One afternoon in October 2018, a strange man showed up at an open house in Michigan.
He trailed around the house for a bit, pretending to be checking it out.
He then walked down to the basement. That’s where the washer and dryer were.
He walked over to the dryer, took one quick look around, and reached in. He pulled out a pair of men’s underwear, then another. He stuffed both pairs of underwear down his own pants, walked back upstairs, and left the house.
We know all this because it was captured on a security camera. In spite of the recording, the man was never identified — and the stolen underwear never recovered.
The lesson being, be careful who you let into your house to wander around…
Or, when you hire a copywriter — and allow him to wander around your business.
After all, in order to have a copywriter write effective copy for you, you often have to show him how your business works from the inside out, in complete detail.
For example, in my time working with various clients, I’ve had access to entire back-end funnels… Names and addresses of all customers… Profitable lead-gen sequences… Secret lists of JV partners… And complete product lines of books, videos, and courses.
If I were the pilfering type, I could have taken this information and cloned these clients’ businesses — or at least portions of them.
And in fact, I’ve heard stories from business owners who have had exactly this happen to them.
I’d like to tell you there’s a simple way to avoid this in your own business.
But I’m not sure there’s any better thing to do than to go by a copywriter’s reputation, or your own gut feeling about who is trustworthy.
Like I said, I’ve been given access to a ton of business underwear in my life. I haven’t stolen a single pair.
And even if you let me steal your underwear, I promise I won’t.
Maybe you don’t find that convincing enough. So if you prefer to write your own copy for now, I can understand. In that case, you might get some good ideas in the following book — which is based on my work with lots of other clients: