On Copywriting

A Christmas Gift

Yesterday, I picked up James Brausch's Christmas gift. It was late. Almost 10 o'clock. Why so late?

Well, my morning started early. It was snowing... hard. I had to shovel the driveway, load up my three kids (with my wife's help), and go to my in-laws' house for breakfast and gift-opening.

Because of the heavy snow, we were late from the start. But it was a good day. We had a great time with family. About 1:30, I went out and shoveled my father-in-law's driveway, then loaded up the kids again. It was still snowing.

We drove on icy roads down to my parents' house. The snow was getting deeper. But we arrived safely. We ate a nice turkey dinner and played games. I opted for Trivial Pursuit, while some others played cards.

About 8:20, I went out and shoveled my dad's driveway. The snow was piling up again. After scraping the van and letting it warm up, I carried the kids out and loaded everything up. As we left, my brother got stuck in a snow drift. So I helped push him out. Then we drove home.

Finally, we arrived home and got the kids into bed. It was just shy of 10 p.m. I remembered I needed to log-in to my email to get James Brausch's gift that he had promised. I told my wife I needed 10 minutes on the computer because this gift wouldn't be available the next day. I'm very glad I took the effort to get the gift, even though I was exhausted from such a long day.

If you missed the gift, I expect there will be one next year. But in the mean time, here is an article I think is worth reading. It's written by Harry Browne. As he says at the beginning of the article, he wants to give his 9-year-old daughter a gift that will be a blessing to her all her life.

==> This is the gift he gave her.

Unmerited Confidence

Confidence is a funny thing. Too little of it and you can't get anywhere in life. Too much of it and you become a prideful jerk with little basis for the confidence you have.

Unfortunately, the world responds to the overconfident man or woman. The world looks up to these paragons of pride as if they actually knew something.

William Bonner and Lila Rajiva say this in Mobs, Messiahs & Markets...

Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt. (p. 45)

This is a shame, but it's true.

Just yesterday I was on the phone with a prospect. He wanted to know if I could help him. I told him I suspected I could, but I made no promises. His response: "Well, I want someone who's confident they can get better results."

I didn't address the statement directly. I've forgotten what I said. Regardless, I cannot promise any prospect I can get better results. There are too many variables in play to accurately predict the outcome. That's a fact, no matter what con men may tell you.

When I got started as a freelance copywriter, I had less experience, but was far more confident than I am today. Why? Because two years of writing sales letters and one year of conducting split-tests has taught me that I don't know everything.

After all, is not "beginner's luck" simply blind confidence? At first, you think you know what you are doing and experience some success. Then you discover your success had little bearing on what you did... and that your first efforts were based largely on false notions.

Aha! That is beginner's luck. Too bad it doesn't last.

Over this last year, I've done a lot of split-testing. The results from these split-tests have often been shocking; the winning copy was not always what I expected. So I no longer have as much confidence in my intuition as I used to, although the results of each new split-test informs future copy and tests.

Still, I can never return to that state of blind, unmerited confidence. As they say in the movies, I've "seen too much."

Does this mean I'll lose out on some clients? Probably. But it doesn't matter. They can have their pick of the overconfident fools. Personally, I'd rather be cautious with the expectations I set and be able to deliver the goods. If that means landing fewer clients, so be it.

How about you? What role do you think confidence plays in success? Can you have too much of it? Too little? Leave a comment with your thoughts.

What Changed David Ogilvy's Life

David Ogilvy had some excellent advice for copywriters.

Unfortunately, most people overlook it... or outright ignore it... even though Ogilvy said it was responsible for changing his life!

Ogilvy's advice is printed on the font cover of My Life in Advertising & Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Here it is...

Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book (Scientific Advertising) seven times. It changed the course of my life.

It is interesting how Ogilvy suggests this as a prerequisite to entry in the advertising field. I bet less then one-tenth of one percent has actually followed his advice.

I have personally read Scientific Advertising twice. I am amazed by how much wisdom is packed into this slim volume.

It is rumored that Jay Abraham has read it more than 50 times.

With that in mind, let me share another bit of advice from Ben Settle, one of my mastermind partners and a copywriter I have a great deal of respect for. He writes...

It always amazes me how someone can buy an expensive book or info product and only read it one or two times.

It doesn't make any sense.

Since you're paying $200, $500, $1,000 (or more) for a course on copywriting or marketing or whatever it is you do, doesn't it make sense to read it over and over and over again—milking out every single secret you can?

I like to cover the stuff I buy at least ten times in a row—minimum.

I just pick it up and work through it—highlighting and underlining and making notes along the way—until I've read it ten times.

