Episode 008 - Copywriting Is a Team Sport

Special Episode with copywriting legend John Carlton, on the topic of "Copywriting Is a Team Sport"
Key takeaways:
- Beginning and intermediate copywriters need mentors and critiques on their work. But, surprisingly, so do A-Listers and super-successful entrepreneurs. A different kind of support -- but, what's similar, is, they need to hear the truth about their work and their businesses from supportive, experienced people who aren't afraid to point out flaws and missing pieces.
- Dan Kennedy on how to decide what creativity fits and what should be cut from your copy: "Does it advance the sale?"
- Golden advice from Gary Halbert: "When all else fails, give people what they want."
- To this day, other top marketers and copywriters count on Carlton to round out their advice and presentations: Two current examples -- Dan Kennedy at Cleveland event, Clayton Makepeace at online Mastermind.
- The Mastermind process, first described by Napoleon Hill in "Think and Grow Rich," is uniquely valuable for writers and business owners
- David read "Think and Grow Rich" in the mid-1980s, and has been in a number of Masterminds continuously since 1989
- Early in his career, Carlton learned and benefited from what he calls "mind melds" with people like copywriting legend Jim Rutz; marketing master Jay Abraham; some other famous people he declined to mention; and of course Gary Halbert, who was his business partner and writing partner
- Sometimes Halbert would take his copy into a bar and read it to folks over a beer. If he heard, "That's a great ad," he knew he had a loser. If he heard "How can I get that???", he knew he had a winner
- There's no way short of testing to know for sure if copy will be successful, but the closest you can come is to have someone with a lot of successful experience (and a lot of remembered failures) to look at what you've written and be completely honest with you
- The Platinum Mastermind is a relatively small group (about a dozen people) that offers a classic Napoleon Hill-style Mastermind, using the hot-seat format Carlton has refined and perfected over many years
- More info on the Platinum Mastermind:
http://garfinkelcoaching.com/love
Download.