Behold a tale of two courses:
Both from marketers who I immensely respect, whose teachings have radically increased my business’ sales over the years, and whose “DNA” weave & strand through just about everything I do, say, teach, sell, and promote — from my books, emails, & newsletters to my business philosophies, sales copy approach, and even the software platforms I’ve been helping design and co-create the last few years.
The first:
Gary Bencivenga.
i.e., universally considered to be the world’s greatest living copywriter.
And his “Farewell” course is tied for my #1 favorite course of all time as for having the most immediate and long term impact (first ad I wrote using it was a control for like 9 years before the client retired it, if that tells you something… with many more after that, including my best sales letters to this day) on my sales copy.
It’s also a high class course.
Nothing low brow about it — prestigious, refined, & high quality, just like his advertising.
Every single aspect of it is pure class.
In fact, I remember writing to Gary — I couldn’t not let him know — how the course gave me “goose flesh” (literally), that’s how much of an impact it had from the quality of the DVDs/video, to the atmosphere he taught in, to the high-level information, to the illustrated transcript book, and even the ordering process itself.
All pure class.
A+ in every way.
And he spared no expense with it.
One of the themes of the course is literally:
“Why not the best?”
And the way he created it fulfills on that nicely.
So that’s course #1.
The course that is tied with Gary’s course for #1 on impact on my business is the great “King of Email” himself Matt Furey’s (original) Furey Formula For Making A Fortune with Email course. It has had just as much impact on my business, sales, & response. I even told Matt that without him and sharing his knowledge I’d probably be pumping gas at a Chevron for a living, and that is more true than not.
Matt changed everything for my business, just like Gary did.
And yet, Matt’s course is the complete opposite in production values:
For one thing, it’s pure audio.
And instead of being polished, a lot of it taught off-the-cuff.
Sometimes you can’t even understand what people in the room are saying (good reason to listen multiple times…) With lots of amusing profanity, dirty inside jokes, back-and-forth banter with the people in the room digging deeper into the craft than one can possibly go with a structured talk, and sometimes it sounds like it was recorded ten feet away from everyone talking compared to today’s technology. (He recorded it it in 2005, when I don’t even think they had half the options we have today).
i.e., it’s the kind of content I personally prefer consuming & creating when I sell digital:
Low brow production, 100% raw, pulls zero punches, little or no refinement.
Again, both these courses tied for #1 on my list.
I proselytize both of them, to everyone, to this day, and always will.
But at the same time:
You could not have two different kinds of production values. Or two different kinds of teaching styles. Or two different kinds of approaches to course creation. They are both the most valuable courses I own, and both are equally valuable to my business. You could also say the same thing about Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters (came without a cover due to hot Florida sun melting it in fulfillment, oversized, hard to hold, no structure or table of contents, goes off topic constantly, hand written — i.e., sometimes hard to read — pages) vs the more professional and prestigious-looking books that have had equal impact like Dan Kennedy’s No BS Time Management book or Joe Vitale’s (original) 7 Lost Secrets of Success book… which both had profound impacts on my business and, in many ways, my life.
All of which brings me to the point:
When creating a course do it 100% you.
If you prefer fast, low brow, get-it-out-and-benefiting people (like I do) do that.
If you’re like my biz partner in software Troy Broussard, who loves high production, do that.
Neither is “better” just like Gary & Matt’s courses are not worse or better than each other.
Only the snobs for one or the other will care.
Regular humans, who aren’t anal retentive don’t.
They just want the info, and to benefit from it.
Those are also the kinds of customers who benefit most from Email Players.
More info on that here:
Ben Settle