After that, I try to read it at least once a year.

This is one of the best ways of mastering a subject you will ever see.

This piece of advice is in Part 3 of "Private Details About Ben Settle." You can read the whole thing here.

Here's the takeaway. You don't constantly need new information to succeed. You need only to fully absorb and apply information that has been tested and proven to work.

Instead of getting sucked into yet another irresistible offer, why not do this instead: Look through your personal library of training materials, pick one book or course, and read it a second time.

After you're done, read it again.

Yeah, it's work. But it's where the real breakthroughs happen...

Give Me a Chisel...

A lot of folks want success overnight. They want it fast and easy. Almost like snapping their fingers.

I don't want that. At least, not anymore.

At one point I did. But I discovered that the faster I wanted things to happen, the less anything happened at all.

So I adopted a different mindset. Just do a little bit everyday. You see, I'd rather have a chisel and a hammer to chip away at success. Over time, it's surprisingly effective.

Some day, I imagine somebody will say, "Ryan was lucky. He's an overnight success."

But they won't know all the struggles and failures I've faced. They won't know that I woke up every single day at 5 a.m. for three years straight to work on entrepreneurial ideas before I drove to work. They won't know that I sacrificed some weekends to pursue my dreams.

Here's the bottom line:

You can't scale Everest in a day. Going for the "big break" is a sure way to fail. Choose the slower path of daily action instead. Putting one foot in front of the other, you'll actually get somewhere.

Don't Go to College to Make Money

You go to college to get educated. Unfortunately, most people go to college so they can make more money. This is a seriously flawed belief, yet the majority of Americans still cling to it.

Yes, people with degrees are often paid more than people who don't have degrees, especially in technical fields like engineering and medicine where you can't even get a job without a degree.

But if your goal is to make money, there are many better ways to go about doing it than going to college. Start a business in your spare time. Or teach yourself a skill that pays better than what you're currently doing. Both will give you substantially better ROI than college.

Here's a funny statistic. Did you know Stanford, California is ranked #1 by City Data for being the highest educated, lowest income city in the U.S.? Despite Stanford's reputation, the median household income is only $41,106.

Boulder, Colorado is just north of where I live. It is home to Colorado University, a mammoth-sized college campus. But did you know Boulder is ranked 25th on City Data's list? The median household income in Boulder is only $44,748.

As you can see, there's not a real great correlation between being highly educated and earning a lot of money. So why does this belief persist? I can only speculate. Perhaps it's because colleges and universities want us to go on believing the myth. After all, it is easier to sell earning power than it is to sell education.

But perhaps it's because of our natural aversion to risk. We are more comfortable with doing what everybody says to do (go to college) than doing what is actually more likely to pay off (start a business).

My own life experiences and my observations tell me that kids would be better off going to work after high school than going to college. What is college but a big party funded by parents who wish to live vicariously through their children? These "students" leave college worse off than when they enrolled.

As I was reading Walden a few months ago, I came across a passage that was particularly interesting. Even Thoreau was railing against colleges in the middle 1800s. Here is a passage worth considering...

[Students] should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? [...] As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. (Walden, pp. 41-42)

It was this same observation that helped to make Robert Kiyosaki famous. He published his best-selling story as Rich Dad Poor Dad. He told how one father was greatly educated but poor; the other "father" was uneducated but wealthy.

Ultimately, if it is wealth you want, skip college. Do as Thoreau suggests and get on with the experiment of living.

The Secret to Happiness

Here's my "secret" recipe for happiness in life... Find something to do and someone to share it with.

Said another way, happiness in life hinges on productivity and relationship.

Productivity is meaningless without somebody to share your achievements with. Likewise, relationships can become trite and boring if you never do anything worth talking about.

I include all productive human activity under productivity. This is where you practice whatever you enjoy doing. Special emphasis on the word enjoy. Painting, writing, cycling, marketing, whatever.

I include humans, animals, and God under relationships. I believe you ought to have relationships with people you care about (of course!), as well as a strong relationship with God. Pets can be a source of additional relationship, although they cannot replace human interaction.

If you're looking for happiness and are stuck on complex theories about the so-called "meaning of life," stop it. When you boil it all down to the essentials, it's quite simple: something to do and somebody to share it with. That's it.

Ladders to Climb

"A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder." -Thomas Carlyle

You know everything is meaningless, right?

Bigger home, nicer cars, Caribbean cruises, etc. All meaningless.

Still, you've got to have goals, even if you realize they're meaningless. Because without them, you'll lose your motivation... the raw fuel that keeps you going. That's why I've concluded you must have...

Ladders to Climb!

