Omnichannel - Bond Halbert | How to Sell Online by Copy

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Send us a textHere’s the single most important episode on how to sell online by copy!Such an honor to have Sir Bond Halbert copywriting royalty on my Podcast!What you'll discover in this epic episode:What is the “Google Sniff Test” and how does it highly contribute to selling high-ticket! How to apply the infamous “A pile B pile analogy” to modern social medias? The 3 major changes that have impacted how we sell by copy online! Bond’s take on the “fake it till you make it” industry & when you should do it and when not? 6 Costly Mistakes Internet Marketers Make with their Copies ! Hint: Once you hear them, it will radically change the way you think about your messaging! What is “market level awareness” and why it will make or break your sales copy? Top 3 Research Techniques on Creating a Winning Copy that practically writes itself! What is a “story arc” and how to use it to gather intel for your perfect copy!And much more.. including never heard before stories from Bond! BONUS: Discover a Mini Template on How to write the perfect “P.S.” That resonates with all types of buyers!Get a FREE Copy of the High Converting Online Events Book: https://book.dominikalegrand.com/

four different types of readers for your copy. So they go to your landing page. Let's suppose that it's your website, right? And then there's the people who just scan it. They look at the headlines, they look at the bullets, they look at the offer, and they decide to buy right then or there. There are other people who I start at the beginning and I'm going to keep reading until I feel like I can move on without missing something that would benefit my life. And then I'm going to quit. And the people who read all the way through the bottom. And then they're the people who start in and they see a subhead or something that's interesting. That's where they jump in and they continue down.

Or they come in and they say, this might be for me. Let me go back to the top and start reading. Right? The whole thing. Your PS has to attract and work with all of those. So I'm super excited to have Sir. Okay. Okay, Sir Bond. I shouldn't make those jokes since the queen just passed away. I'm sorry. Too soon, right? Too soon. Anyway,

super happy to see you. And thank you so much for saying yes to my invite. I'm so excited to hear your take on selling with copy in 2022. I am so excited to hear what you're going to say and what you're going to tell the listeners as well. But first, before we get into the meat and potatoes of the subject, can you tell us a bit about yourself? Because obviously we know about your dad, but what's your origin story? How did you end up in copywriting yourself? Well, my origin story is really rare and unique because I was just telling somebody else on the internet that I don't have the, I was sleeping in my car on disability and doing drugs, you know, and then I saw the light story like a lot of people give, you know, a lot of people give those

stories where they're like, you know, the ragsags to riches thing I actually grew up in the industry but I'll give you a I you know I haven't mentioned it in a while so go ahead and tell you really quickly what happened was my dad had five children but I was with him one time when you know he had blown a lot of his money he blew his money made money blew money money. And so one time he was in the, I just blew all my money phase. And I said, you know, I'm really lucky. And he said, why is that? He said, I said, because I get to see how you make the money. You know, like my, my older brothers, I was the youngest, you know, they get to just, you know, have the toys and stuff like that. I get to see how you do it. He's like, that's the smartest thing I've ever seen any, you know, young kid do. So he immediately started training me because my

dad started thinking differently than everybody in his generation about not just marketing, but parenting and things like that. So all of a sudden I'm going to meetings and, you know, I'm being flown to go with him to go attend meetings and learn about doing stuff in the business and seeing how the business works on a level that no kid was allowed to do. And that included one day him taking me out of school and saying, you know, they'll teach you history or math tomorrow. Today, I'm going to show you how magic happens. And he took me to a lunch meeting with Jay Abraham and Eric Weinstein. Eric Weinstein is a top list broker. So you had the list, he was the, he understood, because what you want is market message offer,

right? So he knew the markets and then Jay would talk about what the offer was. And my dad would talk about the correct message, right? So the three of them together, and it was just like one after another, like, you know, okay, this is what this is what to sell to this list. This is what to sell to that list. So I grew up in the industry. I mean, I literally as a kid was licking stamp, you know, sealing, stuffing and stamping envelopes for test mailings. But but I was also, you know, he would explain what's going to happen at this meeting before we'd go. I'd be there for the meeting and he would explain afterwards what happened during the meeting. You know, so I mean, my, my origin story goes back to really being, you know, trained on it the way that most fathers

would train their children how to play baseball or something. I was trained how to be a marketer. And then I had success on my own and my father wanted to brag about it. And I said, no, because, you know, I've seen what happened when you bragged about it and I didn't appreciate that. And then I found myself actually teaching some of his proteges and some other people who were the top copywriters, new techniques and new ways, new processes for copywriting. And so then I ended up kind of falling into and enjoying it because the one thing I realized is I got bored with hearing the same old things about, you know, the money's in the list and things like that, you know, my, you know, for 400 times growing up and going to all of these

different conferences. And so I learned how to, but I, but I paid also attention is I watched my father teach a lot of the top copywriters. So I learned how to teach copywriting. And so I sort of now drifted into showing people how to do all the stuff that other copywriters are learning from everybody, from all the books and all the classics. But my favorite thing to do is add some brand new twist to it that nobody's ever heard about. And so – and it makes – and I I believe in processes that doesn't mean templates. I mean, processes, like if you're going through these steps, this is where you're going to find something that will make your stuff unique and better. So that's my story. But thank you so much for sharing that. That's awesome. So you essentially were sponging up all the knowledge, the only receptive child in the family by the way um

i was also wanting to ask you this question because when i was reading the born letters i was thinking like dear bond and i realized you had you know brothers and you have other siblings and i'm like thinking okay so i wonder what your siblings are thinking about the famous borrow letters that are, you know, dear bond. Are they jealous of that? You know, well, you know, there's only one other brother that's actually knows a lot about marketing. That's my brother, Kevin, who's my partner. And, you know, you know, we're competitive in a lot of ways and everything like that. And, you know, back then, and he made it sound like, you know, well, you're just like that you do more stuff for dad, like you're his lackey, and I stand on my own and everything. But then later on, you know, what happened was everybody said, you're just like dad, right? You know, and but the funny thing was, I had more influence over

my dad than any other person. So like his partners, the people, anybody who's claiming to have a connection to my dad, his employees, you know, family members, if they were really having an issue with my dad, the person they turned to, to try and help was me. Cause I was the only one actually changed his mind. Um, because I knew how he ticked because he had taught me to think like him. So I knew what he was thinking and I knew what would change the way that he was thinking. So anyway, so you're just like dad went from being an insult to all of a sudden everybody's saying, no, I'm more like dad. I'm like, okay, make up your mind. You know? So after, you know, when he passed away and his legend grew, it was, you know, it all of a sudden turned into a competition to see and it was like before you

know i didn't care i'm just me you know i i think like my father but i also understand how my mom thinks and she's a polar opposite so but i'm also the one with a unique name you know everybody else is jeff and kevin and you know dean from j Was it coming from James Bond or? Oh, it is. It absolutely came from James Bond. He didn't like Ian. He didn't like Fleming. He was reading James Bond books.

He loved them. And he went to my mom and said, hey, if by the time we leave the hospital, we don't come up with a better name, can we name him Bond? And my mom said, you know, if we don't give him a name, you know, I know that we'll be lazy and he'll never have a name in his birth certificate we'll say baby boy halbert forever so she agreed to that and they didn't come up with a different name and that's how i got the name that's but it's a special name like when i was telling people you know i have an interview with bon and like which one james bond i'm like no another one um i was reading the footnote i, in the board letters when he passed. I think you were adding some funny comments there about him, you know, having a cardiac issue or something.

I don't know. But something that was his heart that he wasn't eating healthy after all. I don't know. I remember reading something like that. Yeah, actually, I just recently, I'm the first member of the family to actually survive a heart attack. I just had one. Oh, you did? Yeah, I had the first member of the family to actually survive a heart attack. I just had one. Oh, you did? Yeah, I had one earlier this year. And the funny part about that, I don't want to take too much time away from giving value to your readers. But the weird thing about that was I

prepared for it. Because I early on realized I learned from my dad's mistakes, right? And I learned from them faster than he did so that I didn't even get into the trouble that he did and I mean I'm talking about a lot of mistakes but I also learned from other people's mistakes and by the way you should try and learn from other people's mistakes it's a great life lesson but one you know my great-grandfather my grandfather my dad all died of heart attacks so I was like oh I'm probably gonna have a So, you know, when my kids got, were able to drive, I showed them the fastest route to get to the best hospital for people having a heart attack. I'm like, okay, this is where you drop dad off when he has a heart attack. And a year before it, I went and I got stress tested and I got all of these, you know, went to a cardiologist and I said, hey, my history, I want you to check all this stuff so we can monitor it and see as things

progress. They're like, you're in perfect shape. I was, you know, not perfect as in, but my heart and my cardiovascular health by all the tests were completely clear. I was hiking, you know, earlier this last year, I did a 52 mile backpacking trip. And at the beach, I was along the boardwalk. I was walking five to 10 miles, like, you know, four or five times a week. And then all of a sudden, I, you know, got out of shape for a little while because of a long story. But anyway, and I went to go join a jujitsu class. And I came out and I was like, I think I'm having a heart attack. And, and I went home and I said, Hey, you guys should take me to

the hospital, you know, or I'm willing to go. And they took me and hooked me up. And I recognized it. And the preparation was so fast because of that, like showing everybody how to drive. Yeah, it's insane. Between an hour and within an hour of me having it, I had my stents put in and they said, you know, there's no damage to your heart now because you did that so quick. Wow, that's incredible damage to your heart now because you did that so quick. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. The one thing I realized that, you know, he talked about jogging a lot and I tried that, but it's really hard on your knees. So I did a lot of walking and hiking and apparently fail. Right. So what I will suggest is do what I do now, which is more swimming and

cardio and, you know, bicycling and getting your heart rate up for a good period of time. And, you know, I'm getting back into shape finally, because right after my heart attack, I was getting into shape. And then I twisted my ankle like 90 degrees. Yeah. So that actually depressed me more than the heart attack. But anyway, so, you know, what I was correcting about that is, you know, my dad was somebody who would do something that he couldn't maintain. He would fast and he would diet and he would do these restrictive things. But it wasn't a lifestyle change that he could keep up with. You know, you can't not eat forever, right?

And you can't jog forever. It's bad for your knees. That's what I was commenting there. No, that makes sense. That's why i was reading the footnote i was thinking about you know it was so funny what you commented there i just wanted to say that to you as well but i'm glad you're okay and your heart is fine please stay with us for a long time because we need you so um just going back to copywriting the main subject of today

um i guess the first question that i wanted to ask you is because i think just circling back to your dad who i think he hated technology i don't know you can correct me there like he even though he was in interviewed he was saying like he hates that the phone has so many functions and you know besides calling you know and obviously you have witnessed the evolution from you know mail to like right now online marketing and selling by you know online copies like what do you think has changed do you think the foundations of copywriting have changed if so in what way um okay it's yes and no the foundations of how to do your research which we can talk about, that has changed, you know, your access and ability to do that, how you get your message out. What hasn't changed is, you know, understanding your prospect and developing a message that will actually resonate with them.

And the technology has changed to such a degree. Now, I'd say the one of the big ones is people can now Google you, right? So I teach this thing called I call the Google sniff test. You know, look, if somebody is going to spend $1,000 with you or something like that, or spend a lot of money, one of the first things they're going to do is Google your name. And if you have a very common name, like let's say it's John Halbert instead of bond Halbert. I don't have that problem. But let's say it's John Halbert.

They're going to go John Halbert copywriter. Right. And they're going to try and check you out there. You know, it's like humans are like dogs that are sniffing each other at the park. Right. Try to figure out what everybody's doing. So what they're doing is they're going to Google and checking you out.

And this is a great opportunity for you to show that you're preeminent, as Jay Abraham would say. And so if you look at my Google profile, you'll see that, you know, okay, there's ads that are run. I've got a website, you know. But other people, it's like the only thing that's there is a LinkedIn profile, maybe a Facebook post, you know, post. And so it's not it's not, you know, it leaves the prospect going, well, I don't know. But some but sometimes they look at that and they go, OK, well, this isn't all good. Right. And sometimes they look at it and go, oh, my God, this person really knows what they're talking about. I've had people in my life all of a sudden, you know, they're friends.

They're not in my business or world at all. And they'll come up and they'll start asking me a bunch of marketing questions. And I'll say, you Googled my name, didn't you? And they'll go, yeah, I did. And the, you know, so in fact, one person wrote on one time on Facebook, if you had only three words to say to like sell what you do, or to tell somebody, what would you do? And I said, Google my name, you know, and there, you can actually systematically make those Google results fantastic and look really good and superior. You can do a better job than I've done. Okay. And eventually you can, you know, with enough traffic,

you're going to get actually your own knowledge panel where you can control what images of you are up there. And, you know, you can you can you can understand where the SEO juice is in certain things. You can't control the whole thing. You know, you're not a Google saying I want this to be result number one, two and three. But people you can't really it's a lot harder to hide who you are now, you know, when people are going to check out those results. Now, that's for higher end stuff. The other thing I'll say is, you know, we had this, you know, back when we did print and stuff, there was the newspaper. Now, my dad's, when my dad was younger, there was an evening edition and a morning edition to the newspaper.

When I was, you know, when I was younger, there was an evening edition and a morning edition to the newspaper. When I was you know, when I was younger, it was just one edition to the newspaper. And most people read them around the same time. And but the the mail usually came around the same time, too. So you kind of had an idea of what somebody was doing. Like they come home from work. They were tired. You hear my dad's favorite famous A pile B pile speech where they're sifting through their mail because they're tired trying to figure out what they have to pay attention to. So but nowadays, if you think about it, it's kind of the same thing like the people the person on YouTube is looking for how to do something. The person on Facebook is kind of like

bored and scrolling through and Instagram, they're trying to get inspired. You know, I mean, they're all trying to keep themselves entertained and feel connected and everything. But it's a different feel in each of these different spots. And understanding where they are and what their mindset is like when they're getting your sales message is, you know, is very important. And that makes a big change. Your access to people.

One of the other things that's a huge change is before, you know, you had to major. OK, so a major market was something that had a magazine about it, like photography or something. And if you wanted to go into newspapers, you had to have to be worth it. There's a thing called waste circulation, which is you're reaching you're paying for your ad to be seen by people who do not count. So if you're selling purses, your ads do not count to anybody who's like, you know, you know, any guys that are there to read the sports pages, right? So for there to be little waste circulation and you to get the most, you had to hit like four or five key things. People wanted to lose weight, people who wanted to make more money, you know, stuff like that. And then otherwise you went to these lists, you mailed lists or you

put ads in magazines. So the number of topics for which you can make money on now are much greater because now with modern technology, you can actually reach a whole bunch of weird people who like to buy fancy jewelry for their cats. You know, there was no fancy jewelry cat magazine, right? But you can now, you can now find and reach these people. So the, the, I look at it as the opportunities being really great, but you know, you, if you go back to the basics, like, you know, what happened was my brother and I had to convince our father that the worldwide web and the internet was something a little bit more than a big

filing cabinet. I mean, he fought us on the left and right, but as soon as he did, he went right to the basics. He went and said, okay, this is what the net's like because I go on the net now and I'm trying to figure it out. And this is what people have problems with. So this is how I will easily overcome that problem. And he created the Gary Halbert letter, which became the online Mecca of copywriting. So if you go back to the basics, you can understand all of these things, but you just have to have a good willingness to say, this is why I'm here. This is what, you know, this is the feeling and the emotions. And this is the time I usually access this thing. I have the sense, which is I'm not arrogant. I'm just confident everybody else is as screwed up as I am. So what that means is that like, you know, if I found myself wasting three hours on social media, I'm pretty sure there's some other people who did the same thing anyway. So there's, there's a lot that's changed,

um, with the, with the, you know, the, the technology that's out there, but I think it's only made things easier and it's, and it's also lowered the barriers to entry because before, if you wanted to test something, you want to test a book or an idea or a concept, you had to pay a lot of money and wait a long time for those results. They had a thing called what we call double day, which was 11 days out for an ad. You got half your orders within the first 11 days. It might've been direct. Anyway. So that meant, you know, to really get the results, you had to wait 22 days. Now you can run a Google ad. You can't get the results in one day. That's a mistake. People have to run their ads for about, you have to let it grow for five days, even if you're getting nothing

to see whether a Google ad is working. But that is lightning fast compared to the way it was back in the old days of print. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that um can i ask you about the google sniff test like how do how do i pass the google sniff test like what do i need um okay well i'll give you examples you google your name right so what comes up when you do that there's you can advertise on it that helps um because that's a sign of professionalism when you when you have an ad oh thank you okay there is having your website there is having amazon books now i'm not you know anybody can put a book up on amazon anybody can do that and so it's no longer like oh i'm an expert i got a book on amazon but if somebody's produced three books on amazon they probably know something about that topic and if those books have a lot of reviews, so you can manufacture that situation. You can be interviewed on several

podcasts so that the videos and the images that show your imaging is, you know, showing you speaking to an audience of people or to teaching in a classroom that helps add to the professionalism. Now that's, you know, this is a different thing, depending on what industry you were in, right? So, you know, if you are, you know, you're a professor at something like that, you know, you want to show yourself teaching a class in a university setting. And so there's all kinds of, you know, just if you went through, go through mine and say, you know, how could I make that happen? And the answer is do podcast interviews. The answer is control what images are actually out there. You know, if you have just one image out there, you know, go get a professional photographer. I wish

I had done this. And in fact, I might still go redo it. Get a professional photographer. Actually, I'm sorry. Don't even have to be a professional photographer. Get somebody in a college that's studying photography. They don't even need to be expensive. Look up articles on how the best way to pose so that you look good or whatever it is. And then get three different outfits and go create three different images and convey what you want. You know, if you were selling motorcycle equipment, you know, you'd want those images to show you like at motorcycle races and in helmets and stuff like that. If you know, so it's stuff that matches the persona of what people are expecting from an expert in your field. So there's, you know, you know, take a look and reverse engineer what you're seeing that other people do and then say, how can I get that done? And it's not that difficult. You know what I'm saying? It's, you know, you can, you know, so, you know, I remember one time I was at dinner and somebody was talking about podcasts.

And I said, you know, actually, I think I've been on more podcasts than I've listened to. And I went to Spotify and I went and looked at my name. And I was like, oh, my God, there's a ton of these podcasts that are in Spotify that I've been on, I had not really realized. And so that means that all those things that you see on my profile are things that you can do on yours. So that could be a YouTube channel, even if it's only got three videos up there, I actually deleted all but three videos. You can, you know, so all of those things that you see, so you can do a little YouTube channel, you can do an Instagram thing, you can do, go on to, like I said, go on to interviews and podcasts and things like that. And then all of a sudden, you're in make sure and make sure that everything

lists the one the word that people are going to put next to your name, copywriter, marketer, author, you know, nutritionist, health coach, whatever it is. And so that way, when people Google your name, plus that thing, and that's, again, if you have a common name, you're going to have, you know, a page or two of these results and nothing on page two matters the truth is most of the time nothing passed the they call it okay newspaper used to come in folded right and so they said that you know you had to be above the fold which meant that it wasn't down at the bottom so we would run newspaper ads that were a quarter of the ad but they were tall so that made that they couldn't fit it except in a way that made sure that they were above the fold. That term got blended, blended over, excuse me, jumped over to

Google, meaning, you know, before people have to scroll, right? So very few of that stuff even matters. But if you turn around, you're scrolling and you're scrolling and you're scrolling and there's nothing but people saying, wow, this person is a great nutritionist. And they, you know, the nutritionist to the stars, you no longer have to, you know, you've kind of pre-sold them. Now they're wondering, OK, can I afford you? Thank you. Those are awesome. I think I need to write two more books and I'll be good. Question back to you. Do you see all this like featured in forbes abc fox like all these bots you know publications like what's your take on that because i think those who don't know marketing might

believe that's not a bit not a paid article i mean have what do you think about it i think they do but i think the problem with it and this is one one of the problems that I think a lot of marketers have these days, is they're acting like their prospects are marks, like they're stupid. You know, like, hey, I've got this new book, this PDF, but it's only available for 50 people. You know, everybody knows that there's no such thing as a limited number of digital editions of something, right? So something very quickly became like a dumb idea and the problem i have with it is people are going to find out eventually so eventually you're going to have to take all that down because you know people like yeah yeah everybody can put that fox thing up there and everybody can put this as seen in forbes so i

never bothered to do that you know there is a new thing where a lot, well, it was new, but very quickly died and somebody was paying. What they would do is through an intermediary, they would pay to have this documentary and make an actual documentary film about them. And then they would rent a movie theater in Hollywood and act like they had a premiere of a movie about them. And now you see all these people who are like, you know, we're flying private and stuff like that. Yeah. There's a jet service that charges like 500 bucks to fly you private to Las Vegas. You're just taking pictures on that.

Then you find out that there's actually companies that what they do is they rent their Lear jets on the ground for Instagram photos. And so these people, and now at the beginning, everybody's buying that. And they say, yeah, and it's, but it's kind of like buying likes. The problem with this in buying subscribers is you ever go to someone's profile and it's like, wow, you got 1.4 million subscribers. How come you only have 30 views on your video? You know, how come you only have 20 likes on your, on your video?

