Copywriters Podcast

Legendary NY Yankee Yogi Berra said it best: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” He’s right, you know. But there’s one important exception, and I don’t blame Yogi because, as talented a player and a coach as he was, Yogi wasn’t a copywriter. So he didn’t know about the important exception we’ll talk about today: showing your prospect a compelling future. Not every copywr...

A little over a month ago we did a last-minute podcast about an audacious experiment our special guest today, Nick O’Connor, did with Glenn Fisher and the financial publishing giant Marketwise: Glenn told us how they put together a special program called Financial Copy U, which would train 12 copywriters ABSOLUTELY FREE on how to write copy for financial publishers. With the understanding that som...

It’s the sure-fire strategy that makes you overconfident. It looks like this: The copy’s loud. Aggressive. Alpha-male on a double dose of adderall. It’s practically SCREAMING at you to buy. And you know what? Sometimes it works. But not most of the time. Especially these days. Hyper-aggressive copy is just a huge risk you don’t want to take. And here’s why: While it’s true that pressure might trig...

Today we take a deep dive into the part of copywriting that people talk about all the time. And even though people talk about this all the time, most of them don’t really understand it. That is, psychology. Not the kind of psychology you experience in a therapist’s office—although there’s a little bit of overlap. Not what you’ll find in brightly colored grid of buyer personas. Not mindset. No, we’...

Sometimes copy fails because it’s just not executed well enough. And also, copy that simply misses the mark — doesn’t align with the target prospects and what’s on their minds — won’t do well either. But you can have all the fundamentals in place and done well, and sales can still fail to happen. Why? That would be because the strategy behind the copy was weak or even non-existent. Today, we’re ta...

Three weeks ago, we had a very special Old Masters Series show: The Art of War, Copywriting Edition. But we only covered half the book, so that made the previous episode Part 1. Today we cover the rest of the book, Chapters 7 through 13. And that makes today Part 2. Here’s what you need to know: The Art of War was written by Sun Tzu (SOOON-tzeh) about 2500 years ago, as a treatise on military stra...

In the 1980s, before Internet marketing had even really begun, our very special guest today and returning champion was working as a tech writer in the foreign exchange trading department of Bankers Trust in New York. In his new book “How The Web Won,The Inside Story of How a Motley Crew of Outsiders Hijacked the Information Superhighway and Struck a Blow for Human Freedom,” Ken McCarthy writes: “W...

$6.7 million. That’s how much mega financial publisher Marketwise paid out to copywriters in royalties in 2024. And now they’re making an offer so good we had to rush today’s special guest, top copywriter and best-selling author Glenn Fisher, on the show to tell you about it. The offer is simple, yet overwhelming: FREE training from Marketwise to 12 lucky copywriters… and one of them will be offer...

Most copywriters know the classics of our field—but today we’re drawing from a master whose work predates modern advertising by more than two millennia. In this episode of Copywriters Podcast, we’re unpacking Sun Tzu’s The Art of War—a book written over 2,500 years ago, yet still shaping strategy for business titans like Elon Musk and Marc Benioff. While it was originally written as a guide to mil...

It may have been the furthest thing from what he was thinking when our special guest today, John Caprani, ventured into copywriting. But he’s come up with a fascinating specialty that’s worth paying attention to, and that’s Local Celebrity Advertising. See, we all know what so-called “omnipresence” is online. That’s when your prospects see you everywhere, and so they become familiar with you, in t...

One way that AI can save you from expending massive amounts of blood, sweat and tears is a way that a lot of people aren’t using. And that involves its incredible ability to analyze, find trends, and organize information. On the face of it, all that sounds pretty boring and hardly applicable to copywriters and business owners. But today’s returning champion, Cath Reohorn, has used her impressive i...

Can you picture yourself having the guts and imagination to bring 14 of the top copywriters in the business together to share their best action steps using AI to make money and/or save time? I certainly couldn’t, but our guest today is an adventurous man and a successful copywriter-wrangler. Because he did it. Please welcome John McIntyre, who recently invited me and a host of others. This wasn’t...

Yesterday, Facebook wiped out a bunch of groups without warning. And just like that, some creators lost their entire audience. That’s why today, we’re talking about the one platform you actually own — your email list. Apparently some of the groups were deleted by accident and reinstated. But others were deleted permanently. No one outside of Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters really kn...

