Founders - #170 Claude Hopkins (A Life in Advertising)

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

What I learned from reading My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do. [0:19]There are few pages in “My Life in Advertising” which do not repay careful study—and which do not merit rereading. Before your eyes, a successful advertising life is lived—with all that went to make it successful. The lessons taught are taught exactly as they were learned. They are dished up dripping with life. It is not a book, it is an experience—and experience has always been the great teacher. [2:49] The man who does two or three times the work of another learns two or three times as much. He makes more mistakes and more successes, and he learns from both. If I have gone higher than others in advertising, or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability, but to exceptional hours. [11:00]To poverty I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience. [15:16] If a thing is useful they call it work, if useless they call it play. One is as hard as the other. One can be just as much a game as the other. [20:27] A young man can come to regard his life work as the most fascinating game that he knows. And it should be. The applause of athletics dies in a moment. The applause of success gives one cheer to the grave. [23:16] A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods, in print or in person, without samples. [27:02] I consider business as a game and I play it as a game. That is why I have been, and still am, so devoted to it. [33:44] I sold more carpet sweepers by my one-cent letters than fourteen salesmen on the road combined. [45:31]No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. [50:10]We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person. Center on their desires. [53:46] Again and again I have told simple facts, common to all makers in the line—too common to be told. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary. He does not realize that the world at large might marvel at those methods, and that facts which seem commonplace to him might give him vast distinction. [56:57] Serve better than others, offer more than others, and you are pretty sure to win. [57:45] There are other ways, I know, to win in selling and in advertising. But they are slow and uncertain. Ask a person to take a chance on you, and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him, and the way is easy. [57:52] So far as I know, no ordinary human being has ever resisted Albert Lasker. He has commanded what he would in this world. Nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him. So I yielded, as all do, to his persuasiveness. [1:00:07] The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. [1:01:01] It is curious how we all desire to excel in something outside of our province. That leads many men astray. Men make money in one business and lose it in many others. They seem to feel that one success makes them superbusiness men. [1:04:04] I earned in commissions as high as $185,000 in a year. ($4,000,000 in today's dollars) All earned at a typewriter which I operated myself, without a clerk or secretary. [1:06:33] Most success comes through efficiency. Most failures are due to waste. [1:10:22] Human nature does not change. The principles set down in this book are as enduring as the Alps. [1:17:01] ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

This book is not written as a personal history, but as a business story. I have tried to confine myself to matters of instructive interest. The chief object behind every episode is to offer helpful suggestions to those who will follow me, and to save them some of the midnight groping which I did. Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I've tried to do. My only claim for credit is that I have probably worked twice as

long as anybody else in this field. I have lived for many years in a vortex of advertising. Naturally, I learn more from experience than those who've had a lesser chance. Now I want that experience, so far as possible, to help others avoid the same difficult climb. I set down these findings solely for the purpose of aiding others to start far up the heights I scaled. There is nothing to be gained for myself save the satisfaction. Had someone set down a record like this when I began, I would have blessed him for it. Then, with the efforts I here describe, I might have attained some peaks in advertising beyond any of us now. May I live to see others do that. That is Claude Hopkins describing the why behind writing his autobiography. And that's an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today,

which is My Life in Advertising written by Claude Hopkins. Okay, so before I jump back into the book, let me quickly tie this into everything else that we've been learning. Last week, I did another biography on David Ogilvie. David talks about all the people that influenced his career, all the ideas that he picked up from people that came before him that he applied to his to his work and founding his company. And one of those is Claude Hopkins. And he says in in his own books, the ones he wrote as well, that you should read the autobiography of Claude Hopkins and you should read Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. He says, in fact, on Scientific Advert advertising, he says you should read it seven times. They are both very old books. Scientific advertising was first published in 1923, but it was held secret for 20 years because they thought the person that owned the firm that Claude worked for thought the information was too valuable. So it's over 100, almost 120 years old. And then this autobiography was published in 1927. I read both books to prepare

for this podcast. I'm going to work solely from his autobiography. If you want to read both books, I would recommend reading Scientific Advertising first, use it as a reference, and then read the autobiography to see how those lessons are applied. I think that's a smart move. So let me go ahead and jump into the introduction. These books have been republished many, many times. Scientific advertising alone has sold over 8 million copies. So I want to talk about praise for his autobiography that comes all the way back from 1946. Let me read this quote to you. He says, There are few pages in my life in advertising which do not repay careful study and which do not merit rereading. Before your eyes, a successful advertising life is lived with all that went to making it successful. The lessons taught are taught exactly as they were

learned. They are dished up, dripping with life. It is not a book. It's an experience. And experience has always been the great teacher. Okay, so that's a good overview of why reading this book is beneficial. Before I get into some of the lessons from his career, I want to start with his early life. Oh, and let me stop for a second. In case you've never come across Claude Hopkins ever, he's widely known as probably the greatest copywriter of all time. He was so good at his profession, he had such an obsession and dedication to his craft, that he winds up being recruited by Albert Lasker, who's one of the greatest advertising founders of all time. And he was paid around what would be equivalent about $4 million a year on the basis of how good he was at writing ads that sold products. So that's why he's worthy of study. He was arguably the best of his kind, excuse me, the best of his time rather. Okay, so let me go ahead and jump into his early life. He says, boys, they say, gain most of their qualities from their mothers. Certainly, I inherited from mine conspicuous conservatism. The lack of that quality has

wrecked more advertising men, more businessmen than anything else I know. That fact will be emphasized again and again in this book. I stress it here in tribute to the source of my prudence. Safety first has always been my guiding star. A Scottish mother is the greatest asset a boy can have who desires a career in advertising. Then economy and caution are instinctive with him. They are fundamentals. Success, saved by accident, is impossible without them. So what he's referencing there is in advertising, some people will spend large amounts of money without actually knowing if they're effective or not. Claude's modus operandi is he does a lot of small tests.

He wants to prove that it's effectiveness before doing it on a large scale. And then once you prove its effectiveness, you bet heavy. So he says, let's go back to the influence of his mother. His mother plays a large role. He wants to becoming alienated from her later on because she's a religious fundamentalist. And when he admits that he doesn't share her view, she says stuff like, oh, you're no longer my son. And he was largely raised by his mother. His father dies, I think, when he's nine years old.

But even though at the time he's writing this book, his mother's long dead, he was alienated from her. He talks about learning most of the values of his career that he uses to apply in his career in advertising came from her. And this is about his mother teaching him industry. And he specifically references that she did the work of three or four women. So it says, because of my mother, because of my mother, a dime to me has always looked as big as a dollar, not my dimes only, but the other fellows dimes as well. So he's referencing, obviously, when your businesses are hiring him to do their advertising spend.

So just as he's going to be frugal and make sure he's getting value for his own money, he does the same thing for his clients. I have spent them carefully, both as an owner and a trustee. I have never gambled in a large way, whether acting for myself or for others. So the failures I've made, and there are many, have never counted strongly against me. I have escaped the distrust engendered by conspicuous disaster. When I lost, I lost little in money and nothing in confidence. When I won, I often gained millions for my client and a wealth of prestige for myself. That I largely owe to my mother. I owe her vastly more. She taught me industry. I can scarcely remember an hour, a night, or a day when mother was not at work. She was a college graduate with great intellectual powers.

There came a time when, as a widow, she had to support her children by teaching school. Before and after school, she did the housework. In the evenings, she wrote kindergarten books for schools. When vacation came, she tramped from school to school to sell them. She did the work of three or four women she developed three or four careers from my earliest years under her direction and incentive i did likewise i have supported myself since the age of nine and he's using that age that line of demarcation as a as a time when he had to support himself because of his father passing away says other boys so he talks about i went to, but I didn't use that as,

that was just my day. That was just one thing that I had to do, but I had to work as well. He says, and then he's going to compare and contrast his approach at a young age to, to other boys that were his same age. Other boys, when they went to school, as I did, counted their school work as a day. It was an incident to me. Before school, I opened two schoolhouses, opened the doors for two schoolhouses, built the fires and dusted the seats. After school, I swept those schoolhouses. Then I distributed the newspaper to 65 homes before supper. On Saturdays, I scrubbed the two schoolhouses and distributed bills. He uses the word bills a lot in the book. He means like flyers, like ads. On Sundays,

I was a church janitor, which kept me occupied from early morning until 10 o'clock at night. In vacations, I went to the farm where the working time was 16 hours a day. So he's doing this out of necessity. He talks about a lot in the book, the benefits of growing up poor. And there's two benefits that he references over and over again about growing up poor is one, it taught him how to work really hard, which he applies even when he didn't have to. And two, it taught him how normal average people thought. And he says that was the fact that he grew up poor, the fact that he grew up around the masses, he calls them like the 95% is why he understood how they thought. And so if you understand how somebody thinks, you can sell to them as well.

And that is also how he thinks about advertising. He's credited with what many people consider the best description of advertising, which is salesmanship in print. It's not, he does not look at advertising as a way to entertain you. I'm trying to sell a product to you and I need to know if my efforts are effective or not.

Okay, so I guess I ran over my own point here because he's going to talk about this work ethic that he inherited from his mother, stays with him for the rest of his life. And after years, I did the same in business. I had no working hours. When I ceased before midnight, that was a holiday for me. I often left my office at two o'clock in the morning.

Sundays were my best working days because there were no interruptions. For 16 years after entering business, I rarely had an evening or a Sunday not occupied by work. So let me pause right here in the middle of this. One thing to one, I think, beneficial thing that I learned from reading this book, I'll tell you up front, he didn't really have any other interests besides advertising. He was obsessed by it. And so that's why it's beneficial reading his autobiography because very few people are going to put as much time and effort as he did. Not saying that we want to replicate this. In fact, he talks about in this book openly, and I'll share with you later, you know, doubting, did I make the right decision?

You know, I look around, I see other people that had lived a more balanced life. And towards the end, he dies about five years after he writes this book. You know, he does arrive at the fact that he was content with the way he lived his life because he thought it was true to himself. But he does see the value in other, you know, the choice of other lifestyles, which I found really interesting. So he says, oh, I guess I'm going to run over this point, too. I am not advising others to follow my example. I would not advise a boy of mine to do so. Life holds so many other things more important than success that work in moderation probably brings more joy. So how would I summarize that section?

I worked all the time. I would not advise my son to do the same. There is some difference in brains, of course, but it is not so important as the difference in industry. Now, this is a very interesting takeaway. I'm going to write, this is my note. I'll read my note to you first before I read the section, because that might help understand at least my interpretation of what's happening at this point in the book. Maybe you pity the successful, not envy. There is some

difference in brains, of course, but it is not so important as the difference in industry. The man who does two or three times the work of another learns two or three times as much. He makes more mistakes and more successes, and he learns from both. If I had gone higher than others in advertising or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability, but to exceptional hours. Now, that makes sense, okay? If you want to learn faster, we saw this with Larry Miller. He takes this job working at the counter at an auto parts store, and he did that because, and he worked from open to close, because he's like, I need to learn

fast. And the way to learn fast is by exposing yourself to more successes and more failures. This is Claude Hopkins saying that 100 years ago. but that makes sense. You put in more time, you have more experience, you're going to learn more. Okay. But this, how he ends this section was a surprising part. It means that a man has sacrificed all else in life to excel in this one profession. It means a man to be pitied rather than envied, perhaps. Now I appreciate that he used that he ended with that one word perhaps because it leaves it open to interpretation if i based on reading both of his books if i think my opinion if we could bring claude hopkins back from the dead and ask him would you do anything different i don't think he'd do much different because yes he did work a lot

yes he did make sacrifices for do so but he he also worked remotely, worked from home for a large part of his career. And two, he treated work as a game and he's got a lot of interesting insights. And I would say perspectives we can adopt around that. I shall share that with him. I'll share more with that later. I'm still in his early life though. This is where he's going to explicitly talk about the benefits of poverty, which is very interesting. Through father, I gained poverty, and that was another blessing. Father was the son of a clergyman. His ancestors far back had been clergymen, bred and schooled in poverty. So this was his natural state.

I owe much to that condition. It took me among the common people of whom God made so many. I came to know them, their wants and impulses, their struggles and economies, their simplicities. Those common people whom I know so well became my future customers. When I talk to them in print or in person, they recognize me as one of their kind. And this is something that he feels other people made a mistake. They start out poor, they get rich, they move away. He stayed in the same community. In fact, he talks about later on having in sometimes because opportunity presented itself, having to move Chicago, having to move to bigger cities. He's like, I don't like this. I want to go back home. And towards the end of the book about the benefit of living which is you know i don't even know if i share his uh like i wouldn't live in the same place my whole life but the fact that he did or towards the end maybe the first third of his

life he lived in the same place then he had to go on to seek opportunity and then finishing the last maybe third or or 40 of his life or whatever it was, gave him insights into potential other outcomes of his life based on different decisions. So I don't want to say any more until I get there because the writing is so just amazing. It's really beautiful writing there. So let me go back to this. So saying, hey, I didn't make the mistake. I was surrounded by, I grew up with these people. I stayed around them my whole life. And as a result of that, I understood them deeply and I used those insights and applied it to be better at work. It's essentially what he's telling us there. I am sure that I could not impress the rich, for I do not know them. I have never tried to sell what they buy. And it's very interesting

that he says that because he's unbelievably rich when he's writing those words. Okay, so let me continue around along this line. He talks about this a lot. But in millions of humble homes, the common people will read and buy. They will feel that the writer knows them. And they, in advertising, form 95% of our customers. To poverty, I owe many experiences, which taught me salesmanship. Had it not been for poverty, I would not have been a house-to-house canvasser. So door-to-door salesman. He uses the word house-to-house canvasser, but that's what he means. And there I learned the most I know

about human nature as applied to spending money. So a summary of that section is one of the benefits of poverty is I learned sales. To poverty, I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience instead of a school of theory. This is also something you're going to see a lot of the things, a lot of the highlights I have today is him repeating certain principles that he learned in different ways. And I think putting those principles in different contexts is extremely important for us because repetition is persuasive. It's how we learn, right? So this is the problem where he's going to continue about the benefit of not going to college on the problem with formal business schooling.

We have seen this in many other domains. When a practitioner reads a theorist, they usually arrive at the same conclusion. And that is the way to think about what Claude's saying here. He's a practitioner and he's reading theory. This is not very different than when Charlie Munger calls modern finance education witchcraft. Of course, we had no advertising courses in my day. No courses in salesmanship or journalism. I am sure it would be better if we did not have them now. I have read some of those courses. They were so misleading, so impractical, that they exasperated me.

Once a man brought me from a great technical school their course in advertising and asked me how to improve it when i read it i said burn it you have no right to occupy a young young man's most impressive years most precious years with rot with rot like that if he spends four years to learn such theories he will spend a dozen years to unlearn them then he will learn then he will be so far behind in the race that he will never attempt to catch up okay so he didn't have formal schooling but he had a lot of experience and that's where he learns he also learns from older people people that have that are further down the life path than him and this is an example of this this is really interesting because he learns from a railroad foreman and i would say this is like the the colonel the very beginning

of this idea of treating work like play um so it says another man exerted a remarkable influence on my impressive years he was a railroad section formal so this is a person who taught him a lot in a short amount of time he impressed me with the uh with the difference between him and his helpers he's talking about he's a supervisor he's the one running the crew and then the people working underneath him there's a vast difference between the two uh so the helpers. He's the supervisor, he's the one running the crew, and then the people working underneath him. There's a vast difference between the two. So the helpers worked from necessity. They did as little as possible. They counted the hours to quitting time. Then on Saturday nights, they would go to the city and spend all they had earned in a week. The foreman, by contrast, worked with enthusiasm. And this is where he sees two different paths, two different approaches to work and decides, hey, I'm not taking the boring path.

