FMS FinPub Pro

Mastering FinPub Copy: Insights from a Top Chief

• John Newtson

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FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

Speaker 1:

All right, hey everyone, I am back today with Patrick Bevey, and if you don't know who Patrick is, then you obviously haven't been around newsletters, you haven't been around Agora, you haven't been around MarketWise, you haven't been around FinPub that much because Patrick has been consistently one of the top copy chiefs in the industry. For anyone who doesn't know, first, over at Stansberry you wrote a ton of great promos, classic promos yourself. You've chiefed amazing teams. You were on a year ago. We had a great conversation and since then a lot's changed Awesome to have you back, man.

Speaker 2:

It's great to be back, john. I know a ton's changed for me, a ton's changed for the market, so I'm excited to be here just to talk through it all man Like help us get on the right foot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's um, let's talk about that. So it's been a year roughly um. The last we were talking it was we were kind of talking bear markets. Um how do you see the kind of like, how do you see this the from a promotional standpoint and kind of the industry this last year? How did you see it kind of evolve from your vantage point?

Speaker 2:

it was pretty bullish. You know it was way. The outcome was way more bullish than I anticipated. But the nice thing about working in this industry is that if you have a viewpoint, you could be early. You could be wrong. You could be early, you can be right.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but if you're paying attention to what's selling and you're not trying to force something on the market, you tend to do all right. So I think I'm biased towards the downside only because I think things have just gone bonkers for so long and I have this natural. I also like riding in bear markets. Not that I would wish one on, I won't wish one on us, don't worry. But if it happens, then I feel like I have an edge. So I'm not going to freeze up in a bear market, so kind of like honey badger, honey badger don't care, yeah. So so yeah, that was, that was the outlook then.

Speaker 2:

But sometimes the market will continue longer than you, than it should, or you think it will, and but that's reality, right? That's the moment and you're selling in that moment. So you have to stay wedded to what the customer's beliefs are, and so I could have a belief and act a certain way with my portfolio over the long term. But in the short term I could act entirely different in our business, because you can't sell a bearish idea in the middle of a bullish market.

Speaker 2:

You could test and find out where you are, where the line is, what the interest is, but it could be a huge waste of time, which is the greatest opportunity cost of all. That's the worst possible thing you could do is waste time on an idea that doesn't make sense, because then, even if the market does turn in your favor later on, the copy might not fit. You'd have to write the whole darn thing over again. So I kind of have two minds on it. I have my own view about where the market's going, just as a handicapper slash investor myself, you know. And then I have my real world spectacles for when I'm writing copies, sitting down trying to meet the market where it is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and that's the. It's almost like I almost think of, like writing promo, and fin pub is a little bit like trading, where it's like you're trying to catch short to medium-term trends and you can't, you really can't.

Speaker 2:

You can have a long-term perspective, but that doesn't affect today's trade. Yeah, and sometimes it works in your favor. You can't control the market, right? Nobody can. But the promo that I just wrote for Paradigm, which is off to a huge start. It's called the American Birthright. It's the $150 trillion trust fund promo that folks might've seen on the internet. It's off to a great start, knock on wood. Never want to toot my own horn about anything, especially in advance, but it's a good start and it was a risk writing it because, excuse me, it's essentially a commodities promo, right At a time where AI and crypto were hot.

Speaker 2:

I started working on this last year and this is a bit on handicapping the markets and looking forward. I just had a sense that this is going to turn, and sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, and I was willing to bet my time on this because gold was inching up. You can see the big picture with China withdrawing these commodities from the US pulling back. You knew as soon as Trump won that he was going to smooth the way in a second term and help unlock some of these minerals that have been trapped for decades, if not centuries. So it just seemed like a safer bet to me than it might have to the average copywriter. I took a chance on it and, man, it could have gone the wrong way. It could have gone if gold crashed and sentiment cratered. There's no amount of good copy that's going to sell it. You know, it doesn't matter who you are, but if the market does break your way, it feels like a wonderful, like a tailwind right. It gives you a chance and so the market gave me a chance and so this happened to line up.

Speaker 2:

And it's also a departure for Jim Rickards, who this is written for. He's typically more of a bearish themed analyst. I don't think he's a perma bear, but all of his biggest promos, essentially the past several years, have been bearish. So it was a risk in terms of tone for him. Like, how do you, how do you write for this? Incredibly accomplished, you know, half century experience in DC, kind of guru who's cut his teeth with bear their stories, but you're flipping bullish under a Trump administration it's.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't exactly clear cut, but I'm glad. I'm glad it appears to be working. I don't want to jinx it, but but yeah, there's looking forward as a risk as a copywriter and it's often safer just to stay with what's working, and that's what a lot of people do. I just can't do that because I just get sick to my stomach. Honestly, I can't. I don't want to write another AI promo until something really magical does happen in AI and I know that's crazy to say, because it seems like something magical happens every day, but in a way that makes it less special and overwhelming. So you almost need a high watermark in something. You need a moment to come along. That's like the chat GPT moment. We're all sort of waiting for that. I just personally don't have any interest in writing about AI until that happens or until I can connect the dots in a way that paints the picture of what's happening. That's a bit of what goes on inside my head. I just gave you a window of babble into what goes on inside my head thinking about this stuff.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if that's helpful or not.

Speaker 1:

No, it is. It's very interesting to me because a few things right. When I listen to you talk, the one of one of the things I think about is that you started this last year and we did end the end of the year very bullish commodities as a bullish idea it's not something we see much anymore Records and commodity right. I mean just like you don't see too much of it, right. So Rickards, like you said, tended to have a lot of big bearish promos. He's kind of known as being the gold guy. Commodities traditionally was also kind of one of those things that you would see is kind of like hey, stocks go down, commodities might go up, and so it is even on the profit side side.

Speaker 1:

There is like a bearish element to it and to me this is interesting because, like we've been tracking with the, with all the folks in fms, pro discord and at the summit, like the first three weeks of the year, the end of 2024 banner, I mean like people were having some of the best years they've ever had and then, like around the last week of January, kind of sentiment did drop back end sales. We're getting more difficult for a lot of folks. We're seeing on the front end a little bit more like I won't say it's bad or anything, it's just it's more blah. It was right.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, many things that, yeah, so many things happen. That's the thing Like when, when, when, what you're excited about happening. It's sort of like being a kid on christmas, right? You, you look forward to christmas, or you look forward to your birthday, whatever the heck holiday you're looking forward to and then it gets there and you know there's this high and then does it meet your expectation or exceed it, does it fall beneath your expectation? And then you know, towards the end of the day, you feel down because because it already happened and you have to wait a whole other year for it to happen again, or you don't know when it's going to happen again in terms of a bull market.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's the psychology that plays out among our investors and among our copy teams. You had the Bitcoin reserve to point to, and an idea like that is way more exciting when it's in the future than when it actually happens. There's almost no way the reality of a Bitcoin reserve could ever measure up to what you think it could be in the weeks or months leading up to it. And then that's what happened. I think that happens in a lot of different ways, and then copywriters run out of steam. The market kind of runs out of direction and you're left sitting out there adrift at sea with no breeze, just wondering when the next one's going to kick up at sea, with no, no breeze.

Speaker 1:

You know, like just wondering when the next one's gonna kick up. Yeah, and the the fact that you're doing a commodities promo here um it, how do I put it? Commodities used to be like a mainstay of the industry, like it used to be like, like, right down the middle was commodity investing.

Speaker 1:

It was a very robust part of the industry. Then over the last 10 years, especially during the big bull markets, you had crypto, you have all this stuff. Commodities became a smaller part of the industry. It's become less or harder to sell. Other than Jim Rickards, we don't see a lot of big commodity givers that have had a lot of success, and so it's really it's just a very interesting dynamic to me and I do wonder if you know, you think of all these things. You have technological advances. We have a completely changing global security order that's going to affect supply chains. It's going to have effects on commodity chains. Like, are we maybe going to start to see kind of a return to some of those more almost like romantic themes of FinPub? That, yeah, I mean. What do you think on that?

Speaker 2:

I sure hope so. That's what I'm. I mean, I'm trying to lean into it because I miss writing for those themes. When I came into the business you're right there was entire wings of these groups that were devoted to commodities. It was one of the best-selling publications you could possibly have, whether it was oil or gold or silver or whatever. Even uranium had its moment.

Speaker 2:

It's a lot of fun. There's a romance to it, for sure, and it's real world stuff. You know, in a world that's driven by nothing like fake paper money and fake experts and governments that don't know what the heck they're doing, like this is something to hold on to. So there is a romance to it and there is an appeal to it. But the downside of it is it's not proprietary right, so it does. You're never going to have the singularity or the specificity of an NVIDIA chip in gold, because gold is a generic element that theoretically, anybody could find. Some people stumble over it in a stream and pluck a nugget out of the earth, and so it can't really compete in a world where specificity is demanded in terms of like this is new, this is special, this is different. The golden silver never knew special, different. That's part of their appeal but but it in a world full of shiny objects and shiny object hunters, they they often take a back seat. And so I I knew in working on this theme with with Jim, like he was amazing to work with, had so many insights and his whole life story just is incredible. But I knew working with him that we couldn't just come at this directly, no matter how much we wanted to. There's just not a chance. It had to be big, political, emotional theme to get into this story and we had to make it appeal to a broader audience that doesn't just call out to folks who are already interested in commodities because they're not a big enough audience. So that's part of the challenge when you're writing for these themes. It's just like casting a wide net on a subject that's not necessarily. I mean it is broad, I mean I could contradict myself. Commodities are in a way, broad If you consider the fact they go into everything with an on switch. Okay, they're broad, but they don't really have a broad audience. They don't have fans. There's nobody asking the CEO of Newmont to sign their bra, you know, like the way that, uh, nvidia CEO is literally autographing women's. You know chess and bras, like at their conferences. That's how excited people are about AI. It's nuts. He's like a rockstar. You're never going to see that in the mining business, right? Um, or maybe we will. If we do, it'll be a sign at the top. But yeah, that's why it's such a huge divide when you're writing for it.

Speaker 2:

And crypto I think we talked about this in the past. When crypto came along, it also kind of broke investors' brains in terms of their expectations of what's possible, like how much money can you make in a short period of time? Well, yeah, with crypto you could have made a ton more than anything else if you bought the right ones at the right time. So it it. It also had a way of exciting people but making everything else seem incredibly tame.

Speaker 2:

It's. It's sort of like you know I could think of a million politically incorrect examples that I won't share what that means I could, but you know what I mean. It's sort of just like a or here's a, here's a safe one. You walk into a. You walk into a golden corral buffet which is like the bottom of the dregs and somehow some way there's like a prime choice age, like ribeye sitting there and you know your steak right and you see it there and you know that's a hundred dollar piece of steak next to the schlock. You know that's been fed through a machine, like you could spot it. It's just it stands out. So that's that's. That's comparative to what happens in our business sometimes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure, that's a great great example or analogy, um. So let's talk a little bit about how you changed. So when we last talked, um, uh, you weren't and you're doing what you're doing now, um, which is, you've actually formed a copy agency. That kind of works inside of gore for companies, right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, this was, uh, joe Schrieffer's genius idea. Like it was not my idea, I would. I was. I recognized its brilliance immediately because it was just what I wanted and needed, and I love the idea of working back at Agora. I want to make Agora great again, so to speak. You know like Agora is not anywhere near its heyday levels right now, but man, we're going to get there, I know it, and I what what Bill and Mark did for this business and everybody else in it like to help grow. It is so special to me because I got my start there and I I desperately want them back on top. I desperately want them to be thriving, successful business with lots of great competition between the affiliates.

Speaker 2:

And so this was a chance to step back into the fold and write for anybody. I wanted to, and bring some of my best copywriters from back at Legacy and we could write for anybody across the business, which is appealing because if one thing goes wrong, you go through what I went through at Legacy, where everything's going so well, and then the business is completely dismantled. You realize how little control you have, no matter what kind of a job you do. There could always be some bowling ball that comes and knocks the pins down and then you have to start all over again. Well, the beauty of this new scenario is that it's sort of decentralized. We can write for any group, so if one group is struggling, but we could be a hero and try to jump in and help if we feel passionately. Or we could just follow the money and work for the ones that are thriving and, uh, insert ourselves in there and try to help them succeed even more. So it's it was an easy pitch to my guys who joined the team. There's six of us now and um plus me, and we're having a great time and we're just getting, you know, diving into it.

Speaker 2:

It's a challenge, though, trying to get to know so many different people in so many different businesses, but we knew that going in it's just a that's. The learning curve for us has been, instead of learning, one set of gurus. If you're inside one business as an employee, multiply that by three. Multiply all the marketers by three, all the copy chiefs, everybody in between. So it's a lot of putting faces to names and figure out who does what. But we're all moving past that now and I'm feeling really good about it. I'm feeling great about it, and agora is such a wonderful learning laboratory. It's always been that way. You know, with the zambesi report that comes out every day, there's a lot of sharing that goes on within that community. Um, you can't really hoard ideas because it's so obvious when something becomes successful, uh, so it's. I feel like they're primally positioned to grow and, uh, there's lots of talent coming into agora now too, so it feels like it feels like old school agora. It feels like the place to be.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome that's awesome, that that that kind of like, um, entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial kind of feel was always one of the strengths of of the that culture and ecosystem, and so like hearing that that's like that aspect of it is really like kind of being leveraged here, with like having a group of really just like blockbuster copywriters being able to kind of hunt projects across the business and find opportunities, is seems like a perfect fit for their model and really just really exciting as a copywriter to be able to like say, yeah, I don't want to do that project right now, like this is an idea that I have, this is somebody that fits with, or I love what he's doing, um, for today, but I don't want to get married to that guy. Uh, maybe because you know, there's all kinds of reasons from a creative standpoint, professional business, whatever, yeah and speaking of commodities like the, the, oh, the, there's all kinds of reasons not to.

Speaker 2:

From a creative standpoint, professional business whatever. And speaking of commodities, the most frustrating thing about commodities is they're the most. Commodity gurus tend to lead the most romantic newsletter lives right, and they're highly volatile. They're fascinating, they're some of the best writers and thinkers in the business, but they just blow off and disappear for any reason. It's a trend, it's an inside joke. For me in the business I've seen so many amazingly talented commodity gurus just blow off. You know, I mean everybody from Doug Casey. You know, like he doesn't, but he doesn't need the money. You know like he's. Everybody loves Doug Casey. You got to love Doug Casey. He's a, he's the icon. He's on the Mount Rushmore but he's you can't write for him now. And there's guys like EB Tucker who's amazing, like he has his own newsletter on Substack now he's doing his own thing. It's just like down the line, like you just keep going down the line of all these great commodity gurus. And yeah, so it's nice to be in a position like we are at Agora, because we could take our pick from across all the businesses. If one guy happens to leave, it doesn our agency. So I like that a lot.

Speaker 2:

Um, that's been a lot of fun. I did have, um, I did. I know, last time we talked, we did talk about ideas and what's working or not. I got that. I got some of that up my sleeve too. I know that when we talk about commodities, I'm, I'm, I'm detecting a lot of eye rolls. I think it might be a lot of guys. Just don't, not from you, john, but I just. I can feel it. I can feel it from the audience out there. I'm sensing it. I'm sensing it saying like I'll go, for it's like that old scooby-doo line I'll go first after you, I'll go first after you, you'll be the first one in the door that gets shot, patrick, fine, okay, I'll do it, I'll take it off, uh, but yeah, we, I have plenty of that to talk about too yeah, what else?

Speaker 1:

so what other themes are out there that you see are working right now?

Speaker 2:

so, okay, obviously you know tech and I ai has been perennial with crypto, but but but I mean it's what's the most important thing to know about. It is like meeting the market where they are, like their level of sophistication. And I see a lot of writers coming in who are just writing to an audience that doesn't exist, writing for a time that doesn't exist. And I think certain events that occur, whether it's something like the launch of chat, gpt or it's something like the presidential election they can completely flip a market and they could have a drastic effect on what works and what doesn't. So Trump's election railroaded a whole bunch of packages. They just couldn't work. That was it. And then you just have to deal with it and you have to figure out well, can we pivot or not? Maybe not, but the problem I see in a lot of copy out there for AI and crypto is it's sort of just like me too derivative copy and it's focused on next NVIDIA type stuff, which can work. Some of it, if it's executed well, it can work, but it just gets tired. It gets so tired. I mean our readers get exposed to so many of these messages and I think sometimes the challenge is remembering that fact and then trying to serve up something that's really specific and unique. So I think the key, the key thing to understand, is like where the reader's head's at, of course, and what they've already seen, and connecting the dots in a way that's fascinating, that tells the next story, the next chapter in the story of of or of AI or crypto. So that's been the challenge, but they are some of the safest things to write about. It's just that, like I said a moment ago, you wouldn't want to be writing a Bitcoin or crypto reserve promo now. I think that's crazy. I think it's just it's already happened and it was a nothing burger and maybe it'll be something great. Maybe they'll add to it and find a way to make it what it should be, but it's sort of already run its course. That story has run its course and it would have to take a different twist or turn to be exciting.

Speaker 2:

So then there's, of course, the Trump-Musk axis there. So I mean there's a lot of low-hanging fruit after the election. Course, he's going to do this, he's going to do that, his first executive order. Of course that's smart stuff to write um. But then the election happens and and the inauguration happens, and they're. They're in the real world and it becomes much harder to and talk about a moving target. There's so much coming out of that office it's very difficult for copywriters to keep up, and musk is moving with such frantic speed it's hard to keep up with him as well. Um, this whole Doge story, for instance, like so many live themes are embedded in that Doge kind of storyline. But copywriters are struggling to keep up and because the minute you write something like as a prediction, they go out and actually do it. And then what?

Speaker 1:

So you got to start over. That's Matt Paulson, who's the founder of MarketBeat at FMS. He talked about a promo and he was like and then the problem with that promo is that the prediction came true and so it was over. It's like that's exactly the kind of thing that happens with a forecast promo. If it actually is very timely and correct is well, okay, it happened, it's done.

Speaker 2:

It's so true, and that's why what I've been telling my guys lately is that, especially the macro guys, like if you're looking for something to write, I'm calling it like I don't know if this has been used before, john, but I'm calling it meta macro. Like meta macro is where you should be right now, like talking about the big picture. So, for instance, like what I mean by that is talking about finding the hidden meaning in all these events that are happening today, or finding or exploring the feeling it creates and the effects it creates on the markets. Like that's not going to be out of date. You know that's not going to go away. And I think a lot of guys are frustrated because they come into the business and they're trying to write something.

Speaker 2:

And I thought of this little example I was going to share with you. I don't know if this makes sense or not. I'd like to tell I've spent all these stories to try to make it real. Um, you know, imagine if you walked into the first party ever on earth, if there'd never been a party before, and you walk into this party and you're in the room and it's just like a regular party, like what we'd know today, like there's there's, there's beer in the fridge. There's, there's music on, there's maybe a van and people are mingling and there's a bunch of like finger foods and Tostitos or whatever. Maybe there's a game on or there's whatever, something. It's just a normal party.

Speaker 2:

If nobody had ever had that experience before, you could simply just walk into that room and comment on what you see, what's obvious, and it would be novel, it'd be interesting, right? Like, oh, wow, they got like chips and dip. Oh my God, like amazing, like that's. That's sort of like how it is when you're writing about a new trend and there's low-hanging fruit, like you don't have to work that hard and you shouldn't, right, you just talk about what you see and you can just, you know, just have a little fun on the surface, like skittering along the surface.

Speaker 2:

But we're actually in the weirdest party ever right now, like this is like, and people are walking into this weirdest party, where there's a band playing on the ceiling and there's, like you know, the host is walking around with a punch bowl in their head filled with goldfish and uh, you know, and there's people dancing on the bottom of the pool like upside down and like it's all this crazy stuff going on and the copywriters are walking into that environment, talking about describing it like a normal party, right, they're just saying like, oh man, like look at these chips and dip.

Speaker 2:

And I'm like that guy over there, like he's like, is he homeless? Like what are you? Like you're talking, like they're talking about super service level stuff and they were just walked into this crazy party and treating it like it's just a generic you know, like, and that only works when it's the first party ever. It only works when it's like the first rounds of some new thing that you're writing about. So I think that's the biggest challenge for copywriters right now is just stepping back, zooming out, just thinking about, like what, what does this really mean? You know not just what do I see, but what does it really mean? Cause, if you write about just what's in the headlines, you end up writing a crypto reserve promo, right? Or you end up writing a next NVIDIA promo, or you just or, you just end up just you're.

Speaker 2:

You're constantly chasing, chasing, chasing, like you're never going to get ahead of the market, and I think the other part of that is just like this looseness or tightness of spirit of what you're writing, like you don't have to be so tight. You don't have to like be so specific and pin yourself down to a prediction that's crystal clear. It's really just about the effect of what's coming. You can use your imagination and paint a picture of how whatever seems to be happening now is going to evolve and affect the markets, and affect civilization and the future, and and the market will forgive you for that if it's authentic to what their actual experiences and what their feelings are in the moment.

Speaker 2:

So I think I think there's just like um, at a time like this, the dumbest thing to do is, right on the nose, like write something like punchy on the nose. It's crazy because it's all the low hanging fruit is gone and and nobody. And it seems outdated in a way too, because the market's moving too fast. It's risky, right. It's sort of like your prediction that got that actually came to be. You're right I talk about being right in the worst way possible. You write a promo that's pending and then it happens, and then you're screwed and you're trying to scramble and figure out how to rewrite. So I think I don't know I don't know if that you know. I don't know I haven't refined this message very well, but I don't know if that makes perfect sense, but it's just like a looseness of spirit.

Speaker 1:

I do, and I like the idea of like, kind of like the meta macro in a sense. So in November this was what two days past the election I had a conference down in Miami and we had one of the guys that was on one of the panels was glenn. He was the former head of us news for the wall street journal. Um, and we were just afterwards, you know, sitting. A bunch of us were sitting out on the patio, um, you know, smoking cigars and drinking and talking, and he said, um, we're, you know, I was like grilling him for, like, what were your big ideas about? Like where the country is and things like that. And he's like, you know, and this is before Doge or Doge came out or anything like that happened. And he's like, you know, I'm looking at this and I think you're missing the point If you think this is the second Trump presidency. I say this is the first Musk presidency and that this is that this is going to be like a part of our politics going forward for quite some time now, and that, to me, is like, okay, you can talk about all those AI and Doge stories and all the other things that are related to Musk, but inside of that meta idea which has longer legs. That's more to me. As a person.

Speaker 1:

I find that kind of idea fascinating, just like I find the idea of the changing global security order fascinating, right, like there is phenomenal people out there like Sarah Payne.

Speaker 1:

She's an academic at the Naval War College and she's talking about the difference between look at, a maritime power, like what the US has been for the last 67 years, versus a continental power like the US used to be, or like Russia and China is. And then are we looking at shifting to a continental power? Because talking about threatening Canada, even like slightly in Mexico, like this suggests a strategic move toward the continental power which is such a dramatic change of what the world is that, if you go in that direction, the amount of stories and how that's going to impact everything. And this is not tech related, right, there's tech stories in it, but it's a meta idea, a big idea of the world. And to me that that kind of true, like there's room, there's a romance to like that big macro story, the geopolitical story that we don't even approach anymore because, like so much of the industry's moved to trading versus macro. Even so, even within the macro stories there's fewer people total.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, oh, those are fascinating themes, I mean I, I I'm with you on that and I think I think those are worth working. I think it's just a question of does it match up with the right guru? And then, what part of the story do you focus on? And I was. I was actually on a call with uh, with Porter, on a research project, uh, and he brought up something very interesting. He brought up this idea of how the Ukrainians had taken down or taken out of a Russian warship with a store-bought drone, and I'd never read that story myself, but when the moment he said it I thought, wow, I mean, you think, well, it's asymmetric warfare. Probably could link that to asymmetrical returns, which would be kind of cool. And then, what does it really mean for the global order? What does it mean about how we project power and what the future is going to look like? What does even what is quote-unquote safety and stability even look like, and what is the cost of it? And um and there, and are we going to go through a period of time where those two are odds, the old world and the new world? It's really ugly and messy, probably. Um, could that time period be given a name, absolutely. I mean there's that fourth turning right there again. So it's like there's a or some variation of that for so and then, and then the move to take um canada or greenland you know, which is like still lists a little chuckle, but it's not a zero percent chance, not a zero. And it's not a hundred percent chance obviously either, but it it?

Speaker 2:

If we're, if we're in an area where the lines of the map could possibly be redrawn, then people need to adjust their focus and open up and loosen their minds up a little bit. There's that concept. One of my favorite concepts is that of the Overton window, which is sort of that phrase that's used to describe what is considered possible or probable by the general public or by your audience in general. And if the window is shut or barely open, it just means that audience is not willing to consider many different ideas or much deviation from the present. If it's wide open or blown open, then that means that, wow, it seems like anything is possible, anything can happen. Holy crap, I have to be ready for anything. And that's sort of where we are now. We're in this world of the Overton window is wide open, it's maybe been busted out of its sockets there and it's flapping in the breeze, and a lot of people would prefer just to focus on the same old, same old, because it feels safe and convenient. But they're making a huge mistake, whether it's investors or copywriters, and I think that's something that the ideas you're talking about and you bring up. They appeal to me because they're in line with this. They're exploring areas of radical change taking place in the world today, and where there's radical change, there's radical profits to be had.

Speaker 2:

It goes without saying. Like you don't even have to prove that that's just the truth. Of course you could prove it. I could easily dig up examples, but but and I would if I was writing it but, but, yes, I mean that's like nobody should be afraid about writing. Now the thing is it just can't be political red meat Like you. Just you wouldn't do that and say rah, rah, usa, like we're growing bigger every day. You know you're not going to say that, so you're going to tell the story. But what the heck does that mean for the, for the, for the reader? What does it mean for the markets? What does it mean for, like, geopolitical tensions? You know there's there's so much wrapped up in that. What does it mean for the currency? Uh, there's infinite levels and layers you can explore. But yeah, man, I just love that you're into those ideas, because that's to me that's a great spot to be digging around yeah, I love that stuff.

Speaker 1:

I love like, like, like seeing how, like, like even trading etfs in this environment, right like the dax has been up like straight up since you know the beginning of the year. And like european defense, and like you know you're not. You're not selling the stocks in the us is hard to sell. Like investing in international stocks, but there's plenty of ETFs. At this point I mean you can. But just like people are much more comfortable buying ETFs and ETFs on these plays are really interesting and there's just so much meat.

Speaker 1:

That's why I keep saying this is a newsletter writer's market, somebody who's really into ideas and what's happening in the economy and how it impacts investments. Like not just the trading. Like this is like I don't know. It's like it could be like a boom time, just in terms of the ideas. There's so many big fundamental things that are changing that like to talk about um, and that's not to discount the, the value of having like a trading business and things like that. It's just that this is not to discount the, the value of having like a trading business and things like that. It's just that this is a. To me, a unique feature of the, the current time that we're in is that for better or for worse. A lot of stuff's changing and it's. We're gonna all feel the changes, and that's from an investment and promo standpoint.

Speaker 2:

And that's that's that creates two emotions, that creates excitement and discomfort, massive discomfort, and and it's unexpressed because you can't like, everybody's so caught up in a silly small talk. Nobody's talking about it and because they're afraid to talk about it, because they don't want to picture it, they don't know what to do. But there's an unmet need. The reader has an unmet need for somebody to explain to them that they're not crazy and then what they're seeing is really happening. In fact, it may be worse or better than what they think, depending on what the story is and how. There's a simple way to understand what's happening and and protect yourself from profit. There's this is a classic newsletter architecture, but it's, but it's, it's not reinventing the wheel, it's really.

Speaker 2:

But that's to me, that's the gusher that you want to tap as a copywriter that well of emotion that's unexpressed, unmet. You know unmet needs and who's not meeting it, like society and mainstream media and uh, but that they're causing people pain, or you know whether it's FOMO or there's just pure, pure fear, dreading the future If it came to AI, like they need somebody to connect the dots for them or at least to confirm that they're not crazy and that what they're seeing is true, and I think if you can find a way to do that in a unique way as a copywriter, you're golden, like you got half the battle right there and you just got to hope you have the right. Of course you need the right product and the right editor, right sell. You can't conjure that up out of thin air. But yeah, you're. If you got the right solution on, then you're, then you're done.

Speaker 1:

You're pretty much home free yeah, yeah, um, and that's uh. I know when you're saying that you see a lot of kind of just like a little bit half-assed copied copy out there like this is just um. Another thing Matt Paulson had said he was talking about how because on the acquisition side, working with large publishers, you have groups like MarketBeat, you have it's Today, you have other affiliate CPA models. They're so good anymore that on the first day or so that an offer goes out to them, that's working. They're going to show it to a million people and so the lifecycle of those ideas um has shortened because they're going to. They're so good at getting it out to everybody and getting it in their face from so many different angles, so quickly at scale that like, if you're copying other ideas, like those ideas are just like you know you have diminishing returns on kind of just that kind of half-assed I'm going to copy.

Speaker 1:

And there's people I mean this is not, this is gonna sound bad. I don't mean it badly, but I'm like there are plenty of those writers and kind of people in the publishing business who most of their career is essentially like I'm going to just wait till somebody else comes up with an idea and then I'm going to write a version of that and that's what they do and it's. Oh yeah, it was a lot less of a problem. You know you had a longer timeline, but faster, you know, faster timelines mean less time for ideas to work, time to market is is more and more important. Um, I don't know how if you guys have seen like a like a big shift in using ai to speed up your promo process, but I think that's a huge thing that, like people need to be thinking about too.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love it. Yeah, you're right, I mean cause at some point. I mean that's it's going to speed up the knockoffs for sure. Right, you'll be able to just upload any promo in there and just say like give in there. And just say like give me something that sounds like this, but it's like 90% different, you know, or whatever it has to be. And I don't know what the prompt will be, but that'll be sort of the nature of the prompt and it'll spit out something that's decent and um.

Speaker 2:

But the thing is, then we won't need those copywriters anymore. This one's like I'll just knock myself off over and over again and just have fresh leads Like why would we need some B or C level copywriters to do it? So that's like those guys are really just seeding their own demise If they're not moving up the ladder, moving up the food chain. I think that's what every copywriter should be focused on today, like it's a difficult time if you're new and breaking in, unless you're superiorly talented. If you have a great talent and great desire, you can make it in this business a hundred percent. But it's not as easy or forgiving as it once was and you don't have as much time necessarily. But um.

Speaker 2:

But for as far as ai goes, man, I use it every day. I love it, I love it. I love it like I. I I've used it to write subheads when I'm tired and don't want to write subheads, and I'll refine them. I'll use to give me lift note ideas and I'll go back and edit quite a bit. I'll use it on research almost exclusively. Um, compared to google, I'll. If it points my way to a book, I'll read the book.

Speaker 2:

But man, do I love AI for research. I use it for image generation. I think Shutterstock is dead. I think they're useless. I think Grok AI is like.

Speaker 2:

The images it generates are so incredible and funny. Like I actually asked it to generate an image of Trump on Mount Rushmore for my birthright promo that I did with Rickards and I actually went to chat with GPT first and it wouldn't do it. It wouldn't do it. It's like, oh, we can't, we can't do that for a public figure. I'm like, come on, it's like, what a Karen. So so I go over. So I go over to Grok and Grok's like yep, sure, and of course it botched it the first few times and uh, but the final, the final rendering, it came out so good I threw it in the promo.

Speaker 2:

It gave me a picture of Trump's face on a um, on a dollar bill or something like that, and it looked like it, looked like you could. It was engraved on there yesterday. It just looked so real and it's just you couldn't. You couldn't go to an artist and get that, like you know. Or if you did, it would take a lot of money and a lot of time to get the right artist lined up. But I think it's very freeing from a design perspective. You're thinking, man, I just need the right, visually compelling image to make this point.

