Clayton Makepeace

A step above the A-list copywriters and marketers

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I remembered a little story today. I heard it just once, 3+ years ago, but it’s stuck with me ever since.

Marketer Caleb O’Dowd was talking about copywriter Clayton Makepeace.

Caleb said that Clayton was a step above the A-list copywriters — that he was an alchemist.

Caleb never knew Clayton personally. But here’s the little story Caleb told, which has stuck with me for years:

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When Clayton first came up on my radar I was living in Costa Rica. I had a spare room in my home and I would print out — there were several magalogs that I would print out of his — and I would tape them to the wall one page on top of the other on top of the other. I spent, not weeks, not months, I spent years doing that.

I lived there for a year and a half. By the time it was done I had to repaint the paint on the on the wall for the for the guy who owned the apartment because it was just tape pulling all the paint off the wall. But I studied him for years. There is years’ worth of mentorship and coaching and and education to be had in reverse engineering Clayton Makepeace packages.

===

For reference, when Caleb was pasting his spare bedroom with Clayton Makepeace wallpaper, he was already a massively successful marketer.

Caleb had worked and mentored under Gary Halbert, and he had already sold a lot of stuff and made a lot of money.

And yet, Caleb obsessively studied Clayton Makepeace’s packages — because those packages were getting such good results in markets that Caleb was already in, and because of the audience insights that were available in Clayton’s copy.

I thought of this little story this morning, when looking over the results of the 3-question survey I ran yesterday.

I found one interesting thread in the survey results that I hadn’t thought of, a problem several people listed as their “single biggest challenge.”

I won’t tell you what that interesting thread is.

But if you were good enough to fill out my survey yesterday, I appreciate your help. Maybe the wallpaper story above connects in your mind to what you wrote in the survey and means something to you.

And if you haven’t yet filled out my little survey, you can do it now. Maybe simply filling out survey will make the above story more meaningful to you.

I will read, appreciate, and consider every response and bit of feedback I get. If you’d be good enough to give me yours, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advice

“The one thing all my mentors have in common”

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This past Sunday, Novak Djokovic won the French Open and his 23 Grand Slam title — a big deal in the tennis world.

​​On Monday, in an off moment, I decided to check if there were any interesting news or interviews with Djokovic following the French Open.

I automatically headed to the r/tennis subreddit on Reddit. But in place of the usual page with tennis links and videos, I was hit with a blank page and the following notice:

“r/tennis is joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th, to protest the planned API changes that will kill 3rd party apps”

Perhaps you’ve heard:

Reddit the company, which is basically thousands of different news boards, is experiencing a kind of strike. Special Reddit users — mods — who control the different news boards are protesting Reddit’s proposed policy changes. As a result, they’ve basically made the site unusable for hundreds of millions of users.

I haven’t been following the drama. But apparently, as of yesterday, Reddit’s CEO said he plans to go ahead with the policy changes. To which many mods decided to extend the strike from 2-3 days, as originally planned, to indefinite.

All this reminded me of email conversation I recently had with Glenn Osborn.
​
​Glenn is a curious creature. Once upon a time, Glenn attended 15 of Jay Abraham’s $15k marketing seminars by bartering his way in.

​​He also went to one of Gary Halbert’s copywriting seminars in Key West, and watched Gary go up on stage with that “Clients Suck” hat.

​​These days, Glenn writes an email newsletter called “Billionaire Idea Testing Club” about influence tricks he spots from people like Taylor Swift and James Patterson and J.K. Rowling.

For reasons of his own, Glenn likes to reply to my emails on occasion and send me valuable ideas. A few weeks ago, Glenn wrote me with some things he had learned directly and indirectly from Clayton Makepeace and Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham.

​​Good stuff. But then, in a PS, Glenn added the following:

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P.S. -For Consulting Clients I Do ALL THE Work F-O-R them – MYSELF and thru staffers.

CONTROL is the one thing all my Mentors Have in Common. If You Don’t CONTROL what you do You Cannot Make Munny.

===

That last idea definitely stood out to me.

There are so many ways to be successful in any field. And contradicting strategies will often produce equally good results.

But a very few things are non-negotiable. You could call those the rules of the system. Perhaps CONTROL is one of them.

At this point I would normally refer you to Glenn’s newsletter in case you want to read it yourself. ​​But as Glenn himself says, “My ARCHIVE Is By-Referral-Only – Too ADVANCED to Toss Strangers into.”

If you are determined, then a bit of Googling, based on what I’ve told you above, will lead you to Glenn’s optin page and his unusual but valuable newsletter.

And in case you yourself want to want to write an unusual but valuable newsletter, the following can help:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Reader asks me how to read faster and retain the information

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I’ve been busy the last few days. Whenever I’m busy, I default to writing these emails in the easiest possible way. In my case, that’s emails about interesting or valuable ideas I’ve read somewhere.

Today, I have a bit more time, so I can indulge in writing an email that doesn’t come so easy to me, the Q&A email. A reader wrote in with a question last night, following my email yesterday:

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This was very insightful, you somehow always send an email related to something I’m trying to improve at the moment, thank you.

In the context of Reading, what strategy would YOU recommend to read faster and retain the information?

Will be trying the mentioned focus on the subtlety and easy to miss. details.

===

My 100% serious answer:

If you want to read faster and retain the information, my best recommendation is to read slow.

​​It’s what I do. It helps that I read very slowly by nature, almost at a 5-year-old’s pace. But these days, I even encourage myself in it.

Reading slowly is how I always have lots of interesting ideas that I read somewhere that I can throw into an email if I’m rushed for time. Actually, it’s reading slowly, and taking lots of hand-written notes — of things that surprised me, made me smile, or reminded me of something else I had been reading.

Like the following, said once by a man often called the world’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga. Gary was talking about how he researches a book that he will then write a sales package for:

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You almost have to read a sentence, and think about it. Read another sentence. “Is there any possible drop of juice I could squeeze from this orange to turn it into marketing enticement in some way?” Don’t let a single paragraph go by without pausing. You don’t want to just race through it. Give it a lot of time, and think about each thing you’re looking at.

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Gary said that during his farewell seminar, which cost $5k to attend back in 2006, and the same large amount if you wanted to get the recordings.

Gary could charge that much money for a seminar because of his status — the results he had gotten, the endorsements from top people in the industry.

But there was another reason Gary could charge that much for his knowledge and experience. And that’s scarcity.

Gary never attended conferences. He never got up on stage to give talks. He almost never gave interviews.

In fact, I know of only two interviews Gary ever gave. One of those is with Ken McCarthy, and you have to join Ken’s System Club to get it. The other was a 6-part interview with A-list copywriter Clayton Makepeace, which was available for free on Clayton’s website until Clayton died and the website shut down.

If you take a bit of time and trouble, you can go on the Internet Archive and dig up all 6 parts of this interview. Or you can take me up on my offer today.

Because I’ve gone on the Internet Archive previously, and downloaded all 6 parts for my own files. If you’d like me to share them with you, write in, tell me which book or books you’re reading right now, and I’ll reply with the Gary B/Clayton MP interview.

Two copywriting cowboys and a first draft

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This morning, I found myself, frown on my face, jaw clenched, staring out the window. I was actually stroking my chin, that’s how deep in unpleasant thought I was.

I was trying to come up with a way to start this email.

Finally, disgust swept over me. “Let me just write something, anything,” I said to myself. “In the worst case, it will be terrible. And I will just have to rewrite it.”

In case you’re starting to get a little nervous about where this email is going, let me ease your mind:

This isn’t me cowboy hollering at you to to git ‘er done.

Instead, I just want to remind you — and really, myself — of something I heard in an interview with Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris is one of the most successful copywriters working over the past few decades. He has something like an 80% success rate at defeating control sales letters. And he makes millions of dollars while working on only three or four projects a year.

Even so, Parris doesn’t produce winning copy straight out the gate.

In that interview, Parris said something like:

“When I first sit down and write the bullets for a promotion, I always think I’ve lost it. They’re terrible. Everybody will find out I’m a fraud. Then I rewrite the bullets once, and I think, maybe I will be able to get away with it. Third and fourth rewrite, they’re starting to look pretty damn good.”

So if somebody as successful, proven, established, revered, and experienced as P-Lamp still gets feelings of horror and doubt when he looks at his first draft… then maybe it’s okay if you and I also feel the same.

Or in the words of another A-list copywriter, Clayton Makepeace:

“Don’t compare YOUR first draft with MY 16th draft.”

“Thanks John,” you might say, “but I really don’t need encouragement to keep fiddling with my copy. I do that aplenty already.”

I feel you. I can revise my copy endlessly, moving a single word from place A to place B, and back again, over and over, a dozen times. There’s obviously a point at which it stops paying for itself.

But it’s good to still remind yourself that other people work the same way, including some of the best of the best. It can help you stay sane.

And just as important:

Reminding yourself of the power of rewrites can help you get going in the first place. Like what happened with me with this email you’re reading now.

So that’s all the cowboy hollering I have for you today. And now on to business:

I bring up both Parris and Clayton since they feature many times inside Copy Riddles.

That’s because both Parris and Clayton were a couple of the slowest — but most deadly — gunmen in the Wild West of sales copy. Here’s one of Parris’s bullets that wound:

“How to use an ordinary hairbrush to quit smoking.”

I discovered the secret to this (and many similar) brain-teasers by looking at Parris’s bullet… as well as the actual book he was selling.

The trick Parris used to write this bullet is simple. You can discover it in round 17 of Copy Riddles. Once you know it, you too can write intriguing stuff like this “hair brush” promise, on demand.

And then you can rewrite it… and rewrite it… and rewrite it some more. And slowly, it will start to look pretty damn good.

Anyways, enrollment for Copy Riddles closes tomorrow. So if you’ve got a hankering for some A-list copywriting skills, then pardner, head over here:

https://copyriddles.com/

My so-called life as a 32-year-old Brazilian female fitness model

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Hiii RadGirl!! Yesss, my subject line today is a take on Carline Anglade Cole’s My Life as a 50+ Year-Old White Male ❤️❤️ Carline is SUCH an amazing and inspiring copywriter and—

Gollum! Gollum!

Ah, that’s better. Now that I’ve cleared my throat and got my own voice back, I can tell you the story behind today’s subject line.

A few years ago, through a series of word-of-mouth recommendations, I got a chance to work with Marina.

Marina is Brazilian. She’s a former top-level athlete turned personal trainer and fitness model. She also sells workout and diet programs for busy and stressed moms.

Marina wanted to send conversational emails to her list. But she didn’t want to write the emails herself.

So she and her husband (a well–known direct marketer) made me an offer. A flat monthly fee + a cut of whatever money we made through the emails I’d be writing. But it was important that the emails really sound like her.

“Sure!” I said. “Love to do it! It’ll be a challenge! But a good copywriter can write in anybody’s voice!”

I knew just what to do.

I got on multiple calls with Marina. I wrote down her fitness and health philosophy. I listened to her funny personal stories. I asked about the restaurants she’s been eating in… the TV shows she’s been watching… the thoughts that pop up in her head when the lights go out.

I also started stalking her online. I analyzed each of her Instagram posts for word choice, punctuation, emotional tenor. I made a “Marina vocabulary” file.

And then I got to work. I told my stories of how I used to hate my crazy curly hair in high school… how I struggled to accept cellulite on my thighs, even though it’s a perfectly natural part of being a woman…

I agonized whether to include one exclamation point (important!) two exclamation points (mind-blowing!!!) or three excla—

“Yeah, I get it.” I hear you say. “You worked hard to mimic her voice. What’s the point you’re getting at?”

I see you’re impatient today. Fine. I’ll hurry it up.

The emails I wrote for Marina made some sales. But I hated the process.

It took an enormous amount of time to juke the emails so they would read passably like her.

And even so, what I wrote never really sounded like Marina. It was obvious to me, and I assume obvious to anybody who actually knew her.

No, we never got any complaints from readers (“WTF, this sounds fake”).

And it was impossible to tell how the sales were affected (“This email Marina doesn’t sound like the Instagram Marina I know…. better hold off on buying till I get this sorted”).

But a couple months into this experience… when I realized this wasn’t going to be a giant money maker for either her or me… I wrote to Marina, said thanks for the opportunity, but it’s time for me to move on. And I did, to the real estate investing space, a market where I had more natural fit.

So the point you were asking about:

Lots of new copywriters claim they can write in anybody’s voice. “Love to do it! It’ll be a challenge! But I can mimic anybody with my secret research processss!!!”

And maybe you can.

​​I cannot. Not if it’s a real, live, sentient human being I’m supposed to mimic. Not if the lexical similarity needs to be greater than 60%. Not if I don’t plan to spend months or maybe years growing into the role.

This is part of a bigger issue in copywriting.

I remember hearing in the “Gene Schwartz Graduate Course on Marketing” that Gene Schwartz — yeah, one of the greatest copywriters of all time — couldn’t write winning copy outside his specialized field.

I don’t remember the exact details. But the person who said it was somebody in the know (maybe somebody who had worked with Gene).

​​And this person said that when Gene was taken out of his “Lethal Weapon,” “Rub your belly away” ads and sales letters, his copy didn’t pull. In spite of the meticulous research he did.

Same story with Clayton Makepeace. Another giant. Clayton made crazy sales in health and financial. But I heard Rich Schefren say on a Facebook live that when Clayton wrote some stuff for Rich in the IM space, it also didn’t pull. In spite of Clayton being a natural.

I’m not 100% sure what my takeaway for you is. If you’re a copywriter, I’m certainly not telling you to skip research. I’m also not telling you to refuse jobs just because the client’s voice is not “you.”

But perhaps, this is just argument #4338, not only for specializing with your copy… but for specializing with a few clients — or maybe even hunkering down with one client only.

And if you’re not a copywriter, but a business owner who’s been writing his or her (Heyyy RadGirl) own copy…

Then everything I just said is an argument against casually outsourcing your own voice to a copywriter. Regardless of how much they assure you they will sound like you. It’s not impossible. But it is likely to take time. You might decide it’s better to do keep this sensitive and valuable part of your business to yourself.

Which brings me to my upcoming Influential Emails training. Here’s a reason NOT to sign up:

Influential Emails is not about tips and tricks to jazz up a one-off email or a sequence for a client you will never work with again. Yes, I’ll reveal some high-level stuff. And yes, you can use this to improve storytelling or get more readers sucked in, regardless of what you write.

But Influential Emails is really about the long game. About influencing and building a relationship with an audience. About getting them to look at you (or your email alter-ego) as a leader.

That’s why Influential Emails only makes sense if you are writing to promote yourself… or your own business or brand… or if you are working with a long-term client.

​​In other words, if makes sense if it pays you to invest time and effort to create long-term, powerful influence, instead of just one-time sales.

In any case, the deadline to sign up for Influential Emails is tomorrow.

I CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU TO JOIN and find out all my amazing secrets! 🙏🏼🙌🏼💞. YOU ARE WORTH IT!

Seriously now. Here’s the link:
​
https://influentialemails.com

The silent killer of effective sales messages

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In the next 59 minutes, 100 marketers will suffer a devastating defeat of their marketing message…

… and for half of them, this defeat will come even though their message kicked off with a big promise or a really scary warning.

Today, I want to give you an example of a powerful and undercover copywriting technique. It comes from a Clayton Makepeace sales letter, which I guess ran about 20 years ago.

Clayton’s sales letter had the headline “Cholesterol’s Evil Twin.” And the sales argument went like this:

Fact 1: Only half of people who die of heart disease have high cholesterol.

Fact 2: The other half have heart disease because of inflammation.

Fact 3: Serious conditions like arthritis and diabetes set off inflammation.

Fact 4: Less serious conditions like skin rashes or gum disease also lead to inflammation, which could have dangerous consequences…

Fact 5: And even less serious, everyday conditions, like a splinter or an in-grown toenail… “could trigger an inflammatory response capable of turning plaque into a deadly heart or brain bomb!”

So there you go. An in-grown toenail can make your heart or brain explode.

Pretty wild, right? And apparently, effective, since this sales letter mailed in huge numbers. But here’s my guess:

Had Clayton said this in-grown nail thing at the start of his message, he would have just gotten a roll of the eyes in response. It would have made the rest of his message hard to swallow.

So let me take a page out of Clayton’s book. And let me make a modestly outrageous claim to finish this message:

Beware of putting your most dramatic promise or your scariest warning first. Even if you’ve got facts to back it up. Because the right claim delivered at the wrong time can trigger a defense response in your reader… capable of turning your entire sales message into a deadly marketing flop.

Speaking of deadly marketing:

I write an email newsletter. Deadly copywriting and marketing brain bombs. If you’d like to try it out, here’s where to go.

Makepeace, Schwartz, and Dan Kennedy all agree there’s something magic about the number—

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“A piece of alien technology that arrived from the future.”

That’s how one top-level marketer described a sales letter that A-list copywriter Clayton Makepeace wrote back in 2005. Clayton’s sales letter started out with the headline:

“The 23-Cent Life-Saver Heart Surgeons Never Tell You About!”

Beneath that, Clayton had three bullet points:

* So safe, it’s FDA-APPROVED for use in baby food

* So effective, you can actually SEE it working

* So cheap, it’s just PENNIES A DAY

Sounds great, right? But I’m not here to sell you a supplement. Instead, I’m here to sell you a number. For example, consider the following bullet by Gene Schwartz:

“Three things you must never say to your children – but almost everyone does”

Would you like to know what those three things are? I did. So I looked them up in the book that Gene was selling. And by my count, there are either two things or five. But not three. And yet, Gene chose to put three in his bullet.

Why?

For the same reason that Dan Kennedy decided to write the following passage as he did:

“I and my organization NEED honest, ambitious, reliable men and women in your area right now. You can join me and earn profits of $5,000… $10,000… even $20,000 per transaction, implementing my proven and improved Business System — working at it as little as 4 HOURS A WEEK.”

Dan explains the thinking behind this passage:

“Erroneously most people consider themselves honest, they see themselves as reliable, and they believe they are ambitious. What you don’t want to do (unless very deliberately) is use qualifiers that a lot of people would feel ruled them out or that would intimidate or worry them. There is also some magic in 3, not 2 or 4 or more. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

And now for something completely different:

If you’re interested in persuasion, marketing, or copywriting, and if you are honest, ambitious, and reliable, then you might like my email newsletter. Each email is short, informative, and entertaining. You can sign up to get it here.

#1 secret of wealth creation for marketers and copywriters

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Today, for the first time ever, I took a closer look at Parris Lampropoulos’s Copy Vault sales page.

Parris, who is an A-list copywriter, offered the Copy Vault training back in 2018. And back in 2018, when I decided I wanted in, I raced past the sales letter and went straight to the order page. Rabbit brain.

So today, while working on a project, I finally took a closer look. And right away, I saw something odd. The headline reads:

For the First and Last Time Ever,
Parris Lampropoulos Opens the Vault and Reveals His Top Wealth-Creation Secrets
for Copywriters and Marketers

Hmm. That sounded strangely familiar.

The bit calling out copywriters and marketers… the promised secrets of wealth-creation… and that “first and last time” thing…

Had I seen all of those somewhere before? Oh yeah. Of course:

Available on DVDs for the First and Only Time…
“Gary Bencivenga’s
7 Master Secrets
of Wealth Creation
for Marketers and Copywriters”

That’s the headline that Gary Bencivenga, an even more famous A-list copywriter, wrote for the sales letter for his farewell seminar, back in 2006.

Coincidence?

Hardly. Rather, it’s the #1 wealth-creation secret for any marketers or copywriters who are willing to listen. Here’s why.

I recently heard marketer Caleb O’Dowd talk about how he does research. Caleb said two things.

First, when you enter a market, you should look at your top 3-5 competitors. (Or I guess one is enough, if your competitor happens to be Gary Bencivenga.)

Caleb said there are reasons why those people are at the top. So reverse engineer their successful sales letters… figure out those reasons… and you too will know exactly what to say to prospects to get a response.

Very obvious, right?

Right. But still something that was eye-opening to me. Because while I’ve spent hundreds of hours of research on copywriting projects… very little of that time went to analyzing copy from the competition.

Silly me. That’s something I will change starting now.

And what about the second tip Caleb had about research?

Well, that’s in the video below.

​​The video is from the Q&A after-party of the recent Clayton Makepeace tribute. It features a bunch of A-list copywriters, including Gary Bencivenga and Parris Lampropoulos, answering questions.

​​I personally think it’s worth watching for Caleb’s answer alone. But perhaps you’re wondering if you really need another Obvious Adams tip on research.

In that case, let me repeat something I wrote a few weeks ago, also in connection to Caleb:

“Caleb said deep research is the kind of thing very few marketers are willing to engage in. But those who do inevitably wind up at the top of their market. They don’t just succeed, they have breakthroughs, and they make millions.”

By the way, Caleb isn’t the only one to put such a premium on research and understanding your audience.

Gary says the game is won or lost in research. He calls deep research the “launchpad of copywriting breakthroughs.”

And Parris says the #1 secret in copywriting — more than any technique or book — is to understand your audience.

In case that’s sufficient motivation for you to find out Caleb’s other research tip…

Well, let me interrupt for a second. And say that, if you are a copywriter or a marketer, and you’re after wealth-creation secrets, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter.

And now, if I’ve convinced you about the value of research, and you want to see what Caleb’s second tip is, here’s the video:

Cheapest way to get an A-list copywriting education (only good until Thursday)

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Say you’d like to get a bunch of A-list copywriters to sit around and share insights and advice with you. I’m talking the biggest names in the direct response industry… people like Gary Bencivenga and Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch. Copywriters who have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff with just their magic, fascinating words.

How much would you be willing to pay for such an opportunity, if it lasted, say, an entire afternoon?

$5k?

Too much?

How about $1k?

Still too much?

Maybe only $500?

Well, I’ll tell you how to get it for free.

This Thursday at 1pm EST, a bunch of the most successful copywriters of all time are getting together in virtual space, somewhere in east Zoom. The occasion is the one-year anniversary of the death of Clayton Makepeace, himself a famous A-list copywriter, and a mentor to many of the people who will be speaking on this call.

Here are few things that might interest you about this event:

1. It will last for 3 hours.

2. So far, about a dozen A-list copywriters and other direct marketing veterans are confirmed to be participating.

3. I have no idea what these people people will talk about. But even if there are zero headline tips and even fewer magic sales letter closes being shared… I suspect the call will still be very valuable.

4. Since this is organized in Clayton’s honor, and based on the profile of the people who will join, I imagine it won’t just be a 3-hour-long tease-fest that’s designed to sell something else. But I could be wrong.

5. I don’t know if there will be any recordings of the call, and if there are, how they will be made available and to whom.

5. This event is free to attend, but you do gotta register.

So if an A-list education sounds good to you… and if free is a price you can afford to pay… then here’s where to go:

https://members.carlinecole.com/clayton

How to turn good copy into great copy

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For the past several weeks I’ve been milking content ideas from a recent interview I heard with A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. And I ain’t done yet. Here’s another valuable story from the same:

Once upon a time, while Parris was still getting his copy sea legs, he apprenticed under Clayton Makepeace.

Parris would write some copy. He’d submit it to Clayton. Clayton would fix it up, and the submit it to the client.

The clever thing Parris did was to ask Clayton for the final drafts. He’d go through and compare what Clayton had changed to the original he (Parris) had submitted.

As Parris got better and better through this process, there were fewer and fewer changes.

Until one time, there was only one change.

It was in a bit of copy that Parris had written about part-time jobs for people during retirement. One of these jobs was to be a mystery shopper. And it could earn you as much as $50,000 a year.

Pretty good, right?

Yes. Good. But then Clayton made it great, by adding a few words along the lines of:

“Imagine, $50,000 a year — just for going shopping!”

Parris said that Clayton was a natural-born persuader. And one powerful thing he did instinctively was help people “grasp the advantage.”

That’s a term from Vic Schwab’s book, How to Write a Good Advertisement. Schwab said you first show people an advantage… them you prove it… and then you help them grasp it.

You can do this grasping part in a bunch of different ways.

Clayton’s example above is of the form, “You’re doing X anyways, so why not get Y benefit?”

But there are many others. I spelled out a few of them to my email subscribers.

What? You’re not subscribed to my email newsletter? But you’re reading my stuff anyways, so why not get the full story, with all the lessons laid out on a platter for you? Here’s where to subscribe.