In 2016, a Japanese scientist named Yoshinori Ohsumi was given the Nobel Prize in medicine.
His discovery?
The biological processes underlying autophagy.
auto=self
phagy=eating
It’s literally how our own body consumes itself every day, in millions of little ways.
We do this self-eating for lots of different reasons.
When we’re in a state of starvation, autophagy kicks in to give us fuel for energy.
When we’ve had an infection, autophagy cleans up the bacterial or viral mess that’s been left behind.
It’s also a way of quality control, fixing some of the negative effects of aging, such as malformed proteins that could mess you up.
In other words, autophagy is a very important and necessary process. And it’s no surprse that if autophagy goes missing in your body, all kinds of problems can pop up, including Parkinson’s, diabetes, and cancer, too.
But why am I rattling on about autophagy in this newsletter that’s supposed to be about marketing and the business of copywriting?
Well, I heard someone say once that hunger — ie. autophagy — should be considered an essential nutrient for good health.
And I believe the same goes for good health in business and marketing.
And no, I’m not talking about “you gotta want it” kind of hunger.
I’m talking about actual starvation.
As in, being faced with the chance that you will run out of money, your business will be shut down, and you will have to go to your parents, hat in hand, asking for a loan to tide you over until things get better.
Of course, nobody wants to live like this all the time.
But unless you do experience a period like this every so often, you’re probably also not reaching the optimal level of business leanness, health, and success.
So if you are currently starving, take heart that it might be good for you in the long term.
And if you’ve been living the fat life for a while, it might be time to take some bigger risks and see how that improves your own internal cleanup processes.
But maybe I’m just saying all this to comfort myself.
Because right now, I’m taking on some big risks in the hope of big payoffs.
I’ll let you know how it goes, whether it leads to actual starvation or a new level of success.
In the meantime, if you want to see how to write some lean sales copy, especially about a health product, and especially to an audience that cares about the prestige of Nobel-prize-winning discoveries, then you might like the following: