Classroom to Copy #15: Sean MacIntyre's Journey From Grading Papers & Waiting Tables to Becoming a Top Agora Financial Copywriter (Part 1/2)
11:36PM Aug 22, 2023
Speakers:
Tania Yeo
Sean MacIntyre
Keywords:
people
copy
copywriting
idea
bill bonner
copywriter
work
write
mark
mentorship
recognise
teaching
learning
newsletters
writing
marking
agora
books
big
transubstantiation
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of classroom to copy today I have a very special guest as promised, He is the first teacher turned copywriter I ever met, like I think he also studied like English and literature in college. And then he was a professor. I looked, I looked up your LinkedIn. Professor Miami Dade Dad, how do you pronounce that? Miami did Miami Dade College about eight years ago. And he's the first financial copywriter I've also met and, you know, meeting him was the first time I realised like, hey, there's a lot more I can do with my qualifications and my experience than just what I thought, you know, I thought was just limited to teaching English online for the rest of my life. And there's nothing wrong with that. And that's actually how I funded my start in copywriting. But, yeah, meeting Sean McIntyre, whom you will meet in a moment, is the first time I realised like, there's a lot of work to do and but, you know, my creative background and you know, my creative writing degree. So I just saw him gesture at the camera, but I have to let him know actually, I'm just recording the audio, because we like that. Anyway, it's time for him to introduce himself. Now before I keep rambling. You want to share with us like what you currently do. All the amazing things that that you're up to right now?
Oh, certainly, Tanya, I'm pleased and delighted to be on the show. And I'm pleased and delighted to be talking to you and also saluting at the camera and all the people that are listening today, they listening felt that salute. So I currently am a copywriter. But I sort of stand editorial sales, copy and marketing copy for a number of businesses that I own of the biggest one of them being a content licencing business that mainly does business in Japan. So I write a number of newsletters for them. I do marketing consulting for them. I write sales copy, there's an American offshoot of that business called DIY wealth at DIY wealth.com. We have a YouTube channel as well, where I'm the sort of chief editor and an analyst where I use not only my background in writing, but also my background in finance, and generally tell people to be better about saving their money and trying to live a more fulfilling wealthy life. I also write have written some freelance copy but I haven't had time in the last year or so for other businesses I mainly have to write editorial and copy for my own businesses. That also includes the show copy that which has a YouTube channel and has a steadily growing following I don't know why but I guess some people miss like my shiny endearing bald head. And, you know, spattering of other things too, you know, I've I've had three agencies that I've opened and closed I've I also am a part owner in a transmission company owner in a tutoring business in Austin, Texas, general entrepreneurship and trying to spin up a bunch of plates and seeing what sticks and really right now financial copy and editorial and copy that are the two things that are really sticking.
See, I knew you were up to way more things than I can pick up from like your website and your LinkedIn a tutoring business. I have no idea. And for anyone listening his DIY wealth YouTube channel is extremely entertaining and educational and I highly recommend it just even though thumbnails every time he posts them on LinkedIn. I'm just like, you have to watch this. You can't like just scroll past a thumbnail like that.
