TCC Podcast #36: Info Products and The Stone Soup Method with Ken McCarthy

Ken McCarthy, also known as the “World’s Most Secretive Copywriter” and “Mr. Internet,” is the guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, jammed full of great advice for any copywriter who wants to grow beyond simply writing for clients. Ken may be the only guy who can talk about speed reading, the origins of the internet, Johnny Rotten, making soup, Tested Advertising Methods, and of course, copywriting—and have it all make sense in the end. Listen and learn: •  how Ken become the “world’s most secretive copywriter” •  what you have to do to “get good” at copywriting •  Ken's recommendation about how to grow your business beyond copy •  the “stone soup” method for creating a product •  how to avoid the “me too” trap—perhaps the biggest mistake people make online today •  the marketing secret Ken learned from a punk rock drummer •  the books he recommends to give you an unfair advantage over the other copywriters Told you it was jam packed with good stuff. It's all here in episode 36. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Sponsor: AirStory Ben Settle Eugene Schwartz Tim Ferriss AIDA Mark Graham Mark Andreessen Jim Clark Ted Nicholas The link to Ken’s interviews (updated) System Secrets Martin Atkins Nine Inch Nails Johnny Rotten Scientific Advertising Tested Advertising Methods The Robert Collier Letter Book Gary Halbert Ken’s Copy Clinic My Life in Advertising Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity Full Transcript: The Copywriter Club Podcast is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co/club. Kira: What if you can 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 to 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 36 as we chat with Ken McCarthy, who’s been called the world’s most secretive seven-figure copywriter, about how he has built his business from internet pioneer to where he is today, the most common mistakes writers and other business owners are making online, the books and courses he says will give our listeners a competitive advantage over other writers, and whatever else comes up as we talk. Kira: Hey, Rob. Hey, Ken, how’s it going? Ken: Hey, good. Rob: Ken, welcome to the podcast. Ken: Thank you very much, glad to be here. Rob: We’re excited to talk with you. You’ve got a wide range of experience, and I think we could probably go on for hours and hours, but since our time’s a little bit limited, let’s start with your story, where you came from and how you became the most secretive copywriter in the world. Ken: That’s a really interesting headline or tagline. That was written actually by Ben Settle. He wrote it for me, and he’s a great copywriter, and it was written to actually promote a copywriting info marketing course that I have. He wrote it based on having taken the course. Rather than me write the letter, one of my students wrote the sales letter based on what he learned from me. Now that being said, Ben was already a really good copywriter when I met him. I didn’t teach him everything he knows. He was already really good, but the letter that he wrote was based on the learnings that he got from the course. Anyway, that’s how I became the most secretive seven-figure copywriter. It’s fairly accurate. In fact, it’s exactly accurate. Very few people think of me as a copywriter, which shows how good my copy is. They just think I’m this guy who does things, but it’s all driven by copy. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything without my ability to write copy, I mean, nothing. That’s the secret part of me, and then the seven-figures thing is the businesses that I’ve operated, my own businesses, they have generated way into the seven-figures. I guess it’s probably, gross is certainly eight, low eight, but eight nonetheless, and it’s all come from copy. I don’t know if I’m the world’s most secretive. There might be someone even more secretive than me, but yeah, that’s me. I always like to write. That’s sort of on one side of the equation. I just read a lot. I always wrote a lot starting at a really young age, and that cannot hurt. If you want to be a copywriter, it behooves you to notice that part of copywriting is writing. It’s right there in the world. The more you write the better. I was talking with somebody the other day about finding one’s voice in writing, and he made a really interesting point. You find your voice when you stop saying all this tilted, unnatural stuff that you think people want to hear and you start writing what you actually feel and think. The more you write the closer you’re going to get to being able to find your voice, and then after you find your voice, then you can start playing with writing in other voices, which is sort of client work. I’ve always read and I’ve always written a lot and I recommend everybody who is a copywriter, this is our fuel. I mean, this is how we get good, read, read, read, read, read, read everything, not just ad copy books and marketing and business books, but widely in psychology and history, biography, all these things are helpful. Probably everybody on this call knows of the late great Eugene Schwartz. When he was writing ad copy for a book that he was selling, and he sold lots and lots of books, he not only go through the book with a fine tooth comb and find every interesting thing about the book to create bullets to put in the sales letter, he’d read like 10, 20, 30, 40 books around the topic of the book that he was promoting to try to get some interesting tidbits and insight and flashy things to say about the topic. The more you read and the more knowledgeable you are about whatever it is you’re trying to write ad copy about, the better off you’re going to be. I always wrote a lot. Now, then I found myself stranded and broke in New York City, which is not a good thing, and unemployed, and this was when I was in my early 20s. I was 24, and I had this tech writing job in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Oh my God, what a nightmare, but anyway, it paid pretty well and that was my vision of what was possible for me at the time. I was writing technical manuals for computer software, and then the company lost the contract and they kicked us all to the curb, and here I was in Manhattan with an apartment and rent to pay and no idea of what to do. I had been pretty expert in speed reading and study skills. I had actually taught that subject for a couple of years when I got out of college. I had read, again, going back to the reading theme, I didn’t read a few books about it. I read mountains of books about it. I mean, every book ever written about speed reading and study skills, and there are a lot of them actually, I read them. I said, “Well, I’m broke, I’ve got to pay my rent, I’ve got to eat,” and all these things were extreme, like this was a really extreme situation. What I did was I made up a flyer, speed reading, and I posted it all over Broadway on the Upper West Side, which is where I was living in those days. It was a really great learning experience. I kind of knew that the more exposures the ad had the more chance I’d have for people to call, so I put the flyer everywhere. I knew that I had to have some way for people to get in touch with me, right? This was pre-internet days so I had my phone number, and I just made sure that poster was everywhere. People indeed did call and I started out by giving private lessons in my apartment, and then as time went on I got a big enough following that I could actually give classes, and that’s how I supported myself. Along the way, not ever having heard the word copywriting, not ever having heard the word direct response or direct marketing, I discovered a lot of direct response principles and a lot of copywriting principles. I learned about headlines. I learned about bullet points. I learned about clear call to action. I learned about the importance of relentless follow-up. It was very simple business. I posted posters. People would call. I would talk with them, which I guess is inbound telemarketing. Then I’d get their name and address, and then I would mail them a more detailed description of the course, which was really ad copy. I didn’t know it at the time. Then every time I would put on a new class, I would just go back to my list and mail to the entire list of people that had made inquiries again. I just washed, rinsed, and repeated over and over again. Every month I’d have a class or two, and I didn’t get rich, but I was able to live in Manhattan. I was able to pay my rent. I was able to buy books. I was able to have fun. I didn’t have to work too hard. I only taught an hour a week. I probably spent five hours a week putting up posters and an hour a week teaching. I probably could have been more ambitious and done more, but in those days I was kind of a archetypal slacker. I was very happy to only have to really work six hours a week. I guess I was the original four-hour a week guy, but I didn’t [crosstalk 00:07:23]. Rob: Yeah, Tim Ferriss could learn a lot from you. Ken: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he got that idea for that title from using AdWords testing, running different AdWords and seeing which one people clicked on. That method of using AdWords as a testing device was developed by me and my faculty at the System Seminar back in 2002. There is a connection there. Anyway, I learned a lot about functional copy, and that’s probably the most important thing any writer can get, any ad writer, any copywriter, is we’re writing functionally.