Copywriters Podcast

Today we’re starting a new series called “Old Masters,” where we find wisdom from some of the Founding Fathers of copywriting and see how we can apply them today. On this show, we’re going to look at a list from Maxwell Sackheim’s book, “My First 65 Years In Advertising.” Sackheim started in direct mail in 1906. In 1927 he was a co-founder of a highly successful direct-mail business, The Book-of-t...

Sara’s dad was a lawyer. After she finished college, she wanted to go law school, but her Legal SAT scores weren’t good enough. So she tried stand-up comedy, but that didn’t catch fire. So, she became a billionaire instead. The youngest woman billionaire ever, according to Forbes magazine in 2009. A few weeks ago, I saw that Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, had a class on entrepreneurship up on Mas...

Our guest today really gets around. Richard Miller is founder of Mission Control Studios in Phoenix. Have you ever heard of David DeAngelo and a product called Double Your Dating? David’s real name is Eben Pagan, and Richard helped him with every seminar and info-product. In the copywriting space, Richard’s worked with me and helped John Carlton with all the video in version 2.0 of the Simple Writ...

In the opening of the movie “Echo In the Canyon,” the late Tom Petty is showing Bob Dylan’s son, Jakob, a Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar. He plays about six chords, stops, and says, “You can’t afford the rest.” And laughs. What’s underneath the joke is: They’re making a movie, and if he went much further, under music industry rules, the movie-makers would have to pay a large royalty for wh...

Our guest today comes to us through the magic of the Internet from Galicia, Spain — and he knows a lot about mastermind groups. Whether you know what a mastermind group is or not, you’ll know more about that today. And I think you’ll quickly see why they’re important for direct response copywriters and direct response business owners. Stan is the organizer and co-host of the Platinum Mastermind Gr...

On the podcast Masters of Scale, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman interviewed Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. Chesky tells of advice he got 10 years ago, when the company barely had any customers at all. He got the advice from one of the wisest men in Silicon Valley, Paul Graham of Y Combinator. The advice was simple, but powerful: “Get to know your customers by one.” Brian Chesky and his Airbnb co-foun...

Our guest today Adam Bensman is both state-of-the-art and very old-school. Let’s start with the old-school part: Adam started out as a door-to-door salesman. I call that “old school” because, well, first, I did that once. So did Gary Halbert. And nearly every experienced, successful copywriter I know says that the best possible training you can get for direct-response copywriting is face-to-face s...

The famous investor Warren Buffett is famous for saying that when it comes to investing, he has two rules: 1) Never lose money. 2) See rule #1 To be sure, Warren Buffett hasn’t ALWAYS been able to follow these rules. Because, of course, he is an investor and some things are beyond his control. His insurance company General Re lost $2.4 billion after the attacks on 9-11. Even so, his overall compan...

Direct response copywriter Matt Rizvi has worked with famous people known for being strong independent thinkers who focus on the power of the individual. People like Dr. Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas; best-selling author and financial guru Pamela Yellen; and investment analyst Porter Stansberry. Matt’s sold millions with his copy. He’s the founder of DailyCopywriter.com and the DailyCopywri...

Legendary copywriter and teacher John Carlton returns from last week. Thousands of copywriters and entrepreneurs have learned from Carlton. He still gets royalty checks every month for ads he wrote decades ago. And if you pull him away from writing copy, he plays a mean electric guitar. Carlton agreed to come back because he had more to tell us than we could fit into one show. I’m proud to call hi...

Our guest today is John Carlton. In case you don’t know who he is, maybe you haven’t been paying attention. But you definitely should. John has been a force of nature in copywriting and copywriting education for decades. He was Gary Halbert’s business partner. He worked in Jay Abraham’s office. He’s one of the few people allowed to speak on Dan Kennedy’s stage. I met Carlton at the Gary Halbert Hu...

When I was but a wee lad, not even 40 years old yet, I worked in the Chicago News Bureau of McGraw-Hill as a correspondent for a number of niche business magazines. One of my most important clients was Engineering News Record, or ENR for short. Now this was an interesting challenge, since I had trouble screwing a nut on a bolt. And I’d never taken an engineering course in my life. I had to get up...

Our guest today, Adam Gilad, is a prolific entrepreneur, author, speaker, film producer and global teacher. He’s also a skilled copywriter, and that’s how he’s made a lot of his ventures grow. For example, The Higher Game and The Bold Life Brotherhood. He’s co-founder of this business-in-a-box curriculum of transformational games evenings and weekends that build visibility, revenue, community and...

Kyle Milligan is a successful copywriter with a very unusual view of the world. Lucky for us, it’s a way of seeing things that lets him create copy that makes a lot of money. And let’s see if what you hear from him today can do the same thing for you. Kyle is on staff of Agora financial and won a coveted award for the performance of his copy: What looks like a giant gold record. This is for bringi...

Kyle Milligan is a successful copywriter with a very unusual view of the world. Lucky for us, it’s a way of seeing things that lets him create copy that makes a lot of money. And let’s see if what you hear from him today can do the same thing for you. Kyle is on the staff of Agora financial and won a coveted award for the performance of his copy: What looks like a giant gold record. This is for br...

Do you ever wonder why the superstars in copywriting, and in other fields, got there? A friend of mine, Dr. Ben Mack, told me about a book that has some unique insights on the subject. I’ve met a lot of outrageously successful people and I recognized them in every page of this book, even though their names weren’t in it. I can also say that I know many highly successful copywriters that don’t fit...

Justin Blackman of Pretty Fly Copy knows his way around marketing, branding, and copywriting. He’s worked with clients ranging from Red Bull and 5-Hour Energy to info-marketing guru Amy Porterfield and Rob Marsh of The Copywriter Club. In fact, all that Red Bull must be working. Last year he had more than 200 clients. However he summons the energy, this is a guy who gets things done! Justin’s talk...

It’s September, and at least when I was a kid, this was back to school month. Now, if you could do it all over again, what would you want to learn that they never taught you in school? Me, I would have liked a way to know what other people believed to be true, so I could persuade them starting with what was true for them. And, I would have liked some skills for making good decisions. Learning thes...

Our guest today, Brian Basilico, is the very reason this episode is called “Content Marketing That Brings Home The Bacon.” That’s not only because he’s an expert on content marketing and he has helped a lot of people make a lot of money.. It’s also because he’s the host of “The Bacon Podcast.” In fact, bacon seems to pretty much have taken over his life. His business life, anyway. Brian has a best...

This show is especially for service business owners and copywriters who write for service business owners. I have reason to believe that this includes 68% of our audience. If that’s not you, stick around, because I think you’ll find a few tips that you can use for other types of copywriting and marketing. It all started a few weeks ago when I did critiques on lead-generation sales letters for two...

Linda Perry is a copywriter in a couple niches, but she’s on with us today to share something most copywriters could not talk about the way she can. Linda is a mindset coach, and she came about her knowledge and wisdom in the trenches. You see, Linda learned about mindset where it really counts: In federal prisons, and in the courtroom. Linda was a criminal defense attorney for 17 years and she sa...

In Hollywood they have a joke about screenwriters: “He’s so creative, he doesn’t know how to put on a white shirt and tie.” It’s a lame joke, but it’s supposed to be a compliment. The screenwriter isn’t a boring suit. He’s more creative than that. There was one guy who was head and shoulders above everyone else in creativity. He invented brainstorming. His name was Alex Osborn. He wrote bestsellin...

Imagine a day in the future when you can’t use lead magnets or other opt-in marketing methods to get new customers. Imagine that you can’t use outbound telemarketing anymore either. Now imagine that this has nothing to do with government regulation or anything like that… but one of the warmest, friendliest companies on the planet … or so you thought… has made your job impossible. Well, that day is...

We start with some very powerful copy from the great Bill Bonner, which is written in a way most copy is not written. For the purposes of today’s show, we’ll call this “writing copy in scenes.” Writing this way makes the copy come across as very immediate and real… and sets up the reader in a very good way for what comes next. In today’s show, we talk about: - What writing in scenes means, and why...

How do you make Facebook actually work? That’s becoming an increasingly urgent question for copywriters and marketers across all niches. We have one answer for you today, with our special guest, Sam Carlson. He’s an online traffic and conversion guy, with a specialization in local business marketing. His agency is called 25th West. Sam and his team use digital marketing strategies to grow private...