Before he became a master copywriter, back when he was still a young man, marketing legend Claude Hopkins tried to get a better paying job.
And he tried to do it by talking about his poverty.
No dice. The boss wasn’t moved. He thought struggle and poverty were good for a young man.
So Hopkins admitted his true ambition.
He wanted to eat more pie. There was a boarding house that served pie every night, but he couldn’t afford to live there.
Turns out, the boss loved pie. He couldn’t bear the idea of a man being denied pie. What’s life without pie.
So he hired Hopkins, at a better salary, and even invited the young man to his home — to eat pie, of course.
I mention this because over the past week, a few people have written me to get free access to Copy Riddles. They cited their poverty and bad circumstances.
I turned them away. You can probably guess my reasons:
1. I like to get paid, and even people who are in bad circumstances can often pull together the money for things they really really want.
2. Letting in people for free because isn’t very cool to people who pay.
3. There’s a lot of truth to the idea that, unless you pay for something, you don’t value it.
You’ve probably heard all these arguments before. The only extra thing I can add is to suggest that, if there’s something you really really want, and you absolutely 100% can’t afford it, then talk about your lust for pie — or whatever your true ambition is — rather than about your poverty. It might open more doors.
That however, is not an invitation to write to me about your love of pie. It won’t get you an invite to my house for dinner, and it won’t get you into Copy Riddles for free.
In fact, nothing will get you into Copy Riddles for free, at least for this next round, which kicks off on Monday. But enrollment ends even sooner, tomorrow, Sunday night, at midnight PST.
So if you’d like to join and you can afford to do so… or even if you can’t afford it, but you can somehow scrape together the money because it’s really really important to you… then here’s where to go: