How to Become a Better Copywriter: Proven Tips

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1:16I should not wake up one day and become a successful guy in business. In 1981, I stepped my first business up and it failed. In 1983, I stepped my second business up and it failed. So I thought, well, it's two didn't work, maybe two, another two more will work. So in 1985, I said, two didn't work business at the same time. They both failed. So I sort of woke up one day and realized that whatever I'm doing isn't working. That was a very profound thing to realize. And so I went through a process of letting go of everything I believed in pretty much and put it all back together again and acquiring knowledge and wisdom from people that I knew who spoke the truth. And how I could spot the BS from the truth was I lived the life of BS until that point in time. So I knew what BS was as opposed to what was truth. And I didn't set up my fifth business and it was a very successful business. And I went on from there. And since that time, I've had most of the successes in the odd failure.

2:20But failure is a good thing. You may have heard that before. You failure wage success and I'm moving proof of that. Just the mistake I was making at the beginning was I didn't know what I was talking about. And number two, I kept, I was persistent as hell, but I was proficient in the wrong things. A lot of people say that persistence is really important, but it isn't important, but you don't want you doing the right things. You're persisting in the wrong things, you're getting all the wrong direction real fast. Which is actually really good because you get it over with. So don't worry about failing. A lot of you already failed at one or two more things in your life, and you probably will fail a lot more. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. So you're going through it to be bit painful. So after I had some successes, back in 1989, I had a financial planning business, and I had a financial seminar business. What I had to, what would happen was, you come to my financial seminar and it's a graduate of that program, and you got a meeting with a financial planner. So it was a very well-programmed, step-wise progression through, and it was very profitable.

3:22So we had one problem. We couldn't get enough people into the seminar. We had a marketing issue. And you know, I do things like I would buy a thousand dollar ad in the Vancouver Sun, and get three phone calls and new enrollments. And you know what I mean? That's for so long. And so I got to figure this thing out. So one day in the spring of 1989, I got a fax from a colleague, a 12-page fax from a colleague, it was really a 12-page sales letter, but a marketing conference that was taking place in a hotel near LAX California. And it was about two thousand bucks to go. We shed back in that time with a lot of money, plus airfare and hotel, and all the other expenses. And I decided to go. I just felt this is the right thing for me. And of course, they always big dance from marketing. I had never heard of before. I had Jay Abraham and Gary Halberd and Robert Allen. These guys were all there. And I had the only guy that heard it was Robert Allen. There you guys didn't mean anything to me. So I head off down there with a friend of mine. And I was there about 10 minutes, and it was in the right place. I just, this is where I need to be. And one of the speakers that impressed me the most was a guy called Gary Halberd.

4:24He was a bit of a crude guy. He spent time in jail for mail fraud. And he was a real character. And he, as soon as I heard him speak, I knew this is a guy I want to spend more time with. What's that say about Allen? I'm a real blinded guy. I'm open to having a conversation with anybody with anything. I've always been that way. And I find that some of the most interesting characters are known to most from. They have lots of interesting life experiences. So Gary said they're talking about all those experiences with director of sports marketing. He tried to never heard of before. And so he said, by the way, any of you want to spend a half hour with me tomorrow afternoon, starting at one o'clock, you can spend a half hour with me, you know, help you out with your business marketing problems. So I was the first guy to the back of the room to sign up. Next day at one o'clock, I'm in a hotel room. And for the next half hour, he asked me a few three or four questions about my business then he proceeds to tell me exactly what I needed to do when I got back home. And sure enough, when I got back home, I did exactly what he said and then we were like a charm. In fact, one of the first ads I ran,

5:27studying three phone calls, he got 53 phone calls. And people gave us their visas and master cards over the telephone, which I never experienced before in my life. But what happened back in L.A. was very interesting. After I got the first half hour session with Gary, I asked him a question, the question that changed my life. I said, Gary, would you mind if I sat in and observed that your next five hostage you're going to do with the other business owners? And he paused and he said, no one's ever asked me that before. He paused again and he said, sure, why not? So I sat there like a fly in the wall for the next three hours so he went through the next five guys. And I saw connections and things happened that I never excreted in the half-hour ahead with him. I read as to how marketing worked and how the Japanese plant marketing worked. And that was what caused me to begin to query in marketing to this day of stripping really well. He told me how to be given a good calculator. He told me all those other things. He just put his heart out for me in that time frame.

6:27And I came back and changed man. And I, ever since then, most of my ads have been very successful that I've written and staying with sales letters and doing everything else I've done. And I wrote all the time with Gary Halbert. And one of the, I'll share with you one of the most profound things he told me. If you want to be a good copywriter, anybody in the room be interested in being a good copywriter? It's a lot started. It's a lot started, but here's what you do. You find an ad or a sales letter that you like that really moves you. Then you handwrite it out twice. You handwrite the whole letter that you want to master and you write it up a handwritten. You can't type it. You get into handwritten it. And that will grain the style of writing into your brain. And I've shared that with many people over the years. There's only one guy I know who ever did it. Or two guys I know who ever did it. One is DJ, the other is Stan Locke. And they're both good copywriters because they took Gary Halbert's advice. No, the hundreds of people I shared that with,

7:28nobody else ever did it because it was too much work. I'm going to take a narrow your time to do that. Two hours of your time. The trick's to pick a short letter. 10 times your finances. 10 times your business. 10 times your marketing. 10 times your life. Hit the subscribe button now. Atlantic Union Bank branch today. Atlantic Union Bank. Anyway, you bank. All right, Lee. When you've done the work, you want your hydration to do the same. Introducing new Gatorade lower sugar,

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