You know what I mean? It, it, you know, people aren't stupid. And even if they are stupid, somebody is eventually going to point that out to them and stuff like that. So I don't believe in, you know, people talk about being your authentic self. I don't know, you know, I'm talking about just being, you know, honest and real about it. You don't really need to do all of that stuff, in my opinion. The fake it till you make it thing does work at the lower levels. And by lower levels, I mean the lower levels of buyers, not the low, you know, you know, everybody in, you know, there was nobody at my level who didn't know these people were renting a Lamborghini that they, you know,

and the Lamborghini never left the garage because they couldn't afford to put miles on it. Right. You know, because they charge for the mile that, you know, even when you lease them and stuff like that, there were none of us that, you know, there, uh, there, there was one that I thought was really hysterical. And I, you know, somebody had pointed out this out this you know taking this picture on a jet with all these models right and it was just one dude and all these models and the the the glaring most outstanding thing was all the models were doing that you know like that quiet like like why didn't you instruct them to smile you know it made no sense so you knew all of us yeah I mean it was like just glaringly

obvious you paid for this photo opportunity thing. And I don't think, I don't think that in the long run, it does you any justice to your branding. I think in the short term it can. So I'm not knocking the game that of people doing that. It is just, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are, you know, letting people think that they came up with these brilliant ideas that have been around in direct marketing. And but eventually they go to the Gary Halbert letter and they're like, oh, this is where they got that. And they do that. You know, it happens and people tell us all the time. I was so enamored with this guy.

Everything he was saying was fantastic. And then I found out that, oh, yeah, this is all taken from a guy who passed away, you know, a decade ago. Yeah. And so they, they, they, they lose a little bit of, of that kind of credit, but it's good for jumpstarting your, your business. It's good for jumpstarting your career and it's good for the people who don't, you know, getting to people who don't know better, but it will, you know, you quickly, you know, once you get to the level, once you're higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, your businesses, not you, but your businesses higher up on the thing, it's not helping you.

Eventually you get found out, you know, there's a politician who was famous and he kept, you know, he wanted to be on Time Magazine, but he had these in his office, fake Time Magazines made up with his picture on it. I actually saw one in real life. And then it was like, it became a story. They actually did a story about how he had faked those things. And in the end, look, you're going to be wrong in your life. You're going to say things that are incorrect or you're going to say things that are true and then turn out later that the situation has changed. Let's limit the number of possibilities of that is what I'm saying. My rule is don't say anything like, okay, look, your, your goal in copy is to, you know,

is to say all the things that you really want to say that you would say if this was like, you know, God lets you make you create the perfect client product or whatever is your offer. And then back it down to where you could look your mom straight in the face and sell her that and say that to her, you know, and, you know, this is assuming you're not a jerk to your mom. But, you know, so, you know, the thing is you write what, you know, we call dream copy, which is this is the way we'd want it to be. Then you back it down. Right. And then, you know, so, you know, the thing is you write what we call dream copy, which is this is the way we'd want it to be. Then you back it down. Right. And then, you know, a lot of the people who don't care, they're short, you know, short term gain, long term loss. We'll go ahead and, you know, let the little lie go through exaggeration, go through.

And what's ridiculous about that is most of the time you can turn those lies into truth, but just by making them true. You know, one of the things that I do differently and my dad did differently is, you know, if, if you studied, uh, if you wrote the copy first before a product was finished, you could add into the product. So for example, let's suppose you have a coaching program and you write your dream copy about it, you know, and then you say, and we've got this and we've got that, and you didn't have this or that yet. You can go put this or that into it. It's not often, not that hard to do that. You know? Um, so if you want to say, we've got the world's best copywriters in our group that are also contributing. And then you go, okay, I'd like to say that it's not true right now. And then you call up a few

people who are the world's best copywriters and you say, would you like to contribute? And they say, yes. And you say, boom, I got it. So, you know, write the promo for your podcast. And then, you know, we ask the hard-hitting questions. Or we do this. Or whatever the dream statements are. And then make that true. That's not that hard to do.

So I don't see the reason in just lying about something that it is. Instead of just making it all that it could be. Yeah it makes perfect sense and i love that what you said it's not about you know writing the dream copy and just making it a reality it's super easy to do after you know um question back to you and i want to talk about um copywriting online and what do you think are the biggest mistakes that you see in the industry of selling online products, services, coaching in copywriting? Okay, I got a lot of them. Okay, just tell us about some of those. Okay, one, we already covered pretending that they're stupid. That's one. Not asking for the sale. You have a lot of people who are content copywriters right now

that are, you know, they don't realize you got to tell people, hey, buy this right now. You should get it now. And because, you know, the longer, you know, the longer you wait to get into shape, the harder it will be to get back into shape. You can put the sense of urgency on them based on the results, or you can create a real sense of urgency. But they're not asking for the sale. They're like, no, I don't want to do this. We want to be all authentic, and we want to help everybody. So they hire content copywriters, and they do blog posts, and they do all of these things.

But they don't ask for the sale. That's a big, no, um, uh, not working on the final parts of the ad copywriters go and study. And the first thing they learn how to do is write a headline, right? So they start thinking in headlines. And then if they're a little bit better than that, they start thinking about bullets and then they really start to struggle with stories, right? You know, so I came up with a story writing system, which is a system of how to do your research. So the story writes itself and it's a value that makes the copy, makes the copy sell. The other thing is they speak to too many market levels of awareness. This is something that was going on even before digital, but they do that a lot now. So what happens is, you know,

for those who don't know, MLAs, market levels awareness is basically your prospect doesn't know they have a problem. They don't, they're walking around with heart disease, but they don't know they have heart disease. They're aware, but don't know the solution. So they, they know that they have heart disease. They don't know that, you know, they need to lower their stress. They need to diet and they need to exercise. They're solution aware, they know they need to lower their stress, their diet and their exercise, but they don't know which is the right diet for them. You know, they know which is the right diet for them, but they got to choose amongst them. That's number four. And number five is I know what's the right diet. I know what is the best the best meditate guided meditation app to get in and all of this other

stuff. These are people that are already usually your buyers or multi-buyers. The problem is people are speaking, they're trying to write this ad to grab everybody at once, which is like trying to grab somebody who, you know, look, our oil is specially designed for your car and it doesn't make a difference whether it is a Kia or a Ferrari. That is a mistake. You need to make an ad that's just for the Kia owners and you need to make one that's just for the Ferrari owners. And so they're talking to all these different market levels of awareness at one time. And so one of the things that your copy should do is you should figure out which level you are targeting. And there's a benefit in a problem with each. So the first one is, let's say

your problem unaware. You got to make people aware of it. So you have to call them out by symptom. You can't say, hey, you want to take care of your heart disease if they don't know they have heart disease. The benefit is that's the most number of them. That's the biggest group of people. So you call them out by symptom. You say, are you over 50 and you've gained two inches of belly fat in the last three years? That could be a sign of a deadly heart disease to time bomb ticking away. And so, but your marketing should take them from whatever market level awareness you are already going after and raise them one or two, right. And then sell them your solution. You should say, look, you know, I, you know, I just had a heart attack and man, it was in a

struggle to figure out what are all the ways, the key ways to, you know, to get, get yourself back into shape and to get your heart, you know, and to, you know, to live a long time. And, you know, they talk about this and this and that. So I tried all the different diets. And let me tell you which ones works and which ones don't. Let me, you know, there's, you know, and then if they're at the very end of the spectrum, they're already fans and everything forefront of teaching copywriting for decades and how come they're still continuing to innovate. It's the way they think. And then the fans will turn around and say, OK, yeah, that you know, that's why I, you know, follow him. That's why, you know, that's why I do it. You tell them their place in the history level and try and also rope in people who have just heard about copywriting and what it is that they just found out that copywriting means writing ads. You know, you talk to one and you address them.