Speaker 2:

I even used it to generate those images in Birthright of what the boom towns of the 19th and 20th century looked like before and after their gold rushes or oil rushes and oil rushes. And those pictures I mean I don't have time. I don't have time to go through archives and dig up actual pictures, but Grok served them up immediately. Another thing I'm using it for a lot is handling objections right. So the biggest thing, one of the biggest things about writing copy is you have, if you don't handle objections, you fail, because the reader or viewer sees it and has an unanswered objection you didn't take care of and they're gone, they'll blow.

Speaker 2:

So you could upload your entire script into one of these GPTs or rock and just say, like I want you to give me 20 skeptical questions.

Speaker 2:

So I used that for this records promo and I turned a bunch of those questions into the Q&A at the end and then I just riffed on you know with Jim on the end and then I just riffed on you know with with Jim on the um, on the answers. But it, it's, uh, it's, it's great for speeding up that part of the process. I don't think it's good for idea creation at all yet, but I don't think it's very creative at all. I think it's just all knowing and connected to all knowledge. I mean, if we had you or I had the ability to zap knowledge into our head, that we could write it as fast as chat gpt. It's just that we don't. We have to rely on our frail memories, um, and we don't have any wi-fi. So but, but it may get there someday and who knows, like I'm open, I'm open to having having it help me co-write if we do get to that point. It'd be crazy, not to though.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. So let me switch gears here for a second. Because you mentioned the Q&A at the end, I have kind of a. This is one of my copy geeky things the idea of these kind of like elements that you use in a promo like that are like a Q&A or like an involvement device, or in a video. Like you know, tv like has there's a lot of things that they do on tv that that the nielsen ratings and kind of watching data has driven them to do, like the banners at the bottom that are telling you what's coming next in the, in the video. Um, the teaser scripts or or the teaser promos in the beginning, things like that. What kind of like stuff like that? These like kind of format things. Um, do you kind of include in promos that maybe other people don't like, like that, like you know, q a at the end for specific objections, or do you think about that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2:

um, I I sometimes do.

Speaker 2:

I think I do it more on webinars because it just feels like that's part of the formula On the front end. I try to leverage curiosity as much as I can and it's just more of an actual pacing and teasing that goes on rather than a call-out, an explicit call-out. I never said in this promo with Rickards that, oh, we're going to have a Q&A at the end, because I didn't want to call it out because it wasn't an actual live Q&A anyway. So I didn't want to mislead people about that. But although with webinars you can, because if it's live you could actually do that, it's great. But yeah, I think it could be.

Speaker 2:

I think of it more of like a chain of like pulling somebody through and having one layer unfold after another, and I like having it slightly off kilter, I think. I think I think it's almost like there's different schools of thought when it comes to this, but we're not, since we're not exactly artists, you know. It's like an art and a science. I think it has elements of both and and and. I like things a little bit off kilter. I like things to go wrong or I like things to appear like somewhat odd, but not like what the heck is that I'm out of here. It's more just like slightly incongruent or just I want people to stop and wonder as they go through the copy. And that's sort of my, my own engagement device is to try to try to get them to feel that way is to try to get them to feel that way.

Speaker 2:

So in this example with Jim, we talked about Trump's claim of building 10 new American cities, which I thought was fascinating the moment he said it. It was very patriotic, but also a strange thing to say, because nobody ever does that Like, what does that even mean? And it kind of passed quickly in the news cycle a year or so ago. But then I thought about it and got with jim and we talked about, like, the future and how could, uh, what could be the basis of these new cities? How could this actually happen? What if they had something to do with these vast untapped minerals lying on federal lands, which is where he wants to build the cities on federal lands? Um, so it's, it felt like a bit of a curveball and uh, and patrick mckelvey is the chief over paradigm brought up a really good point we read the section was like yeah, this feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere. I'm like you're right, it kind of does.

Speaker 2:

So I went based on his objection. I inserted a line in there saying like when you hear this, it's probably gonna sound like a little bit, you know, crazy or like it's not gonna make any sense, but I promise it will in a minute, just like I tried to. That's one way to answer an objection is to just acknowledge it Even without answering it. Just acknowledge the fact that it's there. That way people don't think, man, this guy's crazy, like no, no, no, there's a whole point to this. We're going to get to that. So if you kind of you don't have to answer the objection that would be awkward if I answered the objection there. But if I simply acknowledge it, which I was so happy he brought to me because I was so close to this project, like we always do in our promo. But that's just another example there.

Speaker 1:

I like that phrasing too in general, because it's one of those things that it's kind of like a readership viewership sale. Like you open a loop and hey, we're going to explain this in a minute, just hold on. And so it's like okay, now I'm sticking around just for that, right? So I definitely like that, the idea of like going to geeky mode again of different ways to answer objections. I feel like there's some things that like, uh, cause natural objections, right, and some of those things you can remove instantly in the next sentence.

Speaker 1:

And so, like you're saying something like hey, I like take, take, like a really crass kind of straight up claim of like I turned you could turn 500 into a million dollars, right, theoretically, um, and then that's, that's kind of a, that's bullshit, um kind of thing. So if you, if you had that claim in there not that you would do that anymore, probably from a legal but like let's say that this could happen, um, you would then follow that up, if you could, with an immediate proof element, saying that this is true, even if you're going to come back to it later. But like you take, you understand that that whenever you say something, there is a reaction that's going to happen. You hit it immediately before moving on, because you don't let objections pile up.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah yeah, there's, and there's so many ways to do that. You could do it by acknowledging immediately, before moving on, because you don't let objections pile up yes, yeah, yeah, there's, and there's so many ways to do that. You could do it by acknowledging the audacity of the claim you know, like you could. You could say like I know that sounds crazy because, look, even if you took and you could pick out the highest flying stock there is, like, even if you put that money into Nvidia at the start, you wouldn't be anywhere close to that. So you may be wondering, like, what could possibly top that you know like, and the right answer is like you're probably never going to see that in your lifetime, except for maybe once or twice. And this just happens to be one of those opportunities. I'm going to explain why in a moment. So that's, in a way, it's like I'm not answering the objection, I'm just acknowledging. I'm just saying I'm not trying to blow smoke here, I'm not just throwing big numbers at you to get you greedy and then take your credit card, like I'm going to explain everything before you have to make any decision whatsoever. So that's a bit of a more like armor on the shoulder, like I get you, you get me like I'm not playing games here like, or.

Speaker 2:

Or you acknowledge how long it could take. You know, like I mean, depending on the nature of the investment, if it's crypto, maybe it's like an overnight you know sensation. But if it's what? If it? But what if it's a way to do that in 20 years? Well, 20 years is a long time, but it's still a pretty awesome return. So what if you could plant a seed right now that costs $500 and you knew in 20 years it'd be worth a million? Would that be boring to you? Unfortunately, most investors, they fall asleep when I talk like this because they want it tomorrow, but they're probably going to end up losing every penny. You could, because they want it tomorrow, but they're probably going to end up losing every penny. You know, like you could say something like that.

Speaker 1:

That's a little more like stern and loving, like a stern, loving parent. Well, that's like, um that classic, classic direct mail promo by Gary Benzavenga, um get rich slowly. And it's like the exact opposite of what everyone else was saying.

Speaker 2:

Um, but it's a backend service and that's the pick. You could say look, these are moonshots and 8 out of 10 of them are going to be dead wrong. 8 out of 10 of these are going to lose your money. One or two of them are going to make up for everything and then some, and then give an example of that. We've done that a million times at the vc center.

Speaker 2:

So it's really just I I don't mind, like I mean, like I don't mind being open and honest about that. It's actually stronger because when, if you're the reader or the viewer and you're saying bullshit, then I'm like I'm, I'm acknowledging your, your call of bs right there, and I think the other thing to do um change you really just don't see a lot of guys do is like too many guys use the um. I feel like I'm lecturing. This is crazy, but I feel like I'm doing it for a good reason. I want to help Um, so anyway, too many guys. I feel like they they turn the anchor in these promos into a yes man slash cheerleader and it's just sickening to me. I'll read it. I'll be like this is not real. This never happens. This is not what a real interview sounds like, have you watched a real interview? And I think the interviewer should represent the reader. The interviewer should be the most skeptical person on earth and you will get to witness their conversion over the course of the script, like then. So, as the viewer is being converted, the interviewer on the viewer is being converted, the in the interviewer on his screen is being converted, and that's what I try to do.

Speaker 2:

If you look at the, the script with aaron gensler did an amazing job hosting um. That's that's, that's his role and that he executed flawlessly. And it's important because, like, if you're cheerleading or just agreeing with everything or worse, inserting facts that support the case, why would an interviewer help somebody he's interviewing, like by cheerleading him and saying, I know it's even better, you know, like it's just it's so fake and I know the thing is like. That doesn't mean it won't work at all. Like, I think if you're writing in, if you're writing in the middle of a massive bull market or a hype cycle, the market's extremely forgiving you or a hype cycle, the market's extremely forgiving you can make lots of mistakes. I saw that even at Legacy in post-2020 when it was renting money with all the Stimmy checks. But that's not a normal environment. That's not a normal environment. You can't get away with that at a time like this.

Speaker 1:

And to your earlier point, that skill gap is one of those things there, just because you made some money you could have made a lot more money just because you made some royalties.

Speaker 2:

You could have made a lot more royalties. Sure, yeah, do it. Oh yeah, and and feel better, and feel better about it. Like I want to be able to send my promos to. I wish I do.

Speaker 2:

I send it to my dad, I send them to friends. My uncle even bought. He's like I'm going to sign up for this newsletter. I'm like cool, like is it worth it? I'm like this is for real. He's asking him like yeah, jim rickards is amazing man, he's one of a kind you're gonna love this newsletter. I love this newsletter.

Speaker 2:

So I won't, I won't write for anything I don't believe in. And then I won't write it unless I feel like I could send it to friends and family. My best friend bought too. I sent him. I sent him the link. He ended up he's like, oh deal, like man I can't believe you've never heard of him before. But uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so that's, that's what you want. You don't want to have to like hide what you've written.

Speaker 2:

Um, and a lot of that cringe copy where it's just like so on the nose it's just like, oh god, here comes the carnival barker again like, oh, stop it, just stop it, it's, it's. It does way more harm than good over time I think they it pushes away more customers than it attracts. So even if you do succeed, you're attracting a bunch of desperate loonies who are not going to be around for much longer. I don't want to do business with desperate loonies. I want to do business with people who are more like us, who are inquisitive, curious about the world, have some money to spend and really want to know. They're curious. They want to know. They really like they're. They're curious. They want to understand how those dots connect. Those to me are going to be best customers like not the life wrap grabbers, you know, like pill poppers and life grab grabbers like all my name that's dan kennedy line up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, is that the? So is that pretty much the? The problem that you were mentioning earlier, when somebody's writing something you're like this is a terror, like this is a terrible customer you're writing to, this is a yeah, because you're just so on the nose, you're so like you promised the moon and like misrep well, not misrepresent, but just hit the highlights only without like any depth to it oh, it kills me and it can work.

Speaker 2:

There's some guys I don't I won't mention names, but there's some guys in the business who've been very successful in that line and I, you know it's not. It's not, it's a free country. It's not like I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it. I mean, if that works for them, fine. But I just feel better about our business and the future of the business if we're not doing that and I don't, I would never want that to become the standard. I'm. I'm a libertarian at heart, I don't want to control anybody, but it's just. I just don't want to write that way To me. It just makes my stomach turn. And, uh, cause? It's not just about getting the sale. We're building an empire, we're building a relationship, we're building a connection, we're laying the ground for the next step to be taken. We're not just rolling into town selling our snake oil and then rolling out. And there's actually a story to that.

Speaker 2:

In Charlotte, locally here where I'm at, I was taking a tour the other day and there's this beautiful brick home in the center of the city and this guy who who built it, was peddling a hair tonic that he said would regrow men's hair and eliminate women's wrinkles, and he was there for about six months and he made so much money he was able to build this mansion right in the center of town. But then, of course, six months passed and all the bald guys like me didn't have any hair and the women were so I don't know how they were had a still resting bitch face and he, he was run out of town, you know, and probably had to go and do it somewhere else. So it's just uh and that's not. I don't want that lifestyle or legacy, I don't want to have anything to do with that. And I think people sometimes uh, well, I don't know if it's a conscious decision or or if it's just the way they're wired, or if they it's just money. You know it's not a connection to them, but I love this business way too much to write that way and I don't want to read it anyway.

Speaker 2:

So if I wouldn't want to eat, I wouldn't cook food that was loaded in seed oils and saturated fat and covered in sugar. I'm not eating that. I wouldn't serve it to anybody else either. So I kind of think of it the same way in the business, I wouldn't prepare an experience for the reader that's going to mislead them or obscure a key part of the story or lead to an inevitable letdown down the line.

