Interview With Expert Copywriter Ryan Healy Transcript
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BEGIN
BEN: Ryan, how are you?
RYAN: Doing great, Ben. Thanks for having me.
BEN: No problem, thank you for being on this. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. And I’m just going to jump into some questions here. How did you become a copywriter?
RYAN: Well, I actually became a copywriter by accident. I had always been interested in writing. I wrote for the high school paper and stuff like that when I was in high school. But I was actually working at Merrill Lynch and a friend of the family had a home schooling company who was looking for a marketing guy and couldn’t find a marketing guy that kind of fit his criteria. And so he knew that I was entrepreneurial and he approached me about working for him. And said, “Hey, I’ll just kind of teach you want I want you to do.” So I cut my teeth in a job writing copy for a catalog. It wasn’t a lot of pure direct response stuff. It was like writing newsletters for the list and things like that. So he kind of introduced me to the concept of being a copywriter, even though I was mostly just kind of doing whatever they wanted me to do that was related to their business. And then, later on when I went freelance and actually just started writing direct response copy, I had a found out about the AWAI course. You know about that one?
BEN: Right.
RYAN: The six figure course. I got this little pamphlet in the mail and I literally set aside an evening to read through this thing. Because it was like 80 pages or something. So I sat down and I read it. And thought, “Oh my goodness… I can do this!” So I ordered the course and proceeded to take two years to finish it. (Laughs). And then along the way I got sidetracked and decided I wanted to be a financial planner so I got my series six license and all this stuff. And I had this deal worked out with a financial planner to go to work with him—like he was going to kind of teach me how to do things, and he was getting leads and so I would make money by calling them up and getting them to a dinner seminar where he would then pitch them on investing money.
So here it is—let’s see my son was born on March 19th, that was my second child—and quite my job on April 19th of ‘05, so it was like a month later. And my wife hadn’t been working for a few years anyway. She didn’t have a job. So I was riding on all this bonus money and I quit my job to be a financial planner not to be a copywriter.
BEN: That’s the irony of it.
RYAN: Yeah, it is. So here I am and the very first week that I quit my job—I have to back up a minute. This guy who sourced the leads, his only source of leads was coming through a local newspaper. Like they were inserting a flyer and because it was the underdog in the market—there was only one insert in the paper and that was his.
BEN: Okay.
RYAN: So it was working pretty well because that was the only insert. Well the newspaper went bankrupt the week I quit my job.
BEN: Ahhh.
RYAN: So, no more leads. So he goes, “Hey, here’s my database of all these old leads.” And he had a couple of fresh leads that were about a month old—and that’s not really fresh if you’ve ever done calling. Warm calling or whatever. Some of them were as old as 12 months. And so here I am scouring through this old database calling people and they’re like, “Who are you? What did I respond to? What is this about?”
BEN: Oh that sucks!
RYAN: (Laughter) And I did get two or three dinners filled and got paid a little bit of money—few hundred dollars. But then it just wasn’t working out and I’m thinking, okay I have got to do something or I’m done. I’m going to lose my house. I have no idea what to do. So then I’m like, I like copywriting. I like writing. And I finished the AWAI course—I just finished it that Spring. So I thought, “Well, maybe that’s what I should do. I’ll just launch my freelancing copywriting career and see if I can make a go of it.” And I had about two weeks of money left. That was on June 13 of ‘05. So I’d gone like almost two months and I made… $300? In two months. So I was almost sunk and I was able to get I think it was three clients in the first 14 days.
BEN: Well that’s good.
RYAN: And then I didn’t even have a website until four months later. I was able to kind of just use some techniques to get clients and the rest is history I guess as they say.
BEN: What were a couple of techniques used? These were things you used because you were under that pressure—kind of under the gun—what was going through your mind and how did you figure out how to get those first couple clients?
RYAN: Well, initially I was thinking I could use my contacts from where I used to work to try and get some business so I tried that, it didn’t really work. I had some prospects that never came through. And then at the time AWAI was marketing their masters level course.
BEN: Okay.
RYAN: Because I’d gone through their basic course. And I noticed that they had this website directresponsejobs.com. And if you bought their course you could get full access to this website. And so I’m thinking I don’t have any money but I need access to this website so I just used my credit card and spent $900 just for the website. I still haven’t gone through the course by the way (Laughs).
But by doing that I got in early on the launch of that website. I don’t know how it’s doing now. I’m sure it’s grown in popularity. That’s probably both on the client and the people seeking work side. But what I did was I went in there and I uploaded a resume, it wasn’t even a sales letter—it was just kind of like, here’s my background. I’ve written copy for this company. A couple emails I wrote. Got some sales. So I put that in the resume and then started submitting to these job postings and instead letting them reply and waiting for them to reply, I would submit and then probably a couple hours later I’d just call them.
BEN: Is that what worked for you then? You’d just call them right away a couple hours later?
RYAN: Yeah. Basically. Because I figured if I’m going to wait for these guys to contact me it may never happen. And so I called them directly and called their attention to the fact that I’d responded and just talked to them and tried to land them as a client. And I really wasn’t too particular about what I made. As long as I was paid something.
BEN: Yeah—when you’re just starting out you almost have to just take what you can get.
RYAN: Yeah, right, so that’s what I did. I just took whatever jobs I could get—I think I got two clients off of directresponsejobs.com and then the other thing I did was I collected the fliers and the handles off my door. Just starting saving those.
BEN: Okay.
RYAN: Plus all the postcards and mailers I got from local business people. And I started calling them and basically what I’d do is what called “warm calling”—because they contacted me first.
BEN: They gave you an excuse.
RYAN: Yeah, it gave me an excuse to call them so I’m like, “Hey, my name is Ryan Healy, I’m a neighbor of yours. And I just got your flyer on my door.” And it’s really a low pressure situation. They don’t even think they’re going to offer them anything.
BEN: No, they think you’re going to buy something from them probably.
RYAN: Exactly. They think you’re going to buy something so what I did from there was say, “Look, the reason why I’m calling is I help businesses get better results from their advertising.” And after that I’d say something like, “Do you mind if I ask you how well your flyer’s working.” Or, “Do you mind if I ask you how your post card is doing?” And you’d be surprised by these people will start telling you.
BEN: They’re probably waiting to tell somebody.
RYAN: Yeah, and they’re like, “Oh it’s working pretty good…” or “Oh no, it works okay.” Or if they say it’s working pretty good I’d say, “Well, how many responses have you been getting from it?” And then they’ll tell you! (Laughter)
BEN: I don’t know if this was the case or not, but it seems like the more emotional they are about it—like if it’s not working you’d think they’d really want to just tell someone about it, “Oh this thing sucks! It’s not working!” And you can step in as the hero… “Well, I can help you with that.”
