Posted by: Clayton Makepeace
March 19, 2007
Issue #86

The Trials, Travails and Triumphs
of My Newest Copy Cub

in this issue:

• How taking calculated risks can light a fire under your career …
• The three most crucial lessons a new copywriter can learn …
• The #1 mistake too many new copywriters make …
• How to turn criticism into money …
• Much more!

Dear Business-Builder,

I want you to meet someone very special this week – someone who’ll encourage and inspire you, and help you take your copywriting to the next level …

His name is John Newtson – a young copy cub who’s just beginning his career in direct response marketing.

Last year, John and his wife Katrina decided to take a huge gamble: To spend $5,000 plus expenses to attend my Power Marketing Summit.

At the time, John was an office manager for a market research firm in Virginia. He had completed both AWAI courses and was eager to begin his new career as a copywriter.

John figured the Summit would give him the chance to network with other writers and with potential clients. And our Copywriter’s Challenge gave John the opportunity to test his copywriting chops.
So John and Katrina swallowed hard and put the $5,000 registration fee on a credit card.

John’s entry in the Copywriter’s Challenge was for a health product called Super CoQ10™. And wonder of wonders, his entry won the Grand Prize and $25,000 in copywriting assignments from my agency, Response Ink.

Not only that – my client has now mailed John’s promotion to his customers twice and it has earned us both some nice royalties!

Then, a couple of months ago, Wendy and I decided we needed a full-time copywriter here in our offices to help me with my clients’ work – and John was my #1 choice.

And so, John and Katrina took another huge gamble. They put their Virginia home on the market, packed up their worldly possessions and moved here.

I’m hoping John’s experiences as a young writer – and the lessons he learns as we work together on direct mail and Internet promotions – will help you accelerate your learning curve and get you bigger winners, more often – and sooner …

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Clayton: Hey John, thanks for joining us today.

John: Thanks for having me.

Clayton: Why don’t we begin by having you tell us a little bit about your background: growing up, your parents, your education, and so forth?

John: All right. Well basically I was a military brat. My dad was enlisted in the Army for 20-some-odd years. And so I was born in Japan; grew up in Germany—kind of lived all over. And my mom’s from Greece, where I still have family.

So we lived all over the place. And then education-wise, I was a high school drop out. And then went back to school to get my high school diploma. I did go to a couple of years of college but nothing business or marketing related. It was pretty much religion and philosophy.

Clayton: Interesting. Was your father in the military the whole time you were growing up?

John: He retired when I was about in the sixth grade, so right through elementary school. And we actually lived in Germany for a year after he retired because my mom’s family was in Greece and that made it easy to get over there and see them. And then we came back here and he went to work for the government here.

Clayton: So neither one of your parents really were involved in entrepreneurship or marketing or anything like that.

John: Not really. I mean my dad always had some ideas. And before I was born he’d had a couple of auto shops, briefly for about two years. And then he went back into the military because it was a good way to move back overseas. But that was about it.

But he always made the point to me growing up that, “You’re never gonna really be able to make a lot of money if you’re working for someone else.” So it was one of those things, a tradeoff that he made is he kept jobs that gave him a lot of security for the family growing up. And made it easy to go visit family overseas. But he never really got to chase down some of those other dreams. But he really encouraged me to.

Clayton: Did you ever get involved in sales when you were growing up?

John: Not really. I think the closest to actual sales experience was when I was in high school I had a telemarketing job for about a week. And that was about it. Didn’t really care for that too much though.

Clayton: Didn’t work out too well for you?

John: Not at all.

Clayton: So like me, you’re a high school dropout?

John: Oh yeah, I took it almost all the way to the end. I was about halfway through my senior year. And I just didn’t really feel like school was for me. So I just stopped going.

Clayton: Well it worked out okay for me and I think it’s working out okay for you too.

John: Yeah, it looks that way.

Clayton: So when did you first hear about copywriting in direct marketing?

John: Well it was funny. After I met my wife—up until then I hadn’t really thought much about a career because it wasn’t really essential to any of my plans. But then after I got engaged I realized, “I need to really work this thing out.” And so I had a friend who had a bunch of different small businesses at different times and did some marketing online. And he put the bug in my ear because he thought it was a good fit for me but I didn’t think much about it. At least not until I saw an ad for the AWAI course in Early to Rise. And it had the headline: Can you write a letter like this one?

And so I read through it and it seemed like, “Yeah this is me. This is something I could really get behind. I really liked the idea behind it. And that when you’re writing sales letters success has little to do with other people’s opinions because it’s results based.”

And so I asked my friend about it. And he told me, “Yeah copywriting is really one of those areas that’s still a real meritocracy in America. There are not a lot of other things that are quite as result oriented.”

And that’s what I was looking for because I didn’t have a degree and that closed a lot of doors to me. So I just fell down the rabbit hole from there. I got the course material and then started getting every book I could on the subject. I read everything I could find and probably spent $2,000.00 on books and courses and stuff just trying to really understand everything I could about the business.

Clayton: But the AWAI course was your first big introduction really to how to do this, right?

John: Oh yeah. And in retrospect I’m glad it was because most of the other stuff out there doesn’t really give a strong basic structure the way that the AWAI course does. Which, I think, is really fundamental.

Clayton: I hear that a lot, we get a lot of very positive comments about the AWAI course. And I’ve found that when I’m working with Copy Cubs, the ones who’ve completed both courses, the beginner and the advanced, tend to move along a lot more quickly than those who haven’t.

So I met you a year ago at our Power Marketing Summit in Washington, DC. How did you hear about that and what made you decide to spend the $5,000.00 plus to attend?

John: Well that was definitely a big decision for me. I remember I had subscribed to The Total Package. And it was probably the most significant newsletter to me, personally, of all the ones I’d found. I felt like – finally! Here’s someone who knows what he’s doing, but is also really sharing his experience in depth and really giving a broad and detailed perspective on the business on multiple levels. And it was just fantastic.

So then when I saw you were having the Summit, two things struck me. One, I knew you were someone I wanted to learn from because it was obvious you were one of the top in the field and then two, you had this copywriting contest where, basically you’d get the opportunity to write a package, submit it, and the winners would get a chance to apprentice under you or one of your other past Copy Cubs like Carline or someone.

And it was that right there that really just appealed to me. To have the chance to actually learn in the real world from somebody who’s already successful at this and get that kind of experience. Because even taking the courses and reading the books and stuff, you’re so much on the outside of the business. And you have no true frame of reference so you don’t even really know whether you know what you’re doing or not.

And so that was just such an appealing concept to me and I couldn’t let this chance go by. Even thought I hadn’t actually done any copywriting before this. And I didn’t have the money for it either, so I threw it on a credit card and crossed my fingers.

Clayton: And wonder of wonders you won the grand prize in the copywriting contest.

John: Yeah that was quite a surprise, actually. I remember when I had met John McCrea earlier that day, and he ended up winning the first prize spot. And so we were sitting there talking at dinner. And I remember when he got called up and I was so thrilled for him and thinking, “That’s fantastic.”

And then you were talking about how the person who won the grand prize wasn’t really even a copywriter. So my first thought went, “Oh, it was somebody who has a business who happened to submit an entry.” So I’m thinking, “I’m out. I didn’t even get honorable mention. I got nothing.” And then you called my name and I’m sitting there, I’m like, “Did he just call my name?”

Clayton: Well at the time you were working as what?

John: An office manager, actually, in a market research firm.

Clayton: But you weren’t really involved in the market research that much, were you?

John: Not too much. I mean a little bit; you get to see a little bit of it, help out here and there and stuff, but nothing that required any real brainpower. I mean it was interesting to read a lot of the stuff and see what they were doing but it was not a hands-on thing at all.

Clayton: I remember when you came up to the stage and I presented you with your grand prize trophy that you were visibly shaking. You had a smile from ear to ear.

John: Yeah. It was quite an intense experience.

Clayton: And then immediately you disappeared; nobody knew where you were. And it turned out you were calling your wife.

John: Yeah. ‘Cause I mean it was really, it was a big step for her too—we had to talk about our finances for me to put $5,000.00 on a credit card to go to something like this. And it was just—I just wanted to share it with her immediately. And it was great; she was so excited and it felt fantastic.

Clayton: I understand that after the Summit, you and John McCrea arranged to critique each other’s copy. Is that right?

John: Yeah. Actually it was John McCrea, Caleb Osborne, who was one of the honorary mentions there, and I. The three of us started critiquing each others copy and to this day we still do. We send each other our copy and critique it and give each other ideas. And that’s been just so helpful for all of us, I think.

Clayton: It’s something I highly encourage especially with the interconnectivity of the Internet today, there’s no reason in the world why younger writers shouldn’t be making friends with others and sharpening each others copy—even in the absence of a mentor.

Clayton: And since then you’ve been freelancing for me and for Carline and other people I work with. How has that experience affected your approach to copywriting?

John: Well first, it was definitely a reality check for me. When I wrote the package for the Summit, I had all the time in the world to do it. But then I remember the first thing after the Summit I wrote was a newsletter insert for Carline. And time-wise it was a couple weeks to get the first draft to her—which was much faster than I had for the contest promotion.

And then by the time she wanted the first draft I was like, “This is not in very good shape but I have to send something over to her.” And so I felt like she should get some combat pay for that because she really had to tear that first draft to pieces. And I loved the fact that, though she was very nice about it, at the same time she was not going to pussyfoot around. She had no problem saying, “This sucks; this sucks.” She wrote “lame” on everything, which was hilarious.

And then she gave me some direction and it helped so much to have someone like her go through and say, “Look, your line of reasoning here sucks. This is not the right way to go.” Or, “Why are you writing more like an editor rather than a salesman?” And things like that.

Just doing one package with her just totally changed everything—the way I thought about how I approach a project. And it was such a great experience and that was just from one package. So I did, I think, three drafts on that. And I was really impressed by the time I was done with what she could pull out of me. And it did really well when it mailed.

And so the speed factor really came in fast because now I stopped writing editorial style in my first drafts. Now I could start to look at things immediately from how they should lay out in the sales message and that helped a lot.

Clayton: Well yeah, – it’s quite a shock. That’s why I quite often recommend that people look at the AWAI basic course as their bachelors’ degree and the advanced course as their masters’ degree. But to go from there into an internship with live copywriters, so they can experience the challenge of approaching a product and a market and a prospect in a real-world promotion that’s somebody’s actually going to invest money in. And the experience of doing it is instructive. Also the experience of seeing the results afterwards is a great way to focus your energies—especially when you get a loser.

But then we took the copy that you had submitted, that won our copywriters challenge, and we did a few nips and tucks. And one of Response Ink’s clients mailed that promotion. And lo and behold, it worked. It made money for the client. And yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting you with your first-ever royalty check. How did that feel?

John: That was a great surprise and it was just a great feeling to know that something that I had thought I put to rest so long ago is still paying - that was just phenomenal. I did that work months and months and months ago. And it was such a great feeling. You always hear about royalties. But until you get that first check in your hands it doesn’t really feel real. It’s all kind of theoretical. But then as soon as the cash comes in it feels really good.

Clayton: And it feels like free money, doesn’t it?

John: Yeah it does, that’s exactly what it feels like.

Clayton: And since your freelance experience with Carline and your freelancing experience with us, as part of your award for winning the copywriting challenge, you’ve come to work with me full-time.

And, in fact, as we speak right now, everything you own in the world is in boxes on the floor of a house here in Western North Carolina. And your wife is headed down here; she’ll be arriving tonight to begin unpacking and getting you established here.

That’s quite a big step. What made you decide to accept my offer of a full-time job rather than pursue your freelancing career?

John: Well for me it was basically an IQ test —I mean when we were on the phone and you said that you’d be interested in bringing me down here to write for you full time. I had a choice, I could continue to build my freelance business and hope one day to break into the top rungs of the business. Or I could come do this full-time with one of the best in the business. And from the experience I already had working with you my copywriting and my understanding of the business has improved fast that it just seemed like a no-brainer. I knew there was no better way to do this than to come and actually work on a day-to-day basis with you and just see the business as a whole.

And it’s amazing how much stuff besides just the copywriting there is to learn. And, I think, that’s one of the big motivators for me, when I hear you talk about being the “total package” – doing not just copy but strategy and planning and all these other things. And outside as a freelancer you’re more separate from those kinds of details and it’s kind of opaque to you.

So the chance to come in here and work with you and see everything, was a no-brainer. If I’m going to succeed in this business then that’s exactly the kind of experience I want to have. And I know that pretty much everyone I look up to in this business, you and Gary Bencivenga and others; you’ve all worked for someone else in either an agency or for a client early on to get that total view of everything and the input from experienced pros.

Clayton: I remember a conversation you and I had when we first started discussing you coming to work here in which I said, “Here’s how things work, okay? You come to work for me. We’ll spend a couple of years sharpening your approach to copy and getting you a bunch of winners and plumping up your portfolio. So you can eventually unceremoniously quit me and become a $1 million a year freelancer. But between now and then I’m gonna make a buck or two off of you.”

John: Yeah, exactly.

Clayton: And I think that’s a great synergistic relationship. And throughout history that’s the way the apprentice approach to learning a craft has worked; it’s economically helpful to both parties.

Okay so you’ve been here in the office now for a few weeks. What differences have you noticed between your budding freelance career, prior to accepting this job, and being around copywriting eight hours a day, six days a week?

John: Well I think going back to the earlier point that now I see so much more of what’s going on. I see not just the final copy delivered, but I see more of the strategy behind promotions, why we’re doing one thing as opposed to another, the numbers behind the whole plan and how it all fits together. And that is so instructive.

And then there’s also the fact that since coming here things are going at full speed every day. There’s just so much to do—you feel that you get that experience so much faster because you’re just working on so many more things.

And it reminds of something Claude Hopkins said. He was talking about how he’s worked twice the hours every day than other advertising men of his age. And so it wasn’t that he was so much better it was that he had two lifetimes of experience because he put in double the amount of time. And so I think having the volume of work, having that experience of doing so much more and working on so many more things, it speeds up your learning curve dramatically.

Clayton: Yeah absolutely. That’s great stuff.

All right well you came to us with some momentum, some wind in your sails, because of the studying that you had done and that $2,000.00 that you had spent on courses and books. And since then you’ve experienced both, life as a freelancer and, for the last few weeks, life as a fulltime staff copywriter. And you’ve collected your first royalties and you’ve produced a winner that’s making my client money.

So I’d like you to spend a little time and tell us about the two or three or four lessons that you’ve learned over the past year about persuasion in print, that you think would be most helpful to young copywriters.

John: All right. I think the very first one—and this one was the one that really struck me when I was writing the package that ended up winning the grand prize at the Summit and it was one of those real “a-ha” moments—was that I’d been hearing so much about using formulas or swiping and writing headlines and what not and all this technical stuff about the copy itself.

And when I was writing that promotion I was reading through issues of The Total Package. And the one thing that really came home to me was that it wasn’t about the copy itself, it was about the prospect. And that’s something that you said over and over again but it didn’t really come home to me until then. And it wasn’t about writing a how-to headline or this type of headline or about the technique – it was more about what the prospect was actually feeling, where are they mentally in their life, and how are they feeling when they get this promotion—and actually really trying to visualize that and understand that.

And the copy, the theme or the idea that’s going to flow from that is really what’s going to win. It’s not going to be because you had this really great way of turning a phrase or using some whiz-bang word that’s going to really impress someone. Those are such minor things. It’s all about the prospect. And the formulas and everything are great but they don’t really get you there; they’re just crutches.

Clayton: Great, what else?

John: Well one of the things that really struck me more than anything else is maybe less about the copy and more about the business. And that was, both from you and then from listening to a call with Martin Weiss not too long ago, was that integrity matters quite a bit.

And that there’s a lot of stuff out there telling people that it’s all about manipulating and tricking people and squeezing your clients or your list and prospects. And you and Martin, you both just have a completely different take. You honestly care about your prospects and customers. You realize that they’re people and that you’re trying to do something for them and you’re not trying to just squeeze a nickel out of them. You’re trying to provide them with some real, honest value.

And so I think it’s that difference between the churn and burn approach where you just want to cycle through your list or your prospects and get as much money as possible as fast as possible, versus building a long-term business where you’re actually providing things to people that they want and that they enjoy the experience. And that the business itself is about delighting people rather than just getting money from them.

Clayton: Absolutely. This is all about customer lifetime value. The people, who follow the churn and burn approach, make money. But for every $1,000.00 they make, the people who run businesses that are committed to developing long-term relationships and actually improving their customers’ lives, make tens and tens of thousands of dollars.

So it just makes sense. It’s rational selfishness to treat customers with dignity and with respect and to deliver on the promises in your copy.

Are there any other lessons that you’ve learned?

John: Oh there’s so many. Again there’s the idea that you’re most effective when you really understand the marketing side of the business besides just the copywriting. The copywriting is one piece of the puzzle. And the more you understand the business as a whole, the more valuable you are to clients and the more success you’re going to have. Rather than just pigeonholing yourself and thinking, “I just need to learn how to write good headlines,” you’re thinking about the whole business and the front end and the backend – everything. And that seems to be a huge thing that is easily missed, especially in the beginning. Because I know I did. I didn’t really think about it in terms of the business a whole, initially.

Clayton: All of those are great insights. If you were giving advice to a young copywriter who is maybe just starting out or maybe even still taking the AWAI courses, what would it be?

John: Don’t rush through it. Don’t try and just get to the end of the course or the books and check the box that you’ve done it. It’s not about finishing the course. It’s not about having read the books or even just knowing what the principles are. It’s about actually mastering the skills they’re sharing.

I mean, it’s one thing to be able to quote Caples and Reeves and Claude Hopkins. You hear people treat them like bibles, “Claude Hopkins Chapter 12 Verse 10 said this.” Quoting a principle is not the same as having mastered it and being able to use it. And so it’s really focusing on developing the actual craft and the skill.

I’ve noticed as a freelancer before I came down here after working with you, I could send a letter with a couple samples to some of the major mailers. And they’d call me back up and they were like, “Hey this is great. We want to hire you.” And I had to turn work down because I ended up not having the time right now because this opportunity came up. But that was because of the strength of my copy after having worked with you. The point is though copy, if it’s strong, will open doors. It’s not that complicated. Once your copy is strong people will hire you. So focus on the skill rather than just trying to rush through things and get started as fast as possible.

Clayton: There’s a principle there, I think, that’s really important, that what we do is a combination of what has gone before—which is essentially what you pick up from Claude Hopkins and Michael Masterson Masterson and from me and from all of the available books and courses that are out there. That’s the first ingredient.

But the second ingredient is your own genius. Applying those principles and even breaking them selectively at the right time, in order to move our industry ahead and to continue innovating indirect response.

And you and I have noticed recently that there are people who believe a computer is all the brain they’ll ever need and that simple copywriting software will produce those kinds of winners. But all copywriting software can do is to help you replicate what has gone before; it doesn’t help you innovate or move things ahead. And because of that, its ability to produce grand slam, out of the park winners is really limited.

John: Right. And that actually reminds me of something else I’ve noticed when I started working with you. You allow this incredible freedom where I’m not worried about trying something new. There’s a lot more room to explore. Because you’re much more open to ideas. You let me be a little creative. If it’s not a good idea then you just explain why.

But it’s not that you’re trying to fit my writing into a certain mold and so it allows me to express ideas and think outside of the box. And you’re open to it and that just lets me grow, I think, much faster because I’m not just trying to replicate something else. I’m able to think more and try to apply what I understand in different ways. And if it works, it does; and if it doesn’t you just smack me upside the head and say, “Hey, that’s a stupid idea. Try again.”

But there’s no judgment like, “What a horrible copywriter you are to even begin to consider that.” There’s this feeling that I can explore and not be considered an idiot.

Clayton: (Laughter) Well my job with you, and also with anyone who reads The Total Package, is not to create Clayton clones. My job is to help you free the genius within you and try to combine what you know intellectually, the left-brain stuff, with your natural creative side that will give you the real, the grand slam winners in the future.

What is your reaction—we joke around the office that Carline has a rubber stamp that say “this sucks” and another rubber stamp that says “lame” with an exclamation point after it. How do you respond internally to criticism when you submit copy?

John: Well I don’t take it personally, I guess. I think that when I submit to you or to Carline, I want those critiques. I want somebody who is experienced and at the top of the game to tell me, “This is probably not the best way to go about this,” or “this is really not the right approach,” because I don’t want someone to spare my feelings and then hurt me by not letting me advance my craft. I want someone to go ahead and be as hard of a critic as possible with it.

And sometimes you feel like, “Oh man I really suck today.” But just because somebody’s critiqued your copy, even if it’s Carline writing LAME! All over it – it’s never a criticism of you personally. Because at the same time, you get a lot of encouragement and whenever there’s something good that you’re doing, you’ll say, “Hey this is good; this is not.” And it’s more of just a working document.

And so I don’t take it personally. I really enjoy it when somebody experienced critiques the heck out of my copy and makes it stronger.

Clayton: Great. I think that’s a great attitude. Although, I have to admit, even after 35 years of doing this, a negative crit to me is something that evokes an emotional reaction. And I have to deal with that before I can continue and produce the next draft.

Whenever you’re working a piece of copy you have one thing at stake and that’s your ego and, by extension, your hopes for the future. But the client has real dollar bills on the line. And the difference in the longer-lasting importance of a young writer’s ego or the client’s money is a gulf as wide as the distance from here to the nearest star.

And so with that perspective and understanding that the worst thing that’s going happen for the young writer is that he’s going to learn and be a better writer after this project is over. Whereas the worse case scenario for the client could be the loss of tens or even hundreds of thousands dollars if the promotion doesn’t work. I think it really puts things in perspective and can help you through those times of self doubt or those times of feeling insecure because somebody said something naughty about your copy.

John: Right. I was surprised, I guess, that the first time that somebody told me, “Well you know, it’s going to cost me $50,000.00 or $60,000.00 to test your copy.” And I hadn’t really considered that before. All of a sudden I’m realizing, “Yeah, I can see why you’re hesitant to work with new writers.”

Clayton: Right, right. And the responsibility only gets larger as you become more established because pretty soon you’ll be in a situation where somebody will test your copy with a 200,000 piece mailing which is going cost them $100,000.00 or more.

Well is there anything else that you would like to add? Any other piece of advice you’d like to add for younger copywriters, before we close?

John: Yeah well I guess especially when you’re starting out. And whether you haven’t gotten any jobs or you’ve just gotten a few, there’s a lot of self doubt or, “Can I really do this or am I just kidding myself.”

I remember when I first came into the Summit. I’m walking into this room with gaggles of million dollar copywriters, famous names in the industry, business owners and all this stuff. And I had this feeling, “I’m a fraud walking in here and calling myself a copywriter because I was really just someone who wanted to be a copywriter.” But everyone in this business is so nice and they’re very encouraging to you if you’re trying.

And so one thing is not to think that just because you haven’t succeeded right away that the door’s closed to you. If you keep working on getter better and keep learning the business and trying to connect with people —whether through networking with people or sending out sample letters or whatever, if you keep at it you’re going find success. And so don’t give up so easily just because you haven’t gotten there right way. And the most important thing is really, really hone that craft and get better and better.

I know I’m not an A Level copywriter yet. But I don’t have to be yet. I have to be good enough that someone like you is going find value in having me around. And so it’s a process.

And I think it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of copywriting as the lazy man’s way to riches and thinking real skill comes easily and quickly. Because nothing else in life is that easy. You’re not going to be a master pianist because you took a course and three weeks later you’re a concert pianist. You have to develop your craft. It takes time and so don’t be afraid of the fact that it takes work. Copywriting isn’t the one area in life where you don’t have to work to succeed.

Clayton: I think that’s a great analogy.

John, thank you so much for helping us today.

John: Thanks for having me.

Clayton: And I know that your insights and your experience will be both an inspiration and very instructional to the younger writers who read The Total Package.

John: Well thanks. I certainly hope so.

Clayton: Thanks again, buddy.

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Yours for Bigger Winners, More Often,

Clayton Makepeace
Publisher & Editor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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