William Goldman

When ROUS were real

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If you’re a fan of The Princess Bride the way that I am, then you’ll know the fire swamp.

The fire swamp is a place in the kingdom of Florin, where The Princess Bride is set. Nobody has entered the place and lived to tell the tale.

That’s because the fire swamp holds three perils.

The first is sudden bursts of flame from the ground. Those aren’t so bad, because they make a deep popping sound right before they explode.

The second is Lightning Sand. It swallows you up and sucks you in, like you’re falling through a cloud. Lightning Sand is very dangerous but rare.

The third is ROUS. In the words of Westley, the protagonist of The Princess Bride:

“Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”

… but of course they do. Right as Westley says that ROUS are just a matter of legend, a giant, pig-sized rodent launches itself at him and a deadly struggle ensues.

I thought this was all just a wonderful bit of fantasy. But like Westley, I thought that ROUS don’t exist, not really.

It turns out they do. For real. William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, was a compulsive researcher. He probably found out decades ago what I found out just a few days ago.

There’s a place in the Amazon where ROUS live, right now.

The locals call these beasts ariranha, and Spanish-speakers call them lobos del río. They grow up to 1.5 meters in length, with an additional 70cm for the long and thin tail. While they aren’t technically “rodents,” they are carnivorous, they look very much like the ROUS in The Princess Bride, and for all I know, they love the taste of human flesh.

At this point, it would be wise to tie this into some lesson about copywriting and marketing.

The fact is, I really just wanted to share this fact, that ROUS really exist. I think it’s wonderful that there are large mammals I have never heard of, and that fantasy and wonder still exist in the world.

But let me work a little, and try to make this relevant to you too.

Yesterday, I wrote an email in which I tied in a snippet I had heard from marketer Ryan Lee into my own offer, which was looking for a partner for my longevity newsletter.

A bunch of people wrote me about the partner offer.

But a couple people also wrote me about the email itself. They liked how I had managed to connect the Ryan Lee quote with my own offer. How to do that? And do I have a system for it?

I actually do have a system. I even created a training out of it, called Insight Exposed. But I only rarely sell that training because I suspect that, while this Insight Exposed system has been tremendously useful and valuable to me, it’s not something that I can actually transfer to other people. At least that’s the my sense, based on the feedback (or lack of it) I’ve gotten for Insight Exposed, compared to my other trainings like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email.

So I decided to do something different.

Next Tuesday, August 20 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/9am PST, I will hold an AMA — Ask Me Anything — about the topic of research, notetaking, and “creativity.”

The AMA will be live on Zoom. You can register for it simply by clicking the link below.

There won’t be a free replay. If you cannot make it live, I can give you the first step of my system, which is simply to keep an eye out on your own reactions. “ROUS? Are real? That’s wonderful!” Write that down, and you never know when you might be able to use it.

Maybe that’s enough to get you going. But maybe you sitll have questions. If you, you can get me to answer them on the AMA. Here’s the link. Click it, and I’ll let you into the Zoomery when the time comes:

[Get real, you gotta be on my list for this. If you wanna sign up: https://bejakovic.com/]

People like you better when you taste something awful

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Opening scene:

Private investigator Lew Harper lies awake in bed. He stares at the ceiling.

His alarm goes off. He knocks it with his fist to turn it off.

Harper gets out of bed, pushes the still-on TV out of the way, and pulls up the blinds on the windows.

It becomes clear that Harper’s bedroom is actually Harper’s office. He isn’t sleeping there because he was working late, but because he doesn’t have a proper apartment.

Harper goes to the fridge, gets an ice pack. He walks over to the sink, dumps the ice in, and fills it up with water. He puts his head in the ice-filled sink and holds it there.

Finally, Harper goes to make coffee.

He folds a coffee filter. He folds it again. He gets ready to put coffee into the filter but — the coffee can is empty.

Harper hangs his head in defeat.

Then he thinks for a minute. He doesn’t like what he’s thinking. But what to do?

He goes over to the trash can and opens it.

There’s yesterday’s coffee filter with yesterday’s coffee, looking up at him.

Should he? Shouldn’t he?

