Copywriting

How living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills

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A few days ago, I came across a trending science article with the headline:

“These cancer cells wake up when people sleep”

From what my zero-biology-classes-in-college brain could understand, researchers have made an important new discovery.

Cancer cells in one part of the body are most likely to spread to other parts of the body — a dangerous process called metastasis — while we sleep.

In other words, sleep — usually a good thing – suddenly becomes threatening and dangerous if you have cancer.

I guess this is big news in the science community and might lead to new ways to stop cancer from metastasizing.

But I’m not part of the science community. I’m part of the direct response copywriting community.

And so I mused that, were I in the business of selling important new health information, like Boardroom used to do, I might sell this breakthrough research with a provocative headline:

“How living next to train tracks can stop cancer”

The reason I thought this immediately was because the above science story reminded me of what I think is the greatest bullet of all time:

“How a pickpocket can cure your back pain”

That bullet was written by A-list copywriter David Deutsch in control package for Boardroom, back in the 2000s. David’s brilliant bullet has a clever underlying structure, which I modeled for my would-be headline/bullet above.

Perhaps you can parse exactly what I did with my bullet above. Or perhaps you know the story behind David’s bullet and therefore don’t need to parse what I did.

But if not, you can find the background of David’s bullet, including a breakdown of his clever technique, in Round 10A of my Copy Riddles program.

But let me put it this way:

Living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills.

Because enrollment for Copy Riddles closes later today, at 12 midnight PST.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and if you’re sleeping fitfully when the deadline hits, you will miss the enrollment window, and you will have to wait who-knows-how-long to enroll and find out the secret (and more importantly, the copywriting lesson) behind David’s bullet.

So trains rumbling outside your window might actually be a good thing in this case.

On the other hand, if you got no rumbling trains to count on, then you can always sign up now, while you’re still awake and while your mind is fresh and on it. Here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/

How I’m manipulating you again by telling you the truth

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Came a curious question yesterday, in response to my email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.” Reader Jan wrote:

Hi John,

I’ve been reading your emails for a while now and I really enjoy them.

I’d love to know what’s your stance on actively mentioning downsides and what a certain offer is NOT/whom it’s NOT for in order to disqualify the wrong buyers.

This email sounds like you’re not really a fan of it, which surprises me a bit. Maybe I misunderstood something about it.

I would appreciate it a lot if you could clarify that.

At first I found myself flummoxed.

After all, this question came in response to an email in which I actively gave a potential buyer reasons why my Copy Riddles program might not be right for him.

But then my slow, tortoise-like brain struggled forward a few inches. And I remembered the “disqualification” I gave to the potential buyer in yesterday’s email.

I said that Copy Riddles is not for anyone who’s not willing to “poke, prod, jolt, shock, creep out, and unsettle people.” Because my claim is that copywriting is about:

1) Stripping out details that don’t help your case (ie. not telling the whole truth), and

2) Using reliable ways to get people more amped up than they would be normally.

So is this in flagrant conflict with the practice of actively mentioning downsides or disqualifying the wrong buyers?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that.

Now, I hate to do what I’m about to do to you.

But get ready for a bit of hard teaching, because I don’t know how else to deal with this question right now.

During my Most Valuable Email presentation last week, I talked about what I call frontloading. I used a Ben Settle email to illustrate:

And it contains the exact same methods I used to land high-paying clients who could have easily afforded to hire better and more seasoned writers. But, using my sneaky ways, they not only hired me… they hired only me (often multiple times, plus referring me to their friends), without doing the usual client-copywriter dance around price, without jumping through hoops to sell myself, and without even showing them my portfolio, in most cases.

I used this info during good and bad economic times.

In fact, I got more high paying clients during the bad times (2008-2010) than the good times.

I cannot guarantee you will have the same results.

And the methodology doesn’t work overnight.

But, that’s how it worked out in my case, and this book shows you what I did.

Frontloading is when you make a powerful, extreme promise. Then you qualify your promise. But the big, extreme, initial promise still keeps ringing in your prospect’s head.

Ben is a past master at this, as you can see in the snippet above.

Sure, he actively mentions some downsides to make his offers sound legit. But he does it after he’s thourougly amped up his readers with an irresistible promise, which might sound too good to be true — were it not for those downsides.

And by the way:

I’m not in any way criticizing Ben. All I’m saying is, he’s a serious student of direct response copywriting… and he knows what works.

And what works is what I tried to explain, perhaps clumsily, in my email yesterday:

1. Controlling your reader’s attention, and

2. Arousing his emotions in an almost unnatural way

Of course, you can do this to rope in people who are a bad fit for your offers. That’s dumb if you ask me.

You can also do it to turn good prospects into buyers. That’s smart, and it’s what Ben does every day.

And now:

I have an amazing offer for you… a new way to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe.

Some of the smartest and most successful marketers of all time, Ben Settle among them, have endorsed the approach that this offer is built on.

But the thing is, my offer does cost money.

And it’s gonna require work. Every weekday. For 8 weeks straight.

And it might even make your head hurt a bit once or twice.

But if none of those downsides turn you off, you might be a good prospect for my offer. It’s called Copy Riddles. To take me up on it:

https://copyriddles.com/

Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?

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Last night, I sent out an email vaguely threatening you with a bunch of upcoming emails to promote my Copy Riddles program, which is now open for enrollment until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

After I sent that email out, I slumped in my chair and hung my head.

“Great, now what?” I said. “Where am I gonna get all those emails? Who’s gonna write all that stuff I threatened them with?”

Beyond the one half-finished Copy Riddles email I had written during my Most Valuable Email presentation, I had nothing.

But then a desperate idea hit me. “I have that useless diploma from the Oregon School of Manifestation… why don’t I apply what they taught me?”

So I closed my eyes, put my fingers to my temples, and started to massage slowly, while sending out vibrations of easily-written emails into the universe.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my AOL account suddenly said.

Well, not really. I don’t use AOL. But I did get an email, just a few minutes after I wished for some easy help.

The email came from Ben Settle, and the subject line read:

“Advice to a new Agora copywriter”

This email of Ben’s is full of uncharacteristically detailed and forthcoming advice. If you’re on Ben’s list, it might be interesting to read. I will highlight just one bit, because it serves my purposes here.

A new Agora copywriter wrote in to ask Ben’s opinion on a bunch of stuff, including that bullets aren’t at all important any more.

To which Ben responded:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Now I’d like to think Ben wrote this specifically at this moment, just to help me out with promoting Copy Riddles.

After all, the first basic premise behind Copy Riddles is that once you own the skill of writing bullets, you own the essence of intriguing, irresistible copywriting, no matter what format you write in.

The fundamental ideas inside Copy Riddles apply whether you are writing bullets… headlines… subject lines… body copy of sales letters and VSLs… ads… or emails.

In fact, I think Copy Riddles ideas transfer directly if you are writing sales emails, and not just in subject lines. I’ve even made the claim before that sales emails are basically the modern version of “expanded” bullets.

So that’s the first premise behind Copy Riddles.

The second premise is that you go further and faster by doing and experiencing… than by reading/listening/watching and then forgetting.

That’s why Copy Riddles is built around a unique, effective, and, I modestly think, clever mechanism. The mechanism gets those bullets lodged into your head, not just as a bunch of how-to information, but as a skill that you own.

But don’t take it from me. Since we are speaking of new Agora copywriters, a junior Agora copywriter named Harry Thomas went through Copy Riddles during the last run. And he had this to say:

“Honestly, John’s course is brilliant. While the content is bullets-centred, everything inside can be applied to other aspects of copy. Whenever I’m choosing endo subject lines or writing Taboola ads, I’ll write them out in bullet form first, then pick the best ones to use. And this might sound weird, but I can almost feel myself improving in real-time with John’s exercises.”

To get more details on my Copy Riddles exercises or to join while the joining’s good:

https://copyriddles.com/

You are a copywriting god… in the making

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Today is June 21, which means that in 10 days, the second issue of my Most Valuable Postcard is going out.

I am preparing to write it by watching a popular Ted talk about classical music… researching the motivations of men who like to go to strip clubs… and revisiting an old Jeff Walker presentation I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Today, I want to share with you a fascinating moment from that presentation. A bit of background:

Some time in the late 2000s, Jeff Walker was offering a business opportunity called Product Launch Manager. The basic idea was:

No list, no product, big money.

HOW???

By managing big companies’ launches using Jeff’s Product Launch Formula.

This was ideal for the most rabid of Jeff’s customers, the people who bought all his products, maybe even consumed those products, but never did anything beyond that.

Now comes the fascinating moment. ​​

At the end of this five-day event, speaking from the stage to a small segment of this group of hyper-responders, who had each agreed to pay $25k to attend, Jeff raised his hands up in the air, lowered his head to his chest, and said in a soft yet penetrating voice:

“You are marketing gods. If you can speak Internet marketing, you are in a separate class from the rest of the people walking the face of the earth.”

Jeff says this set the room on fire.

People jumped up from their chairs. Others started rolling around in the aisles. Still others were tweeting to let the whole world know. “Jeff says we are marketing gods!”

The implied message was that, by paying a lot of money, by attending an event and hearing a bunch of stuff, and finally by getting Jeff’s benediction, these folks had achieved true success.

And who knows, maybe some of them did go on to achieve true success.

After all, Jeff’s program was a step-by-step roadmap for what to do to manage big launches for big clients.

Put one foot in front of the other, while looking at the map, and you will get to your destination, sooner or later.

Still, the thing that struck me was simply the audacity of the claim — marketing gods! — and how much it resonated with people.

I feel it’s something to keep in mind when you are crafting your own promises… and the promises behind those promises.

Anyways, today, being June 21, is also the last day that I will email inviting you to register for my Most Valuable Email presentation, which happens tomorrow at 7pm CET.

At the end of that presentation, I would like to raise my hands, lower my head, and say in a soft and yet penetrating voice:

“You are now copywriting gods… go ye forth and use your new daily email knowledge to line your pockets with many shekels.”

And sure, I will give you a step-by-step roadmap. I will tell you how I write the one kind of email that has been most valuable to me in the history of this newsletter.

This one kind of email has allowed me:

1. To get in the heads of my readers, including some of the most successful and sophisticated direct marketers and copywriters out there…

2. To pump up my own authority, even when I don’t brag about all the successful and sophisticated marketers and copywriters who read my stuff every day…

3. And maybe most importantly, to drastically improve as a copywriter and marketer.

So there is that promise in the air, “… and you can do it too!”

Well, about that:

Attending tomorrow’s presentation, learning all the stuff I will share, and even having my benediction at the end will still only make you something like a copywriting god… in the making.

In other words, it won’t do you a damn bit of good unless you do the moderately hard work of putting one foot in front of the other, and not just once, but many times over.

So the close to this email is not as fire-generating as Jeff’s talk from the stage.

But it is a fact of life, and it might lead you to success sooner, rather than later or never.

Whatever the case may be:

If you would like to get the info inside my Most Valuable Email presentation, you will have to sign up to my newsletter before 7pm CET tomorrow. And once you get my confirmation email, you will have to hit reply, and let me know you’d like to attend, at the last minute, this fearsome email revival meeting.

Front runner emerges in my poll from yesterday

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As I write this it is 8:46am, exactly 11 hours and 56 mins after my email yesterday went out.

In that email, I gave you a choice of three possible presentations (plus one decoy) I was thinking of creating, and asked which one you would like the best.

It’s still salad days for that poll, and voting is close, but a clear front runner has emerged:

The insight marketing presentation.