RYAN: Yeah! And so I didn’t rely on this technique heavily. I just know that it works because I called four people and got one client out of it. And I ended up writing a two page flyer—front and back—for a housecleaning service. And it quadrupled her response. It’s not surprise, she has an ethnic background so English is her second language. She literally told me when she started putting the flyer on the door she started getting phone calls from people who were like editing her flyer for her.
BEN: Oh boy…
RYAN: They were like, “This thing is so horrible I can’t even read it!”
BEN: Oh man…
RYAN: So she was kind of embarrassed and upset about the whole situation. And so I offered to help her and I got paid $250 to write this two page flyer. But if you think about it, I only made about $250 in two months trying to do this financial planning thing.
BEN: Yeah.
RYAN: So I just made $250 in one morning. I think I spent two hours on the project and that was it. And got a good testimonial out of it. Just told her to go run it off at Kinkos and that’s what she did. And she had all her girls who were working for her go put them on doors and boom—done.
BEN: That’s probably a good market for someone who’s just starting out. Because my wife used to have an office cleaning business and she got all her business just calling the Yellow Pages—I mean there’s people looking for that. It’s so easy to sell that because I mean nobody wants to clean their own place—even during recessions people are like, “Sure, c’mon in…” Or you know the person who answers—the office manager—they’re almost rooting for you to get hired because they’re the ones who have to clean everything right now. I mean they hate it.
RYAN: Yep. It is a good market and I just think working for local business people as a starting point—I haven’t gotten wealthy doing that. I just think it’s a good place to start because a lot of these people have no idea how to write copy and even if you’re pretty new to copywriting, how could you write anything worse than what these guys are sending out? It’s true.
BEN: It is. And to kind of piggyback on that, I wanted to ask you was the AWAI the way you learned? Or did you learn from other sources… or how did you learn the craft itself?
RYAN: Well, I had two ways that I learned. One was definitely the AWAI course. Because it kind of walks you through a formula for how to write direct response copy. That was really how I learned the structure and the flow and things like that. Hand copying of the letters was really helpful. But I was also—when I worked for Sonlight—the owner of that company—his name is John—he mentored me and it wasn’t necessarily in the style of like direct response copy. But I learned a couple of really key things from him. It took me forever to get this into my head—but writing to a single person.
BEN: Yeah.
RYAN: I mean this is really somewhat basic stuff. But I just couldn’t get if for the longest time. He taught me how to write to a single person—you—and he also taught me how to write in active voice. Because when he hired me even though I had written for newspapers and blah blah blah—been published and stuff, my poetry has been published in a college journal that I never even went to—I don’t have a degree by the way (laughter).
BEN: But you got published so that’s good.
RYAN: But I got publishes… and despite all this background I was not a good writer. I mean looking back on it, I was not a good writer. Before he hired me he gave me kind of this assignment like, “Write these three things and we’ll see how it goes from here.” It was kind of like a trial. So I kept my job while I wrote these three things. Well I wrote them and he ended up hiring me and I thought well, I must have done okay. And I went back and re-read what I wrote and it’s just embarrassing how bad it was. I can’t even believe I wrote that. So while I worked for him, he would send me these emails that—like two, three, ten page letters, and I’m not joking via email—just tearing my work apart. Just ripping it to shreds. I mean I would go home some weekends and I would be just devastated. Like, “Oh my gosh! What am I going to do? I’m going to get fired, I just know it.” But it was all just learning two things: How to write in active voice and how to write to a single audience. And my real breakthrough was when he started letting me write to their email list. And people started responding on the forums so it was like I was able to write a personal message—it wasn’t a sales piece at all. It was just writing a personal message to them. Then hearing them respond and all the sudden something clicked and I was like, “Ooooohhh… I see I am writing to one person. I get it!”
BEN: Unless you’ve been torn to pieces like that… we’re all like that. Who wants to be criticized? But you almost have to like seek it out.
RYAN: Oh yeah.
BEN: Nobody likes it but man… it can be the best learning experience you can get.
RYAN: It was painful going through it for sure. It’s one of those things where you look back and say, “I never want to go through it again. But I’m glad I went through it.”
BEN: Like puberty.
RYAN: (Laughter) Yeah…
BEN: It was a great time. But no way am I doing that again.
RYAN: (Laughter) Yeah…
BEN: When you write your copy now, are you using the same process you did when you first started out in 2005 or is it kind of progressed… or what’s your process like?
RYAN: Well, I’ve been working on defining that more lately. Mostly because I might be teaching it in the near future. I guess my process if fairly straight-forward and simple. I start with interviewing the client about the product, about the customers, about what they’re expectations are and a lot of times the client will be able to shortcut the research process. They’ll know who their top competitors are. They’ll already know about any kind of articles that were written about them or reviews or things like that you can use in the copy.
BEN: Hopefully they’ll know this stuff.
RYAN: Yeah hopefully they do. So I usually start there. And that’s kind of the beginning of the research process. And then from there a lot of times I’ll do searches on google and try to find competitors—see what competitors are saying. Get a feel for the market. Especially if it’s kind of a market that I really haven’t written much for before. So the research process is first. And then a lot of times I find that after I do the research—writing the hook or the headline or stuff like that gets pretty easy. And actually let me step back a minute, too.
BEN: Okay.
RYAN: If it’s a digital product I always consume the product before I start writing the copy. So like an information product for me is a little bit different than some other products. Because I’ll actually—and that’s part of the research process—is actually consume the product—reading everything, listening to the audios, watching the videos, and during that process is when I write bullets. So if it’s an info product I always end up writing the bullets first.
BEN: Do end up actually using the product if it’s applicable to your life in some way?
RYAN: Yes. Oh yeah. Or even if it’s not necessarily applicable—I still read it. And then as I’m going through I write my bullets and I note down the page number where that bullet be found. Because a lot of times the client will come back and say, “Is that really in my product?”
BEN: Yeah. (Laughter). I know that’s always a good sign by the way.
RYAN: Yeah, I mean I’ve had that happen a couple times. And the first time—oh man—it was horrible because I didn’t write the page numbers down. And I scrambled the bullets.
BEN: Uh-Oh.
RYAN: So it’s like, “Hey where’s this?” Uhhhh, I don’t know…
BEN: Do you go through everything more than once, or do you go through everything just one time, or how does that work for you?
RYAN: Normally just one time. I suppose it might help if I did it two or three or five times like Eugene Schwartz used to do. But I find that most clients are on pretty tight deadlines. And if you’re dealing with a 100 or 200 or 400 page product it’s just brutal to go through more than once.
