Feelings of entitlement may signal copywriting potential

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Today I read a viral pop-science article that made my head spin. The article reported research from Stanford University. The research consisted of two parts.

In the first part, the scientists tested a bunch of people to see whether those people were prone to feelings of guilt.

In the second part, the scientists had those same people interact in group settings, like planning a marketing campaign.

And get this:

The scientists found that the people who tested the most guilt-prone… were also voted as being the most leader-like. That’s according to the other participants in the study.

The underlying message of this research was clear:

If you yourself get burdened with deep guilt from time to time, there might be hope for you yet. In fact, it might be a sign that you secret talents – maybe even a purpose, a mission — that you just aren’t aware of yet.

Inspiring, right? No wonder this article went viral, with billions of upvotes and trillions of comments.

Aye, but here’s the rubbety rub:

The Stanford scientists didn’t just test whether subjects were guilt-prone or not. Instead, they actually tested whether subjects were more prone to either guilt… or to shame.

Guilt? Shame?

Maybe you’re not sure what distinction there is between those two. I wasn’t sure. But the Stanford scientists have their own definitions of the two terms.

Guilt is proactive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to make amends.

Shame is passive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to hide and not be seen.

Aaahhh…

So it turns out this inspiring Stanford study was really a bit of clever categorization and reframing. The article I read was titled, “Feelings of Guilt May Signal Leadership Potential.” But really, it could have been more honestly titled, “Proactive Behaviors May Signal Leadership Potential.”

But whatever. This article cannot in any way help us with persuasion and influence. So let’s just drop it.

And in entirely unrelated news, let me pay off today’s subject line:

Perhaps you sometimes catch a sneaking sense of entitlement coming over you.

​​Perhaps you get angry when you cannot get what you want… or you feel you are special and should not have to accept normal constraints… or you cannot discipline yourself to complete boring or routine tasks… or you become easily frustrated… or you have trouble giving up immediate gratification to reach a long-term goal.

All those might sound like very negative behaviors and thought patterns, ones that are destined to keep you from success.

But what if I told you that feelings of entitlement might actually signal copywriting potential?

The missing thing you might not have realized is that there are two related but actually distinct states.

One is entitlement. Entitlement is thinking you are better than others, and is rooted in a sensitivity to outside stimula, to social cues and responses, as well as to your own internal states and your place in the world.

The other is arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you are better than others, but is based in dullness and a lack of sensitivity, both to outside and inner sensations.

And that’s why arrogant people cannot make for good copywriters. They are not interested enough in observing the world, in how others behave and react, in what it all means.

On the other hand, entitled people, well, their sensitivity actually predisposes them to become immensely successful as copywriters.

I won’t name names here, but when I look at some of the most successful people in the direct response industry, both now and in the past, I suspect they felt a strong, even dominant sense of entitlement. Even if they appeared to be modest, self-effacing, humble people.

All right, let’s wrap up this pop science article.

Final words:​​

In case you are trying to make it as a copywriter, and you’re wondering where to start, then here’s a resource that may help you make the most of your latent copywriting potential:

​​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The sales secret of Man on Wire

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Last night, in a desperate hunt for a movie to watch, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes 100% Club. That’s a list of some 370 movies that have had uniformly positive reviews — a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

This led me to Man On Wire, a 2008 documentary about a man named Philippe Petit. In case you haven’t seen this movie, the gist is:

Petit was a tightrope walker. And obsessive.

Back in 1968, when he was just 18 years old, Petit hit upon the idea of walking on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Problem:

The towers hadn’t been built yet. So Petit spent the next six years scheming, practicing, and waiting in preparation for his audacious August 7, 1974 walk between The South and North Towers, which lasted 45 minutes.

But here’s a question that maybe immediately pops into your head, as it did into mine when I heard about this stunt:

How exactly do you stretch a wire across the two towers? The wire weighed 200 kilograms, or about 450 lbs. Petit was doing his setup clandestinely, in the middle of the night, while hiding from security guards, so helicopters and cranes were out of the question.

So what the hell do you do?
​​
​​You can’t just hoist the wire up from the ground — it’s a 400 meter drop (over 1,300 feet). You can’t just toss the heavy wire across the 40 meters (130 feet) that separate the corners of the two towers.

A hint comes early in the movie.

You see a silhouette of a man packing things into a bag. It’s supposed to represent Petit.

Along with other unrecognizable equipment, the silhouette gives away something familiar — an arrow.

The fact is, one of Petit’s henchmen shot an arrow with a bow from one tower to the another. And that arrow had a fishing line attached to the end of it.

They used that first fishing line to pull across a slightly sturdier string.

Then they used that string to pull across a strong rope.

And finally, they used the rope to pull across the actual wire, which like I said, weighed as much as an adult melon-headed whale.

Maybe see where I’m going with this.

Because when I saw this in the movie, a lightbulb went off in my head.

“I know this technique!” I shouted in the darkness.

But not from tightrope walking. I know this technique from sales. I first read about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. Gary called it one of the “the most powerful master strategies I ever learned.”

You can find the explanation of this sales technique below. But not just that.

You can also find lots of inspiring personal stuff about Gary at the page below. Such as for example, that for a long time, Gary was such a bad copywriter that he considered giving up and becoming a mailman. He even went to the post office to pick up a job application.

The only reason Gary stuck with copywriting, the only reason he persevered and eventually became so successful, the only reason we know of him today, was that he was told at the post office that they are not hiring at the moment, and when they do start hiring again, thousands of prior applicants will be ahead of Gary in line.

So Gary stuck with copywriting and marketing.
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And one of the biggest things that Gary learned in the years that followed, and used in all his copy and marketing, from his sales letters to his olive oil business, was this “Man On Wire” sales technique. In case you are interested:

http://marketingbullets.com/bullet-15/

Blackjack positioning

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Al Ries and Jack Trout invented the term positioning. They then wrote a book with that title. In it, they say positioning is a hook in your prospect’s brain from which you can hang your product.

Fine. That’s once you’ve got an established position.

But how do you get that hook in your prospect’s brain? Throwing a clothes hanger at somebody’s head will only make it bounce off.

What you need instead is a spear. Something with a very small, very sharp point, which can pierce your prospect’s thick defenses (his skull) and lodge in the soft gray matter inside.

When people talk about positioning, they often talk about taking control of a part of the market. “We want to be the Apple of dog nail clippers.” Meaning, we only want a sliver of that market that’s willing to spend like crazy.

That’s one way to do positioning.

This is the flip side. Instead of thinking about cutting down your market… think about cutting down your product and its functionality.

Once upon a time, Perry Marshall was an experienced and capable online marketer. But that’s a floppy, blunt object, incapable of piercing any skull.

So Perry dropped all his copywriting knowledge… funnel building knowledge… positioning knowledge… and became “The AdWords Guy.” At least to people who had never heard of him before. His business exploded, way beyond his previous success.

Because it can be easier to sell a fragment of the thing rather than the whole. At the same price. Or even for more.

Many people rebel at this. No wonder. Our minds work additively. If you have A plus B plus C, then that’s worth at least as much as A alone, right?

Not in positioning.

Positioning math is more like blackjack. You know how the game goes. You keep getting cards, trying to get as close as possible to 21. But if you ever go over, you’re BUST. You lose.

Same thing with positioning. Keep adding ideas to your position, and you will go BUST. You will lose. And you don’t need to go over 21 ideas either.

So swallow your pride — or fight your client’s pride. The dealer will offer to deal you more cards. Wave him off. One, sharp, deadly idea. No more.

And now a confession:

I used to have a daily email newsletter on copywriting, marketing, and persuasion. No more. From now on, it’s a newsletter on positioning. For today only. Click here to subscribe.

My best advice for beginner copywriters

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If you are a diligent reader of this newsletter, you will know I have been studying Spanish for the past few months.

So far, one of the best resources I’ve discovered is a YouTube channel, Español con Juan.

The Juan of “Español con Juan” is a Spanish teacher at University College London. He’s very likeable and funny. In his videos, he mostly makes stuff up and jokes around, but then he also sneaks in some actual Spanish language lessons when you’re not looking.

Juan usually only makes videos directed at language learners.

But once, he made a video of advice for Spanish teachers. It had five pieces of advice, including:

* Carry around a ruler (it’s a symbol of authority)

* Laugh at students (they will never make the same mistake twice)

* Line up the chairs correctly (students should not be facing each other but should be facing you — you are the star of the class)

Inspired by this video, I decided to do something equally helpful for beginner copywriters. Here goes:

1. Once you know “features vs. benefits” and AIDA, you’ve learned 99% of that’s worth learning from others. The rest is just practice. Copywriting is common sense, and inspiration comes from within.

2. If you really do want to learn something more, make sure you only look at courses and books that came out in the last ~2 years. Recent trainings like this have will have the newest secrets that haven’t been widely published yet. Everything older than ~2 years is too old hat, and the market has adapted to it.

