, hold on. I'm not saying I am either, but, Chris, if you don't know, I'm like, it doesn't matter what time of day it is. The first call I Ever have any day. I will not be wearing a shirt for the first three minutes or I'll be putting it up as I'm logging on a zoom.

Yeah, I don't wear clothes. I mean, I walk around the house. I work mostly naked most of the time or actually.

Dude.

Right, yeah, why not? Why would you want to? I need to. I need to have. I need to have my testicles well ventilated to be able to write great copy.

Dude, the boy.

It's a real secret here.

When you're working, you will make better copy, I promise you.

Damn.

That's the hot tip right there.

Damn. I didn't know. I didn't know. You guys are funny though. It is interesting real quick because I like to dress. I mean, I'm a little more casual stuffing today, but I actually like to dress nicely even when I'm just at home. Because I just feel like when I am dressed nicer I just feel more like, I don't know, motivated and stuff like that. So I tend to do that. But you guys are on the other side of it where you're just not dressed at all. So that's kind of fun.

I hate clothes. I hate wearing clothes. I hate the fact that we have to do that.

Yeah, that's so interesting. Now like to give you way to actually never mind. Not gonna do it. Okay. Yeah. Let's go to a question.

So first, first person asked a great question.

Her question always goes to the very top. Kimmy Do.

Kimmy Do.

What's your process for crafting that punch in the gut first line or attention grabbing motion story? So Chris, I'm going to unmute her. She can stand on it?

Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Kimmy Do.

What's up? Kimmy? Hi.

Hi, Stefan. How are you? Good, how are you? I'm fantastic. The world is burning, but I'm great.

Awesome. So Kimmy. Yeah, you. I mean it was a pretty self explanatory one, but you want to provide any context.

Yeah.

Just like the.

What's your process for crafting that punch in the gut first line? Okay. It's a lot. It depends. Sometimes it's just a bolt from the blue, which is the most amazing thing in the world. Largely. It's largely. What I do is I usually will write the second half of the letter first. Right. Generally speaking, I will start with the bullets, fascinations, whatever you want to call them, that kind of area. And then I'll write my way to the end of the letter. And while I'm doing that, I'M really like, oftentimes creating the offer because oftentimes I'll write the letter before we even do the product. Or I'll write the letter and then never look at the product because I'll write the letter and give it to somebody else to create a product and then walk away because that's always great. But largely I'm just kind of letting the emotions of it all kind of, kind of sit on me for sit on me, you know, sift through me a little bit. I was talking to Dave D. I don't know if you guys know Dave D. About this the other day. And he, in this webinar course of his that I was going through, talks about the Sinislavski Method, right, The method act. I used to do some acting when I was younger and one thing I learned there was like to really learn how to empathize and sit in the emotions of the person you're trying to write to. So when I'm writing, say, make him worship you. And coming up with that, he kissed me like his sister. And I knew I was alone again. I'm spending a lot of time not only talking to women I know, but thinking about myself as like a 45 year old lonely woman who has been through the wringer and thinking about, like, what am I feeling there? And the feeling that I'm trying to communicate in that opening line is this feeling of frustration and this feeling of, oh God, what's the word? I mean, just feeling almost lied to in some way, disappointment. Because you're, you know, women are kind of told from a very young age, your prince is going to come. This one man's going to want you and only you forever if you just stand, surrender and give yourself to him. That all these wonderful things are going to happen. And every woman I know has had the experience of getting their heart broken again and again and being disappointed again and again and again. And in my Michael Fury stuff, I largely talk about how that is because the expectations that women have of men and women have of women are absolute bullshit and we need to get the rid of those. But I'm largely just kind of sitting in it and letting my brain chew on it a bunch. And usually I come up with my best lines when I'm on the phone with a friend of mine. I was on the phone with Emily Lark, I think, when I was talking about this one. Emily writes me for dating Adv sometimes and I asked her to help me with my ideas sometimes as well. And that line just kind of came out. But the Key about it is to come up with, like, what is that emotion?

Like?

For the newest offer, we're doing the weight loss one. The product is called you can't hate yourself thin. I'm very happy with the name of the product and the idea behind it. My wife and I did it together. When I was writing the letter, I could not get that opening line. I couldn't quite figure it out. I had the storyline, which is largely based on my wife and I and our experiences, but I couldn't quite get it. And the opening I currently have is, you can't hate yourself thin. My husband screamed when it screamed as he stared at the scrape. As he stared at my. The scrapes on my bloody knuckles or something. And it's about the woman who's trying to vomit in the toilet because she feels bad. And it just isn't grabbing the right way. It's a little bit too complicated. Right. It's making you think too hard at the very beginning of the letter and doesn't have the same emotional grab that, like, talk dirty to me. Talk dirty to me, he said. And I forget exactly what did I say in that first line. The language desire one or he kissed me like his sister. Those are really actually my favorite one. Oh, my God, I forgot about this one. We have an offer that's a hand job product. Like, a product that's like, how to give the best hand job. And the opening line for that is, cassidy, look what you did to my dick. And the idea is the guy comes out of the bathroom and he's all chafed and shit because she didn't know what she was doing. Now where does that come from? It comes from knowing a lot of women and talking to them and also just having the ability to kind of get into their mindset of that idea of, oh, my fucking God, am I doing it wrong? Am I doing it wrong? I don't want to do it wrong. Am I hurting him? Is he not gonna like me, etc.

So that.

Yeah, like. Like Rachel and spirits here is saying it's their biggest fear. It's that. That level of insecurity. We are all fucking insecure. We all think we suck. Right? Everybody except for narcissists. I won't name one that we all know. Yeah. Who refuses that. Actually, he thinks he sucks, too. He just refuses to look at it. Yeah.

That's awesome, Kimmy. Was that a helpful answer?

Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you so much. You're very welcome, Kimmy.

Awesome.

That's a great name.

It's a great name. So Jay just hired Kimmy full time to be, like, with a. Wow. Yeah. And she's 16.

Tell that guy to send me more money.

Yeah, he's paying Kimmy now, so he can't. She's taking up all the cash. 16?

You said 16?

Yeah. Amazing, right?

Dude, if I was 16 when I.

Started this show, I'm telling you. I know. Well, you might be dead.

I was 28. 28. Damn it. 2.

8 might be for the better. I think about that. If I'd had success really young, I feel like I might not have been very good.

Oh, God. If I got money in my 20, in my early 20s, holy shit. That would have gone badly. Yeah, yeah, we know people that's gone badly for. Right? We both know plenty of people who made millions when they were 23 and then went, why don't people pay their fucking taxes? Just pay your fucking taxes. Like, what the fuck, man? The IRS is not to be messed with.

Yikes. Yeah. Awesome. That was a great answer, man. I got legit a bunch of insights from that. And this is why this is so fun. Let's do another one. I just wanna hear more, Chris. I mean, I'll chime in if it's relevant, but, you know, if it's a.

Chris, I'm very shy and I can't talk at all.

Chris has never talked in front of camera before. This is his first time.

I'm so nervous. Somebody asked me if I was nervous about speaking at your thing, and I was like, why would I be nervous? I don't understand. But I've done this a lot. It's easy.

I used to get nervous, but that's the thing. It really is an experiencing, right? So, like, just being in front of camera and. Or being in front of live, it's. Yeah, man. It's like ripping the band aid off for sure.

So even when I did the Rachel Ray show years ago, I was only nervous as I was walking on stage, right? There was that moment when I was walking on stage, I was sweating through my shirt. Cause I didn't wear a T shirt. My coat was pinned shut. I go out there, there's this entire crowd. The warmup comedian starts making fun of me because I'm from Massachusetts. So I make fun of him back, and I'm immediately comfortable. I was like, oh, well, fuck you too. Cool. We're good. This is like home.

That's awesome. God, Lovely of an alter ego. I mean, just that alone does not make you so cool. I feel like it does. You don't have to. You don't have to say it makes you cool.

I don't think it makes me cool. I think it is a very. So Ryan Dice and I have talked about this several times and Ryan has said that one of the things he wishes he had done early on when he became Brian Dice, who's, I mean, amazing was use a different name. And the reason that I use it's a different name for the Michael Fury stuff because I did I this whole relationship alter ego guy, Michael, Michael Fiore, who some people think is really famous. He had a stalker for a while. But the valuable thing to me about that because he was having it not be me having it be a character to some degree, being able to emotionally separate. Because when you start putting yourself out there, we have like best selling stuff on Amazon and I was on tv, I did podcasts, we had a. You know, the business got pretty big. When that happens, people are constantly telling you how great you are or they're threatening to kill you. So those are the kind of the two things that you get at the same time. And I was very, very happy to have that alter ego because it gave me enough of a remove where I could be like, okay, well, I'm not the greatest thing in the world, no matter how often you tell me. And I'm not a horrible piece of shit who deserves to choke on his own foot or whatever or having people tell me. My favorite was a woman who wrote me and said, I bought your texture X back program, you fucking son of a bitch. It didn't work. My ex, who I beat up with a frying pan still won't come back to me. And I was like, that's probably for the best. Or my other favorite, really quick was somebody who wrote in my favorite fucking testimonial. My favorite testimonial from anyone was somebody who wrote in and was like, dear Michael Fiore, your program is amazing. Your Texture X back program, I went through it. I loved every single moment of it. I used that program. I met a woman who I think is the most amazing woman in the world. We're going to get married. She's beautiful. We love each other. Everything that is making this relationship work, I learned from you, from your text to X back program that made me really wonder if I wanted my ex back or not. I didn't want my ex back. I got this other woman. But because I didn't get my ex back, I want my money back. 47 bucks. What the hell?

Yeah, that's legendary. I'm Trying to find, if I can find this really quickly. This is for when I was hiring writers, like way back in the day for the Lions Publishing people. And, I mean, I'm not going to take too long. I have it in my inbox. But the point I'm trying, I was gonna make of it is that there's just some crazy people. I remember one woman had emailed me, and she's like, you know, you might know that at one point I was like, you know, the most hated woman in America. But, you know, obviously that was in the past and people didn't understand my reasons for it, blah, blah, blah. And I looked her up, and basically she had tried to, like, sell two of her kids on, like, Craigslist and, like, got, like, caught trying to sell her kids on Craigslist. And then, like, the media freaked out and, like, you know, like all that. But then she's saying they're, like, applying for a job and kind of acknowledging it. And that was just. I don't know why I'm thinking about that right now, except for the fact that there's just some crazy effing people out there.

And I just want to say, Stefan, really quickly, the mistake she made. You sell somebody else's kids on Craigslist. Otherwise your kids know your phone number and they can come back to you when you get in trouble.

It might have been adopted kids. It might have been that they adopted kids for a few years and then she tried to, like, give them away on Craigslist. It was something like long ago, but, yeah, it was. It was not good.

Automatic garage sale. What's the big deal?

Yeah, if it had been like the Facebook. Whatever the Facebook Marketplace thing is, you know.

Marcus just said, if you want more stories about crazy people, read 11 Reasons not to Become Famous by Tim Ferriss. It's a great blog post, and it actually is. Yeah. So I was on this angle. If I hadn't lost so much, if I hadn't gotten really sick, I probably would have become famous, Right? I probably would have kept doing the Michael Fiore stuff, doing more books, going on television, doing all that shit. And, God, I'm happy I didn't. I'm really, really happy I didn't. Because people I know who do that are not happy people. They really are not. You're getting so much bullshit. People just lie to you constantly. People are like, you know, just. They're sucking up to you because they. You think. They think you can help them in some way. You can never trust anybody at that point. You really Learn to rely on your. Your real friends who you knew before all that shit happened.

100%. And by the way, everyone in chat, I see a bunch of people are still typing to all panelists and I put in the chat a few times. If you want to chat, put it. All panelists and attendees. Malai, you just made that mistake. Jasmine, I feel like you changed it and then stopped. Chain made a mistake. And Andrew Trackman, I'm calling you out because I've been putting the chat like five times. So make sure in your chat it says all past attendees. Otherwise me, Chris and Ed can see your witty comments. But everybody else, we can't see your witty comments. And they're missing out.

Super witty.

Andrew Trackman had something funny. I forget what he had. I can't find.

Call out accelerator. That's pretty good.

Yeah, that was called accelerator. But yeah, but anyway, so please make sure. Oh yeah, he said, I just can't see Kimmy do going mad with power and dodging taxes. That made me laugh because I'm thinking about 16 year old Kimmy do just going all crazy and evading taxes. So. But no one got to see it but us three. Okay. Anyway, let's get another question up.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. J.D. bold says I owe him money because him paying me so little made me a millionaire because I said, fuck it, I'm not going to People all the time anymore.

Great reframe from Jay.

Pretty good, Jay.

All right, so next here is from Jonathan Fisher. Jonathan asks when should you start the lead with the story versus putting it.

In the background story? You test it. You just test it. That's the thing. I have had. I did a offer for Kelly Felix recently. There was a. Unfortunately we can't run on Facebook for reasons that have nothing to do with me, but the letter was converting incredibly well.

Yeah, I saw that one.

Yeah, I was doing really, really well, but it's a good one. But that one opens with a benefit lead, right? That one opens kind of with this version of something I've done several times because we all just rip ourselves off and redo it and plug new things in. And we tested between having the lead be the I'm going to teach you how to get rid of your credit card debt thing versus the actual opening of the letter. I think that one is about a man. Yeah, it's about. It's actually based on a real story, but it's about a man who was just at dinner with his daughter and his credit card got. And the sheer embarrassment that he felt because of that. And it's again, I think a big important thing is, like, your story doesn't need to be inherently dramatic. Right. So many of these stories that you see, especially for ClickBank authors, are like, you know, I did this fungal foot cream and then I had a heart attack and was at the hospital and my wife was crying and it was all these horrible things. Sure, you can go that way. But so often for the stories that I'm looking for, I'm just looking for the exquisite internal pain. Right? The embarrassment. It's not about. It's not the drama of necessarily my daughter almost died or something. It's. My daughter stopped looking up to me. Right. Which is so much more exquisitely painful for most people than this really kind of dramatic stuff. I think it's valuable sometimes to be able to write stories that feel like they could actually happen to the people that are watching the video. Or at least that in some way tickle those insecurities and tickle those fears that we don't know, that most people don't know how to articulate.

Yeah, that's a great point. And Jonathan, I know we forgot to let you ask the question because we jumped right in, but. Jonathan, is that. Is that helpful?

Yes, it's helpful. But I was just thinking, can I give a little bit more context to that question?

Sure.

Okay, cool.

Of course.

So I was looking at. I think actually I was looking at one of your sales letters, Stefan. It's something you wrote for blood sugar. And not to go into too much details, but basically the story something like.

I went on holiday with my wife.

She went into a coma. The doctors couldn't help her. Then I met some guy in the lobby who speaks, like, great English. And then I go on like a scooter with him zigzagging into the Amazon where I meet, like a natural healer. Yeah, I thought it was a really, really interesting. Was that yours?

Yeah.

Okay.

I love that letter. So it is. I mean, I wrote it for a client and it was. And to be fair, I kind of swiped beta blood sugar, which kind of swiped one of my old blood sugar things. So just going back to. We're all just sort of copying each other. But as I wrote that, I was like, man, I can make like. I remember reading it to, like, Malai, who's on the chat, she was in the office and other people and they're like, this is like a movie. And that's always one of the best compliments. I feel like when people are saying that my letter, you know, reads like A movie. But, yeah, that one was more dramatic. But go on with the question, too.

Yeah. So basically the question is like, I look at that story. It's great. It pulls you in. And then I was looking at Chris's story, the one where it's like, she kissed me like I was his sister and then I was alone again. And, like, that also just, like, pulls you straight in. So what I was wondering is why. For your story, why couldn't you just started the lead off like that? Like, when. When do you. When do you have to have something that's more of, like, a pain by the numbers approach with your lead? And then.

Let me just answer that really quickly, Jonathan, because I think I know the answer Stefan's gonna give you just fucking split. Test it. Like, that's the answer. The answer is always, you split. So I've had many offers where I'm very good at writing stories, and I've had many offers that work really well with the storytelling open. If you get the opening line right. If you don't get the opening line right, it doesn't pull us the same. And I've had other offers that you really need to build up the benefit beforehand and suck them in that way. So it's not. There's no long and short answer about it. It's just a matter of you write both and you see what's going. What works best. Every time. I mean, I test it every single time. Every single time we test benefit open, most of the time, the version that we do with the story works better. Most of the time, yeah.

The other thing, too, this is. And this is me being a little bit of a diva, honestly. But, like, I shot in a shock. But sometimes, like, with those blood sugar offers where it's like. Like, even the way research starts, where it's like, oh, God, John. Like, wake up. I was just like, yeah, I don't write that. You know, I mean, like. And it's like, if I'm not passionate about writing it, then, like, why I'm not gonna do it. So something like that. It's like, I had a good. Like, a really cool story, and it was like a movie. And it's all this crazy stuff about this guy's like, dad died at the Battle of Manila in, like, World War II. And he wants to go see, you know, like, where the battle side of the battle. But his wife's got, like, blood sugar issues, so, like, he's not sure about traveling, but they travel. But then she, like, her diabetes gets worse while they're Abroad. And then he like ends up meeting like local people who tell him about these plants and stuff like that. And like, you know, it ends up being like, there's a bunch of cool, like, dramatic stuff in it. But to me, I was like, that's kind of a more interesting story. And like, I'm like, I'm more excited to write that story. Then just like again, like the starting the hospital, like, your wife's in a diabetic coma and we're gonna solve her leg. Or like, it's like, yeah, you know, like, I don't know. So many letters have done that. So honestly, Jonathan, part of it for me was it was. Chris's answer is right, you should split test this stuff. But like, why I didn't take that approach is also because I just didn't want to do another one of those. There's so many of those things out there and I just didn't really want to do it.

Yeah, it's too samey, too like, I think what made my career what it is or has been in the past. It's just that I wasn't doing the exact same thing as everybody else and everybody started copying me and I was like, fuck you. Now I have to innovate. This sucks worst.

Does that help though, Jonathan?

Yeah. Great answers.

Thank you, guys.

All right, awesome. Cool. And yeah, we do have a lot of questions. So Ed, we'll keep going if somebody asked Ed, can we keep the questions moving along?

We've got which I'm a moderator. Like, I'll let you guys have your fun.

Yeah, I mean, we can as many as we can.

I can literally fill as much time as you need, so.

I know you can. And I like to honor Ed's heart outs. And you know, it actually is good. I'd like to get have a hard out at 11:30 Pacific Time and then that helps me to not drain myself to death. So.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll see.

45 minutes. Let's go.

Yeah, let's go. Let's get through more. So I'd go ahead.

More questions. Let's do it.

Question from Shuria, the 16 year old legend. What key emotions do you focus on while writing copy and what percentage do each one of them cover?

The entire sales letter.

Cool.

Let's let Shira come. I know. Shame. I know, I know. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shira, what's up, buddy?

Yeah, I'm great. Hey, Chris, how are you doing? Good, good. Yeah. And you are. You're pretty hilarious. Thank you.

I was all over the floor laughing.

Good. Yeah. Yeah. So basically that's the question. Sure. So the key. Yeah, the key emotion. So I used to live in shame constantly because I had issues with that. And everybody feels ashamed. I have a bit that I do on stage very occasionally. They'll probably go into a course if I ever do one, which is, you're not special and that's awesome. Right? You're not special and that's awesome. Nobody's special. Your children are not special. I'm sorry. They're just not. My nephew isn't special, though. He is special because of the most amazing kid in the entire world. And I will fucking kill you if you say otherwise. But no, shame is the number. Everybody feels inadequate. Everybody feels like they're the only one who's suffering. Everyone feels like you're the only one who, if you ever actually said, was actually in your heart, you're going to be made fun of by people. When people ask me what story should they tell in their sales letter, I usually say the story that you are terrified to tell. The story that makes you look the weakest, I suppose. And when I talk about that, I'll get on stage and I'll talk about many of the very difficult things that have happened in my life. And I'll usually say at the end of that, how many people in this audience think less of me because I shared these things with you? Who? I mean, this audience think I'm weaker because I share these things with you. And nobody does because we're not in high school anymore. We're just not in high school anymore. And no one's actually sitting around waiting to make fun of you for these things. But yeah, shame, like when I did the power for home letter years ago, that did. I mean, I made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on that letter, so I can only imagine how much it made for my client. And the original version of that letter was, I'm going to teach you how to make money at home. I'm going to teach you how to save money on your power bill. Right. Save money on your power bill. Turns out that niche has nothing to do with environmentalism and has everything to do with hard right Republicans who don't like paying the government money. That's cool. And the original version was that I raised conversions by 70%, I think, literally in two days. And I did it by making more about a story. And that letter does open with a benefit lead, which I quite like. But then when we go into the actual story, it opens up with a guy saying something that's more or less. Like, I'll always remember that moment when my beautiful little girl, her lips almost blue, came padding into the living room and said, daddy, I am cold. And the idea is that there's a big storm and then it's really, really cold. And it's about this man feeling like he can't protect his daughter. Right. It's not about saving. It's not about saving money on power. It's not about anything to do with that. It's about him as a 40 something year old man feeling like he is failing as a man, feeling ashamed of himself for not being strong enough to do the job that he is supposed to do as a man. Right. When we do things like make him worship you. The shame that she feels is largely about, am I not attractive enough? Is everybody else going about this? Am I going to end up alone? Actually is really the fear there for the weight loss offer I'm doing right now that we're still working on because it doesn't quite work yet. It's largely about there's a lot of stuff in there that is based on the idea of I'm ashamed of how I look and how I feel because I used to be really fit and hot and now my husband doesn't look at me the same way that he used to. And I'm ashamed of that. Like, that's, that's the core emotion. Shame, embarrassment and fear, largely. And that doesn't mean that you have to be a dick in your letters. It doesn't mean that you're constantly kind of like what we see in politics where you're just trying to scare people and scare people and scare people and scare people. And I say, see my wonderful aunt posting things on Facebook that are so hateful, but she's a wonderful person. It's not her fault she's been brainwashed. Yeah. But anyway, those are the kind of the core emotions. And there's ways to do it that are very, very empathetic. And I try to do it in a relatively subtle way. If you tell somebody what they're feeling, they will not react well. But if you can show and kind of bring out these emotions where they feel like you understand them, then you can sell them all the things in the world.

Awesome. Shira, is that a good answer for you? Yeah, definitely.

Super, super great. Thanks so much. You're welcome. You're very welcome.

Chris, one question for you. I'm actually just curious to get your take on this because again, going back to just because I wrote a weight loss offer for People who want to beat like resurge. And I like the letter a lot and we'll see how it does. But going back through so many of those weight loss offers on ClickBank it's like the guy telling the wife's story and it's like, you know, like my wife, this is all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. And so on one hand I know that in our experience, testing like with VSL is right. Like generally we've had the experience that a male narrator or spokesperson just does converts better. Often I think it's just maybe because it's easier to get like a deep voice male who like people respond to. Whereas with a female voiceover artist it seems like it's more hit or miss or whatever. But I'm just curious. I think that's so interesting because. And I've written a copy like that back in the day too. But I'm just curious, you know, from a psychology standpoint, what do you think? Why do you think that that works versus having the woman tell the story herself? Because I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.