BEN: Yeah, that could take several months and they want it—what, in three weeks.
RYAN: Exactly. Most of my deadlines—I’d say the longest deadline I’ve ever had is about 5 weeks out.
BEN: So you basically do your research and then go through it and you start writing bullets. And then does the rest of the ad kind of come together for you at that point?
RYAN: Yeah, I usually do the bullets in their own document in chronological or sequential order. And then I save them. And then I start writing the letter. So I’ll just write the headline, then lead, then just kind of work through the different sections. I think the hardest part of the letter for me is the hook. The lead copy… deck copy all that stuff. That’s the hardest—very hardest part for me. Once I get down to the point where I’m building credibility and then putting in testimonials and bullets and explaining the product and guarantee and close and all that stuff—like all that stuff comes easy for me. So if I can get to the 40% through the beginning of the letter, first 30%, 40%—it’s like, boom. Slam dunk.
BEN: I think a lot of people have that same struggle. That headline and that deck copy. And sometimes you don’t even need to use necessarily deck copy. But I know I struggle with that a lot and one of the little tricks that I learned—I actually learned this from Ken McCarthy—was take your best bullet, and that’s your headline.
RYAN: Oh wow…
BEN: I mean you might come up with a better one. But I’m saying if you’re struggling… you have to have that think done in two hours and man, you just can’t find a headline… just find that best bullet and just put it up there and maybe you can shape it into a better headline. But usually your headline is just your best bullet.
RYAN: That’s makes sense to me. You know what, when I’ve written copy I haven’t done it like that. But a lot of times I’ll find the same—like if I write the headline first—one of my bullets will wind up being a variation of the headline. And a lot of times I’ll reiterate the same verbiage that’s in the headline in the close and then sometimes somewhere in the PS. It’s like you want that thread woven through the whole letter.
BEN: Oh yeah and if you’re hitting the strongest theme… that strongest emotion… that strongest selling point… it never hurts to go over it a couple times—two to three times.
RYAN: Yep.
BEN: You know who does that actually if someone wants to see an example of that—at least the last time I looked, unless he’s changed it—was Jeff Paul, his copywriting course.
RYAN: Oh yeah?
BEN: And I don’t know the URL off the top of my head. But if you go to google and type in Jeff Paul—I think it’s “killer copywriting” or something—I notice his headline is one of his bullets. It can really simplify things. Especially with that part.
RYAN: Definitely. Thanks… that’s a great tip.
BEN: Oh, well look, I wish I could take credit for it but I learned it, too. Now that’s your process… is that the exact same process you use with everything project or does it ever change or…?
RYAN: It’s primarily the same for every projects. Like I said, the biggest difference I think comes when it’s an information product. Like if you’re writing copy for a live event, you might just start with the headline and work your way through. Or, instead of the bullets, sometimes they’ll start with writing the profiles of the speakers that are going to be there.
BEN: By the way, if you’re writing for an event like that—and I’ve only done one sales letter for that, and it never actually got ran because I was doing one of these joint venture things and the lady was just a total flake but—I was putting bullets in it, but I was taking bullets from the last year’s event because I didn’t what was even going to be taught in this event. How do you do that? Do you just ask what’s going to be in it?
RYAN: I’ll tell you what—there’s no easy answer for this one. I’ve written copy for a few events now, I find that event letters in some ways are simpler. Because there’s no product to consume before. It’s not like you can go to the event before it happens.
BEN: Yeah, exactly.
RYAN: So you’re kind of writing blind. So in that sense it kind of shortcuts the research process. And so you might think, “Oh great!” But actually it’s not really great because the person who’s organizing the event is trying to get speakers locked in and it’s hard enough to get them to commit to the dates right?
BEN: Right.
RYAN: But then beyond that now you’re talking about trying to get the person to commit on what they’re talking about. And getting them to commit to points that they’re going to actually cover from the stage.
BEN: Oh boy…
RYAN: So I’m just going off my experience. Now granted, it’s not like I’ve written five or ten of these things. I’ve only written a handful. But what ends up happening is you try to go to the speaker and get them to submit bullets.
BEN: Hey, that’s a good idea.
RYAN: I just figured that out actually on this last letter that I wrote. I’m thinking, why am I trying to figure what the speaker’s going to say? I don’t know what he’s going to say. So I had the speakers each write three bullets for their presentation. Three to five bullets. I tried to get five. And some of them who are really good writers wrote some killer bullets. And I didn’t have to write them at all.
BEN: Now that’s really good.
RYAN: Yeah, some of them wrote bullets that were okay. But hey, at least it was the raw information I needed. So then I just edited them. I didn’t have to write them from scratch. And now you’re guaranteed if the speaker submits the bullets—it’s kind of like, hey, this is what the speaker said he was going to cover so if he doesn’t cover it from the stage now the onus is on him. The burden is on him. And then event organizer is also going to be speaker so in this case it’d probably be your client directly. What I’ve done is I’ve tried to just ask them, “Hey, what are you going to be speaking about?” and he shared that with me and I’ve even done occasionally I’ll just write bullets—make stuff up. (Laughs)
BEN: Yeah, well, that’s the best way to do it. If you can make them make it happen.
RYAN: Exactly. So you kind of think, “Hey, if I was going to be at this event, what would I find interesting?” And then just make up some bullets. I’m being totally serious—just make it up and then send it to your client and say, “Hey, here’s some bullets I wrote, are you going to cover this stuff?”
BEN: That’s good… that’s actually very useful advice I think. I never would have thought of that in a million years. That’s great.
RYAN: If you wait for your client, you could be waiting until the deadline. I don’t know. Event letters are just tough because you have so many moving parts. You’re trying to get the hotel information and getting commitments from the speakers, and the content and it’s just a whole different animal. That’s why in event copy—like sales letters to sell events—a lot of times you won’t even see bullets.
BEN: Yeah, that’s true.
RYAN: They’re afraid of committing to any kind of information that’s going to be shared. And the fact is they don’t know what’s going to happen.
BEN: I wonder if—and I’m just thinking out out loud here—I know that when they do newsletters, various newsletters, they have the same problem—they don’t really know exactly what’s going to be written about, so they just sell the premium. I wonder if they’ll start doing that for events. They’ll just come up with a bunch of premiums, “Here, you’re going to get all this stuff. And you get it free if you come to the event.” I wonder if they’ll ever start doing that?