Now, maybe that’s all due to the awesome interestingness of the topic. After all, how do you get people to experience an epiphany, a shift in thinking?

People are more stubborn than mules. That why the typical advice from smart marketers it not to even try to change people’s minds. It’s supposed to be the hardest thing to do in daily life, and it should be even harder in writing, or remotely, online… and harder still in a selling context.

And yet, it does happen, and it’s quite possible to do it on purpose.

So maybe it is the topic that’s inherently interesting.

But maybe the front runner status of insight has nothing to do with the topic. Maybe it’s all about a simple statistic that’s publicly visible on my website:

I have written 38 emails so far that ended up in the insight marketing category.

On the other hand, I’ve only written 17 emails about advertorials, and just 10 about natural authority (the other two presentation ideas I introduced yesterday.)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about How to Speak, a slow and sexy presentation given by Patrick Winston, an MIT professor, about giving effective talks.

One of Winston’s bits of insight, gleaned from years of studying effective talks, is that people in general want to be inspired.

There are different ways to brush that dog.

But one reliable way to inspire is to have passion or enthusiasm.

So maybe that’s the real explanation for why the insight presentation is leading the voting right now.

As the numbers above show, it’s simply a topic I am enthusiastic about. And some of that enthusiasm gets reflected back at me by my readers.

“That’s all fine and good,” I hear a copywriter somewhere yelling, “but how do you get enthusiastic on demand? I have to write about a bunch of offers that are not my own, that I would never buy myself, that are dry and underwhelming.”

If you are a copywriter, that is a real problem. There are tricks I’ve used to get enthusiastic on demand, some obvious, some less so. But that’s a topic for a different email.

For now, I just want to say that, if you are a copywriter, and you want to inspire potential clients to hire you, you might want to write about things you yourself are stimulated by. And the problem of enthusiasm will be instantly solved.

Which is one more reason, probably reason #1738, why writing your own email newsletter, about topics you choose to write about, is a borderline brilliant idea if you are looking to sell your services.

This brings me to my Most Valuable Email presentation. It’s coming up on Wednesday.

And it’s about the single most effective, valuable, and personally interesting (to me) email I regularly send out in this newsletter. No, it’s not about the topic of insight, though it is connected to it in some deep and mysterious way.

If you are looking to sell your services, particularly copywriting services, then this type of email might be equally as valuable to you.

So if you’d like to join this presentation live, or if you’d like to at least have a chance to watch the recording during the 7-day replay window, then get on my email newsletter and watch out for my first email.

“Research is the enemy of creativity”

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Yesterday, I mentioned an embarrassingly titled book I bought, “Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)”

The book is written by a brand marketing guy, George Lois. On the face of it, it’s all about pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, following your bliss, and other cliches that advertisers who work for prizes, rather than for sales, resort to.

Take for example Lois’s advice no. 50, which says:

“Research is the enemy of creativity, unless it’s your own ‘creative’ research (heh-heh)”

Nonsense, right?

Like direct response giant Gene Schwartz said, copy is assembled, not written. And it is assembled out of diligent, detailed research, deeper and more penetrating than the other guy is willing to do. No research, no sex, at least when it comes to copy that gets real results.

But really what Lois is talking about is the kind of research that’s common in brand advertising:

Focus groups.

Ask people who have no skin in the game, who aren’t being faced with decision whether or not to buy your product, what they think of your ad. “Is it good? Is it bad? Do you like it?”

It’s completely reasonable that research like this won’t give you useful feedback.

Not unless, as Lois says, you get creative.

He tells the story of Aunt Jemima pancake mix.

The makers of Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Quaker Oats, never wanted to create a matching Aunt Jemima syrup, in spite of Lois’s insisting that it would make tremendous $$$ business sense.

So Lois got creative.

He sent out a survey to a bunch of pancake mix consumers, asking a series of questions.

One of the questions was which syrup these people used. There were 10 brands to choose from, among them Aunt Jemima syrup.

And get this:

89 out of 100 pancake eaters selected Aunt Jemima syrup as their preferred choice, even though it was entirely imaginary at that point, just something in Lois’s head.

Result:

The head honchos at Quaker Oats were finally convinced, and put out the syrup. Within a year, just as the survey predicted, Aunt Jemima went on to become the number one brand in the billion-dollar-plus syrup business.

Is this scientific advertising?

Hardly.

Is it a useful idea which could potentially be worth a lot of money to you?

Well, consider this:

Direct marketer Justin Goff recently sent out an email exactly about this topic.

Justin said that he and his pardner Stefan Georgi often poll their audience about what offers to create next.

But they don’t go the focus group route.

“What should our next offer be? Do you like the sound of ‘Copy Accelerator By The Beach’? Would you buy ‘8.F.F.G.M.S.’ if that stood for ‘8-Figure Facebook Group Marketing Secrets’?”

No, none of that.

Instead, Justin and Stefan make a list of a few specific offer ideas. They ask people which one they want best.

This bit of research, Justin says, matches up very well to actual results of how well an offer sells when they do create it.

In this way, a simple creative poll can be worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to Justin and Stefan.

So there you go. An idea that you can use, starting today.

Or an idea that I can use, starting right now.

Because there are a few live presentations or trainings that I’ve been thinking of creating. They might be paid, or they might be free. They might be a single lesson, or multiple, depending on the topic.

Based on this limited info, and the short descriptions below, which one would you like the best?

If you would like to vote, sign up to my email list. And when you get my welcome email, tell me your preference among the four choices below. If you vote honestly, you will have the best chance of seeing a training about this topic from me in the near future:

1. A presentation about horror advertorials, the front-end funnel that I’ve used to help clients sell millions of dollars of dog seat belts, door stops, and detergent-replacement balls

2. A presentation about the most valuable email I regularly send to my daily email subscribers — the one type of email I would resort to if I had to stick to only one type for all of time

3. A presentation about creating a feeling of insight in your prospects, as a way of overcoming resistance and driving people to spontaneously want your offer, without you doing any overt selling

4. A presentation about natural authority — the rare, most penetrating, and longest-lasting form of authority, which is not built on either expertise or overt status or association

A damn good bit of advice from an embarrassing book I bought yesterday

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Yesterday, I found myself in the Moco Museum gift shop, thumbing through a book, and looking over my shoulder.

The Moco Museum features street art, pop art, and what I can only call high kitsch.

And after getting through the colorful exhibit, there I was in the gift shop, holding a little white book with a big black title.

The book collects 120 short ideas by George Lois. Lois is a brand advertising guy that the book describes as “America’s master communicator, advertising guru, the original Mad Man, and acclaimed cultural provocateur.”

A little boastful, but nothing too indecent in that.

The problem was that big black title on the cover. It read:

“DAMN GOOD ADVICE (for people with talent!)”

I felt embarrassed being seen buying something like this. But I liked the few of Lois’s bits of advice that I had thumbed to.

And since I have exactly one physical book in my new apartment, I steeled myself and decided to buy “DAMN GOOD ADVICE (for people with talent!)” in spite of the title.

So like a teenager buying condoms for the first time, I looked around, picked an opportune moment, and rushed for the cash register.

“I’d like to buy this,” I mumbled, pushing the book across the counter, not raising my eyes.

The woman just smiled at me knowingly and rang up the book without comment.

And good thing. Because I’m reading the book more this morning, and I’m enjoying it.

Lois gives a brief but interesting perspective on creativity and brand advertising. Much of it is laughable and sacrilegious from the perspective of direct response advertising. But there is still some surprising common ground.

For example, Lois’s advice no. 50 says:

“Research is the enemy of creativity — unless it’s your own ‘creative’ research (heh-heh)”

I raised my eyebrows when I read this headline. But Lois pays it off in a way that is consistent with something a very successful direct response marketer said recently. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow if you like.

For today, I just want to share a much simpler idea, Lois’s advice no. 75:

“What a difference a name makes!”

Lois is talking about the power of good brand names. But his advice no. 75 made me think of chapter 6 of Great Leads, by Mark Ford and John Forde.

One bit of advice from that marketing classic is that, if you have a complex problem to talk about, it can be smart to package it up inside of a name, ideally one that makes instant sense to the reader.

Of course, not only complex, hard-to-describe problems deserve a good name.

Vague symptoms… shadowy enemies… novel mechanisms… and plain old giant promises often become more manageable and real if you just give them the handle of a good name.

Which brings me to the name and the promise of the presentation I will put on next Wednesday.

It’s called the Most Valuable Email.

And it’s about a type of daily email that has been most valuable to me in the history of this newsletter… and that might be equally valuable to you, if you are a copywriter or marketer, and you have your own mailing list, or you want to start one.

The Most Valuable Email presentation will happen on Wed June 22 at 7pm CET. If you’d like to get signed up for it, the first step is to get on my email newsletter before Wednesday. The second step will become obvious once you get my first daily email. No talent required.

Frankly, I’m a little passive aggressive…

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I got an email from a marketer not too long ago, and the subject line read:

“Frankly, I’m a little concerned about you…”

The body of the email was predictable — I’m concerned about you because you might miss out on this amazing offer.

I groaned.

Not just because I recognized this subject line as a yet another marketer abusing Paul Greystone’s “Frankly, I’m puzzled” hook.

But worse than that, I groaned because this came in a daily email from somebody I was curious to hear from, somebody who seemed promising and cool. And here he was, sounding needy, awkward, even a little passive aggressive.

I’ve committed my share of marketing sins, so I’m not here to lob tomatoes at this guy.

I just want to share something with you. Something it took me a while to accept, but which was really rather obvious once it clicked. It’s simply this:

Copy in email marketing is not the same as classic direct response copy.

Obvious, right? Right. But how many times a day, if you are in the marketing and copywriting space, do you get things which are blatantly lifted from old school sales letters and hooks?

Or how many times have you done it yourself, if you write emails for your own business or a client?

My accountant says I’m crazy…
I’m eating steak whether you buy this offer or not…
Our warehouse manager just called me to say we are overstocked!

I’m not saying not to study or use proven direct response classics.

I continue to read classic marketing and copywriting books, and study old sales letters, often for the fourth or fifth time.

I continue to find brilliant ideas in them.

And I continue to work them into my own daily emails, often with great success.

So the way I see it, you’ve got two choices right now. Choice one is to ignore everything I’ve just told you and continue to make profit-crippling email marketing mist—

No, we won’t go down either route of the crossroads close in this email.

But if you want a different, more subtle, more entertaining and less passive aggressive way to use classic direct response ideas in your email marketing… at least if you are a copywriter or marketer, selling yourself first and foremost… then you might like to hear a presentation I will put on next Wednesday at 7pm CET.

I’m calling this presentation the Most Valuable Email. Because that’s what it’s been for me.

If you are a marketer or copywriter, maybe it will be the same for you. But whether you sign up or not, I’m eating stea—

(Professional habits are hard to break.)

But seriously:

To register to watch my Most Valuable Email presentation live, sign up to my email newsletter by next Wednesday. This will give you an opportunity to sign up for the presentation — and who knows, maybe it will inspire you with a few classic direct response ideas as well.

Most Valuable Email… for copywriters

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I’d like to tell you about a type of content, specifically a type of daily email, that has been most valuable for me.

This type of daily email is my go-to whenever I want to stimulate and engage my readers, including the many grizzled, wary, and sophisticated marketers and copywriters on my list.

In this way, this type of email has helped me sell stuff… grow my email list organically… get amazing job referrals… and sometimes even get interesting and cool stuff for free.

