I’m in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia, lying on the bed of my AirBnb as I write this.
A moment ago, I was looking around the room, determined to find something to write about. But what?
The strange ceramic crucifix on the wall, which looks like a starfish?
The mysterious unlit match on the ground?
The flowering white orchid by the window?
None of it was good enough.
So I got up off the bed and started rifling through a basket of tourist brochures and city maps in the corner of the room.
It turned out there were a bunch of old books in the basket as well. Among them was what I was looking for:
A 1996 gem called, “The Secrets Of Growing Up: Advice For Boys.”
The cover shows a manic- and aggressive-looking ruffian of about 14, pumping his fist in triumph.
I flipped through the book. A few section headings jumped out:
“What is petting really?”
“From the first tiny hairs to a real beard”
“Can muscles be sinful?”
I broke out in a light sweat, remembering the horror and awkwardness of my teenage years. These days, whenever I wish that I were younger again, I have to remind myself how bad things were back then.
But really, The Secrets Of Growing Up is such a quaint throwback.
There’s a section describing musical styles for boys to consider: techno (“the more BPM, the better”)… grunge (“the terms ‘punk’ and ‘grunge’ mean the same — garbage”)… and hip hop (“the rapper pays much attention to his artfully rhymed texts”).
I guess The Secrets of Growing Up was a useful book in its time?
It must have been. It was published in German originally, then translated to a bunch of different languages and republished in countries across Europe, including Croatia.
But who would possibly need or want or buy such a book today?
There was a time when there were real secrets, or at least taboo topics. Access to information was limited, scattered, restricted.
That’s not true any more.
Over the past few decades, and culminating today with Perplexity and ChatGPT, whatever you want to know or do, you have the information available instantly, for free, wherever you are.
But will you actually bother to seek out the information?
Will you actually consume it when it’s served up to you?
And most of all, will you act on it, and benefit from it?
I’m telling you this in case you KNOW how to write marketing emails… and if you already KNOW the value of doing so.
If that’s the case, do you need another email copywriting equivalent of “The Secrets Of Growing Up?”
My guess is no. And if you suspect I’m right, I’d like to point you to my Daily Email Habit service.
It’s not more information on how to write emails.
In the words of marketing agency owner Eric Mann, who signed up for daily email habit a few weeks ago:
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Thanks for the DEH – without it and the fear of missing out on getting one more day in a row – I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing this at all.
The content isn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined, I assume because I read so many daily emails from so many great copywriters like you and Ben and Daniel T, etc, it almost feels second nature to me now…
It’s the discipline of writing when you don’t have something dripping from your pen – that’s what the DEH solves for me! Thanks again!! 🙂
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If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and get writing for real, today: