Saturday, 2:48pm
Tampa, FL
“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?” (Monty Python)

Howdy…

Special treat today on the blog.

Another guest post by our good friend, colleague and former stand-up comic (before his new career as killer copywriter), Kevin Rogers.

(Kevin is also the head writer for my Stable O’ Copywriters project, where you can find a recommended freelancer who meets my strict standards of professionalism — and who has my ear for consultations: www.carlton-copywriting.com.)

This cat is funny.  And every time Kevin and I hang out, I’m reminded of two things:

1. Nearly every top marketer and writer I know personally… has a shockingly-acute high-end sense of humor. (This explains the comraderie you see among the best in the biz.  We make each other laugh.)

2. And… there are awesomely valuable insights to life and success available in studying lessons in tales from the “vice squad”. (Meaning, that part of living well which includes hanging out, challenging the boundaries of sobriety, and squandering time laughing as hard as you can for as long as you can.)

Being funny won’t make you smarter.  And it doesn’t bestow an automatic deeper understanding of human behavior.

However… if you pay attention… you will discover insights and rules for living well that are simply not available to uptight folks.

That’s why I’ve asked Kevin to chime in again here.  This is his third guest post.  (The only other writer to have guest-posted here is my buddy David Garfinkel.)

So, without further ado… here’s Kevin.

Don’t try to read this while drinking carbonated beverages — it’s hell spitting it out through your nose while guffawing.

Take it, Kevin…

[applause]

Hey, great to be here… let’s here it again for John Carlton folks… the only blogger in history to spark a 600 comment riot with a psychological Dixie cup riddle.

Let him know you love him, everyone… John Carlton.

Okay. No more stand-up comedy/copywriting anecdotes for this post.

Today I want to discuss something much more relevant to all serious marketers: Booze.

Not drinking, necessarily…

… but rather the art of ordering a cocktail.

You can tell a lot about someone by the way they order a drink… and there’s a great marketing lesson in that simple act that could be the “a-Ha!” moment of a lifetime.

First, a quick back-story…

Towards the end of my comedy career, when road life had finally reduced itself into a sappy Bob Seger song, I realized it was finally time to go legit (gasp!)…

… and so began my awkward re-entry to the great American workplace.

I was almost 30… and after a decade of stand-up, the only skills I could fudge on a resume were “long distance driving” and “heckler control”.

So, unless I wanted a new career as road manager for, say, a fledgling white ska band from Wisconsin, it was clear I would need to get me some education.

As luck would have it, The ABC Bartending School in Mount Prospect, Illinois was just about to kick off its summer session.  I dusted off my academic chops, dove in, and passed with flying colors.

A few happy coincidences later, I was manning the afternoon shift at one of the oldest taverns in Chicago. (By the way, first rule of tending a real bar: Never admit you graduated from bartending school.  You’ll get tagged as an elitist snob.)

This place had been slinging booze across the same soggy block of dead oak since before the days of Prohibition (during which they promptly began mixing bathtub gin and became a gangster-haven speakeasy).

The owner was a tough-as-nails but senile old broad named Marge. Every night she would stalk the bar like Mae West in silk pajamas with wild, silver bed-hair… chain-smoking Pall Malls that always seemed to be dangling two-inch ashes.

Marge lived above the tavern in a cluttered apartment reeking of spoiled fish and Ben Gay lotion, with a feisty parrot named “Billy” who cursed like a sailor and attacked my head every time I entered the room (usually to bring Marge cigarettes and remind her not to light them off the stove burner).

“Remember last time, Marge, when you forgot to turn off the burner and the firemen had to come?”

“Are they here now?”

“No Marge. Not right now.”

“Go down and buy them a drink on me.”

“Sure, Marge.”

And, fighting off Billy (as he squawked“Eat shit!” in a Kamikaze dive for my cowlick), I would retreat to the laboratory of marketing wisdom behind the bar downstairs.

Sell Like A Bartender,
Serve Like a Waitress.

Slinging cocktails at Marge’s really was an excellent introduction into the world of street-level selling.

Sure, there’s plenty of sales tactics in play during a live comedy performance…

… but tending bar is a pure closer’s game. (Which is why the gig pays less than the minimum wage.)

So, here is my Great Direct Response Lesson from the world of “saloon commerce”.  It lies in the stark difference between selling like a bartender… or serving like a waitress.

The attitudes a waitress and bartender bring to the sale are polar opposites for this simple reason: As a bartender, people come to you…

… while, as a waitress, you must go to them.

Important stuff here.  Listen up.

Let’s look at a typical cast of prospects for your business… as if they were patrons in a saloon.

Two thirsty patrons walk into a club. One approaches the bar, ready to buy… while the other grabs a seat at a table and looks for the waitress.

With that simple act, they have qualified themselves in very different ways.

When a prospect sits at a table, they are looking for guidance. They need more info. They want to be led, perhaps intellectually coddled, and certainly paid attention to.

So, it’s the waitress’s (or waiter’s) job to arrive at their table quickly, offer up a big friendly smile, get their order and help ‘em feel they’ll be well taken care of.  Their happiness is her responsibility.

The other guy, who headed straight for the bar?  He’s ready to buy.  He’s being pro-active, rather than re-active.

An experienced bartender controls a shocking level of power. If the joint is crowded, he has total discretion over who gets served, in what order. So, it’s up to the patron to show the bartender they are worthy of his attention.

They should have money in hand and a cool, casual look that says: I know exactly what I’m ordering.

(If you’ve ever felt ignored by a harried bartender in a busy bar… it’s because you looked confused or kept your cash hidden in your pocket.  We have little time to babysit rookie drunks.)

It’s a good lesson, for any marketer.  There will always be these two wildly different types of prospect on your list.

The ones who wander over to tables to avoid the frenzy are looking for a very specific kind of service. They include the tire-kickers on your list — those annoying freebie-seekers who want to see how well you can serve them before they’ll make up their minds about you — as well as folks who will become life-time buyers.

However, customer service ranks high on their hierarchy of needs.  They wanna shop, they wanna interact.

Their money’s good… but they require patient attention.

Then there are the eager buyers. They elbow their way through the crowded bar, raise cash in the air, shout their order and tip well.

Low maintenance, independent, no-BS types with money to spend, and a definite goal in mind.

So, our job as marketers is to first get as many people into the place as possible…

… and then inspire as many as we can to crowd the bar and waive cash at us. That is the relationship you create with the right marketing strategy and top-shelf copy.

Eager buyers are your best customers, not just because they are comfortable spending money…

… but because they’re also the most likely to put your material to good use. Which leads to them achieving high-end results and then spreading the word.

Once your action-oriented, cash-in-hand buyers are all happily sipping their cocktails… it’s time to grab a tray and appease the higher-maintenance table sitters.

You do this by making sure you provide every prospect on your list the high-value content they need to get involved.

The main rule is to remember they are human — not just a pile of data. They breathe, and think and pay closer attention than you might think.

Talk to them like a good bartender would… once the crowd thins out and shouts have turned to mellow tones.

Listen to their problems. Offer wisdom without condescending. Attend to their needs patiently and expertly.  Let them find their best selves through you.

And whatever you do… don’t let that damn parrot into the bar. Nothing good is going to happen once he gets riled up.

Hey, you’ve been great. Enjoy Carrot Top!

Kevin

Saturday, 12:17pm
Reno, NV
“So what?” (Miles Davis)

Howdy…

Okay, I know I’m a few hours late delivering the answer to the very excellent Quiz #8.

I had writer’s block.  Just couldn’t think of what to write…

Kidding!  I’m joshing with you.

I apologize for the delay.  Simple matter of being abducted by friends and whisked off to an enjoyable Friday adventure.  I earned it, and knew you’d forgive me for being a tad late with the solution to the Quiz.  (You know it takes me several hours to concoct these posts, right?)

Let’s get down to it, then.

First: I want to thank, and congratulate, everyone who posted for the Quiz.  The threads on this blog are always energizing mini-riots of good critical thinking…

… along with a smattering of cleverness, sheer brilliance, pontificating idiocy, and (always) one or two utterly outraged comments from folks who wandered into the fray by accident.

I love it all.

As many have noted… the comment threads at this blog rival the actual posts for being fascinating reading.

There’s some smokin’-hot wisdom out there, for anyone paying attention.

Second:  Here is the answer to the Quiz question…

“Writer’s block is…

… a self-induced delusional state of undisciplined focus.

It is merely not knowing what to do next.”

Technically, it is a “real” affliction in the same way that — technically — you perhaps once thought that if only the lovely Susie Q would realize you were meant for each other, and tumble into your arms… then life would be perfect forever after.

It’s not true.  But it feels true to the afflicted.

(Susie Q would, of course, have broken your heart within weeks.)

I am decidedly biased on this issue.

And I’m right.

I’ve never had single moment of “writer’s block” in my life.

I have struggled to write well at times, but that’s not the same thing at all.  (And, later in this post,  I’ll give you a couple of tactics to muscle your way past those moments of struggle.)

If you read the entire thread in the Quiz comments section, you may have noticed that a number of fiction writers chimed in.  And they defended “writer’s block” like a warrior might show you battlefield scars.

“It’s real!  You’re not a real writer if you’ve never suffered from it!”

Now, I’ve lived in both worlds.  Long career in non-fiction writing (as a copywriter, and author of business books like “Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel”)…

… and an equal period of time writing fiction.  (I’ve penned 3 novels, and have towering stacks of short stories in storage.)  (I’ve also written several hundred songs.)

And this straddling of professions has given me a very nuanced perspective of how people approach writing.

My last foray into fiction writing pretty much crushed my passion for getting a novel published.  Ten years ago, I took a break from the business world and focused on fiction for a while.

I attended a couple of very prestigious week-long fiction workshops (including the one in Lake Tahoe which produced Amy Tan and Kem Nunn — killer authors — and one of the oldest workshops, in Swanee, Tennessee).

Two things happened at every workshop:  First, as soon as folks learned that I was actually making money as a professional ad writer, I got swarmed.

I never met a writer — including the faculty — at any of these workshops who could support themselves with fiction.  (The best gig they could find was getting hired to teach “writing” in academia.)

A few actually wrote best-selling books.  Flurry of attention and fleeting fame, a couple of nice checks in the mail… and then back to starving.

I quickly realized that my fiction-writing was going to remain a sideline hobby, like playing music and cartooning.

Second:  As an already-successful professional writer, I realized I was a complete outsider amongst the throng of wannabe novelists at these workshops.

And it wasn’t just the fact I was rolling in dough as a freelancer.  (And was living off fat royalties while I dabbled in fiction during a year-long vacation.)

Nope.

The main reason I didn’t fit in with the other folks at the workshop…

… was my work ethic.

I was used to meeting deadlines.  I took writing seriously, and I studied the essentials of getting my work done (so I could collect those fees that made clients faint).

This is important: The vast majority of wannabe novelists I met didn’t actually want to write.

They wanted to have already written a great novel… so they could enjoy what they thought was the confidence, respect and romantic life of a published author.

I remain stunned at this attitude.

Writers write.  You earn respect — it isn’t bestowed upon you like an award for being a nice person.

And if there’s any “romance” to writing… it comes either before or after the actual task of sitting at your desk and working.

Don’t get me wrong.  Being a pro writer is the best gig on the planet.

Well, next to being a rock star guitarist, I suppose.

But in both cases… you’re working your ass off.  Yes, there are rewards.  Yes, it’s a blast to carve out a niche among your peers as a wicked-good producer of the real stuff.

And yes, to outsiders it can look like a cushy, easy job.

Get past that illusion.

You build up your chops through experience and discipline.  The professionals code is simple:  “When there’s money on the line, you show up where you’re supposed to be, when you said you’d be there… having done what you said you’d do.”

For a writer, that means you meet your hard deadlines… with the best stuff you’re capable of producing.  (”Soft” deadlines, which do not impact the client’s project, are different animals… as I’ve frequently discussed.  You should always have multiple soft deadlines prior to every hard deadline.  “Hard” means final… as in meeting printing deadlines, launch schedules, and any other deadline where — if it’s missed — disaster looms.)  (This attitude, of never missing hard deadlines, still separates the rookies from the trusted pro’s in business.)

And you meet your critical deadlines every time.

Writer’s block?

Complete bullshit.

It’s just a matter of not having prepared yourself for the task.

Here’s a clue: The very first step in the Simple Writing System is…

… research.

You learn everything you can about the market you’re writing to.   Who the competition is, what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong, what’s new, what’s over and done with, where the opportunities are.

The second step: Get into the head of your prospect.  Research the emotional, physiological, spiritual and psychological needs, wants and world-view of the folks you’re going to persuade.

There are 17 steps, total, in the System.  And every last one of them rest on the practical information you get through research.  (Which is easy, and even enjoyable, once you know what you’re doing.)

So, when you’re finally ready to sit down and “write”… you know where you’re going, who you’re going after…

… and what you need to write to accomplish it all.

Somehow, people get the notion (even at fancy, expensive fiction workshops) that inspiration has something to do with writing.

So they sit down at the keyboard, stare at the blank monitor…

… and despair.

This is beyond dumb.  It’s suicidal, if there’s money on the line.

It is exactly like flying to a strange city… agreeing to meet someone at a restaurant downtown… and then hopping in a car to drive there…

… without an address, or a GPS, or a map, or even advice on where you’re going.

You’ll freeze up at the first cross-street.  Do you go left?  Right?  Straight?

You don’t know.  You have no clue where you’re going.

Preparing to write something means you’ll never sit there staring at the blank screen.

Your research is your address, GPS, and map.

The tactics and tips you learn from guys like me are the advice on getting there.

Want some practical, professional advice right now?

Here’s what pro-level writers do:

1. Take lots of notes. Most of the “real” writers I know (those making a living at it) always carry a pen a notebook around with them.

They take long walks, long showers, long naps… letting all that deep research they’ve done settle and gurgle inside their cerebral cortex…

… where, eventually, it will burble up in the form of “a-HA!” hooks, headline ideas, and overall narration strategies.

This is not inspiration.  This is going deep into a subject, so your brain gets deeply involved.

You don’t sit down to write until your fingers are twitching, desperate to hit the keyboard and start the process of getting all these “cooked notes” written out.

And you work yourself into that state by prepping.  It’s active, not reactive.

2. Don’t even try to write “finished copy” right off the bat.

Your first draft should look like a disaster.  Just disgorge everything haphazardly onto the page.  Don’t sweat adjectives, or grammar, or any of the niceties of a finished piece.

Pro writers know that writing is re-writing.

Get it down.  Go back and edit.  Then edit again.  And again.

Inspiration is great, I suppose.  I’ve never experienced it.  Nor have any of the famous writer’s I’ve met and hung out with.

Writing is just translating a story (or a pitch) into words.  You develop the skills of doing this through experience.

3. Don’t start at the beginning.

The classic notion of “writer’s block” is sitting at your desk, staring hopelessly at a blank page.

Here’s another hint: Most writers don’t start on page one.

With sales copy, the headline is seldom the first thing you write.  I usually start out by writing bullets — those nuggets of info and insight that normally don’t appear in an ad until way after page one.

This helps me get hip to the essence of the product I’m writing about.  Often, my headline and opening paragraphs will come from the bullets.

Or I’ll slam out the guarantee first.  Or the close.

Or a few subheads.  It’s okay to ease into the process… as long as you’re actually writing.

A good piece of writing is actually multiple — and very different — sections of thought smoothly connected together…

… in a process.

Not one inspired session of writing, starting with “It was a dark and stormy night…” and moving through each sentence thereafter in a single flow until you triumphantly type out “The End.”

It’s more like a ridiculously-simple jigsaw puzzle.  Imagine one cut into just 17 pieces (instead of the 200 most are).

You know what the final result should look like (more or less), and so each piece you handle has an obvious destination.  You don’t need to start in the upper left corner, and work from there.

You can start anywhere.  You know where you’re going.

(And, yes, you may end up tossing entire chunks, or rewriting so severely that the 3rd edit looks nothing like the 2nd… and, occasionally, you may burn an entire manuscript.  All part of getting to where you need to go.  Don’t panic at ANY stage, as long as you’re moving forward.)

Okay?

Writer’s block is not a lie.  Not even a myth (one of the most common answers given).

It’s bullshit… but it afflicts people nonetheless.

It is simple a matter of not knowing what to do next.

Easily solved… once you start getting good advice, and maybe get some decent coaching.  (To get your hands on the Simple Writing System — obviously a great choice of training — go here: www.simplewritingsystem.com.)

The winners:

This is good.  After all my efforts to spread the wealth (and the prizes) around…

… the FIRST GUY TO POST won.

So, congrats to Henry Bingaman.  Nice, tidy answer that shows he understands the process of writing.

The second winner… the eleventh to post the right answer… is:

Stephan Erdman.  Entry number 62.

Good job, guys.

My overworked assistant, Diane, will be contacting you about sending over the two prizes — the Power Words compendium, and the “11 Quick Marketing Fixes” checklist.

That was fun, no?

Everybody wins, because engaging your brain in critical thinking — especially when you’re challenging your belief systems and superstitions and flawed ideology — is an essential step in becoming a killer writer.

We’ll have to do this again, soon.

I gotta split now.

Stay frosty,

John

Monday, 8:34pm
Reno, NV
“The horror… the horror…” (Brando, “Apocalypse Now”)

Howdy…

Let’s do another quiz, what d’ya say?

With TWO prizes.

This one is very simple.  Or not, depending on how much you’ve been paying attention.

Let’s start with the good stuff. 

Here’s what the winners will get: A twin package of Extreme Special Reports that have only been available as bonuses before…

Extreme Report #1. The super-potent (and much sought-after) “Power Words” collection…

Extreme Report #2. And the mind-altering “11 Quick Marketing Fixes” checklist.

These are easily among the most valuable reports a marketer could ever get your hands on.

Though they come as bonuses with our larger packages (there is no other way to get them)… these little treasures are often cited as “major game changers” when past customers tell me which piece of advice or tactic fundamentally impacted their life.

The first report is a thick compendium crammed with specific words and phrases I’ve plucked from successful ads I’ve penned over the years.

These words and phrases are the building blocks of explosive hooks and “drive ‘em to tears” emotionally-compelling writing…

… the stuff that can turn a lame-ass, boring ad…

… into a shockingly-persuasive Blitzkrieg winner.

Words matter.  Often, a single word change in a headline can affect results so dramatically, it defies belief.  (And really, results are what it’s all about in this biz.)

The second report consists of the actual checklist I used throughout my 25-year career when consulting with new clients…

… especially when they were mired in doubt, or rushing off a cliff with brutally-bad marketing plans.

These 11 “fixes” are simple… easily applied… and yet hidden to most marketers.

This kind of basic insight is what separates the gun-slingers from the clueless canon-fodder in direct response advertising.

So, yeah… if you don’t have these twin-dynamo reports yet…

… you want them in your tool kit.  (Many of the best online wizards you know about keep their dog-eared copies of these reports close by whenever they create new marketing.)

Now… who wins these reports?

Here’s who: The first person to post the correct answer in the comments section below…

… and the eleventh person to post the correct answer.

Two glory-drenched winners, separated by a small mob of “Nice Try But No Cigar” almost-winners.

I’m doing this because — last time — the Usual Suspect Smart-Asses descended on Quiz #7 like sharp-talking stalkers waiting in a dark alley…

… and nailed the answer early.

Okay, they weren’t smart-asses.  They just happened to be up late when I posted, or on the other side of the globe (all bright-eyed and sipping coffee, while the rest of the blog readers were slumbering peacefully).

So, we’re gonna make this Quiz a fair fight, dammit.

I counted up all the smart-asses… and there are approximately ten of you out there.  (You’re actually among my favorite folks to banter with, and I deeply appreciate your faithful readership of the blog… but you keep gobbling up these Quiz prizes too easily.)

Thus… there is now an opportunity for someone outside the Rant’s inner circle to grab at least the second prize…

… as Correct Answer #11.

Okay?

Okay.

Here’s the question:

Fill in the rest of this statement:  “Writer’s block is…”

And… go.  The Quiz has started.

What do you think writer’s block is?

Please bear in mind that there were over 600 attempts to win the last Quiz…

… so get busy.

There are no “wrong” answers… as in, you can’t lose when you engage your brain in critical thinking like this.

But there’s only ONE right answer.

And here’s a hint: It probably isn’t what you think it is.

“Writer’s block” gets a lot of discussion in the culture.  Everybody’s got an opinion or theory.

Books have been written about it.  Famous fiction writers have reportedly suffered from it.  Almost everyone who’s ever stared at a blank page believes they know what it is.

And I’ll tell you this:  They’re all dead wrong.

And that’s all I’m gonna say right now.

The Quiz is on.

I’ll check in over the next few days…

… and announce the winner…

… on Friday.

Go get ‘em, tiger.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. One more rule… which is necessary only because the Usual Suspect Smart-Asses are already considering ways to get around being “fair”:

You can post as often as you like… but you cannot post the same answer more than once.

Ha!

See, I know some of you were already gonna post what you thought was the correct answer eleven times in a row, copying and pasting real fast… in a bid to win BOTH prizes in an outrageous sweep of cleverness and evil manipulation of everything that is sacred about good sportsmanship.

Hey — it’s what I would have done.

How do you think I stay ahead of you guys?

So — we have a Fairness Doctrine here.

Please respect it.

Now… go crush the competition.  Bragging rights are important in this biz…

P.P.S Friday Note: Hey… I know I’m late with the “answer post” here…

… just got delayed a bit by something unexpected.

I’ll get the new post up tomorrow…

And yes, there are winners…

Saturday, 4:14pm
Reno, NV
“He’s not the messiah.  He’s a very naughty boy…” (Terry Jones, Monty Python’s “Life Of Brian”)

Howdy…

Quick post here… but it’s important.

I’m relaying something here that I just shared in the Simple Writing System mentoring program.  (The entire program is sizzling with action, by the way.  Mucho fun… and this is yet another “taste” of the kind of stuff we’re getting into.)

It’s about using and abusing “intuition” when there’s money on the line.

I had a little saying I’d rely on, back when I was a freelancer: “It’s a mess to guess.”

I used that saying as a reminder not to go off half-cocked when trying to persuade prospects to part with money.

In the SWS training, I mention that most people’s intuition is just dead wrong.  It was amended, during discussion, to “untrained intuition is almost always dead wrong.”

There’s a difference, you see, between good intuition and bad intuition.

And it’s worth learning about.

Here’s the slightly-edited rant I just delivered:

My own discovery of how dangerous intuition could be — in the wrong hands, used the wrong way — was mostly through experience.

When I talk about intuition now, I’m talking about my own long trek through the School Of Hard Knocks, seen through the eyes of a guy who has studied psychology both formally, and via “street level” salesmanship.

When most folks talk about intuition, however, they are really talking about “wishful thinking“. They aren’t trained to really access the quasi-unconscious state where info is objectively processed and run through what we’ve learned in our life’s experience… which is what “intuition” actually is.

In poker, for example (and by the way, academic psych loves to use playing cards and games to test this stuff), you can have all the “feeling” you want about another player’s hand.

If you’re just looking for a “fold” or “raise” feeling, you may get it…

… but if you don’t test results, or go deeper into WHY you felt the way you felt…

… you won’t learn whether your intuition in these cases is any good or not.

Again:  Most non-wishful-thinking “intuition” is really experience, memory, and current facts melted down into an educated guess… tested over and over again in the crucible of real life.

For some professionals (once they’re adept) the process can happen so quickly… and be so accurate… that there’s little need to stop to double-check the process, or move beyond that familiar feeling they get when they have a “hunch” they can act on.

They’re trained to know when that hunch has legs… and when it’s just bullshit bubbling up from inchoate desire.

So here is my Grizzled Veteran Advice: All rookies should not rely on intuition…

… until they’ve proven that those feelings actually are worth relying on.  That takes time.

To train yourself, study the process in your head as it happens… take notes… keep score…

… and see if you can’t improve whatever parts of that process that seem to be faulty. (For example, if you keep trying to twist reality to fit political, religious or other ideological thinking, you’re going to have murderously-bad intuition.  It’s got to be reality-based… which is really, really hard to do when you’re shackled with preconceived notions of how the world “should” be.)

The biggest part of waking up and “knowing thyself”, as Aristotle suggested to us… is to abandon your prejudices, certainty, and unexamined habits.

All top writers go through this gauntlet… it’s how they GET good.

Your intuition, left wild and untamed, can get you hurt.

Once trained, vetted and tempered, you will possess a powerful tool for moving through life like a ninja pro.

Trust me on this:  The examined life is the only one worth living.

Love to hear your comments, below.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. We’ve left a garrison of goodies over at the Simple Writing System blog…

… so if you still haven’t sampled any of the free advice, tips and info over there yet… get thee hither and enjoy:

www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog

Saturday, 8:53pm
Reno, NV
“It’s the end of the world as we know, and I feel fine…” (REM)

Howdy…

Nice big glob of seemingly-nasty news hit the grid this week.

The FTC (brrr, even the name causes Halloween-style chills, doesn’t it) fired a shot across the bow of the good ship Capitalism with their “final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials”.

In case you’ve been in a coma or something, here’s the Fed-sponsored link:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

What immediately followed was a lot of hair-on-fire screaming and rending of clothes by both online and offline business owners who use testimonials or endorsements in their marketing.

It was kinda fun to watch, actually.

A lot of entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed over the decades, are skittish enough already about the whole “provide a product to customers in exchange for money” model of doing business.

They’re like “Are you sure we can do this?  Actually accept moolah just for giving people this thing of value we created?”

It’s understandable to be a little paranoid.  Business is part of the grown-up world, all full of consequences and responsibilities and risks…

… as well as the totally uncool embarrassment of finally getting serious about the very adult requirement of applying salesmanship to your excellent marketing adventure.

So, when any of the federal “alphabet agencies” get frisky with new rules, the entrepreneurial world goes bonkers.

Now, I’m not a lawyer.

And I’m not gonna offer anyone legal advice here.  You do what you think is best.  You’re the only one who can correctly judge your own levels of raw paranoia against reality.

However… here is (more or less) what I shared with the folks now embroiled in the Simple Writing System mentoring program (which is steaming full-throttle into it’s second week).

I thought you might want to hear a less-hysterical side to this story:

Ahem.

First, relax.

Every detail of this fresh ruling is still very vague.

The panic around this news is uncalled for. The Feds are not going to suddenly load up their compliance forces with jack-booted thugs and go after entrepreneurs. Their focus is and always has been the large scofflaws. They will follow the money. (Large corporations like Jenny Craig and Subway have alerted their teams of lawyers.)

Yes, the “possible ramifications” of the ruling are a Conspiracy Theorist’s wet dream. Then again, so is every other ruling the FTC has ever put out.

The diet industry — which is used as the most common example when discussing this ruling — needs periodical policing.

However, the first time a regulator tries to define the idea of “typical” results, they are in for a mind-bending exercise in irrational thinking.  What, for example, is a typical dieter?  Someone who needs to lose 15 pounds?  Fifty pounds?  A hundred?

How do you figure it out?  There are three forms of statistical averages — mean, mode and medium.  Each can be a wildly different number.

The Feds will not find an ally among mathematicians or scientists while trying to define “typical”.

Nor will they find an ally in the Constitution… where, last time I looked, there was still a guarantee of free speech.

Of course, what the Feds are responding to are the egregious abuses of endorsements and testimonials.  And God knows, there are liars and thieves and scoundrels in the business community who need to be outed and punished for polluting the joint with their scammy ways.

And it would make the Feds’ job oh-so-much easier if everyone would just stop… selling stuff… by providing context and examples that help prospects decide if they want to participate or not.

You know — all that advertising voodoo that fuels the engines of capitalism.

Meanwhile, over at the FBI, they’re hoping that criminals will stop murdering and plotting and stuff… because it’s really hard to keep order when people insist on being evil.

Also, the Oakland Raiders would like the rest of the NFL to stop picking on them.  Maybe let ‘em win a freakin’ game or something already…

Look — no marketer is forced to use testimonials.

Nevertheless — and regardless of what you may have read in various other blogs — they remain powerful tools for anyone in business. (In fact, let’s hope, real hard, that your competition gets so scared that they never use testimonials again in any way, shape or form.)

And, anyway… even if you do decide to never use a testimonial, you still should know how to collect them, what they should look like, and how to communicate with happy customers who want to say nice things about you.

It’s still the best kind of feedback you can get about your business.

It’s… oh, what’s that phrase… oh yeah: Word of mouth.  A thumb’s up from a satisfied customer.

Again, I’m not a lawyer.  Haven’t talked with one about the ramifications of this ruling (which is not, by the way, an actual “law”, but a recommendation).

Here’s some common sense, anyway: Don’t compensate people for giving you a testimonial, and say so in your ad.  (And if your stuff is so crappy that you have to pay people to say something nice about it… then create better stuff.)

If you get compensation for touting a product on your blog (which appears to be the crux of the ruling, despite the “deeper” readings by the more paranoid among us), come clean on that.  No biggie.

If you’re unsure about anything, pay attention over the next couple of months.

This ruling goes “official” December 1… and between now and then, there will be a lot of discussion about it.  (Is Jared of Subway out of a job?  And, since most diets fail most of the time… because people don’t follow them… will every diet book ever published in history have to be amended to reflect that fact that anyone who actually lost weight is a freak of nature?)

(Will the Home Shopping Network be forced to stop touting celebrity make-over programs?)

(Will any advertiser, ever, be allowed to show people in their ads… for fear that any implication of “typical” is not breached?)

Folks, this kind of hysteria shows up every few years in advertising.

Twenty years ago, for example, the Feds ordered magazines to put a big “Advertisement” slug on top of every long-copy ad run in the publication.

You know… so no one would get confused.  We don’t want anybody’s head exploding because they accidentally read an ad in Cosmo, thinking it was a real article.

Marketers flipped out… until they realized that putting the slug on top of their ads didn’t affect results (and sometimes actually INCREASED sales).  (Oh, the irony.)

The diet industry — which, by the way, I have refused to get involved with as a freelancer for over a decade now — has been subject to endless “you can’t do that” rulings on showing people’s before-and-after tales…

… and in the end, the smart marketers comply, and do and say everything the rulings demand…

… and life (and profit) goes on.

I’m not saying this ruling is something to ignore completely.

We’ll have to see how it plays out in reality… meaning, how the Feds actually decide to follow up, and how any actual enforcement (which clearly appears to violate the Constitutional protections of free speech) manifests itself.

It’s worth a long discussion.

I’m all for hampering the scam artists out there.  (Just to be clear:  If you’re an unethical marketer, I hope you rot in Hell.  After getting your head handed to you here on Earth.)

However, trying to re-invent capitalism by kicking it in the balls is not the way to go about it.

Again… this vague, extremely ambiguous ruling (not a law) won’t go into effect until December 1st, and there will be much input from established businesses between now and then.

The lawyers are loving it.  Let the paranoia ooze and scorch!

This is not, however, the end of capitalism as we know it. Nor are testimonials going away. (Again, pray that your competition stops using them, though.)

Let’s see what other shoes drop over the next few weeks, shall we?

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. And yes, we get affiliate commissions from any sale resulting from someone clicking on any of the banners on this blog.

It’s called marketing, folks.

UPDATE: The esteemed New York Times weighs in on this issue:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/opinion/13tue2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Thursday, 12:15pm
Reno, NV
“It’s too hard.  You’ll never figure it out.” (What the first copywriter I ever met told me about writing ads.)

Howdy…

I’m going to tell you about two promises here.

The stories behind them may help you chart out the rest of your life… as they did mine.

Harken:

Promise #1:

The above quote (”It’s too hard.  You’ll never figure it out.”) are the exact words that a professional copywriter said to me when I innocently asked for advice.

They are burned into my cerebral cortex, because it was one of the first times I had ever nurtured a small ember of actual hope about my future in business…

… and she crushed it like a bug.

All I’d wanted from her was a smidgen of advice. Maybe point me in the right direction.  Or offer a small word of encouragement.

I was lost at the time.  Trapped in the drudgery of a dead-end J.O.B. that sucked big-time.

And I was genuinely clueless about the process of writing anything for business.  I’d never met a real copywriter before, and was very interested in finding out more.

I didn’t even know what the word “mentor” meant at the time… but I suppose I would have squirmed with joy if she had said, instead, something like “Let me help you learn how to do this.”

Still, she did me a HUGE favor by being such a miserable, hateful bitch.

As I stood at her desk, burning with shame for having asked for something and been so brutally refused…

… I promised myself that I would prove her wrong.

And I used that promise as motivation whenever I needed some extra oomph in the next year or so, as I figured out — on my own, without help from anyone — how to write killer sales messages.

So I owe her one.  She did me a proper by igniting my until-then-dormant ability to Do It Myself.  Literally with a vengeance.

I launched my solo career as a freelance writer entirely on my own.  I took the Do It Yourself ethic and ran with it…

… and 25 years later, I don’t regret a single moment of the journey.  Even though long stretches of it were soul-shaking scary while I hacked my way through the wilderness of Cluelessness into the light.

Promise #2:

I made another promise to myself soon after that little episode with the Hateful Bitch.

When it became glaringly evident that I wasn’t going to get any kind of help from anyone in my quest for success…

… I stumbled onto the Big Damn Secret of how to do it all on my own.

Actually, it’s not much of a secret, but it remains under-utilized by folks who could be changing their lives with it.

The secret: I just got busy setting goals… and going after them like a bulldog chasing a squirrel.

I figured out how to sell stuff, and do it through writing, step by step.

And I took notes along the way.

Why did I take notes?

Because I’d made another promise: When (not “if”) I made it as a professional creator of ads that sold massive quantities of stuff…

… I would bend over backwards helping others to make it, too.

And I’d help them do it much more simply, and much easier, than I did.

Those notes I took during the Wilderness Years — when I was learning the ropes of advertising and salesmanship rung by rung — turned me into a flat-out great teacher.

Because I analyzed everything I learned.  Dissected information… ran it through my internal Bullshit Detector… tested ideas and tactics in the real world…

… and worked like a madman to discover the techniques and tactics that actually persuaded prospects to take action and buy stuff.

So, when I started teaching others, I had a couple of decades worth of incredible notes to use as instructional material.

I can easily knock years off your quest to learn the inside secrets of advertising and marketing.  I know all the dark alleys to avoid, and I know all the shortcuts around the tedious nonsense.

I take my promises very, very seriously.

Doing so brought me out of my prior existence as a Clueless Slacker, and launched me into a prime seat at The Feast Of Life (where happiness, fame and wealth await you).

If I have taught you anything over the 5 years of this blog… or if you have heard of my prowess as a teacher from anyone else…

… it’s because I walk the walk.

Here’s why this is so important to the Rest Of Your Life: During my journey, I used both the Do It Yourself method…

… and the Mentoring method.

I know that both work.

I always recommend mentoring first.  If you have an opportunity to be taken in by someone with the chops you wish to learn… do so.

I worked for Jay Abraham for years, for free.  In exchange for getting to hang around his offices, and learn from him.

I met Gary Halbert through Jay.  And turned away from millions as an up-and-coming copywriter for the Big Mailers, in order to learn from the Master himself.  Personally, one-on-one, over a couple of years of hard-core mentoring.

I “delayed” earning my fortune, because I intuitively suspected (correctly, it turned out) that — as moderately successful as I was when I met Gary — I still had much more to learn in my quest to get as good as possible.

So mentoring paid off for me.

As did the Do It Yourself method.

What’s this got to do with you?

Everything… if you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been offering folks over the past week or so.

The Simple Writing System is built on the notes I took during my career.  It’s everything I know about writing, and selling, and marketing at the highest level of efficiency and power.

For anyone who wants to learn how to write kick-ass sales messages… for ads, for websites, for email campaigns, for video scripts, for speeches, for anything and everything necessary to succeed in business…

… the Simple Writing System is your ticket.

Now, there are two ways to indulge here.

First:  We’ve put together a faculty of pro writers to help me mentor students personally.  One-on-one, personally customized, hands-on mentoring with a pro.

It’s the program I wish had been available back when I started out.  I would have crawled through broken glass to get involved with this kind of coaching — from a proven professional, who watched my back as I learned.

However…

… the mentoring program is now closed.  All the available public spots have been snapped up.  She’s full up.

Nevertheless…

Second:  The Do It Yourself option is still available.

In fact, it’s the perfect option for anyone who prefers to do it themselves, without the time and cost of adding a mentor to the mix.

Again — I always recommend mentoring, when it’s possible.

However, the next-best-thing is to do it yourself.

The Simple Writing System, as I created it, is tailored for exactly this kind of learning.  In this program, I teach you everything I know… in a way that has been proven (over decades of trial and error) to help people “get it” quickly.

It’s my pride and joy.  I’m hanging my hat on this system, and I’ve lovingly and patiently molded it into a course that really can transform your ability to persuade, and sell, with writing.

So… if the time-boxed limitations or the cost of the mentoring option made you hesitate to get involved in the coaching program we created…

… or if you’re just a rebel at heart, and (like me when I started out) want to do it yourself…

… we’ve just released an option that suits you perfectly.

To get the details, go here:

www.simplewritingsystem.com

I understand… better than almost anyone else you’re going to meet in your journey to find your own success… how doing it yourself and being mentored offer different paths to the same destination.

The key is to get moving.

If you dithered about getting into the now-closed mentoring program… or if you didn’t find out about it in time to grab a spot… you now have before you another option.

Which can effectively and quickly ignite your transformation into the Killer Marketer you need to become to reach your goals and attain your dreams.

The main thing is… choose to make today the day you begin your transformation.

Get moving.  See what’s available.

You don’t have to choose the Simple Writing System.  If you believe you have other options out there — either mentors to woo, or courses to dive into — then get after them.

I wasted half my life wondering how to even take the first step toward The Feast.  (I was in my early thirties when I finally started my career.)

You know it’s time to choose when that hunger inside you starts burning.  You cannot wait for magic.  You cannot delay just because you’re scared.  (Learning the first few steps to take, in fact, obliterates fear better than any other tactic you’ll ever find.)

You have no excuse, now, if you’ve been telling yourself you’re waiting for the “right opportunity”.  I’ve just laid the most rational, easy, and affordable opportunity at your feet.

Just see what’s up:

www.simplewritingsystem.com

And come back here next week.  I’ve got a back-log of free advice and goodies to share with you.

It’ll all go excellently with your evolving transformation to Killer Marketer.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

P.S. Yeah, that’s me in the photo.

Probably 18 months into my solo career… doing everything myself, from a cramped desk in a cramped bedroom in a cramped apartment near the beach in LA.

The mess on that desk (and taped to the wall) includes many of the early notes I was obsessively taking while learning how to write copy that brought in results.

Proof, here, that I was once not only young, but quite handsome, wouldn’t you say?

No?  Well, I was young, at any rate…

Monday, 10am
Reno, NV
“Right tool for the right job…” (Uncle Bob Jones)

Howdy…

What are you doing hanging out on this blog?

Don’t you realize we’ve just opened the doors to what may be the last-ever Simple Writing System at-home mentoring program?

The action’s all happening over here:

www.simplewritingsystem.com

If you have ever wondered what hands-on professional mentoring like this could do for you in your quest for big bucks, happiness and fame…

… you can now read up on the details and make an enlightened decision.

But you can’t decide anything if you don’t get the scuttlebutt.

So check that site out right now, to see what all the fuss is about.  (Thousands of bucks in hot “fast action” bonuses are being ladled out over there, too.)

And there is a lot of fuss and buzz about this spectacular program.

Go.  Shoo.  Get over there now…

I’ll be back to regular blogging duties in a few days…

Stay frosty,

John

Sunday, 7:57pm
Reno, NV
“It’s alive!” (Baron Von Frankenstein, kickstarting the Monster)

Howdy…

We’ve just fired up the Simple Writing System blog (www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog)…

… which means a stunning (and unprecedented) pile of free tools, tactics, advice and insight can be yours…

… just for the grabbing.

This is an all-out assault on reason and logic.  We’re just GIVING AWAY stuff that — not too long ago — would have cost you a pretty penny just to get a quick glimpse of.

We’ve created a beast here, and it’s name is FREE.

Here’s just a small taste of what’s piling up over there (that you’re missing out on if you haven’t signed in):

• A free swipe file of “home run” ads I’ve written (which few folks outside the target markets have ever seen)… can be in your tool kit tonight.  This swipe file, alone, is causing hearts to skip a beat among marketers and freelance writers who love to rip juicy headlines and sales angles from proven ads.  (Removes any guesswork on who/what to rip.)

• A short (but frightenly powerful) series of special reports channeling the best “how to make the sale” secrets I’ve ever used.  (I used to keep this stuff classified, only bringing it out during high-paid consultations… and here we are giving it away.)

• The actual video (torn directly from the masters hidden in Frank’s inner sanctum) of my “How to persuade, influence and sell the shit out of anything… using the simplest stories you can create” presentation at Mass Control.

What?  You didn’t see that presentation?

It’s marketing theater at its finest… and gives away the storytelling techniques that have earned me a fortune (seriously revealed for the first time in this wacky presentation that held the crowd in thrall).

And it’s free… at least for a few days… at www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog.

More…

• Have you heard the teleclass Ed Dale and I just did… about using sneaky social media tactics to overthrow your niche and capture total, unassailable “leadership positioning”… using only Twitter?

Dude — it’s FREE right now over there.  And coming up:

• Legendary adman Joe Sugarman actually punk’d me during a sizzling interview (which reveals his BEST sales-exploding secrets).  Oh, we’re laughing about it now, but it left me speechless, twisting in the wind last week when it happened.  (And I’m never speechless.  Joe is just that good.)

These are classic salesmanship secrets now lost, overlooked and ignored by most marketers…

… which is a HUGE advantage to you (IF you have the sense to start using them yourself).

• Wait a minute… you haven’t heard of James Schramko yet?

Are you living in a cave?  This guy rocketed (that’s the right word, too) from total obscurity… not even a year ago…

… to the very top of the online  money-making wizards pile.  Respect, fame, wealth and a well-earned rabid fan-base siphoning off his deep knowledge.

Best part: He took detailed notes during his climb to fame and wealth (as a rookie!)… and this webinar we’ve got is the first time he’s shared the really good insider stuff.

And it free!

What are you doing here?  Get over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog and grab this cornucopia of give-away goodies now.

Again: We’re only leaving access to the reports, the webinars, the videos and everything else…

… for a few days.

Then: Ffffft.

Gone.

(Big hint: One major reason James was able to zoom to the top… was his obsession with never missing an opportunity to grab the really good info whenever, and however, it became available.)

Here… it’s all free.

More:

• We reveal the next logical (and most lucrative) big step for any smart online marketer to make as the economy continues to morph.

Have you ever wanted to be one of those people who get advance notice on hot incoming trends?  Well, here ya go.

Colette Marshall (the queen of  “Product Sourcing”) spills everything you need to know in the free webinar we’re about to post.

• And get this: Blogmeister Extraordinare Yaro Starak reveals the secrets of living lavishly from a 2-hour workday… using nothing but a blog and some specific email tactics.  (It took him years to figure this out… and he just lays out the 7 simple steps, right here in a cool-as-heck webinar you can own for nothing.)

And how about this:  Just hearing someone’s blah-blah-blah story on striking it rich using a certain tactic is boring… and useless to you.

Unless you have access to the actual “case studies” outlining what was done, and what happened to generate the breakthroughs and hot results.

Well, guess what?

Yep.  Posted for free at www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog.

Look.  I could go on and on just describing the sheer awesomeness of what we’re giving away.

But you can just find out for yourself with a quick click on the link.

And I’m gonna suggest you do exactly that…

… right now.

www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog

I have poured massive quantities of energy, brain-power and time into creating this pile o’ goodies for you.  It took weeks of exhausting work.

I did it just to blow people away.

And it’s all there… for free.

Stop reading.

Go over there now.

This is life-changing stuff.

Stay frosty,

John Carlton

Monday, 9:21pm
Reno, NV
“Stop sniveling…” (Pretenders, “Tatooed Love Boys”)

Howdy…

Quick note here for those in need.

I’ve been almost completely retired from freelancing for some time now.  I still indulge a few long-time clients…

… but I haven’t taken on a new gig in over a year.

I’m devoting my time to teaching, and writing stuff for myself.

This makes me happy.

But it bums out business owners and entrepreneurs in a major way.  Because, often, someone will realize they need copy written…

… and they know, deep down, that I’m the guy who needs to write it to squeeze out max results…

… and… here’s the sad part…  they cannot bribe, cajole, threaten or offer me enough money to come out of this semi-retirement to do the gig.

Man, that’s frustrating.

Here’s the good news, though: I can now offer you… the next best thing.

If you need a writer who meets my strict, Operation MoneySuck, no-BS-allowed requirements for professionalism and quality…

… I now have a small “stable” full of them.

And we’ve just released a simple program that gives you immediate access.

These are professional writers who I have either trained and guided to expert status (over a period of years)…

… or who I have hired myself to do mission-critical work in my own business.

There aren’t many of them.

In my 25 years in advertising and marketing… I have only come across a handful of writers who meet (or exceed) the admittedly-brutal requirements I demand from myself, or from any writer I would work with.

This includes having the chops to guide you to the best possible solution for whatever problem you’re up against…

… to write outrageously-excellent copy that persuades and sells like crazy…

… and to meet all deadlines. (This is critical for any biz owner under a time crunch… and way too many freelancers out there can’t meet a deadline to save their lives.)

All while bringing to the table vast hands-on experience with all kinds of markets… in all kinds of economic conditions… both online and offline.

These are, in my honest opinion, the hottest freelancers available right now.

Best part: They all love working with entrepreneurs and small business owners… something a lot of the more famous writers out there refuse to do anymore.  (Or, like me, have retired from doing.)

So…

… if you’re in the market for a killer writer…

… who has been vetted by me, who has worked with me, and who gets my “thumbs up” for being a trusted veteran professional who can get the job done, on time, within your budget…

… then hurry over to this site:

http://www.carlton-copywriting.com

You’ll get all the details you need there.

And, if you’re interesting in actually talking with a writer, it’s easy to arrange…

… and you can start the simple, fast process right there on the site.

Warning: I cannot over-emphasize how FEW writers are in this stable.

It’s literally a handful.

I’ve plowed through a mob of writers over the years, passing on the vast majority…

… and I’m only allowing this program to go forward because I have finally found enough scribes I can vouch for to justify this announcement.

If you’re ready to talk to writers…

… and you want to be sure you’re talking to one who meets my strict requirements for professionalism and getting the job done right…

… then get over there now.

As you can imagine, this small band of murderously-good pro’s will book up quickly.

To see if this program is right for your situation, just follow the simple directions on the site.

There is no obligation just for talking to any of the writers, of course.

But we’ve got this process down pretty pat… and if your situation is right for one of these writers…

… well, this could be the happiest day of your life.

Cuz once you hook up with a good writer, you can get your biz on the fast track… and jam the pedal to the metal.

It’s a good time to check the site out, too… because we haven’t yet announced this program to the general market.

Right now, it’s still just you and us.

See you over there.

Stay frosty,

John

Wednesday, 8:53pm
Reno, NV
“Make no mistake… this is an exercise in radical self-reliance…” (Burning Man survival guide)

Howdy…

No, I’m not at Burning Man this year.

Just couldn’t pull it off, because of random acts of viciousness and distraction ladled upon my poor vulnerable head by the universe.

Visited last year.  Might go next year, too.

I’ll see this Burn, though, through the sky-cam there in the smoldering Black Rock desert, if I see it at all.

However, just thinking about that amazingly unique event generated a familiar thought about survival.

I call it “The Hard Knocks Lesson Of Three’s“.

It applies to stuff like attending an event like Burning Man… which is a week-long freak show in the middle of the playa, way the hell in the middle of the northern Nevada desert.

Nothing you’ve ever done in your life, to this point, can totally prepare you for the experience.

One day before the event, the desert is a wasteland, free of humans.  One day into the event, it’s suddenly a Mad Max-styled city of 40,000 partiers who stay up all night torching stuff and dancing themselves into madness to blaring trance music (which goes 24 hours a day out there).

Lots of art, and street theater, and comraderie, and general naughtiness ensue, at levels you simply are not prepared for.

Experienced Burners report it’s a very raw, pure form of fun.  But daunting fun, at first.

You gotta bring every drop of your own water and food (or barter for it from others — no money is allowed inside Black Rock City)…

… and you’re on your own dealing with the sand storms, the brain-melting heat, the absolute lack of basic resources, and all the other details of maintaining good-animal health in the middle of Hell.

Trust me, it’s something that has to be seen to be believed.  People arrive from every corner of the globe, eager to get the party started again.

Burners take the self-reliance code to heart.  They truck in everything they need, and truck it back out again when the show’s over.  No trace is left of the massive city, or the party.

This once-a-year bacchanalia has been going on since the 1980s, with little or no mayhem or tragedy.

Self-reliant partiers.  It’s a concept.

The lesson, however, applies to all sorts of new experiences.  Like starting a new job.  Or putting together a market launch of a new product.  Or engaging in a new course or mentoring program.

Here’s what I’ve found:

1. The first time you do anything new, your senses are kind of overwhelmed.  You may not even realize if you’re having a good time, or a worthwhile experience, until after you’re done and you can look back on it.

This first time is essential to the process.

Just get it done.  Do the best you can, and expect nothing and everything, while allowing the experience to wind out as it will.

2. You will either have a good experience, or a bad one.

It doesn’t matter which (unless you’re a pussy and the bad experience sours you on going further into the process forever).

If it’s good, you have a benchmark for what a “good” experience is about.  And you may want to attemtp to repeat it the next time out.  Or top it.

If it’s a bummer, you have a benchmark for what a “bad” experience is about.  And you will want to take steps to avoid it next time.

3. After you’ve had two rounds, you have accumulated a little storehouse of insight, knowledge and hands-on experience.  It could be all good, all bad, or a mix.

But it’s the third time out where you can now call yourself “experienced”.

You have context, now, to judge and adjust and feel at home with the process.

I’ve lived in many different cities in my time.  Had many different jobs, started many different relationships, gone on many different adventures.

And all these different experiences started out overwhelming… and got dramatically easier to maneuver through on the third time around.

I even used it as a way to build up familiarity in strange towns.  The third day in a row you go to the same cafe for lunch, sit in the same place, and order the same thing… you’ll get noticed. You’re no longer an invisible face in the crowd.

You are now seen in context.

(When I first moved to Virginia City, I stopped by the Bucket O’ Blood saloon once a day on my daily walks around town for a beer.  On the third visit, the bartender leans over and whispers “Are you a local?  Damn, I’ve been charging you ‘tourist’ prices for that beer.  This one’s on me.”)

In even the scariest new job, the third day gives you solid hints to what your daily routine will become.  Getting there on time, knowing the rules, figuring out who the assholes are and who the cool kids are.

It’s a process of collecting and consciously analyzing incoming data.

At Burning Man, the dramatic self-reliance required can be shocking the first time out.

By the third year’s journey, you can probably call yourself a veteran Burner.  Sure, there will always be unexpected stuff.  But while alarming, the new tweaks to the experience will fit into the greater perspective you have from having been there before.

Just knowing this rule can take a lot of heat off your stress levels.

As a rookie, you’re a liability to the people around you.  You’re encountering everything for the first time, and you have no context for how you’re going to react.

The next time, you’ll do better.

And by the third go-round, your comfort level with the very stuff that may have alarmed you before will be astounding.

It may occasionally take more than three attempts to “get” any given situation or experience down pat.

You certainly will not be an “expert” at it yet.

But you will have some history, good or bad, and that allows you a little internal reference library of experience to draw on.

During those stretches in my life where I was constantly experiencing upheaval, radical change and emotional turmoil, keeping this simple rule of 3’s in mind helped a lot.

I never put pressure on myself to excel right out of the blocks.  I took it slow, kept copious notes, and built upon every minor success while correcting the mistakes.

People fear change and new things.  It’s in our DNA.

The key to beating fear is to acknowledge it, and engage in the experience anyway.  Know that you’re probably not going to ace it this first time out… but what you learn will give you a foundation to becoming more confident and comfortable each successive time.

I’ve been a rookie, a lot.  I welcome most opportunities to try new things.

And I’m a grizzled veteran of nearly everything I’ve experienced and liked (or needed to like, to further my goals).

I’m also a pro at dealing with a lot of the bad shit that can come crashing down on you.  Been there, done that.

It’s a process.

Just a little advice to help you navigate the dusty road.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. I’ve been burning up Twitter lately.

If you want in on the fun, you gotta follow me, though:

http://www.twitter.com/johncarlton007

Do not be fooled by poseurs.  Stick with the real thing…

Sunday, 7:36pm
Reno, NV
“A thief believes everybody steals.” (E.W. Howe)

Howdy…

For those of you bugging me about the next Quiz…

… it’s coming, it’s coming.

Soon.

Tonight, though, I’ve gotta get something off my chest.

And so, a Rant.  By little Johnny Carlton:

Ahem.

There seems to be a parasite bug infecting the brains of many marketers out there.

Let’s call this bug… “Theft“.

It’s not going away anytime soon.

In fact, the very word has been mutating for a long time now… so that what would have easily been labeled “stealing” in the bad-old pre-Web days…

… is now considered smart and brave and even ethical.

Which means that the word “ethical” has also required some definition surgery, as well.

Okay, I gotta take part of all that back, right off the top.  (Note:  Rants often take sudden swerving turns like this.  Just relax and go with it.  You’ll be rewarded for your patience soon…)

This attitude — that taking something of value from someone else is not necessarily “wrong”, and may even be completely cool – has shown its ugly head before in my lifetime.

Remember Woodstock?

Forget about all the feelings brought up by that festival.  Boomer hippies assign the event iconic holiness, while later generations mock what they see as hypocritical bullshit from their elders.

Me? Still love the movie.  In fact, every year or so I line up “Monterey”, “Don’t Look Back” — Dylan’s ‘64 tour of England — “Woodstock”, “Isle of Wight Festival” — the ‘70 edition — and “Gimme Shelter”.

It’s a mini-film festival covering exactly 6 years — 1964 to 1970 — where things changed oh-so-dramatically in the world.  Innocence to grim chaos, told through the soundtrack of the time.  Lovely unintended documentary, these films…

It would have been great if the “spirit” of peace and love really had taken over the universe, and we all evolved into a groovy mind-meld of far-out angelic transmogrification.

Didn’t happen, of course.

The uncritical idealism of the time turned me, for example, away from the entire philosophy of idealism.  I loathe idealism now.  It’s counter-productive and rots minds.

And, as an older-and-maybe-wiser business owner, the most striking part of all these movies for me — aside from the music, which still astounds — is the way the “average” person saw no reason why everything shouldn’t be “free”.

Woodstock became a free concert because of shit-poor planning and bad fences.  They were forced to do it.

The bands were not consulted.  Nor were they happy about it.

And if you know the story, you know that the producers of the concert refused to declare bankruptcy, and eventually paid all their bills (though it took the organization many years to accomplish this task).

That’s old school.  Take your lumps, clean up your mess, and fulfill your obligations.

One year later, at the first Isle of Wight festival, a mob of angry socialist counter-culture types harshed everyone’s mellow by demanding that this concert be “free”, too.

Through a slo-mo riot.

It’s free, or we’ll kill you.

By the time the Stones offered a free concert at Altamont (documented in “Gimme Shelter”), things just got completely out of hand.

While the music still shines, the Isle of Wight film captures the chaos and confusion from the bands’ perspective: What?  Somebody’s gotta pay for putting this thing on, getting us here, and providing electricity for my gee-tar and Keith’s Bee-Three.

You think this shit all happens by magic?

I find this unresolved battle between clueless people waning a free lunch… and the practical folks who understand how lunches actually get made… fascinating.

Folks (including many biz owners) have been getting confused about capitalism since the first trade of something-for-something between cave men, lo, those many eons ago.

It’s particularly gnarly when prosperity collides with reality.

For example: I was a vandal as a kid.  Not proud of it, just saying.

I had no idea who erected the streetlights, or who ran the trains chugging along the tracks behind our house.  Stuff just happened, because that’s the way the post-war world operated.

So, when we took out the streetlight bulbs with BB guns, or derailed the noon Southern Pacific with a pile of railroad ties… there was no connection in our feeble brains about what consequences we were igniting.

We were bulls in the china shop.

Education was provided “free” to me, growing up.  Water came out of the tap, magically.  And, as far I could think it through, free.  Same with the radio, the TV, the mail, all all the other stuff that contributed to this “free” life for me.

It was a rude awakening to discover that, to buy a car and keep the tank full so I could take Suzie to the Who concert, I needed to generate “money” from a “job” to grease the machine of capitalism.

“Free” was so much more fun.

The World Wide Web was created by an unholy alliance of the Armed Forces and elite academia… both of which operated largely outside the demands of capitalism.   (Grants and Congressional budgets are not equal to a paycheck from a job.)

So the concept of “free” took root easily.

If you were among the early adopters of Web marketing, you must remember the snarling resistance to capitalism among the Web-heads dominating the landscape back then.

All software should be open source.  Selling stuff — any stuff at all — “polluted” the promise of a New Way Of Doing Things Online, where everything should be free (as God and Al Gore surely intended).

When non-techie-type people — your neighbors, for example — started flooding online, and finally got over the fear of using their credit card on a Web site, that “free” ethos collapsed in earnest.

Except for the really cool stuff… like music and intellectual property.

Hey — I don’t like the Big Music Moguls any more than you do.  They raped artists and kept a corrupt house since the first needle hit vinyl.

And the Grateful Dead/Coldplay model of allowing rips (and making their real money through touring) is a great tactic… except when it isn’t.

Okay, time out again.  I’m not gonna enter the fray of whether all movies and music should be available free on bit torrent sites.

No.

I wanna get more specific.

I wanna discuss the notion that ripping off another marketer’s ADS is somehow cool and hip and righteous.

This is where I was heading the entire time here.  A slight detour through Woodstock, down the side alley of my vandal past, across the lawn of the Internet, and finally into the parking lot of Marketing And Advertising.

When I was coming up through the freelance ranks, there was not another copywriter alive who thought it was okay to directly rip another writer’s stuff.

Seriously.

It was a sin to copy someone else’s stuff word for word.

You just didn’t do it.

There was theft, of course.  Thieving bastards who thought they wouldn’t get caught would be so brazen as to clip ads from newspapers, white-out the address in the coupon, type in their own address…

… and then submit the altered ad, as is, to their local paper for publication.

This happened to clients of mine.  A lot.  Ads I wrote were nicked in Australia — where US law couldn’t touch them, at the time — and run exactly that way.

These were not copywriters doing the deed.

These were thieves.  The lowest form of life in the food chain.

No one pretended it was otherwise.

As business on the Web progressed through the early years of this century, however…

… a curious thing happened.

Suddenly, it was okay to rip off another writer’s copy.  Word for word.

My fellow “old school” writers were appalled.  But powerless to change this re-definition of the word “ethical”.

I even decided to help the rippers out.  I gave a now-infamous workshop called the “License To Steal Seminar”… where I taught people how to rip 5 of my most successful ads.

Why did I do this?

Because everyone was ripping my ads incorrectly.

It pissed me off.

And so, I took it upon myself to teach budding writers what the swipe-file process actually entailed.

The key: Don’t blindly copy.

Instead, figure out the essence of how the sales pitch has been constructed in a good ad…

… and adopt what you learn when you write your own ad.

When I started out, I stalked Gary Bencivenga’s direct mail pieces because his writing “spoke” to me.

I would literally tear his packages apart, and mark them up with notes as I dissected his bullets, his word choices, and the way he guided his reader through the pitch.

But I never copied any of his bullets, or headlines, or even “close the sale” wording.

It was like studying Eric Clapton’s solo in “Crossroads”.  Sure, learn how he constructed it.  Learn how to emulate it.

But don’t go out and play it, note for note, in one of your own songs.  That would be rightly ridiculed.

Instead, “channel” Eric’s style if you must… but be original.

There are only a handful of notes (plus quarter and half-note bends) in the classic blues scale.  That “Crossroads” solo (correct me if I’m wrong) uses just A, C, D and E, up and down the neck, with bends.

Think about that.  A smattering of notes, arranged to send chills and thrills through a Clapton fan.  He has no legal or moral right to claim those notes as his, and no one else’s.  All musicians share the same scales.

And yet what he did was original, and easily identified.

Same with copy, people.  No writer can claim to “own” words like “how to”, or “absolutely free”, or “here’s what I have for you”, or anything else.

But an entire piece of copy…

… a successful ad really can become a work of art.  Worthy of emulation and inspiration.

However, you are CHEATING yourself if you rip mindlessly.

Look, I advocate swipe files.  They’re a great tool.  I include extensive swipe files — of my own stuff — in the packages I offer.

And, as I said, I offer insight to using these swipe files to help spur your own original creation of a good sales conversation.

Just plain old copying, though… it’s like taking your sister to the prom.

It may have all the appearances of a “real” date, but it’s not legit.  It is not a foundation to build anything on.

And this kind of mis-wired thinking produces a lot of hokey “They laughed when I sat down at the piano… but then I started to play…” kind of knock-off marketing.

It will look and sound silly if you don’t understand WHY that John Caples headline and copy worked.  (For the record: It’s a before-and-after type of head.  The key words are not “laughed” or “sat down”, but the juxtaposition of being put down with the “and then I started to play” tease, promising a story of redemption and new-found respect.)

I am now calm but still rueful about being perhaps the most ripped-off writer in the game these days.

It is not — as some might say — the highest form of flattery.  It is, in most cases, intellectual theft.

And it’s become accepted, without apology.

I’ve had books sent to me by folks who should be ashamed that they’ve copied large sections of my stuff… and pawned it off as their own.  And they are not ashamed at all.

I’ve witnessed speakers go on before me at an event… and tell my stories as their own (which sends me scrambling to adjust my own talk to get around the infraction).

This kind of shit leaves me baffled.

The real professionals in marketing never copy directly.  They may quote other writers, but they are lavish in praise while doing so, to ensure there is no confusion.

And they strive to be original at all times.

There are only so many commonly-used words in the English language.  The rich body of slang is refreshed constantly as we toy with phrases and cultural definitions.

If you can hold a conversation with someone, you can write what you need written for your biz.

You don’t need to steal blindly.

You can have a real date for the prom — all you need to do is get hip to the simple, easy process of doing what needs to be done to attain what you want.

Understanding why a good ad IS good gives you insight to what you must do in your own writing.

It’s not rocket science.  It’s actually easy to get into the groove of being original, once you’ve had just a touch of mentoring.

And when it finally clicks, you are off to the races.  You are no longer a slave to your swipe file, because you know how to have a sales conversation that gets results.

And that kind of knowledge just automatically fuels original thinking.

If you’re hot to embrace the freedom, independence, and wealth-generating mojo of knowing how to write everything you need written to make your biz rock…

… you can check out the Simple Writing System package I’ve made available.

I’m not gonna pitch you on it here.  You can decide for yourself if it’s what you need by going here to kick the tires: http://www.simplewritingsystem.com

It truly is a fun ride.

I’m also in the process of interviewing an astonishing array of marketing wizards — including a number of movers-and-shakers you may not have heard of yet (offering you an obvious advantage by learning their secrets before your competition).

These interviews will be released in just a few weeks from now.

And they will be free. No theft is required to access them.

So I’m just saying… you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the announcements of these free content-stuffed interviews.

It’s all part of my devious plan to help you get past your sticking-points and problems with writing your own fast, easy sales conversations that bring in the moolah.

Thanks for letting get all this off my chest here.

Especially the Woodstock stuff.  Been 40 years now.  Still a hell of a party, regardless of whatever else you might think about the event…

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Really… what IS so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Friday, 1:04pm
San Diego, CA
“First, learn your craft.  It won’t stop you from being a genius later.”

Howdy.

Quick little note today, to take you through the weekend (while I’m down here in Baja La-La Land speaking at the star-studded “Paid For Life” seminar).

If you — like me in my mis-spent youth, and like the vast majority of folks out there who “can’t get started” — feel a sense of satisfaction over your ability to Think Deep on Big Thoughts…

… you’d be doing yourself a favor by murdering that satisfaction right now.

The best quote I’ve ever seen on this was by biz legend Peter Drucker:

“Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual.  They fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement.  They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.”

In other words…

… you will never get shit done — no matter how smart you are (or think you are) — until you get MOVING on your ideas.

I, too, was a lost and wandering soul… until I discovered (by accident) the concept of goal-setting and — just as important — the trick to actually putting your goal-achievement plans into action.

That trick?

Get off your butt.

Figure out what you need to know or possess to move to each new step in the plan, and then go acquire it.  Mentoring, information, tools, funding, partners, whatever you need.

Many a fabulous dream has been crushed by the realization that the world will NOT beat a path to your door if you invent a better mousetrap.

Nope.  In this universe, you must breathe life into your dreams, and get the word out.

That requires elbow grease, and the unpleasant reality of needing to work at it.

I grew up with dozens and dozens of smarter-than-me dudes with razor-sharp minds…

… and all but a few of them are slowly curdling in dead-end jobs that never came close to fulfilling the dreams they dreamed.

This is not a crime.  Unless you feel it is.

In which case, you have no one else but yourself to blame.

In this country, in this global economy, in this wired world…

… there is very little standing in the way of achieving almost anything you plan for and set out accomplishing.

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy” to follow your plans.

It’s not.  It takes discipline — which is still a dirty word to most folks.

And it takes a lifetime of paying attention and staying focused and digging in when things don’t go your way.

It is a daunting recipe for most people to even consider.

However, here’s the big secret no one’s hiding from you: Once you engage with life at this level…

… you’ll never go back.

Most of the wealthy entrepreneurs I know and hang out with are lazy.  Or, rather, they’re “selectively” lazy.

When they get after a goal, they are as passionately engaged as a bulldog going after a squirrel.  They enjoy it, they revel in the process, and they gain strength, energy and wisdom (especially self-knowledge) as they progress.

Setting goals, going after them… and achieving them… is more addictive than heroin.

And the side effects are life-changing.  And even disorienting at first.

Your friends will, for the most part, not enjoy your departure from the world of sloth and deep-thinking-without-action.  You may have to leave some of them behind.

You may encounter crushing loneliness… until you discover other like-minded pilgrims on the less-traveled paths of goal-attainment.  (This is why entrepreneurs continue to haunt seminars long after they’ve mastered their business — a huge part of the fun in this journey is in the people you encounter along the way.)

(A finer group of nut-jobs and wacky characters you will not find anywhere else.)

So, just consider “brilliance” as successful entrepreneurs do.

It’s simply not enough.

One decent idea, taken to completion, beats the crap out of a thousand brilliant insights never acted on.

Something to think about, no?

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. If you’re ready to start moving, and you know one of the gaps in your tool kit is being confident about your ability to communicate through writing… you know, for your websites, email, video scripts, ads and everything required for a decent marketing campaign…

… then check out www.simplewritingsystem.com.

I’m not gonna push on this.

When you’re ready, you’ll get over there.

I’m just saying… the tools are waiting for you to decide to get off your duff and get in the game.

Enjoy your weekend.

Tuesday, 8:54pm
Reno, NV
“You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…” (Eagles, “Hotel California”)

Howdy…

Today, let’s explore a little-discussed part of running a biz…

… using a couple of enlightening (and very brief) anecdotes from my recent (and continuing) “Adventures With Hotels”.

Let’s call this lesson: The Faded Lady and the Trump.

With all due apologies to Disney’s classic dog-romance movie, of course.

See if you can spot how the following short story applies to YOUR business…

Ahem.

Each of the last two weekends found me in different cities, staying in hotels I booked online, sight-unseen.

In Sin City, it was the splendiferous Trump International Hotel Las Vegas.

In San Francisco, the once-famous, now-infamous Cathedral Hill Hotel.

Now, the Trump joint was built with luxury in mind.  Shiny, tall, imposing building with huge well-apportioned rooms and super-modern equipment like elevators and art.

As a “product”, the building was great. (Though it seems idiotic not to have any gambling on the premises, as a wanna-be “player” in the Las Vegas scene.  I heard that Trump got skunked on getting his gambling license, but that’s not the spin the staff offered.  “We just didn’t want gambling here,” is what they said, unconvincingly.)

Great price for the rooms, too.  (Most likely because of the lack of casino amenities and dearth of unit sales, which turned it from condo to hotel.)

I have complaints about the joint… but not because of the room, the rate, or the basic delivery of stuff like air conditioning, clean water, nice beds, etc.  (In fact, their pillow-top beds are amazing to sleep in.  Like being cuddled by angels.)

Now, back in SF, it was a completely different situation.

We hosted a gathering of writers, affiliates, and other mucky-mucks at the Cathedral Hill Hotel because we wanted to treat everyone to an evening with the world-renown “Beer Chef“, who puts on fabulous dinners there once a month.  (You can read more about Bruce Paton’s unique meals at www.beer-chef.com. )

You want the “Beer Chef”, you deal with Cathedral Hill. (And yes, we very much wanted his magic.  He creates these shockingly-tasty gourmet meals there, with each course matched by a local micro-brew beer instead of boring old wine.  It’ll knock your socks off, even if you aren’t well-versed in pilsners, ales and lagers.)

We also started the day off with an afternoon-long brainstorm session in the hotel’s main meeting room.  (I’m sure you caught some of the updates on Twitter from the luminaries and stars in attendance.)

However…

… none of us had ever stayed at the hotel.

And while it has a storied past (well-chronicled in San Francisco lore), it has, alas,  fallen on hard times.

Culminating in being bought out a short time ago and scheduled for the wrecking ball.

Ouch.

We made the most of it.  The stories and jokes we all shared about our rooms and experiences in the hotel are howlingly funny…

… but still, as a “product”, there’s no getting around the fact that the building was in serious disrepair.

Sort of like a once-beautiful lady who has fallen on hard times, and ended up sacked-out in a filthy alley, soused with cheap booze and a reputation heading south at light speed.

The price was actually a red flag: You cannot stay in the city, in a decent room, for anywhere near the rate Cathedral Hill was asking.

Kind of like seeing an ad for a luxury Caribbean Cruise in the paper for five bucks.  It sort of sets off your early-warning alarm.  (Five bucks and your kidney, maybe.)

So… while no one got robbed, or found a dead hooker in their room… the experience came off as part Overlook Hotel horror-show (from “The Shining”), and part David Lynch “29 Palms” surreal.

Good grist for hair-raising tales.  And jokes.

Not so good for scoring nice comments on hotel-rating sites.

Now…

… here’s where the lesson comes in.

While the Trump shined as architecture… the hotel staff was a disaster.

They left us standing outside for half and hour in 100 degree heat while finding our valeted car… and got pissed when I raised a fuss.  I was told that pffft, of course I should have known it would take 20 minutes or longer to get a car from the garage.

Was I that naive?

Then, after charging me $9 for a few Advil in the tiny, inadequate store… I asked the desk clerk to hold the oversized bottle until I came back from my adventures outside.

And they stole it.  Or lost it.  And it was my problem.

Room service?  No one ever answered the phone when I called.  No message, no music, just endless ringing.  (I finally called the toll-free number for the hotel, got the manager on the line, and gave him my simple order.  Somehow, it actually got delivered some time later.)

Hey — I realize this isn’t earth shaking stuff. Lost overpriced Advil bottles, snotty attitudes, phones unanswered, meetings missed because of long waits for the car…

… I don’t really care all that much.

I’m actually amazed that anything works in this culture, ever.  Water coming out of the tap, planes actually flying, mail getting delivered…

… I find each act of modern life a mind-boggling miracle.  (The light came on!  I just flipped the switch like this… look! It came on again!)

But that’s the point of this little story.

It’s the little shit that actually leaves the biggest impression in business.

Over at the crumbling Cathedral Hill, the staff was like long-lost family.  The desk clerks fussed with clients, making sure we were as happy as possible.  Bell hops scrambled to help with luggage and directions (even though I know they were often stiffed from foreign bad-tippers).

The staff assigned to us during our brainstorm was attentive and eager to please.

And the Beer Chef’s kitchen staff performed amazing culinary feats all night long.  (Yum.)

These were, almost to a person, nice folks tackling difficult short-ticket jobs in a hotel with a date for demolition.

This got me thinking about customer service.

Most online biz fall down on dealing with customers and clients.  It’s just too tempting to treat people like numbers when everything is anonymous and digital.

Offline, you gotta look a customer in the eye.  Online, it’s email, and maybe a phone call.

So it’s easy to forget that after making a sale, the “real” work begins of creating a lasting relationship with a customer.

And the life-time value of a customer is what counts.

It’s not that first sale.

It’s all the following times he buys from you that builds a successful business model.

Good biz savvy demands over-the-top excellent customer service… all the way down the line.

It costs you to acquire a new customer.  It can be expensive, in cash laid out for ads, and in time spent communicating your sales message.

Once he’s a happy current customer, however, there’s an opportunity to bond deeply… which creates the kind of trust and bonhomie required to make back-end sales simple and easy.  (And this post-sale bonding can be accomplished for spare change.)

But there’s a mix of factors here, too.

I probably won’t stay at Trump’s little condo experiment again.  What I saved on the room rate was gobbled up by extra cab fares and the overpriced drinks and food they served.

And it just pissed me off that the staff seemed to have taken classes in offending customers.

So it’s worth noting that a great product, at a great price…

… can be nullified by rotten customer service.

And it’s also worth noting that a poor product — like the Cathedral Hill soon-to-go-bye-bye Hotel — can still leave you with good feelings about the experience.

I won’t be staying there again, mind you.  Because, again, the product sucked.

So the perfect mix is: Great product, great price…

… and great customer service.

It’s not brain surgery.

I ran Marketing Rebel as a 2-person shop for years, earning a fortune and a sterling reputation.

It was just Diane and me… and both of us made post-sale customer service a priority.

Even now, with the staff burgeoning, everyone who deals with customer happiness is a single phone call away from me.

You got a problem, you’re gonna get someone I know personally on it as fast as possible.

And each case is unique, far as we’re concerned.  There are real people behind every email we send out for customer service.

We will never make everyone happy, of course.  We’ll always have unpredictable problems that just crank some folks so much it damages the relationship forever.  It happens.

And we’ll always see a very tiny percentage of pure rage-aholic customers who cannot be satisfied, ever, because they’re batshit crazy.

Still, they will get replies, as fast as we can get on it.  For most customer service, in fact, my own personal assistant (the infamous Diane) is point person and chief handler.

You may, for whatever reason, become disenchanted with us.

But it won’t be from a sucky product or bad customer service.  You will never be left dangling in the wind.

I came up through the ranks knowing that customer service can make or break a project.

Some businesses out there say “screw it”, and accept 20% and higher refund rates because they just don’t want to bother with good customer relations.

I don’t recommend that model.

Truly resilient success is built on having a killer product… supported by equally killer customer service.

It’s easy to ruin a relationship.  (Lord, don’t I know that.)

And it’s hard to follow through with doing the right thing, as a rule.  People can be assholes, clueless, and utter nuisances… often all at once.

But it pays off to hang in there, and take the high road.

The customer may not always be right… but that’s the right attitude to start out with when dealing with someone.

If Trump was smart, he’d hire the Cathedral Hill staff as soon as they’re all available… and send his current mob packing.

It’s a huge lesson.  Great product, great service.

Any other combination just plain sucks, and will contaminate your success.

What do you think?

Love to hear your comments.  Maybe a horror story about dealing with a biz using professional assholes for customer service, or staying in Hotel Hell yourself.

(I loved that YouTube video about the cable TV guy napping on the job, and the other one about trying to quit AOL… while the representatives on the phone refused to allow it.)

Also… a couple of posts ago, someone put up a comment about being “ignored” by my staff regarding a complaint.  And I looked into it, and discovered that she had given us incorrect contact info, and ignored OUR reply emails on the matter.

I left that comment up (I’ve never taken down a comment yet, in five years, that wasn’t spam) as a little exercise in seeing how our years of over-the-top customer service has affected our reputation out there.

The answer: Not a whole lot.

Folks who deal with us are happy.  The few who cannot be satisfied, no matter what, remain disgruntled.

And you simply cannot really brag about good customer service to prospects.  No one will believe you until they experience it firsthand.

So, be clear on this: You don’t do it in your online biz because you score huge points with prospects.

You do it because it keeps happy customers happy.  And because it’s just the right thing to do.

Over time, your reputation will benefit.

More important, over that same period of time, your bottom line will grow faster, because you’re able to build on good will with back end sales to a happy list.

A small lesson, perhaps.

But critical to sustainable, honest success.

Please — share a horror story.

Stay frosty,

John

Wednesday, 3:31pm
San Francisco, CA
“It crawled into my hand, honest…” (The Fuggs, circa 1967)

Howdy…

I’m off having more fun than you this week…

… meeting up with a bunch of crazy writers in Baghdad By The Bay for a nice gourmet feast (delivered by the world-renown “Beer Chef”, who pairs super-delicious fare with micro-brews instead of boring old wine)…

… followed by, well, being in San Francisco with a bunch of crazy writers.

Oh, there will be stories.

I suggest you follow us on Twitter.  (It’s the Usual Suspects at the core of this adventure: Harlan, Morgan, Lorrie, Kevin, Garf, Curly, Mark, Dahl, etc.)

If you’re not following me on Twitter… first, get your head examined, then check in at www.twitter.com/johncarlton007.   (Don’t forget the “oo7″ part.  Some other doofus nailed “johncarlton” long ago — turns out, it’s a fairly common name.  Not that I’ve ever met one of the imposters personally…)

And while you’re waiting for me to get back (probably early next week) and start posting on this blog again…

… take this opportunity to go back through the archives and get hip to why this blog is so popular in the first place.

There’s almost 5 years of good stuff waiting for you.

So, indulge.

And I’ll see you back here in a few days.

If, that is, I survive the weekend in SF.

Stay frosty,

John

Monday, 11am
Reno, NV
“Facts are stupid things.” (Ronald Reagan, ‘88 GOP convention)

Howdy…

Well, that was fun.

Over 650 comments on that last quiz so far (with a bullet).  Some really good responses, too.

Also some really out-there ones, which always makes for giddy reading.

The main thing, of course, is that so many folks put on their Thinking Caps and went for it.  As I’ve said before: You win just by trying with this kind of brain stumper.

Anyway…

… we have a winner.  I’ll let you know who it was in a minute.

First, let’s relieve the tension and reveal the answer already.

Or at least head in that direction.  It’s probably worth noting that only a tiny handful of the comments were on the right path.

The question was vague, on purpose.  This is high-end street-level psychology…

… and one of the main features of this kind of advanced salesmanship is that it is NOT easily understood by most people.

In fact, you’ve likely encountered the answer to this quiz before in your life… but because it didn’t “fit” with your intuition and belief about “how things work”, it didn’t stick.

Most of what classic salesmen know about people runs counter to what the majority calls  “common sense”.

This is startling to rookie marketers.  Confusing.  Disorienting.  Challenges long-held beliefs about the nobility of human endeavor and the lofty inclinations of the human brain.

Thus, we saw long sub-threads in the comments that ignored the entire concept of a “glitch” in people’s thinking…

… and instead dove into all kinds of elaborate explanations of how a successful sales pitch might smoothly proceed with dignity and logic.

It’s good to have these discussions, if you desire to get anywhere in marketing.

I, too, had trouble getting into the minds of my prospects at first.

This is why I jumped on every opportunity that arose, early in my career, to hang out and grill every “street wise” marketer I ran into.

Cuz those guys knew how to SELL.

No theory.  Just experience (and the bank accounts to prove it).

This group included:

… Jay Abraham and Gary Halbert (both of whom had door-to-door selling experience where, if they didn’t make the sale, they didn’t eat that day)…

… a veteran of the old Craftmatic Bed marketing model (his motto: “Don’t leave the prospect’s house until there’s money in your pocket or blood on the wall”)…

… several grizzled direct response admen with professed ties to David Ogilvy (and more insight into people from  selling diet and jewelry products than the CIA will ever get from high-tech espionage)…

… a hard-ass sales genius who’d grown up on the streets of Berkeley plundering tourists with 3-Card Monte games (who channeled P.T. Barnum by insisting “there are suckers born every minute)…

… a Los Angeles “porn king” who hated all the dark knowledge his gig had revealed about human behavior (he’d gotten into the biz accidentally)…

… a perpetually roaming marketing expert (who was 60 when I met him and a multi-millionaire) who had serially convinced several different Miss World winners to marry him and put up with his infidelities long before any of the current PUA heroes were even born…

… and Joe Cossman (the guy who introduced the Spud Gun to America — along with a stream of foreign-made goods like X-ray glasses and magic tricks — through impossible-to-ignore ads in comic books).

Just to name a few of the resources I encountered while getting schooled in the psychology of selling.

(That flimsy BA in Psychology I got from the University of California isn’t even a pimple on the ass of what I learned — in just a few years of going deep with the street-hip salesmen — about what makes humans tick.)

This is where I formulated my little rule about moving through life:

You must look at the world that way it IS… not how you wish it were, or how you believe it ought to be.

To be a great salesman, you gotta continually apply brutal, real-world reality checks to yourself.

Thus… the answer to the question I posed (”What is this Psychological Glitch in people’s thinking process that has made long copy so vital for the sales process?”) has less to do with logic and rational thinking…

… than with the more infuriating part of human brain activity.

That part where, after  you offer up nice sets of facts and figures that — for anyone with a Vulcan-level sense of logic — should seal the deal…

…  your prospect just sniffs skeptically, shrugs off your careful presentation of reality…

… and instead buys from the competition.  Those assholes with the brazen, outlandish, over-the-top sales pitch that reads like it was written by an uneducated huckster.

You know — the long copy stuff with the folksy attitude and outrageous appeals for attention.

This truly offends rookie marketers (and even veteran marketers who don’t get it).

I hear their lament often:

“Why can’t people just be logical and sensible and understand how superior my product is and GIVE ME THEIR FUCKING MONEY?”

The answer: Because they don’t want to give you their fucking money.

Even the most basic exchange of goods for cash in our society… is an inherently hostile situation.

One side wants the best bargain possible (the most for the least), while the other side wants the best profit possible (the most income for the least effort).

You’re not a bad person for wanting a better deal than the other guy wants to offer.

You’re human.  You’ve got quirks and foibles and ulterior motives that — despite your best efforts to remain pure and above the fray — include deep-seated greed, raw lust, and a persistent driving need to be able to gloat because you negotiated a better deal than your schmuck brother-in-law.

Oh, it’s not always nice inside the brain of a typical human being.

All kinds of dark thoughts and paranoid fears and rude desires dominate the neuro-landscape.

And if you don’t understand what you’re up against when you’re creating a pitch, you’ll have trouble persuading anyone to do anything.

Especially when it involves them taking money out of their wallet and handing it to you.

Here is the answer to the quiz: People loathe a void.

When they encounter gaps in the information they’re receiving (from an ad, from the news, from gossip, from any incoming stimuli at all)…

… they have a stunning tendency to fill in those gaps with their own ideas.

Based on ill-formed intuition, soggy critical thinking, and flawed belief systems that defy reality.

In other words:  They just make it up as they go.

You lose control of the sales process when this happens.

Thus, the final argument for long copy (and I hope we can stop arguing about this now) is:  You must counter every objection your prospect has… which can be a long list all by itself…

… and you must also go deep into his noggin and demolish the unconscious bullshit flooding his cerebral cortex that will sabotage his own rational desire to buy from you.

Your job is to give him a burning desire to own what you offer… that is both rational AND emotionally satisfying.

Which are often wildly different things.

Non-salesmen just get frustrated when someone makes stuff up.  The operative line of thought when faced with a gap in knowledge goes something like this:  “I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because…” followed by suggested realities pulled completely out of their butt.

Top tier salesmen, however, USE this insight.  They don’t get frustrated at how people behave.  They just roll with the punch.

I asked you to go visit www.snopes.com just to see how many of the urban myths (which have been thoroughly debunked with annoying facts) are still part or your belief system.

If you went, you learned something about how people process stuff.  (If you didn’t take the advice to visit that site, you learned something about yourself.)

This has nothing to do with education or class, either.  When I was college, my smart-as-hell girlfriend convinced a bunch of us to get involved with a chain letter pyramid scheme.

She talked herself — and us — into it with seemingly impeccable logic.

It’s the same type of argument the country collectively engaged in during the last few financial bubbles.  (I knew the real estate market was in for a bloodbath four years ago, when a smart-yet-deluded secretary I knew bragged about refinancing her third home so she could buy another one… which was gonna make her rich because she’d just find folks to pay her mortgages through high rents.)

(Check this YouTube video out for a gruesome laugh about how too many people’s thought-processes perverted logic during the housing bubble: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNmcf4Y3lGM )

All of us have a belief system that governs our behavior.

Most of these systems are not rooted in the way the universe actually operates.  They are, instead, propelled by:

• Myths
• Rumors and gossip
• Fuzzy logic
• Unexamined assumptions
• And lots of guessing.

Almost every single consultation I’ve ever been paid for included an extended session where I had to beat the assumptions out of the client.

“No,” he’ll say, “I didn’t try that tactic, because I just assumed that…” is what I hear the most.  Followed by complete nonsense pulled out of thin air, backed up with rumor and myth.

And we all know what you do when you assume.  (You make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”.)

Start paying attention to the bullshit flying around you.

Hollywood is one of the worst offenders.  Screenwriters for generations have been writing about stuff they have zero real clue about.

(So you keep seeing heroes getting shot, slugged in the head with bats, and falling twelve stories to the sidewalk… only to shake it off and go back to win the fight.  For example.)

Congress is a mix of fools and geniuses.  Both engage with their constituency at the lowest intellectual level possible.  One group just does it on purpose… but they’re still playing to the myths and rumor mills.

(Time after time, researchers have discovered that average — and otherwise good-hearted — Americans will recoil and reject the Bill of Rights when it’s presented to them without explaining what it is.  Scary.  But if you’re gonna succeed in politics, you gotta understand how the voting brain functions.)

And my favorite example (cuz I come from this kind of family): Your arrogant, know-it-all brother-in-law will get so angry discussing what he “knows” about the world that he will insult you, offer vague threats, and feel totally justified calling you an idiot if you disagree.

Or if you have the gall to ask where he gets his “facts”.

“Just look it up,” is what I heard at family functions growing up.  “It’s a fact.  I guarantee you it’s true.”

The kicker: Nowadays, you can simply Google any question and get immediate expert-supported facts.

Growing up, I used to pull out the dictionary and encyclopedias and triumphantly present the actual correct answer to what was being angrily discussed.

What I learned: Presenting facts — even unimpeachable stacks of figures, statsistics, quotes and conclusions — couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm another person had for what he “believed” to be true.

When selling something, you cannot leave anything out of the your pitch.

Or your prospect will fill in the gap from his vast internal storehouse of misinformation, rumor, myth, “common sense” and — worst of all — his own guesses at what “should” be in your sales argument.

Great salesmen use long copy formats (in written ads or websites, autoresponder email series, videos, and speeches) because they know they’re supplying “buying reasons” for both the rational side of their prospect’s brain…

… and his irrational side (which often dominates the internal conversation).

The next time you try to persuade someone to do something — buy what you offer, leave his name and email, come to an event, whatever — just throw in a few nods to the roiling nonsense you suspect is inside his brain.

(”You know they make good stuff in Germany,” is how Vince “Mr. Sham-Wow” put it.)

What you know – for a FACT — is true about what you offer…

… may (in fact) be utterly polluted by what your prospect believes is true about it.

So you need to know what he’s thinking… and you need to address it in a way that is satisfying to his need to fill in the gaps.

Remember: People are actively looking a reason — factually true or not — to say “no” to your offer.

Saying “no” means they can relax and get on with their day, continuing to believe there is no good solution to their problem.

This is why you explain — with vivid stories and action-oriented case studies — stuff like return-on-investment, the outrageous value being offered, the limits of the opportunity, and all the wonderful ways his life is about to change.

Including lots of sound-bites he can use to remind himself, his doubting spouse, and his skeptical neighbor why this was such a great decision.

When you leave gaps in your sales pitch, you lose control of the process.

Rookies do this all the time.  They take for granted that their prospect understands the offer and product the same way they do.

And so they leave too many “easy outs” for the prospect to say “Oh, that’s not for me, because…” followed by whatever belief sways them.

When you control the conversation, he can’t assume anything, or go anywhere in his head you don’t want him to go.

(Side note: When you get really good at understanding the mindset of your prospect, you CAN leave vast holes in your pitch.

It’s called “going blind”, because you’re purposely avoiding explaining things in too much detail.  The prospect has to order and receive the product to relieve his curiosity.

This tactic has as many iron-clad rules as the more common straightforward pitch.

A blind ad is all about managing the void. You control the “gaps” presented to your prospect much like great musicians control the “spaces” in jazz (think Miles Davis).

You block all exits and direct your prospect’s imagination in the direction you want it to go.

You know he’s going to fill in the gaps.  So you give him plenty of good ammo to do so, by playing on the myths, gossip and other flotsam and jetsam in his mind.

Maybe we’ll discuss this other advanced tactic soon.)

So…

… it might help you to go back and look at the two winners I’ve selected.

(Yes, I’m giving away two prizes, rather than the one I promised.  I think it’s justified.)

The winners:

“Bob”, with answer number 30.

And “Sergy”, with answer number 133.

Guys, my overworked assistant Diane will be contacting you soon about delivering your Freelance Courses.

Well done, boys.

To everyone: It was a pleasure reading what you came up with.

There was a ton of fabulous critical thinking going on.  Which is very gratifying to someone like me, who fancies himself a teacher.

However, street-wise salesmen know that critical thinking must be joined with real-world experience to be worth anything during Crunch Time.

Hope this little exercise helped you tidy up your own head a bit.

It’s all about self-knowledge — understanding what you do not yet have covered, and going after it.

We’ll have to do this again, soon.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. One last thing: That “lighthouse” tip I offered?

It was actually a tremendous hint.  If you’re honest, you know you’ve participated (at some point in your life)  in talking about something you have little or no real knowledge of… like lighthouses.

You’ve seen photos, maybe visited one, probably watched a movie or two involving one.

So, during a conversation about lighthouses, you pull out your internal file on them, and behold: There is all kinds of stuff you “know” or suspect you know about them.

There’s nothing criminal going on.

Just be more aware of how much bullshit you’re laying out in the course of a day.  Most folks tell little white lies (and a few big ones) at regular intervals while awake.

We’re just filling in the gaps.

It’s worth the effort to train yourself to stay within your actual knowledge, if you want to succeed as a marketer.

This includes everything about you, personally (”know thyself”)… about your product… about your audience… and about the world around you.

It can be startling at first to junk your long-held belief systems.

Ultimately, though, it’s a better way to live.

Because, guess what?

The world, minus myth and gossip and bullshit, is actually a very fascinating place.

Peace out.

Thursday, 10:11pm
Reno, NV
“Ain’t it hard when you discover that he wasn’t really where it’s at… after he took from you everything he could steal?” (Bob Dylan, “Like A Rollin’ Stone”)

Howdy…

This is gonna be good.

And a whole lot tougher than any previous quiz I’ve given.

I’ll explain the prize in just a sec.

First, the set-up for the question:

I find it shocking that so many wanna-be-rich marketers out there still think the question of “short copy vs. long copy” is unsettled online.

I can tell you this: For the top guys — the ones sloughing off the vast majority of the moolah being made by entrepreneurs on the Web — it’s settled.

Whether you’re primarily using video, or email, or websites, or social media…

… the Main Big Damn Rule for getting people to part with their hard-earned money in trade for what you offer hasn’t changed since the first caveman traded up to a new cave with a view for a slab of mastodon meat:

The more you tell…

… the more you sell.

Hey — I love a good argument.  Don’t get me wrong.

And I’m always open to hearing someone out on this subject.

I realize that — for many people unsullied by actual experience in the biz world — it’s just plain tempting to believe that the rules of the universe have suddenly changed.

And you no longer have to be so… vulgar… to make a sale anymore.

Because, you know… the Web has changed everything.  Social networking has somehow mysteriously short-circuited the old skepticism, doubt, and fear of getting “taken” that has marred the smooth exchange of money in the past.

Now, hey, we’re all buddies on Twitter and Facebook!

Mi casa es su casa.

How much do you need?  Here, take my wallet…

Naw.

For anyone paying attention to what the entrepreneurs actually making money online are doing…

… there is zero doubt that classic salesmanship still is in operation.

The “long copy” may be broken up into half-a-dozen emails, or several shorter videos, or multiple blog posts, or webinars…

… but it’s still long copy.  You start at the beginning of a classic pitch.  You explain who you are, why you’re credible, why other people endorse you, what you’ve got, why it’s such a big thing, why you need to jump on this opportunity now…

… and exactly what you need to do next to pay me for it.

That final part — the “close” — is one of the most complex human-to-human transactions there is.  It’s simple when you get clued-in and learn the step-by-step process…

… but until you get hip, it’s just damned difficult to convince someone to give you money for what you offer.

If you can find a way to get through this process of persuasion with a few clever bon mots, avoiding any mention of actually (horrors) asking for money… then congratulations.

You’ve just entered a parallel universe.  Where webinars last two minutes, no email is longer than five words, and entire launch processes involve just saying “hi” and waiting for the money to pour in.

Okay, I’m being a dick here.  Nobody’s seriously suggesting two minute videos can do entire sales jobs.  (Are they?)

But this is a point that often deserves a bit of ridicule.

No matter how many times people who know discuss WHY long copy is still king… it never seems to sink in for the majority of newbies out there.

Which brings me to an interesting insight.  It may explain things — finally — in a simple way that makes it too obvious to ignore anymore.

Here’s that insight: There is a very important psychological reason for using long copy that hardly anyone ever discusses.

It’s a glitch in the way almost everyone’s brain works.

And it’s especially prevalent among folks who have become Zombified in their daily lives… lost in a trance caused by too much incoming stimuli from the modern world.

This Psychological Glitch is something that permeates nearly everything that people do…

… and it’s the main reason the world continues to operate pretty much on a permanent Self-Destruct “Who The Fuck Is In Charge” Mode.

This Psychological Glitch affects most of the decisions people make each and every day, all day long…

… on both mundane topics and issues that will decide the rest of their lives.

You see it in effect in the halls of Congress.

You see it in the pages of every newspaper and magazine on earth.

You hear it in every bar, and at every family gathering.

And — most of all — you encounter it every time you try to complete a simple capitalistic exercise in selling stuff.

So here is today’s Quiz Question:

“What is this Psychological Glitch in people’s thinking process that has made long copy so vital for the sales process?”

Yeah, I know it’s not obvious.

I want folks to think a little about this.  Real critical thinking, based on experience and observation and deduction.

When I reveal the answer, I’m pretty sure two things will happen:

1. You’ll slap the side of your head and say “Of course!”

2. And, you will wonder why this fact of life hasn’t been more prominent in discussions about marketing.  (Not to mention international politics, sports, the making of movies, and why your dumb-ass brother-in-law is always so adamant about his opinions at family dinners.)

So give it your best shot in the comments section.

Come on.  It’ll be fun to exercise your brain a little bit.

I know it’s not multiple choice.  Just roll with it.

The first dead-on answer gets a prize!

Now, because this question is so centered on copy, let’s make the prize relevant.

So: I’m giving away a nice, fresh copy of the legendary Freelance Course.

It’s everything I know (from 25 years at the top of the game) about making the Big Bucks as a respected, feared, and sought-after freelance copywriter.

Yes… it’s that same course that has been off the market for years at a time… because it was generating too much hot competition for working freelance copywriters out there.

This course has sold for up to $5,000 (back when I included personal coaching).  And never less than several hundred bucks (when available at all).

Every single writer in my “Stable O’ Copywriters” (the new semi-secret service we’ve created offering biz owners the immediate services of “Carlton Recommended And Supported Copywriters”) has devoured this course.

For anyone who’s ever considered the adventure, huge money, and total independence that a scorching career in freelance copywriting offers…

… this is the Holy Grail.

And I’m giving away a free copy to the first “best answer” to this puzzling question I’ve just posed.

This quiz will run all weekend long.

I’ll give a hint on Saturday if folks are having too much trouble thinking this through.

On Monday, I’ll reveal the intriguing (and rarely discussed) answer on this Psychological Glitch in folks that makes longer copy so damned important.

Don’t be shy.

The last quiz started a mini-riot (despite the correct answer coming in via the third poster).  Nearly 250 responses.

That was fun.  A nice online brawl.

Now, this question may throw many folks (and dampen responses).  I think you should still give it a shot, anyway.  (You have just as good a chance of accidentally scoring here as anyone else.)

Remember: This glitch is rarely included in discussions about short copy vs. long copy.  Or in talks about how to use social media.

It’s psychological.  That means it’s connected to how regular people think.

So consider how you, and the people around you, ponder stuff like “Should I buy that?”

Okay.  Here’s a hint: Check out www.snopes.com, and see if any of the urban myths revealed to be wrong on that site… were ever part of your belief system.

If so — and nearly everyone answers “yes” to that question at first, by the way — ask yourself why you ever thought such an obvious myth was ever true.

Okay, I’m giving away too much now.

Let the quiz begin.

Silence, please.

Brains, begin cogitating.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S. Watch this “P.S.” space for the hint on Saturday… if no one has given the right answer by then.

Monday, I’ll reveal all.

UPDATE & HINT: Okay, it’s Saturday.

And I’ve gotta tell you — there are two (but just two) posts in the attached hulking pile of comments that are close enough to be declared winners.

And no, I’m not gonna reveal which ones they are until Monday.

This is truly evil fun.  I’ve got several high-end copywriters privately emailing me with their answers (because they don’t wanna risk being wrong in public).

And they’re close enough to be pissed off about not nailing it exactly… and  far enough away to not be able to sleep.

Look — I told you this wasn’t gonna be an easy quiz.  I hope you appreciate the opportunity to think hard about communicating with prospects at this deep psychological level.  You win just by trying.

I’m still gonna give another hint for those still playing.

Here’s that hint: Look at the photo up at the top of this post.

It’s a lighthouse in Australia.

Now, ask yourself: What do you know about lighthouses?

Imagine you’re in a conversation with a group of people, and the topic of lighthouses comes up.  Your brain whirls around and clicks on the file “What I know about lighthouses”.

You mentally open that file, and… what happens?

How does your participation in the conversation proceed?

Consider how you — not some hypothetical person — would engage in this conversation about lighthouses.  What are you doing, using that thin mental file on the subject?

Okay, I’m really giving it away now.

Remember: This is a GLITCH in the way we think.  It’s not necessarily a rational response, nor a logical next step.

(Some folks consciously smother this glitch, but it can take years of practice.  It’s the default position for most people.)

I’ll publish the specific answer on Monday.  Understanding this one piece of street-level psychology will help you more with your next attempt to sell something… than all the reading you could do online right now about copywriting.

See you Monday, then…

Monday, 8:24pm
Reno, NV
“… and in the early mornin’ fog, I looked into those Mystic Eyes…” (Van Morrison, with Them, “Mystic Eyes”)

Howdy…

Had a little extended email exchange with our old pal Shawn Casey today.

See, he’s about to turn the Big Five-Oh… and I offered him the same gift that Gary Halbert offered me when I turned 50: An open invitation to hear about all the horrific shit he has to look forward to as his body slams full-force into official middle age.

Halbert used to absolutely delight in detailing for me some of the more evil indignities of waving bye-bye to youth.

Let’s just say your days of indulging in a bar brawl, and sleeping it off so you can do it again the next night, too…

… are over.

(Bonus insight: However, you can still have fun minus the dangerous stunts and life-threatening bravado that used to cap a good night out.  Who’d a thought?)

I’m still laughing from that exchange with Shawn.

In truth, if you’re healthy, it ain’t all that big a deal sliding into your fifties.  If you’ve spent the last four decades thrashing yourself, then yeah, you may be looking at getting your ticket punched early.

But if you listen to your body, keep the stress under control, get some freakin’ exercise once in a while, and avoid chunking out like Jaba The Hut…

… well, it’s actually kinda nice being a grizzled, older ape.

The real pleasures of life are just as intense… and you’ve pretty much identified which ones you want to focus on.  (I spent my youth sampling almost every forbidden fruit in the feast… which I felt was my duty as a buddng writer.  Many of those experiences were just downright awful, and yet they’d looked so good from a distance…)

And — even if you dinked around a lot for the bulk of your youth (as I did) (and, boy, was I good at dinking around) — you can’t help but have gathered a ton of experience.

And stories.

And whatever mangled philosophy of life that got you this far must have something going for it… or you wouldn’t have made it.

Now, the reason I’m writing this post…

… is to soothe the fears of my younger readers.

Dudes: Your brain does not melt in your 30s.  Sex can actually get better (though it may require a little extra management).  And…

… wait for it…

… here’s the Big News: Most of you won’t even begin to hit your intellectual peak until you hit your fifties.

So, as smart and hip and nailed-down as you believe you are right now…

… it really can get even better.

Right after your second mid-life crisis, if my own experience is any gauge.  (I’m on Crisis # 4, by the way.  And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every damn one of them.)

I am seriously at the peak of my ability to think clearly.

And my writing — if I can be immodest for a moment — has absolutely morphed into something killer these days.  Plus, I’m prolific as heck (notice the brilliant and yet subtle use of slang there).

And it’s all because so much of the flotsam and jetsam of life’s distractions have finally drifted away.

I am over being “cool”.  It’s a dumb pursuit, anyway… cuz, in most cases, the young man’s quest for coolness becomes ideological, and deprives him of a broader appreciation of The Feast of Life.

I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks about my conduct, either.  Halbert used to say “You know you’ve earned a certain self-made status when you can look any maitre’ d in the eye and walk him back.”

And he was right.  I’m just a working class kid who clawed his way into the Good Life… and you can bite me if you think I’m intimidated by anything you bring to the table.

At this point — after 25+ years in the cutthroat front-line trenches of the business world — I’ve seen ‘em come, and I’ve seen ‘em go.

That perspective has taught me to be humble (mostly), and to appreciate life on it’s own terms.

Cuz “life” always wins in the end.  The reality of moving through this world can be truly frightening when you finally leave the nest and meet the monsters.

The indifference of the universe just takes a while to sink in.

Who you are after a few years in the thick of it is a direct result of how you deal with the challenges.  It’s easy to be a winner while you’re winning.  It’s more revealing, though, to see how someone copes with adversity and, yes, losing.

(There’s an old saying that you’ll never really “know” someone until you’ve seen them cold, wet, tired, hungry… and lost.  Nietzche would be proud.)

This is where living through a few more years comes in handy.

Both Shawn and I have had the same experience (and it’s truly weird).

For nearly all of my career as a professional copywriter and marketing consultant, I was the Young Punk With Attitude in the room.

That was my job.  To afflict the other know-it-all’s with better chops and edgier energy.

I did it well.

Then, one day (and I swear to you this happened literally overnight) I realized I was 20 years older than the rest of the group at the table.

And some of them were treating me differently because of it.

I understand the tendency.  A lot of folks bring baggage with them into adulthood — issues with daddy or older men in general.

And it can screw with your ability to deal with semi-geezers.  Which is a shame.

I recognize the younger guys who have no “age issues” instantly.  They treat me like an equal, and we get along without problem.

I escaped the confinements of my peer group as soon as I was out of high school.   I’d been lucky to have friends of different races growing up.  Next expanded awareness step: Hang with people of different ages.

My Pop was typical World War II guy:  Work hard, don’t complain, don’t explain, provide for the family and let ‘em figure it out for themselves.

So my first real experience with getting into the heads of older folks was in college.  I had an anthropology teacher who forced us, for the grade, to go out into the community and collect stories from the most doddering, near-death oldsters we could find.

I’ll tell you what: If I could force every young person to do anything in life today, it would be that exact assignment.

Because of the segmenting that goes on in our culture, we’ve been isolated from a wealth of stories, insight, advice and good vibes.

When you only deal with older people at work, or in situations where you’re at odds with them (cops pulling you over, supervisors firing you, store owners suspicious that you’re stealing) then of course you’re not gonna get to know them.

This assignment, however, was specific: Get them to tell you a single story about what it was like to be young in their time.

Wow.

As we go through life, we tend to consider that everything is, right now, the way it’s always been.  That tree has always been in the front yard.  The mail has always arrived promptly at ten on Saturday.

And Old Man Harrison over there has always been an asshole about kids on his lawn.

But things have NOT always been thus.  Harrison, in fact, was once a vibrant young buck, full of piss and vinegar, shooting down Japanese Zeroes over the ocean in his P-51 Mustang.  Back home after the war, with all that death and adventure under his belt, he was still just 22 years old.

And he didn’t just nibble on life.

Naw.  He and his buddies gobbled up the experiences of being young and alive and in America in the post-war boom.  (Just a hint of post-traumatic stress in the old guy, self-medicated with tobacco and beer, but never so much he couldn’t handle it.)

For most young adults, the only “glimpse” they get of Life Before You Were Born is from Hollywood.  And I’m here to tell you that’s a piss-poor way to fuel your belief system of how things really were.

Books are better.  Biographies are best.

And raw stories, straight from the mouths of those who lived it, simply cannot be beat.

I have hung out with people with absolutely no regard to their age ever since that assignment.  Halbert and my now-biz partner Stan and I used to get together now and again… Halbert fifteen years older than me, and Stan twelve years younger than me… and we got along great. Total equals.

There are lots of excellent reasons not to like someone.

Being younger or older than them is not one of those reasons.

Look.  I’m not gonna play rugby with you anymore.  I would have a few years ago.

And I’m not gonna go to some nightclub where I’m the oldest dude in the room.

That’s all part of the long menu of stuff I used to do, and have decided not to do anymore.

Instead, I’m focusing on doing the things I truly enjoy doing.  Turns out, I like to work hard sometimes, especially at writing.  And teaching. And playing the kind of music I like to play.

And learning new shit, like marketing on the Web.

This is a very cool time to be alive, and be part of the fast-moving paradigm that is the Internets.  (That’s a joke.  Bush used to call the Web “the Internets”.  He’s a few years older than me, but he’s a fellow Baby Boomer… and regardless of what else you may think of him, his true failing was to lose touch with modern life… which is, and will be for some time, centered on the Web.)

I consider most of the top online marketers out there to be colleagues of mine, and many are friends.   For some, I’m the first old guy they’ve ever hung out with… and while I’m hardly an average salt-and-pepper-haired dude, I appreciate the comraderie and sense of equality we share.

Bigotry has always been a stupid way to go through life.

You have no idea what value the other person brings to the table…

… until you hear their stories.

And I’ll tell you this (from my perch in mid-life): You’re never as smart as you think you are, and the other guy is never as dumb as you’re convinced he is.  (He may, in fact, be dumber.  But your intuition, until it’s been tested and honed in life, will be inaccurate more often than not.)

There is a very nice Zen middle-ground to living well… where you experience things as they are, and not as you think they should be or wish they were.

If I inherited my father’s genes, I’ve got another forty to fifty years left of top-of-my-game living left.  (He is a sharp dude, at 89, with no signs of slowing down yet.)  (And I don’t mean “sharp for an old guy”… I mean he’ll clean your clock at critical thinking.)

I may very well outlive many of my compatriots who are still young enough to believe they will live forever.  This is neither fair, nor unfair.  It is how it is.

People shut down their brains and become sleep-walking zombies at all ages.

I’ve met many folks shy of 30 who might as well be brain dead for what little critical thinking they’re capable of.  And I’ve met people of all ages who seem ready to cash out — fried, tired and exhausted by what they perceive of as a “hard life”… which around 4 billion impoverished and soul-crushed people elsewhere in the world would kill to trade up to.

One of the advantages of piling up some years is the perspective you attain (whether you want it or not).

My perspective: Life is complex, messy, and gorgeous, all at once.

You can lose sight of this, at any age, when you lose touch with the stories that fuel understanding and comprehension of what this strange ride is all about.

Stop relying on Hollywood for your stories.

Develop your own, and sample some from outside your little peer-group prison.

Life is a banquet.  And most poor suckers are starving to death…

Okay, rant done.

I’d love to hear some of your stories here in the comments section.

Here’s a starter question:  What was your “best summer ever”?

What happened that made it a turning point for you, or what fueled the adventure you had?

For me, there are multiple “best summers”.  I’ve been lucky.  And I can go on and on about what happened.

Often, it was nothing more than a transistor radio with great tunes, the beach, a new girl suddenly entering my radar, long days of catching great surf…

But that’s me.

What happened to you?

Stay frosty, in the meantime…

John

Howdy…

Quick post here, cuz I’m heading out the door for a trip out of town.

I just want to alert you to a wonderful opportunity:  My good pal and colleague, Mike Koenigs, asked me to speak at a hot new marketing seminar…

… where all the proceeds go to a truly great cause.

The last event like this I helped out with was the one Gary Halbert hosted after Hurricane Andrew ripped up south Florida.  We stocked the speaker list with the hottest names from the entrepreneur world…

… and it offered people an excellent chance to offer real support to a very deserving cause…

… while scoring KILLER marketing info in a cutting-edge seminar.

Mike’s put together a line-up just as stunning, for this event coming up next month.  Besides moi, there is Eben Pagan, Shawn Casey, Russell Brunson…

… it’s a long damn list.

These guys just ooze dyn-o-mite secrets of making the Big Bucks.  (I often seek their advice myself.)

The event is coming up fast, though.

It’s August 15-16, in gorgeous San Diego (probably the ONLY place worth hanging out in during August).

VIP opportunities abound, once you score one of the few seats available.

Go here to get the inside scoop:

http://mixiv.com/vp/59097/19021/

As you’ll see, spot are vanishing at a good clip.

I have traveled to San Diego just to hang out with Mike and learn what he’s doing online (especially with video).

He is, of course, the founder of Traffic Geyser.

And when he puts on a show, it’s guaranteed to be a doozy.

Go for the amazing info you’re gonna get from the speakers…

… and for the fun of hanging out in San Diego like the kool kids.

And know that you’re contributing to a great cause in the process.

Hit that site to see what the fuss is all about.

See you there.

Stay frosty,

John

Thursday, 11:49am
Tampa Bay, FL
“What kind of music do you play here, Bob?” “Oh, we got both kinds. Country and western.” (Bob, the bar owner, and Jake Blues in “The Blues Brothers”)

Howdy…

Each year around July 4th, I like to post something on the blog about the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The part about free speech remains a protection that Americans enjoy (most of the time)… while much of the rest of the world refuses to even consider the concept.

Even otherwise enlightened joints like Europe have an itchy relationship with free speech.

Hell, we couldn’t get such a protection passed here in the States now.  If it hadn’t been wedged into the Constitution by Jefferson in the Bill of Rights 240 years ago, it would still be an unrealized pipe dream of writers and deep thinkers everywhere.

Make no mistake:  Your freedom to write blogs without government interference… as well as your right to use words like “fuck” to your heart’s content while making your point… is protected (mostly).

And this freedom is what fueled America’s dominance in stand up comedy.

Hey, don’t scoff.  Satire, ridicule, and funny stuff very much qualifies as deep thinking.

In fact, it’s how public opinion gets changed the fastest.

And this freedom has been denied to almost every human who has walked the planet in our history.

So don’t take it lightly.  Your ancestors would have killed for such a seemingly obvious privilege (and both did kill to get it, and die defending it).

The Man don’t like free speech.

Bugs him.  Irritates his sense of authority and moral dominance.

Well, fuck The Man.