I think both can work. So I did Todd Lamb's letter. I'm forgetting the name of it. Flat Belly Fix. I think it was. That was really bad on clickbank several years ago and that story is very much. And in that case it was just. Well, that was the story that Todd had and I really liked the story and what works about that, especially for women. So what I discovered years ago is that in the relationship niche is that women will buy from a man, men will not buy from a woman, which is sexist as fuck, but also true. Right. Whereas if we had like a woman who was being the one who was like, I'm going to teach you about women. Guys just don't really like that. They don't. They don't. Well, they want to learn from a guy who's really good with getting girls to sleep with them, basically. Whereas women can look at a guy and there's a certain, especially if you manage to project a certain level of confidence and aren't horrible looking and have a pretty decent voice, they'll follow you. I think it is. It's because women want a man who's a protector and they find the idea of a man who is willing to fight for their woman incredibly alluring and incredibly powerful. Right. So that's the kind of man they want to admire in some way and it creates a level of attraction. Yeah, like Matt Hussey. I know Matt, really, you know, good guy. He's done amazing things with what he's done in his business. That's the long and the short of it, though, is that feeling of admiration. And it's a man who is exemplifying what women think a man should be. Right. Women want. This is also why, like, if you want to. If you want to have a girl flirt with you, get married first because she'll be like, oh, well, he's so strong and powerful and he's so good to his wife and he talks about her. I better make him cheat. Is a relatively common kind of thing. The long and the short of it.

No. Yeah, that's interesting. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's just been. It's an interesting phenomenon. And it is funny though too, is the point for people. Because, like, okay, research, top offer on clickbank. Well, that and proven. Right. So they've been going back and forth and I got the transcripts of both. So research from a guy's perspective, he's an expert, solves his problem. And that script is like about 6,000 words long. Proven from a husband's perspective, anti expert, that script is 13,000 words long, double the size. And they basically go back and forth on conversion. So that's why it's so funny when people are always, how long does the script need to be? What does the story. It's like, a lot of stuff can work right. And I just think that's such a funny observation, but it's a really.

My best one is 25 minutes. Not my best. I've done a bunch. But Language of Desire, the final version of that that's still up and has made millions, is 25 minutes long. Yeah, that's it.

Conversely, one of my better ones, back in the day for the Lions guys were on the shorter end, but then again, I've had longer stuff. That does great too. I think what happens for a lot of writers, I think, and I've seen. I think I got. I went through a space too, is then you start wanting to put so much stuff in that your copy, you keep putting out these 10,000 and 11,000 and 13,000 word letters because you're like, but there's so much good stuff. I need to just get it all in there. But you don't really. It's like. So learning to be a bit kind of a ruthless editor and realize you don't need to like, you know, yeah, a bunch of all these hooks might be interesting, but at a certain point, people still are like, you know, can you get to the fucking point? And like, tell me why I'm watching this. Or, you know, whatever.

I think there's also a feeling of like, it's supposed to be that long. So you make it that long, right? You're like, well, it's supposed to be 9,000 words. One thing I used to do, I used to write copy in keynote a lot because we were just doing standard kind of text on screen stuff. And that's a very laborious process. It takes a while, but it does make you really vicious as far as making sure every word is earning its place. Just because you don't want to have to click in the box and type the thing and find the word that you want to make, read and bold it and all. Like, it just becomes annoying. I don't like doing annoying things. And it makes it annoying enough. And you can't just type and type and type. And you're forced to really be like, okay, well, this slide by itself needs to hold. It will hold its weight. This one elliptical sentence basically needs to hold its weight.

Super interesting.

Awesome.

Okay, let's get to some more questions.

For sure.

And by the way, when I go.

To the bar, I'm wearing a wedding ring.

Totally. This is the site. I mean, if you listen, we can do an entire other podcast with just what I know about female psychology. That'd be a whole other thing. I've learned. I've learned a lot about it in my relationship advice stuff. I've gotten very, very good at it.

I'm going to add you after.

We'll chat.

Yeah, let's do it. I will tell you, I have given relationship and women advice to a shocking number of men and some women in this niche. I've actually. I remember once I was at an event with a couple friends and I sat there and they gave me their cell phones and I told them exactly what the dirty text of their girlfriends, and they wrote me two days later and said, dude, I got weighed so hard when I got home. I'm like, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. It's not that complicated.

Changing lives.

I love it.

Okay, dude, learning from you, learning from Adam Gilad.

He's a good friend of mine, coaching me now. Adam and I learned how to cure cancer together once. I'm not going to. I'm not going to explain, but you can ask him.

You got it.

I will.

I have a call with him right after this.

Cool. Say hi for me. You got it.

David asks, what are your top three emotional copywriting tips?

Oh, what's up, David?

Yeah, go for it. David? Yeah. So a question for you, Chris. What are your three emotional copywriting tips that will transform your copy? Cool. I don't know if I have three or not, but we'll see what happens. Sometimes I say, be grateful for your tragedies. They make you who you are. I've had a fair number of. And again, this is not me in any way complaining. This is not me in any way saying. Saying, oh, my life is worse than other people's. My life is not worse than other people's. My life is fucking fantastic compared to billions of people on this planet with everything I have faced. There are billions of people on this planet who would literally kill to have my life. And I try to be very, very aware of that at all times. That said, I had a sexual abuse thing when I was six years old. My dad died when I was 19. I've dealt with. I dealt with 40 years of undiagnosed mental illness that really made my life hellish in many, many ways. I got in a car wreck when I was 26 years old that twisted my spine into knots and made me more or less crippled for three years and then somewhat less crippled when I got older. I spent the last six years of my life doing literally constant yoga. People that see me at conferences like, why are you always twisting your hips like that? It's not because I want to waggle my dick in your face. I do. It's largely just because that's the only way that I can fix myself, is to spend thousands and thousands of hours doing that. I got hit by Lyme disease for six years and essentially lost four years of my life to anything else. I've been through this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Everybody's been through their shit, right? Everybody's been through their shit. And the thing that you can do to make your copy better is to mine that shit in some way to be able to look back. I wrote a letter for Joe Barton years and years ago that was about heart disease stuff. And when I was doing that heart disease stuff, the letter that I wrote was based on, very truly the emotions that I felt. When my dad died, when I was 19 years old, he had a heart attack. He had cancer for a year. He had a heart attack because he smoked like a fish and drank like one, too. And he died when I was 19 and he was 47. I'm 43 now. I'll be 47 in a few years. Believe me, if I want to write a letter about getting older as a man, I will write that into the letter because I'm like, holy fucking shit. Only four years from now. My dad died. He seemed so old at the time. But you can take all of these experiences and the emotions that you have feel about them, and you can put them into your copy. You're not special. And that's awesome. You have felt the same things that I have felt. We have all felt inadequate. We have all felt devastated. Most of us have felt suicidal at least one time in our life, right? At least once. And you can take those things and kind of put them in there. The other thing I think that you can do is make your copy much more about what is going. This is what I do. It's much more about what is going on inside of the character than it is about what is actually going on. I can tell you. I mean, I did this in a video I put on Facebook several years ago. You might be able to find it. I'm not entirely sure where it is, but I take a very basic story and I take it from Joe walked into his boss's office. Like, that's what happened. He walked into his boss's office. And over the course of that 20, 30 minute video, I take it from Joe walks into his boss's office to something. I forget exactly what I said, but maybe it was something like, you better get the goddamn job. The text from my wife read, and I felt a nod of fear and horror in my chest. I walked into my boss's office and saw that look in his eyes. Not that look of, hey, Bob, you've done a really good job, but, hey, Bob, you fucked up for the last time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I made it much more about his fear of what might happen and his feelings of inadequacy and his feelings of like, oh, I'm not really there for that, but if you can just take what's going on inside, inside the character. You know, he kissed me like his sister and I knew I was alone. Again, that's not a line that she's saying to anybody. Right? That's not even a thing that's happening necessarily. It's just the thing that's her reaction to it. And saying that line really brings up all the emotional, those opening lines to me, if you're doing it right, this is what I didn't do right in the most recent one. That line tells the whole fucking story that you need to tell if you do it right. And it brings up all of the emotions that you need to bring up. And really, that. That. That. That first moment. But that's the long and the short of it. Use your pain, you know, Use what you've got. Work on being empathetic. Work on actually understanding that it's painful for other people and that you're not special, that everyone else is going through the same shit. I've done a lot of acting and theater stuff in my past. There's a bunch of books called the Save the Cat books that, unfortunately, that guy died, but he was amazing writer and wrote a lot about story structure and how to do this stuff. But it's largely just about getting into your own. Getting into your own heart and your own pain and not being afraid of it. Most people are so afraid to look at the tough stuff in their life. I'm pretty liberal. But I get so annoyed at trigger warnings, and I get so annoyed at that idea, because the way that you move through pain is not by avoiding it. It's by seeing it and going to it and dealing with it. That's the only way you become a happier, better person. That means more life philosophy than copy. But life philosophy and copy are kind of the same thing to me in a lot of ways.

Amazing. David, is that a good answer?

Yeah, it's super powerful. So thank you. Really, really. It helps a lot. You're welcome. Good. Thanks, David.

Awesome, man. Cool.

Beautiful. All right. This chat is hilarious.

I know. I love the chat. It's a huge secret, but that's for people who don't come on the Zoom call and do Facebook Live or just watch the replays. You. You are missing out on the chat, which is, like, wildly active and.

Yeah. Yeah.

A little distracting. Like, we were talking about nudism earlier in the chat. People won't know that who didn't watch this, you know, live.

But, yeah, I just open my mouth and talk and things come out. So, yeah, what else? Let's do it.

All right, question here from Jazz Courtenay.

How do I write stories that make people cry?

Oh.

Oh, man. Largely the same answer I just gave you. It's about being vulnerable. It's about taking, you know, take the things that you are afraid to say, take the insecurities that you are afraid to talk about. And I will tell you, like, oh, I can hear myself. Jazz.

That's jazz. You got it. Yeah.

There you go. Meet yourself. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the lightning. We've all had tragedies. We've all had hard things. And if you just take those hard things and you. I think it's like method Acting, right? You're taking the emotion of those hard things and you're applying it to the situation of your character or the product owner or whatever. And then it's. A lot of it is craft. A lot of it is just stuff that I can't really go into here about how you position words and when you bring certain emotions in, et cetera. But listen to the voice in your head, right? We all have that voice in our head, that voice in our head that tells us that we suck or that we're an inadequate. I used to have a much worse one. So quiet in my head now it kind of freaks me out. Listen to that and understand that everyone else has that, too, and that that is the key to empathy and the key to connecting in a way that will actually get you money. No, not an iambic contaminator, Andrew. That's really funny, Jaz.

Did you want to add anything to Chris? Let's try to let people ask the questions, too, just because for the podcast and the replay on.

Oh, fine.

I know it's funny. Amber was doing the same thing, and it's like, I wish his. I want to do it sometimes, too, but. But, Jaz, was that. Was that helpful? Yeah, it was super helpful.

And I was gonna say you mostly.

Answered it in the last question because I just want to get really good at writing stories that move people, make them feel something.

Read romance novels, man. Read some romance novels. Read some just really emotional writers that are out there. I've read romance, by the way. If you're a man who wants to understand what women want, just read a fucking romance novel. It's right there. They tell you it's right there. Like, everything that women are, you know, genetically kind of predisposed to want. As far as a powerful man who has resources, who can have any woman that she wants or any woman he wants, but he chooses to only want her. That's the story. That's the whole thing. That's what they want every time.

Got any recommendations for books for that?

I mean, I know Sam Novak said she's got some, but she can put it in the chat. But don't put Nicholas Sparks, which I've talked about, that I read. I went through a phase two years ago. I ordered a bunch of Nicholas Sparks novels, and I also got stuff like, like Gone Girl and Big Little Lies and the Girl on the Train and a lot of that sort of, like, popular, like, kind of mystery type, like fiction and all. Like, I'm like, look, if this is, like, being really successful, like, a 50 Shades of Gray, Twilight. Right. All that kind of stuff. But like, wow, huge swath of people are reading these books and they're really successful. Like, let me kind of read them and look at the reasons why, you know, like dissect them. And I think that's actually a really. My bookcase in Vegas was like a bottom row. It's got a bunch of like romance novels and Nicholas Sparks books, which, sure. People might walk in and be like, oh, that's, that's an interesting tidbit about Stefan, but, you know, it's really helpful.

Well, one thing I say when I'm in my relationship with stuff is like, status is cleavage for men. Basically, like if you're able to have. Women are not attracted to rich guys because they're shallow. They're attracted to rich guys because rich guys have shown that they have resources, which is a great thing. Be able to protect people, people, if you have kids, et cetera, and that they're willing to go out and do something. It's actually an attractive trait. It's not necessarily about the money, though. It is to some degree. It's more about what that says about the guy. It's an honest. As they say in evolutionary psychology, it's an honest signal. Done right.

Interesting. Makes sense. Ed Ray, let's keep, keep it rolling, bro.

I need more of this info from Chris. Man, it's so fascinating. Different podcast. Different podcast. Yeah, actually, if you, if you look on, if you look on itunes, you can find my old digital romance radio podcast. I did 100 and something episodes of half hour podcasts about relationships. You can go check it out.

Sounds good.

Awesome.

Someone asked here where to learn Facebook compliance. Go to my email list.

Ed rae.comedreay.com that's it. You're gonna learn that from me, I promise you.

Right?

That's so funny.

Good question. Here from Roman is how do you. Oh, he's gone.

He left.

Anyway, let's find something else.

Time.

So everyone seems to be asking about the emotional stories and this one similar, but I think it's asked in a different way. I know John asked. This is a three part question. What does your step by step process look like for coming up with the pig opening sentences? You know, do you start with the emotion and look for words that express it? Do you search forums or specific keywords? And on average, how much time do you spend trying out different variations of words until you get the right combo? And lastly, what do you do when you get a mental block and you.

Can'T come up with a punch in.

The gut line that you feel is good.

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Go ahead.

Let him say it. Let him down. Say it.

Although, maybe from now we'll kind of give, like, a summary of the question, and then let's let people on. They can ask the full question. Maybe that'll be our new format. What's up, John?

Hey.

Hey.

Hey, Chris.

Hey, Stefan. Hey, Ed. Good, cool. Yeah.

I mean, you pretty much answered the.

Question when Kimmy asked it, but I.

Guess my where I would like to get a little bit more clarification is like, what do you do when it just. It doesn't happen because it feels like a creative process. Like, I tried to emulate what you do in a recent sales letter, but, like, I really hated it. So I would kind of. I couldn't come up with anything that was, like, good enough. So I just went back to just doing what I always do, which is.

More direct response style and. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. I'm looking for the moment of crisis, right? So if you look at the old hero's journey kind of thing, right? There's always that moment of crisis. There's that moment where the character is. You know, they're in their normal world, every. Everything is fine, and then they have a moment of crisis, like, they answered the call, et cetera. I want that moment when they're just like, I can't do this anymore. Right? Like, that's. That's what I'm looking for. That moment when they're just like, I fucking give. Yeah. The dark night of the Soul, as Michael McGovern is saying right there. It's the exact same dark night back to them. And so, like, what is that moment that just makes them be like, holy fucking shit, I just can't fucking do this anymore. Right? For the woman and make him worship you. It's that moment of, like, again. Like, fucking again. This was the 17th guy in 20 years who, like, I got really fucking excited about, and I thought he was gonna be the one. And I did every single thing they said in the goddamn books, and I was super nice, and I wasn't even too feminist or whatever, and blah, blah, blah, and this still fucking happened. I'm 42. What the fuck am I gonna do? That's what I'm looking at right there, right? Like, the moment for the guy with the power for home thing is just that feeling of, like, I didn't. The one thing that I'm supposed to do as a human being is keep my daughter safe. And I'm not doing that. That is not acceptable. I'm going to go on a journey now. I'm going to find a way to fix that. That's what I'm looking for. And it takes a while to kind of figure that out. If I can't get it, I go for a seven mile walk. Generally speaking, phones, I like to go for really long walks. It's kind of how I spend a significant amount of my time. I do that and I kind of just let it go and let it go and let it go. And you can't really force it. What you can do is you can put kind of a placeholder in there and then try to remember to change it before you actually test. But, you know, sometimes just getting something down on paper is the best way to do it.

Awesome. Thank you. So put things on paper.

One quick thing. One quick thing. This is the best advice I can give you for writing great copy. If you're getting writer's block, write the shittiest version you can, like give yourself. Just be like, I'm gonna write a really, really shitty letter right now. Like, fully expect that you're gonna put down things that just aren't very good. Like, and you're just like, what would I write if I wasn't trying that hard? And get it down. And then you'll have something on the page that you can fix.

Right.

And that will take away that self editor and that part of you that is like, this sucks so much. And also start at the end. I oftentimes will start at the end of the letter because the close is the close. I mean, Stefan, how often do you use the crossroads close?

Literally copy and paste my clothes and then I just sort of edit it and tweak it.

Totally. I just, I write a few different things, blah, blah, blah. I've even had letters. I hand them the clients where I had the same. The wrong name of the product and the clothes and they're like, what's this? I'm like, just change it. It's the same thing that I always do. It's easy. Get the easy stuff. Get the boilerplate stuff out of the way first. It'll be easier.

Sweet.

Cool.

Thank you so much. So just basically take the pressure off. Write something can be fixed later and go for a walk.

It doesn't just write it. You can, yeah, go for a walk and let it go. Pretend it's for a fictional product. That can work sometimes. Like, it's not actually going to go out and world, but just get something Down. You can always make it better.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Sweet. Awesome. Ed, I was thinking maybe. I was kind of going through the questions too, because I know there are a lot of similar ones, but maybe Sean Burks was kind of interesting. Want to do that one on that one?

Okay.

So Sean feels like he makes his copyrighting too mechanical and cerebral. Basically.

How does he get out of his shell and makes me more emotional and actually, I have the same question.

That's great. Cool. Sean, you want to hop on and give us a little context there? Hey, what's up, guys?

Can you hear me?

Okay? We can, yeah. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So I totally jumped on because Chris, I feel like, is the opposite of me. I'm like a very analytical person. I know how to do, like, AB testing. I know how to like, you know, analyze and tweak every little thing and, you know, find all these mechanical things that should work and optimize them. But when it comes to just writing, like, good emotional copy, I feel like I just can't do it. So I'd love to hear more about how to get in that mindset.

Yeah.

Here's a tip. For one thing, I'm way more analytical than you think. Just try playing me in a board game and you'll start crying. One of my favorite things is playing board games versus all the tech people in Seattle. And they're like, oh, you're a writer. And then I just kick their ass. And they're like, so here's what I want you to do, Sean. Either go to a friend or write down in a journal. Tell the most painful story of your life that doesn't need to be anybody. But talk about when your dog died. Talk about when you dealt with an incredibly difficult disease and how you dealt with it and what it made you feel and be willing to kind of go there. I mean, the only way to become good at writing about emotions is to become more in touch with your emotions or be a sociopath and study emotions in a very analytical way, which you could do, I suppose, but it's really just about getting into your own pain and learning how to communicate your own pain. The only way you can communicate somebody else's pain is if you can communicate your own pain first. So I don't know what your life is like. I don't know what you've been through, but I guarantee you've been through some hard ass shit. And the key is to be able to learn how to talk about that hard ass shit in a way that communicates the emotion.

I think that's that's awesome. I want to add in on this too. A couple other thoughts I have would be like, one side of it is, and this is a good universal advice and it's gonna sound really generic or basic, but like, is to have. Try to have fun. Like you're writing for most of the time what you're selling. Like, you know, it should be fun and entertaining and enjoyable and you should be having fun while you're writing it. And like it should be like a movie or it should be something that kind of like captivates you. So as simple as it sounds, I think one thing we forget to do, especially as copywriters is we get so worried about the mechanistic stuff that we don't actually have fun. And so just having fun, like, is a really important aspect. And feeling like when I critique a show, shit ton of copy because of copy accelerator. And one of the things I say is like, you can kind of feel when there's no. Like I can feel when there's no joy coming through. I don't even mean joy. You can still be. This can apply to emotional like sad punch in the gut stories, but there's like a joy for the writer. You can tell the writer is like having like a. Having a good time, sharing the story. Like there's a little bit of a flourish to it almost. Right. And you can tell. And that copy is always so much more captivating than when somebody's just trying to check every box. So it's like, don't forget to give yourself permission to like to suck like we talked about in the chat. But also give yourself permission to have fun and to like actually enjoy what you're doing because your writing is gonna almost always be better and then yeah, and even personality. That's advice I've given to other writers. And I talked about this recently where I've noticed this more often with women writers than men writers. And I wonder if it's because of societal stuff and women feel like they have to maybe this go back to when you're raised and it's a man's role and all that kind of stuff. But like, especially for women writers out there, one thing I really encourage men to, I just notice it more often with women is don't be afraid to be yourself, to put your personality into it. To like, to. Again, going back to have fun and not feeling like you need to hold back. I just feel like there's some holding back that goes on and I think your copy is gonna be significantly better and more Entertaining and things like that when you don't hold back. So I think that's really, really important.

I think what you're saying there is like, don't be afraid to be yourself. What made me successful in the relationship as a relationship advice person, because I still get some of the old emails that I wrote from our list. I'm like, oh, that's pretty good. Is I'm a weird, funny person. So I'm a weird, funny person in my emails. And I'm a weird. I mean, you'll see some things in my sales letters that you're like. That doesn't seem like it should go in a sales letter. That's a weird fucking metaphor. And that's whatever. But it works because there's energy to it. Like, I talk about, good copy has velocity. In my opinion. That's kind of how I talk about it. You probably feel the same way. The best copy I write is the copy when it's just coming. You're just like, right. And if it's too hard, I usually walk away from the desk because it isn't there yet. I just don't have it yet at that part.

Yeah.

I spend more of my time letting copy bang around the back of my brain than I do writing it. I'll let that happen for a couple of weeks where it just kind of was going, churn, churn, churn, while I'm doing other things. And then at some point I'll sit down and actually type it up.

