Today being January 1st, I find it an excellent opportunity to wish you a happy New Year and to point out the surprising significance of January.
As I learned when I was still young and very stupid, January is named after the Roman god Janus, the two-faced deity of doors, gates, and more broadly, beginnings and endings.
I say I was still very stupid when I first learned this, because my reaction was, “A god of doors? How lame. What’s next? A god of faucets?”
It was only later, after I read a book or two, that I found out just how fundamental the idea of a door — an entry point, an exit point — really is to the human mind.
Because all human perception, down at the most basic neurological level, is based on difference, contrast.
Right now, bunches of your neurons are frantically working to determine where they can draw a line, and call everything before it one thing, everything after it another, and convince you these are somehow meaningfully separate, and discard the many other details that don’t fit into that picture of the world.
Without this Januarial work of drawing lines and creating doors to come up with discrete concepts, we couldn’t really have any higher-level thinking.
That’s why it makes sense that January, the month of doors, comes before, say March, named after the Roman god of war, Mars.
“That’s truly fascinating,” I hear you saying. “I had no idea of the depth of your classical learning or your smattering of popsci neuroscience. But what does this have to do with marketing or making money or really anything else I might actually care about on January 1st?”
Everything. It has everything to do with it.
This basic observation, of the outsized importance of beginnings and endings, repeats itself at every level of the sales job.
At the level of entire sales campaigns, where the opening of the campaign and the closing of the campaign bring in almost all the sales…
At the level of individual sales letters, where the headline and lead on the one end, and the offer and close at the other end, represent 80%-95% of the effectiveness or sales pull of that letter…
At the level of individual sales claims or promises, such as the following:
“The simple 12-word-sentence that will make you the #1 candidate more often than you would ever believe.”
That’s a bullet written by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, considered by many to be the greatest of the greats because he won so often against other A-list copywriters.
You might think Gary’s bullet is just a simple, direct response promise. But there’s a surprising amount of subtle psychology that goes into this bullet, with a particular emphasis on what Gary chooses to put first in this bullet, and what to put last.
I won’t explain that subtle psychology here, but I will tell you the following:
Wouldn’t it be nice to start this New Year acquiring a new skill, a truly valuable skill, a skill that few others possess?
Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter, whether you write for clients or for your own business?
Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire a skill that ultimately all effective copy comes from?
You probably know what I’m talking about.
But if you’d like to make 100% sure, or if you’d actually like to use this January 1st to get yourself this skill and the associated bump in fortune that this skill can bring, then take a look here: