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John Caples Copywriting Secrets

John Caples is best known as a pioneer and master practitioner of testing copy, but he was also a brilliant copywriter. His first year writing copy, he wrote an ad with the headline “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano… But When I Began To Play…” which is famous to this day. He taught copywriting at Columbia Business School in New York. Caples is truly an old master, and that’s why...

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Powerful Takeaways From Scientific Advertising

When I first started learning how to write copy, everybody told me “read Scientific Advertising.” It’s a book written at the beginning of the 20th century, over 100 years ago, by Claude Hopkins, who many consider the father of direct-response copywriting. I did read the book. I read it again. In fact, I read it 15 times. For today’s show, I reviewed it. This is part of our Old Masters seri...

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Maxwell Sackheim’s Magic List - 2

Today we return to our new series called “Old Masters,” and we’re going to look at another list from Maxwell Sackheim’s book, “My First 65 Years In Advertising.” Sackheim started in direct mail in 1906. In 1927 he was a co-founder of a highly successful direct-mail business, The Book-of-the-Month Club. He wrote a very famous ad with the headline, “Do You Make These Mistakes In Englis...

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Maxwell Sackheim’s Magic List - 1

Today we’re starting a new series called “Old Masters,” where we find wisdom from some of the Founding Fathers of copywriting and see how we can apply them today. On this show, we’re going to look at a list from Maxwell Sackheim’s book, “My First 65 Years In Advertising.” Sackheim started in direct mail in 1906. In 1927 he was a co-founder of a highly successful direct-mail business,...

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Billionaire Business Secrets

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

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An Info-Products Pro Tells All, With Richard Miller

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

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Getting Paid a Percentage

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

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Mastermind Groups: The Inside Story

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

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Adventures in Empathy

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

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Copywriting for Consistent Cash Flow

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