Yeah, I have to say my wife does the thumbnails for both my wife and for copy that and I have to say that her work is utterly exceptional as with all things about her
so she does the thumbnails for copy that yeah, the ones where like they she she transplants their heads onto like baby bodies. Wow. I actually send people like like teachers and people who hit me up on LinkedIn and you're like, hey, what's copywriting? And you know what's, uh, what's the big deal about that? Actually, I send everyone to copy that and to LX Smyers six our amazing copy training. That's the first place I point everyone because I mean, not to diss on your shiny head, but you know that just there's a wealth of information you can get just from the copy that channel and like the six hour training that Alex posted. That's actually where I got my foundation in copywriting. Like he, he really like he really was right when he said that everything you need to know, you can get in the six hours. Yeah. And I noticed from stalking you and your experience on LinkedIn that okay, so you started off as a professor at Miami Dade College, eight
years? No, no, no, no, I'll just sort of give the Reader's Digest version of my so when I was getting my first master's degree, it was at the California State University, Northridge. And they had a programme that basically covered tuition and give a stipend. If you taught some freshman level rhetoric classes, and I was like, I like money on do that. And so I signed up, it was about a year of learning pedagogy. I love pedagogy. And, you know, after that I was basically teaching at the age of I think I was 23, or 24, when I became a college professor, something slightly below an adjunct, and did that until I got my, you know, finished up my first master's degree in literature. And then, at the same time, I was also studying and trying to get a second bachelor's degree in linguistics. And during that time, I was also taking a number of classes in teaching English as a second language. And so I was just shadowing teachers, I was preparing to live abroad and teach English abroad. But then I got accepted at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign for a Master's in Fine Art and in creative writing. Because I guess I'm that good, didn't end up finishing the linguistics degree, finished the master's degree, moved to Illinois. And they similarly had a hey, teach freshman composition, in exchange for, you know, a little bit of money. And so I did that. And so top for my three years, I was at the University of Illinois. And then my ex wife, my wife at the time, she got accepted into medical school in Miami. So I moved from Illinois to Miami, and I got a job as an adjunct professor at Miami Dade College. And one of the things that I learned along the way was how much I utterly, utterly detest grading papers. I, the teaching is fun. Seeing a concept of the cosmos, awaken in a student's mind as you explain a concept in a new or novel way that finally clicks with them. That's amazing, supremely fulfilling, that's perhaps why I have a YouTube channel that teaches copy. But the actual act of sitting down with you know, I was doing it for four. And so that's four classes in the fall four classes in the spring. So, you know, that was about 30 students per class. So 30 times four, that's 120 papers times four papers per class, as 480 papers per semester. And, and like, I'm a little bit of a trihard I have to admit that and, like, I wouldn't just like sit down and you know, you know, right out read Where's Waldo, like, you know, I would actually sit down and try to give people comprehensive feedback on every single essay. I guarantee that almost nobody read the feedback that I gave them. But like it was, it was a slog, man, it was, it was painful. On top of that, like I was getting, you know, adjunct salary, which is like, I think after taxes was like, $18,000, and take home. So I literally had to moonlight as a waiter when I was living in Miami, and I literally would work all day, you know, from like, I tried to do the early morning classes there. So it was like six or seven o'clock in the morning until about like sometime in the afternoon. And then I would drive to a political books and books in Miami, and I worked at the cafe, I was a barista and a surfer there. And I would work the late shift. And what I would do is I would actually take student papers and keep them in my server book. And I would in between, like taking orders or you know, while I was waiting, I would like be grading student papers in my server book. It was how should I say, an unsustainable lifestyle?
When they like reach a point of no return. You're like, I can't do this anymore.
So I definitely hit that point. So here's the thing at Miami Dade College, they actually, you know, similar to what you described before you started the podcast, I was on a bit of a probationary period as an adjunct. And they, they said, your, all your reviews are great. People love you, you get the politics of this. You're a good teacher, all, like, all the classroom observations have been really good. Do you want to be on tenure track, and I was like, Well, my, again, my ex wife, my wife at the time, like we had to go. So medical school, it's four years. And she had to do two years Miami in two years in West Palm Beach during a period of time, which are called rotations, rotations, or when a medical student goes from surgery to pathology to and basically just shadows doctors for a certain amount of time to learn what they do. And so the second set of two years ago, she was going to be up in West Palm Beach. And so I was like, okay, tenure track, let's like the dream for a teacher, you know, that's basically like, a huge boost and pay benefits you get in the Union like it was, you know, it basically you get pilots, everybody wants cloud. But I had to turn that down because, you know, marriage. And what I ended up doing was I applied to a college called Palm Beach Atlantic University. And they were a supremely like Christian college, I was raised Catholic. And Todd, I was Catholic until I until my mom told me that I was Jewish at the age of 27. Now, I don't know what else. But they were like, hey, yeah, you can teach freshman composition. They love me. They love the interview, they were ready to give me you know, for classes in the fall and stuff like that. And but then they had rules about like, well, you also have to attend church services. And you also have to attend like mass and like, and stuff like that. And I was like, Man, I want to make jokes about coops and dicks and stuff like that. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. That sounds silly. And like dishonest. And like, you know, I have I have a horrible chronic disease called integrity. And so I was just like, I can't do this. And so I dropped that completely. And basically, what happened was, I was like, Well, what do I do? Oh, I have been freelance writing, you know, picking up odd jobs here and there as a freelance writer since about 2001. And so my first didn't call it copywriting at the time, didn't know it was called copywriting at the time. My first copywriting gig was in the summer of 2015. And I got it from posting of Craigslist ads, like, Hey, anybody need a writer, like, I will, I will do an writing I will do a writing for you, and knock some things out of the park and it goes reading a book for a business professor. And I was making money as a freelancer making enough money to sustain myself. But I wanted the security and stability and so I ended up applying for a part time job as a proofreader at a small little company called Palm Beach research group that eventually became legacy research group, now a part of market wise the parent company of Sandberg and Associates for Tanya. Tanya currently works. And so yeah, it is a small world. I do not want to paint it. But yeah, I started out as a proofreader at agora and I got it because I was like, Yeah, might as well get some extra income. And I moved up from there to from proofer to publisher and copywriter within about 13 months.
Wait, so you're a publisher at some point?
Yeah. So in December of 2016, Mark Ford basically said, like, hey, I want to break off my division of Palm Beach research group and go somewhere else. Are you gonna be my guy? I was like, Okay. And so I became the publisher of creating wealth publications, and we attach that business to agora financial. We tried to launch there. That was in late 2017. You know, I wrote the copy I was the publisher handle all the marketing stuff like that? Wrote the launch package. And it was kind of middling package at the time, like crypto was working exceedingly well, like you know, all these get rich quick kinds of messages were working really well. And so like, the Marx message of like, slow the F down, enjoy life, you know, real wealth is not about like, how much ROI you get, like that message just wasn't resonating with the list. And so he was a little disheartened by that. And he decided, yeah, I'm gonna retire, but it was like the seventh time he retired.
Can you share with our audience who marked for this and like, how important he's been in your journey?
Of course, Mark Ford, otherwise known by his pen name, Michael Masterson has written a number of books, most famously ready fire aim, but he's written a number of books that were bestsellers including automatic wealth reluctant entrepreneurs having versus seven figures pledge that he is a very prolific writer. He started the blog early to rise which was basically one of the first like, copywriting slash business guru slash entrepreneurship guru blogs, like ever like the, on the internet and it was started, like, as a listserv email that then was turned into a blog and I think it was the year 2000 or 2001. Nobody knew what the hell to do with the Internet back then. Or like how, how direct response would even work on the internet. But hey, you know, here we are. And his, his fame kind of grew. But you know, he got his start in the 80s basically writing, you know, sales copy for like tchotchkes and TVs from China and stuff like that, like, you know, selling knockoff products and, you know, site like newsletters about psychic powers and shit like that. He hooked up with a Gora in 1993, he and Bill Bonner were acquainted, but they were competitors for many years. So I think the second or third time Mark Ford retired, he decided, you know, these, becoming an Octo Millionaire was not enough for him. And so he went back to work. And he got a job consulting, like being a partner with agora and through abora to what it is today with Bill Bonner. Mark Ford. After I got out of the proofing pool, I was noticed by my current business partner, Lindsay, she noticed that I was a rising talent that I was a go getter. Because what I was doing in the proofing pool was like, I would go into the office, and I would prove all my stuff. And I'd be bored. And so I just be reading the newsletters that we did. And I noticed that a number of the newsletters had like, you know, briefs, little pockets of like other information, book reviews, things like that. And so what I did was I just started as an employee started writing stuff on spec and sending them to the managing editors being like, hey, like, you know, I know you need content, like what do you think about publishing this. And since I had so much experience as a freelance writer like that was it was an easy transition. And so within three months of getting hired as a part time, proofreader, I was bumped up to assistant managing editor a few months later was managing editor and then, you know, by the end of 2016, that wraps us right around. But Mark four was essentially my first mentor, as a copywriter. And it's funny. The first copy that I ever sent to them in 2016, was, he responded, and I quote, this copy sounds like copy, fucking stop it. rewrite this so that your copy doesn't sound like copy. So that's the first feedback that I ever got from Mark Ford about coffee that I have written.
Oh, that's like, Well, my coffee chief has a gentler way of saying it, it looks like coffee, but smells like coffee, and it smells like coffee, but you know, it, rewrite this. And basically, when it sells when it sounds too salesy, right and sticky and not like connecting with people on an authentic level. So I remember you sharing a lot of things with the coffee collective about because I know people were like, so many people are asking, like, how do you find a mentor? How you get someone to mentor you? And you're like, it's, it's a lot more complicated than that. And a lot of these things happen organically. Do you want to share some of the stuff that you shared in the discord?
Yeah, I mean, there's so much that I've shared so you're gonna have to, like, you know, calibrate me as I, as I sort of, you know, shotgun out answers. But since you start with mentors, like, let's talk about mentorship for a moment, mentorship and copywriting, I think there's a, there's a common misconception that people need a mentor to start copywriting. And I think that that misconception has proliferated by people who sell mentorship, and who tried to position themselves as an expert, that is, you know, willing to step down from the cloud. And you know, except the plebs. And you know, if you pay me enough, I guess I'll help you, you know, stuff like that. But here's the thing, like, what are your common questions when you're a newbie, it's like, okay, well, what even is copy? How How, where does copywriting go? Do it? Should I write copy in a Word document or a Google Documents? Like these are the kinds of questions that I get from people that are true newbies? Like, they don't know anything. And so here's the thing, all the answers to those kinds of questions. They're out there, they're available for free and like, like, even more advanced stuff, like the role of copywriting, how to think about covering how to think about sales, how to actually like write copy and research, copy, you know, my business, puts all that stuff out there. for free so that people don't feel like they have to pay for mentorship. And so I feel about mentorship, the same way that I feel about getting critiques on copy, which is learn everything that you can. Everything possible on your own. Only when you are like looking around and stuff, reading books, and you're like, I'm not learning anything. Where do I go from here? That's the point when you get a mentor. That's the point when getting a mentor actually makes sense. Because it's at that point where you need some other set of eyes come to be like, well, you're missing this and this and this and this stuff that you don't know that you don't know. But here's the thing. When you're starting out, you know, that you don't know stuff. And so just get all that stuff out of the way first, before you actually seek out a mentor.
Well, thank you like that You took the words, enough? Yeah, this a lot. I think there's a lot that people can do on your own to be like resourceful, and like, self sufficient to a point where you need that external eye. And by the time you've reached that stage, you're no longer How does nicely, like being a pest to someone who's helped you would like to get and I'll know, because I put this, put this nicely. Like, give you value that person's time, then you need to figure out the stuff that that you need to figure out on your own first, and, and see what are things that you genuinely need help with? And also how do you approach that that mentorship or that working relationship with like, respect for the other person's time, I mean, something that kind of drove me crazy in three communities is sometimes I felt that people felt entitled to the time of more experienced copywriters, and just like, I wasn't even experienced, I was, you know, part of your community. And when people know that I was an English teacher, they would, they would ask me to teach them stuff. And I was like, I did, like free over time for six years. I don't want to do that anymore. Please don't. Yeah, there's, there's, I think, by the time you've gotten out there and and looked up resources on your own, practice on your own, which I'm going to ask Shawn to share with you in a moment, like some of the practices he shared, that really like fast tracked everything for me, like, you have to do all of that, to a point where you know, the questions that are meaningful enough to like, or someone who's more experienced, and like, in my case, I actually, you know, eventually, I can't write coffee on my own anymore. Like I did everything Sean said, I put my coffee away in the door for 10 days, and then went back to it. And I was like, I still can't see what else and I was like, okay, um, let's look for something. Joint coffee chief. And even then I was like, I don't want to bug anybody. All I did was just tried to contribute to the community. And that's, for me, that's how mentorship came about organically, like people saw the effort and then reached out to help. I don't know if that makes sense.
No, I think it does. And if I may interpolate a response to sort of what you've just put out there. You know, there's a fine line between like, you know, appearing as an asset versus appearing as a as a pest. And what I have found over the years is that mentors and experience people, they, they can recognise when somebody is being an asset, and is typically people who, you know, are self starters who find the answers to basic questions on their own. And, like, ask more nuanced complex questions, you know, based at like, after, clearly displaying that they have, you know, the sort of basic knowledge that is necessary. And in general, like mentors, and more experienced people really respond well to people who just show drive and initiative and do make an effort to help others as well. You know, almost all of the, how shall I say, success that I've had in coffee that has come from like trying to strike that balance between like, you know, having healthy boundaries, of course, you can't answer everything, but also just being exceedingly generous and helpful with other people. And I think, you know, it's this is basic, Robert Kennedy. any influence kind of stuff, people respond reciprocally to people who give. And when one gives, things tend to fall back, you know, we don't need to get into, like woowoo with like, the secret kind of stuff, you know? What is the theory? Is something like the universe like? Yeah, that's it. That's it? Yeah, I don't I don't buy into any of that stuff. And I think it's much more simpler, much more simple to just understand that human psychology, like, you know, we have these built in mechanisms that drive guilt. And when we see somebody gives something to us, we want to give something back. Yeah. And so I think, I think that mentorship and mentors and experience people, you know, they recognise that they recognise when somebody is like, willing to give and willing to do and willing to put in the work. It's obvious, like if you know what to look for.
Yeah, I think, just to sneak in something really quick in there. I think the internet has also distorted the way we approach our fellow human beings. And sometimes I see some of the messages I guess, I don't think you would say this, too. If you met me on the street, like, would you go to a stranger like and and ask for their labour, like, out of the blue without introducing yourself or getting to know who they are first. So it's, it's a lot more basic and simple than like the woowoo of the law of attraction, which I don't buy into either is just like, treating each other. Like I'm being being a decent human being.
I'm shocking how that works.
Yeah, so um, Shang was the I know that I mean, I don't know if it came from you. I've heard this practice from like, a few different places. But you were the first person to like, introduce me to the idea like, of reading coffee every day mark, marking up coffee everyday writing coffee every day and coming up with Yeah.
So that actually, I learned that from Joe Schrieffer. I don't know if he's the origin of it. But he, Joe Schrieffer was the publisher, executive publisher and a copywriter for agora financial. He, you know, you meet some people in life, and they are just like, they like, you just speak to them for 10 seconds, and you instantly recognise Oh, my God, this person is so competent, and so charismatic and so kind and so cool. Joe Schrieffer is one of those people, Bill Bonner Mark Porter of those kinds of people as well. Like, I don't think there's a more charismatic person on the planet than Bill Bonner. But Joe Schrieffer, he was teaching copywriting. And one of the things that he recognised and then I think most people need to recognise is that you learn copy from reading and writing copy. And that's sort of lined up with my own. You know, how I learned copy, which was, you know, I read two books, I read great leads, and I read persuasion, both by Michael Masterson artwork. And I actually messaged mark, and I said, So I read these two books, which I read next year, I get a course from Awai. Like, what should I do? And Mark wrote back and this is exactly what he said, That's enough theory for now. Go, we'd write copy, go mark up and read great copy and then start writing copy, just get the get a toehold in theory, and then start actually like absorbing and producing. And that's a big thing that I think a lot of people miss out, you know, people that are interested in copywriting, like, I'll find out very quickly, like, you know, they still browse the internet with AdBlock on, you know, they don't click on the links that they get in emails, they don't participate in the thing that they want to do. And so of course, they have no idea what copy is because they've never actually read copy. And so one of the best things that a person could do is just have a daily practice that allows them to gain exposure to the language and the ideas and the structures of copywriting, whatever form that may take, whether it's email, sales pages, landing pages, squeeze pages, other types of pages, whatever. And the advice that Joe Schrieffer gave to achieve that was, listen, if you want to learn long form, direct response, copywriting, gotta read a promo day. Some of these things are like 60 to 120 pages long. Read the whole thing in a single setting. Just do it. That is going to train you to like, one be diligent and one be deliberate in like your actual practice, and like it teaches you how to focus and he means like, actively read it like Mark have actually like notice patterns, make connections, things like that. They said that in addition to that, you also got to write, you know, a page of coffee a day, you know, what is the page just like 200 to 300 words like anybody can do that also, like, it can be like the part of something that you're building over time. If you write a page a day, man, you're going to end up the year with 365 pages, that's a books length of whatever it is you're doing, you know, one page a day, adds up quick. And, you know, like one page a day, like, say, you are writing a promo, you know, you write one page a day. And, you know, let's leave revising, you know, off to the side of this conversation for a moment, you know, that's two months, is the typical timeframe that, you know, we expect a promo to be done, you know, eight weeks, two months. And, hey, guess what, two months is about the amount of days that you would get if you wrote a page a day, that would lead you to have a problem on your hands. And then the other thing that he said was come up with an idea day. And this is something that I've actually found a number of people struggle with, people generally don't. They don't know what is meant by an idea. And most of that is because they don't read idea driven copy. Just for an example, like, an idea might be, for example, hey, what if we have a, you know, an advertorial page between this PPC ad and a landing page? You know, that's a marketing idea of sales copy idea might be something along the lines of like, hey, you know, these master limited partnerships, this kind of stock is paying distributed income and it's being registered with the IRS as royalty. Well, it's because royalties, people who write books, hey, yeah, we can we can write a pro basically around the idea of like, if you want to get royalties like Brock Obama, well, guess what, Brock, Obama gets this much in royalties, if you want. If you want access to this income stream royalties, here's a way to do it. Hi, master limited partnerships. And so that's, that's an idea. And those are the kinds of ideas that financial copywriters are expected to come up with. But there are many other ideas too. Like, for example, you know, I was reading a diet sales letter relatively recently. And the sort of the ordinary idea, the sort of non transubstantiated Transubstantiation is, you know, both I think Mark and Bill raised Catholic, so when they came up with all these terms, there's that sort of, like,
so much the first time was like, Isn't this like? Yeah, I don't know which of the is it? Catholic?
Yeah, it's Catholicism. And so, capitalism. Yeah. The all the people that came up with these terms, like were deeply Catholic, and oh, like, you know, Transubstantiation, you know, and several other terms come from Catholicism as well. But Transubstantiation is, when Jesus turned water into wine, and transportation, transport, I can't even say it Transubstantiation and copy is when you take an ordinary idea or an ordinary mechanism, and you transform it into something magical, something wonderful, something completely different from what it was still the same base matter. But now extraordinary in a reader's mind. And this weight loss sales letter that I was reading, the ordinary idea was about how cortisol affects our tendency to hold on to adipose tissue that is no fat matter. And so basically, one way to reduce your body's tendency to hold on to fat is to lower the levels of cortisol in the blood. Well, how do you do that you can reduce the level of stress you're exposed to? How does one know lower stress? Well, there are actually some supplements that can help do this. Well, if you take a supplement that relaxes you and lowers your cholesterol, we might call that a fat burning reset switch. That's the idea of that promo. Now, all of a sudden, like, you see, like, there's a series of logical steps that goes in between, hey, you know, this is a thing, you know, this is a mechanism that causes a thing to happen. How can we turn that into an idea that would be alluring to people? Because if you say to people, Hey, lower your stress, and you could lose weight. Everybody's going to ignore that because people people don't want to be told what to do necessarily. They just want solutions. They want that, you know, magic black box where they press the button, the thing that they want their life magically comes out. And that's, you know, the sort of the logic of copy and that's the logic of spinning out ideas, crafting those automatic boxes that spit out results that people desire.
Yeah. Do you have Like a process that you go through yourself or coming up with, you're actually, I've noticed that almost every financial copywriter I've met defines Big Idea differently. So how do you define it? And like, what, what's your own process for like, coming up with these ideas?
I mean, I'm about I'm actually in the middle of writing a newsletter for the copy that email list about big ideas, like, what what they are. And the first thing I started off with is like, everybody is confused about what a big idea is. And so what's funny is I actually conducted a, still to this day, unpublished interview with Mark Ford in 2018, where I basically asked him like, what is the origin of the big idea? Where does it come from? What is it? And like, how do people get it? And I'm incorporating segments of that interview in this particular newsletter. And he's basically saying, like, nobody knows what the frick of big ideas is that people. And part of the problem is that people have taken like, Oh, if you want to sell something, you have to offer like one specific thing that is going to be the solution to problems. And what marketers did was they said, Oh, you're Poppy sucks. Your marketing sucks, because it lacks a big idea. And Mark is just like, no, like, of his entire career, maybe five to 35% of his sales came from big idea of promotion. So that is promotions that are driven by an arresting, evocative, intellectually stimulating, emotionally compelling idea, a notion like getting royalties like Barack Obama, or the notion that America's sought not sovereignty, but as curiosity is intrinsically tied to the US dollar being reserve currency and how America superiority is being put into threat because of challenges to the US Dollar as a reserve currency. That's a big idea. You know, if people like understand that idea, and recognise it, they're like, Oh, crap, well, what do I do? And that is one of the emotions that leads people to buy. And so big idea promos, you know, they're very timely, they're very specific. Like, it's, it's like lightning in a bottle. Like, you know, one of the things that Kyle Milligan, another copywriting YouTuber, and a friend of mine, likes to say is that like, people need to stop pointing to end of America as being like this bastion of copy that people need to read because Big Idea copy is so specific to like, a moment, a Zeitgeist a feeling that people have. It's like, it really is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. And for that reason, like most hoppy that sells well, it's actually gimmicks, it's it's, you know, small ideas, it's no good offers, it's it's mostly gimmicks, let's be real. Like, for example, you know, these 48 simple tricks to like boost your retirement income or something like that, or like, you know, the four words you can say to a bank teller to get free silver, things like that. Those are those are arguments, they're not ideas, but people think they're ideas, rather big ideas. They are certainly ideas. But an idea is really it has a Freshman Composition player like it's, it's a thesis, it's an argument, it is something that is debatable, it is a thing that you can prove or disprove. And that's important for a sales argument, something that you would do on a piece of sales copy, because you're saying a thing, hey, this is a thing that's happening. And also, here's the proof. And you can prove it with stories of facts or statistics, stories tend to sell better. And also like, if you know, the end result, the end logical result of this argument is, hey, you should probably buy this thing so that you can tap into whatever it is I was talking about. And so, you know, really big ideas. The biggest, big idea person was Bill Bonner. And he, you know, there's so many things that you need to have in sales copy to, like, make it work. You know, a good offer promises is proof and backup, like, closes, high pressure closes. And Bill Bonner was just like, Nah, fuck all that, like I, I just want to write really compelling, interesting ideas about the world and talk to people about them. And so Bill Bonner was the sort of pioneer sort of like, how should I say co opted the term big idea from David Ogilvy a famous ad man who once famously said that if you want your advertisement to stand a chance, it has to have a big idea of advertising stuff, big ideas, prospects will pass them like a ship in the night. Not what does he say? Not one in 100 advertisements have a big idea. It was the often omitted end of that quote. And, you know, really what David Oglesby was talking about in terms of These ideas was like, Hey, if you want to make cigarette smoking cool show a picture of a cowboy smoking a cigarette. That was his version of an idea. And Mark Ford when I interviewed him, you know, he talked about like, that's not really an idea and arguable thesis, that's just a notion that people have, what are the feelings and things that people think when they see a cowboy? Okay, when they see a cowboy, and they feel and think these things and have these notions, how does that associate with cigarette smoking? That's what's going on there psychologically. And that's really an important thing for people to sort of, like, tease out and distinguish. But so many people misuse and abuse the term idea or big idea and copy that. It's almost like, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, somebody's going to come up to you and say the word irregardless. And you just in order for the conversation to progress, you can't correct them. You just have to accept that this person is going to say to you the word irregardless. And that's it. There's nothing you can do.
So I was curious, you know, hearing you talk about like, the Freshman Composition thing. When you're, you first start learning copywriting? Do you transfer any of like, your skills as like an English major or professor to the process, especially like marking up copy, dissecting the sales argument, stuff like that?
Yeah, what's interesting is that, you know, I, my focus when I was getting my first master's degree was in post structuralism, deconstruction, things like that post modernism. And one of the things the common threads between deconstruction, and I believe it was Russian formalism, and also was Greenblatt, I forget, I forget the thread of theory that he belonged to the sort of American version of Russian formalism. But basically, the common thread is this notion of deep reading, like, what are like every single word if we look at in breakout down a text, not in terms of the big themes that I'm talking about, but like word for word, sentence by sentence, punctuation mark by punctuation mark, what is actually going on here? What is under the hood of this writing. And the cool thing about learning that and practising that is it really prepared me for like how to break down copy how to annotate, copy, how to think about copy, because copywriting operates in this different register of language. You know, the way that you speak to a person on the street versus a person on the internet. It's different from how you would speak to a bank teller, for example, you know, that's the difference between a register of language and copywriting has a register of some people right in this very salesy. You know, as we talked about before, person A pushy, aggressive, kind of register, but really good copywriting is more like, how shall I say, almost conversational in nature, it's very friendly, it's very supportive, and learning how to speak in that register and how to like write words and sentences that cut out the fluff and very succinctly deliver messages in that register. You know, it requires a lot of deep reading and a lot of thinking and a lot of practice.
Yeah, yeah. That's what I was like really grateful for having a literature background because I was like, I just went from like, marking up poems with my students to like marking up sales letters, I was like, okay, and like you had this really handy list of stuff to look out for and promos like throwing rocks at the villain and Okay, still on admissions of guilt, I was like, Okay, once you start once you know the components to look out for you know, it's really like for me it was like marking up a literary texts and just transferring my skills as a teacher and even as a student over to being a student of coffee.
Hey, guys, so this conversation I had with Sean went on for I think, almost 70 minutes, so I'm gonna split this up into two episodes in this conversation will be continued. So stay tuned for next week's episode. We'll continue this conversation. I promise you it's going to be lots of fun. And I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Alright, see you next on the next episode of classroom new copy.