He does.

Harper takes yesterday’s coffee out the trash. He makes a new coffee with it. He takes a sip.

And, in a moment that launched a giant Hollywood career, Harper shudders from how bad the coffee tastes.

So now, let me ask you, how do you feel?

Let me change how you feel for a moment, by sharing with you a really repulsive negotiation lesson. It comes from negotiation coach Jim Camp, who said:

“The wise negotiator knows that only one person in a negotiation can feel okay, and that person is the adversary.”

I’ve read this lesson 100 times. I accept it on an intellectual level. But I still find it impossible to accept emotionally, and that’s why I say it’s so repulsive.

Camp advised his coaching clients to make their negotiation adversaries feel okay. To make them feel smart, important, respected.

“Fine,” you might say, “that’s pretty obvious.”

That’s what I said too.

But the part that’s not obvious is that Camp says that okayness is a positional good. If you have it, then I can’t have it. And vice versa.

That’s the part I still can’t accept.

Whether or not Camp’s 100% right, the truth remains, if I make myself a little unokay, you will feel more okay.

And as proof of that, let me finish up the Harper story.

Harper was the first screenplay ever written by my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman.

The movie went on to be a big success. It launched Goldman’s career in Hollywood. It led Goldman to dozens more movies, a couple Academy Awards, and even a few million dollars.

None of it would have happened had Harper been a flop. But Harper was a success from that opening scene. Goldman wrote about the reaction of people who saw Harper when it launched:

===

Whenever anyone talked about Harper to me in the weeks that followed, that was the moment they they remembered — drinking that horrible stuff. And the laugh that went along with it, that was a laugh of affection.

What that coffee moment really turned out to be was an invitation that the audience gladly accepted: They liked Lew Harper.

From that moment forward, the script was on rails.

===

In entirely unrelated news:

Yesterday, I asked readers what todo items are waiting for them that they are dreading. I got a number of people responding with dreadful todo items.

In situations like this, whenever I get a number of good responses, I always like to repeat the offer. There’s sure to be people who didn’t see it the first time or who got pulled away before having a chance to respond.

So here goes:

What’s one thing on your todo list for today that you’re dreading?

It can be big or small. Important or trivial. The only thing that counts is that you’re not looking forward to doing it.

Let me know. Maybe I can figure out or find a solution to help you get rid of this troubling todo item. Thanks in advance.

How to launch offers that almost never fail

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Last week, I was talking to Steve “License to Quill” Raju. Steve’s a very smart guy who has over the past year transformed himself from a direct response copywriter into an AI consultant for big corporations.

Steve was telling me how he used AI to augment his problem-solving ability.

​​For example, the problem of direct response offers that fall flat.

Steve wanted to see if there’s a way to reduce the risk of offers falling flat. So he asked the AI if this problem has already been solved in other industries.

“The AI came up with the TV industry,” Steve told me with some enthusiasm, and he went on to explain how the TV industry apparently makes sure its shows are hits.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I had my doubts. Not of Steve, but of the AI’s advice.

From what I know, the TV industry is riddled with failure — pilot episodes that never get picked up, shows that get canceled after the first season, spinoffs that go nowhere.

​​Same thing holds in the movie industry. (William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”)

Ditto for the publishing industry. About that:

A couple days ago, I read a 4,425-word article that summarized a 1194-page book called The Trial.

The Trial itself summarizes a yearlong antitrust case that came up when Penguin Random House tried to buy Simon & Schuster, and reduce the Big Five publishing houses to the Big Four.

As part of this antitrust case, the heads of all the major publishing companies testified, and revealed the failure-ridden and frankly sad state of the traditional publishing industry.

For example, only half the books published by these companies make any money. A much lower percentage actually pay back the money advanced to the author, and make any kind of profit.

However!

There are two categories of books where the odds are much, much better.

​​These two categories do not quite guaranteed successes. Failures still do happen. But these two types of books are as close to guaranteed as it gets.

The first are books by celebrities. Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan.

The second are franchise authors. Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson.

Of these two categories, the franchise authors produce far more reliable successes. And no wonder.

Franchise authors have already built up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific character or concept. This audience remains highly dedicated and forgiving, as long as the author keeps giving them more of what they already said they want.

When I put it in these terms, the lesson is hardly surprising.

But surprising or not, the fact remains that, in spite of literally hundreds of years of experimentation by established billion-dollar industries, this is still the best recipe for new offers that are an almost guaranteed success:

1. Build up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific promise, product, or persona…

​2. ​​… and then give them more of what they already said they want.

​​Of course, you don’t have to write books. Short emails will do.

And if you want to see how I’ve done this using short emails, in several different industries, from supplements to pet supplies to high-ticket coaching and courses, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Advanced email copywriting tricks for sale soon

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This week I’m promoting my Influential Emails training. This training is something I’ve made available only once before, live, back in 2021, the Year of the Ox.

But starting next Thursday, and lasting at most until next Sunday, I will make Influential Emails available once again.

Over the y​​ears, by keeping track of when and why I’ve bought from other people’s via email, I discovered it makes good sense to send out regular emails telling your audience what exactly it is you are selling, without any frills, funniness, or flippancy.

​​So here’s whats inside Influential Emails:

​
1. The recordings of the three Influential Emails live calls, which all lasted around 2 hours.

2. Edited transcripts of all the calls, in case would rather read than listen to me talk.

3. Call 1 covers 5+ of my advanced email copywriting tricks, including the “Five Fingers” storytelling strategy, S. Morgenstern transitions, and the “Sophisticated Slapstick” structure that makes trivial or even silly things sound funny or profound.

4. Call 2 breaks down four emails I wrote to this list, shows you how I wrote them from snout to tail, and highlights the techniques from Call 1 in action. This second call also includes a lighting-round training, 15 Unique Things I Do To come Up With Ideas and Create Content.

5. Call 3 includes brutal and merciless copy critiques of a dozen emails I got from attendees of the original Influential Emails training. You see what I thought was good in these emails, and more importantly, what I would change to make each email more effective for 1) making sales and 2) being more influential/interesting/memorable.

6. There are also two bonuses. The first is “Mystery Screenwriting Insights For Copywriters.” The core of this is a special, never-produced screenplay from my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman, overlaid with my analysis of the writing tricks Goldman used, and how copywriters can apply the same.

7. The second bonus is “My 12/4 Most Influential Emails.” This is a micro swipe file, including 12 of my most influential emails, along with the background of why and how each email ended up influential. Plus, I’ll give you the four more emails, written by mysterious others, which had the biggest influence on me.

Over the coming days, I will have more to say about Influential Emails, specifically who it’s possibly for and who it’s definitely not for.

If you do decide you want to get Influential Emails, you will have to get on the waiting list. And in order to get on the waiting list, you will first have to get on the list to get my daily emails. Click here to do so now.

If this email makes me any money, I still won’t really get it

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I read a story a while back about a man named John Clauser.

Clauser studied physics but he struggled with it. That resonated with me, not because I studied physics, but because I studied math, and I struggled with that.

Anyways, Clauser had to take a grad-level course in quantum mechanics.

He failed. Twice. Eventually he managed to pass but he never really “got” it.

Some time later, Clauser decided to design an experiment to disprove quantum mechanics. His advisors told him not to do it. Clauser insisted. Maybe his ego was on the line.

Clauser carried out his experiment, which was meant to falsify a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Instead, to his disappointment, Clauser demonstrated quantum entanglement, just as the theory predicted.

Last year, Clauser won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work. He said, “I confess even to this day that I still don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz compared copywriters to atomic scientists. Gene argued that both copywriters and atomic scientists work with primal forces of nature. They cannot create those forces, but they can harness them and use them.

I’d like to extend Gene’s analogy. It’s not just that we can’t create those primal forces. We can’t even understand them, not really, not using our everyday human intuition.

Nobel-winning physicists still don’t understand quantum mechanics. ​​A-list copywriters still don’t understand human desire multiplied.

A few decades into his career, Gary Halbert put a lot of money into a weight loss product with a great proof element — a high school student who lost almost 600 lbs. “Without hunger! Without pills! Without low energy! Without giving up good food!”

Gary flew down to interview and record the guy. He created the product. He wrote and ran the ads. He put in dramatic before-and-after pictures and a money-back guarantee.

The ads bombed.

Nobody wanted this thing. Why? Nobody knows. You would think that a weight loss offer with a strong proof element and copy written by Gary Halbert would be a sure shot.

As screenwriter William Goldman once said — about those other people who cater to human desire, the Hollywood crowd — “Nobody knows anything.”

My point is not to depress you, by the way. Gary Halbert made millions of dollars and lived in Key West and fished all day long. William Goldman won a couple of Oscars. John Clauser got his Nobel prize. All that, in spite of not understanding how the damn thing works on a basic level.

The key of course is to keep generating ideas, to keep working, to keep taking a new step every day. And the day after, and so on until you drop dead. Great things can get accomplished in this way, and small things, and everything in between.

All right. I hope I haven’t inspired you too much.

I now have my Most Valuable Email training to pitch to you. I doubt you will be interested. You have probably heard me talk about this training before, and you have probably decided already it’s not for you.

That’s fine. But in case you want to find out more about Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you keep writing a new valuable email each day — and maybe even make money with it, God knows how — then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Dr. Bejako the sadistic dentist goes to work on the “mystery box” bonus

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Long-time readers of this newsletter might know I’m a big fan of screenwriter William Goldman. Goldman won two screenwriting Oscars, one for Butch Cassidy and another for All The President’s Men.

​​He also wrote The Princess Bride.

​​And of course, Goldman wrote Marathon Man, which starred Sir Laurence Olivier in the role of the sadistic dentist Dr. Szell (“Is it safe?”).

I thought of Dr. Szell because I’ve never before been compared to a dentist, but it finally happened today.

​​Author and copywriter Angie Archer, who not only took me up on my Most Valuable Email offer, but was one of the first to take me up on the free but valuable, time-limited offer included inside MVE, wrote me to say:

This feels like a trip to the dentist.

I know it’ll be good for me, but…

Here, before I talk myself out of it, is [Angie taking me up on my ‘mystery box’ offer].

You might not know what a “mystery box” offer is.

It’s an idea I got from marketer Rich Schefren. Rich once offered a “mystery box” upsell for $29. He didn’t say what was in the box, only that the buyer should trust him, and his claim that the box is worth at least 10x the asking price.

Rich’s “mystery box” upsell converted at a crazy 78% — 2x or 3x what a typical upsell will do. What’s more, Rich says the offer got zero negative chargebacks, and ended up forming a segment of his best customers.

So a mystery box might be worth experimenting with in your own marketing. You just gotta be firm, and not give in, and not tell people what’s inside the box.

That’s what I won’t tell you what my MVE “mystery box” offer is. I will just say it is very valuable, more so than the price of this course, and that it’s something I probably won’t keep up for very long.

So if you are interested in taking me up on the Most Valuable Email and the free but valuable, time-limited mystery box offer it contains, it might make sense to act now.

​​The launch period is coming to an end in a few hours time, at 12 midnight PST tonight. After that deadline, the price will go up. If you’d like to get in before then:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The fallout of my “rape” subject line

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3 days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Don’t rape your audience.”

That hook came from a quote from screenwriter William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), who compared gradually seducing your audience (movie screenplays) to raping them (TV writing).

Like I said at the start of that email, rape is a shocking metaphor. In today’s society, it’s borderline impermissible.

So sure enough, when I checked my unsubscribe count for this email, it showed I disappointed, offended, or perhaps triggered a lot of people. ​​My unsubscribes proved it. I had 7 unsubscribes total, which might not sound like a lot, but is 5.8x my norm for the past 90 days.

I did the hard work of checking who all those unsubscribes were.

Some were new — they signed up only a few weeks ago for my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

Others had been on my list for a while.

Either way, none of them had ever bought anything from me… replied to any of my emails… played along with any of the engagement bait I regularly put out… or even opened and read my emails very often.

So there’s that, the hard and toxic fallout.