The men would go at it stoically and work as though work was a bore. But the foreman made the work a game. That man built his own home in the evenings. So remember what he's talking about, the difference between him and students. You know, most people, they just go to school. That's what they did. You know, I'm working before school. I'm going to school and working after working after school and i'm working on the

weekends it's not very much different this guy is trying to be productive and he knows that being productive especially in his off time is going to lead him to an easier life later on i like the idea of hard choices easy life as opposed to the how most people approach life uh easy choice each is your just easy choice is hard life the men would go at it stoically and work as though work was a bore. But the foreman made the work a game. The man built his home in the evenings. After 10-hour days on the railroad, he cultivated a garden around it.

Then he married the prettiest girl in the section and lived a life of bliss. Eventually, he was called onto some higher post, but not until I learned a great many lessons from him. And we're going to get into those lessons right now. I have to say, when I read this section, for some reason, what popped into my mind was something I learned all the way back on Founders No. 125 with the biography of Charles Kettering. And in that, if you don't know who he is, he's a genius. He was extremely influential in the early automobile days. But he says something in that book that I never forgot. He talks about the value, like, like yeah he went to college and went to school he's like but the person i learned most from was an old wagon maker and his name was hiram sweet and he talks about

like uh what you do in your off time so during his during the days hiram's making wagons but when he has no work he says he works he goes to work on hiram's mind he's talking to himself in third person which is hilarious but that just that idea that I'm constantly learning and we live this big beautiful world and a lot of us as we age we lose that childlike curiosity and Hiram Sweet never lost that childlike curiosity Charles Kettering didn't lose it either and I think there's a lot of value in that lesson okay let's go back to this uh foreman, though. So now he's talking directly to Claude. He says, look at those fellows whittling, discussing railroads, talking politics. The most that any of them know about a railroad is how to drive a spike. They will always do that and no more. Note what I have done while they loafed. Know what... This is... Okay, let me read that again, because this is kind of weird writing a little bit, even though he's usually a really good writer.

Note what I have done while they loafed there this evening. Built most of the porch on my home. Soon I'll be sitting there in comfort, making love to a pretty wife. They will always be sitting on those soapboxes around the grocery store. Which is work and which is play? If a thing is useful, they call it work. If useless, they call it play. One is as hard as another. One can be just as much a game as the other. In both, there is a rivalry there's a struggle to excel the rest all the difference i see lies in

the attitude of mine of mind so that's the end of his quote that was a long quote from the the railroad foreman i don't even think we ever told his name so this idea that there's work this play really just comes down to the main point of this whole section is like all the difference I see lies in the attitude of the mind. What he's saying is the perspective in which you look at things. Think about on Freedom's Forge, the end of that podcast I did on that book talks about Henry Kaiser. Henry Kaiser, you know, built over 100 companies in his lifetime, built the Hoover Dam. He's this crazy guy. But he has one thing I loved about him is just his optimism, his refusal to look at the negative aspects of life. And so at the very end of that book,

it talks about, um, they're trying to build, I forgot what they're building, maybe a shipyard or something like that. And they have to, there's a big storm that comes through and turns everything to mud. And one of the workers is crying.

He's just like, look at this, look at all this mud. And Kaiser comes around. He's like, what are you talking about? I don't see mud. He's like the sun come out and turn turn that mud into into like solid ground.

He says something like, see, see the sun, smell the dirt. And again, it's just two people looking at the same exact the same exact circumstances, but completely different perspectives. There's another quote. I can't remember which book. It's one of the ones we've talked about recently. And it talks about two bricklayers. One says, I'm laying bricks. And the other one says, I'm building a cathedral. They're doing the exact same thing, but their perspective, the way they approach their work is completely different. It makes all the difference. So I love what he's saying there. All I see is all the difference I see lies in the attitude of mind. And now we see Claude's takeaway from this entire section. He says, I never forgot those talks.

And so a few pages later, we see Claude apply the ideas of the railroad foreman. And this is just great writing. I came to love work as other men love golf. I love it still. Many a time I beg off from a bridge game, a dinner, or a dance to spend the evening in my office. I steal away from weekend parties at my country home to enjoy a few hours at my typewriter. So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable.

What others call work, I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we like best. If that is chasing a polo ball, one will probably excel in that. If it means checkmating competitors or getting a home run in something worthwhile, he will excel in that. So it means a great deal when a young man can come to regard his life work as the most fascinating game that he knows. And it should be be the applause of athletics dies in a moment the applause of success gives one cheer to the grave okay so those are lessons he's still going to apply way further in life than we are we're still in his other life i want to talk about the fact that he's going

around placing ads that other people are making he's just delivering them uh to other people's homes when he was a young boy. Really, what is happening in the session has taught him the value of being able to compare results with inferior competition. And so this is another lesson you learn as a young boy that he's going to apply to his career. I would offer to place one bill, remember that word, one flyer, one flyer in each home for $ dollars it meant traveling some 35 miles other boys offered to do the same job for a dollar fifty but they would place several bills in a home and would skip all the faraway homes i asked advertisers to compare the results i soon obtained a monopoly

that was my first experience with traced results so he's going to use the word trace results a million times in this book it's just saying that you shouldn't be doing anything that you can't prove that's it's effectiveness okay i think that's how you think about the term he's going to use in a bunch of different uh examples in different domains it taught me to stand for known and compared returns and i've urged them ever since in no other way can real service reveal its advantage doing anything blindly is folly. Okay, so that's one of his main ideas. You need to be able to trace what you're actually doing.

This is another idea he's going to use over and over again. And it's really on the value of free samples. There's going to be a distinction here. You just don't give samples out willy-nilly. That's not what he's recommending. But when I read this part, remember, I don't know the number of founders in front of me, but it's the autobiography of Estee Lauder, which in my opinion, way too many people sleep on. That book, if you could bring Estee Lauder back from the grave, put her in, you know, start her again.

I know she didn't start her career until she was 40. But drop her today. She's going to do the same thing. She's going to be one of the best entrepreneurs to ever live. Her autobiography is short. It's like you could read it in a weekend. It's 200 pages, but it's large text, a bunch of pictures and everything else. And it's just full of fun.

She understood human nature. She was very gifted. And she understood sales. And she talks about that over and over again. I mean, obviously and she understood sales. And she talks about that over and over again. I mean, obviously she loved beauty, but anything she loved, she would be successful at reading that book. It's just a bunch of timeless knowledge. And I don't think many people read it. Anyways, she talks about building her empire.

She calls it the sales technique of a century in her book is what I'm trying to to reference here um and they talk about anybody comes to the counter they buy something and then she would give them free like a example of some other gift or it calls a gift with purchase or whatever the case is and then she realized she goes hey um she realized it was so effective that she stopped spending money on uh she instead of spending money when she had a limited budget the money they they they set aside for advertising they changed that and actually just spent it uh manufacturing more product and that was more product meant to give away and so we're going to see the power of demonstration and actually letting your product speak for itself which is something claude talks about

over and over again and remember he's writing these words over 120 years ago. It's still true today. History doesn't repeat. Human nature does. Mother made a silver polish. I molded it into a cake form and wrapped it in pretty paper. Then I went from house to house to sell it. I found that I sold about one woman in 10 by merely talking about the polish at the door. So, okay, I'm at 10% success rate. But when I could get into the pantry and demonstrate the polish, I sold nearly all. That taught me the rudiments of another lesson I have never forgotten. A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods in print or in person without samples. The hardest struggle of my life has been to educate advertisers to the use of samples or to trials of some kind. They would not think of sending out a salesman without samples, but they will spend fortunes on advertising to urge people to buy without seeing or testing.

OK, moving on, let's go to another lesson. They talked about this is going to echo what is going to be talked about over and over again. Research, research, research, read more, study more study more read your product read books about your product talks about you know spending three or four weeks reading all these like engineering guides to when he got the Rolls-Royce account and finding one line you know after spending what 100 100 200 hours whatever it was reading he found one line and he used that as his headline and that winds up producing more sales and I think almost any other car for. I forgot.

It increased sales by a lot. I can't remember the exact degree, but it was very valuable. The point is the reading and the research was valuable. So this is more about him on the value of research because a lot of life is counterintuitive. And yet we go through life thinking, you know, how we think is how everybody else thinks. It's just not true. So he says, this taught me another lesson. We must never judge humanity by ourselves. The things we want, the things we

like may appeal to a small minority. The losses occasioned in advertising by venturing on personal preference would easily pay the national debt. We live in a democracy. On every law, there are divided opinions. Soon in every preference, every want. So saying no matter what, you put one thing up and people are going to have a million different opinions about the same exact thing. We don't people like, oh, I see what I cringe at when people say, oh, I call things how they are. Or I say it's like, no, you don't you don't call things how they are. You don't you don't describe things how they are. You describe them as how you are. And many people fail to ever learn a lesson.

We live in a democracy. just read that part uh only the obstinate the boneheaded will venture far on personal opinion we must submit all things in advertising as in everything else to the court of public opinion this and why am i reading this because he's saying this is a main point pay attention to this and i like that he doesn't beat around the bush this writing is very clear and he tells you what to focus on this you will see is the main theme of this book i own here's a little bit of flex for you i own an ocean going yacht but do you suppose i would venture across an ocean without a chart or a compass so now he talks about the importance of studying human nature uh and he says let me digress here to say that the road to success lies through ordinary people.

They form the vast majority. The man who knows them and is one of them stands vastly a better chance. Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising were ignorant men. So he's going to talk about the difference between somebody being a practitioner and somebody being a theorist or spending their formative years being educated and sometimes educated in learning the wrong things. So he says some of the greatest successes are quote unquote ignorant men. They are now heads of agencies. Two of them are now heads of advertising agencies. One of them has made much money in advertising. A man can, the same man can hardly sign his name, but he knew ordinary people and the ordinary people bought what he had to sell. One of them wrote copy, which would induce a farmer to mortgage his barn to respond. But his every sentence had to be

edited for grammar. And he's going to give us an example here. And he's going to say, when you find these people, who was it? I think it was Peter Thiel says, like, you have to find undiscovered talent. When you find these people, you have have to hire them it doesn't matter what their education was you he clearly demonstrated an understanding of human nature that they have value so it says at the time we were seeking all the time we were seeking and advertising men with the impulses of the majority we never asked their education we never asked their literary qualifications those lacks are easily supplied but let a man prove to us that he understands human nature and we welcome him with open arms so here's a direct example of him finding somebody and then hiring that person. have named them Mrs. Brown's Meat Pies because people like home cooking. I have created a considerable demand and I know there exists a much larger demand. I want capital to expand it.

Now here's Claude's reaction to this. I saw in that man primeval instincts. His meat pies did not attract me, but his rare insight to human nature did so i sent out a man to investigate he found that the writer was a night cook in a shabby restaurant and he was making eight dollars per week i brought him to my office and i offered him 25 per week to learn advertising he came with me and he is now one of the leading advertising men of the country so he talks about two insights there's one uh he like he's in a position to know that people will eat meat pies because he's in a restaurant. Right. But the main insight there is that I've named them Mrs. Brown's meat pies because people like home cooking. That is the

main insight. Uh, Claude mentions over and over again, there's really no such thing as a corporation. It's just an abstraction, right? People like people and you're attracted to people that talk like people not yet no one goes out and reads the writing of a mindless corporate or a fate so i think he calls it soulless i want to say faceless no no he says soulless corporation um so his point this idea is like there's a it's just some dude in a shabby restaurant making meat pies at night but he calls him mrs brown they use that same thing over and over again claude will develop personalities for businesses based on real people and usually it'll be uh even if the person doesn't work there like maybe it's the same model uh person you photograph but you always that that is becomes the physical representation of the company he does this for women's clothing what's the other thing he does it for i can't remember at the moment hopefully i'll run into it but he uses examples like oh

it's a guy i do have a highlight on it i know i do so i'm sure i'll cover it it'll come to mind uh when i get to that part but just remember that main point um again that main insight it's like people want to buy from people mrs brown's meat pies denote to the customer it's like things of you know maybe your mother's home cooking or whatever the case was like it's a very strong um instinct in humans i guess this is point there now claude just has some general advice about career you could summarize this section by love what you do or find another work i believe every man should do. No man succeeds in any line where he finds himself in disagreement and where unhappiness results. I consider business as a game and I play it as a game. That is why I have been and still am so

devoted to it. Okay, so now we're in the early days of his career. He does not start out as an advertising agent or working in an advertising agency he works for private businesses and tries to do develop advertising internally it takes i want to say 16 years that's the number that jumps out to me uh 16 years before he finally uh accepts albert lasker's uh being recruited by albert lasker which he talks about like the lasker's persuasion power was unbelievable so a lot of the lessons that he's going to apply once he's actually working in advertising, he developed by working in a bunch of businesses. So one of them is he works for this brand still around, Bissell Carpet. Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company is what it's named then.

I think it's just named Bissell now, if I'm not mistaken. But the reason I bring this to your attention is because this is where he's discovering a quirk in human nature. He does not have a lot of money. He's like there's places where you can rent like a place to live and they give you food as well. And he's forced he has so little money that he's forced to accept like the package deal where you have to skip a meal or two. I want to say a meal a day, something like that. And so he tries to appeal, be like, oh, I'm poor, help me. And he realizes that's not really convincing. Some people will be convinced by the argument,

but the vast majority of humans won't be. And so this is where he's discovering a quirk in human nature. I met Mr. Bissell. He's the president of the Bissell carpet sweeper company. He was a genial man, and I saw in him a chance at a higher salary. One day, I waylaid him on his way to lunch. I pictured the difficulties of a young man living on $4.50 per week. There was no need to exaggerate. There, on his way to lunch, I told him of the two meals weekly I was obliged to miss. He has to skip two meals a week, not a day. Above all, I pictured my dream of pie. So saying, I just really want to buy.

I knew a restaurant which served pie at dinner, but the board was $3.50 per week. My greatest ambition at that time was to get that pie. From him, I learned another kink in human nature. Struggle and poverty did not appeal to him. He had known them as well, and he considered them good for a fellow. But he loved pie, and had never been denied it. So he invited me home to eat pie. And this is the important part. He gets his pie, but then he's like, hey, you want a job? And he arranged for a salary of $6 per week so I could have pie every

day. Oh, so I could have pie every day. Oh, so I need to back up too. I skipped over something. He's not yet advertising yet. He's being trained as like a gopher, like a bookkeeper. And this is where he realizes like, I'm on the wrong side of this transaction. And you and I have talked about this many times. The way to summarize just good life advice in general is if you're working for a company,

stay close to the money. People, they start on sales, they start in retail, they start close to the customer transaction on the front lines, and then they get promoted and they get further away from the money. And then they go from being an asset to an expense. And when times are tough or when a new CEO takes place or new management, they start looking at this like,

Oh, okay. And they wipe these departments out. Stay close to the money. I began to read, and this is Claude realizing that 120 years before I did. I began to reason in this way. A bookkeeper is an expense. In every business, expenses are kept down.

I could never be worth more than any other man who could do the work I did. The big salaries were paid to salesmen. To the ones who brought in orders. Or to the men in the factory who reduced the cost. They showed profits. And they could command a reasonable share of those profits. I saw the difference between the profit earning and the expense side of a business. And I resolved to graduate from the debit class.

And this is why he could make $4 million in a year as an employee because he's making the business that he works for and the customers of that business way more money than that. He would never make that as a bookkeeper or anything else. So now we get to the point where he's learning. Again, there's really no formal advertising career here. So he's got to learn through a series of experiences. This is like a potential blueprint through serious experiences he winds up

this is like a potential blueprint for him he winds up competing with him this guy named john powers um and he sees how much money remember he's making six dollars a week i think at this point so just over what 300 bucks a year and he realizes this guy named john powers who's really good at advertising is making twelve thousand dollars a year had been advertising, he was an advertising writer for John Wanamaker. And there he created a new conception, a new conception of advertising. He told the truth, but he told it in a rugged and fascinating way. Wanamaker paid him $12,000 a year, which in those days was considered a fabulous salary. He had become the model and idea of all men who had advertising ambitions. So that's John Powers he's talking about. And so in some respects today, the principles for which John Powers stood are still among our advertising fundamentals. So why is this sentence so

important, right? So we learned from David Olgervee. David Olgervee says, hey, I was a disciple of Rosser Reeves. When he's having lunch or dinner whatever it was with his weekly meetings with rosser reeves rosser reeves is like hey i learned from claude hopkins you should study him now claude hopkins is saying i learned from john powers you see how no one owns ideas everybody learns from somebody else they steal borrow whatever copy whatever word you want to put on it and then use those ideas in your career. This is so fundamentally powerful. A clothing concern was on the verge of bankruptcy. So now he's talking about an advertising campaign that Powers had a lot of success with that is very, very counterintuitive. And really, he's going to

say, tell the truth. That's the main point here. A clothing concern was on the verge of bankruptcy. They called in Powers and he immediately measured up the situation. And this is what Powers said. There is only one way out. Tell the truth. Tell the people that you're going bankrupt and that your only way to salvation lies through large and immediate sales. The clothing dealers argued that such an announcement would bring every creditor to their doors. But Powers said, no matter. Either tell the truth or I quit. Their next day ad, their next day's ad read, we are bankrupt. We owe $125,000 more than we could pay. This announcement will bring our creditors down to our necks. But if you come and buy tomorrow, we shall have the money to meet them. If not, we go to the wall. These are the prices we are quoting to meet this situation.

And this is the result. So they're saying, look at these prices. Just please buy from us. Truth was then such a rarity in advertising that this announcement created a sensation. People flocked by the thousands to buy and the store was saved. So that was an example of powers being extremely successful. Now, the carpet company that Claude is working for hires Powers. And then Claude's reading the ads. He's like, this isn't going to work. I think I could do a better job. So he says, I said, that cannot sell carpet sweepers. There's not one word in the

pamphlet which will lead people to buy. Let me try my hand. In three days, I will hand you a book to compete with based on knowledge of our problems. So this is writing his first ads. And the way he approaches, the way he gets this opportunity, because it's a very, it's a low risk. So he caps the downside, but leaves the upside potentially unlimited. He's going to wind up selling like a quarter million of these things. It's really remarkable what's about to happen. So he's going to attack this, but he's like, okay, can we sell this by mail? Okay. The carpet sweeper business was then in its infancy. Users were few and sales small on the strength of my pamphlet i asked for permission to try to increase the demand christmas was approaching on my nights pacing the streets i had thought of the idea of a sweeper as

a christmas present it had never been offered as such i designed a display rack for exhibit i drew up cards uh so they say the queen of christ presents was the headline. And I went to the manager and asked his permission to solicit some to solicit some sales by mail. I sent out some 5000 letters. They brought me 1000 orders. That was the most orders we had ever received by mail. That was the birth of a new idea, which led me to graduate from the expense account to the field of money earners. So that's him talking about. I'm getting I'm on the wrong side of the transaction. I'm going to stay closer to the field of money earners so that's him talking about it's like i'm getting i'm on the wrong side of the transaction i'm going to stay closer to the money okay so he gets his next

idea because he has he's interested in he grew up in the woods in michigan so he'd like to walk in the forest and everything and he used to gather sample of woods and he would set like different kind of uh woods and trees and send it around to people and so you had this idea it's like okay well how can we get people interested in things? And I just reread my highlights from James Dyson's Autobiography, which is a fantastic book if you haven't read yet. And he was talking about one of the benefits. He like purposely made his vacuum cleaner

look different than anything else because even if they don't buy it, they're going to stop. Like what is happening? Seth Godin, the famous writer and marketer, it's like he references this shorthand. It's like a purple cow. Like if you're driving down the road,'re used to seeing you know black and white cows

they're sitting there eat they're standing next to each other maybe eat some grass but if one of them is purple you'd stop like what the hell is happening here so he uses this idea it's like okay i know a lot about woods and what they look like different finishes and so he convinces them like why don't we try to make our sweeper look different? And we say for a limited time, I think it was limited time. Hey, we're going to put out 12. You can pick a new sweeper and you can pick, you know, which would, we're going to have 12 different models. And this is the result of this.

This is what I mean about like why Claude, I think, was so um so hell-bent on like uh experimentation because you you derived counterintuitive unpredictable insights from experimentation that you would never would otherwise and no one would think okay we some put some wood some wood coating on a bunch of sweepers we're gonna sell a quarter million of them like that just sounds ridiculous but it actually happened uh it multiplied the use of carpet sweepers and it gave Bissell sweepers the practical monopoly which they maintain to this day. Other men will say, I have no such opportunity. My line is not like that, meaning my product is not like that. Of course it isn't.

But in all probability, it offers a thousand advantages. No man is in any line that is harder to sell than carpet sweepers were in those days. I care not what it is. The usual advertising was impossible. A carpet sweeper were in those days. I care not what it is. The usual advertising was impossible. A carpet sweeper would last 10 years. The profit was about a dollar. Never has anyone found an ordinary way to advertise profitably on an article of that class

because what he's saying is, how can you advertise? You're making a dollar for every decade per customer. No young man finds himself in any field with smaller opportunity. So he's talking about the need for looking at things creatively, doing things differently, experimenting differently. Any man in a bank, a lumber office, a tire concern, or a grocery has a far better opportunity than I had. The only difference lies in his conceptions, meaning his ideas,

your perspective, how you're approaching it. I felt that clerkship was an expense and expenses would always be minimized. I was struggling to graduate into the profit earning class where no such limit exists. So I just gave you the punchline, obviously. This book, it's like 200 pages. I love little small compact books.

I have a lot of ideas in them. I'm going to leave a link in the show notes to the Kindle version because you buy this book and you get scientific advertising as well. And it's 10 bucks 12 bucks i don't even know what i paid but it's remarkable i recommend reading it's really interesting um let me i'm still in this this section about uh about him finally making the switch and and doing so because uh he found he wound up hitting on two really good ideas to sell more more carpet sweepers right and really

what he's about to say here is the leverage that a great idea can give you, right? After that, I gave up my bookkeeping and devoted my time to selling. I sold more carpet sweepers by my one cent letters than 14 salesmen on the road combined. This is also what I like about this book is that he talks about it like, it's not, hey, I'm fantastic, I'm great. Look, you know, just, it's not a really celebration of his life. It's

just like, this is how I looked at things. And, you know, I could be content towards the end of my life that I did things, but there are alternate paths to consider. And it's, this is where we see he's not sure which path is best at the time. Because he tried to get, he was recruited several times, and he pulled him away from where he wanted to be. And he's just not sure about that. So let me read this. The point is that everybody's going to go through periods of self-doubt, or uncertainty in their life, and then we just got to keep working our way through it, right? Now I approach a tragic epoch in my life. I was close to my limits in Grand Rapids. That's where he liked living. This offer gave me wider recognition. Ambition surged within me. I became anxious to go higher. I had built a new home in Grand Rapids.

All the friends I knew were there as well. I enjoyed prestige there. I knew that in a larger field, I would have to sacrifice the things that I love most. I suppose I was right in my desires, according to general standards. Ambition is everywhere applauded. So he's like, you know, people love ambitious people, but ambitious, maybe a decision you have to make to further ambition is not the best decision for your life. This is very confusing. It can be very confusing. Ambition is everywhere applauded, but I have often returned to Grand Rapids to envy my old associates. They continued in a quiet, sheltered life. Or quiet, sheltered fields, excuse me.

They met no large demands. Success and money came to them in moderation. But in my turbulent life, as I review it, I have found no joys that they have missed. Fame came to me, but I did not enjoy it. Money came, but I could never spend it. My real inclination has always been toward the quiet paths. When my old friends and I get together here, it is hard to decide who took the wiser course. And so the more I read and learn about the life stories of people, I don i don't know if you can i don't

know if uncertainty is ever anything you overcome i think you just learn to live with it i mean this guy's writing this towards the end of his life and he's like in some degree it's a celebration of his career and you know uh that he is happy that he was able to master his craft and add to and he's writing to hopefully to to help us if we we want to um like derive any insights from his work but it's also not you know the uncertainty is never resolved i guess is my point here so let me tell you what's going on in his life for him to think this way so there's a company that has one of the largest advertising budgets in america and it's looking for a head of advertising and claude talking about his ambition claude finds out 105 other people applied.

And for some reason, he wants it more now because of that. He gets really competitive. He has dozens of people send letters about his skills as a writer and advertiser to the company. This guy's an extreme person. He starts writing a daily newspaper article for free on the subject of advertising just so the person in charge of hiring sees it so he winds up getting the job um and regretting it and then i left myself as how wild is this last sentence um and i'll tell you when i get to the last sentence so it says the next morning in oh i didn't i wasn't clear there he has to leave grand rapids where he doesn't want to leave and i think this is in chicago it's a uh stockyard, which is like a slaughterhouse.

The next morning in Grand Rapids, I went to my home and saw the family on the porch. There were shade trees in front and many flowers in the yard. He's obsessed with nature, by the way. I contrasted that setting with the stockyards, where the outlook covered only dirty pens filled with cattle and hogs. The way to the office led to a half mile of mud. Then I regretted my action. The price seemed too great to pay. Had I not given my word, I would have turned back that morning to quiet insignificance. And this is a wild last sentence. And now, after looking back 30 years, I think I would turn back this morning.

Now, this is more, it's another him talking about the importance of demoing again. He says this over and over again. So he says, to many, advertising is placing some dignified phrases in print. But commonplace dignity doesn't get far. Study salesmen, canvassers, and fakers. He talks about learning from people that, you know, street performers. That's what he means by faker. Fakers. Study salesmen, canvassers, and fakers. If you want to know how to sell goods. This is his main point here. No argument in the world can ever compare

with one dramatic demonstration. And I like that he talks about demos as a form of service. So if you're talking about advertising, trying to convince people to buy what you want, he's like, don't start saying, buy my goods. That's not compelling to anybody. You start with service. All good salesmanship in print or in person is based on some appealing service. Good salesmen study to make their appeals inviting. One says, send me the money and I will return it if the article is not satisfactory. Another send no money let me send the article for trial then remit or return it just as you desire the second one being a lot better i buy many books by mail in nearly every issue of certain magazines i see descriptions of books of books i may want the ads do not say send the money. If they did, my purchases would be few.

My checkbook is at the office. By the next day, in all probability, the book would be forgotten. But they offer to send me the book to examine. I simply mail the coupon. I tear it out, put it in my pocket and mail it the next morning. Do you see what he's talking about there? Where he's saying, okay, one's saying, send me money. And the other one's saying, I'll send you something. One is asking for something. One is serving you. Saying, hey, this book's so good,

let me go ahead and send it to you. And if you like it, send me a check for it. If you don't, just send it back. Start with service is the way to summarize that section. Another main insight of his, treat every ad, everything you're doing, everything you're writing as if the person is standing in front of you.

This is hilarious. Um, yeah, the noise of, I guess I'll tell you that the note I left myself first, because it helps to understand what I'm about to read to you. You wouldn't hand her a catalog of general products. If that person was asking you about sewing machines, yet the process, the business process of this particular company does that exact same thing.

So it says he's doing the advertising for Montgomery Ward. It says many new many new merchandising plans were inaugurated. My everlasting argument was against dealing with people in the mask. Remember, in the mask, not mask, in the mask. Treat everyone as if it was one person, an individual standing in front of you. It's a very powerful idea. For instance, a woman wrote in about a sewing machine. She had that and nothing else on her mind. The general plan then was to send a catalog. That's what the company was doing before. He's

like, what are you doing? Treating all inquiries as if they were alike i urge that every inquirer should be treated like a prospect who came into the store we had a special catalog on sewing machines showing every style and price we sent every inquirer the names of all of all in her vicinity who had bought our sewing machines we asked her to see the machines and to talk with their owner so he's talking about the approach he did as opposed to just like you wrote me in about sewing machines here i'll send you a catalog it has sewing machines in it but it's not dedicated to that as opposed to i'm going to send you a catalog that only has sewing machines showing every style every price then we show you a list of my customers their contact information if you want to talk to them about the sewing machine which one you think

is going to respond result in the most amount of sales a lot of what cloud does is just thinking it's just like is this common sense like are that's the thing, a large problem with big companies is like they come obsessed with process instead of actually solving problems. There I learned another valuable principle in advertising. In a wide reaching campaign, we are too apt to regard to people in the mass. We try to broadcast our seed in the hope that some part will take root. That is too wasteful to bring a profit. We must get down to individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person. Center on their desires. Consider the person who stands before you with certain expressed

desires. However big your business, get down to the units, for those units are all that make size okay so now he's going to talk about the insights he derived from writing ads for a brewery and the summary of the section is like what is ordinary to you about your product or your work is unknown to the customer and if they knew it would marvel them use it so he goes and takes a tour of the brewery and he just cannot believe the process they go through to make the beer. And he's like, why aren't you telling the story? Like, because everybody does this, but nobody, the customer doesn't know that. And what's, what's again, what you know about your product is you're used to, you become used to it. It will marvel your customer. So he says, then I went through the brewery. I saw plate glass, plate glass rooms where beer was dripping

over pipes. And I asked the reason for that. They told me glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes, and I asked the reason for that. They told me those rooms were filled with filtered air so the beer could be cooled in purity. I saw great filters filled with whitewood pulp. They explained how that filtered the beer. They showed how they cleaned every pump and pipe twice daily to avoid contamination, how every bottle was cleaned four times by machinery. They showed me a well where they went 4,000 feet deep for pure water. They showed me that the vats

were where beer was aged for six months before it went out to the user. They took me to the laboratory and showed me that their original, showed me their original mother yeast cell that had been developed

by 1,200 experiments to bring out the utmost in flavor all of the yeast used in making their beer was developed from that original shell so i came back to the office amazed i said why don't you tell people these things why do you merely try to cry louder and others that your beer is pure why don't you teach the reasons? Why, they said, the process we use are just the same as others use. No one can make good beer without it. But I replied, others have never told this story. It amazes anyone who goes through your brewery. It will startle everyone in print. So I pictured in print those plate glass rooms and every other form of purity i told a story common to all good brewers but a story which had never been told i gave purity a meaning because he's

talking about everybody at the thing he's like we are the everybody you know we're we all copy each other and so he talks about you'll see ads if you say the lowest price then your competitors will say lowest price and then they're like everybody starts copying then everybody's ads are the same and they're not effective so everybody at this point is advertising beer saying it's the pure purest beer that's not helpful if there's seven other people or 15 other beers are making the same claim find a way to differentiate yourself and you have to differentiate yourself because you're describing a process that you use to make the product that would marvel people that don't understand it or that are unaware of it rather

so it says i told a story common to all good brewers but a story which had never been told i gave period of meaning uh the brand he's working for a jump from fifth place to neck and neck with first place in a few months that campaign remains to this day one of my greatest accomplishments but it also gave me the basis for many other campaigns again and again and again i have told simple facts common to all makers in the line, too common to be told. But they have given the article first, given the product first allied with them an exclusive and lasting prestige. That situation occurs in many, many lines. So many, many businesses, what he's saying there.

The maker is too close to his product. He sees it in his in his he sees in his methods only the ordinary. He does not realize that the world at large might marvel at those methods and that facts which seem commonplace to him might give him vast distinction. And this is a summary of the entire section. Tell the pains you take to excel. So just one very concise sentence i think is good advice serve better than others offer more than others and you are pretty sure to win

more on service there are other ways i know to win in selling and in advertising but they are slow and uncertain ask a person to take a chance on you and you have a fight. Offer to take a chance on him and the way is easy. Okay, so he has all these experiences working for companies and this is where he's burnt out. He wants to give up and take a break for a little bit. And he winds up, this is when he yields to being recruited by Albert Lasker. And I think the way Albert Lasker recruits him is very fascinating. It gives an insight. I have Lasker's biography too. I'll probably cover that in the future at some point. I haven't read it yet to see if it's any good, but this guy seems very, very unique. So he goes to meet Mr. Lasker. He thinks at the beginning, he's like, I'm just going to,

I'm not, I don't, I'm not going to accept the job. I'm just going to hear him out, but I'm not going to accept it. He says, Mr. Lasker handed me a contract from the Van Camp Packing Company for $400,000. It was based on the condition that copy be submitted satisfactory to Mr. Van Camp. Mr. Lasker said, I searched the country for copy. This is copy I got in New York. This is in Philadelphia. I spent thousands of dollars to get the best copy obtainable. You see the results.

Neither you or I would submit it. Now I ask you to help me. Give me three ads, which will start this campaign. And your wife may go down Michigan Avenue to select any car on the street and have it charged to me. So it's a very unique selling proposition. Albert Lasker is a very unique individual. David Ogilvie in Ogilvieilvy and advertising says that albert lesker made more money than anybody else in the entire history of advertising business he also spent a ton too he's a wild wild person winds up doing this you know for multiple decades and one day just says i'm done winds up selling his firm to three people that work for him for like a token payment of a hundred thousand dollars and then just walking away never dealing with uh advertising again he also didn't pay attention to his competitors he i i do think i'm going to wind up covering his biography because he just has a very unique approach to his work

that was wildly successful so it's probably a lot we can learn from him but this thing is like okay yeah you don't want to do ads pick me an ad and then your wife goes down and she could buy any car she wants on me okay so he says so so now Claude's talking about the unusual persuasive ability of Albert Lasker. So far as I know, no ordinary human being has ever resisted Albert Lasker. He has commanded what he would in this world. Presidents have made him their pal. Nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him. What a crazy sentence. Let me read that again. Nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him what a crazy sentence let me read

that again nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him so i yielded as all due to his persuasiveness and so that starts his career he's going to wind up working for albert getting paid a ton of money i think for 16 17 years something like that and then um he he's going to quit and go into business on his own and he and he talk about the last chapter. I think the last chapter of this book might be like his greatest mistakes. Actually, why don't I just tell you what it is by looking at it? No, the next last chapter is my great mistake. And that's just waiting too long to do what he actually wanted to do. All right. So let's go back to some some ideas that he derives from this point in his career. The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness.

That's another point to consider. Are you anything for your own advantage and people will resist you to the limit, but seem unselfishly to consider your customers' desires and they will naturally flock to you. The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. So go back to that article or the ad about book

hey send me money i'll send you a book or how about hey i'm sending you the book if you like it send me money same the same desire the book the bookseller has the same desire one approach works and one doesn't because one is not just asking for things that just advantage you it's very interesting uh people will listen if you talk service to them. They will turn their backs and always, when you seek to impress an advantage for yourself, this is important.

So he also says that companies do this as well. And he lists him applying that principle to advertising tires. He gets a Goodyear account. At the time, there was really no tire advertising to speak of. And this is a way to apply that principle.

Or another way is how you can get 30,000 customers in just a few months. Another problem we had to solve was to get dealers to carry tire stocks. So I'm Goodyear, the manufacturer. I have dealers that sell it to the end customer. But they're only buying from me as the customer needs it. But I want more money up front. But I can't say, hey, why don't you guys buy more stock for me? Because then I'm just saying I'm appealing to my advantage.

That's not helping you. I'm not serving you. So he flips it. This guy's a freaking genius. So it says, we wanted to solve a way to get dealers to carry tire stocks. Few of them did so in those days. They bought from Goodyear branches as they sold. We prepared a large newspaper campaign.

We prepared a large newspaper campaign and offered to name in each ad all the dealers who stocked the minimum requirement or who stocked. The minimum requirement was $250 stock. So if you buy, if you will keep at your location the minimum of $250 worth of tires from us, as we advertise our tire, we will also advertise your name as where you can get the tire, right? So it's, I want you to buy stock from me. You say that, no one's buying stock from you. If you're saying, hey, if you buy stock from me,

I will also advertise you in this national newspaper campaign I'm doing. They'll buy stock from you. The minimum requirement is $2. In a few months, we induced some 30,000 dealers to stock Goodyear's tires on that basis, and the campaign did much to change the whole complexion of the tire business. This naming of dealers and local advertising is an almost irresistible inducement to stock. Few plans are more effective. No dealer likes to see his rivals named in a big campaign and his own name omitted. The more who join in the plan, the easier it is to get others.

I have often secured on new products almost universal distribution this way. More random advice from him talking about, you know, you really should stay inside your circle of competence if you want to think about it in those terms. It is curious how we all desire to excel in something outside of our province. That leads many men astray. Men make money in one business and then lose it in many others. They seem to feel that one success makes them super businessmen as well. This, I don't know why, when I read that part, it reminded me of the quote from Warren Buffett in last week's's book where ogilvy and other they're talking about hey we're gonna go out it's very common this time we're gonna go about even against ogilvy's wishes going on and acquiring other um advertising agencies and warren's like instead of buying

other agencies why don't you just buy the best agency and they're like what he's like your own buy more of your stock if you're the best advertising agency in the world buy more of that and the lesson there is a lot of these people went out and bought other advertising agencies and wound up losing money on that so going back to this this his his desire free trials estate lauders the same way give free trials but only to those who ask of it right don? Don't just send your product everywhere. It diminishes the quality. I have never found that it paid to give either a sample or a full-size package to people who did not request it. We must arouse interest in our product before it has value to anybody. I consider promiscuous sampling a very bad plan indeed. Products handed out without asking are thrown on the doorstep, lose respect.

It is different when you force people to make an effort he's already mentioned a dozen variations of the same idea so obviously he's telling us it's exceptionally important you cannot go into a well occupied a well occupied well occupied field on the simple appeal buy my brand that is a selfish appeal it's repugnant to all one must offer exceptional service to induce people to change from favorite brands to yours. The usual advertiser does not offer that exceptional service. That's why he keeps talking about over and over again in the book. Like, all the money wasted on advertising can pay the national debt.

Oh, so he's, this is, okay, now I reached the part I was mentioning earlier about. My note is personalities appeal, soulless corporations do not. He's doing, he's re-revamping a brand of uh breakfast cereal and so he he establishes an actual like person to act as a brand so he says i established a personality professor a p anderson i have always done that whenever possible personalities appeal soulless while soulless corporations do not make a man famous and you make his creation famous and all of us love to study men and their accomplishments uh this is more about him him it's essentially working remotely a long time ago he says i earned commissions as high as 185 000

dollars in a year that's equivalent to about four million dollars a year now uh all earned at a typewriter which i operated myself without a clerk or, and much of it earned in the woods. That's where he's living. So think about that. I made $4 million a year working at home by myself at a typewriter, which I operated without a secretary, and most of it in the woods in Michigan. But he also spent a large amount of time teaching, teaching, teaching, serving, serving, serving. I was doing more than just serving myself.

I was doing my best to teach other copy men in the agency. I held many meetings with them to discuss the principles of copy. For that, I received no pay. Then I wrote numerous books to set down the agency principles. Because of those services, Mr. Lasker finally made me president of Lord and Thomas. So he didn't say make me president first, and then I'll do this. He's saying, I'm just going to teach everybody around me. I'm going to serve those, try to help them better at their job. And as a result of that service, I'll get what I deserve. So I left myself on this next section. I'm trying to read it before I read it to you. Oh, okay. I wrote, this is very good. Read it twice. All right. I'm not going to read it twice, but you'll know how I feel about it. How have I been able to win from this situation

so many great successes? Simply because I made so many mistakes in a small way and learned something from each. I made no mistake twice. Every once in a while, I developed some great advertising principle. That endured. That method cost me, beginning as I did in the infancy of advertising, an enormous amount of time. More time than other men are apt to devote to this primitive experience much more time much more sacrifice than i would want a son of mine to devote that is the purpose of this autobiography to help other people six to help other people start where i ended going back to this idea treating ads uh treating customers, personalizing them. Taking an actual ad, think of an ad as a salesperson.