3. The best thing you can do to attract new copywriting clients is to sharpen your copywriting skills.

4. The r/copywriting subreddit is a great place to learn copywriting and mingle with real, successful copywriters.

5. “Date around” as much as possible with different copywriting clients. A new client is always more exciting and potentially much more profitable than a past or present client.

6. The second-best way to attract copywriting clients is to go around asking, “How do you get copywriting clients?” And to keep asking it. Never stop asking.

7. Likewise, never stop studying. There’s always more to learn, and until you have learned it all, it’s best not to try anything in practice.

8. Do not start an email newsletter before you are ready! You could be inadvertently showing off your lack of skill and experience to clients who might hire you otherwise.

9. You are a copywriter. Industry rates start at $300/sales email, $10k/sales letter. Also, you are entitled to get paid royalties, because you’re the one bringing in the sales.

10. If you are unknown, particularly if you have no skills or experience, then make business owners a risk-free offer. For example, tell them you will charge them nothing upfront if they they test out your copy with paid traffic, or in place of a piece of copy which is currently making them money. The offer is, you only get paid if your copy converts, and if it doesn’t, it’s still a learning experience for you both. Win-win!

So that’s my advice. Follow it at your own risk.

But if you’re feeling a little suspicious, if you have some doubts I’m being genuine, if you wonder if this is really the best advice I can give you, then let me point you to a second set of 10 recommendations for copywriters. They apply equally whether you are a beginner or intermediate or advanced. You can find them here:

​​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So stubborn they can’t ignore you

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Yesterday, I spent an hour on Google, trying and failing to find good affiliate health offers to promote for my new health list.

Sure, there are millions of “Bates Motel” health offers out there. They will gladly pay you a large commission if you send a gullible victim their way.

There are also millions of worthwhile health offers out there. But they either have no affiliate program, or they demand that you have a list of ~2M names if you want to become their affiliate.

On the other hand:

Last week, I found myself participating in a “JV Mixer”.

This was an affiliate deal-making event. It was in the Internet marketing and personal development niches, but I’m sure equal things exist in the health space.

This JV mixer consisted of people with 7-, 8-, and possibly 9-figure businesses, including big names that I recognized, all pitching themselves and trying to make their best case for attracting new affiliates to promote their stuff.

My point being, it’s surprisingly hard to find good affiliate offers to promote, at least if you’re starting out. On the other hand, there are big and hungry businesses who can’t find enough affiliates to promote their offers.

See the strange contradiction there?

It’s actually the same thing with copywriting clients.

When I got started as a freelance copywriter, I heard that businesses are starving for copywriters. Business want to throw money at copywriters. But businesses don’t know where to find copywriters to throw money at, or there are just not enough copywriters around who want money thrown at them.

Maybe you’ve heard the same claim. And if you’re a freelance copywriter, maybe you’ve been around long enough to call BS.

And why not? I mean, I got decent copywriting work in those first few years. But I never once saw a desperate business owner, running down the street, grabbing random passersby and pleading, “Are you a copywriter? God I need a copywriter right now! If only I knew where to find a copywriter!”

But as I’ve written before, I eventually discovered that yes, that incredible claim really is true.

I discovered it when I suddenly became to go-to guy for a specific format of copy (VSLs) in a very specific niche (real estate investing). It turned out there really are dozens of business owners, running successful businesses, ready to throw money at a good copywriter, if only they could find one. Fortunately, they found me.

So then the question becomes:

How do you go from one to the other? How do you go from being a scrub searching for affiliate offers on Google… to being part of JV mixers where owners of multi-million businesses try to recruit you as an affiliate?

How do you go from being a starving copywriter mass-applying to jobs on Upwork… to sitting back, and having potential clients emailing you every day, and asking politely if you have some time to talk to them?

There are tricks and tactics to do it. Some are common sense.

Some you can pay for.

Some you can extract from your own experience, if you’ve gone down this road before, like I have in my freelance copywriting career, and now in my marketing and copywriting influencer career.

But the thing is, all those tricks and tactics are secondary.

Because there is just one primary resource if you want to go from scrub to success, from starving to satisfied.

This resource is very plain. Very unsexy. And it’s lying all around you.

But with this resource, you can do without any tricks and tactics.

On the other hand, without this resource, no tricks and tactics will help you.

I’m talking about time. Simple stubbornness. Still being at it tomorrow, and the next month, and in a year from now.

Which is why, if you ask me, it’s not worth even starting a new project if you’re not okay with still being at it in two-three years’ time.

