End of America

The end of Stansberry?

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Last week, a reader of my email newsletter who works for an Agora affiliate clued me into the following fact:

Stansberry Research is going public.

Stansberry, as you probably know, is one of the biggest imprints that came out of Agora. They had the End of America promo. This was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.

When I heard that Stansberry is going public, my first thought was to David Bowie.

Back in 1997, Bowie released 10-year bonds backed by the future royalties of his album sales.

​​Bowie bonds put $55 million into David Bowie’s pocket, and were given a respectable A3 rating.

​​But within a couple of years, digital file sharing caused the whole music album market to implode. Bowie bonds were downgraded to Baa3, one notch above junk bond status.

Maybe David Bowie, with his artist’s intuition, sensed it coming, and made a smart cash grab just in time?

And maybe Porter Stansberry, using his entrepreneur’s intuition, senses something similar in the current moment?

The Agora copywriter who told me about this assured me I’m imagining things. “It’s probably Stansberry himself wants to be a billionaire. He must be pretty close now.”

A Barrons article that reported on this quoted the CEO of the company that’s taking Stansberry public through a merger. That guy’s reasoning:

“We were looking for a company in the attention economy with scalable, digitally delivered IP. As people say, ‘content is king.’ But it’s rare that you find a company that’s as prolific at creating new IP… They’re like the Netflix of financial content.”

So rather than this being a Bowie moment, maybe it’s a Netflix moment?

​​A moment in which a somewhat limited, niche company uses its own existing assets and a bunch of cash to become a mainstream powerhouse?

Or maybe it’s a sign of things to come — Stansberry & chill?

Maybe. I’m not convinced. But I am curious. So if like me, you dip your toes in the direct response pond, it might be worth keeping an eye on the the ripples from this isolated pebble drop.

Or do you want me to keep an eye out for you? If so, then sign up for my email newsletter, because that’s where all my writing shows up first.

The secret psychology of giving up

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This is a brontosaurus:

Hello I am Brontosaurus

But let me give you the back story:

Yesterday I saw a question from a struggling copywriter. He says he’s put in the time and effort. But he’s not getting the reward.

He’s not swamped with client work… he’s disappointed by the money he’s making… and he’s not even hearing a kind word or two about a job well done.

This brought to mind a presentation I saw once by billion-dollar copywriter Mike Palmer.

Mike works at Stansberry Research, an Agora imprint. He wrote The End of America VSL, which brought in many millions of simoleons for Stansberry.

So Mike gave this presentation called The Secret Psychology of Becoming a Great Copywriter. The upshot is, there will be times when you feel you suck.

Mike drew a graph to illustrate the natural changes in skill/suck levels. It’s pretty much the brontosaurus up top:

Hello I am Annotated Brontosaurus

Point A is when you get started, full of optimism.

Point B is when you realize it will be harder than you thought.

Point C is the moment of crisis and despair. At this point many people give up.

(I just want to say I am all for giving up. There’s no shame in it if you ask me, and I suspect most people who champion blind perseverance haven’t tried to do much in life. I’ve given up often, and with very few exceptions, I’ve never looked back.)

But if for some reason you don’t give up, then you eventually move to point D. That’s where you improve and rise above your previous level.

This is not a one-time thing, by the way.

It’s happened to me over and over since I started writing copy for money.

For example, last year around this time, I thought I was pretty good at this whole thing. I then joined Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. After getting some feedback from Dan, I realized I still had big things to work on.

A month or two later, deep into a project, the feedback kept pouring in and getting more significant. I thought “Jesus, why do I need this? I’m obviously not meant to write sales copy.”

But I stuck around, finished the project, became better at the craft, and eventually got my rewards.

Like I said, this has happened to me over and over. I expect it will happen again.

Perhaps if you know this, it will make it easier to progress to point D once you hit that hollow, right at the bottom of the brontosaurus’s neck.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps you’ll look up, squint… well, let me stop there.

When I wrote this article and sent it out to my email newsletter subscribers, I ended on a personal note, about giving up. But I limit those things on this public blog. In case you want to get on my email newsletter, where I don’t hold anything back, click here to subscribe.