Copywriters Podcast

Our guest today is Troy Steine, and what he has to say will be of interest to every copywriter! He’s going to tell us how to close more copywriting deals. Now Troy is a soft-spoken guy, but make no mistake — he is a sales powerhouse. He has sold and helped others to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of offers and products. Today, Troy specializes in working consultants, coaches, copywriters and online entrepreneurs. He’s the head sales advisor at PeacefulProfits.com and works with people who are looking to launch, grow and scale their businesses. Full disclosure: Troy is a former mentoring client of mine, and that’s one reason he understands the business of copywriting so well. On our show today, Troy covered: • What he has discovered speaking to dozens of copywriters and business owners over the last 12 months • How his experience in many types of sales has led him to what he’s doing today • This one’s especially important! The big reason people who have a conversation with prospects never end up getting that person as a client • A framework for successfully getting sales • How you can best position yourself to get the most business Troy is willing to take follow-up questions from Copywriters Podcast listeners. His email is: tdsteine@gmail.comDownload.

I met Josh Rosenberg in Las Vegas a few years ago at Mark Ling’s mastermind. We had a very animated conversation at dinner, and then all of us headed over to one of the wildest and most memorable parties of my life. It’s a fitting memory, because Josh takes a bold approach to copywriting and marketing, and he’s going to share some highlights today. Josh got into copywriting in 2008. He had a corporate job he hated. He learned copywriting and web marketing from the ground up, and as his career took off like a rocket, he became a much happier camper. But he’s about as unconventional as you get. For example, when he’s working on a piece of copy and he asks his friends to review it, if they tell him it’s “good,” he’ll tear it up and rewrite from scratch. He won’t actually start to use the copy until his friends stop complimenting him and start demanding to buy the product. Josh’s work has generated over $100 million for businesses in almost 60 industries. And he prides himself on getting paid far more than most other copywriters do. Here’s what I asked him: 1. Where do you find clients who can pay you top dollar for your work? 2. Okay, so now that you know where high paying clients what do you actually say and do in order to get their attention so they’ll agree to get on the phone with you? 3. With so much competition out there in industries like info products and eCommerce, how do you stand out from other copywriters? I’ve heard you comparing how clients pick which copywriter to hire very similarly to ordering a bottle of wine at a restaurant. Can you tell us what that means? 4. So you’ve set yourself apart from everyone else, got a potential client on the phone, what do you say when they ask about your rates? 5. I know you’re very proud of the fact you’ve figured out how to get paid upwards of $25,000 before you even get hired or are asked to do any work. I’m dying to know, how does this work? Josh’s Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/copywritersclubhouse Download.

We recorded today’s show a few days after the Superbowl, and I’d like to talk about the most admired and most hated athlete in America, Tom Brady. People seem to run very hot or very cold on him. Personally, I like him. He lived in my part of the country earlier in his life; he graduated from the same college I did; and he used to come back here summers to work with Tom Martinez as a personal quarterback coach. Martinez was also the football coach at the College of San Mateo, where legendary coach Bill Walsh once played. Football royalty. So, you have every right to ask, what in the WORLD does this have to do with copywriting? Well, I know about Tom Brady’s secret frustration. And what I know is not from any inside information, but just from a fact of life which also affects copywriters. Tom Brady’s work ethic is not the only reason for his incredible success. It’s also his patience, when he worked and worked and worked and worked and worked without seeing any progress. And then one day - shazaam - a breakthrough. There’s a brick wall he kept running into. A brick wall we ALL run into, if we really want to get really good at something. Then one day, the door seems to magically open, and you break on through to the next level. We talked about the brick wall today and I laid out the formula for getting through it. What you need to know to get to the next level of copywriting. The brick wall I was referring to before has a technical name, among those of us who study it and those of us who coach people for performance improvement. It’s called the plateau. When you’re climbing a mountain, there are stretches of the path where you are moving upward. And there are stretches of land on your path that are flat. You have to move across these flat areas to get to the next part where the path continues upward. In geography, the flat area is known as a plateau, and that’s where the term comes from. We talked about George Leonard’s book Mastery a few shows ago. He has a chapter in the book titled “Loving the Plateau.” In that chapter, he writes “The achievement of goals is important… We are taught in countless ways to value the product, the prize, the climactic moment. “But even after we’ve just caught the winning pass in the Superbowl, there’s always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If our life is a good one, a life of mastery, most of it will be spent on the plateau. If not, a large part of it may well be spent in restless, distracted, ultimately self-destructive attempts to escape the plateau. “The question remains: Where in our upbringing, our schooling, our career are we explicitly taught to value, to enjoy, even to love the plateau, the long stretch of diligent effort with no seeming progress?” It’s a good question, the one that George Leonard asks. I’ll hazard a guess. Most people aren’t taught to value or even love the plateau. And when it comes to copywriting, that may be the number one reason people give up on trying to get really good about it. Yet you’ve got to. Put in the darkest terms, I’ll quote Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” It’s amusing, and it’s easy to focus on the word “hell.” But I’m here to tell you today to focus on four other words instead: “going through” and “keep going.” Now, to get a little clearer on the concept: A plateau is not writer’s block or burning out. No, a plateau is where you keep working on what you’re doing, and it seems like you’re making no progress. We talked about what that looks like… what you need to know about plateaus that will help you keep going and realize all is not lost but, to coin a phrase -- and that’s really what we copywriters do, you know, coin a phrase -- the best is yet to come. Books referred to in this show: Mastery, by George Leonard https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfillment-ebook/dp/B01ND0X91Y Peak, by K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebook/dp/B011H56MKS Atomic Habits, by James Clear https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break-ebook/dp/B07D23CFGR Download.

Today we’re back at it in the Old Masters Series. We’re going to talk about how to make a fortune during a recession. Now a lot of people think now is the worst time to make a lot of money, but it all depends on your perspective. People who are good at spotting opportunities learn how to adjust the way they look at things depending upon the environment. When the storm clouds of recession and depression show up, they use it to their advantage. Not to take advantage of helpless people, but to recognize the opportunities in the changed circumstances. Bill Benton was such a man. He was 30 years old when the Great Depression hit in 1929, but he didn’t let that get in his way of becoming a millionaire by age 35. He saved companies with his unique ad strategies. And he even bought one for peanuts that later was earning him $2 million a year. Now let’s talk about you. Times are tough and you have to make a choice — do you want to go along with the doom and gloom thinking of the naysayers, or see this as a legitimate opportunity? Now, to be sure, things aren’t easy and right now a lot of people are in such bad shape that they can’t take advantage of opportunities, or create new ones. If that’s you, I understand. But if you even see a glimmer of possibility for building business during hard times, today we’re going to look at someone who did it and see what lessons we can draw from his amazing story — and use today. That person is Bill Benton. He founded his own ad agency just before the great crash of 1929, and emerged very wealthy and powerful, right in the middle of the Great Depression. In an interview Studs Terkel’s great book “Hard Times,” Benton refers to what his friend the economist Beardley Ruml said: “In all catastrophes, there is the potential of benefit.” We’ll look at how you can do that in today’s show. I’ve boiled down what I’ve learned to five principles of how Bill Benton did so well during the Great Depression, and we take a deep dip into each one: They are: 1) Ignore the doom and gloom 2) Feet on the ground, eyes on the future 3) Use the power of great content to multiply the results from advertising 4) Make direct response advertising your foundation, not your skyscape 5) Imagination really is more powerful than knowledge — but first you gotta have the knowledge. Books referenced in the show: The Lives of William Benton, by Sidney Hyman https://www.amazon.com/Lives-William-Benton-Sidney-1970-04-20/dp/B01FELATKU Hard Times, by Studs Terkel https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Times-History-Great-Depression/dp/1565846567Download.

Rocky is an entrepreneur, coach, consultant, and the creator of a program called Platinum Path, where he helps people reinvent their expertise and shift into a high-priced, lifestyle-friendly business model. Over the last 20 years Rocky has helped his clients bring over 100 million dollars in training and info products to the market. He's consulted on over 3000 projects for clients ranging from billion-dollar brands like Pearson, Wiley, and Macmillan, to experts, authors, and entrepreneurs in 7 countries and over a hundred different markets. But he’s accessible. You can hang out with him every day in his free Facebook group, called The Power Persona Project. Rocky talked about how and when personal branding is a plus for a copywriter, and some inside secrets you can use for yourself or your clients. Effective branding requires inner and outer work, Rocky says. He gave some great tips and benchmarks to give you a fuller working understanding about personal branding. Rocky’s Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/powerpersona Download.

We are back with another show in the Old Masters series. Today it’s How I Learned The Secrets of Success in Advertising, by G. Lynn Sumner. Guy Sumner originally published the book in 1952, and it was recently reissued. You can get it on Amazon now. We’ll put a link in the show notes. I only heard about this book from friend of the podcast Don Hauptman. The author Sumner was really an Old Master -- here’s an article about him from the New York Times of May 15, 1940, announcing he was re-elected as president of the Advertising Club of New York. That was 81 years ago! There’s one secret that’s particularly important, as important today as it was when the book was written. It has to do with the one thing that separates ordinary copy from blockbuster copy, and that’s imagination. Sumner has some great ideas about how to develop it, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. A lot of people believe that imagination in advertising is just coming up with some wild and crazy idea… throwing it up against the wall… and then hoping and praying it will stick. The problem is, sometimes it does, but almost all the time, it doesn’t. Let’s talk about how to vastly increase your odds by using your imagination to increase sales. We’ll start with an important question: What is creative thinking? Some creative people truly believe creative thinking is a magic thing you can’t describe, learn or teach. And for them, that may be true. A lot of people who haven’t learned how to think creatively yet think the same thing. So what follows from this is the idea: “Creativity — either you get it, or you don’t.” Guy Sumner doesn’t see it that way, and neither do I. Sumner says, “It is taking known facts, known elements, known functions and arranging them in new patterns.” He admits this is not easy, because it requires focused thinking to do this rearrangement. Now, what about creativity and copy? That’s where Sumner talks about another important quality, imagination. If creativity is the lab where new stuff gets designed, imagination is the art department where it gets put together in the most appealing way. Stated another way, imagination is what you use to make your creativity add value to your copy. Sumner talks about watching his mother make a cake. The flour, sugar and eggs would just sit there in the pan. The flour, sugar and eggs were the creativity. Then, his mom would in that magic ingredient, baking powder. Then, when you put it in the oven, the ingredients would rise and form a delicious cake! Sumner goes on to say that imagination is the “baking powder” of copy. We go on to detail the four steps of feeding the imagination that leads to blockbuster copy ideas. I know from personal experience, and the experiences of my clients, that these are as good today as they were in the 1940s and 1950s, when Sumner was writing about them. Here’s the link to Sumner’s book: How I Learned The Secrets of Success In Advertising: https://www.amazon.com/How-Learned-Secrets-Success-Advertising/dp/0981643213 Download.

We all need a lawyer sometimes. But haven’t you ever thought: “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a lawyer devoted to copywriters and other creative professionals -- not only that, but she put together customizable contracts especially for people like us?” Well I’ve got two pieces of good news for you: There is such a person. Her name is Amy Nesheim. Secondly, she is our special guest today and she will give us some important information about Copywriting and the Law. Amy explains some things you might never find out about otherwise, unless it’s too late: The kind of mistakes copywriters make all the time that puts them at legal risk (so you’ll know not to make them) Do copywriters need to worry about whether their copy is legally compliant? Or is that all on the client’s shoulders? What kind of claims should copywriters worry about in their copy? Do you see anything frequently on sales pages that you think could be problematic? What can a copywriter do to protect themselves from potential liability? What Artful Contracts is, and how copywriters can take advantage of this website. https://artfulcontracts.com/ Download.

Our guest today has a curious connection to copywriting. Though he is not a copywriter or even a traditional entrepreneur by trade, he is one hell of a copywriter anyway. His name is Dickie Bush and he describes himself as a macro investor. I’m not sure what that means but I think it has to do with hedge funds and numbers with lots of commas in them. Dickie caught my eye on Twitter because of an online writing program he has called “Ship30for30,” which gets people from all walks of life to write something every day, for 30 days. It’s a paid program he had to learn how to write copy to sell it. He did, and he told me yesterday he’s getting 10% conversion on his sales page. That’s a skilled copywriter, no matter how you look at it. Dickie is a keen student of, and I would say expert in, growth of all kinds. How people grow, how systems grow, how businesses grow. This of course is very closely related to what we do as copywriters, since a good copywriter will help a business grow tremendously. There’s more, and covered a lot in our freewheeling conversation. Dickie’s online program: https://ship30for30.com Download.

Top copywriter Roy Furr discusses the most underrated copywriting skill - structured thinking. He emphasizes the importance of a solid structure in copywriting to make all elements work effectively. Roy provides valuable tips and resources to improve copy structure and offers insightful ways to enhance coherence and engagement in writing.

I don’t know how controversial what we say on Copywriters Podcast is, because I don’t have much data or gut feel on the subject, one way or the other. But I think I can say with great certainty something that nearly everyone would agree on. And that is this: The single hardest part of writing copy is getting started. The terror of the blank page. Where do you start, anyway? I mean, after you’ve done all your customer research, your product research… after you’ve written all your bullets… after you’ve brainstormed and schemed and planned… you’ve got to finally grab the beast by its lapels and get started. And you know what’s really hard about getting started? Finding your hook. Now, I can’t do that for you here today. But what I can do is offer some guidance and a few trampolines to get you going. I’ll give you three specific ways to create a hook… and tell you about the one way too many people default to, way too often, that really doesn’t work. So here’s the deal. Whatever you say in the beginning of your copy has a hugely disproportionate impact. It’s not just copy, really. It’s any communication. What you say or write at the start sets the tone, frames the conversation, prepares your reader or your listener for what’s next. People have these unspoken, often even unheard, questions in their mind. Not only “What’s this about?” but “Does this have anything to do with me?” and “Can I trust the person who’s saying this to me?” Whatever answers to those questions pop up will determine the frame of mind in which your prospect will hear or read what comes next. Again, this usually happens below the threshold of conscious thought. And ultimately, we’re talking about the level and quality of their engagement. Is it open, curious, receptive? Or is it skeptical, cautious, even bordering on hostile? Your hook -- your headline and the words that come right after your headline -- will determine that. Because your hook is what starts everything off. When you start right, you’ve got a shot. Start wrong, and you’ve pretty much blown it. We’ll start with the one thing a lot of people do that they shouldn’t, because it kills their chances. And then we’ll go onto three other things that give you a much better shot. Download.