For every writer who was or will be jailed for writing the truth (as he or she sees it)…

… and for every deep thinker who has been ostracized or exiled (or beheaded) for daring to challenge The Way Things Are…

… here is my toast to you, on the eve of the anniversary of our country’s bid for independence.

We’re not perfect, by a long shot.  We are, in fact, extremely dysfunctional on most levels — government, commerce, entertainment, Fourth Estate, and on down the list.

Still, I love this rickety old experiment in democracy.

As a writer, it’s part of my job to love and enjoy the good parts.  I owe it to all the poor slobs who preceded me in the gig… ink-stained wretches who could barely dream of the freedoms that writers enjoy today.  (Let alone the amazing stage presented by the Web for eveyone with something to say.)  (And even those with nothing to say.)

Mmmm-whaw!  Big kiss to the Constitution.

Our rights are fragile, as recent administrations have made abundantly clear.

Love them, hug them, nurture and protect them with passion and action.

And, most of all…

… enjoy the hell out of them.

To that end, I am proud to introduce another guest post by my friend and colleague Kevin Rogers.  (That stand-up-comic-turned-killer-copywriter who was also the very first writer to guest-post on this blog a while back.)

I laughed out loud several times reading this post, and I hope you get the same raw enjoyment.

The lessons are good ones, too.

So, without further ado… put your hands together and give a rousing Marketing Rebel Rant welcome to our guest, Kevin Rogers.

Kevin Rogers, everybody.

Take it away, Kevin.

And don’t fuck it up.

[Applause, dropped mic, feedback, lights dim...]

Thanks John, I’m honored to be back.

(And a special shout out to everyone who posted jokes and comments last time. Not surprisingly, there’s an army of sharp wits floating around here at camp Carlton.)

I had such a good time examining copywriting tactics through the prism of stand-up comedy on the last post that I’m going back to the well. Only this time let’s flip the script and observe at the art of bombing on stage…

…and how studying the cause and effect can help you avoid “eating the big one” with your marketing campaigns.

One of my first “hell gigs” as a stand-up comic was a deal too good to pass up…

…$75 to drive 600 miles from my apartment in Clearwater, FL to Gadsden, Alabama for one show in a strip mall country bar called Shit Kickerz - or something ridiculous like that.

(Don’t bother doing the math on that. I was 19 and living the dream. Besides, as you’ll see, negative net profit was not my biggest problem on this gig.)

It was a cavernous strip mall dance hall bathed in black light — turning anyone you talked to into a neon cartoon of eyeballs and teeth (bad teeth at that).

Ten minutes before I hit the stage, there were 11 dudes in cowboy hats wandering around looking desperate and 2 girls with poofy bangs drinking bottled beer at the bar.

If this was the audience I’d driven 9 hours to perform for, tomorrow’s trip home was going to feel twice as long. Every cell in my body screamed: Leave now!

The Art of Bombing

When asked to list their worst fears, most people rank public speaking scarier than death.

I believe it was Jerry Seinfeld who pointed out… “that means most people delivering the eulogy at a funeral would rather be in the casket.”

Makes sense.

A classic bombing is almost as painful for the audience as for the performer on stage. I’ve seen some doozies, too. Total meltdowns where the comic snaps and the audience is trapped in their seats… frozen in seething contempt.

The best are those occasions where the comic refuses to go quietly and remains on stage ranting until he’s completely “walked the room” (a comedy phrase for tormenting the audience into getting up and leaving… table by table).

A few comics (Bill Hicks and Andy Kaufman come to mind) made an art form of walking rooms before sobriety or an untimely demise broke them of the habit.

But the truth is, whether you’re an entertainer, a marketer or just the whacky guy at the company picnic, if you’re bold enough to call attention to yourself…

You’re going to bomb eventually.

In fact, I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t crashed and burned a few times. I want my experts wearing scars, don’t you?

Bombing as a comic will cause you to drink a little more and sleep a little less until your next good show… but it’s a necessary evil. Because each soul-drenching death adds another layer to the armor. Preparing you for future battles.

Bombing in marketing, however, can cost you a life savings. Some entrepreneurs never make it past their first tour of duty.

So here to help you avoid such a fate are…

The 3 Mistakes That (Almost Always) Lead To Certain Death.

1. Misjudging your “message to market match.”

One of the most common scenarios John takes on in his famous Hot Seat interventions is… entrepreneurs with a mixed bag of interests trying to be all things to all people.

Which, of course, causes you to be nothing to nobody.

People like to imagine their experts fixated on solving their problem and not much else. So try not to blow the image for them.

My pre-schooler gets freaked out if we run into his teacher at the grocery store. In his mind, any activity she engages in outside of the classroom is a serious breach of their agreement.

She teacher, him student. End of story.

Your customers see you the same way. You get to be the champion of one niche. So, choose wisely.

If you’re a hypnotist/entertainer selling a video on “fertility through guided meditation”… do not mention anywhere in the same ad – or the same website - that you’re also available to perform magic at children’s parties.

No sane woman is taking fertility guidance from “Bonkers the Clown”. So demonstrate your balloon-twisting skills on a totally different site… under a different name… wearing heavy make-up… and a wig.

2.  Wimping out.

This one is crucial… whether you’re speaking at live events or writing direct sales copy, you’ve got to beam with confidence.

Now, there are some pro comics who play the nervous, insecure or ambiguous character (remember Emo Philips?)… but trust me, it’s only an act.

If the crowd were to mistake that meekness for weakness and become aggressive, they’d quickly see another side to the character.

I once watched Bobcat Goldthwait yank an overzealous audience member out of his seat… drag him on stage by the leg… and kick him back off the stage onto the floor.

He then launched right into another joke with that nervous pitchy character voice… and the audience went wild.

Marketing yourself with confidence doesn’t require you to take on a “Rich Jerk” type persona, but you do need to write and speak with gravitas. Always use an active voice rather than a passive one.

(If you don’t know the difference between active and passive RUN to the bookstore and buy “Elements of Style” by Strunk and White.)

Your readers crave leadership.  (Not, leadership is craved by your readers.)

3. Get the crowd behind you BEFORE you take on hecklers.

Most hecklers suck. They’re rude and incoherent and serve no purpose but to interrupt the show.

So for the comic, having to stop the show to tell them, “It’s amazing that out of 100 million sperm, YOU were the fastest swimmer…”

or…

“Hey, man I don’t come to your job and knock the mop out of your hand… can I get back to work here?”

…while good for a quick laugh, is nothing more than a tedious game of Whack-A-Mole.

But, every once in a while, you get a really good heckler. One that shouts out witty jabs at just the right moments (preferably between jokes), and gets a segment of the crowd to rally behind her.

This is a risky scenario marketers also face in this age of Internet forums. The gurus take a beating on message boards… and while it’s RARELY a good idea to respond to the territorial pissings of frustrated wannabes… it can be done to great effect.

The key to success in either situation is to know your final shot before entering the battle, and leading your opponent accordingly.

A few years into my road career, I began welcoming good hecklers because I knew how the game was going to end. And I had a line so good, I could close the show with it.

After lulling the heckler into false confidence, I would feign defeat by saying…

“Look. You’ve been shouting out and disrupting the show all night. We’ve had a little fun with it. But it’s to a point now where it’s unfair to all these good people who paid to see the real show.

So, let’s make a deal. As a peace offering, I’m going to buy you a drink… and all you have to do is keep quiet and sip that drink for the next 5 minutes while I finish up here. Does that sound fair?”

At this point the crowd is touched by the gesture, and the heckler has little choice but to agree. And then I say:

“Great. Waitress… would you bring a vinegar and water to this DOUCHE BAG at table 6!”

Ka-boom! Good night everybody.

Bottom line: You can’t always choose your opponents, but you can always control the battle.

Meanwhile… back at Shit Kickerz…

I had yet to learn any of these survival lessons that night in Alabama. I was introduced to the crowd I described, plus a few more that straggled in unenthusiastically…

…then proceeded to bomb so hard that I literally took up smoking the minute I came off stage. (I had never smoked in my life, but after that – I needed a cigarette!)

Christopher Walken was quoted in the June issue of Esquire. He said:

“When you’re on stage and you know you’re bombing, that’s very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going–you’re bombing, but you can’t stop. And you know that a half an hour from now, you’re still gonna be bombing. It takes thick skin.”

I once calculated that every horrifying stage death I endured snipped a week off of the end of my life. (Not to mention the decade of cigarette smoking!)

But I wouldn’t trade it, because the experience makes the time you spend here richer and more productive. Bombing teaches you how not to bomb.

And hopefully this article did, too.

You’ve been great. Enjoy Foghat!

Kevin

P.S. Now that I’ve laid my soul bare, it’s your turn. Tell me about your big bombs, and what you learned from it.

Monday, 12:10pm
Reno, NV
“Let’s just say I was testing the bounds of reality…” (Jim Morrison of The Doors)

Howdy…

We have a winner!

Actually, the winning answer to last Friday’s quiz crashed the gates within ten minutes of the post going live.

But it was good to let the test string out, anyway… because the hard-core thinking and pure cogitation going on was excellent mental exercise.

In fact…

… there was so much fresh thinking in the over 200 responses (as of right now — they’re still trickling in)…

… that I feel compelled to bestow THREE prizes.

One, for the first right answer.  And two more for honorable mentions — one for Best Exhibit Of Pure Kick-Ass Attitude… and another for Cracking Me Up with real wit and cleverness.

I’ll reveal the winners in a moment.

First, though… let’s unravel what we’ve all learned here from this little brain teaser.

Revelation #1: James Surowiecki, in his book “The Wisdom of Crowds”, pointed out how often polls and crowd sampling is dead-on correct.

Crowds aren’t always right, of course.  This is why myth-busting sites like snopes.com serve such a useful role in an advanced society.

(We won’t survive long as a high-tech civilization as long as medieval urban myths cripple the way humans adapt to rapid changes.  For example: Electricity doesn’t “leak” from the sockets in your wall.  A hundred years ago, this was a common myth, though, scaring folks.)

(More modern example: Choose any current email scam… from MicroSoft giving away free computers, to the political conspiracy du jour, to the latest Nigerian money-laundering opportunity.)

The vast majority of the responses to this little quiz we just went through were correct.

If you’d been playing a game show with an “audience survey” option available when you got stuck, you would have had the answer delivered to you by bell curve.

(Surowieki, I believe, even pointed out that this crowd survey option on TV game shows yielded correct answers, by averages, almost without fail.)

Lesson for marketers: Surveys of your target audience rock.

You may not discover the exact way to sell what you offer… but you sure as heck will quickly be handed amazing insight to the wants, needs, fears and suggested price points of your market.

“Survey”, however, was not the right answer.  It’s part of your research, not what you turn to after you’ve got everything in place.

Revelation #2: Though not the right answer, all the folks who said “take action” are at least on the right wavelength.

This gets back to the beef I (and many other front-line marketers) have with MBA programs.

I love education… but you need to know where theory ends and reality begins.

Or you’ll get your head handed to you when you actually start a business that needs to make money.

Too many people have a deep, stubborn resistance to what successful marketers call “movement”.

These resisters have drank way too much of “The Secret” Kool-Aid… and honestly believe that deep thought, brainstorming, theorizing and other brainy pursuits will fuel the engines of success for them.

Uh… no.

Sorry.

That old adage “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% persperation” is true.

Yes, you need brainstorming and deep thinking in the mix.  All the top marketers regularly engage in brutal no-holds-barred brainstorming when they begin a project…

… because they want to collect all the info, all the problems they have overlooked, all the hidden pitfalls others have experienced, and all the ways to make the project WORK…

… before they roll up their sleeves and get busy.

However, too many rookie marketers do the brainstorming…

… and never get busy.

It’s intoxicating to come up with cool new ideas… and plan out how you “could” make it work… if you ever got off your butt and actually got moving.

This is what kills would-be entrepreneurs: They are, at any given time, flush with stuff to do… and none of it ever gets done, because the distraction of the next shiny new idea is more attractive than grinding out the end-game of the current project.

One decent idea, taken all the way to fruition (where sales are made)…

… is more valuable than a thousand GREAT ideas, never realized.

(I’ve dabbled in writing fiction for decades now, as a hobby.  And, just for kicks, I’ve gone to some of the most prestigious week-long “creative writing” programs in the country.

Early on, I made a startling realization:  Most of the folks attending believed they had multiple great novels hiding inside them…

… but were petrified of actually writing any of them.  Those who did get started often discovered their “great” novel was a piece of shit or — worse — needed much more focus and concentration to get finished than the wannabe-writer felt was “fun”.)

(In fiction writing circles, the vast majority of folks don’t want to write a book.  They want to have already written one… and thus enjoy the privileges of being a “real” writer.  Which is bullshit.)

(It’s also killer insight to why there aren’t more successful entrepreneurs online.  It truly is easy to get a biz started, and get it pumping money, online right now.  All the pieces are available — merchant accounts, lead-gathering processes like PPC, easy digital delivery of virtual product, easy drop-shipping of “real” product, simple technology for slamming up websites that work, short-cut mentoring for writing what needs to be written — see Simple Writing System — and on and on.

And yet… at every seminar or gathering of would-be marketers I attend, I meet gaggles of people who are frozen at the threshold of getting their biz started.

They have the “thinking” part down.  Great ideas, fabulous long-range plans, oodles of sizzling passion.

They just can’t pull the trigger.

Their bugaboo is “action”.

Movement gets more shit done in this world than all the pondering in history.  (Write that down and stick it on your wall.)

Revelation #3: Finally…

… the answer to the question “What do you do next”, once you’ve set up the fundamentals of your lead generation, your sales funnel, and everything else necessary to attract, persuade and sell prospects is…

You test.

It’s not glamorous.

It even smacks of “work”, if you need to educate yourself on the process of A/B split testing, or tracking responses, or any of the number-crunching that reveals results.

Nevertheless, it’s what you need to do.

Not sure which headline is better, or which appeal will work best in pay-per-click, or what price will pull in the most sales?  Test.

It’s not voodoo.

Not testing, however, IS relying on voodoo.

Because your intuition as a rookie is completely suspect.

My own intuition, after 25 years in the trenches of business, isn’t infallible, either.

So, we test.

My motto:  It’s a mess to guess.  So, test.

That was fun, wasn’t it?

Even with the answer revealed early on, the brain-challenging thought process people went through is EXCELLENT cognitive exercise.

There were lots of completely wrong answers… but that’s a good thing.  If your head is hazy on the actual processes that successful marketers use, then it’s GOOD to quiz yourself on this stuff.

It helps shake out all the nonsense.

And brings you face-to-face with any holes in your thinking or skill-set.

This, again, is a good thing.  You cannot progress if you are unconsciously ham-strung by faulty thinking or incomplete knowledge.

Okay.

The winners:

First correct answer was given by some dude with “Twitter” as his (or her) handle.  It was the third response through the gate.

So, good job, Twitter.  You’ll be contacted by my personal assistant Diane (assuming you left your correct email address in your profile when you posted your comment).

And a fresh, signed copy of “Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel” will be soon be winging it’s way through the mail to you.

Next: The Honorable Mentions.

Brian (comment #130) also gets a copy of “Kick-Ass Secrets”… just because I liked his attitude.   He knew he was too late with the right answer, but dove in anyway…

… and showed some very cool confidence and wit.  Nice job.

And Gail (comment #116) wins a copy, too… for cracking me up with her response.  She definitely looked at this quiz from a different angle.

She’s a rebel.

Rebels get rewarded around here.

To the rest of you… thanks again for participating.

You’re all winners, because you took the time to think this through and give an honest response.  (Well, except for the nutjobs suggesting opium or sex as the right response.  Funny, guys, but being the class clown isn’t the most direct route to success.)

(Though, we’ve got a guest post by an actual stand-up-comedian-turned-successful-copywriter coming up here soon… so maybe that route really does exist…)

Okay, that’s it for today.

That was great fun.  We’ll have to do another quiz here soon.

Be safe celebrating the Fourth.

And for those of you who JUST MISSED being first with the answer: This will teach you not to ignore my emails.

And maybe even convince you to follow me on Twitter.  (I’m johncarlton007.)

Stay frosty,

John