Yeah. And two people put in the chat. And generally, obviously we answer through the Q and A. But two people said, like, you know, but what about when you're writing for your client? But it's like, your clients never had fun. Your client doesn't have any personality. Your client doesn't ever make a joke. Your client doesn't ever have joy. I think that's the thing. It's like, that's a huge part of it, right? Like, we go to write for clients and especially, like, inject some of that personality. Like, have fun. I mean, probably if you don't do it, it's because you're afraid and you don't actually know your client enough. And when that happens, it's like, that's where, like, I've talked about this before. When I write for clients, I, like, I'm trying to hear their voice in their head. And, like, it almost always I'm able to do that. The only person I really had any trouble with was recently was like, Tony Horton, because he'd come back and be Like I wouldn't say like that. I say it like this when it was like a micro difference like between this. Like I used like, you know, like blue and he wanted like, you know, aqua blue or when you're like, alright man, like I'm not throwing Tony Horn on the bus. It was just like he was, he was tough to. And I watched all these videos into all this stuff and I basically told him, I was like, hey Tony, like if I, you know, unless I've been, you're like your best friend for the last 20 years, I'm never gonna be able to actually write exactly. Like this is in your head because I'm just not in your head. But like for the vast majority of people, when I can hear the client in their voice in my head and then I'm writing as them and then you can still have fun as them, you know, I mean, but, but I still think it holds. It's not like if you're for client now, you have to just be like, report the facts. Because again, most of your clients are people who are real people too, with emotions and passions and joys and a sense of humor and all those things. So you can still have fun and put personality into it.

Yeah. Also like what I've told clients in the past is like, you're hiring me to be me. You're not hiring me to be you, essentially, right? You're hiring me to write as you, but you're not hiring me to be you. And I'm not going to change the languaging that I worked really hard. My stuff tends to have a lot of. I've never studied nlp, but I'm told I'm really good at NLP by people that have studied nlp. And that kind of languaging is there very much on purpose. And if somebody wants me to change that, I'm like, well, I'm not going to do that because that's what's going to work for my style of copy. Also just tell them to be more fun and more interesting. Or also the best thing, get rid of your fucking clients. Clients suck.

Whole other topic that is, that's an interesting one because you and I have definitely done different paths there where I do client work still and you don't. But with this, probably with 11 minutes left, we'll shelve that for now. But it can be a good conversation.

I do, I do some partner deals these days, but I'm not going to do something. I only do jobs when I know people respect me enough. They're not going to give me shit. Essentially, where they're like. I'm like, do what I tell you to do and then come back to me and tell me how it did.

It's a fair. A fair point to do. What about. I like Dami's question, Ed, not I take over your host details. I like Romans, too, but I know he's gone. But I'm like, damn, Romans was a good question, but he's gone.

So you wanted to do.

You just want to do 10 minutes speedrun.

All right, fine. Let's do a speedrun on it to get through. Okay, so. Because Roman isn't here anymore, but he'd ask, how do you find the balance between punching them in the gut? Wait. Oh, yeah. And throwing the reader a lifeline. And that's something you and I have talked about a little bit before, because it's like you want to punch them in the gut, but if you just keep punching, eventually they're like, fuck you. Right?

Yeah.

Curious how you find the balance there.

I mean, generally, I do it by. I'm rarely talking. It's interesting. It's most of my letters. I don't really use the word you until pretty deep in the letter. Which goes against every single thing you learn about copywriting. Right? Everything is about your orientation, your orientation, your orientation. I remember one of the first letters I ever wrote when I was in my early mid-20s, which was like, are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Which is the most bullshit crap piece of copy in the world? But I was 26 or whatever and just trying to get into this. I find that kind of offensive in a way. Like, don't tell me how I feel. Please don't tell me how I feel. You don't know how I feel. But if you tell me how you feel and it's really in a compelling way, it'll drive people in. And I just started talking and forgot the question. So tell me one more time what.

You forgot the question.

I forgot.

Well, just. How do you. How do you. How do you transition from.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Because. Because I tell a story of hope. I tell a story of a person who is coming from a place of despair, essentially, and feeling like they're going to give up. And then we tell a story of hope and a story of, like, transitioning from that pain to actually feeling a sense of power in some way in their lives and moving away from that. It's about redemption. It's about power. It's about. At the end, I'm usually talking about. I Can't wait to hear about your journey. I hope it's anywhere near as wonderful as mine is, et cetera. I'm talking about how, again, it's about reclaiming power and reclaiming agency.

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Dami said, how do you know when the story is getting too long? You know, it's easy to go on and on and up in the rabbit hole. And I do see a lot of writers kind of struggle with this. So what's your take on that, Chris?

When it gets boring, really? I mean, when you're just kind of talking without purpose. I mean, I'm hitting very specific story beats when I'm doing my letters, and they're largely based off the hero's journey with a few adjustments that I kind of make along the way if I feel like I need to. For instance, you have to have that teaching section. Oftentimes when I'm doing the teaching section, by the way, I'm not having an expert who is teaching you. I'm having a person who was learning along the way and teaching you as they learn. Right. So oftentimes it'll be about, for instance, and make him worship you. That letter is about. It's basically a testimonial letter. It's largely based off one person's story, but it's about her going to Michael Fury and her teaching her things. And at the same time that Michael Fury is teaching her things, of course, that is coming across to the actual people that are watching the letter as well.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So, yeah, Rachel, my stories are all based on reality. They're based on somebody, something that actually happened. Though we, of course, make it more dramatic. I guarantee none of the exact words are going to be said the same way. But the core about what actually happened is based on somebody. Yeah.

Yeah. That's one thing that when I did saying when Forgotten Hippo and Craig gave me, like, a critique and overall was like, you know, pretty complimentary, which is awesome. And Craig's an amazing writer. But one of the things he talked about was with the. And I know this, but I think I got away from in this letter, which is, again, that's why we have other people look at our stuff. But it was like with the expert finding out about, like, this is like a health letter and finding these studies. And he was like, you know, it'd be better if you can make it that the expert sort of learning along with the viewer kind of what you just said. Right. And be like, oh, wow. And then I was really surprised because what we Find out in lock copy. It's like, and I saw this and did you. And did you know. And it's like hardcore data facts and like. But they're saying this like really authoritative way of like just sort of rattling off statistics and studies. And it's way more interesting if it's like a discovery, you know, journey of discovery for both like the. The spokesperson and the viewer. And that one stuck with me because I was like, oh, shit. That was a really good point from. From Craig.

One quick thing on that too is that like, so in the Michael. It's in the letter of the Make a Mercer view letter. Early on in my career, I would have Michael. I would actually voice the letters myself. But we discovered that having a female voice for those particular things worked better ever since Language of Desire. Why can I not remember what I'm actually saying at this point? My brain is breaking for an hour and a half.

You feel so good about two hours.

But then, yeah, nothing. This is nothing. Oh, here's what it is. So in that letter, it's about the woman named Kate and she discovers Michael Fury. The cool thing about it is if it was a Michael Fury letter where I was the one talking, I would have to be like, I'm Michael Fury. I have a Wall Street Journal best selling book and I've done this and I've done that and I've done that. And actually when you have a letter that's more of a testimonial letter, you don't need as much credibility because the fact that the person who's in the letter looks up to this person so much gives them a level of credibility they wouldn't have if they were the one who was kind of saying it themselves. It's a shortcut. I like it.

Perfect. Sorry, my daughter just ran into the room naked. Speaking of naked people. But then she saw that Laura wasn't in here, had a look of sadness and turned around. So I guess I'm not.

Our dog does that.

Now we know where she gets it from. A Sam Novak said, yeah, she turned her by. So But a couple of these ones. Adriana asked, what advice do you have for super mega beginners on choosing a niche? And that's interesting because I have my own opinions on oh yeah, choosing a niche, but let me hear. Love to hear yours.

What do you. What are you excited about that will actually make money? Not what are you excited about? That's a stupid word answer that will not get you anywhere. But what are you excited about that has the potential to actually make money for me. Health stuff kind of bores me, honestly. Like, I do it because there's money in it, and I have other people who help me fill in the parts that I really don't like, like doing. But this isn't something I have passionate about. The relationship advice, like, psychology and relationship advice is what gets me. Well, psychology is what gets me. What gets me out of bed in the morning. I really enjoy it. And relationship advice is about psychology. I mean, my. My text, the Romance Back program that I did years ago, that's done very well for me, is basically a copywriting product angled towards relationships. It's just stuff that I know how to do from copywriting, but I'm like, send this in a text instead. There's only X number of niches that can actually make money. You know, there's weight loss, there's make money, there's relationships. There's, you know, a few others. Ted's work working, which has been on top 10 on clickbank for, like, 15 years or something. But, yeah, that's. That's the main event. Like, what do you have passion about? It's really hard to write compelling copy about something you don't have. Passionate about yourself. It's almost impossible. I can't do it. There's plenty of jobs that I've turned down over the years because I'm like, I just don't care. Like, I don't believe in this secret. I think it's bullshit. I've written a couple letters in that, but I don't want to do it again because I'm like, it's bullshit. It's just bullshit. It's fine that it's bullshit, but it's bullshit. Stefan's muted.

I know, because Ian came back and said, daddy. What? Eden came. She can come back. All right, sorry. We only got four minutes. Anyway, I wanted to. I hate to be the. To kick her out, so I'm not gonna put her on naked, but she wants to make a cameo. She can. One question I had to follow up on that, Chris, is because I kind of tell, like, a lot of beginning copywriters that, like, I wouldn't worry so much about choosing a niche. I feel like a lot of them feel like they need to find a niche. Eden agrees. She's like, I don't like this either. But, like, you know, it's like, maybe just try different stuff to find out what you really like. Because if you don't do that, you may miss out. Like, I didn't know I was gonna be a health Copywriter mostly. I did survival biz op, I mean, you name it. And I liked and I learned a lot of stuff from those different niches and categories which probably made me a better writer when I started writing for Health. So I'm curious how you feel on that. Do you feel like the same way or do you feel more like, hey, find a niche early on, like, you know, it's better.

Well, you want to. I mean I did a whole bunch of different stuff before I kind of settled into what I'm doing now. And I really enjoyed doing different stuff. I did that better for Kelly Felix. I really enjoyed it because it was fun and it was about. It wasn't health stuff because I don't really enjoy health stuff the same way, but it was about making money and it's about emotions. I mean I was dead broke for most of my 20s, so I can kind of resonate with those feelings. And I remember what it's like to go to a shitty, shitty job that you hate and be chained to your desk all day not actually accomplishing anything, etc. But I think it's important to go off and do a bunch of different things, especially early on in your career because you'll learn a lot and you'll find like when I do the relationship advice stuff, if I had just gone to relationship advice, I would not have been as successful in relationship advice as I was by doing all these other letters first. Because I was able to take all these things that I learned in im, which is much more hypey and whatever and bring that into relationship advice in a way that it wasn't being done before.

Yeah, 100%. That's awesome. And I feel the same way. And I mean I wrote for everything. Like I did stuff for like it virtual servers and cloud hosting and like logistics and. But it was cool. I mean I like to learn. And that thing that helped me, that helped me realize how much I like enjoyed learning. So then I'm like, oh, that. Then when I developed RNBC and the research process stuff, it's like, oh cool, research is really helpful. So even that was a cool kind of tidbit too. Maybe the last question we'll do, somebody asked where was it here about basically the advice you would give to your 28 year old self about how to not, you know, become like a narcissist, like once you start having success. That was essentially what it was.

Oh man. My answer would be get medicated 12 years earlier because I'm way less of a narcissist now. Than I was before that, especially like five or six years ago. I think the main thing is to have shit. A couple of things. One, keep your. Keep your real friends close. Many of my absolute best friends are still people who I've known for 15, 20 years at this point who think it's hilarious that I became a quote, unquote, big deal in marketing land. They see people writing things on my Facebook wall and they're like, that's so fucking weird. They just think it's fucking hilarious. And it's important to have that humility also, dude, like, making money doesn't. It doesn't mean you're as smart as you think it does. Quite honestly, it really doesn't. So much of it is luck. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time with the right education. You know, like, if my dad hadn't died 20 something years ago, I probably wouldn't have moved to Seattle eventually and I probably wouldn't have gotten the crappy job that when I got laid off from it, I somehow got the Awai course. And this happened and that happened. It's just I personally could very easily be dead broke or dead. I mean, if I wasn't rich, I'd be dead or homeless at this point. And I think it's important to realize that and to also realize, like, you're not changing the fucking world, man. Like, I'm really good at writing things that get people to buy shit on the Internet. So fucking what? Like, who cares? That is really not that impressive of a thing. I am much more passionate about being a great husband to my wife or being a great person to my friends, et cetera, than I am about, oh my God, I'm so good at that. Now, granted, that is partly because I've been financially comfortable for quite a while at this point, and I wasn't before. But also, you're going to become a dick for a while. You just are. You know, George Clooney talked about this in some interview I read at some point about how, like, when actors become a big deal, you become a fucking asshole for two or three years and then hopefully you come back. But a lot of people don't. I have personally had many conversations with younger guys, almost always guys, because they seek me out for advice. Talking about, like, don't get too impressed with yourself. Do not try to convince your best friend friend to become a copywriter because they can't do it.

That's really. Everyone should write that down because every single person, it's like, you come from a good place. But they, like, it's not. It's just gonna waste your time and it's gonna end in disappointment for everybody.

Don't talk to your friends about how much money you're making ever. Like, don't bring it up. Don't make that a big deal. I know for a long time I had this. This insecurity in me that I really needed people to know that I was successful all the time, and it made me kind of obnoxious, and I didn't really like it. And now I just don't care in the same way. But I think you just need to. It's going to happen for a while. Especially because people that become successful in direct marketing are usually from the island of misfit toys, right? We're usually people that either didn't have a great education or were ADD or bipolar or whatever and couldn't keep a real job, because I couldn't. I got fired from every job I ever had, et cetera. And so there's this feeling that we tend to have of not being good enough or like, for me, my brother was off making half a million dollars a year in New York City in finance when I was making $13,000 a year when I was, like, dead broke in my 20s. And so when I started to make enough some real money where I could, quote, unquote, I could even go to a restaurant. It was like, a big deal to me. And so you're going to put that out to some degree, you're going to feel like, hey, I'm finally worth something, and people need to know that. And then hopefully you can find your way past that at some point. But forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for feeling those emotions for a while. Hey, Eden, how are you?

She's like, I have a question.

Yeah, you can have a question.

No, she doesn't. Yeah, she's captivated. She's just watching. She's locked in. She's like.

She takes after her mom.

Yeah, I know. Any questions? No. Okay. No. That's an awesome answer, though. Chris and everyone. Ian, people are saying hi to you in the little chat here, but. Cool. So let's wrap up. I know. I'm conscious of Ed's time, too, but, Chris, thank you so much for coming on and sharing these insights. It was incredible. It inspires me. I said it after when Craig talked at our comic starter event, the kickoff, and I was like, man, he made me want to be a better copywriter. And same thing with you talking. You just make me want to just even be better at my craft and just the insights to sharing. I really appreciate it. It was just an awesome kind of hour and a half to get to spend with you, so thank you for that.

I feel the same way about you, honestly. I have learned a lot by studying your stuff. I went through your RMBC course the other day, and I think it's valuable, too, to understand no matter how big your name gets, you can still learn shit, right? You don't know everything. There's always new. Especially it gets a little harder as you get a little older because, like, who are these younger people? How am I? But you're like, oh, well, they're smart and they're doing the work and they know what they're doing. You can always learn from other people. And there's some really good writers out there. There's some really interesting people.

Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much. This wraps up today's episode of the Road to Billion if you're on Facebook Live. Thanks for watching there, everyone on Zoom. Love you all, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.