All right, so much for my plea for stubbornness. For today, at least. Tomorrow, I will be back at it, with another daily email.

In case you think if you think my years of experience working with 7- and 8-figure direct response businesses could be valuable for you… you can sign up to my daily emails by clicking here.

 

 

The career-ending consequences of working with bad prospects

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In an email a few months ago, I recommended illusionist Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. That’s because the book gives you 90%-of-what-you-need-to-know summaries of persuasion topics like magic, cold reading, hypnosis, and NLP.

But there’s more to this book.

For example, there’s one scary but instructive story in Brown’s book that sticks out in my mind. It’s not really about any of those persuasion topics, but about dealing with prospects, particularly bad prospects.

The story starts out back in the day, when Derrren Brown used to perform stage hypnosis at universities.

Brown is English and he performed in England. So it’s little wonder that during one show, a very drunk university girl stumbled to the stage to take part in Brown’s hypnosis act.

Brown quickly realized the girl is sloshed. He told her to go back to her seat, because he knew drunk people make poor hypnosis subjects. The girl grumbled and cursed but did as she was told.

Later, Brown was called over the PA. The girl was found unconscious somewhere. An ambulance had been called.

Even though Brown had in no way hypnotized the girl, he was told by university staff to try to awaken her as if she had been in a trance.

Brown gave it his best shot, putting on an act to appease the people around him. Unsurprisingly, his dehypnosis had no effect on the unconscious girl.

The girl was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital. There she had her stomach pumped. She almost died.

Of course, she had had way much too much to drink, and that’s why she had passed out.

Now here’s the scary question that Brown ponders in Tricks of the Mind:

Had the girl really died, would Brown and his stage hypnosis be blamed? After all, when the girl was found unconscious, it was assumed Brown’s dark arts might have had something to do with it.

And if that’s the case, then how much worse would things be if Brown had allowed the drunk girl to actually participate in the stage show?

Would he have had to deal with police inquiries… with bitter lawsuits from the girl’s family… with denunciations in the press? Would his act, his career, and maybe his name be ruined, possibly forever?

I think the point stands whether you do stage hypnosis, or hawk info products, or just sell yourself and your services.

And the point is to know which characteristics make a bad prospect — or subject — for whatever it is you do. And when you spot a prospect with any such characteristics, the point is to tell this guy or gal, without regret or malice, to go back to their seat, and to get far away from you.

Of course you don’t have to take my advice. And you don’t have to learn anything from the Derren Brown story above.

You can learn from your own experiences if you want to.

As for me, I’ve long ago decided on strict criteria for prospective clients, customers, and even prospects. If you’d like to see some of those criteria, you can get started by signing up for my daily email newsletter.

“What will cause your death — and when?”

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Serious students of direct response advertising will know the following famous and shocking headline:

“READ THIS OR DIE”

This headline appeared on a Phillips Publishing bookalog back in the early 2000s. It supposedly got Phillips more than 100k new subscribers at $39 a year.

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“Today you have a 95 percent chance of dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure somewhere on the planet.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

“Read this or die” was written by Jim Rutz. Rutz himself was a serious student of direct response advertising.

So is it possible that Rutz, though he was famous for being off-the-wall, creative, and unique-sounding, actually swiped his famous ad?

I would say it’s certainly possible.

Because I am yet another serious student of direct response advertising. And today I found an old ad, from 1926, which reads exactly like Rutz’s “Read this or die” ad. The headline of that 1926 ad runs:

“What will cause your death — and when?”

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“If you value your health and life here are some facts that will shock you into thinking more about your body. it is almost beyond belief, yet true, that eight hundred thousand people die in the United States every year of preventable disease.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

The offer at the end of this ad was the Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, a massive book in six volumes, which sold for $600 in today’s money.

The Encyclopedia was sold with many different ads, but I only found one instance of “What will cause your death — and when?” online.

Maybe the ad ran in many places, but only one of these is archived online.

It’s also possible that the ad only ran once in this exact form.

In any case, a few things are sure:

1. The Encyclopedia of Physical Culture sold out at least 8 editions between 1911 and 1928…

2, ​​Bernarr MacFadden, the author of the Encyclopedia, was worth $30 million as a result of his publishing activities (around half a billion in today’s money)…

3. ​The Encyclopedia was read broadly by generations of impressionable young men, and ended up a huge influence on America’s ongoing obsession with diet, health, and fitness.