Your story should be like a little bit, just a little bit before where they're at. So they go, OK, yeah, that's that's, that that's, that's what I'm feeling. And that's what I'm knowing. And then the story should help educate them to the point where they're at, they're at now at the next level or the next level higher. So by the time I'm done, you know, your lead magnet, for example, should elevate them from one market level awareness to the, to the next one, or to the even one up a higher than that. So that, you know, your free report reveals the studies and the secrets of behind, you know, we've tested 1000 different, you know, diet plans and meditation programs. And we've now ranked the three best ones,

you know, you know, call in for this, you know, or excuse me, download this free report or click and go to this website. Your lead magnet should educate them on that. And then at the end of the lead magnet, you make your offer. So I think the, I think one of the mistakes everybody's making, which I've seen them make before is pretending that, you know, like, like if there was a gym, you say, who's this for? Is this for that guy who just, you know, like if there was a gym, you say, who's this for? Is this for that guy who's just, you know, going to the gym for the first time? Or is this for that guy who's pumping iron and he's in a bodybuilding competition? And the owner always says, it's for all of them.

It's like, no, we need different gyms. You got your easy, like, weakling gym. You have your big strongman gym. You know, tell us which one that you want to target, and that's where we'll go. It doesn't mean that you can't open up a separate gym. It doesn't mean that you can't have a separate room, a separate program, and a separate ad. It's just don't do that all in the same advertisement. One of the other mistakes that copywriters are making is this.

They start at the top of the ad to learning. They start learning headlines. Then they learn bullets. If they're lucky they learn some storytelling techniques the other thing that they're doing um two things that they're doing one is they're not studying closing arguments they're not studying how to kick those people off the fence they're not saying you know look um this is um you know saying, you know, look, this is, you know, this is, you know, for if, you know, for twenty dollars, you can find out whether or not my new book, whether I'm full of it. And what everybody says about me is a lie or if I'm the real deal, you know, but 20 bucks, you know, that's you know, that's that's less than the price of that's now like the price of lunch at McDonald's.

Right. So, you know, you're you're making these closing arguments to make them, you know, kick them off the fence and stuff like that. And people don't study closing arguments. What you should do with your swipe files, your collections of ads for people who don't know what a swipe file is, is don't look at them and then copy the ads, cut them up, cut them up between headlines, cut them up, you know, the intros, um, bullets, stories, closing arguments, risk reversal, you know, postscripts. And then that way, when you're on that part of the ad that you're writing, flip through that file folder of just bullets. And then that'll, that'll inspire ideas. And now you will sound like you just ripped off the most common ad in your industry because they're from everybody's industry okay the final thing is everybody's trying to be too entertaining these days um entertaining is not bad right you know big problem nowadays versus the old days is

people love to read in the old days and people can get bored easily so you know but it's not their attention span that's dropped people say that but that you know marvel two and a half hour movies proves their attention span hasn't dropped it just proves that you need to keep the action going a lot right but there are people now who are trying to be just entertaining and i you know there's this you know one copywriter like three people said oh they write these great emails but each one said but I've never bought anything they sold. And I was like, well, then copy doesn't have to be super clever. It has, you know, if you have, if you're a direct market response marketing, and this is another problem,

if you're a direct response marketing expert and a copywriter, you are twice as valuable as anybody who's three or four times as entertaining as you are. I would much rather have somebody look, if I can turn around and say, listen, this is how we can make these statements that the customers want to hear in order to buy. And we can make that true and change the product. And that makes it a better offer. And that makes that offer match the market better. And my job of making the message is easier. I just need to describe the product and the offer. I just need to say, yes, this includes this. And unlike these other people who say this includes this, ours really does include it.

And here's why. Here's what we put together. I would rather have somebody who's like, you know, let's take the most basic, which I'm not a fan of, copywriting concept. I think I've heard it from John Carlton and some other people, which is here's who I am. Here's what I got. Here's what I'll do for you. Yeah, I heard that. That's not really super nuanced, right? That's not like a lot of detailed things. But if you took that and, you know, have a copywriter who says, look, we're going to do that. And then we're going to mail everybody who didn't open the first email, the same thing with a different subject line. Cause that's a direct response marketing strategy, right? That person is worth more money than somebody who could

write a better first piece of copy because they're going to be, they're going to bring you in more dollars. So everybody's so worried about being clever and entertaining and, you know, you know, like, Oh, do you see, you know, the killer use of those emojis and whatever. And I'm not against emojis. They work in subject lines and stuff. But they're so worried about that and being entertaining and getting laughs in likes that they're not getting sales. And if you want to become worth it as a copywriter, you need to study direct response marketing strategies as well, because it also leads to more business. So if I look at your funnel and I say, listen, you know, you're yeah, you're you're I did this thing recently where I took an Excel like spreadsheet. Right. It's like a calculator. And on the right side, looks like I said left here because of the video.

But on the OK, on the right side, it says, um, it's, it's got the, the amount of money that's being spent. So you start with an ad spend, which means it's negative, right? You know, you spent $5,000 and then sales start to come in. So the, that negative drops, and then you get sales, hopefully it's positive. And then there's refunds and all this other stuff. And when you do all of this stuff, you can turn a negative campaign into a winner by adding an upsell, right? Teach your clients that. If you can teach your clients that you can turn a negative campaign by adding it into an upsell or adding an offer at the end because you've captured their names and addresses anyway, then you can turn a negative campaign into a positive. But you've also created work because somebody's got to write that upsell.

Somebody also has to write that back-end offer. Even if you're talking about, look, your refund rate is high. Let's look into that. Let's make some changes. But then let's also write a stick letter, and that is to make the sale stick. Let's talk about what's coming up. Reinforce their decision of why they buy. Teach them how to go through the product and make sure that they're happy with it so that they don't want to refund it. Talk to them about we're also going to be adding this really soon. And really soon means it's right near where the refund time limit would have been.

You know, these are stick, you know, stick letter strategies expert, you not only get to teach them how to make more money, you also get that in turn adds to more work for you. I'm sorry, I'm talking quite a bit. No, that makes perfect sense. And thank you so much for sharing that. So what I think is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but today, copywriters also have to have some other skills that they have to adopt, right? For the funnels, the upsells, like those skills, I'm not sure if they had to, I mean, before that was not even an option, but like, well, they don't need the tech skills. So for example, they just need to understand what these things are. So, okay. So let me give you an example. One of the, you know, one of the highest paid marketing consultant, direct marketing consultants is Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy,

you can't get in touch with without a fax machine. Now, do you even know what a fax machine is? I do. Your parents had one in the basement, you're like but the point is the tech people need to know how to do that but you just need to know the concept of um okay look you need to add an upsell you need to make this more mobile friendly you know and what you know you know so you know i don't know if you're using wordpress and you're going to need this mobile this mobile optimizing widget or plugin or if you're just going to you know take your website and increase the font size or whatever, let the tech people worry about that. You do not have to do that. That's not your job. But your job is to understand the experiences they're going through. So I'll give you an example.

And this, you know, this is one research technique technique which is to walk in the shoes of your prospects so one time i was looking at a i was writing actually i got so many examples of this i'll give you one i was writing an ad for a website about free things to do in los angeles right and it was a google ad and so what i did was I went and I Googled that and I looked at the results. And I asked myself, what are the problems with all of these? And I knew that the big problem was. And so I was like, OK, the URL address would be free things to do in Los Angeles. So that's promising that it kind of has to deliver on the promise because that's in the

flipping URL. So if I say copywriting secrets, you better have some copywriting material listed in that website if that's in the flipping URL. So if I say copywriting secrets, you better have some copywriting material listed in that in that website, if that's in the website name, right. So I knew that was going to be in there. And then I put in an amazing, almost unbelievable fact, which was that the we had made sure that the calendars had 1000s of free events to do, right, which really wasn't that hard, with all of the different events and things that, you know, classes and museum events and library events and everything else. So we made that that was like an unbelievable. Oh, my God, I got to check this out. But I added this one line and this was my very first Google ad ever.

And it got a double digit click through response. And this was after, you know, this wasn't in the early days when everybody, you know, nobody had Google ads. I wrote the line, no signups necessary. Right. And because I knew everybody going through there was tired of clicking on these ads and saying, oh, I got to sign up for this. Oh, I got to sign up for this. Oh, I got to sign up for this. Now I did have a thing that's saying, you know, you can sign up for all these other extras and benefits, but I just provide it all and make sure that everything was being provided. And that was actually true. And people were more than glad to sign up. They went in, they found out, oh, look, this actually delivered. Look at all of this cool stuff to do. And, you know, and so what

happened was the, and this is another thing that marketers don't do is they're not marketing all the time. They, they think about their business when they sit down at the computer at a blank screen to write their copy. You're going to get crushed by somebody like me who's walking around thinking about that, you know, and like, oh, you know what? And going through the motions and having a gut reaction and saying, oh, this is what really sucks about this industry. Is there a way to fix that? You know, here would be a way to fix it. Let's try it. Oh, that worked. Now I've got some, I've got a better offer than you do. I don't have to be a better copywriter. I got a better offer. Right. You know, I mean, it just, it's, it's, it's like the powers in your research, the talent is in the gut feeling that you have and the ability to see opportunities for, for, for being better than other people, other businesses in your competition.

The professionalism is in the editing. The professionalism means that you're doing the work. If you look at the very, very top copywriters in the world that I respect, each one of them is willing to work the customer service line. Each one of them is willing, you know, the hours they put in is so many, you know, and other, everybody else is like, oh man, I just wanted to have a brainstorm in my, while driving in my car and I wanted to travel around Europe when I did this. And, you know, I was hoping that, you know, you know, my e-commerce idea would just explode and I'd be going to parties. It's no, it's work. It's, you know, my dad worked hard when he when he was working. He didn't work often. I don't work often. But when I do, I put my mind into it and I put, you know, I dive into it.

And it's going to be, you know, by the time I'm sitting down at the computer, I've got, you know, a whole bunch of notes on things that I want to say about the offer, about the product, or to create and make that dream copy true. And so that gives you a huge advantage. What's your go-to research methods? Because you were saying stalking the competitors, like what they are missing. But how do you go about? Okay, well, one is you want to shop the competition. You want to go through and buy the other products that people are doing. And this

is not looking for their best practices and, you know, stealing their strategies or modeling them and everything. You're looking for what they screw up, right? You're looking for how they can make it better. Um, and you look for what are look for what are the things that I'm doing that frustrate me? And then you're looking for opportunities and ways to make that not frustrating. So that's one of the things. The other thing is you're looking at being willing to talk with those customers. Whether you're working a customer service line, going to events where the buyers are like, you know, you want to sell the Disney fans, you got to go to the D3 convention and sit around now. And you can do surveys and stuff like that if you're, if you have to work remotely, but that has to be very open-ended questions or no questions at all.

So in other words, if they're already talking, you just sit there and absorb it. Right. If they're not talking, you ask these kind of open end questions. You know, you know, marketers with a college degree and actually I have a college degree. And, you know, it's they teach them to do things like, you know, that's where you get like a survey. This thing was easy to use. Agree. Strongly agree. Disagree. Where I'm like, did you find it easy to

to you know to to use and if not why i want to get them talking so then they use their words right when they use their words their words can turn into my copy right and another place to get great reviews and everything is reviews so long ones are the ones that are more valuable than the short ones but i will look into reviews and i'll find out all kinds of stuff i'll find out you know they'll talk and they'll they'll let you you can figure out their market level awareness because they'll be like you know i tried you know i tried so-and-so's workshop and that didn't really do it for me so then i went to so-and-so so like okay yeah they're they're not they're not in market level awareness one or two.

And so this is how they're thinking. And this is what they want. I look at the negative, I like the negative ones better than the positive ones, because it tells me what they're really thinking there. And they hate, there's not like they say, there's nobody tells the truth, like people who are drunk or angry. And I look at their names and try and get the demographics, they'll mention things like, you know, my kids and stuff like that. And I was like, okay, wait a minute. You know, you can get an idea from who they are and their pictures. I'll give you another hint that I do that nobody else was doing is, like, let's suppose you're going into Amazon. You're looking at competitors' reviews for something.

I will look at the other things they reviewed. I'll find out what else they're buying, right? And that in the end, whether you know, you know, I'll find out whether they are risk adverse or negative. I did a whole training on this where I walk people through the actual reviews and say, see, this is what you can see in this review. And this is how the copyrights itself. And again, it's it's about, you know, going back to like making things happen. So the, the, the one I always like to use that's using the book that I'm about to publish is imagine, you know, those sticks that people have, they're long and you put a tennis ball in and you flick it and it sends the ball running for the dogs, right?

Yeah, I know. Okay. So you go into the reviews and somebody says, man, this was great. I was feeling guilty because my doc said that the, the, the dog needed more exercise, but I came home from work and I'm so tired. And another one is complaining because it was green and I left it at the park and I couldn't see it easily because it was getting dark. And another person is complaining that it broke after, you know, you know know maybe 30 throws so what i do is i say you know hey with a flick of a wrist you can give your favorite pet fur baby all the exercise it needs no matter how tired you are from work and you'll you'll go home and you're loving each other and feeling better and your dog will

live a lot longer plus ours is made out of a high polymer plastic and we've tested it so it will not break on you like those cheap other ones, you know, the cheap other ones that they have even did. We've even painted it day glow yellow so that, you know, you can see it in the evenings and, you know, be able to go and pick it, pick it up in case your dog ran off with it like so many other dogs do. You know, the,

the wording is just like taking the negative ones and reversing it and taking the positive ones and reinforcing it. And then all of a sudden you've got copy that is resonating because it comes from real buyers. And so that's one of the, you know, that's a great, great way to do it as well. But walking in their shoes will lead to breakthroughs. It's, you know, that's, it's like, you know, great marketing breakthroughs can be a big ideas as we call them. It can be an interesting hook. It could be a marketing solution. So, you know, a marketing solution is like how to get free advertising that your competitors don't get right um and you can get these by walking in the shoes of prospects and seeing opportunities and stuff like that um

so um i i you know one of the time one times and this is pretty you know famous now that i did this i was going to go put out one of the books the boring letters on amazon and so the first thing i did was go buy a book on amazon and as i did that i was looking at the book and at the books i think i looked up scientific advertising i scrolled down it said you know for 25 bucks i get free shipping it says people who bought this book also bought that book and i was like i want to be there right i want that to happen with my book so what i did was i told um i i was like what would amazon want well first they're going to obviously connect the people bought this book did buy this other book right that's the you know that's a natural the computer's doing that but some human is programming this computer to decide and they're not offering books that are free or a dollar right

that makes no sense why would they do that and i knew that Kindle didn't want your book to be over 10 bucks because they dropped your commission from like 70% to 40%. So what I did was something that no other marketers were doing at the time. And I threw in a webinar for people who bought my book. And I said, if you bought a copy of the Boren letters, whether it's on your phone or anything, hold it up and, you know, with a picture of your smiling face and then, um, um, and then post it on your Facebook and put hashtag the born letters. And then I will invite you into a free webinar. Okay. So I did that, invited them into the free webinar. Now, because of the webinar, I have their names and addresses as well, you know, because they opted in for it. But on top of that, what happened was I told everybody now, Hey, if you like that, you should also go buy John Carlton's book, the entrepreneur's guide to getting your shit together. And so, um, it worked

like, so all of a sudden I looked at, you know, so when, so John would sit there and tell everybody, Hey, go buy my book. And when he did, it was adding book sales to mine because it would say, Hey, people also bought this book, you know, the barn letters. And he called me one day and he said, you know, how'd you get people? How'd you get Amazon to send emails to people, buy my book, to sell your book. And I was like, I didn't even know they did that. Right. So I was like, let's try this again. So I wrote an email and it was called the Holy Trinity of Copywriting Books. It was the subject line. And it got the highest open rate of anything, even higher than anything my dad had ever

written for his email list. And this unscrubbed list with thousands and thousands of names on it. And it's like a 52% open rate, right? Wow. With unscrubbed names, that was a pretty big holy, holy crud. So I told him to go by Scientific Advertising, the Robert Collierbed names, that was a pretty big, holy, holy crud. So I told them to go by scientific advertising, the Robert Collier letter book and the Boren letters that these are the three main books and everything. And so it worked again. Now I see all these people that are,

you know, that are connecting the connecting the two. And so what I was doing was I was marketing to them, but I found a marketing solution, right? Because I was walking in the shoes and I saw an opportunity. And it's kind of like, you know, I'm on your podcast. You know, I see an opportunity, you know, maybe I could sponsor and pay a fee and sponsor people's podcast. Sponsored by, you know, Halbertizing, the greatest the greatest you know copywriting mentorship program in the in the world or whatever you know you see these opportunities by being something you know by pretending you're new and trying to study copywriting right you see these opportunities that other people don't that could be a marketing solution and then i took it another step further

and i i said to people if you buy my book on editing, this is, I wrote the first book on editing sales copy ever written. And I called the people who in, I don't know if they do it in France, but in America, all these realtors leave these notepads at your door that like you can use a shopping list for with their names at the top. So it's kind of like you sit around in their kitchen. It's like leaving your business in the kitchen. They're using it all the time. And I called the people who did that. I said, can I put a black and white checklist on every page?

And they said, yeah. So I said, okay. And then I offered people who bought the book the checklist, right? So this notepad with the checklist on every page. To get that notepad, you now I've got your email address. I've also got your mailing address, right? So I can now direct mail offers as well. And so, you know, and then one of the first things that I offered everybody as a piece of advice was other top marketing books. And that what that does is so now somebody's like, you know, hey,

so now when john sells his book, or somebody's got a list of the top 10 copywriting books, they don't know it, but they're adding sales to me anyway, because I've already connected mine to those other books. Yeah. And honestly, that was so organic as well. I mean, you just added this, you know, options to sell and then, you it works it's it's amazing right yeah no it worked like a charm i i do you test a lot like do you test um ideas a lot and i test ideas but most of the ideas i'm testing are they're different because now I've evolved into testing new ideas for copywriters. So for example, when I told you, I was telling you about the story writing system. I'm just always thinking like that. And it's not like I'm always looking for an opportunity or something like that. My mind just sees these things and thinks, you know,

people say I'm a think like a marketer. So I'm always thinking in headlines or what's the pitch. That's not what I do. What, um, but my mind is always churning. So I was over at a screenwriting buddy of mine's office and we were there for, you know, to play some European board games actually. And I looked over and he had this thing called the story arc on it. And then it just hit me. I was like, that's the story arc, the natural story arc. And if I, you know, it's got the key points of their stress, of what they're looking for. So if I have a question that's designed to go to, let's say the audience or a business or whatever it is that I'm doing the story on,

to find out like, so the story arc starts with, you know, what were you doing? You know, what life was like, and this is the same thing that happens in movies. Somebody is just cruising along. They're a librarian going about their day and then boom, some, something happens, they get robbed or there's an, there's an inciting incident, right. That changes their life forever. And then they go on, they have these mounting problems. And the mounting problems come up and then

they get really, really bad. They're peak and you almost giving up and everything. And then finally you get this breakthrough and you're in the life is great phase, right? This is the, this is the pattern for most movies. There's different story arcs, but this is the general pattern of most of them. And so I was like, you know, when it comes to business, I can actually do that and I can write the questions to get the answers from people, open-ended questions. So I would go into my copy group and I'd say, okay, what were you doing before you decided to become a copywriter, right?

I'm getting the what was life before the inciting incident. And I would ask these questions out of order. So another question eventually would be, hey, what made you decide that you wanted to be a copywriter? And then it was like, how did you struggle to learn copywriting? And, you know, and what was the first breakthrough you got? What was life like after you got, you know, you knew that you no longer had to work for a living doing anything else and copywriting was going to pay the bills for you forever. And then, you know, I asked these questions out of order, and then all of a sudden you stick them,

and now you've got the whole pattern. You've got the story of your average prospect that makes them go, hey, yeah, that's me. That's right. So they're somewhere on that scale. And then when they get that, and that's where you're now talking to them talking to them and they go, oh my God, you know, he, he gets me, he understands this. This is what I was going through. And that, you know, and I don't have that story. You know, I mean, my story is different from every other copywriter in the world, including my father.

You know, I was born into it, but that's how you can get the story of your prospects. All right. And that tells the prospects that you know where they are. So along that story is also the market levels of awareness. Right. Along that arc at the beginning, they are. I'm not I don't even know what copywriting is. I am problem unaware. I discovered copywriting.

Now I need to know who do I study? That's not, you know, I'm problem aware, but not solution aware. OK, and then I started looking into all these people and I heard about these different clubs. I didn't know which ones to join, which one of the good ones. And I didn't know if I should get a mentor, if I should read these books first, if I should start handwriting ads, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, I, and then I figured that out and then I struggled to get my first clients and, you know, and then, you know, I wanted to stop going from client to client and i wanted to get to high paying clients that everybody talks about and make that a list and then you know at to make a long story short now we're at the very end and clients are calling

me and i'm turning down work left and right and have to raise my prices and you know i'm in demand and life is easy yeah it's so natural as well, because once you see, do you see patterns easily? Because what I've heard from, you know, what you were saying, it seems like you can see trends, patterns, like super easily. You can spot them. You can see like logical patterns. I took an IQ test once and it said that my strength was patterns. Yeah, I can see that. You can see a lot of patterns yeah you can that's what i feel like that you have this ability to just see patterns when people don't see them so maybe that's your superpower i i think it is i think what happens is i'll give you an example of a pattern and this will give everybody a tip too i noticed that the best postscripts in copywriting, that one of their best things that they did was they three kinds.

There's four different types of readers for your copy. So they go to your landing page. Let's suppose that it's your website. Right. And then there's the people who just scan it. They look at the headlines and look at the bullets and look at the offer and they decide to buy right then are there. There are other people who I start at the beginning and I'm going to keep reading until I feel like I can move on without missing something that would benefit my life. And then I'm going to quit. And the people who read all the way through the bottom, and then they're the people who start in and they see a subhead or something that's interesting. That's where they jump in and they continue down or they come in and they say, this might be for me. Let me go back to the top and start reading, right? The whole thing. Your PS has to attract and work with all of those. Because it's

the last, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, it's the last thing that OCD person's going to see. It is also one of the first things that person who just scans real quickly is going to see. So that is an opportunity to make them feel like they have to read your copy. So the way that the best thing to do is I created this now you can do it in many different ways. But I like to say if you have nothing else, just say remember, repeat the main benefit and then repeat your sense of sense of urgency. So remember, while I promise I can make you a much better copywriter in a shorter time than other people can, I only have room for three people left in this group. Now you're sitting there going, well, if this is true and I'm

interested, I better read this offer. If you are, I've read the whole thing, it still works and it kicks them off the fence. It works for no matter who's reading it, right? And you're putting a sense of urgency into making them read the offer if they didn't and kicking them off the fence if they read the offer and they need to do this. You're restating that sense of urgency. And so it's a great little trick. And then once you know tricks like that, you can just go, I've got a better way of putting the sense of urgency. And you don't have to use that little formula, that little template. You can actually do better than that but when you

have nothing else starting that way helps you um helps kick that off and what happened was there was another another one i'll give you the i was noticing that everybody's everybody started teaching this stuff and i hated it it was you know you know, you have to say I, and, um, you have to say you and you are four times as often as you say me and mine, right. As you talk about yourself, cause it's about the prospect. And that's true. It is about the prospect and the prospects benefit. And people start off wanting to tell you about like, you know, the, you know, I want you to know, you didn't mention my college education.

You're flipping your, your, your prospects don't give a crap about your college education. They just you know, they you know, they care about what's in it for them. They want to care that you can make them a better copywriter. They care that you can make them a better, you know, help them lose weight. They care about the results and whatever. So but when you're telling your story, I said the best. And this is a pattern I recognize in all the best ads, the I and the me were always taken on the negative and the you and the your was the positive. And you took them from a place that was worse than they are to a place that was better than they dare dreamed.

So you say, you know, I was so worried about my business. I had borrowed money from the in-laws. And I knew that I did the calculations. And if the business didn't start becoming profitable within a month, I was going to have to file bankruptcy. And I didn't know how to tell my wife that. My in-laws were going to probably hold it against me for the rest of my life. And I needed a Hail Mary situation. And I didn't know what to do. And so I thought, why not give it a last shot?

And I did something radically new. And that's when I discovered this ad writing system that will help your business get more, so many, so many customers that you may have to actually in the meat, turn business away and maybe even send them to your competitors because you can't handle it all until you open up another business, another, you know, another chain. And so, but you see how I switched from the, I saw the negative and then I gave you all that, right? And so I was like, that's what I saw a lot happening in a lot of the best ads. So I developed that system and I started teaching that to some of the best copywriters in the world. And they're like, oh, I never thought of that. That's brilliant. And I started seeing it in their systems. So when I say I was teaching

these, these are my friends. They call me up, like people who are top copywriters for big companies themselves that they own, Anagora, they'll call me up and say, can I read some copy to you and get your opinion on this? And I'll say, you know, this is great, but here's two changes I'd make. And they go, oh yeah, that's really good. And, um, you know, and it's just, and it, because it's a gut feeling, it is, it is, I'm very quick to say, if I was this housewife, this is what I would call, I would say is bullshit. And I wouldn't believe it. If I was housewife, this is what I would call, I would say is bullshit. And I wouldn't believe it. If I was a housewife, this is what would mean a lot more to me. And so it doesn't, you know, cause if you study and you're curious and you're interested in people, you start to understand all kinds of

different people. And I'll tell you, that's what made my dad so good. Most of the people in the great copywriters could sell one type of person, but even if they were better, they could sell to one type of prospect. They could only sell to middle-aged men who were self-made and entrepreneurs who hated paying taxes, or they could only sell to women who were insecure about their beauty and needed skin creams and other products and stuff like that. They couldn't sell to the other prospects. My dad was interested in knowing how everybody worked and thought and how, what made them tick. So he could sell to, you know, young women, middle-aged men, entrepreneurs, people who worked for a living, you know, just everybody. And it's because he,

he had the interest in that. And it's, you know, and to get that, you have to have, you have to have, uh, you have to be interested in people. And so the more interested you are in your prospects and the more eager you are to help them and to solve problems for them and stuff like that, the better your offers are and the easier it is to write that message. Because like I said earlier, it doesn't have to be that entertaining and clever. Thank you so much, Bond. My camera's going to die, so I need to wrap up this session. But it was so lovely to have you.

It's such an honor to have you on the show. And thank you so much for sharing all the knowledge. Can you just tell us, the listeners, just very quickly where they can find you? When is your book coming out? Just all that information. Well, the next one, I don when is your book is coming out just all that information um well the next one i don't know where it's coming out there's two of them that are finished right now are being proofread um and those are going to be on amazon but you can reach and you

can find out more about me at bond halbert.com and the other one is you can go on face if you're on facebook join our facebook group called the Gary Halbert Copy Club. And if you mention this podcast, I'll make sure you get in because we don't. We're pretty exclusive, actually. We are now like accepting like one out of 10 people who apply to get in. That's awesome. I'm in your group, by the way. Oh, I'm glad you are.

I joined like I think two years ago, like after I read the board letters, I immediately hopped in the group. So great. Yeah, I've been there. Thank you so much again for your time. It was lovely to chat with you. And thanks for all the tips. I think I'm just going to go back to the video as well

and just review over and over. Okay. Thank you so much, Bon. Thanks. So have a nice day. You too. Bye-bye. Bye. So have a nice day. You too. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.