[RTB:E40] After Selling $1B Online, Is eCom or Direct Response Better? w/ Craig Clemens

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 on this special bonus edition. The Road to a Billion is a call and radio show style podcast where you can ask myself and my guests questions about freelancing, copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, relationships, money and really pretty much anything. The reason for the name the Road to a Billion is twofold. One is because I have sold around a billion dollars worth of stuff now with both with my own products and brands and for clients honestly, more so for the cl. But either way, and also the goal is to make an impact on the lives of a billion people over the next 10 years. So start taking calls in about 30 minutes from now and when we do that, you'll be able to put questions into Zoom in the Q and A section and myself and my guests will answer some of them. And those will be moderated by my great friend Ed Ray, who is our co host. Ed, do you want to go ahead and say hello and introduce yourself to everybody here? Hey, what's up everyone?

My name is Ed Ray and I help people grow their businesses without sacrificing their voice or their integrity.

Perfect. Thank you Ed. And in addition to Ed, we have an awesome guest today who is the legendary Mr. Craig Clemons. So I'm going to read Craig's bio off a bit, but then we'll jump right into it. For over 15 years, Craig Clemons has been an e commerce innovator, brand storyteller and visionary builder of category leading brands. As a copywriter, he's run many of the biggest digital ad campaigns in history, generating hundreds of millions of video views and upwards of a billion dollars in sales. Presently, Craig is co founder of Golden Hippo, America's largest digitally native brand incubator which under his leadership has become one of the fastest growing companies in the USA, scaling to an 800 person team across five offices with no outside investor capital. Prior to Golden Hippo, Craig founded Breakthrough Media, a digital advertising company which reached $3 million in annual revenues with just three employees. He's been an online e commerce since 2003 as a copywriter and also as a philanthropist as well. Craig and his wife Sarah are longtime well members of Charity Water. They funded over 1200 cleft lip surgeries through a partnership with the Smile Train and Beverly Hills md. And they have built education centers in Guatemala, Kenya through partnerships with the Unstoppable foundation and Pencils of Promise. So Craig, thank you so Much for joining me today.

My pleasure. Long time coming.

I know, I'm stoked. I'm really excited. I know you're a very busy man and it's just wonderful to have you on. So are you. You're in LA right now, Is that where you are?

I am, yes.

Excellent.

Cool.

So, Craig, I mean, I have a lot I want to cover and I want to give people the opportunity to ask questions as well. But maybe we'll start in the beginning because it's so interesting. Golden Hippo is fairly well known in the world of digital marketing and E commerce and direct response and all those different worlds and. But you know, if we go way back, how did you first kind of discover the world of digital marketing, advertising, and more specifically, I guess direct response marketing.

Yeah. Well, I started off as a telemarketer. I feel like I've told this story a lot, so I don't want to tell the whole saga again. But the short story is that I was dialing for dollars, interrupting people during their dinners. And when I was doing that, you have a script that you say to people when you call them. And I would write these scripts for myself to use and they would work and then people, other people in the company would steal them and use them to sell their folks on the phone. And that made me angry. But, you know, I guess it was a compliment to the scripts. Yeah, exactly. I was getting swiped. Someone said in the comments, never stops. Yeah, it really does. So that was interesting. And then I was bouncing from one dead end telemarketing job to another. I was really fortunate. I met Evan Pagan through a friend and he had just started double your dating, which a lot of people know. And I convinced him to hire me. And I go on his website and he's got this long form sales letter talking to men about how reading this ebook is going to help you get dates and find a girlfriend and you know, all other fun stuff. And I realized that what he had there was the same type of thing. I'd been working my ass off making 200 calls a day to pitch to people. And here he just put it up on a webpage and was sending thousands of people to it a day. And the conversion rate wasn't quite as high. But you didn't have to interrupt anybody during dinner and have them tell you to fuck off. So it was pretty appealing to see the power of salesmanship leveraged. So I went and started working for him. I actually didn't start working as a copywriter, that I was doing customer support at first and managed the affiliate program. I bought some of the online media. I was contacting other website owners to trade links. If people are old school in Internet marketing, you'll remember that if you had inbound links would make your site rank higher in Google. So that was one of the other things I did. And I didn't start writing copy there probably two years down the line. But he had introduced me to Gary Halbert and I was reading Gary Halbert's newsletters and I loved Gary's newsletters. And I was living in San Diego and I was throwing parties and when I would throw an invite up to a party, I would type it in Gary Halbert's style. And I started to get a lot of people enjoying my party invites. And a lot of people would show up to the parties too. So that got me excited about the idea of writing copy myself. And then Evan gave me a shot writing bullets. So bullets aren't as much of a thing today as they used to be. But if you remember long form static sales letters, you know, most of those will have a bullet section with the teaser lines in there. And he had me start with the bullets. And I'd sit in the back of the room during the seminars that he'd do, which so for example like Meeting Women Online would be a seminar he'd do for a weekend. And we'd be making a course called Meeting Women Online. And I'd sit in the back and I'd write down the concepts and then I try to shape them in a bullet. So he'd talk about, you know, what your profile should say. And I find ah, the three words to add to your profile that double the amount of sponsors responses you'll get to your emails, you know, things like that. So I try to take as big concepts, turn them into bullets. And I remember the first seminar I did, it was, it was Meeting Women Online. I wrote this three pages of bullets and I was supposed to send them to Evan and I thought, you know, before I send them to Evan, I'm going to send them to our CEO of the company, this guy named Rob, and ask him which were his favorites so I could cut out the crappy ones. And I sent them to Rob and he wrote me an email back and I was all excited to open it up and see what his favorite bullets are. And it said, Craig, to be honest, I don't really like any of these bullets. Can we talk on the phone? And I talked on the phone. This guy wasn't even a copywriter, but he told me how crappy my bullets were and how unappealing and, you know, not catchy. But, you know, I went back and I rewrote and I rewrote, and then I started looking at John Carlton sales letters and Yannick Silver's sales letters, and I started swiping their formulas. But putting my own words into John Carlton would have, you know, the seven word sentence to add to your order page that increases your closing ratio. And I'd be like, well, is there a place where Eben said seven words to say to a woman? I'd be like, ah, here it is. You know, the seven words to say to a woman in your initial email that make her excited to actually go on a real life date with you? You know, so I was borrowing back then. And, yeah, that's how it all started. And I think these kids today, not starting with bullets, you miss a big chunk of the learning because the bullets teach you how to write very concise. They teach you how to cut out the crap, and they also, most importantly, teach you how to grab attention in a way that's so strong. I mean, we would always say that people will buy the product just because of one bullet, and you never know what that bullet's going to be. I think Gary Halbert is this famous story. I'm probably going to butcher this. But something like he put out this, some health course or something like that. And one of the bullets said, legal cocaine. Make it in your own home, or something like that. And that ended up being the reason everyone was buying it. So, you know, you never know what people are going to buy for. So you got to really tune in and make these bullets amazing. So I started with straight bullets, and that was all. I was good at writing for the first little stretch too. I remember I would then write these email promos to sell our interview series where Evan would interview a dating guru every month. And that was 29.95. So you kids today got it easy. Podcasts are free. Back then, you had to pay 29.95 to get one interview from someone. And that was quite a business actually, too reoccurring revenue. So I would write the email that would sell that every month to our existing dating list. And I would just listen to those interviews and I just come up with the best, you know, 10 to 15 bullets. And the email would be really simple. It'd be like, hey, I just interviewed a fascinating dating expert. But what's more interesting is what he shared. Here's what you're going to learn. And I just put the zingers in there. And that would get people to sign up for the interview series. So I think bullets are super critical. And now people go straight to video sales letters. And you don't get that because there's not as many bullets in video sales letters. In fact, there's sometimes zero. And.

They.

While they don't have bullets, in another sense, everything is a bullet. If you're writing good copy, every single sentence should have the purpose of making the person reading it or viewing it super damn intrigued to feel the effects of your product. Every single one needs to have a purpose, you know, I mean, yeah, there's some setups and things like that, but that's what bullets teach you. So when I train writers, I tell them, hey, go. Go write a ton of bullets for, you know, whatever this is, even though you might not use them, even though you might not put them in your video, it'll give you some hooks that you can use in your clothes. You can use it in your opening, you can use it in the product copy, things like that.

Yes. That's awesome.

I don't remember what your question was or how I went on that tangent.

I don't know, but it was good. It was good. No? How do you get started? But the bullet thing, it makes sense. I mean, even for myself. And when I was first kind of. I always tell people when I. When I feel like I first started to get good at copy, it was because somebody gave me the Screaming Eagle newsletter with, like, Clay, Makepeace and Tony Flores. And it was like, the 21 different, like, bullet types, right? And it was like they were like, study these different types of bullets. And then for a certain info product, they were like, write something crazy, like 20 or 30 fascinations or bullets for each of the 21 types. So it was like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And I remember thinking that the assignment was so, like, stupid at first and then having a lot of fun, but also struggling, but then realizing suddenly there was like, this magic secret weapon I had that I could work into copy. Because to your point, it just. It hooks people. And even if your big idea in your lead, kind of like only half hits, like, if you have some bullets even in the lead, right? It's like, I almost say it's like, here's your big hook. And then your fascinations and bullets are these little tiny hooks. And it's like, maybe the fish swims past that baited hook here, but then sees one of those other little tiny hooks that has one of your bullets, and they grab onto that one, that could be enough to pull them into the rest of the copy. And all the things I've ever read that you've written just sort of. Yeah, you're really good at the curiosity element.

Well said. I love the way you describe that and that's so true.

Thanks, man. Yeah, a question, I guess as we move forward into creating Going Hippo and Gundry md. I remember when those first Gundry MD offers kind of came out. Like I, it was funny because at first I was almost like jealous because I'm like, well, you know, it's really good copy. But you know, he just like, he took an accomplished doctor and he made it so it's high production value and then, you know, wrote it so that it could run on Facebook. And so, yeah, and then of course it's doing really well. And then, and then I had that moment of, right, cool. And who else did that? I was like, oh, nobody else did that. Craig did that. And the copy itself is excellent. The offers are great, the products are great, all of that. But I had to have my ego checked for a minute because it was almost such a good idea and almost, I don't mean obvious in any way, offensive way. It was such a no brainer to do what you did. It was so smart to do it and it was the jealousy of like, I didn't think of it. Nobody else thought of it, you did. So I'm curious, as that came about, was it really intentional? Just like, let's create a high production value, high quality sort of brand with like a great doctor, you know, that we're partnered with or how did you kind of conceive of Gundry MD and sort of the style that Going Hippo became one or has become well known for?

Well, yes, it was absolutely deliberate and thanks for the compliments. You know, when we started in this space, we saw two worlds divided. We saw the nicely branded supplements that you would see at GNC or Vitamin Shop, you know, that had no online marketing. And then you'd see the white bottle that someone like, you know, wrote the name on and you know, had great marketing, but it was also greatly aggressive marketing for what was in it. And we thought, wow, if this well branded approach can be mixed with strong marketing principles, you're going to have a huge advantage over the people in GNC because they don't know any of this. And you're going to have a huge advantage over the people that are doing the aggressive stuff and the lower quality products because we could tell what direction the networks were going in and what direction the world is going in. I mean, you know, someone only needs to buy one of those to not fall for it again, you know, and so we always, you know, had a rule that we would make best in class products and make them feel branded in a way that would let people know that it's the same quality stuff that's on those shelves, except now you can get it direct to consumer and direct from the doctor.

Yeah, that's. That's awesome. Like I said, it was just this huge hole in the market. And in hindsight, it seems, like, obvious, but the time it wasn't.

And I think, yeah, well, you know, who else, you know, who else does this really well, but in a totally different way is mlms. So MLM is a beautiful branding, the successful ones, right? It's amazing branding, and it's actually meshed with a very hard sales pitch. It's a different kind of sales pitch because it's like, hey, do you want to make money and get healthy at the same time while working around your schedule? I know you just met me and you're pumping your gas, you know, but just listen to what I have to say. What the fuck? Who's this? But, you know, it works, right? I mean, these mlms are huge, you know, so it's like, it's. It's. You know, then when they get someone's attention and they open up the brochure, they're like, oh, herbalife. This sounds really legit. It's been around for 20 years. It's got these, you know, doctors in the medical advisory panel. This is real deal stuff. And there's actual people making real money here. Okay, I might give this a try. Versus if someone was coming to you with an MLM pitch and they were like, yeah, you know, this is. This is the product. And then it looks like, I mean, I don't know, I don't have any crappy looking products on my desk. I got some nice ones. What it feel like, you know, you know, if they have some crappy looking thing, you're gonna be like, okay, this is a total scam. But if they're saying, hey, you can make money here and it's really healthy, and they pull up some beautiful product and you're like, oh, interesting. That looks just like the things that I saw in gnc. You mean I can take that and offer it to other people? Oh, yeah, you can. And it's actually better. These are the reasons why, because MLM people know how to build good hooks into their products as well. So they're masters of that.

That's a really. That's an interesting way of looking at it. I haven't, but it makes perfect sense. One more point. I want to get to some other stuff too, like bitcloud and variety of things and then we won't be able to cover everything today anyway. But I'm thinking about one interesting thing you told me when I was writing for you guys. You talked about how you're like, when I try, I try to write every piece so that, you know, somebody who's never like seen a direct response piece before, never seen like a sales letter, who's never thought about buying like will be engaged in this, the place where they're going to buy. Like you sort of what I got from it, maybe I just misinterpreted it. And I've been misinterpreted since that conversation was almost that you were going to like. It's almost a pretty broad market where you want, almost anybody can come into like what you've created, right, like your video sales letter or your funnel and, and get sucked in. And on one hand you think, well, yeah, sure, of course. But then on the other hand you're like, well, yeah, but what about the levels of, you know, like market awareness and you know, kind of like niching down and all that? And so I was just curious if you want, if you could pretend, you know, elaborate a little bit on that philosophy of yours and how it does play into that versus really being super hyper targeted with who you go after with an offer.

Yeah, it's a great question. So one thing I'm proud of at Golden Hippo is I think we've probably gotten more people in the United States to take their first supplement than any other company. Because if you think about it, you know, most people are not exposed to this. If you're in a rural area, you got your grocery store that's got, you know, maybe like a little vitamin section. And I mean it's a lot better than a was 10 years ago, you know, now at least you probably find probiotics in every corner of America. But you know, back then you didn't have much. You know, you might have your centrum and your, you know, Flintstones vitamins, maybe hydroxy cut, weight loss or something like that, you know, or Garcinia cambogia would make it in there. But not high quality supplements. And so does that mean that people don't need them just because, you know, the thing has got 20 different probiotic strains that are written in Latin and Greek that people don't know. Does that mean that it's only good for biohackers or the people in Venice Beach? No, I mean, everyone can benefit from some of these high quality nutrients. Right? So when I am sitting down to write a promo, that's something else I think about is what is the information gap? And when there is a big information gap, which I also call educational opportunity, I think it's a good market to go into. So probiotics was a great example of that. I started taking probiotics myself in 2013. I'd never heard of them before. I couldn't pronounce anything on the bottle. But I felt a difference when I was taking them. And so what's, what is the difference? Well, I learned that the stuff I was eating had added sugars and sweeteners and preservatives in it, and that stuff made bad bacteria grow in my, my stomach, you know, and that these probiotics were good bacteria. All those names were names for good bacteria. So I just gave you a layman's explanation of probiotics. But if you go up to someone in the street and you're like, hey, have you taken some Lactobacillus coagulans? Is that is really what you need? If you want to readjust the composition of your gut flora in your microbiome, they'd be like, well, we speak English around here. You know, what was that? Right? So. So that's the same thing you're saying, but you got to, got to meet the market where it's at. So when we got in the probiotics market, most people didn't know what probiotics were. And so that was something that we would try to do. And the banners at the time would say things like, the root of all stomach problems was a good one, because everyone can relate to a stomach problem. And then, as most people, I'm sure listening, know, we were very early in probiotics. We were one of the biggest sellers of probiotics in the world and definitely in the United States in, you know, 2014, and, you know, up, up on, you know, the next few years. And there was a movement going on. So there was things like Kavita soda, which had probiotics in it. All the yogurt companies were advertising probiotic benefits. You know, people were educated. And so now you can walk down the street and most people know what a microbiome is. Most people know what probiotics are. So a few years later, a banner we were using says, doctor says, throw your probiotics away and be like, oh, interesting. You know, you got all this stuff that's saying the probiotics are great for you. And then this one was now, you know, in 2017, meeting the market where it's at now, where everyone is hearing about these probiotics and this doctor's saying something different, you know, so it's all about meeting the market where the market is. And to be able to do that, I think you got to pay attention to what's going on. So I never stop reading ads. You know, every six months I buy a Cosmopolitan magazine in a woman's world and I read it cover to cover. You know, I don't read, I mean, all the articles, you know, well, sometimes I'll read the, you know, hot sex tips and things like that. But, you know, you gotta, you gotta watch the market where it's at. You know, you gotta go on the consumer websites in your niche. You know, if you're in health, it might be mindbody green. If you're in finance, it might be the Reddit forums, you know, if they're seeking alpha or, you know, whatever it is. So you gotta know what the market is familiar with, what's basic knowledge and what's advanced knowledge. And if something's advanced, you gotta learn how to speak to them at a basic level to convey that message. And this is exactly the same thing, but, you know, being more granular on how you speak to someone. I always love the story of how Gary Halbert in his lectures would say, you have to Write at a 6th grade reading level. I'm sure everyone's heard that, you know, and you can now use plenty of tools to see what level your writing's at. But the thing I love about the story is that back in Gary's day, there was no tools. It was just you guessing if it was a sixth grade reading level. And so after Gary Halbert passed and these tools were around, someone said, you know, I wonder if Gary was really practicing what he preached because he was selling stock trading, he was selling some advanced weight loss things like that. Gary Halbert was selling garcinia cambogia. Back in the 80s, someone went and took his sales letters and they stuck it into one of these apps and they said that Gary was not writing at a sixth grade reading level, he was writing at a third grade reading. So there you go.

That's amazing.

And people, I've talked about this too, so it sounds like we're going to talk about BitCloud at some point. I talked to a BitCloud developer the other day who is building a project on the platform and I was reading his white paper, which is super intense crypto defi stuff that I can't even understand. And I was explaining to him like this. I was saying, look, you're smarter than most of the people that are going to read this. That said, even really smart people want something that makes their brain churn to read. They want something that's easy to read, easy to digest. That's why a book like the Alchemist is going to be popular among brilliant folks to average folks alike, because it's written in such a just easy to absorb manner.

Yeah, that's an awesome point. Yeah. We are going to get to BitCloud. I've got maybe just a couple more questions before we go there. So. And before we do that, Craig, I like to try and remember in the middle of episodes to how can people connect with you? I mean, oneplace sounds like private cloud, right? Anywhere else. And then also I know you mentioned that you guys are looking for writers and media buyers. So I'll give you the chance to talk about that and then we'll keep going with the questions. So where do they connect and then what are you looking for?

Yeah, so we are actively hiring writers and media buyers at Golden Hippo. I even set up a special email address for this call writersoldenhippo.com if you want to send us a resume, samples, cover letter. You know, we're a professional organization so, you know, while we appreciate the personalized sales letters, I gotta show you some of the stuff I get, man. It's amazing. Where is this? Oh, dude, this guy, he might be on the call. His name is Jordan. He sent me this amazing direct mail package. It was, you know, came in this envelope. Oh no. But it's fast company cover with me on it. It's got like some of my big goals like saving the dolphins. You know, it's got like the little handwritten tag and then it had the sales letter yours. Free emails for Golden Hip on a test. I love this stuff. Don't get me wrong. But at the same time, when it was time for me to introduce this gentleman to my copy chief, I said okay. Also include your resume and a proper cover letter, you know, because this is a serious environment here and you learn skills not just on how to write kick ass copy, but how to be a kick ass business person at this company. So yeah, we're hiring for writers and media buyers right now and it's an exciting time. You know, the company's Growing fast. It was one of those weird things last year, you know, Covid hit and you almost feel guilty talking about it. But, I mean, the world is home. They're watching videos and they're thinking about health. So we had tremendous growth over the last year. And this year we're up a little bit as well. And so we're looking for great people to bring onto our team. And I think we have the world's best training program for writers where you get paid as you train. And we have some studs and stud ads on our team that, you know, are writing the most successful promos on the Internet. And also, the cool thing about Golden Hippo is when you write something good, it's going to be seen by millions of people, you know, which was a challenge with some of the people I've mentored that aren't quite ready that, you know, they write something, no one can see it, you know, and that was something I was very fortunate when I worked for Evan is my first piece of copy. Well, it took six months before I wrote something that he would mail out to the email list because I had to get good. But when I did write something good enough, it went out to a million people, you know, so that's great because you can actually get data quickly. So, yeah, please writersgoldenhippo.com come join us. Media buyers too. And it's an environment where you really will sharpen your knife and kick some butt.

Yeah, that's amazing. It's an awesome, awesome opportunity for writers, for media buyers. And when we do the replay on YouTube, put it up on itunes, all that, we'll make sure that is linked in there as well so that you. I mean, again, for people who are watching now or are going to watch, like, I would not miss that. Do they need to move to la? Craig?

Oh, man, such a great question. You know, it's a debate right now. Yeah, it is a debate because we were so firm on come to the office up until Covid and now we're thinking about these policies and what it's going to look like in the future. We don't have a firm answer yet. I'd say definitely send an application if you're interested. And I think the world's changing, so not sure, but to hear applications and meet people from all over the place. So, yeah, let us know. And I have to be protected by time these days because we're just doing a lot of new partnerships and exciting things. I think people know we have Tony Horton as one of our brand partners now Dr. Gundry. Of course. Oh, man. Can I say this person? I guess I'll say. I guess I'll say. I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but we're doing a survival brand with Chuck Norris.

Oh, nice. That is amazing.

Yeah, so. So that's. That's really exciting. So I do a lot of these partnerships and deal with the people in the chat's blowing up. I love it. We're so pumped for that. But I gotta be selective with my time. But I do mentor the people that work at Golden Hippo. I hands on personally go over their copy and work with them because, you know, I remember where I was. Damn. It's been almost 20 years now, you know, and I want to. I want to create the next group of a list copywriters. And as. As you know, Stefan, as you know, there's only like what, like five of us or something in the whole world, you know, and, you know, I think, you know, maybe 10, because I know I got a few of them here at Golden Hippo that people don't know yet. But yeah, that's. That's my aim with this.

So. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, Chuck Norris just broke the chat. Okay. A couple other questions and yeah, then eventually we will answer some Q and A. So I know there's one question in there. One thing that came to mind is what I deal with a lot as a mentor to many copywriters through copy Accelerator and everything is a lot of the freelancers see the revenue numbers with offer ownership, and so they want to create their own offer. Right. And because in their head they're like, well, I can stop trading time for money. Which isn't necessarily true, as you know, having created offers. But yeah, there's an allure to it. And then often Justin, my partner and I will advise them not to hurry to do that because there's a lot of headaches, unforeseen headaches. So I guess the question is just any advice you would give to a copywriter who has been ran for, let's say, a couple years, they feel like they've had some wins. They feel pretty good. They don't think they're the best in the world, but they feel solid. And then they're tempted to create their own offer. Like saying that, you know, the health space or really whatever, but especially the health space, since you're in that space and that's where a lot of these writers want to go. What kind of advice would you give to them?

That's a great Question. So, as you know, you. You be better to answer this question than I would. I'd be curious to get your take, because I believe you just. You either currently have an offer or you recently had one. Is it. And you. Did you step away from it or what's the latest?