All of which is to say:

That “What will cause your death” ad might be worth reading. Assuming, that is, that you’ve got an ongoing obsession with seeing what makes people tick… what they want to become… and what they are willing to pay for, at least when it comes to their health.

In case you are interested, you can see the entire ad at the link below. Before you click away, you might want to sign up to my newsletter here. Now here’s the ad:

https://bejakovic.com/what-will-cause-your-death

The biggest egos in the world

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One morning in 1985, actor Val Kilmer staggered to his bathroom and got ready to shave. He squinted because of how sleepy he still was. But then he spotted something in the mirror that shocked him awake.

In the middle of Kilmer’s chest a perfectly round bruise, the size of a 50-cent piece.

“I didn’t drink,” Kilmer said to himself. “I didn’t fall during the night. What could stab me like this in the chest?”

After a moment, the realization hit him.

The night prior, Kilmer had gone out partying with a bunch of Navy pilots. He was about to start shooting Top Gun, and he was trying to get into the role of Iceman.

The real Navy fighter pilots liked Kilmer a lot.

“You’re the actor that we’re most like,” they kept yelling the whole night. “You got good hair!”

And each time the fighter pilots said this, they emphasized their point by stabbing their fingers into the middle of Kilmer’s chest. That’s how he got the bruise.

Kilmer later said,

“The only egos bigger than actors are rock stars. And the only people beyond that are fighter pilots. They have the biggest egos on the planet.”

My point being, in spite of how it might look in the insular direct response world, email copywriters do not have the biggest egos in the world. Likewise, copywriting and marketing newsletters, podcasts, and books are not the most valuable things to read and study if you want valuable ideas, stories, and inspiration.

I recently made a list of 10 sources where I get ideas for my daily emails.

Most of these sources were predictable, or I had written about them already in emails prior.

But there was one source that I haven’t really talked about much.

And that’s analyses, documentaries, and original material about entertainment I love. Analyses and background info on Looney Tunes cartoons… William Goldman screenplays… Farside comics… and of course, Top Gun. For example, The Val Kilmer story above came from Danger Zone, a feature-length documentary about making of Top Gun.

So that’s my advice for you for today:

Think about your favorite movies, books, TV shows. Read about how they were made, or track down a documentary that saves you from reading.

You will get great ideas you can apply to your business, and in the most enjoyable format, since you will be digging into something you love.

And if you happen to love Top Gun:

I can’t recommend that Danger Zone documentary enough. It’s fascinating, and not just if you are a die-hard Top Gun fan. The documentary shows how complex it is to produce an hour and a half of seamless entertainment… how many specialists are involved… how much thinking lies behind seemingly simple decisions… how many layers of persuasion go into even a jockish, commercial, fantasy flick like Top Gun.

In case you are interested, you can find Danger Zone on YouTube in two parts. Here’s part 1:

The trouble with selling prostitute interviews you gave away for free

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About six months ago, I wrote an email about a prurient new obsession I had developed with the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly.

Soft White Underbelly features thousands of in-depth interviews with people on the outside of mainstream society:

Drug addicts… homeless people… prostitutes… escorts… child abuse victims… inbred Appalachian families… gang members… a high-level mob boss… a strychnine-drinking Pentecostal preacher… a conman who ran real-estate frauds totaling in the tens of millions of dollars.

Then, a couple days ago, I read that YouTube had demonetized Soft White Underbelly.

​​SFU videos are still available to watch on YouTube. But they won’t come with any ads, and so they won’t make any money for Mark Laita, the photographer behind the Soft White Underbelly channel.

I tried to do some back-of-the-envelope math for how much money that actually was.

Over the past 30 days, Soft White Underbelly had a bit more than 12M views. Using the low-end rate of $3/1k YouTube views, that comes out to $36,000 over those 30 days, or about $430k per year.

That’s a sizeable chunk of cash to disappear from one day to the next.

My point?

I guess I could tell you the same old story, one you’ve probably heard a million times before:

Don’t rely on anybody else’s platform. Have your own platform — such as an email list — which you control.

The trouble is, Mark Laita already has that. He has his own site, where you can subscribe for $8/month to get all that stuff that’s on YouTube, plus some “exclusive content” in the form of more videos exactly like the stuff that’s on YouTube.

The welcome video to the SFU YouTube channel invites you to subscribe on the paid site. And in that video about being demonetized, Mark also tells people who can afford to do so to get the paid subscription.

Will that replace the income from YouTube?

I have my doubts, for several reasons. The most important reason is this:

It’s hard to sell the exact same thing you’re giving away for free. It’s even harder to sell it there’s a bunch of your free stuff still lying around.

