Let me tell you about my place.
It’s newer house that sits atop a tall hill overlooking a pretty crappy neighborhood (on my podcast I once said how I could literally see a meth house from my office window — I wish I was joking…) Even though I dig my place and my 3 neighbors on top of this hill (for the most part), I feel kinda like the grinch overlooking Whoville when I look out the window.
All the dam Who’s in the ‘hood.
Making noise.
Cluttering up the street.
(People park on BOTH sides of the street, even though it’s narrow and a sign clearly says “no parking on this side of the street” on one side).
And full of so many stray dogs, I daren’t walk my dog here.
Anyway, that said:
I do dig my place.
(The hill is too steep for the dregs to want to climb up here — hellz, I don’t even like walking up and down it to get my mail at the mailbox…)
Anyway, to the point:
One thing I don’t like about my place is all the earwigs.
Whenever the exterminator comes, he sprays around and, within hours, I got earwigs sneaking in through a crack in the front door dying on my kitchen floor.
It’s like the earwig apocalypse.
And, it’s kinda gross.
Anyway, why am I telling you this?
How does this help you?
Well, for the first year here, I just ignored it. Since I had a person cleaning my place, I simply didn’t worry about it. Especially since I spend 99% of my time upstairs either sleeping or in my office.
But eventually, it got to me.
All the friggin dead earwigs.
Now, if I was foolish I would’ve blamed the exterminators.
(I’ve gone through three.)
But, it’s not their fault.
It’s mine.
I didn’t seal the small opening in the door.
And no matter how skilled they were… no matter how precisely they sprayed… no matter how great their knowledge… until I sealed that hole, the bugs were coming in.
And, it’s the same online.
I’ve seen time after time and after time people complaining about their “copy” not working, when all the dead sales lying around had nothing to do with their copy.
Example:
One of my friends told me about a client he had.
His opt ins were abysmally low.
At first, the client blamed the copywriter. But it wasn’t the copy. It was a glitch in the code that was screwing something up and only a small fraction of people *could* opt in.
And until they fixed that, the copy didn’t matter.
They had to fix the crack in the door, first.
Only then, could sales flow.
Anyway, something to think about.
There’s a lot of profit in dropping the “ninja” mindset always looking for ways to tweak and geek your ads… and just look for obvious bottlenecks in your sites.
Enter the book “Obvious Adams”
I first heard of it when the great Gary Bencivenga sent it to me.
(He’s universally considered the world’s greatest living copywriter.)
And, he said he reads it once or twice per year.
And, that his mentor the late (great) ad man David Ogilvy insisted all his people read it — since it instills a certain, very rare mindset in you where you can see the obvious solutions to problems that plague the average, common marketer.
What about you?
Would you like to see this book?
(Actually, it’s a booklet — only about 20 pages or so.)
It’s on Kindle here:
And it only costs a “whopping” $2.99.
Ben Settle
