TCC Podcast #164: The (not so) secret to getting better at copy with Glenn Fisher

Want to get better at copy? Copywriter and author, Glenn Fisher, joined us for the 164th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to talk about how he became a copywriter and how he rapidly improved his skills. Today, Glenn teaches other how to start and get better at copywriting on his podcast, in speeches, and in his book. We asked Glenn about: •  how copywriting overtook his dream of becoming a bank manager •  pitching everyone in London before finding his first job •  what he learned from his early mentors that helped him most •  Glenn’s process for finding (and testing out) a great idea •  the difference between the UK and the USA when it comes to ideas •  the lessons he took away from his Tony Robbins experience •  whether or not copy and advertising can change a person’s beliefs •  the no-secret, “secrets” Glenn has used to grow his skill set •  what his business looks like and how he spends his time •  the catalyst for writing his book and the process he followed •  what he would do differently if he were rewriting his book again •  what the book has done to build his credibility and why that’s NOT enough •  what he struggles with in his business today •  what he would do if he lost everything and had to start over from scratch •  why other copywriters aren’t your competition We also asked Glenn about the future of copywriting and where marketing is headed right now. To hear this interview, click the play button below, or download the episode to your favorite podcast app. Or scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Agora Tony Robbins The End of America Alex Mandossian AWAI Proust The Art of the Click Mary Ellen Tribby Kate Toon All Good Copy Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: This episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Club, In Real Life, our live event in San Diego, March 12th through 14th. Get your tickets now at thecopywriterclub.com/tccirl. 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 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 164 as we chat with copywriter and podcaster Glenn Fisher about becoming a direct-response copywriter and writing a book about it, what it takes to write good copy, his writing processes, mistakes he's made, and what he thinks the future of copywriting looks like. Kira:   Welcome, Glenn. Rob:   Hi, Glenn. Glenn:            Hello. Thanks for having me. Kira:   So, let's kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter/author/speaker? Let's hear your story. Glenn:            Cool. So, yeah, we'll break it down into parts. As is the case with most copywriters, I got into it completely by mistake. I think I've spoken to you about one out of a thousand copywriters who went, ‘I'm going to be a copywriter.’ I started out as an accountant, which was an obvious mistake, but I did that for a few years and so I wanted to be a bank manager. I've never met anyone else who, as a 15-year-old kid, wanted to be a bank manager, but that's what I wanted to do. And I was going along on that path for a while until something snapped in my brain and went wrong, or maybe right, depending on which way you look at it, and I figured I wanted to do writing in some form. So, I ended up... I knew I couldn't just walk into a job and go, ‘Hey, I'm a writer now. Hope you might employ me,’ so I went back to uni. I was probably 22-ish, something around that mark. Went back to uni and did a creative writing course, a degree, here in England. I did that and then I come from a very small town in the Northeast of England where they barely can read, let alone write, so I had to move to the big city, to London, and get a job, and I applied for as many writing jobs as I could, anything that said Junior Writer, I applied for. And the only place where I managed to get an interview, let alone any response, was a company that at the time I had little to no idea who they were or what they did, but it was a company called Agora, which many of your listeners will be familiar with, especially in US. And they had an office in London. I applied for a junior writer job and got the job. Still, for probably at least three months sat in an office in London with direct-response sales letters all around me, not knowing what the hell was going on, whether... what any of this meant. Didn't know really what a copywriter was, but obviously, as you guys will know, having entered that world, I'd kind of, very luckily, struck the jackpot as far as learning to be a copywriter goes. So, it's purely chance that I discovered copywriting. I got this job at Agora and then from there obviously I was very lucky that I, at the time, when I joined the company, I have no idea of dates and stuff like that, I kind of lose track after this, but it was a time when Bill Bonner, the owner and Mark Ford or Michael Masterson, depending on how much of the back story you know, they were actually in England at the time and they were training the UK writers, so it was a fantastic opportunity to work directly with them and learn a lot from them. Worked at Agora for about a decade, directly, and then more recently went freelance. Still write letters for Agora but also wrote the book and that's where we are now. So that's how I became an author. And then, once I had that, it was kind of, ‘Right, well, I'll start speaking and do that kind of thing, and then do a podcast.’ And then I can't... I'm a bit of a workaholic so I just keep doing more and more things, but, I think that's how I got here and I want to do it in a shorter way. I tend to ramble, so you'll have to stop me. Rob:   Rambling's always good. Before we get to the book and the speaking, the podcasting, those early days, as you were learning from some of your mentors, what were the kinds of things that Mark and others were teaching you? And I'm asking this because I think a lot of copywriters who listen to this podcast want ideas of how they can get better faster. Maybe they're starting out, they want to know the first resources that they ought to be looking at, so what did that look like as you were learning the skill of copywriting and more precisely direct-response copywriting? Glenn:            Sure. So, I mean, it's funny because I spend all my time trying to share this information and educate people and what have you and teach people the skills that I've learned over the years, and I try to distill them in very easy and simple ways. And I think that, I always used to say, Mark was brilliant at this, and both Bill and Mark are like this in their nature. They have the kind of yin and yang, but they both have the same philosophy that they just keep things simple and they reduce everything to its absolutely simplest kind of unarguable form. So, never enter into an argument with them because you will eventually lose because they can reduce things to just very simple ideas and I think that probably, without getting too philosophical, is the whole thing behind the success of Agora because they take things down to its simplest ideas. It's all about ideas. So, I learned very early on that you live and survive and grow, succeed, what have you, by your ideas, and if an idea is no good, it doesn't matter how good a writer you are, how clever you are, and how much you manipulate the bad idea that you got, if it's a bad idea it's not going to work. So you need to spend the time on good ideas and searching for those ideas. It sounds obvious but very few businesses are able to do that, and I will say able to do that because, I think, everybody wants to have good ideas and spend the time to come up with the good ideas, but as businesses and in a busy world where everybody's fighting and competing, it's very hard to give the time that you actually need to give to come up with those ideas and spend the time you need to. So, that was a real kind of fundamental thing that I learned early on. Then, it's like, I mean there's so much stuff, but the technical things that always stick in my mind, Mark always said, ‘Stick to one idea,’ and it's one of the simplest pieces of advice, it's one of the hardest to follow. We naturally want to go off on tangents and do things that have more depth and all this kind of stuff, but sticking to one idea was a big thing. And then from Bill, the classic, ‘Speak to people, or write to people as you would be speaking to them in the bar.’ Those two pieces of information, if you can talk about a very simple idea in very simple language, there's nothing really harder than that. So, it's all about finding the idea and then just expressing it in a very simple and effective way. Obviously, I could go into the nitty-gritty, there's the four Us and four Ps and all this kind of stuff, but really, it's just about finding the idea and then expressing that in its simplest form. Kira:   Can we dig deeper into that and talk about how to find the great ideas, and what your process looks like for finding great ideas, to the point where you're like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is it.’ Glenn:            Sure. So, that's the number one hardest question in the world, but I've asked it a lot myself, the thing that still sticks in my mind now, actually, it's a good friend of mine, he still works with Agora in London in one of the offshoots there, and when I asked him about it, a guy called Nick, he said, ‘One of the best ways to find good ideas is to spot the bad ideas.’ So you're kind of whittling out the bad ideas. You can usually spot when something's not right. It's harder to go, ‘That's a winning idea. We'll go with that.’