That’s just human nature.

Laziness. Entitlement. Plus, a bit of common sense. If there are already thousands of prurient Soft White Underbelly videos on YouTube, most of which I haven’t watched, why should I pay to get a few more each month?

But here’s what I would tell Mark Laita, and maybe you, if you’re in a similar situation:

This is not really a big problem.

Because it’s easy to sell a slightly different thing to what you’re giving away for free. You can even sell almost the exact same thing, only renamed and repackaged in a sexy way.

So for example, Mark Laita has thousands of video interviews. Instead of selling more of the same, he could repackage some of that content in a different ways:

* He could sell a coffee table book of photography — stills from his videos. (He already has these photos in the videos themselves.)

* He could sell transcripts, packaged up as fancy printed books, or low-end kindle ebooks.

* He could create “themed documentaries” which are really his different videos pasted together. The effect of absentee fathers… the drug scene in east LA… massage parlor confessions.

Of course, there are also many other things Mark could sell congruently on the back end of his YouTube Channel. The above are just a few ideas for things he could sell with practically no additional thought or work.

So like I said, that’s my advice for you too, in case you create a lot of content, which isn’t making you money direct now.

Take that free content, repacakge it, rename it, and stick a (preferably large) price tag on it.

People will buy it, and get value out of it, even if you gave it away for free before.

Of course, maybe you are too close to your own content to see how it could be repackaged or renamed in the most sexy and profitable way. You might be able to find some good ideas on that in my free daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up for it.

What I learned from copywriting

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Copywriting pays for my food, my rent, and my collection of black t-shirts.

Copywriting allows me to work on a Saturday, if I so choose, and skip Monday through Wednesday.

Copywriting has put me in touch with multimillionaires and even one billionaire.

It’s exposed me to strange new worlds, such as beekeping, billboard wholesaling, and penis enlargement.

But all that is kids’ stuff. Where copywriting really impacted me, where it changed me in ways I didn’t expect, is the following:

A. It taught me to read.

David Deutsch said, “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t read 50 books one time each; I would read 10 books five times each.”

Other famous copywriters say the same.

So I reread books now. And I find mucho stuff in there that I didn’t see before. My brain changed in the meantime.

Also when I read, I’m much more careful. I keep stopping to ask myself, “Is this interesting? New? Useful? Could it be useful if I combined it with something else I’d read?” It’s slow and it’s work. But it’s a better use of my time than flying through text and not getting anything out of it.

B. It gave me a real acceptance of the moist robot hypothesis.

Scott Adams says we are all “moist robots”:

“Humans are wet robots that respond to programming. If you aren’t intentionally programming yourself, the environment and other people are doing it for you.”

This sounded outlandish when I first heard it… then amusing… then interesting… then believable… then obvious. Copywriting provided me with plenty of real-life examples. There might be something more inside of us, some capacity for experience and reflection… but most of what we do is moist robot.

C. It exposed me to the Gene Schwartz sophistication/awareness models.

This is so valuable whether you’re writing copy or doing any other kind of communicating. It can be summed up with the idea of starting where your reader/prospect/adversary is… But how do you do that? Schwartz’s models tell you exactly.

D. It taught me the low value of secrets.

And also the low value of supplements. And the low value of opportunities. In general, through copywriting, I’ve developed a suspicion of anything new being advertised for sale.

E. It taught me the enduring power of listicles.

For getting attention. Not necessarily valuable attention. Which is why I used the headline “What I learned from copywriting” instead of “5 things I learned from copywriting.” As Mark Ford said recently:

“If you want to get cheap readership, listicles are great. But they don’t do a good job selling anything, or getting serious attention, or creating a fan out of the reader, especially at higher price points.”

F. It taught me how to get rich.

I’m not sure if I ever will be rich. But I might.

Through copywriting, I’ve had an amazing business education. I’ve gotten to look behind the curtain at dozens of successful enterprises. I’ve found out exactly how they get their customers… what they sell to these customers… and how they keep selling more.

Maybe one day, I’ll turn that knowledge into actual success. Speaking of which, let me repeat something I wrote a few months back:

​​”Perhaps success is simply about choosing a field where you don’t mind getting better. Where the daily work is something you find enjoyable enough — or at least, not too repulsive — so you can continue to get better at it day after day.”

Copywriting is not my passion. I don’t have any passions.

But I don’t mind the daily work, and sometimes I even find it enjoyable. And that’s something I never thought would happen.

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