Yeah, I was partnered in one that. There's a friend's health supplement company. He already had it. They were at, like, 5 million a year in revenue. I helped them get to, like, 20 million. But then I did step away. And, you know, the reasons why on my end were. I mean, it wasn't like, we used, like, real people and it was real stories, but it was a little bit of, like, aggressive stuff that I was like, yeah, I don't know if I really want to be doing this, but also, I mean, transparently, that was the biggest. That was the cast that made me do it. But. But beyond that, it was also like, I just wasn't. There's a lot of headaches right to the point I made and stuff that I was like, I don't think really want to be dealing with. I don't need to be doing this. I'm not that passionate about it. I don't want to, you know, have to just all this crap with, like, merchant accounts and, you know, just all the stuff that goes into it. So, yeah, that's why some of the reasons I stepped away from it.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm fortunate. I have business partners that are really good at that. I'm not. I almost wrote a book called Notrepreneur, because I'm just not an entrepreneur. I'm a writer and a marketer, you know, so if it was me running all that stuff, the company would have failed a long time ago. And we also had a huge advantage. You know, we started Golden HIPPO in, like, 2009, 2010, you know, so we've been building out these systems, you know, So, I mean, I've got, like, I don't know, 30 video editors or something, you know, 20 or 30 media buyers, 20 copywriters. And that's what it takes. And the ROIs are not what they used to be, you know, so we're more about scale now than we are those quick profits. And the people that I do see that are able to edge something out where it makes money, it's typically like you described, where they're running something super aggressive that they can run for a year or so, and then it'll get banned or slapped or just burn out, and then they have to go back to Square one and start something new. And it's not really like a sustainable thing. It's more of a money maker than a business. So I think it's a tough time to get into the health space right now because also too the networks these days, as you may know, is they don't want you to be testing your crap above bs like whiteboard stuff anymore. They want the polished thing up front, you know, and so it's a lot harder to do AB testing today than it used to be, you know, back when you could just put words and voice and that would be good to go, you know. So I think it's a tougher game. I think we're lucky that we started back when it was lucky that I had my business partners who, you know, there's four of us tackling these issues. If it was only any two of us, company wouldn't have done as well. There has to be these pieces come into play. And also I think you need a copy advantage. And when I say a copy advantage, I don't think a B plus copywriter is going to be able to compete anymore. I think you need a Stefan Giorgi or someone like that in a house. And the reason I say in house too is because we all write things that tank. You know, I don't know what my exact track record is. I say I'm probably 3 for 4 is my guess on things that work. So you hire me, which I don't freelance. Let's say you do. Let's say you get the number four. But wasn't like I tried any less than the fourth package. It just, you know, some things, things don't work, you know, so I've had that experience too, trying to hire every freelancer and, you know, can we talk Stefan openly about.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we, you know, we tried to do some business together and you delivered the copy on time. The first one didn't work. You did a great deep rewrite, you went and did your research and, and it still didn't beat our in house guy, you know, which I get my ass kicked by our in house writers all the time. It's not an ego thing, it's just you don't know what's going to happen, what's going to work. And that was me actively hiring the number one available person in the world. You know, that's just how it goes. Now if I had hired you for a four package deal or something, I mean, I bet, you know, at least one of those is going to work. Probably more. Maybe that's the way someone could do it. But yeah, it's a tough game. And that's why when people also ask me to, no matter what type of business they're in, what they should do on the copy front and, you know, if they hire people, I say, well, I say hire Stefan if you can get him, because he's serious about his craft. He's worth every penny. He'll deliver you the stuff on time. As you know, Stefan, I've hired other a list people who have ran away with the money, including someone whose name has been mentioned on this call. I'm not going to say who it is again, but that guy just literally took the money and ran away and never delivered the sales letter. And then I've gotten other people that, you know, have sent in the thing and it just like one guy took, who's a guy everyone's name would know, took six months to get the letter to us. Every month he'd write me a sales letter on why he didn't have the sales letter. But, you know, it finally came and it was 80 pages long, which I was like, okay, it's different style than me. Maybe we'll put it up. And we put it up and it didn't do very well. And, you know, we finally got it working. My, my. One of my guys, like went through it, like three months later, he pulled it out of the done pile and like did a deep edit. He got it breaking even. And I spent, literally, I spent a full week, like a focused week, like at the coffee shop, you know, and we got to work and end up being a success. But, but yeah, that's, that's like our issue. You know, hiring freelancers is really tough. So. That said, there is always room for great direct response marketing. I just feel like health is kind of busy. So I've seen it brought to other categories like eargo hearing aids, which I think just SPAC for like a $3 billion valuation or something with 30 million of revenue. I mean, I see stuff like that and I'm like, damn, I'm in the wrong business. Russell Brunson clickfunnels I think they do 100 million plus, not 200 million. They might, but I don't know, something like that. I think they got like, you know, billion plus valuation. You know, I mean, there's all these things where you can get bigger valuation nowadays. So if I was starting over, I wouldn't get into health. I haven't seen anyone really come up in the last few years that is super legally compliant. I see that like, I mean I heard research is absolutely murdering it, but I don't see them on the big network. So I don't really know.

Yeah, no, I mean I think we won't go too down the path of research, but yeah, I think V shred.

V shred is a good one that's come up. Yeah.

Vshread one example. But yeah, overall I agree. I mean GPLANS has done decently well, but. Yeah, but to your point, it is true. It's like if, hey, if you want to play the cash grab game for like a year and your model is you launch these things, you make money for a year, you sort of sleep uneasily at night because cause you're worried about your dubious claims and then the offer shuts down or you get a letter from a legal agency or traffic dies out or whatever it is and you try it again. It's very exhausting to do that, but it's very resource intensive to build a large health brand. You guys have done it with your partners and funnily enough, V shred people. Vince is the spokesperson, Nick's the CEO. But then you've got Kevin who's basically running a massive team of media buyers and you've got Roger who's your CTO doing all this tech stuff and they've got just like you guys, a very large team. And so for like the sort of solopreneur who then wants to start an offer and make a lot of money, like yeah, health is a really challenging one. And I mean dude like Jason Gutaski, I don't know if you know Jason or not. Great guy, good media buyer, ran a lot of traffic for me back in the day and he has a really successful children's publishing book company now. And one of the reasons he did that was because he's got so tired of Facebook telling him no to everything that he was like, what can I do do that Facebook's just not going to have an issue with. And he was like children's books like Facebook is just not going to get for running children's books. And he's building a really healthy eight figure business and they sell more books than best selling author. Yeah, it's really awesome. He's a great guy. I don't know if you've never met if you ever want to intro really smart guy and they're doing awesome stuff. But yeah, I think that's great advice, Craig.

Yeah, I mean I always get the calls later like hey Craig, do you want to buy this offer that we had that used to be doing great volume and. And it's kicked off all the networks. Maybe you can use your connections to get it back on, you know, so. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I want to go to BitCloud, maybe. One last question for you before I go to BitCloud, which is, I guess so speaking of that, because you talked about it, health specifically. But in 2021, what is the place for sort of like doctor and like, long form? Because I'm looking at a lot of E Comm stuff that incorporates Dr. Elements. And, you know, part of me feels like, oh, I want to go play there. Like, there's these people that their offers are converting at like 30% with like an. Or, sorry, 3% with like an $80 AOV, but they're at a decent amount of scale on Facebook and YouTube and whatever. And I'm like, well, I could come in and I think I could probably get them to 4 or 5%. I could probably get the AOV up to 120 and, you know, stuff like that. But then there's issues of E commerce.

I just want to make sure. Are you talking about, like, people selling pans and clothing and stuff like that? Or E Comm. What do you.

Definitely health stuff. But. But even gadgets. Like, interesting, you know, like. Like different. Like consumer. Consumer products. Yeah. Mostly when I talk about E Com. So sometimes it is like supplement companies. Like, we were just looking at one for Copy Starter today that one of our writers is working on. It's like an eczema cream. And it was like, they're like basically 3% across the board of an $80 AOV. And you know, I'm like, there's a lot of opportunity on that page. Right. Um, but again, I see it with.

That's a tough one to scale, I can tell you. I tried to do excellent cream with gunnery. Yeah, it's up to scale. That's some of these categories too.

Right. But like, that was like a toilet cleaner. It's like a toilet cleaning invention that automatically cleans.

Yeah. Poo Pourri is like what, 300 million a year business or something like that, you know?

Yeah.

And then.

But they use Dr. Elements and people sort of. I think a lot of times people who are on the hardcore doctor side don't realize how easily applicable some of their skills are about optimization and things like that to more E Comm oriented. But I guess back to my question, though. Yeah. I mean, where do you see it today and beyond as far as long form? Building a brand using long form copy? Is that still A good idea. Is it on its way out? I'm just curious to get your take. I know other people would be interested as well.

Yeah, we still have mostly long form. Just kind of go back to a little bit of what we're talking about earlier. If you bring Dr. To a world that hasn't seen it before, it's magic, right? So anyone here seen the ads for caraway pots and pans? Those are amazing and they're short, but they basically say your pots and pans have toxins in them. These don't. And it's just like, you know, Dr. 101, right? Like problem solution type stuff. And there's plant company, like direct to consumer plants. I forget the name of it, but they do some cool ads, you know, and the hearing aid company I mentioned earlier, so these companies don't do long form per se. Long form is tough, man.

Long form.

The reason it's tougher now than it used to be is because you can't launch with your crappy video. And to make a shiny fancy video is really expensive and you can lose a lot of money. I think that's why more people don't do long form is because they will launch their first VSL or whatever it is, you know, 30 minute VSL that's done well, costs a lot to produce and then if it doesn't work, it's hard to edit because you just had to, you just made it so fancy. But I don't know, is it going away? I mean, I hear it once a year. I hear it's going away, but it hasn't gone away. You know, once a year Facebook calls us up, they say, hey guys, we're, you know, today we want to talk to you guys about doing some shorter formats and shorter form video. I will say we use a lot more short form stuff than we did, you know, five and 10 years ago. And I guess it would be more of those like E comm style ads that you're used to seeing. We do run those now in conjunction with our other stuff which we never did back in, you know, 2015. So I don't think long form is going away, but I think it's just harder to launch long form now because the networks are so strict with how well it has to present. You know, if you think about it, a long form video is a network's worst nightmare. What does everybody want on their site, Right? If you're, if you own a website, right, you want the BMW ad that has the fancy car and the sexy couple getting it out of it that no one clicks on. They stay on your site and they consume more content, right? The last thing you want is some tricky ad with like a penis looking elbow dipped in a jar of red bananas that says one weird trick to detox your colon at home. Like that's the last thing people want on their website. And then not only is that on the website, but then it pulls someone off of your website for an hour, they're never coming back, you know. So I think that's another like, you know, moat that we have at Golden Hippos. We built these network relationships many years ago, so we still get some leeway running this stuff. I don't know anyone who's tried to do it soon. That said though, I mean, you guys all know the old rule of thumb is that long copy beats short copy as long as it's interesting. So if you're speaking to someone about their dreams, hopes and desires, they want to hear as much as you have to say. So it's a great question. I don't think the question's going away anytime soon. I also don't think long form is going away anytime soon. But I will say we are doing more short form now. And man, seeing some of the traction that these Amazon businesses are getting is really blowing my mind. Yeah, like Smarty pants vitamins just had a big exit to Unilever. I don't remember their. I don't. I actually, I only heard speculation on what their numbers were, but it was, you know, mid eight figures or something like that. On Amazon Kids Vitamins, it's longer copy if you go on their web pages, longer copy than some of the competitors. But you know, it's not a long form vsl. So I think there's a lot of different ways to, you know, skin the cat these days. And I would say that there's no wrong or right. I mean, there's also a completely different way. If you look at vital proteins, I always talk trash on influencer marketing and every time I do a bunch of ad agencies and you know, influencer agencies come after me on Twitter and I still hate influencer marketing. I've just spent a lot of money trying to make it work and not made it work. That said vital proteins, they sponsored all these influencers to hold up the collagen powder and go to Tulum and things like that and had the biggest booths at Expo west. When you go to the conventions, it's like the vital proteins booth is like five times as big as the rest of them. Just blowing investor capital Sells to nestle for 750 million bucks and a pretty solid deal for the founder too. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to play this game. Ritual is another one that is raised a lot of money, doing a lot of revenue. Long form. They'll probably have a big exit. I don't think they're making a lot of money, but they're doing a lot of revenue. And that's what some of these acquirers want to see. And it's got beautiful branding. And that's another thing too is I think people in our space think that they can't learn from these companies. They don't even look at them. But I'm always studying these companies and ordering their products, seeing what they do, you know, and thinking about how can we incorporate some of that stuff, you know, like there's brands in our portfolio that I've considered raising money for and doing some models like that. You know, I don't think you should limit yourself. And I think it's been one of our secrets to success is looking at other worlds, like, you know, the startup worlds, the brand advertising worlds, and taking the best of those and peppering them in to create a unique system.

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I think there's a lot of gold there for people who listen. And I think going back to the person who wants to start their own company, it sounds kind of obvious, but at least I would imagine you'd agree. If you don't feel free to say it, but kind of think about what you're trying to build and being real for yourself. Because there's people who build a cash flow lifestyle business. Great, awesome. And that's what offers generally are. And you could make lots of money doing that and invest in whatever. If you're trying to build something to sell it, then it can be a totally different game. Because if you're getting investment or venture capital or you're raising rounds and then basically you don't care about being profitable. All you care about is growth, growth, growth, growth, and doing it with metrics that your investors are happy with. So you can get to that exit. But that's a very difficult game. Very few. For every company that we hear those crazy exits, there's like the other nine that sort of got here and then.

Fell, or they have the big exit in the media, but the founder didn't actually make make much more than, you know, a million or 2 million bucks or something like that. You know, there's a lot of those too, because they raised too Much money or, you know, had bad things happen everywhere.

So I know a company that sold for like 1.13 or 1.6 billion, but the founder barely got anything. It's a.

Which one?

I can't. I won't say it on this, but.

Oh, friends company. Okay, got it. Yeah, I had a friend tickets company public for $500 million. And you know, he made like 3 million bucks.

Yes.

It was just because he raised too much money. You know, it wasn't in our space at all. So, you know, you gotta. You gotta be careful when you're doing that type of stuff. You know, the great thing about copywriting, Stefan, as you know, is if you get really good, you make a lot of money.

Yeah, oh, absolutely.

Pretty carefree. Especially if you have either an in house position or like one good steady client. Something like that. You know, I would hate to be a freelance game person trying to play that game of, you know, trying to juggle a lot of clients. But like, you know, I think Clayton Makepeace worked with Weiss Investments for many, many years. It was like his only client and he was making a killing, you know. And so I guess it also depends on like how good of a copywriter you are. You know, if you think you got what it takes to be world class and you're willing to put the time in, then you might as well get there because you'll make a lot of money on the way up. You'll make a lot of money at that position. And then you're probably also. Then you're in actually weird position because you can make a lot of money doing exactly what you're doing. But then you also have that unfair advantage if you go start your own company.

Yeah, no, I think that that's great advice. I mean, I think it's really good advice. And I think people, yeah, just think long and hard about what you really want. What do you want to do? Some people, they want to start a company for the feeling of accomplishment and all that. And it's like, great, but if you're miserable because you suddenly have a giant team and you're trying to manage it and you don't know what's going on, and there's good days and bad days, and then you're like, or I could just have gotten really good rank copy and gotten made whatever, half a million dollars a year, even a couple million dollars a year of royalties with the right company. And yeah, I think you have to weigh that out. But so, two things. One, everyone remember, if you go to writersholdenhipo.com if you want to, you know, potentially become a writer for Golden Hippo. If you want to apply, include your resume, a cover letter, samples, I would assume. Right. But that is a special email that Craig set up. Writersoldenhipo.com they're looking for media buyers as well. And you don't necessarily need to move to la. That's open for debate within the Golden Hippo organization. So if in doubt, apply. I mean, it's like applying for one of the greatest companies that we've got and just marketing and direct response and consumer products. Craig is a great copy chief, even having worked with him on that one project, which, as he alluded to, did not work. But from out on my end. But yeah, until that point. It's funny because I literally just had something for another client where I wrote three things for them. One double. There were two controls, one new one, but one beat the control by over 100%. One beat the control by like 30%, but that control was more established. And then one's just totally tanking, right? And I'm trying to figured out, but it's like, you know, and I put a post about too. So like I'm still batting, you know, like basically two out of three. And so yeah, that's great. But like, you know, if you just hire me for the one that takes, right? And no writer's gonna go a hundred percent anytime. Just a good lesson for writers to know as well, including myself.