On the other hand, I also had a dozen thoughtful replies to my email, both about the subject line and the idea in the body. Almost all these replies came from successful marketers and copywriters. For example, copywriter Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency, wrote in to say:

Yo.

Yesterday I was on a zoom call with the team.

It was about our marketing emails.

I shared my screen and opened my email app to talk about a thing.

Instead of talking about our email stuff, we spent the next 10 minutes admiring your subject line.

It’s tier-1.

At first, I had a thought like:
“In a non-DR market this would get super-high Opens, but just as many Spam complaints.”

Addendum to original thought after opening:
“…Only if the body doesn’t deliver.”

3rd addendum after reading body:
“And… It delivered.”

Kick ass! And super inspiring to see. Really got me thinking: “my subject lines suck!”

Robert pretty much spelled out everything I wanted to say about this crisis.

Shocking subject lines, and shocking topics in general, will polarize your audience.

But if you can somehow back up your shocking stuff in a congruent way, you will only scrub away the barnacles clinging to the gleaming white hull of your magnificent ship.

At the same time, you will engage and bond more deeply with successful, thoughtful people, the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with, whether as customers, clients, or just readers.

You might say I am not telling you anything new here.

And you’re right. Ben Settle and Dan Kennedy before him have both been preaching this kind of repulsion marketing for years.

But fundamentals like this work. And so they are worth repeating from time to time. Until maybe the right time, when it all clicks for you and you decide to try it out for yourself.

Anyways, if you have a business, and you’re worried your subject lines suck, then you might want to hire me to help with that.

Because as of now, I’m offering consulting. And one of the things I’m highly qualified to consult on is email marketing and copywriting. And not just the shocking and repelling kind. And not just to my own email list.

If case you are interested, fill out the form below, and I’ll be in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it a couple years ago. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and pour the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

An open letter to my non-native copywriting brethren

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For my upcoming business of copy guide, Copy Zone, I interviewed three working copywriters about their experiences getting client work.

Only afterwards, I realized a curious and unintended thing had happened:

All three of these copywriters are non-native English speakers. To be fair, one of them is writing copy in his own language (Spanish). But the other two are working and writing in English, and successfully so.

I bring this up because a few days ago, I got a comment and a question from a new reader:

I love your writing and how you take your readers (us) on the journey with you.

I mean, is it even possible for me (a non-native copywriter) to write close to your writing style and finesse?

I don’t know about my writing style and finesse. If there is something fine and stylish about my writing, I think it’s mainly the result of work.

But on the broader question of whether it’s possible for a non-native speaker copywriter to succeed… well, the case studies I will include in Copy Zone definitely show that yes, it is possible.

On the other hand, most people never do anything, and never achieve anything.

One of my favorite “fun” writers is William Goldman, who wrote the screenplays for movies like The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Goldman also wrote books, including one about Hollywood called Adventures in the Screen Trade.

And in that book, Goldman said that, in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

​​In spite of huge money being on the line… in spite of a bunch of smart and ambitious people working day and night to identify or create the next hit… nobody in Hollywood has any clue of what will end up being successful or why.

My belief is that it’s not just Hollywood where nobody knows anything.

The world is a complex and mysterious place. The only way to find out the answer to many questions is to run the cellular automaton a few million steps and see what ends up happening.

And if you want an example of how weird and unpredictable life can be, then take me.

I am technically a non-native English speaker, though I consider English to be my first language. ​​Meaning, I didn’t grow up speaking English for the first decade or so of my life… but today English is the language I know best, because I’ve done most of my reading, writing, and arithmeticking in English.

I’m not giving myself as an example of somebody who succeeded in copywriting despite a non-native level of English skill.

All I want to point out is that, at birth, and for some years after, nobody could have predicted I would end up speaking English as my first language. And even fewer bodies could have predicted that, one day, I will make my living writing sales copy.

So can you make it as a non-native copywriter?

​​You certainly can. ​​I imagine you knew that already.

But will you make it?

​​Well, here’s something else you probably knew already. That’s a question that only you, and a bit of time, can really answer.

Last point:

If you want to know when my Copy Zone guide is out, or if you want occasional free advice on the business side of copywriting, then grab a spot on my daily email newsletter.