With the rapid spread of AI, will there even be a future for copywriters? Both new and experienced copywriters are plagued by that same question. And it’s a good question. Because there are plenty of solid arguments that go like this: With the rapid growth of AI, soon there won’t be any need for human copywriters. And in some cases, that’s 100% true. The good news is, there are also some powerful...

When you turn a prospect into a customer, are you delivering and getting the most value you can? A lot of people have lame, generic welcome sequences because they know they have to say something… but they really don’t know what to say or how to say it. Our very special guest today aims to change all that. She’s Evelina Kagonovitch, and she has gotten big numbers that should make you sit up and pay...

Our returning champion is Sam Woods, who’s been using AI for business in very big ways since 2016. That’s a lot longer than most people, including me. And Nathan. And we’re both big fans of AI for copywriting! But more important for today’s show, we’re big fans of Sam Woods! And last time he was here, Sam gave us some highly valuable insights and hands-on tips for using AI with copywriting. But ov...

In 1911, psychology pioneer Alfred Adler resigned from the presidency of a prestigious society in Vienna—and Sigmund Freud took it personally and deemed Adler an enemy. It didn’t stop there. Freud continued to rail against Adler until Freud’s death in 1939. The details of the dispute are kind of technical and petty, and we won’t get into them today. The effects, however, were massive: Because of F...

Nick Lowe had a big hit on the top 40 back in the day called “Cruel to be Kind.” Interesting idea, but how about this one? “Kind to be Kind.” Now there’s a novel idea. And it’s the guiding principle of copywriter and agency owner Cath Reohorn, who has taken this philosophy to £1 million/month in revenues for her clients. So you don’t have to do the math, that’s about $1.3 million per month. Now, h...

What do you do if you’ve tried and tried, six times, and what you’re trying to make happen… never happens? That was the dilemma facing our special guest today, James Allen. “I built 6 different funnels and courses that didn't make me a penny until I changed my strategy,” he says. “Finally, I built one that sold for me in my sleep—on repeat.” In my mind, that’s an evergreen money machine. James got...

You can’t fake it. It seems like you can’t force it. But when creativity shows up at the right moment — your copy comes alive. Sometimes it’s the difference between a flat headline and a breakthrough idea. Between a click and a sale. Between a promotion that falls flat and a control that blows the doors off. On the other hand, when it doesn’t show up — that’s when things get rough. Here’s the thin...

For many people, actually doing a podcast is a lot harder than it seems. A few months ago, Riverside.fm, a major podcast platform, published an article that said, "90% of podcasts don't get past episode 3," and "of the few that continue, another 90% will quit after 20 episodes." Here at Copywriters Podcast, we understand this, but to be honest, we just haven’t done a lot ourselves to solve this pa...

So a man says into his phone, “Siri, play Pizzetti’s Rondò Veneziano.” Siri says, “Calling Roundtable Pizza.” Pretty frustrating, right? Well, that was what AI seemed like to me just one year ago. Especially when it came to writing copy. Completely out of the question. But that has changed, in a VERY big way. So for today, I’ve put together a special report on how AI is changing copywriting. This...

One name comes up more than any other when I talk to people about copywriting and AI. That name is Sam Woods, and he’s our very special guest today. Sam has been in the game for nine years, while most of us haven’t been there half as long. And I don’t know of anyone who’s been in it longer than Sam has. He got started with machine learning in 2016 and generative AI in 2019. He was a pioneer in pro...

What’s the opposite of a confident salesperson who makes it easy for you to buy? A nervous salesperson who jumps the gun and makes you want to run away! Today’s returning champion, Brenna McGowan, understands this difference all too well. She has mastered the arts of the pre-launch and the launch, and she knows all the big and little differences. Because besides the successful implementers, Brenna...

Wouldn’t you love to have a confidential chat with a copywriter working at the highest levels of our business? Well, we can’t provide the confidential part. This IS a podcast, after all, not a Signal chat. But today’s guest, Cain Smith is on the front lines of some of the biggest businesses using direct response. So we can provide the copywriter working on the highest levels of our business part....