Another thing is it's, you know, the magic is in the rewrite often.

Yeah.

I remember one of my most frustrating experiences. It was actually with the pre bio Thrive sales letter, which I'm sure some people have seen. First one I put up didn't work. Second one I put up didn't work. And these are deep rewrites, you know, these are like rewriting the whole intro and the body and all that. Everything but the clothes. Third one I put up just as okay, and then I get this new idea and this new idea is like, this is the one, you know, And I spent like another two weeks writing this crazy big idea for this thing and put that up and it loses to the third one. I was so bummed. But fortunately the third one. Because this is another thing too, Stefan, that I think people don't understand is it's not as much about the writer as it was back when the sales letter was the only thing the prospect saw when it came in your mailbox or in the newspaper or something like that. Now the media buyer is a critical Part of the puzzle. So my third draft of this thing. Our amazing media team was tweaking and tuning and doing their thing along with our amazing video editor and split testing different video and different types of buttons on the page and colors and headlines and all this stuff. And they got my third draft working really well. That is the writer's life. You never know what is going to work. And even the things that you are most excited about can totally tank. Oh, man. I wrote a letter for Dr. Gundry Chocolates. I was so excited about this. It was the first supplement chocolate. It was a heart healthy chocolate. I knew how big of a market heart health was and I poured my heart and soul into this letter. And that one just. I mean, I guess the good news is it just like tanked immediately. It was like, no, no, don't even bother rewriting this one. It's like made like two sales or something like that off thousands of dollars.

Yeah, you just like, it's true again. I think it's. But it's good for a writer. I mean, again, because rare is we're fragile.

Right?

Especially if when you're earlier on in your career because I think all good writers and A list writers, you learn that lesson. So then you're like, you want everything to be a home run. I'm still pissed when something doesn't smash it. I'm still bummed about it because there's pride and workmanship and if you're excited about the idea, which you should be for anything you're writing, but you realize that that's part of the game too. And so, yeah, it's just important, I think for younger writers to understand, like, not. It doesn't mean like if you write something that you think is great and it doesn't go well, it doesn't mean that you're like a piece of shit, that you're a bad writer, that you're, you know, any of that stuff, like it, it just means it didn't work. I mean, if you write 30 things that all go live over like three years and none of them do good. And so for a really good client who has really doubted media buying, then maybe you should consider a career change. But like, you know, having the stuff that doesn't, it doesn't work. That's everybody. So, Craig, one last question for me. And I think we just have one question in the Q and A which you guys all fucked up by not asking more questions. You literally had Craig Lemons on the call. But now I don't have time for a Ton of them. But BitCloud, I mean, like, I was like, heard about it. I was just at the 100 million mastermind, and like, you know, Dan Fleischman's talking about it and he's like, I promise you BitCloud's gonna be important. And all these people are writing down bitcloud. And I went through the website. I still haven't set mine up and I need to. I'm probably gonna. It's on my to do list to do. So I don't know if I'll do anything with it or not. I just want to have one. But I know you're on it. You're doing a lot with it. So can you explain to people who are watching, listening, or will watch or listen later on the replays, what is BitCloud, why is it important? And what are you doing on that platform?

Sure. So BitCloud is decentralized Twitter on the blockchain, and everyone has a coin. So when you create a profile, you have your own coin, which is kind of like an NFT for a person. If you know what an NFT is. They're calling this movement Social Tokens. And so unlike Twitter, where you post something out there and you get random people on there and Maybe you got 10,000 followers, but you don't know who any of them are. On BitCloud, you can have people who invest in your coin, and when they invest in your coin, they're supporting you. You get a little piece of that investment into your pocket to go do your craft. So if you think of Patreon, you know, which is a billion dollar plus company that has, you know, artists can go on there and people can give 20 bucks a month to their favorite artists to support their work. So that artist doesn't go up, they go, you know, flip burgers or whatever. BitCloud is a way for creators to monetize. And it's right there on platform, so it's really fascinating. So I jumped on the platform, just testing it out, and I invested in it, not super early, but in the public token sale and started playing around on it. And I was just posting normal stuff. I was posting some copywriting things on there and things like that. And then I was having a good time geeking out with all my friends who were buying other people's coins. What they did, they took the first 15,000 Twitter profiles by following. So like Barack Obama, Katy Perry, Donald Trump, everyone who was on Twitter, they had to pull Donald Trump out of the either since he kicked off of Twitter. But the top 15,000 Twitter followers. And they made them profiles on BitCloud pre reserved. So squatters couldn't go and claim that name. So I couldn't go pretend to be Steve Aoki and have a fake thing and take some of the coin money, right? So they did that with the first 15,000. And you can bet on these people and their thoughts are that you buy this coin of, say, like, Jake Paul. Jake Paul has a coin, then he has his boxing fight. If Jake Paul gets a knockout, in theory, they hope his coin will go up because he'll be a more desirable person. Or if Jake Paul loses or says something racist at the end of the fight, in theory, his coin will go down because people will think he's a scumbag. So there's all types of ways to speculate. For the first time ever, everyone has a token on their head. And you can make money with it. You can bet on your friends, you can even bet on your enemies. If it's just about the money, you know, I see people like buying both Donald Trump and Alexandria Cortez coin. They'll have them both, their portfolio. I don't care. Political beliefs. I think both of these coins are going to appreciate as more people come on the platform. So I think it has something like, you know, I don't know, a few tens of thousands of users, maybe 100,000, 200,000, something like that now. But it's growing really fast. And all Instagram influencers are getting on there. Because if you think about it, if you're an Instagram influencer, you usually got to like sign some brand deal and go hold up a jar of vital proteins or something to get paid. Right? Here, people are just paying you because they like you. It's got that Patreon model. They're buying your token, and when they buy your token, you have something called the founder reward, and that's how much you decide to take yourself. So most people set that to 10%. So let's say Stephan buys 10 grand of my tokens. I get a thousand bucks immediately, and he's got nine grand still riding in my coin. So if my coin price goes up from there, then later he might be able to sell that 9,000 and make a profit. And I actually did the first ever sponsored post on BitCloud. I made an announcement that I was going to do the first sponsored post on my page. I randomly, even though I'm not a big social media guy, I became the biggest account on BitCloud that is active. Elon Musk is still Ahead of me. Naval Ravikant still ahead of me. But of the accounts that are being used, I was the biggest. So I have the highest, almost the highest amount of followers besides the founder and all that. So I announced a sponsored post. But it was super interesting because I said I'm doing this first sponsored post, it's up for auction. The auction ends on this day. But here's the thing. You're not going to just write me a check and I'm going to make the post and it's gone. It's an investment into my coin. So you may roi on this ad twice. You may roi on people buying whatever it is or following whatever page it is you want me to post. You might also roi on holding my coin if you think it's going to go up. So super interesting model and the dynamics here are fascinating. So I've been geeking out on that a lot and yeah, I did. I had a three way tie for the sponsored post, Stephen. I had three people tie at ninety grand each investment and that's something. You're not going to pay 90 grand for me to do a sponsored post. Only have 6,000 followers on there. You know, if it was a pay 90 grand gone, poof, waste of money. But you're also investing in me and it looks like I'm growing, so it might be an investment and my founder rewards at 10%. I decided when I first started that I'm going to donate all that founder reward to charity. So I've raised like a million and a half bucks in a month for charity. Water and ocean conservation just in founder reward. It's insane. So if someone was wanting to use it to make money, that would have been a profit in my pocket of the million and a half. Now here's the crafty thing though. If I cashed out that million and a half, my coin price would tank because I am a big holder of myself, you know, because now, because that foundry order I'm collecting and I bought some of my own coin too, which they say you should do. So you gotta think about this. And people are still figuring out the best practices, you know, so I'm going to be slowly selling off my coin. But I'm going to talk with my investors first, then we're going to decide. I'll probably sell one coin a month. My coin is currently valued at about $32,000. So sell one a month and then I will give them the opportunity to buy the dip. If they don't buy it, I'll probably buy the dip myself. Which is investing myself, which might be a good investment if I believe my coin's going to go up long term. Right. And I'll keep track of what I put in myself and how much I raised for the charity. But that's a plan. I'm going to sell, like one a month or something like that and either buy the dip myself or let my investors buy the dip. I'll put the founder reward to zero. I'll say, hey, investors, if you want to buy the dip to founder reward zero right now, you can buy back in and hold more Credcoin and then I'll sell that. And it's amazing because with those three sponsored posts, 90k each, you can build a well in Africa with charity water that gives a village clean water for like 20 years for 10 grand. And so founder reward, I made nine grand on each of the sponsored posts, so I'm throwing in another three grand on top, so it'll be 30 grand. So we're going to build three wells in Africa. Uganda, actually. We already picked the country and they're already, like, getting going. I think they're going to be drilled in July, all because of BitCloud, this sponsor post thing. So it's a lot of fun because the platform is brand new. So me announcing a sponsored post and there was a big deal because it would never been done in there before. And then it was a big deal because it was like, whoa, is it going to ROI because of the views or is it going to ROI because it's an investment? Maybe both. So there's all kinds of interesting things. I also bid on someone else. They did the first ever physical sponsor post and I won this. This guy is the owner of the Israeli soccer team. I forget the name of the team, but I bid on it. I bid it. It was a $15,000 investment into his coin. And they put up Craig dollar sign, which is the sign for my token in the game, in the football game. It was in the stadium and they showed pictures and things like that. I don't think that ROI'd, but probably maybe ROI on this guy's token because he's using the platform creatively. So I see this guy doing creative things. I think, oh, I put 15,000 in his coin. And he's probably going to keep doing creative things, which are probably get more people to buy his coin later. So that'll probably be a good investment. So fascinating social dynamics. I love the platform. You know, I'm just at Craig on there and, you know, I. I'm also doing A mastermind group on there. I don't host a paid mastermind group right now. It's been a decision for me because, you know, there's a lot of fun that can be had meeting with great people like you guys do in the accelerator. You get to hang out with smart people all the time and, you know, cash flow is positive. The people who put in cash get a big roi. Thought about it for a while, but I never did it because just doing other things. But with this BitCloud thing, I was just jamming out with all my friends and investing on the platform so much in different creator coins. I thought, you know what? Why don't I invite my top 10 coin holders to be on the Zoom with me and my friends? And so I said, okay, you buy some of my coin. If you get my top 10, you can be on this private zoom. And then I reached out to Jake Paul and got him to come on the Zoom. And so pretty soon it was a private zoom with me, the top investors inside, and Jake Paul. So people started buying my coin like crazy. And that made my coin price go up. It was just like a basic mastermind group idea. So there's all kinds of things you can do on the platform. People are still figuring it out. Pamela Anderson is on there. If you're to her top holders, you get a signed photo of her. Neil Strauss is on there. If you're in his top 10 holders, you get a signed book. There's all kinds of interesting things you can do on there. And it's been a lot of fun too. So check it out. You need some bitcoin to play around on it. You can't put US Dollars in it, but it's a lot of fun and definitely a sign of weird things to come when everyone has a price in their head.

