The Mental Health Side of Copywriting

Copywriter and persuasion expert Adil Amarsi is the guest for the 196th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Adil is working on a book on Persuasion and recently changed the title he prefers from Copywriter to Creative Director because he does so much more than copy. We covered quite a bit of ground during our discussion, including: •  how writing daily stories as a kid led to a gig as a copywriter (before he knew what copywriting was) •  his process for attracting his first clients •  what he did to learn copywriting and who he learned it from •  the “first week’s earnings” deal that netted him six figures •  what not to do when you get a windfall •  going from £300 to $30,000 + 4%—the secret of Adil’s success •  mental health issues and the impact on his business •  how much time he spends writing versus ideation •  breaking down what a $30K project looks like •  the clause that Adil adds to his contract that you’ll definitely want to borrow •  walking the line between manipulation and persuasion •  one of the words you should never use in your copy •  what it means to be a creative director and why he doesn’t call himself a copywriter •  what it takes to create a great offer •  the practical joke he played on one of his friends You won’t want to miss this one. Download it to your favorite podcast app or simple scroll down and press the play button. You’ll also find a full transcript and links below.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: John Carlton Gary Halbert PsychoCybernetics Jay Abraham The Irresistible Offer Adil's website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob:   This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground, the place to connect with hundreds of smart copywriters who share ideas and strategies to help you master marketing, mindset and copywriting in your business. Learn more at thecopywriterunderground.com. Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club podcast. Rob:   You're invited to join the club for episode 196 as we chat with copywriter, podcaster and alchemists of persuasion, Adil Amarsi, about telling better stories, what it takes to create a great offer, how to be more persuasive, and his approach to consulting with his clients on their marketing needs. Kira:   Welcome, Adil. Adil:   Hi. Thanks for having me, guys. Kira:   Yeah, and just shout out before we jump into Brennan Hopkins, who introduced us, so thank you, Brennan for making the introduction. And let's just kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter, consultant, podcaster, artists and we can go on and on, and on? Adil:   Yeah. So first of all, thank you, Brennan, because he did make this happen. So my story's kind of I used to think it was interesting until I actually sat down and wrote it out with a friend. So I moved from Africa, like East Africa to the UK when I was four years old. About a year into moving to the UK, in the mid-90s, my dad ended up having a herniated disk that affected his walking, so he was paralyzed from the waist down for about two years. And it's important to know that I have an older sister and the 90s were basically known as Nickelodeon versus Cartoon Network. You can pretty much guess which side I sided with and which side she went with. I was Cartoon Network, she was Nickelodeon. I found that the best way I could watch cartoons was to sit down and watch whatever my dad was watching at the time. In the UK my dad really loved watching four shows, in particular. Two quite important. The other two, somewhat. So the first one was the news. My dad loved watching the news. I do not love watching the news. He did, but there was a lot that I picked up from there, especially about how presentation is done and essentially how to speak in a presentable manner. Very unconsciously, I picked up those habits. The second was a trigger show known as Fifteen to One. It was just like the weakest link but less competitive. It was like playing Trivial Pursuit with a real live audience of 15 people. My dad loved the show called Countdown, which is about words and numbers. And finally, his favorite show of all, for some strange reason, he loved watching the Home Shopping channel with Billy Mays. And he would watch it for two hours a day, six days a week. And this went on for like two years. So in the space of about three hours, or three and a half hours of television programming, me at the age of five to the time I was seven, when my brain is most susceptible to taking on this kind of information, it's being bombarded with not only cartoons, high levels of creativity because I love to draw, but I'm also being bombarded with mathematics, analysis, trivia, words, propaganda, and of course, direct selling. And this starts to amalgamate and form into my brain. Fast forward to the time about 11, 12 years old, my dad can walk again. I'm about to go up from what we call the UK secondary school to, sorry, primary school to secondary school, or I think it's middle school in the US. My parents were pulled into a parent-teacher conference, and they said, well, your son's smart, but he's a bit of a perfectionist. And my parents would ask, what do you mean? They said, well, he sits down and he ... If he makes a single mistake on a page, instead of crossing it out, he'll rip out the page and start again. And my mom was like, "Okay." And my dad was like, "Okay." My dad was walking at this point. He had recovered. The herniated disc had like eased up off of his spinal cord, and he had a small business that he was running. This is important to say, because my dad ended up making me write a story every single day in a notepad to give to him. And I thought it was ... At the time I was like, I don't really like doing this, but I got to do it. Even if it's a small thing, I should get it done. Shortly after my parents separated for a short while, so my mother, my sister, and I moved across city to another part of town, where my school commute became, instead of a 30 minute walk, it became a two hour journey. And in that two hour journey, an hour there, an hour back. Bit of a lonely kid, low self-esteem, very creative. I saw drawing. I started writing poetry. I started writing hip hop and rap lyrics because that was the thing I was into. I kept writing these stories for my dad. And every weekend I'd go see my dad, I'd drop off these stories to him. And this went on for about two or three years. Around this time, I started getting to other things like stand-up comedy, hip hop, as in actually participating in rap battles because you had to be quick and fast on your feet and that was always a fun thing for me. Slam poetry and of course, I actually hung up my ability to draw for a while. I shelved it because I didn't like my teacher. And then fast forward to the time I'm 18, I'm also a martial artist at this point. 18 years old, I joined a network marketing company. Things don't go as well as you want them to. I started off quite well but things kind of deteriorated. I decided to go online to find out how to do network marketing online. I end up writing a blog post and I was really bad at traffic. I wrote a blog post about the network marketing company I was with at the time, which was a self-development company. I had 10 people view that post, I had seven people buy it from me. I had no idea what I was doing. I went to a marketing seminar and essentially I spoke to two people there and they said, hey, what are you really good at? And I said, "Well, I'm not very good at many things." They said, yeah, but what are you good at? I said, "I had 10 people read a blog post and 7 of them gave me money. I know that's not the best result you could go for. But hey, I'm not very good at the traffic." And they were just both looking at me like, the speakers in the room, they were just looking at me like I was an idiot. That I just said something that was so stupid. Of course, I asked. I'm an 18, 19 year old kid, I'm like, "What's going on?" And they're like, you do realize that's kind of unheard of, and you have a room full of people that will actually pay you a lot of money for those kinds of results. So ever since then, I went back home. My parents again, my parents did get back together like a few years prior. I see my dad I talked to him. I'm like, "Hey, I've decided on a new career path. I'm going to go down the copywriting route." Because I was a dropout as well. So I dropped out of high school at 17. Graduated high school, but like we have a thing called college here. So technically same thing. But yeah, essentially that was it. At that point my dad went upstairs, pulled out a black binder. He gave it to me and said, "Read this." I got about two three ads into it. So I was reading the advertisements for his projects when he had his company before he sold it. I said, "These seem familiar." He goes, "Yeah, we used to take your stories, clean up the grammar, add a headline, give an actual real story of what we were selling and mailed this out. You were always the essential basis of how we started all copy." I was like, "That's crazy." Over the last 12 years, it's just been one crazy thing after the other. That's basically what led me to where I'm at today. Rob:   I love how serendipity seems to play a part in a lot of copywriters lives. I've got to know though, that first blog post, what did you do that was so effective so that you could get essentially a 70% conversion rate from what you wrote. Adil:   I wish I knew. I wish I still had that blog post. It was on an old blogspot blog.