RYAN: You know that’s a great point because I was actually thinking when I went to an event that Michel Fortin and Ken Calhoun put on—they put on this little copywriting seminar here in Denver. And I live in Denver so it was a no-brainer… I’m just going to go up there and go. And it was fairly inexpensive—$400. And they had all these bullets in the sales letter. I read the copy and was like, “How could I not go?” So I went and I thought it was really creative what they did to fulfill the promise of the bullets. What they did was they had some printed material that they handed out and they literally took the bullets from the sales letter, printed the bullets, and then after each bullet wrote the answer or provided the information.
BEN: Oh, there you go…
RYAN: So you actually were guaranteed to get the answer to every single one of the bullets in their sales letter and it was printed already written down for you so you didn’t even have to write the notes. And they handed that out and it was basically they were trying to deliver on what they had promised. And that was their way of delivering on what they had promised.
BEN: It’s pretty clever. It’s better than leaving people hanging and then asking you questions of, “Well why wasn’t this in the seminar…?”
RYAN: Yeah exactly… I thought it was really good technique because of course they still covered a lot of it up front, but if they skipped a bullet well you can’t get mad at them because, hey, here’s the answer right here.
BEN: Let’s go some more with the bullet thing. What are some ways that you use to actually create your bullets?
RYAN: The easiest way for me is when I’m—I think I mentioned before when I’m reading. And a lot of times the content in there is just so compelling in like an info product—I don’t know you can almost just write the same exact words and just throw in a curiosity hook or something. And it becomes a really great bullet. I remember writing bullets for a book that I helped to sell and I literally used some of the sentences straight out of the book. But then I just omitted the following sentence where the answer would give it.
BEN: Well, you know, that works.
RYAN: So I did that and then another technique I use is trying to just stretch the limits of a person’s belief. Like challenging that belief but it has to be a belief that somebody has that they don’t want to have anymore. Like they believe it’s one way, but they wish it was not that way.
BEN: Is that kind of like the Eugene Schwartz “can’t be done” fascinations he would do? I don;t know you saw that video of him when he was talking to I think it was Rodale, and it he said he would come up with these what he called “can’t be dones”—it’s almost unbelievable.
RYAN: Yeah!
BEN: Like how to vacuum and dust your drawers without removing its contents. And he’s like people get the book even if just to prove you wrong they would get it. Is that kind of…?
RYAN: Yeah, it’s kind of like that. And I haven’t watched that video. I have that video.
BEN: It’s great—I mean that is one of the best. That is really a good video.
RYAN: I haven’t watched it. I should watch it—now you got me interested.
BEN: Oh man, you’ll watch it multiple times… multiple times. And you’ll get something new out of it every time it’s so good.
RYAN: But like you were saying that’s kind of the idea is you know your audience or your reader has certain beliefs about what can or can’t be done. And probably wishes it wasn’t that way. So if you can show him in a compelling way that it can be done, or that it’s different than he thinks, then put that into a bullet and then you can kind of in the follow up tease them even more. I’m trying to see how to phrase this—the stuff a lot of it comes so naturally to you it’s hard to put it into words.
BEN: Yeah, I know… writing is much easier than talking sometimes.
RYAN: Yeah. So you write the bullet—the meat of the bullet—but then you say, “Even if you believe think it can’t be done.” Or, “Even if you’ve never done this in your life.” So you’re almost addressing the thought that he’s having. So he reads this and thinks, “No way!” or, “Whatever.” But then you say, “No, I know what you’re thinking and it’s still true.”
BEN: So it’s kind of like the how to write a million dollar sales letter even if you suck at writing and failed English class and the one they always use in those sales letters, kind of like that?
RYAN: Yeah, kind of like that. Or another technique would be to kind of write this really compelling bullet blind it doesn’t give the answer away.
BEN: Yeah, those are always the fun ones.
RYAN: Yeah, you write that and then anticipate what he’s thinking the answer is. And then you say, “No, and it’s not that!”
BEN: You almost have to to do that otherwise it’ll just get blown off. They’ll go, “Yeah, I already know that one.”
RYAN: Exactly.
BEN: Yeah, that’s really good advice. You want to tease.
RYAN: And especially in really cynical, burned out markets. They’ve probably read everything in the world—they’ve seen everything, they’ve tried everything and so it’s really important that you tell them what they product is not. They’re automatically going to start assuming what it is.
BEN: And that’s a big thing a lot of sales letters miss. They assume that these people want to hear what they have to say. Maybe a part of them does obviously—that part that wants the benefit. But that mechanism they’ve seen already.
RYAN: Yeah.
BEN: And they’ve probably already tried it. And it didn’t work for them or they didn’t use it. It’s still sitting on the shelf.
RYAN: Yeah right.
BEN: But that’s some really good advice on bullets there. One thing I also wanted to ask you about—because I’ve noticed this when I’ve read your ads—you’re even big on talking about this in some of your ads—is gaining the reader’s trust. And I’ve read many of your ads and you do this really well. And I’m just wondering what’s going through your mind when you’re writing your ad. Are you thinking of that consciously first before you get into any promised or any claims? Are you trying to gain that trust first? And if so, how do you do that?
RYAN: That is a really great question. I would say it’s conscious part of the time. And probably unconscious a lot of the time. One of the easiest ways to build trust that I’ve found is just providing proof. So I try to think of all the different ways that I can provide proof in my letter. And I try to provide the proof pretty early before you get blow off.
BEN: That makes perfect sense.
RYAN: Because if you make these really big grand promises and draw it out too long people will drop you. So I try to build the credibility and you can do things like—I actually kind of learned this from Alex Mandossian—at least he verbalized the concept for me. He calls it “smuggling donkeys.”
BEN: That’s an interesting way of looking at it…
RYAN: Sounds kind of funny. But basically the story goes that this guy down in Peru they have this check point to make sure that you’re not smuggling drugs and illegal things into certain areas. So there’s this check point and this guy comes through every day. And he’s coming down the mountain side with his donkey and the guy at the checkpoint checks through all the bags and things slung over the donkey. Says, “Okay, you’re good to go.” And he goes and then this process just repeats every day and finally the guy at the checkpoint just gets really frustrated because he’s like, this guy must be doing something. So one day he asks, “You never have any drugs, you never have any of this stuff… what are you doing?” And he’s like, “Well, I’m not smuggling drugs, I’m smuggling donkeys.”
(Laughs)
BEN: There you go!
RYAN: Basically the idea is to lean on other people’s credibility in the letter in a—I don’t know, not “sneaky”, I guess it is sneaky—but you might say, “Just like Mark Victor Hansen did for the book publishing industry…” or “Richard Branson did for the airline industry… I’m doing for the copywriting industry.” Well, you’ve drawn kind of a metaphor for one. Saying you’re doing something really big in your industry, right? But all the sudden now you have Mark Victor Hansen’s name and Richard Branson’s name in your letter. You get to piggyback on that credibility. Is it a direct one-to-one thing? No. It’s totally subconscious. The person reading the letter sees Mark Victor Hansen and Richard Branson and thinks oh, this guy is in the same league as these guys.
BEN: That’s like Eugene Schwartz wrote in his book “Breakthrough Advertising”—borrowing credibility. He was talking about borrowing credibility from formats. But you’re saying you can do it just from dropping a name if you can do it in a logical, organic way that makes sense.
RYAN: Exactly.
BEN: I think that’s really good technique, too, actually. I’ve seen that used a lot lately. I didn’t see it used a lot when I first started out. But I have seen it a lot lately. I don’t if that’s something that people are just figuring out or if someone’s teaching that. But I never heard it verbalized until now. So that’s good.
RYAN: Yeah. And something else that builds credibility is websites where you’ve been featured before. I haven’t added this to my site yet, but I will soon, is I’ve got an ad that’s going to be running in “Stocks And Commodities” magazine. So I’ll probably add a little sidebar or something like that that says, “As featured in Stocks And Commodities Magazine.” And I have an ad that might be running in USA Today and so I’ll say, “As featured in USA Today.”
BEN: So it’s not like it was a feature article but really you’re not lying, you’re just saying it was featured. It might have been featured as an ad, but it was featured.
RYAN: Yeah, it was featured. It was in the publication.
BEN: It’s the same as “As Seen On TV.” It’s being sold on TV. But nobody’s written an article or did a news report on it or anything.
RYAN: Yeah. So you can borrow credibility like that. I was thinking that would be a good technique. Another one is putting on different web seals like “scamalert.com.”
BEN: Isn’t that on one of your sites?
RYAN: I have a web seal called honesteonline.
BEN: That’s what I saw.
RYAN: And it’s spelled “honeste”—instead of a “y” at the end, there’s an “e.” And they provide a web seal there. The guy—his name is Jimmy, he’s a friend and client of mine—he did split test. He split tested this thing with like 60,000 page views or something. So this has statistical relevance.
BEN: Okay, so that’s interesting…
RYAN: He ran it with 60,000 different page views and the only difference between the two pages was one had an honesteonline web seal and one didn’t. And the one with the web seal got a 17% better conversion rate.
BEN: Man…
RYAN: It’s just a way to build trust with people. Like, hey this vendor—you’ve seen the “bb” online…
BEN: Right… I was just thinking of that, it’s the exact same thing.
RYAN: Yeah same kind of thing. But honesteonline is a lot less expensive. And less onerous to get into and everything. But there are web seals you can use. And I also think just talking in a plain kind of style or voice. This may sound elementary but I think it’s really powerful. A lot of my inspiration comes form Claude Hopkins. I just love his work. I love the way that he writes. And a lot of times I write my best copy after I read Claude Hopkins. Because he reminds me of the power of just writing very plainly—short sentences. He says he makes a statement in his book, it’s like any study that tends to sell creates a corresponding resistance with your reader. So if you try to be fancy—I think this is why hype a lot of times backfires—it’s like trying to be too fancy in your letter.
BEN: Yeah, and it’s just not even necessary 90% of the time.
RYAN: It’s somebody’s attempt to sell is what it is. So every time you get too studied in your approach—to academic or trying too hard is another way to say it—it’s like the salesman tries too hard.
BEN: It’s like that car dealer who’s yelling at you on the TV—”Get down here right now!” It’s like he’s almost ready to start cursing or something, he’s so intense about it. “Come on down here we’ve got this and that and…!” And you’re like, “Whatever. I’m NOT going to that one.”
RYAN: Yeah exactly… so I think that just the style you write in can build trust. So like understatement versus overstatement you know? Short, plain sentences versus really descriptive hype sentences. The more adjectives the more hype you sound.
BEN: That reminds me of there’s an ad that Gary Bencivenga wrote called “Get Rich Slowly.” And it’s such an understatement, it’s so different. You have to read it just to see why he’s telling me to get rich slowly.
RYAN: Absolutely, yeah.
BEN: He had another one where they split tested I guess, “Why The Price Of Silver Will Rise Steeply” or “Why The Price Of Silver May Rise Steeply” and “may rise” like way out-pulled “will rise”.
RYAN: Because it was more honest, right? Nobody knows the future.
BEN: Yeah from what I understand—and I mean anyone can read the discussion on Clayton Makepeace’s website makepeacetotalpackage.com and just look up the interview with Gary Bencivenga. They go over all that. And it’s such an education in copywriting. I’ve just read that thing ten times because you get so much out of it. I mean I just encourage anyone listening to this go read that over and over and over because that really goes against 90% of what’s being taught right now.
RYAN: Right.
BEN: I just throw that in there. I just wish everyone would read that. Actually I wish a lot of clients would read that so they wouldn’t insist on us putting hype in everything.
RYAN: Couple other things for trust—because you’re talking about being honest and saying “may” versus “will”—one of the approaches I’ve used real successfully when there’s a new product is new products often don’t have testimonials. And so one of the questions is well how do you deal with that? If there are no testimonials how do you sell? Well, if the person has another product or service and they have testimonials for that… here’s what I do: I put the testimonials in the PS. And basically the gist of that PS says, “Naturally because this is a new product we don’t have any testimonials for it yet. Although I’m sure we will. Here’s what people are saying products and services that we’ve offered before…” or something like that.
BEN: That’s a good idea.
RYAN: It’s like saying obviously this is a new product so we don’t have any testimonials. And people are all the sudden like, “Wow… can’t believe they just said that.” Versus trying to make up testimonials which I know for a fact that some people do.
BEN: You can tell…
RYAN: You can tell when it happens and another thing people will do—I think is a really big mistake that a lot of copywriters make (it sounds like I’m writing copy right now)—are using these feel good testimonials. Getting testimonials from other copywriters. It’s like, “He’s a really good copywriter!” Or you know, “Guru Marketer” is saying, “Yeah, he’s the best!”
BEN: Ah… the little circle jerk of testimonials going around.
RYAN: Yeah! I hate that.
BEN: It’s so transparent.
RYAN: I just blow it off and am like, whatever. I don’t care what anybody says about who you are, I want can you get results? And so I think it’s fine to start with those feel good testimonials when you’re just getting started. I think you have to a little bit. But then man, get results as fast as you can, get the testimonial with real results in it, then delete… delete, delete, delete all your feel good testimonials.
BEN: It’s the difference between performance testimonials and non-performance testimonials. Yeah, I really like the color of your shoes and you’re a real sweet guy. Doesn’t really do me any good from a sales point of view.
RYAN: (Laughs) You’ve got great fashion sense!
BEN: I always like grabbing the comments when someone’s just emailing you and their not even trying to give you a testimonial, they’re just saying something nice.
RYAN: Yeah.
BEN: You get it right from the gut. People get these all the time, I’m amazed they don’t use them more often. All you have to do is—even if it just inspired an idea—email them back and say, “Can I use this?” and then re-word it your way. And no one’s going to say “no.” I mean there’s some people who for whatever reason won’t email you back probably because they never got your email or something. But it’s so much easier to do that then to beg for a testimonial.
RYAN: Really… yeah it is.
BEN: Anyway, enough of that. I wanted to get into another question I personally have for you here and that’s when you’re testing your sales letter—because let’s face it, most copywriters and marketers… we all talk you gotta test, test test. That’s everyone’s favorite answer to a question: test. Like their some authority saying that or it’s some new concept.
RYAN: Yeah, right… just test it… c’mon…
BEN: But it’s good advice. And it’s something we all—at least I know I need to do more often—and I’m really curious how do you test yours? What do you do?
RYAN: Well, just to give you some history on this. I was one of the same guys who said you need to test but wasn’t testing. (Laughter) There really is kind of a technical barrier there. And I think for us copywriter most of us aren’t technical. I’m kind of jealous of the guys who are.
BEN: Yeah…
RYAN: Who have both sides of the equation. I know Michel Fortin is like that. Like programmers in their own right.
BEN: I’m just in awe at these guys.
RYAN: I’m like, “Aww man! I just want to write copy…” But I started—let’s see when did I start split testing… I think it was about 6 or 7 months ago… beginning of this year I kind of resolved I was going to do it. I’m like I’ve got to start doing this. So I started doing it with clients and I used what’s called “multi track generator”—don’t bother looking it up.
BEN: It’s not what you use now, right?
RYAN: It’s not what I use now. I started with that because I had recommendations from other people I trust to use it. Well the thing is that ever since google came out with their system I believe in multi track generator or something. Somebody else told me that I trust—all this is second hand knowledge. I don’t know that you can bank on it 100% but that product kind of going away and in my own experiments it was kind of buggy. Like we had it crash a couple times and it was just kind of difficult. And my clients were happy with the results once we got it to work, but it was just kind of hard to get it to work. But so I had two clients on that, we found some pretty surprising things—like for instance in one case my client had some really nice professional photos done, and in one case when he used the photo is lowered response. And no offense to him, but appearances matter—people make judgments based off of that. I don’t want to sound overly harsh, but if you’re ugly or something like that, it probably is going to affect your conversion in a negative way. And sometimes it can affect them in a positive way. The thing is you gotta test it. In this case
BEN: (Laughter) Sorry—it’s just kind of funny to think about, “Mr. Client you’re kind of ugly, I don’t know if you should do this…”
RYAN: (Laughter) Well you know in this case I don’t think that was the reason why.
BEN: I would be kind of a mean thing to say.
RYAN: Yeah it would be kind of a mean thing to say. I think the reason why—we both agreed on it—was that he just looked a little bit young. He has aged well.
BEN: Oh I see…
RYAN: He looked younger than he really is, and so people kind of think, “Oh well how can he possibly know all this stuff if he’s that young?”
BEN: That makes sense.
RYAN: So we have no proof that was the reason why, but that was kind of our guess.
Another thing was—getting back to get to the software I’m using—right now I’m using google’s website optimizer which is free. And of the systems I’ve looked at it’s probably the easiest one to use. You don’t have to install anything on your server, it’s pretty straight forward. So I finally forced myself to do it and set up my first split test with 96 different page combinations in about 60 minutes.
BEN: Wow…
RYAN: So I mean this is not brain surgery here. Anyway that’s what I’m using now, I know Muvar is a good tool as well. James Brausch puts that one out. I have a copy and I’ve gone through his training videos, but I’ve actually haven’t used it yet. It’s a little bit more difficult. But there are some advantages to using it because you can add variables during the middle of a test where google is kind of a closed system while the test is running. You have to start the test and then stop it and then set up a new test. Whereas with Muvar it’s my understanding that you can set up a test, define all your variables, but then you can add new headlines to test and subheads to test like on the fly.
BEN: Oh that’s good.
RYAN: Like while it’s testing it’s kind of this one ongoing test. And it’s constantly optimizing so that’s one reason why I want to try Muvar and see how that works. But just using google so far I found some pretty surprising stuff with my own web page. Like my header graphic was reducing my response like big time. I took off the header, I tested one with the header and one without. And the one without was getting three times as many leads. That’s huge.
BEN: That is huge and that’s very interesting because I’ve known some people who have said the opposite and you really just have to test it I guess.
RYAN: Yeah I’m sure with the right header you could make response go up. But my header is not the right header graphic.
BEN: But just think it’s such a big difference and such a small change. It’s amazing.
RYAN: Yeah it really is.
BEN: So basically you’re using the google one and it’s pretty easy to use and even a total idiot like myself when it comes to technology could use it.
RYAN: Yes. Because you don’t have to upload anything to your server. All you need is I’ll just tell you in a nutshell. You need your sales page—I guess you could call it landing page—but to avoid confusion it’s your page that the customer lands on after they’ve completed the action. So if it’s an opt-in it’s the page they hit after the opt-in. If it’s a sales page it’s the page they hit after they place their order.
BEN: This is the same as the order page or is that… like if it’s a “click here to order now” that other page that they order on that would be tested then?
RYAN: It wouldn’t be the order page in this case. So if you have a sales page and then they click to an order page it wouldn’t be the order page, it would be the page they land on after they complete their order.
BEN: Okay, I see.
RYAN: So whatever page they land on after they complete the action… so like if it’s an opt-in usually it’s just two pages. It’s like the opt-in page they hit submit and their instantly on the page that says, “Hey go check your email.”
BEN: So when you say action, that means submitting some kind of a form?
RYAN: Yeah, some kind of response.
BEN: Okay. So it’s not just clicking a link.
RYAN: No it’s not just clicking a link, it’s actually completing the action or task that you’ve assigned.
BEN: I’m telling you Ryan you’ve got me wanting to use that now and finally lit a fire under me on this. So I hope everyone else is going to use it too because I know we all need to do this.
RYAN: Yeah and so all you do is you got these two pages right… you put two snippets of code on your sales page and one snippet of code on the page that your customer lands on after they finish the action. And that’s all it is and it’s just upload those two pages. So I guess you need a cursory knowledge of HTML.
BEN: Which that’s not the problem at least for people like myself. It’s just all this other stuff—all these variables.
RYAN: And that confused me at first. Maybe I can take some mystery out of it. A variable is a headline. Or a subhead. Or a PS.
BEN: Okay so it’s not like some technical thing, it’s just a fancy way of saying headline or change the opening paragraph or something like that?
RYAN: So what you would do is define your headline as that’s a variable in the test. Because you’re going to create variations of your headline. Does that make sense?
BEN: Yeah, it does.
RYAN: The headline becomes a variable because you’re going to create variations of your headline. So you define the variable and you call it “headline.” And then inside of google you would write at least two headlines—your original plus one to test. Maybe you write a third headline and a fourth headline. And the headlines are what are rotated. And so the variable which you defined the variable inside the code, the HTML code, and all you do is you just wrap the headline with like a little snippet of code that google gives you. You just wrap it, it’s just an open tag and a closed tag and that’s it. And you define that variable and then google pulls in your original headline and you just enter new headlines and then google automatically is the one that rotates it. It just shows the first headline and then the second and the third for every—first visitor gets the first headline, second gets the second, third gets the third… does that make sense?
BEN: Yeah. I’m really actually looking forward to trying this stuff.
RYAN: It’s pretty simple. It sounds really scary and complicated and stuff and it took me a while when I was getting started. But it’s pretty simple.
BEN: Yeah but it really doesn’t sound that bad compared to some of these other ones.
RYAN: And you know what, just to get started I would suggest just starting with like the headline and the subhead on your sales letter and that’s it.
BEN: Something simple…
RYAN: Don’t make it overly complicated, don’t try to test every piece of your letter. Just do like two things and get it up and running. You could probably do that in 30 minutes.
BEN: Okay, well that—I’ll tell you right now that is one of the best things I’ve heard in a while. And I know to a lot of people that’s really elementary but to a lot of us it’s really not. It’s gonna be helpful I think.
RYAN: Good.
BEN: Let’s move on to something else I wanted to ask you. Everyone runs into this problem of getting burned out, especially if you have a lot of stuff going on. What do you do when you’re up to your ears in copywriting projects and other things. How do you avoid the burnout?
RYAN: Well, I don’t know—I use a few different techniques or methods or whatever. One is I find that when I load myself up with work I tend to focus on the work and start ignoring things that are important like exercise… and going out for a breath of fresh air. And just doing stuff like that. So a lot of times I’ll just catch myself and when the stress loads getting high and I’ll be like, “Well jeez I know why, it’s because I haven’t gone to the gym in three weeks or…”
BEN: No kidding…
RYAN: So then I’ll go exercise. Your brain is like addicted to different chemicals and stuff—endorphins and I forget, there are some other fancy names for what the chemicals are—if you don’t get them on a regular basis you actually go into kind of a mild depression. And you know stress can increase—I think it’s cortizone—in the brain and stuff like that. All that leads to bad feelings and feeling like you can’t get things done. But if you go exercise you get a nice shot of endorphins. And they’ve even shown actually getting sunlight on your skin—like don’t use sunscreen…
BEN: Oh yeah—I’ve heard that before…
RYAN: You need to just get out there and go on a walk for 15 or 30 minutes just letting the sun beat down on you. That’ll elevate your mood because there’s a chemical reaction in your brain. If you’re married…
BEN: (Laughter) And you’ve locked yourself in the bedroom…
RYAN: And the kids are napping… I don’t know. You might think of something to do. (Laughter). Sometimes I think just reading a book like going to a coffee shop, getting out of the office… turning off the computer and maybe writing long hand in a notebook. I found just staring at a screen all day can sometimes get me in a funk.
BEN: Yeah.
RYAN: I’ll be like looking at stuff and I’ll know I have all this stuff to do but I can’t seem to get started. And then—I don’t know—it’s almost like this twilight zone black hole—you’re looking at your computer screen and you just kind of get sucked in and can’t seem to get anything done.
BEN: It’s almost a panicky feeling if you’ve got a lot to get done, too.
RYAN: Oh yeah… definitely… you start looking at the clock and it’s like 2:00 and you look at the computer screen and look back and it’s 3:00 and you’re like, “Holy crap there’s only two more hours left to work today…”
BEN: Oh man, I hate that.
RYAN: I know. But so I like to use a notebook sometimes. I find that just changing my setting—changing the environment, getting out of the office and going and just writing by longhand—when you’re away from the email and the blogs and everything else. And all you have is your notebook and you don’t even bring a book with you. Just bring a notebook—I mean, what else are you going to do?
BEN: You’re forced to—that’s a good idea. I never tried that. That’s very good idea.
RYAN: All you can do is write and sometimes I’ve—
BEN: You could draw or doodle.
RYAN: You could do that. But I am just like a horrible artist.
BEN: I would end up drawing. I suck at it too but I just love doing it. I tried to draw these comic book characters—you see my old college notebooks. They’re like masterpieces of crappy art. But I got my C’s I guess and we’re okay.
RYAN: Yeah right… you got your C’s (Laughter).
BEN: I mean sometimes I guess for some of us a notebook might—but at least you’re getting away from the actual writing.
RYAN: Yeah. You’re getting away from the computer and so. I don’t know, I’ve gotten breakthroughs that way. What I mean is just I was able to get started on a project or break through on a part of a letter that was hard. Just by writing longhand.
BEN: One of the—Bob Bly, I’m sure everyone knows who he is—he did an interview with Michael Senoff of www.hardtodfindseminars.com like last year. And he has a really, really interesting way of dealing this. He’ll have like 15 or 20 things going all simultaneously. So when he gets bored or burned out on one thing, he just goes right to another thing. If he’s writing a long sales letter he’ll go, “Man, I’m kind of tired and I’m going to go write this auto-responder message…”—totally different subject, totally different everything. And he’s excited about it. And then he comes back to the thing he was burned out on and finishes that up. It’s almost counter intuitive but I’ve been using that myself a lot and you get a lot more done that way and less burn out. So I just throw that in the mix.
RYAN: I think that’s a great suggestion. I often times will shift back and forth between a client projects and my own personal projects. Because when a client project is new you’re excited about it but then you might hit a point where you’re not as excited. So then it’s easy to get excited about your own projects—at least it is for me.
BEN: Oh yeah!
RYAN: But then I work a bit on that and then I come back to the client projects and I’m refreshed.
BEN: I don’t see how anybody can have burnout just doing what you were saying there. That’s really good advice. You know what—here’s a question, and I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything, but you’re one of the few marketers out there who’s not shy about your religious faith and I know Terry Dean is like that, too. Isn’t it www.terrydean.org?
RYAN: Yes.
BEN: He’s really outspoken about it, too. And I think a lot of people would be afraid to do that, you know? I know I’ve done little things like that and am like, “Man, are people going to freak out?” But you’re one of the few people—you just go out there and talk about it if it’s relevant. And I really wanted to know this because I’ve been actually meaning to ask you this in our mastermind calls but I never remember to. But I know you read a lot of the Bible and stuff and have you learned anything like from the Bible, pulled out of the Bible, that you’ve applied to your copywriting or your business or your marketing that’s applicable? Even for someone who’s not into that, but they could take the advice out of there? Because there’s just a lot of good wisdom in there for anybody.
RYAN: Yeah. That’s a great question. One of the things that I think I mentioned this on my blog a long time ago—you may or may not have seen it—but I think it’s applicable here. It’s a verse and it says, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before obscure men.” King Solomon wrote that in Proverbs and I always really took that to heart thinking, if I’m going to be a copywriter, I need to be skilled in my work. It’s kind of a no-brainer but—it says he will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men. So I thought if I just improving my skills and really focus on that, then eventually I’ll be standing before kings figuratively speaking.
BEN: Right that makes sense.
RYAN: So that was kind of a goal for me. Something I kind of just kept in my mind all the time just trying to improve my skills and copywriting and all that. I don’t know if everybody will be able to benefit from this, but lately I’ve just been studying a lot about God’s will versus man’s will. And just acknowledging the sovereignty of God in all things. This may bother some people.
BEN: We’re not afraid to bother people.
RYAN: We’re not afraid to do that (laughter).
BEN: No one is forcing anyone to listen to this. So I guess someone could fast forward through it or whatever.
RYAN: But you know, I’ve been doing all this reading and for me personally, I believe God is sovereign in everything. Like down to the minutest detail of my life. He is controlling it, He is controlling the people that come into my life. He’s controlling the clients that come into my life. Or the clients who don’t come into my life. So there’s a lot of peace that comes with that—inner peace, you know? I’m not worried about where my money is going to come from because I know who provides my money. God writes my check. My clients don’t write my check. In fact, if God wants a client to give me money, that client has no choice in the matter. They’re going to write me the check. So I don’t worry about it. If a prospect comes into my life, I try to help that prospect and I control what I can control which is what I say and how I carry myself and so forth. But you know what, I might not be supposed—that’s bad grammar (laughter).
BEN: (Laughter) You’re supposed to be a writer here, what’s going on… that’s actually a good from a copywriting point of view… don’t worry about it. People talk like that.
RYAN: I might not supposed to be working with that person. So and that’s okay. I’m fine with that because I know that God’s in control of who’s coming in and out of my life. And I don’t know—before when I got started and I hadn’t studied this stuff as much—I was more worried about who was going to be my client and who wasn’t and all that stuff. But I think there’s a lot that can happen for you and a lot of peace you can have by just acknowledging God’s sovereignty and honoring that.
BEN: And realizing even if something so-called “appears to be bad” does happen, chances are—and I’ve seen this and I’m sure you’ve seen this and I know a lot of other people have had this happen because they told me—you find out, well, I’m kinda glad that happened because it saved me from doing something really dumb or maybe I wasn’t ready. I’ll give you an example: I had an ad that I wrote that was really good and it got postponed for a few months—and I only say it was really good because it did pull a lot of money eventually—but had it run when I wanted it to, on my time frame, man we probably would have got in trouble because I hadn’t really researched all the claims that I put in it and stuff. And I had to go through it again and I’m like, “Oh my God am I glad that this happened!” Because, me and the client might have gotten in trouble. So sometimes something that looks bad could actually be saving you from something later on.
RYAN: Sure. Yeah, and there’s a lot of—I don’t know if the hype machine is going real strong with “The Secret”—but I’ll tell you a little secret of my own: And that is we are not gods. We do not control our futures. God is the one in control and He’s the one controlling the future. And so I kind of take a completely different approach on that. We don’t always know why things happen to us and stuff. But you know another thing that’s really helped me in the last couple of years is you’re going to have problems. It’s not smooth sailing the whole time. I’ve been fired, I’ve had letters bomb, I’ve had a lot of letters successful as well but, you know you can’t avoid the problems—it’s how you react to those problems. And so because I am a Christian, I find it’s really helpful to a sing praise music when things go wrong. Does that sound weird?
BEN: If it helps you what’s wrong with it?
RYAN: Yeah, well it’s like there’s a song that I particularly love where he says, “You give and take away, you give and take away, but blessed be Your Name.” Job says, “Shall I receive blessings from God, but not evil?”
BEN: And just for people who are listening don’t worry—we’re not going to ask you to drink any Kool-Aid or anything like that… (Laughter)
RYAN: Yeah (laughter).
BEN: I’m kind of glad we’re able to go off a little bit on that tangent because there’s a lot—even if you’re not in to that stuff, there’s a lot of wisdom that you can take from a book like the Bible.
RYAN: Oh yeah, definitely.
BEN: I kind of want to wrap this up now, you have a membership site that you’re in in the process of building from last we talked. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
RYAN: Sure. Well, basically I have a list of copywriters and I asked them what they’d be interested in and they said they’d be interested in a membership site about copywriting as well as a report about how to get clients. So I’m in the process of creating both of those. I’ve written 39 pages on the report. And have got the infrastructure for the membership site set up and it’ll probably be ready some time this month because it is August now. So the membership site is going to be at www.copywritingcode.com. And then the report that I’m writing is intended for copywriters and aspiring copywriters and showing them how to get their first client and how to build a business. A thriving copywriting business. And so that report will probably be release before the membership site, but it will also be included in the membership site. So copywritingcode.com is a membership site and the report is at www.getcopywritingclients.com (My affiliate link - Ben). That may be a lot of awkward phrasing.
BEN: Well go ahead and say it again real slow, just to make sure we all got it.
RYAN: Sure, www.getcopywritingclients.com.
BEN: www.getcopywritingclients.com. Well Ryan I really want to thank you for doing this call. I’ve been wanting to do this with you for a while now. And I’m glad you were able to take some time out and if there’s anything else you want to say, have at it.
RYAN: Well I think I’m done. But I’m just honored that you contacted me to do an interview and I’m just thankful for the opportunity. So thanks, Ben.
BEN: Well you’re welcome. And maybe we can do this again some time down the road and maybe do some Q&A. Who knows? We’ll talk about it more.
RYAN: Alright. Sounds good, man.
BEN: Alright well thanks a lot.
RYAN: You’re welcome, Ben.
END
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