Yeah, that's crazy, man. I'm definitely going to setting mine up after, just. But that's cool, man. That's cool. You're playing. Yeah, I just went to bitcoin too. I saw it was literally Elon Musk and two other people. And then just like, Craig, here's something.

Else that's happening now, too. This is funny. So I've been up in that spot for like a week, and it was a big deal when I got up there just yesterday. One day, some guy rises up above me and he's like, what's going on? What is this guy doing? He's not doing any sort of mastermind group. People are like, I didn't invest this guy's coin. Well, you can track everything on the blockchain. Right. So he put a million dollars into his own coin.

Oh, wow.

And then some other account that hasn't had been active at all on the platform put in another million dollars into his account like. Like today. And you know, that's a lot of money to inflate the coin price. So it's like, what's going on? You know? And then you think about the future where Nike's going to come in and just pop 10 million bucks into their coin to be number one. Because why not? That's not a lot of money to them.

Wild. That's so interesting. Damn, man. Yeah, we are in a crazy time for sure.

Cool. Okay.

I want to be respectful of your time. Speaking of time, we did have some questions. Come. Do you have five minutes if I rapid fire you? Let's go.

Rapid fire.

Okay, cool. So for everyone who put a question in, I'm gonna. You wanna read them off to Craig? I know, Brad, you've been silent. I appreciate you being here and hopefully you're just enjoying and I'm here listening, appreciating.

Craig's genius, man.

That's all. Cool. Yeah. I'm gonna read them off and we'll let Craig just sort of tackle them for sure. All right, Craig, what advice from Kieran?

Craig, what advice do you have for.

New copywriters to help them get good? You mentioned studying bullets, but what else? I currently have one client I'm writing emails for and I'm using the RNBC.

Method to help write the emails, which Stephan's method.

Method. I want to deliver the best email copy she's ever seen. So any advice you can give me to improve my copy helps.

So email copy is a continual conversation and I think the best thing to do is. I mean, you know, this is not rock science or anything like that, but study. The guys are the best at that study. Who I would say are like Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Stefan and Justin for sure. I remember I was getting so mad and forget which. Which one you guys launched the newsletter. Second. I think it was you, Stefan. I was like, now, you bastard. Now I gotta. I got two compelling emails in my inbox every day. I gotta read both of them. I actually had to. I actually, you know, no offense to you or Justin, but I actually had to filter those into my Internet marketing newsletters file. Cause I was just reading them too much. Like every single day I was reading yours and Justin's above everyone else. So that's why you haven't gotten a response from me. In a while because I was also responding like at least once a week because it would just be so compelling, you know, so I would just. Yes, they study Staphon, Jeff Walker, Frank Kern, they're all great at that. That's awesome.

By the way, Frank Kern also reads my emails and responds to me like all the time. Which is funny because all the best marketers out there love to read the other marketers and see what they not like. You're like, become too cool for shit. You're like, you want to know what's going on. So flattered though, that you cool Ed. Let's keep, let's keep rapid firing. Beautiful. From Michael McGovern. Hey, Craig, what should a direct response company look for in a partnership with a doctor?

You know, I think having someone who's easy to work with is very, very important and not something you would think about in the beginning. I was looking for doctors with the best credentials and, you know, the most well spoken and you know, if they had celebrity patients or whatever, that was good. But some doctors are really tough to work with. Some doctors will not approve any sort of copy. You know, they'll, or they'll take your copy and they'll rewrite it if it sounds like a textbook and then it doesn't convert and they won't let you change it back. And so, you know, I would just say someone that's, that's, that's friendly, easy to work with, that you want to hang out with. Like Dr. Gundry and I, we're, we're, we're boys. Like he calls me his, his son. He never had. You know, we go out to dinner with his wife and my wife and you know, we just have a great working relationship. Same with Beverly Hills MD Doctors. I used to hang out with them in nightclubs back, you know, 15 years ago. That's how I met those guys, you know. So I would say that that'd be, yeah, the thing to look for number one. Yeah, like I've ended. I'll get on a zoom and I'll wrap within 15 minutes. I can just tell. If I can just tell, someone's gonna be a pain in the butt. Let's be like, hey, listen, I'm glad we got connected, you know, I wanna, anything I can do to help you grow your supplement business, let me know. We're actually full right now, so I guess you could just tell, you know, so. Which, I mean, you know, there has been a couple though that I've really wanted to work with that we've been more Accommodating for. But usually it's. It's a mistake, I think.

Yeah. I was gonna ask, because usually whenever I do that, you're not just in general, when you talk yourself into doing something, like, about a person, a judgment about a person, and you go against it, I generally end up regretting that. Right. I'm like, I should have followed my gut or my instinct, because all this stuff you tried to rationalize when you were in, like, the possibilities phase and, like, the actuality space of working with that person regularly, you're like, man, this person just kind of sucks.

Right?

Like. But has there been a case where that has been the case, though, where, you know, you. Somebody seemed really, like, I don't know, like, like off putting, gruff, like, maybe difficult. But you've worked with. You obviously don't need to name the name, but. But then you ended up working with the person, and we're like, oh, I'm so glad I worked with them. Have you. Have you had that?

Yeah, that's good. There is one. But this person, the first sales letter that they saw, they sent back with so much red on the page, it was like, we might have to end this relationship before it starts. But the person who introduced us was in the marketing world. And so I talked to that person and said, hey, can you have a chat with so and so first and let them know that this is. It's. It's, you know, you got to communicate with someone in Nebraska who's never heard of these supplements before. This is how it has to be, you know?

Right.

And so I had an intermediary, so.

Yeah, got you. Cool. And I was gonna say, I think Eli's question is pretty similar to Michael's. We could skip that. And then other people are trying to sneak in their questions now, but let's just do Santiago's and then we'll. Yeah, I think that too. Cool. Cool. Santiago asks, any particular advice that you usually give to your in house writers? Well, actually, I was. I had a different one. I had the. One of, you know, that one's good. But I had. Had. Sorry. Dan's about looking back at his old self.

Sorry. 2.

Craig, we'll go fast with two last.

So in house writers, you know, it's different every time. I think when you end up editing a lot of other people's copy for a long time, you get a sixth sense of what they need to do differently. And so it is unique. So I don't know if this is a good answer, but I looked at someone's copy last week. And I said, look, your copy is strong and outlining points, but you're just not entertaining. You're not exciting. So for the next week, you're into sports, right? You're going to write a thing about the daily sporting events every day that you're really excited about, and that's what you're going to write. You're not going to think about selling people or anything like that. You're going to write about the daily sporting events. It's going to be like, consider, like a newsletter about sports, about sports that you're really pumped about, about the MMA fight, something like that, you know, And I gave him that assignment for a week not to write anything else, you know, So I know that probably helps.0 but it's different for every person. You know, some people are too exciting and making too many jokes just aren't serious enough and don't sound like a serious doctor talking to someone about a serious problem.

That's great. And I. Yeah, I don't know. I generally see it on the side of too dull, not excited enough. Like, people get into educator mode, which is, we want to educate, but you want to educate while also entertaining. Right. And. But you're right, you've seen sometimes where it's just so like. It's like if you have a job interview with somebody and they're just cracking jokes and almost like saying personal things about you and trying to laugh about it and you're like, this is like a little too much. Just a little overboard.

Yeah. Another exercise if you're too dull is think about your favorite movie. Come with your favorite movie, and then write a sales letter on why it's the best movie ever made.

That's great.

Cool.

Ed, do you want to do. Yeah, that's awesome.

Last one here from Dan. If you were looking back at your old self, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself when you started your copywriting journey? That's a great question. I feel like I should have an answer to this question. I would say start writing copies sooner. Don't wait the two years. I mean, that was. That was a good experience. But yes, go sooner. You know, I've talked about this on other shows, but there's this pinnacle moment where, uh. So I used to be a fuck off. Like, I used to be a very bad procrastinator. There was multiple times when Eben would pull me aside and be like, look, you're gonna. I'm gonna fire you if you don't start putting out work like everyone else. And Then he figured out how to actually bait me. And he said, look, if you write 10 pages of copy every day and you can do it for six months in a row, I'll make sure you're making a hundred grand a year. And this is, you know, back in 2005, where that was a ton of money to me and, you know, smoothies weren't $22. So 100 grand bought a lot more back then. And I did. And, you know, had I done that sooner, I would have gotten better a lot faster. So there's a great book called Turning Pro. It's written by Steven Pressfield, and it talks about this transition that you make from amateur to professional. It's a quick read. You could probably read it in a day or two. So I would say read that book and turn pro sooner, because if you're going to do something, why half ass it? I still could have been just as big of a party animal as I was back then. The waste of time wasn't not having a social life. It was just procrastinating and refreshing. MySpace, which was the social network at the time, and just delaying work. But Turning Pro is a great book and Andy has another one called the War of Art on Beating Procrastination. Both of those are, I think, must reads and will help you get serious with your craft. And yes, I did get to hang out with Tom from MySpace and that was a pinnacle moment for me.

Damn, that's going to be an open loop for if we ever have a part.

Yeah, someone mentioned that in the chat.

I know. That's good. I think he added me on Facebook a long time ago because I. You were Facebook friends with him and you and I became friends and then he, like, added me, and then I'm like, wait, is this actually Tom from my. And it was showing all his travel photography. I don't know if he's still on Facebook. This was a year, you know, a couple years back, But I remember being, like, so starstruck. My Tom from MySpace. So the fact that you got to.

Hang out with him, well, he's the nicest guy. And this was in the heyday of MySpace too, so it was actually really cool.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Dude, that's awesome. Craig, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, being so giving, sharing so much incredible information, insights about your story. Again, for everyone who is watching, listening, or who will watch or listen on the replays on YouTube and on iTunes, go on Hippo. If you're a copywriter, writersoanhippo.com to apply to write with Gohan Hippo.

Oh, and for media buyers, just on our website there's a careers section and it's just, you just go to golden hippo.com and there's a careers page and that talks more about the copywriter positions as well. But I'd love to work with, you know, some of the folks from your group one on one, Stephan, because the people who've been paying attention to your stuff, they're going to be light years ahead of everyone else that comes in. So it's really fun to work with those type of folks that have been studying the craft, that are serious about becoming the best in the world, you know, and your, your content is top notch and getting people, you know, to really step their game up. So it's, it's always fun to jam out with you, be a part of it.

Cool. Well, yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. And yeah, Craig, any, any last, any final words of advice, wisdom, like, you know, asks, anything like that, Beyond.

Yeah. Craig Coyne.

Craig Coyne.

I'm just kidding. You know what's funny though is Jake Paul, I heard him say in a video, he said they sell a lot of merch, right? Like sweaters and stuff. I heard they do like 10 million a year in merch. And one of his things that he says is always plug. And he's made it into a thing so he doesn't look like a salesperson. He says always plug, always plug. Okay, it's time to plug. Merch, Merch, merch. Go buy my merch. But he makes it cool to be always pitching. I thought that was a funny meta marketing move. But, but yeah, last words, I'll just say is that copywriting is the most powerful force on earth. It is words and messages that have created world wars and created world peace. You as a copywriter are a part of potential world change. You just got to decide how you're going to use it. Are you going to use it for good? Are you going to use it for evil? I think if you use it for good and you're helping people and giving value, then the value comes back to you very much so in return. And if you take the time and to become the best in the world, you continue to use it to add value, you're going to become very valuable yourself, both in your bank account and on a status level. You know, getting to meet people from projects that you're passionate about, whether it's, you know, other businesses. I mean, like, you know, the, the, the inbound. I get these days is crazy. Man from There was a guy I was helping run for mayor in New York. You know, there's like, you know, big businesses will call me up and be like, hey, we're launching a direct to consumer funnel for the first time ever. You know, it's. It's just. It's really interesting because we feel like there's a lot of us here, but it's not. It's a really tight circle. And if you can get to the top of this game, the whole world is your playground. So you're in the right place with Stefan and Justin.

Awesome. Thank you so much. So, everyone, Craig Clements again. Craig, thank you. Really appreciate it. And Ed Ray, thank you to you as well for co hosting and hanging out with us today.

You got it. Thanks, guys. All right, great to chat. All right, talk soon. Bye. Bye.

Cool. So that wraps up there, everyone. Just last notes, please. Make sure that if you watch on YouTube that you smash the like button, leave a comment, let Craig and I know that you enjoyed everything. And if you listen on itunes, make sure you leave a review. Subscribe all that good stuff, and we'll see everybody next time. Thank you all so much.