Make it in human form. Just like if somebody's inquiring something, like the lady that was interested about sewing machines. The way you responded to her mail is not the way you responded to her in person. To apply scientific advertising, one must recognize that ads are salesmen. One must compare them one by one on a salesman basis and hold them responsible for cost and result. To advertise blindly teaches one nothing, and it usually leads to the rocks. Regardless of principles, we must always experiment. And the note I left myself is the world still has secrets to give up. We do not know everything about the complex world that we live in.

That's why you experiment, because you're going to derive insights and knowledge that you can't otherwise. You can't just sit there and think them up in your mind. They're too unpredictable. The world still has secrets to give up. More on this idea of thinking about advertising as a service. Don't talk about yourself talk about what service your product will give the customer so it says i've seen many at many an ad killed by a single unfortunate phrase usually a selfish phrase indicating ulterior

desires which repel phrases like insist on what's that word oh insist on this brand avoid imitations look out for substitution such appeals have no good effect and they indicate a motive with which buyers cannot sympathize forget yourself entirely have in your mind a typical prospect interested enough to read about your product keep that prospect before you seek in every word to increase your good impression say only what you think a good salesman should say if that prospect stood before him. See, he's hitting the same idea in different contexts over and over again. Then if you could sell it in person, you can sell it in print.

Do not boast. Not about your plant or your output. Not about anything more interesting to you than to your prospect. Boasting is repulsive. Random great quote here. Most success comes through efficiency. Most failures are due to waste. Oh, this is very interesting. The best school I know is canvassing. So going door to door, right? The best school I know is canvassing, going from home to home. Many great ad writers spend half their time in that. They learn by personal contacts what wins

and what repulses. Then they apply their findings to appeals in print. So people are like, oh, no one's going to do that nowadays. It hit me when I read this. Some of the most successful apps, modern-day apps, did this. You go back and read that book, I think it's How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, something like that. Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat, the very early days of Snapchat, he would go out and hand flyers in person at the mall and ask people to download Snapchat.

He was doing this by hand at the very beginning. It sounds like fake, right? Unreal. There's this quote that Paul Graham uses, which is hilarious. He calls it the Collison install. So the very beginning days of Stripe, the Collison brothers would be describing to other people,

like other founders, what Stripe could do for their business. And then people would inevitably say, oh, wow, that sounds like something interesting. Instead of sending an email with a link or saying, hey, go to my website. They're like, oh, it sounds interesting. Give me your laptop. And they would literally install Stripe on the laptop. They wouldn't let that prospect, that temporary interest be fleeting. Okay, I'll do it for you.

So again, like this whole idea is is you can derive insights in person. You're not going to do that later on as your business is more stable. At the very beginning, you have to know why people are true, what service you're trying to give to people and how they feel about that. I don't know. That was very, very interesting.

Okay, so just a few more things here. I want to talk about his greatest mistake because I thought it was interesting. And really, his greatest mistake was not taking a chance on himself. So now he's talking about something that happened in his earlier life. Mr. Bissell, president of the company, called me into his office. He said, I have some advice to give you. You have many of the qualifications which make for success, including the selling instinct. You are too good a man to work for me.

You should start out for yourself as I did, or you should start out for yourself as I did. He told me something of his history, how he had refused every salary offer, every safe anchorage, and struggled alone, and how as a result he had finally arrived on the road to fortune. He ended by saying, I am selfish enough to want you to stay here. If you do, your salary will be much increased next year. But I am fair enough to advise you not to stay. Don't let someone else glean the chief profits from your hard work and your talent. My Scottish conservatism led me to stay. It was my great mistake. Soon after that, I married and any venture of my own became increasingly difficult. Thus, I tied myself to a lifetime of service as an employee. I watched some of my

co-workers start out for themselves, largely on lines that I had taught them. I feel now as then as I did then that I was that I was fully as well equipped as they were, save for courage. So I was as talented as them, but I wasn't as courageous as them. I always envied their independence, which I spent 35 years to attain. So he finally does make the jump. He says, you know, it just took me, he didn't waste 35 years because he's learning to, but if he could do it all over again, he would have jumped.

And part of it was his wife pushing him, you know, to have that desire because I'm sure it's very comfortable. I can stay at home. I can do what I'm really good at and I'm still making a lot of money, but he wants ownership. So he says, an ambitious wife was the one who woke me from that lethargy.

She had desires for which money counted more than fame. She pointed out how those who employed me always gained the advantage in a monetary way. Finally, I considered her viewpoint. And after many years of working for others, I started to work for myself. I've already made more by sharing the profits of my creations than I ever made by working on commission. One of my first ventures was in a toothpaste. I bought a share in that for which I paid $13,000. It paid me some $200,000 in dividends. And then I sold the stock for $500,000. So that's 700 grand, right? Based on an investment he'd made for a company he's doing advertising for. And this is $700,000 in 1920 money.

So now he's got some insights on money and happiness, which I always find interesting. I long lived in utter poverty where hunger and I were pals. When I entered business, I had to miss two meals a week to pay for my laundry bills. I also have lived in luxury, spending as high as $140,000 a year. It has made little difference to me. I was as happy in one condition as the other. I do not think we can go back to humble conditions without being in pain, but I'm sure that men can be as happy on one plateau as another. The happiest man I know is a neighbor of mine who

never made more than $125 per month. Out of that, he saved enough to build six small houses, which he rents. Then he retired on that income. He spends his summer on the lake, working in his garden and his winters in Florida. I often go down to his cottage for a lesson in contentment. Until the income tax was established, I kept no record of my earnings. Their volume meant nothing to me. Their ups and downs did not affect me in the least. This is all recited to indicate that my incentive for work was not money, nor was it fame or position. I care nothing for either out here in the woods among simple people where I have built my home.

All things are handicap, which in any way seem to place me above my fellows. Here in the country, we all meet on equality. I have worked for the fun of working and because work became a habit with me. Then later in business, because I realized that somebody had to do a deal of hard work to get advertising out of its swaddling clothes. He's saying like, I'm doing work for my clients and the firm, but I'm also trying to grow the industry as a whole. And this is where he talks about what he gained from this. What have I gained? And this is just really, really good writing. This idea that the principles he's learning or enduring is the Swiss Alps. This is

fantastic. What have I gained by these many years of exceptional application? I have gained what others gained by medical research, by spending their lives in the laboratory. My life work has been research in advertising. Now I have the privilege of setting down my findings for the men who follow me. I have the hope that the record will save to many the mistakes of the pioneers and the years that I spent to correct them. I have gained what Thomas Edison had gained by his 20 hour days, the satisfaction knowing that I've discovered some enduring principles. Many argue that advertising is changing, that the times call for something new. Certainly the tempo of life in America is changing.

Fads, fancies, and desires change. Certain styles in advertising are changing. It is and always has been necessary to give every campaign a different keynote. Imitators never succeed, but human nature does not change. The principles set down in this book are as enduring as the Alps. And now we reach the part where I referenced earlier about he's got some interesting insights living where he grew up, and I'll close on this. Many hard years went by before I saw this boyhood home again. Then the homing instinct brought me back.

I bought a bluff of virgin forest, which I've always loved as a boy, and I named it Pinecrest. There I built my home, which for 17 years I've enlarged and developed into a paradise. Here I do what I love to do in beautiful surroundings. Here, a mile apart, are the contrasts to show what I have gained by my efforts. Here remain some who never dared to show me what might have been. Here is my motherland.

Here my tabernacle. Here my home. I am sure that no man has gained more from life than I have, more of true happiness and content. I trace that to the love of simple things of common people which made my success in advertising. Here at our weekend parties I meet many successful men in the most intimate way. I envy none of them.

The happiest are those who live closest to nature an essential to advertising success. So I conclude that this vocation, depending as it does on love and knowledge of the masses, offered many more rewards beyond money. And that is where I'll leave it. If you want the full story, I highly recommend reading the book. If you buy the book using the LinkedIn show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. A lot of new listeners are discovering this podcast from misfits buying gift subscriptions for friends, family, or coworkers. If you want to do that, I'll leave a handy link below.

It feels good to do something nice for someone else and it helps the podcast at the same time. That is 170 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.