Which is to say, you need something to work toward and a way to measure your progress. What you measure could be dollars earned or gross profit or how few hours you worked.

Whatever metric you choose is a bit arbitrary, just so long as you have something to track.

As I told my brother this weekend, I feel a bit lost without any ladders to climb. I like to climb for climbing's sake.

Still, it's important to ask:

Are You Climbing the Right Ladder?

Stephen Covey says, "If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster."

I understand what Covey is saying, but let me ask another question: Can we really know for sure we're climbing the right ladder?

If you've set out to climb a ladder, of course you believe it's the right ladder to climb! Why else would you bother climbing it?

In terms of motivation, it does not matter which ladder you climb. If you've decided to climb a ladder, and you're tracking your progress, you'll naturally be...

Motivated to Climb Higher!

Example: Think about a role-playing game (RPG) like Final Fantasy. If you've ever played a game like this, you've probably experienced the motivation to help your characters reach higher "experience levels" and accumulate more "hit points." These levels and points don't have any meaning in the real world, yet you're motivated to "get to the next level" anyway.

In terms of happiness, which ladder you climb absolutely matters.

Let's say you decide to measure success by the quantity and quality of your material possessions... or how many women (or men) you sleep with. Chances are, you'll end up feeling lonely, worthless, and depressed.

But let's say you decide to measure success by how many underprivileged children you support... or how many people you help to become self-employed. Chances are, your happiness will be far greater than someone with purely self-centered goals.

So... all ladders provide a certain amount of motivation, but not all ladders lead to happiness. Keep this in mind when you set your goals and begin tracking your progress.

If you'd like to read more about how to set goals, read Terry Dean's "Design an Inspiring Vision." For another helpful exercise (inspired by Alfred Nobel), see what Marcus wrote here.

P.S. People climb ladders all the time "just because." Want proof? Read Who Are You People? by Shari Caudron. It recounts Shari's journey into "the heart of fanatical passion in America." While not directly about copywriting, it's helpful for understanding why people do what they do. First person to send a Trackback to this post gets my copy for free.

Are 2-Percenters Better?

There's a lot of buzz among Internet marketers about being a "2-percenter."

The phrase is used to reference somebody who goes above and beyond what most other people are willing to do. It also refers to somebody who earns far more than the average person.

For instance, doing a little research, I discovered that to be a "5-percenter," you must individually earn $100,000 or more.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Census Bureau stops tracking personal income at this level, although they track household income to higher levels.

So if your household income is more than $200,000 annually, you are in the top 2% of all households.

If your individual income were to exceed $200,000, we can then safely assume you're a 2-percenter... and probably more like a 1-percenter.

But please allow me a question: Should we boast or gloat that we are 2-percenters?

I think not, and it really bugs me when I perceive this attitude among my fellow marketers.

If you are a 2-percenter, you did not get there by yourself. In fact, God is the one who put you there. So praise God and bless others. But don't boast.

After all, "it is [God] who is giving you power to make wealth." (Deuteronomy 8:18)

I would say then, God is also giving you the power to take the right actions that produce wealth. For it is not we who move, but God who moves us.

P.S. The verse above is not the only passage in the Bible that gives God credit for human wealth. I've listed two more verses below:

"For the blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and He adds no trouble to it." Proverbs 10:22

"Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God." Ecclesiastes 5:19

Success Is Messy

I first heard Dan Kennedy say "Success is messy" a little over a year ago.

It stuck with me.

After being a freelance copywriter for nearly two years now, I can confidently testify to this truth.

I've missed filing deadlines with the state unemployment office. I've written some "duds." I've even been fired.

Of course, I've also written some "home runs" and cultivated a reputation for writing honest, hard-hitting copy.

Which is to say, success is messy. Or at least it has been in my case.

Success is not a smooth six-lane highway. It's a twisty two-lane road, filled with unexpected potholes... kind of like the mountain roads here in Colorado.

To encourage you a bit, I thought I'd tell you a little story.

For over a year, I didn't clean my study. The stacks of paper grew. The floor was covered. It got so bad, that I could hardly get around without stepping on the piles.

I resisted organizing. I was too busy trying to bring in new clients and writing copy to worry about it.

Finally, after a whole year, I had to do something. It became hard to focus with messes all around me.

So I undertook the project. And for the next month I cleaned. Sometimes a few hours a day; sometimes for a few minutes. But I got the job done.

I've posted some pictures for you to see. One "before" picture and two "after" pictures. (Follow the links in the captions to go from one picture to the next.)

This is visual proof that success is indeed messy!

P.S. One of the things that has helped me stay organized and saved me many hours of time is what I call the "Three File System." Click here to read about it.