This type of email has also been most valuable to me because it builds up immediate and unquestionable authority.

It makes it clear I know what I’m talking about, even if I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

And finally:

This type of email is most valuable because it’s the type of email I personally find most enjoyable to write.

Going back to this type of email over and over has helped me stick with daily emailing for the long term, while making me exponentially better at the actual work of copywriting.

If you’ve been reading my daily emails for a while, you can probably guess the type of email I’m talking about.

But if you cannot guess, or if you would simply like to hear me go into this topic in more detail and tell you how you too can write this type of email yourself, I will do that in a free presentation I’m calling The Most Valuable Email.

You can register for the Most Valuable presentation below. But first a warning:

This type of email has been most valuable to me personally. I can imagine it being equally most valuable for for any other copywriter.

If you are not a copywriter, you might be able to adapt and use this type of email profitably in a different market, for a different type of audience. But that’s something I haven’t thought much about, and so I won’t be talking about it on this presentation.

If that doesn’t turn you off, then here are the details:

The Most Valuable Email presentation will happen live, on Zoom, on Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022, at 7pm Central European Time.

You can sign up for the presentation by clicking the link below. I will then send you a confirmation email with the Zoom link and a public calender invite — which I can never manage to make work, but will try for anyhow.

Also, there will be a recording. I will only send it to you if you express interest and register below. I won’t be sending the recording out to my list in general.

I haven’t yet decided what I will do with this Most Valuable Email training in the future. I might make it available only as a bonus for a paid offer, or I might turn it into a paid offer itself.

One thing is for sure:

I will make the recording available for one week, following the live presentation. Beyond that, I make no guarantees.

So if you want to join me live for this Most Valuable Email training, or if you want to watch the recording during this guaranteed 7-day replay window, sign up to my email newsletter before next Wednesday. You will then get an email from me with the registration details for this presentation.

The six-word email, with examples

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I’m sitting on the couch as I write this, next to the open balcony doors, in my underwear, eyes bleary, hair looking like a lawnmower went over it, in a press to write a personal and yet valuable email to you before.

Before what?

Before it’s time for me to rush out of the house and go pick up my rental car and then drive up the coast for the day. The idea is to give myself a chance to burn in the sun, on a beautiful beach I will visit for the first time in my life.

But what to write about?

Fortunately, I wrote down a concept for today’s email almost two weeks ago:

“The six-word email, with examples”

That concept is based on an idea from Hollywood.

​​Your story should fit into six words, say Hollywood screenwriting . Here are a few examples from Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work, a series from Scott Myers’s Go Into The Story blog:

1. Human Spy on an Alien Planet

2. Loner cop. New partner. Police dog.

3. Infatuated boy. Dream girl. Find condom.

“Fine,” I said to myself when I read this idea. “Let me put it into action and try it out.”

So ​​I made a list of 10 possible email ideas, each just six words. And then, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly sending them out. Example:

1. Emails without offer: stupid. Hence, consulting.

2. Results of my “rape” subject line.

3. What’s working on Substack right now?

And of course today’s email is another example of the six-word email.

Because it’s not that the email has to actually be six words itself. But rather, the core idea should be simple and easy to express, in just six words.

In some of my example emails above, I ran on too long and covered up the core message with too many words.

I won’t make that mistake today.

So let me just say, if you think you have no time to write daily emails, then do what I did.

Make a list of 10 six-word email concepts. Flesh them out a bit in an interesting and insightful way, and then send them out.

And if you say you don’t know how to come up with interesting six-word email concepts… or a way to quickly and easily flesh them out in an interesting and insightful way, then you might like:

A free presentation I will be putting on in the next week. It’s called the Most Valuable Email.

The details of this presentation will come tomorrow. If you’d like to read those details when they come out, or even sign up for my Most Valuable Email presentation, you can do that by getting onto my email newsletter. Sign up for it here.