Speaker 2:

And I wouldn't want to write to somebody who's not the avatar, not the type of person I'd want to hang out with or connect with in an event, or somebody who may not have the funds to even become a lifelong customer, although they could work their way up, I mean if they're just starting out. But yeah, I think those are questions that don't get asked often enough and because it's hard to measure, it's almost impossible to measure their impact where it's easy to measure the result of a sale, and so we tend to lean towards what's easiest to measure and use those metrics to guide the entire business. But then it was hard to understand, hard to fathom metrics that you'll never pin down, but they could matter a great deal. So it's really more about the spirit in which you approach it with good faith.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, nice. Well, I guess we're up on an hour, so I don't want to take too long here, but I do want to end with one quick thing, which is you mentioned before we started talking an opportunity that like if I was a young copywriter, a junior copywriter, I would kill for and this is I mean I literally picked up, sold my house, my wife and I my wife did her job to to to take an opportunity just like this which was how I got in the industry was I was a junior writer. Clayton make peace had a conference. He had a competition. I won the competition for a promo, I wrote and then did a little bit of work.

Speaker 1:

And then he calls me up like six, seven months later and he's like, hey, I'm going to hire a full-time writer here, a junior. I'm going to pay you peanuts. You're going to come here, you're going to learn everything, just as you get good, you're going to leave me and go off and make six figures, which is what did um right out of? You know um, but you're gonna learn more in those, in that in the first two years and of being here in person, than you ever would any other way. And I did. I sold my house, my wife quit her job, we moved to north carolina and if it wasn't for that, like I never would have had like that huge string of winners that I had, that then led me to starting fms and got me in the industry and really, like, started my career. And so you are literally I'm looking for somebody like that right now to come work with you in person in North Carolina. You want to talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I built this agency. We call ourselves FK7, which is kind of fun. It sounds like a Mission Impossible group, like an early Navy SEALs, but it's really an homage to the flesh Kincaid score FK seven we try to write that seventh grade level, um. So anyway, yeah, I have a bunch of really seasoned, talented guys on my team, but I and I have an abundance of ideas. They have abundance of ideas. I can't force multiply it. My team's not big enough, so I'm looking to grow my team over the long term. What I'm really looking for is for one supremely talented junior who's got some experience and a lot of upside to come live in this area with me, work at least a few days a week, um, in person and just soak up, you know whatever mad ramblings I have to share.

Speaker 2:

I'm approaching 50. I have a lot of ramblings. My ramblings are flowing over, so I think that just comes with age. Hopefully some of them are useful. But yeah, I want somebody. I need somebody actually for two reasons like really just to help me force multiply my ideas, and I do miss teaching and coaching. And you don't really get to do that with your senior guys because they've already kind of they figured it out and they have their own styles, kind of, they figured it out and they have their own styles. Why would I miss them?

Speaker 2:

But I'm also thinking about the future. Like, how do we grow like I want? My dream has always been to find the next me or the next better than me would be even better, um, and I found a couple of those guys in my career. I'm extremely excited to work with them and help develop them and I'm proud of them and but I also they're also extremely useful to me along the way. They put some money in my pocket as a copy chief as well, of course.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, I'd love to have somebody local or somebody who can move here and spend at least a year or two, and the way I want to get into that is maybe like do a one-off contract with a few people, if there are any candidates. We work together on a project, we see how it goes and then, if it goes really well and we hit it off on the right foot, then we can talk details about what comes next for next year. So, uh, I'd love it and thank you for helping me put that message out there, because it's important. I'm not like this is not a class. I can't hire a whole class like I did in the past. I don't have the bandwidth. But the right guy or gal, who, uh, who wants to step up and show me what they got, I'm all ears I mean, that's a like.

Speaker 1:

Anyone who's listening, who is serious about like moving into the copy in this industry in a real serious way, like that's, has to seriously consider that, just because that's a career making kind of experience. Um for sure, because you know, I think about like the like we were talking earlier, like the, the intangible things that you learn working in person with somebody who's working, the, the way that you get to see, especially with someone like you as a chief, working with lots of different promos and ideas and lots of different gurus, you're going to get into the business in all kinds of interesting ways and learn things you wouldn't learn just from like studying copy by itself, relationship building with people in the industry, like there's nothing more valuable outside of your skills than your network when it comes to your career, and like building an actual network of people in the industry that way, like it's just invaluable. So anyone who's serious about the industry, who's listening, who's maybe thinking like hey, I'd love to do this, like I would say, reach out to Patrick, how would somebody do that?

Speaker 2:

Oh, people at the Agora dot com. So my first initial last name people of a at the Agoracom. So yeah, I'll be. I'll be looking, I'll be checking those emails, we'll see who's out there. I know, I know there's a lot of talent in your audience and it's just a question of who's got the guts to do what you did when you were younger to go work with Clayton.

Speaker 2:

You know it makes all the difference in the world and I got that it is a big risk and especially if you have a family, I mean it's even harder, but it's got to be in person. That's the only way to do it. You can't do this remote when you're starting out, and I that's. That's what I got out of Palmer when I went to Stansbury back in 2011,. I planted myself right next to him. I listened to every conversation he had. I took advantage of every opportunity to have him look over my copy and absorbed as much as I could of his wisdom and brilliance. So and it's worked out well. I can't imagine not having access to him at that point in my life. You know, it was just like he's an incredible guy and copywriter. So it's just. He's trained infinite like seemingly infinite number of pros. So that's really the best way to learn.

Speaker 2:

It's not from a course, it's not from a book. It's from being in the trenches with a chief who cares, who's going to shower you with attention and you're going to work your ass off to help them. You know, and you help each other and, uh, that's the only way I've seen it work in this business. That's that you either all you either go all the way or you don't go at all. You know like you go all in or riders will make that sacrifice and and go, and people have moved to war zones like Baltimore, you know like for years, just to get exposed to all these talented copywriters who are there and uh, it's, but it was worth it. You know like nobody died and everybody came out richer and happier. You know so, and Charlotte's lovely, so I don't know, it's very mild winter, lower cost of living in.

Speaker 1:

Florida yeah there you go. Thanks for the endorsement. No, it is. It's a great town, great food town, great beaches. It's just a great town for real, awesome. Well, thanks, man. This is always great to talk to you. Anyone who's listening pay attention. Maybe give Patrick an email if you're a copywriter. Uh and yeah thanks, man.

Speaker 2:

That was fun, john, always great to talk to you. I enjoy these chats, I'm. We should definitely keep them up once or twice a year. Bare minimum, I appreciate it. Thanks, all right, take care. All right, man, bye.