A few weeks ago, copywriter Tom Baines wrote me to say:
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Anyway, I’m excited for your new book, and here’s an interesting tabloidy factoid you may already be aware of: Dan Ferarri and Ning Li have both talked openly about how they first connected in a pickup artist subreddit, where Dan initially mentored Ning as a pick-up artist before eventually bringing him over into copywriting and helping him build his career here… I think it’s a fun little overlap.
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I’m sharing this as a bit of gossip in case you have connections to the copywriting industry. Ning and Dan are both well-known figures there. I never knew the background of how they met, even though I was in Dan’s small and intimate coaching program 5+ years ago.
Beyond gossip, anything worthwhile here?
I heard direct marketing legend Dan Kennedy say on multiple occasions how the top copywriters he knows all have years of “nose to nose, toes to toes” sales experience. And if you look at the famousest copywriters, from Claude Hopkins to Gary Halbert on down to Dan Kennedy himself, all started out in direct or door-to-door sales.
But I think today the “nose to nose, toes to toes” connection has weakened, in large part because door-to-door sales has become a much rarer endeavor.
On the other hand, I know more successful copywriters who have experience with pickup than I can count on my two hands and 10 sticky fingers.
In part, that’s because equivalent social shifts — things like the Internet — which caused d2d selling to drop have also made info about pickup and seduction available to a large pool of eager men.
But it’s more than that.
There are ideas, skills, and attitudes that translate from pickup to copywriting, and vice versa, same as from copy to d2d sales, and vice versa.
All to say:
1. You might have valuable skills and experiences you are not aware of right now.
2. If you want to find out some of the connections between copywriting and d2d sales and pickup, and also seemingly unrelated but deeply connected fields like hypnosis and stage magic and standup comedy, then you might like: