29x29: Sales Pages and Analysis

Keep scrolling to see every sales page and analysis from the 29x29 Project.

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DAY 1: HEADSPACE

How to Reprogram Your Mind to Reduce Stress by 14% in Just 10 Days

The Technique is Incredibly Simple — And You Can Start Using it Today.

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon, and you don’t have to be a monk.

All you have to do is listen to an audio recording and follow along. (You can do this in your room, on the subway, or in the car on your lunch break.)

You might think you’re doomed to deal with anxiety and stress forever. You might even have trouble doing your job or having fun with friends because you’re so anxious.

But — as you’ll learn in this letter — you’re not doomed.

Science has shown you can actually reprogram your mind to reduce stress and anxiety and start sleeping better, too.

It feels like a 50-lb dumbbell on your chest.

Doesn’t it?

Or maybe it feels like you have so many thoughts in your mind that you can’t decide what any of them mean. You don’t know which ones are true and which ones are false.

So you chase them around, trying to determine the difference. And then — once you finally do get your “answer” or find some peace, your mind comes up with another problem to solve.

It feels like an endless cycle.

And you’re not sure if you’ll ever be free of it.

That’s the problem with anxiety and stress. They turn you into a prisoner of your own mind. And no matter how bad you want to get out — to go through a single day without worrying, to get one restful night’s sleep — it makes you feel powerless.

Is there anything you can do?

Your anxiety would tell you the answer is “no.” He’ll tell you that he’s here to stay. And you’ll have to deal with him for the rest of your life.

I’m here to tell you he’s a liar.

Your anxiety has been lying to you.

If you think about it, you’ll realize the human brain has evolved to keep you alive. It’s why you feel a rush of adrenaline when you’re walking down a dark alley at night.

You know there’s potential for real danger.

But sometimes your brain can be overactive. It sends you signals that indicate there’s danger even when there’s not.

It’s why you can be just as nervous about starting a conversation with a cute stranger as you can be about finding a snake in your garden.

But you can change your brain.

Have you heard of something called “neuroplasticity?”

It means that your brain changes based on what it experiences. So, if your brain experiences anxiety, stress, or fear constantly — that becomes its default state.

So if you want to reduce stress and anxiety, you need to reprogram your brain by helping it experience less anxiety, stress, and fear.

But how do you do that?

In short, you do the opposite of what you’ve been doing.

Why doing the opposite works.

Here is what you’ve probably been doing:

Step 1: Stressful thought appears

Step 2: You chase the thought down the rabbit hole

Step 3: You fall into a pit of anxiety, stress, and fear

Step 4: You believe that, if you continue thinking through the problem, you will find a solution

Step 5: Your mind continues to thrash about, looking for an acceptable answer to make the anxiety go away

Step 6 (optional): Your mind finds an answer. It feels at peace.

Step 7 (optional): Your mind creates a new stressful thought.

Step 8: Repeat the process

To reprogram your mind and reduce your anxiety and stress, you have to introduce a new pattern.

Step 1: Stressful thought appears

Step 2: You notice the stressful thought

Step 3: You come back to the present moment.

But this can be scary. Your anxiety will tell you that you NEED to find an answer RIGHT NOW. But again, he’s lying.

But it’s hard to realize that without the right guidance, and it’s very easy to fall into old patterns and end up back down the rabbit hole.

With the right guidance, you can train your brain to follow a healthier pattern.

That’s what Headspace does.

It’s a guided meditation app that walks you through the exact steps you need to follow to reprogram your brain to experience less stress and anxiety — and more peace and happiness.

It works.

In 2018, a study using Headspace in the workplace showed “a 46% decrease in distress and a 31% reduction in negative feelings” after just 8 weeks of use.

You might think meditation is just for monks or hippies, but that’s no longer true. Even “companies like Goldman Sachs and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have bought package subscriptions for employees.”

Can you imagine?

Waking up in the morning without heart-pounding anxiety…

Having the courage to stop running from your mind or chasing down the problems it creates…

Feeling relaxed and at-ease on a daily basis…

You can start today for FREE.

Your first 10 days of Headspace are 100% free.

During those 10 days, you’ll get access to 10 unique training sessions designed to teach you the basics of meditation — the practice that will help you reprogram your mind for less stress and anxiety.

If you’re skeptical, I understand. But what do you have to lose?

It’s been shown that Headspace can reduce stress by 14% in just 10 days. Your first session will only take 10 minutes. And for 10 days, you can get a taste of what it would feel like to take control of your mind and your life again.

If, after those 10 days, you decide it’s not for you, then delete the app and move on.

But if this could be the technique that helps you start over, that gives you a new, more positive, healthier perspective on life, why wouldn’t you take it?

After the 10 days are up...

If you realize the power of the meditation techniques in Headspace, you can sign up for a full membership after the first 10 days are up.

That’s when you’ll get access to meditation training about:

  • Anxiety

  • Stress

  • Depression

  • Sleep

  • Sadness

  • Regret

  • Self-esteem

  • Happiness

  • Kindness

  • Generosity

  • Motivation

  • Concentration

  • And much more

You also get access to SOS sessions for those moments when the anxiety feels like too much to handle.

In just 3 minutes, these SOS sessions give you the guidance you need to pull yourself back into a more peaceful, calm state of mind.

Headspace can help.

With over 350 hours of guided meditations and over 30 meditation “packs” that teach you how to address specific problems or situations in your life, Headspace can give you the tools you need to take control of your mind and your life again.

Try it today.

Click the button below to get your free 10-day trial of Headspace and start reprogramming your mind for more peace, more happiness, and less anxiety and stress.

Will you take advantage of the opportunity?

Now, you know your mind has been unconsciously programmed to make you experience stress, anxiety, and fear — even when it’s not helpful or necessary.

You know that you have the ability to change it.

And you know exactly what you can do to start making that change today.

Will you take advantage of the opportunity?

Or will you continue on the path you’re on? Experiencing unwanted anxiety, not being able to be fully present when talking with friends or family, tossing and turning in bed at night — wishing you could fall asleep…

The choice is yours.

Click the button below to get your free trial of Headspace.

[Try Headspace today]

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ANALYSIS

Today’s sales letter went well. It was a bit of a grind, as I didn’t get too much sleep last night (Halloween shenanigans).

It’s made me realize that, not only will I have to follow a structured process to make this work, I’ll have to stick to a strict schedule as well.

Product

I wrote about Headspace today. It’s a product I absolutely love, and one that I’ve been raving about for years.

It helped me come off of antidepressants, and it is legitimately one of the things that keeps me sane. It’s an integral part of my self-care, and I think everyone should do it.

Who is the Customer?

I found an article that mentioned Headspace’s user base is pretty much split down the middle in regard to gender. Beyond that, there’s a pretty even distribution age-wise from 18 - 65.

So, my audience was broad.

In general, I identified them as people whose anxiety and stress are so severe that they’re interfering with their ability to enjoy life, perform at work, and get a good night’s rest.

My belief is that, only once people get to this level of pain will they be willing to do something about it.

Customer Level of Awareness

I assumed (maybe wrongly — not sure) that the customer knew little about meditation, other than that it’s for Buddhists or hippies.

Essentially, they are problem-aware, but not solution-aware.

One of the things I did in the letter was try to bring meditation down to a level they could resonate with — one that was more logical than emotional or spiritual.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is something I picked up from the Headspace website that they emphasize pretty heavily.

Neuroplasticity — the idea that you can literally reprogram your brain with experiences.

Someone who experiences a high level of anxiety on a regular basis is essentially reinforcing that mental pattern.

So, the idea of meditation is to provide a safe, relaxed environment to reprogram the brain to experience less anxiety.

Headspace essentially holds your hand and guides you through the reprogramming process (using meditation).

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, by using Headspace, they’ll get everything they need to reprogram their brain to experience less stress and anxiety.

Lessons Learned

Overall, I’d say today’s letter was “decent.”

There were a lot of places I could have been more specific — especially with the pain points. I could have drawn a much better picture of that stuff.

I also think I could have been more specific about how Headspace helps and how it’s the best solution.

Overall, I think the big idea behind the letter is solid.

And I really like that I was able to position meditation as the means of reprogramming the brain. I think that angle is likely to resonate with an audience who is unfamiliar with the practice and bring it to a level that’s a bit more scientific and easier to conceptualize than sitting cross-legged saying “ommmm” repeatedly.

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DAY 2: CALM THOUGHTS

How “Nature’s Xanax” Increases this Neurotransmitter to Make You Calm and Relaxed

One Tablet Can Let You “Take The Edge Off” Without Alcohol or Prescription Drugs

“I need a drink.”

You’ve heard this before, and you may have even said it yourself.

It’s a natural reaction to a stressful day. A helpful “nightcap” to help you “take the edge off” and finally get some peace and quiet.

But what if it’s only 11AM and you already “need a drink?”

Many people reach for a Valium or Xanax, but these pills are Benodiazepines — a class of physically addictive drugs.

And, while they might work, there’s something about taking a commercially developed pharmaceutical that makes certain people feel uneasy.

What if there was a way to “take the edge off” using only vitamins, minerals, and herbs?

What if you could get a relaxed, peaceful, “buzzy” feeling (while still being mentally clear) without taking a prescription drug or reaching for the liquor?

Now, there is. Let me tell you a little about how it works.

The Neurotransmitter That Can Give You Peace

If you’re unfamiliar with neurotransmitters, here’s what you need to know:

Your brain uses neurons to send signals throughout your body. Neurotransmitters are what let your neurons talk to each other in order to send those signals.

Essentially, neurotransmitters are the phone line that lets your neurons talk to each other, so they can send messages to your body.

There are many types of neurotransmitters in your brain, and they are all important.

But there’s one that you’ve undoubtedly felt the effects of — even if you’ve never heard its name.

It’s called GABA.

GABA stands for Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (say that three times fast).

There are two “receptors” for GABA, and when activated, they can make you feel relaxed, calm, and peaceful.

As a matter of fact, Valium, Xanax, and alcohol all activate these receptors, causing that relaxed, “buzzy” feeling you may be familiar with.

So, if you want to “take the edge off” or get the same level of relaxation provided by drugs or alcohol — activating these GABA receptors is an effective way to do it.

But ideally, instead of relying on drugs or alcohol, you’d use a natural product, like Source Naturals Calm Thoughts.

It’s specifically formulated with natural ingredients that help increase GABA production and act on the GABA receptors in your brain.

Formulated with Vitamins, Minerals, and Herbs to “Take the Edge Off”

Calm Thoughts contains key ingredients to help increase GABA production and act on the GABA receptors in your brain.

Here’s what they are:

L-Theanine

L-Theanine is an amino acid (a “building block” of protein) that, in animal studies, has been shown to increase serotonin, dopamine, and (most importantly) GABA levels in the brain.

Gotu Kola

This unassuming plant has been used by humans for centuries. It’s been shown to reduce anxiety and stress.

And it “increases cerebral levels of GABA.”

Magnesium

More than half of Americans are deficient in this mineral — which is a problem, as it “regulates GABA activation across most of your brain.”

Valerian Root

Valerian is a flower, and (as you probably guessed) Valerian Root is the root of that flower.

Valerian root contains valerenic acid, which has been shown to interact with GABA receptors in a similar way to Benzodiazepines. And a 2010 study showed “a significant reduction in anxious behavior” among rats given valerian extract or valerenic acid.

GABA

Yes, you read that right. We even added GABA itself to the formulation. A 2006 study found that “GABA could work effectively as a natural relaxant and its effects could be seen within 1 hour of its administration to induce relaxation and diminish anxiety.”

There’s still some debate about whether supplemental GABA can be used by the brain. And, although we probably didn’t need to include it in this formulation (since the other ingredients stimulate your body’s own production of GABA), we added it just in case. ;)

Get the Potent GABA-Increasing Tablets Today

The days of “wonder drugs” are gone. Calm Thoughts cannot solve all your problems.

It cannot make your children do their chores, nor can it make your husband wash the dishes.

We will not promise that.

What we can say, however, is this:

Calm Thoughts has been specifically formulated to increase GABA and reduce anxiety.

It may be just what you need to “take the edge off” after a long day — without alcohol or strong prescription drugs.

And, you can get a 15 - 45 day supply for just $11.49. (Probably less than your favorite bottle of wine.)

The “Stress-Fighting Duo”

On top of all the GABA-increasing ingredients we’ve already mentioned, we also added a “stress-fighting duo” to the formulation.

L-Tyrosine

Like Theanine, Tyrosine is an amino acid. It’s been shown to help increase well-being in stressful situations and even delay the negative cognitive effects of sleep deprivation.

Relora ®

Oddly enough, Relora is a combination of two different types of tree bark. But what’s more important is that it’s been shown to “reduce cortisol [stress hormone] exposure and perceived daily stress...”

So if you’re feeling stressed, tired, or overwhelmed Calm Thoughts contains a “stress-fighting duo” that can help.

“What if I don’t like it?”

Return your empty bottle, and we’ll give you a 100% refund.

Here’s What You Get

When you order today, you’ll get 45 GABA-increasing Calm Thoughts tablets that act like “Nature’s Xanax” to help you relax and “take the edge off” without using alcohol or prescription drugs.

And remember, if you don’t like it, we’ll give you a full refund.

Click the button below to get Calm Thoughts.

[Yes, I want to try Calm Thoughts to “take the edge off!”]

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ANALYSIS

Today’s sales letter was interesting.

I did the bulk of the research last night, which will be my plan going forward. (About 2 hours or research in the PM and 1-2 hours of writing the next AM — ideally.)

But this was (as far as I can remember) the first sales letter I’ve written for a supplement. There were a few things I really enjoyed, and a few things (dealing with ethics) that I really did not.

Product

Source Naturals Calm Thoughts

I chose this product because it’s something I’ve used before and really enjoyed. I haven’t taken it in awhile, but I remember it being extremely effective in maintaining some level of mental clarity/performance after a night of little sleep (which, after doing some research, I think is probably due to the Tyrosine in it — isn’t learning fun!?).

Who is the Customer?

I determined the target customer by perusing Amazon reviews. It seemed that most reviewers were female, and somewhere along the line, I developed the belief that most were middle-aged.

There was no real science that went into that determination — honestly just an educated guess on my part.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

I’d say the target customer is solution-aware in that, they understand taking a pill (or having a drink) can reduce anxiety and stress in the short-term.

However, I’d also say, for the purposes of this sales letter, they were aware of the wrong solution.

Big Idea + Rationale

There are a couple things at play with this big idea.

The first being that GABA, a neurotransmitter, is responsible to the relaxed, laid-back feeling associated with Benzos or alcohol.

The second being that it’s possible to attain a similar feeling without prescription drugs or alcohol.

The target customer either uses or has used prescription drugs or alcohol to “take the edge off” (that phrase pulled from at least one, probably 2 or more Amazon reviews).

But — the customer also knows (somewhere deep down) that constantly using prescription drugs or alcohol to numb feelings is not healthy.

So, the goal of the sales letter was not to change the solution (take a pill — which, in my personal opinion is probably NOT the actual best solution — more on that in the Lessons Learned section), but to change the type of solution from prescription drugs or alcohol to a seemingly more (not actually or entirely) natural solution.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, by taking Calm Thoughts, you could achieve the same or similar effects as taking Benzodiazepines like Xanax or Valium or drinking alcohol — in a more seemingly natural manner.

Lessons Learned

I really liked doing the research for this letter. I’m realizing lately how important research is to the writing process.

In the past, I would sit down and start putting words on the page as quickly as possible. But I now realize that doing the research makes the writing part much easier.

The opener of this letter pretty much wrote itself after doing the research last night.

Being a consumer of supplements myself, I would assume that I’d like writing about them.

Surprisingly, I was wrong.

In doing the research I found that certain ingredients in the supplement might react adversely with other medications or not even provide the effect promised by the supplement.

Beyond that, I realized that I have a problem with encouraging someone I do not personally know to take a supplement. I don’t know their health history, I don’t know how they’ll react. And it’s my actual nightmare to recommend a supplement to a stranger, they take it, and have an adverse reaction.

I don’t want that on my conscience.

Aaaand, I’m not comfortable recommending a pill to fix anxiety or stress.

While some people certainly could benefit from that, my own experience has shown that things like meditation, exercise, time with friends, and working with a therapist are much more effective and beneficial than taking a pill and moving on.

So, the main lesson learned today (and yesterday) is that copywriting is very powerful. With the right amount of research, logic, and copywriting skills, you can make a convincing argument for nearly anything.

Make sure you’re making the argument for something you believe in, something that will actually help people. Don’t leave your ethics at the altar in favor of making more cash.

After yesterday and today, I have much more respect for the power that copywriting holds, and want to make sure the work I do promotes products that actually help people and make their lives better.

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DAY 3: THE DAILY STOIC

The 2,300-Year-Old Thought Framework for a Simple and Happy Life...

...and a clear-cut way to apply it every day

You don’t have to quit your job or become a monk.

Learning about this thought framework will only take 5 - 10 minutes each morning, and you can harness its power for the rest of the day.

As a matter of fact, this thought framework is so powerful it’s been used by:

  • Thomas Jefferson (3rd president of the United States)

  • Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple)

  • James “Mad Dog” Mattis (Military General)

  • Pete Carroll (Seattle Seahawks Coach)

  • Tim Ferriss (Entrepreneur and Author)

And you’re about to learn exactly what it is, as well as the simplest, most clear-cut way you can start using it in your life.

“I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it…”

“...I’ll wish to bear it courageously with bravery and honour.”

- Seneca

Thankfully, torture is something we don’t have to deal with. But, some days feel like torture, don’t they?

From the moment you wake up, you’re hit with a feeling of dread and a mental checklist of all the problems in your life.

Before you’re even out of bed, you’re wishing you were asleep again.

You might even think: How am I going to make it through today?

But is that any way to live life?

Another quote from Seneca:

“So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

It’s not that we don’t have enough time, it’s that we don’t use our time effectively.

And we don’t always know how to deal with the problems we’re faced with.

Okay, but what does this have to do with a 2,300-year-old thought framework?

Glad you asked.

This thought framework — this philosophy — you’re about to learn about will show you that (if you’re like most of us) the problems in your life aren’t the real problem.

The real problem is in the way you view what you think are problems.

By using this framework to transform the way you approach your problems, you can take control of your life and live more simply and happily.

How to Live a More Simple and Happy Life

The Stoic Philosophy (Stoicism) began in Athens in 3rd century B.C.

And it’s a bit odd to think that something that old would be able to help us solve problems in a world full of screens, meetings, calls, and other constant distractions.

Beyond that, it might be hard to imagine that a philosophy, of all things, would actually help us get anything done.

Isn’t philosophy just people sitting around doing nothing and thinking?

Not Stoicism.

Stoicism is the philosophy of people from all different walks of life:

Emperors, high-ranking politicians, and even slaves.

It’s not for people who want to “sit around and do nothing.”

It’s for the do-ers of the world. The people who take action. The people who want to live the best life possible.

The main idea behind Stoicism is this:

“The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don’t control the world around you, you control how you respond.”

- Ryan Holiday, Author of The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

And there’s hardly anything that feels more out-of-control than the world we live in today.

So — what if you could embody this philosophy?

What if you could be largely unaffected by the craziness of the world around you, finding peace in even the most difficult of situations?

It would be pretty great to “be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.” (Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome and Stoic Philosopher)

But I’m guessing you don’t have the time to read hundreds of pages of philosophical text. To delve into dense reading material, parse out what’s important, and analyze how it applies to your life.

A Clear-Cut Way to Use Stoicism in Your Life

You need something quick, effective. Something efficient.

Something you can start using immediately to apply Stoic principles to your life, face problems head-on, and conquer them.

Something like The Daily Stoic.

It’s a book that presents a short passage of Stoic philosophy for each day of the year. Then highlights a quick analysis of how you can use that philosophy to make life better today.

You can read and think about each passage in 10 minutes or less every morning.

No need to dive into passages that are thousands of years old and try to figure out what they mean. That’s already been done for you.

You can pick up the book while you’re drinking your morning coffee, learn exactly how to apply Stoic philosophy in your life for that day, and move forward with a strong foundation of mental clarity to tackle any challenge you might face.

Philosophy for People Who Take Action

Stoicism is designed for the do-ers of the world. Those who take action.

NFL Coaches, Entrepreneurs, Presidents, Leaders.

These people don’t have time to fool around with things that don’t work. They need something that’s simple, straightforward, and immediately applicable.

So they choose Stoicism.

What will you choose?

Imagine yourself taking action.

Facing each day confidently with a thought framework that forms a strong foundation to face any challenge.

The Daily Stoic can give you that confidence in just 10 minutes or less per day.

Take Action Today

Today, you can choose a happier and simpler life.

Today, you can begin being “like the cliff against which the waves continually break.”

Today, for less than the cost of a new shirt, you can make the choice to take control of your life.

[Click here to get The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living]

Where Will You Be in a Year?

Will you be waking up afraid to face each day?

Will you be suffocating under the mountain of problems you must deal with? Or will you simply be running from them?

OR —

Will you be facing them head on?

Pushing through your obstacles with a sense of confidence and ease — largely unshaken by the world around you — operating from a rock of inner peace and stillness?

Get The Daily Stoic Today

Remember, “...we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

Your life will continue happening regardless of whether you get this book or not. But whatever you do,

Don’t waste your life. Use it. Make it long, productive, simple, happy, and well-lived.

[Get The Daily Stoic today]

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ANALYSIS

Today was a bit more of a grind than I was expecting, largely because I didn’t do enough research last night.

I’m finding that ideas come more easily when I do all my research one day, then write the next day.

Product

Today, I wrote about The Daily Stoic, a book I love and that has been a very helpful part of my morning routine.

Who is the Customer?

Essentially, the customer was me — someone who is looking for a lens through which to view life and its challenges, but is not necessarily aligned with a religion or faith.

Someone who likes to think of themselves as a “do-er.” Someone who’s working toward a better version of themselves, but doesn’t always have the framework through which to do it.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

They know they’re stressed, busy, and afraid to face their problems, but they don’t exactly know what to do about it.

This sales letter would be entirely different if it had been for an audience who was aware of Stoicism.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that Stoicism is a thought framework you can use to live a happier, simpler, overall better life.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that The Daily Stoic can give you the benefits of Stoicism in less than 10 minutes per day in an easily-digestible way.

Lessons Learned

I would have liked a little more time with this letter. I think I have a strong knowledge of the audience — as I’m a member of it — so I was able to tailor the copy to that, using language like “do-ers of the world,” and repeated calls to “take action.”

However, I think I could have drilled into the pain points a little better and done more to describe The Daily Stoic as the best solution to those pain points.

In general, I’m okay with the letter. But with more time, I think it could be much more effective.

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DAY 4: CRAVE DOG FOOD

What are you feeding your dog?

Are you cheating him out of a long, healthy life?

Have you ever watched your dog without him knowing?

He trots around the backyard with a toy or a bone, looking for a place to hide it. Sniffing here and there.

Digging — until you blow your cover and tell him to stop. ;)

What you’ll notice is that dogs aren’t like us. There’s something more wild about them.

You’ve heard that “dogs are descendants of wolves.”

And, if you’ve felt the excited tugging on a leash as yours attempts to chase a squirrel up a tree, you know it’s true.

But often, we fail to realize the implications of our dog’s ancestry when we drop some kibble into a bowl.

So — what are you feeding your dog? And how do you know that’s what’s best for him?

An Outrageous Fact About 70% of “Dog People”

Over 70% of dog people don’t know what’s in the food they give their dogs.”

Do you?

Or do you simply buy a “trusted” brand and think nothing more about it?

Think about this for a moment — out of these two people, who do you think will live a longer, healthier life?

Person 1

Eats mostly fast food. Drinks soft drinks. Loves candy.

Person 2

Eats mostly whole foods, including lots of fruit and veggies. Drinks a lot of water. Avoids sweets except for special occasions.

You answered “Person 2,” right?

Because you understand that food has an effect on our health and longevity.

Your dog is the same way.

For a long, healthy life, he should be eating the healthiest food possible.

We’ll talk more about that in a moment, but first, since dogs are the descendants of wolves, let’s talk about what they eat.

The Diet of Wolves

Wolves live in packs, run free, and make their own decisions about how to live life — including what to eat.

Sometimes, they eat fruit. But mostly, wolves eat meat.

Not only are they hunters, they’re scavengers too.

If they haven’t gotten enough meat for the day or week, they’ll eat something that’s already dead.

Spend a few minutes on YouTube watching wolves hunt and you’ll notice a few things.

First, much like your dog, wolves LOVE chasing things.

While hunting may seem savage to us, to wolves — it’s the joy of a lifetime. (Very similar to your dog chasing a rabbit or a squirrel.)

Second, they work in packs.

The “lone wolf” ideal is romantic, but in general, it’s not reality. Wolves live and work together to build their lives.

Finally, they’re ambitious. Often, you’ll see wolves attempt to take down a massive animal like an elk or a moose. And often, they succeed.

(You’ve likely seen this ambition in your own dog as well. You know he’ll never catch that squirrel, but that never stops him from trying.)

Your Dog is Like a Wolf

If you pay attention, you might notice a few behaviors or traits that are direct indications your dog descended from wolves.

Digging

Wolves dig to build dens or to hide their food for later. Your dog might do the same.

Howling

Wolves use howls to communicate with each other.

Fun fact:

Wolves have unique howls, like fingerprints, that scientists (and other pack members) can use to tell them apart.”

Teeth

We’re all familiar with the “canine” teeth at front of a dog’s snout, but did you know there are teeth in the back of the mouth specifically designed for shearing flesh?

They’re called carnassials, and wolves have them too.

3 Criteria of “Healthy” Dog Food

Healthy dog food should fit these 3 criteria:

1. The first ingredient should be meat.

Remember the wolves we talked about earlier?

Your dog needs a diet like theirs to thrive. And what do they crave above all else?

Meat.

2. It should have NO corn, wheat, or soy.

Healthy dog food should not contain fillers like corn, wheat, or soy. These are like french fries for your dog.

They might like to eat it, but it makes them unhealthy.

3. It should be a “complete” meal.

Unless your dog regularly gets table scraps or supplements, the only thing he eats is dog food.

Healthy dog food should provide everything your dog needs to thrive.

The Easiest Way to Get Healthy Dog Food

You could start researching and become an “expert” in healthy dog food before buying your next bag.

Or you could sit back and relax, because we’ve already done the work for you.

CRAVE Dog Food meets all 3 criteria of healthy dog food:

1. The first ingredient is always meat.

2. We NEVER use corn, soy, or wheat in any of our recipes.

3. We add minerals and vitamins to each recipe to make a complete meal for your dog.

[5/5 star DogFoodAdvisor rating graphic]

CRAVE Gets Dogs Excited

With how healthy CRAVE is, you might be expecting your dog to walk away as soon as you drop it in his bowl.

That’s how kids act with vegetables, right?

Believe it or not, we’ve seen multiple reports of dogs “dancing” around their bowls, excited for the first bit of kibble to land.

We ever heard of one dog rolling in her bowl she loved the smell of CRAVE so much!

Give Your Dog a Long, Healthy Life

You know how to give your dog a long, healthy life:

  • Long walks to the dog park

  • Extra treats occasionally

  • As many cuddles as possible

And healthy food.

With CRAVE, healthy dog food is finally affordable.

Most healthy dog food is expensive.

Not CRAVE.

We work with the best suppliers around the world to get the healthiest ingredients for your dog at the most cost-effective price possible.

So now, you don’t have to resort to feeding your dog low-quality food anymore.

For less than the price of a new chew toy, you can give your dog the food he needs for a long healthy life.

Click the button below to get CRAVE.

[Get CRAVE Now]

Don’t be like those 70% of dog people who “don’t know what’s in the food they give their dogs.”

You know what’s best for your dog. Take care of him.

Give him something that satisfies his natural, wild instinct. Give him something like CRAVE.

[Get CRAVE Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

This is the perfect example of an ad that needed more time. There are a few bits that show some promise, but overall, I don’t think my Big Idea or Big Promise had enough time to develop.

More on that in the Lessons Learned section.

Product

Today, I wrote about CRAVE Dog Food — which is the food I feed to my dog, Wallace. (pic included)

Who is the Customer?

As far as I can tell, dog owners are spread pretty evenly across male/female and age demographics.

The one important thing I noted was that the customer needs to have disposable income. If you don’t know where your own next meal is coming from, you probably aren’t too worried about what your dog is eating.

Customer Level of Awareness

The customer in this scenario is unaware. The letter educates them about the problem (their dog’s diet should mimic a wolf’s diet).

However, if I could re-do it, “solution-aware” might be more appropriate, because I think a lot of people recognize the importance of grain-free diets for both humans and dogs.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, since dogs are descendants of wolves, their diet should closely match that of wolves (i.e. mostly meat).

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that CRAVE gives dogs a diet similar to their wolf ancestors in an affordable package.

Lessons Learned

I think there’s a tendency among new or new-ish copywriters to believe that clients pay for words or time.

i.e.

“If you hire me to write a sales page, you’re paying me for the amount of words I write or the amount of time it takes to complete the project.”

And, indeed, some clients to prefer to pay by-the-hour, or by-the-word.

But ultimately, in those pricing models, the idea is to get the work done as quickly as possible. Clients might get the words, but they don’t get the expertise.

See, I don’t think the real value of copywriting lies in a copywriter simply being able to provide copy.

If the M.O. is “Hey, can you write this? I need it ASAP.,” then you’re not going to get anything good.

The magic happens after the writer has had time to immerse himself (or herself) in the idea for long enough to let it percolate and fully develop.

Today’s sales letter was not great, because, while I think some of the ideas expressed in it were sound, I needed more time to fully develop them in order to make a strong argument.

So — if you’re a copywriter working with a client who doesn’t understand why copywriting takes so long, remind them of this.

They are not paying you just for words. If they were, you could charge them $100, throw some garbage onto a page, and deliver it before the day was over.

Instead, they are paying you for the right words, which only come after hours of research, thinking, writing, editing, researching more, thinking more, writing more, and editing more.

Putting words on a page is quick. Putting the right words on a page takes a long time.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 5: TOOLS OF TITANS

Get the systems, hacks, and tools of some of the most successful people in the world...

...in an easily-digestible format you can reference any time you want.

Billionaires, world-class athletes, high-ranking military personnel, and successful entrepreneurs.

What do they all have in common?

Aside from achieving some of the highest accomplishments in their respective fields, they have done one thing incredibly well:

Focused intensely on what works and discarded what does not.

They have developed systems, processes, routines, habits — whatever you want to call it — that make it hard for them NOT to succeed.

What if you could do the same?

What if you could sit down with these people for a few minutes and ask them for their absolute best advice?

Unfortunately, you can’t take them out for a cocktail — or, at least, I can’t help with that. But you can get access to their systems, hacks, and tools very easily. More on that in a moment.

First, a question.

How are you living your life?

Take a moment, and think seriously about it.

If you’re like most of us, you’re probably happy with a lot of things, but I’d also imagine there are areas where you’d like to improve.

Places you haven’t achieved your full potential yet. Unfinished goals.

You know you have more in you, but you’re not sure how to get there.

How are you approaching those goals? Are you actively working toward them? And if you’re not —

Why?

If you’re thinking, “I don’t know how to do this or that yet,” I’m about to take away that excuse.

How to work toward your goals (with confidence)

Who are the most successful people you know?

Wouldn’t you love to grab coffee with a few of them just to ask:

How the hell did you do it?”

Their situation might not directly apply to your life, but it would still be helpful to understand the lens through which they view their own life.

And I’m betting that, after that coffee meeting, you’d be working toward your goals with a lot more vigor.

You’d be motivated, inspired. Maybe you wouldn’t have all the answers, but you’d have more than you started with.

But most importantly, you’d realize this —

That wildly successful person is just that. A person. A normal person just like you or me. And if they can do it, you can.

Once you realize that, you can work toward your goals with the confidence you can achieve them.

Again, I can’t set up coffee meetings for you, but I can give you something that might be even better.

Life advice from 113 of the most successful people in the world

Today, you can get access to life advice from 113 of the most successful people in the world.

What I’m offering is essentially a guide to life from the titans of their industries.

In it, you’ll find guidance from:

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger (actor and politician)

  • Tony Robbins (motivational speaker and author)

  • Peter Thiel (serial entrepreneur and investor)

  • Daymond John (entrepreneur — regularly on Shark Tank)

  • B.J. Novak (writer most famous for his work on The Office)

  • Jocko Willink (author and former Navy SEAL)

  • Rick Rubin (music producer)

  • Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter)

  • Tara Brach (author and meditation teacher)

  • Jamie Foxx (actor and musician)

And that’s just to name a few.

The book is called Tools of Titans, and it was written by entrepreneur, podcast host, and general human guinea pig, Tim Ferriss.

Why Buy Tools of Titans?

This is not a book of theories, musings, or essays.

It’s a manual.

An index of “recipes for life” centering around three main categories:

  • Health

  • Wealth

  • Wisdom

In these pages, you’ll be hard-pressed to find something you can’t start using within the next day or so.

That is, the tips in this book are actionable, ready-to-use.

This book is for those who are not content to sit and talk about theory, but those who are ready and willing to do what must be done.

Better yet — it’s practical advice and wisdom from those who have already succeeded. Those who have gone through the fire and learned the hard lessons.

Tools of Titans gives you some of the most crucial wisdom of 113 of the brightest minds (with proven track records) on the planet — in a simple, easily-digestible format.

Get Tools of Titans today

You could do this the hard way.

Exit out of this page. Forget this book exists, and learn life’s lessons on your own. I won’t stop you.

But I would ask:

Why?

Why would you purposely ignore the knowledge of the most successful people on the planet?

The knowledge, tools, and hacks that could help you start confidently working toward your goals?

The proven tips, strategies, and systems that have helped over 100 people become wildly successful?

Your call.

But if you want to shorten your learning curve…

If you want to learn some of life’s most important lessons…

If you want to learn what it takes to become world-class in a skill, profession, or sport…

If you want to improve yourself — starting TODAY — get Tools of Titans.

[Get Tools of Titans today]

Don’t forget about the extras

Oh — and you don’t just get advice from 113 world-class individuals, you also get Tim’s own wisdom sprinkled throughout the book, including:

  • 5 Tools for Faster and Better Sleep (One will make you feel like a bat — yes, an actual bat.)

  • How to Create a Real-World MBA

  • 8 Tactics for Dealing with Haters

  • 5 Morning Rituals that Help [Tim] Win the Day (The first takes less than 3 minutes, and is also recommended by a Naval Admiral.)

  • Testing the “Impossible”: 17 Questions that Changed [Tim’s] Life

  • And more!

Where are you going?

A direct quote from the book:

“Looking out the windshield is how you get where you want to go.”

So, where are you going?

Forward?

Backward?

Nowhere?

Really, the answer to that question isn’t important, but the answer to this one is:

Where will you go now?

Using Tools of Titans isn’t the only way to move forward, but it’s certainly a simple way to do it.

The choice is yours. But whatever you do, keep looking out the windshield.

[Get Tools of Titans today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

Aside from the first day, when I wrote about Headspace, this may have been the easiest day of writing.

I attribute that to the fact that I am a part of the target audience, and — when writing — felt like I was speaking to either myself or a close friend.

The words flowed naturally because I fully understood the audience.

Product

Today, I wrote about Tools of Titans, a book by Tim Ferriss.

Who is the Customer?

Essentially, the customer is me or one of my friends. A young-ish professional working to improve his or her life in a variety of ways, but not always exactly sure how to go about it (due to a lack of life experience).

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

The customer is solution-aware. They realize the problem — they’re not exactly where they want to be in life, and they know the solution — gain wisdom from others & put in the work.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, if you want to achieve “success,” whatever that means for you, one of the best things you can do is get advice from someone who has already succeeded and adopt some of their practices to your own life.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Tools of Titans essentially lets you sit down with extremely successful people and get their advice — in an easily-digestible format.

Lessons Learned

A few lessons from today:

1. I did not feel guilty at all writing this sales letter.

With a few of the other products I’ve written about, there has been some guilt associated with selling the product. Often, this comes from the belief that the product I was selling probably wasn’t actually the best solution for the problem it was supposed to solve.

However, with Tools of Titans, I did not feel that. To me, this is a legitimately helpful product that could truly make a difference in the life of a reader. Because of that, the letter not only flowed naturally, it flowed from a clear conscience.

2. Understanding your audience is HUGE.

The reason this letter was so easy was because I was essentially talking to myself when writing it. While we can’t be that close to every product or prospect, if you can metaphorically sit down and have an honest conversation with your customer — that’s the best place to sell from.

3. Information products might be my niche.

I’m a sucker for info products. Books, courses, you name it. If it’s information, I want access to it.

Because of that, this seems like a natural fit for me. Double bonus points for the fact that I can write this sales material with a clear conscience — because I KNOW the product(s) is worth purchasing.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 6: “YOU ARE” CARDS

Give something real.

They’re not Thank You cards.

“Thanks!”

There’s nothing wrong with it. We should all say it more often. But You Are Cards are not Thank You cards.

You Are Cards are more than a “thank you.”

They’re not based on an act of service.

They’re not a courtesy.

They are a genuine, real connection. And they’re surprisingly vulnerable.

You Are cards don’t communicate a “thank you.”

They communicate something much more real. Something like...

“Hey, I appreciate you. Not because of what you’ve done for me, but because of who you are as a person.

That’s powerful. And we don’t do it often enough.

Can I get sentimental for a moment?

If there’s one thing the world needs, it’s more kindness.

I’m not sure we’ll ever have enough.

But our “kindness” can be pretty shallow. We think a Like or a heart emoji is a genuine expression of affection.

We choose convenience over courage — the easy way over the hard one — the digital over the tangible.

Because we’re scared.

Scared of expressing how we really feel. Scared we might come off as “awkward” or that we might be “too much.”

But maybe we shouldn’t be scared of letting those words out. Maybe we should be scared of keeping them in.

Besides, I think people would rather hear our gratitude than our silence.

Because those Likes we crave, they’re not what we really want.

We really want something else.

We want to know we’re appreciated.

Be honest with yourself for a moment.

What does a Like, a text message, a heart emoji represent to you?

It’s low-level validation that we are loved. That we are appreciated. That we’re more than just another picture on a screen.

But it’s fleeting.

No matter how many times our phone dings to interrupt our crunches of kale salad, the “love” coming from that screen will never be enough to fill us up.

So what should we do?

This is the part where I tell you that You Are Cards can fix everything, right?

Nope.

Because they can’t.

You Are Cards are not the whole solution, but they can be part of it.

I’m no philosopher, and I might be totally full of garbage, but I’d say the solution is a change in the way we live our lives.

A slowing down.

A savoring of each moment.

An occasional pause to tell people how much they mean to us.

You don’t need cards for that — but they do make it easier.

Give something real.

Whatever you do — give something real.

Whether it’s a random phone call, a sweet note scribbled on the back of a McDonald’s receipt, or a surprise bag of Swedish Fish.

Give someone something real to let them know how much they mean to you.

It might be scary, but what’s scarier is never letting the people in your life know they’re appreciated.

However you do it, make it happen.

And if you want to use a You Are Card to make it happen, just click the button below to grab a few.

[Get You Are Cards Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

This one was a bit different.

Rather than a strict direct response sales page, I envision this one as more of a homepage — potentially a landing page.

That being the case, I approached it a bit differently. More on that in the Lessons Learned.

Product

My friend Taylor recently launched a product called “You Are cards.” Essentially, they’re little cards that say “You are appreciated.”

They’re a cool idea, and the people I’ve given them to have really appreciated the sentiment.

Plus, if he can use any of this copy, that would be cool too.

Who is the Customer?

Full disclosure, I really didn’t think too intentionally about who the customer is here. Not because I have no idea who they, but because I think I inherently know who they are.

These cards are $5 a piece (or 5 for $20). My experience with products like this tells me the audience who’d be most interested is millennials. People who recognize the world we live in is a bit shallow and who would be willing to spend some cash to make it a little less so.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

Problem-aware.

As I mentioned, the customer recognizes the world is a bit shallow, but they’re not exactly sure of the solution. This sales page drills into the problem, makes it tangible (and a bit painful), and then presents a potential solution.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that the way we show affection to others is two-dimensional. Genuinely expressing affection and appreciation is scary, but not doing so is even scarier.

Big Promise + Rationale

You Are Cards provide a way for people to express genuine appreciation to others in a simple, tangible way.

Lessons Learned

A hard-sell isn’t always necessary.

Most of the sales letters i’ve written to this point have been hard sells. But with this one, I didn’t go that route, because I don’t think the audience would be receptive to it, nor do I think a hard sell would be congruent with the product.

The audience has seen their share of hard sells and (unless a serious value is presented) has learned to distrust them.

Beyond that, in my opinion, a product that seeks to bring more love and appreciation into the world doesn’t necessarily need a hard sell. I think that, for this type of product, once you drill into the need and problem enough, the product sells itself to those receptive to the message.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 7: DEUTER FUTURA 28

Break Up With Your Old Backpack and Meet My Hot New Friend

Introducing the Updated Deuter Futura 28

“You’re too demanding.”

That’s what your current backpack would say if it could talk.

From day hikes to weekends at your parents’ house to backpacking across Europe, you two have been through a lot together.

But it’s time to say goodbye. I have someone I want to set you up with.

“You’re right. I am too depending. I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work anymore…”

- You, talking to your backpack, like a completely normal (?) person

“Why does it have to be so hard?”

A backpack breakup is never easy. We know.

At a certain point, it becomes a part of you. But people change. Their needs change. Their lives change. And their expectations change.

Eventually, they become too demanding of even the most rugged, versatile packs out there.

For those people —

Who are afraid they’re asking too much…

Who are worried if they’ll ever find a pack that meets all their needs…

Who need a pack for the summit, subway, and everything in-between

— We created the updated Deuter Futura 28.

A Detailed List of All Your Ex’s Flaws

We’re guessing your ex pack had a few of these things going wrong for it:

  • It was too big.

  • It was too small.

  • It didn’t have enough pockets.

  • It had so many pockets it felt like the Swiss Army Knife of backpacks.

  • You bought it in 1998, and it hasn’t aged well.

  • It made your shoulders hurt so bad you thought about inventing a jumbo-sized fanny pack.

  • It made your back so sweaty people thought you laid down in a puddle.

  • It made you look like you were still in middle school.

  • Somewhere along the way, it developed a slight odor that you can’t quite place.

Whatever it was, we can assure you of one thing:

It was totally your ex’s fault — not yours.

The New Pack on the Block (Don’t be shy. Come say “hi.”)

We want to introduce you to someone.

It’s the updated Deuter Futura 28.

I know you normally don’t go for packs like this, but I think you’ll really like it.

Just hear me out.

It’s really comfortable.

Spring Steel Frame

It’s built around a spring steel frame — which makes it sound a little too hardcore, but I promise it’s not.

Spring steel is really light. It’s even a bit flexible.

Plus, the frame creates a gap between your back and the pack. (Also — claiming it now, “Your Back and the Pack” is the name of our new band.)

What that means is NO. MORE. GROSS. BACK. SWEAT.

Seriously.

It’s called an Aircomfort System, and it has that name for a good reason.

Now, instead of having a sweaty swamp-back, you’ll enjoy a nice cool breeze and stay dry no matter where in the world you are.

It also means less weight on your shoulders.

If your current pack makes you feel like you’re carrying the weight of the world, you want to hear this.

The spring steel frame distributes the weight to your hips, because they’re stronger than your shoulders and can handle it better.

That means no more screaming shoulders at the end of a long day on the trail.

Padded Hip Belt

We’re going to talk about your hips some more. (They look great, by the way. Have you been working out?)

The Futura puts most of the pack’s weight on them, but it does it in a soft, gentle way.

It has extra padding so it doesn’t feel like you’re lugging your pack around. Instead, you’re supporting its weight in the most optimal spot.

Believe it or not, that actually makes your pack feel lighter than it really is.

Load Adjustment Straps

Are you noticing a trend?

The entire design of this pack is structured to distribute weight in the most physically optimal spots possible (oh — and to make you sweat less).

The Load Adjustment Shoulder Straps let you move the pack’s load closer to your back and, therefore, closer to your center of gravity.

That means — you guessed it — the pack doesn’t feel near as heavy as you might expect.

Organizer Pocket

You thought we forgot, didn’t you?

While it’s true we focused a lot of our design effort on making the Deuter Futura 28 the most comfortable pack on the market, we didn’t forget the little things — and the organizer pocket is just one example.

It’s positioned right at the top of the pack, on the inside, to help you organize your valuables and add another layer of security.

Stretch Pockets

Sometimes you over-pack. And you end up tying that flannel around your waist because there’s absolutely no way it’s going to fit in your bag.

Well — not anymore.

The Deuter Futura 28 has stretch pockets on the sides and the front, so if you need to add a pair of socks (or a flask — we don’t judge) to your pack on the way out the door, we’ve got you covered.

Get You a Pack That Can Do Both.

Just like your favorite bourbon, the Deuter Futura 28 is rugged on the trail and smooth in the city.

Made with 40% Polyester and 60% Polyamide, it’s strong enough to carry the weight of your past relationships but smooth enough to let you talk it out sometimes.

But seriously, the Futura’s simple, straightforward design means it looks great on the summit or the subway.

I mean, look at those curves!

Who Are You Going to Choose?

Look, we know you love your old pack. That’s why you’ve kept it around for so long.

But sometimes moving forward means making hard choices and saying “goodbye” to things that don’t serve you anymore.

If you’re ready for something new...

Something that’s ready to meet all your demands…

Something that can give you everything you need from a backpack…

You should go out with my friend, The Updated Deuter Futura 28. Just click the button below, and I’ll set you two up.

[Get the Deuter Futura 28 Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

This letter really took on a mind of its own.

I started believing the audience was one demographic, but as I kept writing, it morphed into something else.

More on that in the following sections.

Product

I wrote about the Deuter Futura 28. I bought an old version of this backpack after reading about it from a book written by my favorite blogger at the time.

Who is the Customer?

Initially, I wasn’t writing to a specific gender. The customer group was both males and females, generally millennial-age, with some disposable income and a huge passion for the outdoors.

As I began writing, the idea of “breaking up with your old backpack” and trading up to a newer, better one really became the focus. And, as that happened, I took on a snarkier tone.

It wasn’t so much a conscious choice as it was a natural reaction to that angle.

Customer Level of Awareness

This customer is solution-aware. They may not be specifically aware of the Deuter Futura 28, so I hesitate to call them product-aware, but thankfully, they are aware that backpacks exist.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea behind this one is that, even though your old backpack has served you well, you can “break up” with it, and trade up to something newer that suits your current needs better.

Big Promise + Rationale

This is a little murky, and if I had more time, I’d nail this down a little better. In general, the promise is that the Futura 28 is better than the current reader’s backpack, because it’s designed to be more comfortable.

I emphasized this by highlighting the features.

Overall, not bad. But the big promise could definitely be clearer.

Lessons Learned

When I started this project, I thought it would make me a master at writing sales letters. I’ve learned a few things about that assumption:

1. The letters are starting to flow more naturally.

Words seem to be coming out a bit easier, and I’m hitting more of a rhythm where I can recognize that it’s time for the CTA at the end.

2. The biggest change hasn’t been in the quality of the letters, but in the way my mind works.

Witty phrases are starting to come more easily. Both in my writing and in my daily life, I’ve found myself a bit more able to throw out quick witticisms here and there, and while that’s definitely good for copywriting, more than anything, it’s just FUN.

In regard to this letter, specifically, I think it shows promise, and I like the angle. BUT, it definitely needs some more massaging. I think the snarky tone, while fun, walks a fine line.

My main fear would be that it talks at the reader rather than to the reader. If I had more time with this one, I’d work to walk that line a little better.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 8: PITT LONDON

Good For You. Good For The World. Meet Pitt London.

Perfectly Crafted Natural Deodorant (That Actually Works)

Natural deodorant doesn’t work.

At least — not the way it’s been done up to this point.

Pitt London is here to change that.

Why Natural Deodorant Doesn’t Work

Most natural deodorants are a facade.

They’re all show, no substance.

They’re loaded with oils and fragrances, so they smell great. But when it comes to making you feel clean, fresh, and confident?

They totally fail.

Those oils and fragrances are a great start, but they’re not going to help you when you’re three hours into a club night and see that hottie across the bar.

Because they’re missing the most important natural deodorant ingredient...

The #1 Ingredient All Natural Deodorants Need (But Most Don’t Have)

It’s all about the powder, baby.

And no, we’re not talking about the kind you sneak off to the bathroom for.

We’re talking about Arrowroot Powder.

See — most natural deodorants don’t have it. That’s why they leave your pits feeling like an aromatic slip-n-slide.

Think of Arrowroot powder as an ultra-absorbent sponge for your sweat.

And, since we’ve paired it with the perfect combination of scents, you get the comfort of being dry and the confidence of smelling like a fresh pine forest.

Why Antiperspirants Are An Unnatural Solution

Sweating is natural.

We’re not here to tamper with your body’s natural processes, and we don’t think you should, either.

Most antiperspirants prohibit your body from doing what it naturally wants to do. They clog your pores with aluminum salts to keep sweat from coming out.

If you want to continue putting aluminum on your body, that’s your choice. But if you’re looking for something better, something that lets your body do what’s natural AND keeps you clean and fresh all day…

Pitt London is for you.

The 3 Little Words That Started This Company

It started with three little words:

“Ed, you stink.”

One of our founders, Ed, was performing in a West End play and had just finished a dance routine. Then he heard those three words.

He knew it was true. But still, no one wants to hear that. So he set out to change it.

He spent the next three years experimenting with natural deodorant formulations and testing them on some of the sweatiest people in England. (More on that later.)

The result?

Barbican14.

Pitt London’s Barbican14: The Perfect Natural Deodorant

The perfect natural deodorant isn’t made on accident.

While creating something natural was important to us, our #1 priority was creating something that worked.

Thankfully, what worked was not just incredibly effective in one of the most demanding environments we could find — it was also natural.

With our first scent, Barbican14, we’ve combined three pillars to create the perfect natural deodorant:

  • Perfect ingredients

  • Perfect packaging

  • Perfect application

Pitt London’s Perfect Ingredients

It all starts with Arrowroot Powder.

That’s the powerhouse that makes Pitt London more than a smell-good cream you smear on your pits.

Arrowroot sucks up sweat and makes Pitt London a natural deodorant that actually works.

Beyond that, we’ve carefully selected all-natural ingredients to craft a clean, refined, and mature scent — because you shouldn’t have to smell like a teenager who just discovered body spray.

Pitt London’s Perfect Packaging

We’re not Barbie.

“Made of plastic” is no longer fantastic.

We’ve intentionally chosen a unique, slim tin to package our deodorant. Because being clean isn’t just about smelling or feeling good, it’s about doing good.

Pitt London’s Perfect Application

“Gua sha.”

Ever heard of it?

It’s a tool from ancient Chinese medicine used to stimulate blood flow, and it’s how we recommend you apply our natural deodorant.

Why?

Here’s a quick, simplified biology lesson:

You have lymph nodes in your armpits. Lymph nodes responsible for draining junk out of your body. Stimulating flow around those lymph nodes helps them clean that junk out more effectively.

Gua sha + Pitt London helps clean your body, inside and out.

How Pitt London Worked For Some of the Sweatiest People in London

We’ve tested our deodorant on some of the sweatiest people in London:

West End performers.

These are people acting under bright lights in hot costumes every day. They don’t need a deodorant that works “sometimes,” and they definitely don’t need a deodorant that only works when they’re standing still.

They need a deodorant that works in the most demanding conditions there are.

So what did they think?

They loved it.

As a matter of fact, they’ve been some of the biggest supporters of our Kickstarter campaign.

Get Pitt London Today

You can get a 1-2 month supply of Pitt London’s Barbican14 and the Gua Sha applicator (which you’ll never have to buy again) today for just $38.

We’re running out of Kickstarter packages, though. Our project was fully funded within 17 hours of being launched, and we’ve raised nearly twice as much money as we hoped.

But that means our supplies are quickly being limited, and we’ll be rushing to fulfill them once the campaign ends.

So, if you want to get your hands on a package, act quickly.

Just click the button below to go to our Kickstarter campaign.

[Get Pitt London Today]

Your Body Deserves It. The World Deserves It.

Your body deserves a deodorant that lets it do what it was naturally designed to do.

And the world deserves a product that won’t needlessly and carelessly create waste.

With Pitt London, you can make a small step toward taking care of your body, taking care of the world, and using a natural deodorant that actually works.

[Get Pitt London Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

One of the main reasons I wanted to do this project was because it would be hard.

I knew that, while the idea of writing a sales letter every day sounded romantic, it would probably be pretty challenging.

I tried not to think about that though.

Writing today’s letter wasn’t hell, by any means, but (due to my schedule today) making myself finish it was harder than it’s been the past few days.

But that’s kind of the point.

Product

I wrote about a Kickstarter product called Pitt London. I’ve never used it, it just looked like a cool product with a lot information to pull from on the Kickstarter page.

So here we are.

Who is the Customer?

I didn’t define this as much as a probably should have. In general, the customer is a moderately active millennial who prefers buying natural products when possible and makes environmentally-friendly decisions when it’s easy.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is solution-aware. They know that natural deodorant exists, but if they’ve tried any — they know that the majority of natural deodorants simply don’t work the way you want them to.

Big Idea + Rationale

There are a couple big ideas in this one. I should have done a better job narrowing down.

In general, the big idea is that natural deodorants don’t work, and antiperspirants are unnatural.

Beyond that, there are a few tertiary ideas:

  • Pitt London is good for the environment (or at least better than other deodorant packaging)

  • Pitt London actually works, thanks to Arrowroot Powder as a main ingredient

  • The gua sha applicator provides health benefits

If I were to re-do it, I’d narrow this down A LOT. I think the problem is that this product has a lot of cool features, each of which deserves to be talked about, but that can take the focus away from the big idea.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that using Pitt London is making a healthy, effective choice for the individual and the environment.

I’ll admit — this could be a lot better.

Lessons Learned

Cool products are both easy and hard to write for at the same time.

It’s easy, because you can write a lot of shit about a cool product. It’s hard, because if there’s so much cool shit — how do you decide which cool shit to focus on?

Beyond that, I learned that showing up and writing every day is what makes the magic happen. But this lesson isn’t from my writing today, it’s from Steven Pressfield’s War of Art, which I was listening to earlier.

If you haven’t read or listened to that book, holy shit — do it now. It will light a fire under you in the best way.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 9: WALLET WIPES

“You’ve got a nice butt.”

But it’s hiding a dirty little secret.

The gluteus maximus.

The posterior.

The hiney.

The Big, Beautiful Bum.

Call us Sir Mix-A-Lot, because we like big butts and we cannot lie. We like small butts too, though. And even medium butts!

But there’s one type of butt we don’t like:

A dirty butt.

Because, while butts are beautiful, they’ve been known to do some pretty...ummm...how should we put this...messy things.

“What dat butt do?”

Well, if you’re like most people, “dat butt” does one thing exceptionally well:

It poops.

And you — being the responsible owner of dat butt — clean it.

Well, you think you clean it. But do you really?

An Incredibly Brief, Honest Assessment of Hygiene on Uranus

Not the planet, though. You know what we’re talking about.

Now, to the assessment:

1. What do you wipe your butt with?

If you answered “toilet paper,” we have some bad news (sit down for this):

“You have a case of The Dirty Butt.”

What’s “The Dirty Butt?”

The Dirty Butt is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s a horrid condition that indicates the owner of said butt has failed to clean it adequately following a bowel movement.

It affects millions of people around the world, but the worst part is:

Those who have it often don’t even know they’re affected!

They walk around with The Dirty Butt every day, sitting their dirty butts on the subway, the park bench, the seat at the restaurant, blissfully unaware of their polluted posteriors.

How Do People Get The Dirty Butt?

We’re gonna answer your question with a few of our own:

How do you wash your dishes?

Your clothes?

Your car?

“Soap and water.”

“Soap and water.”

“Soap and water.”

Right?

You’d never wipe a crusty plate, a chocolate ice-cream-stained shirt, or a muddy car with a dry paper towel and say:

“WELP, LOOKS LIKE MY JOB IS DONE HERE…”

Would you?

Of course not. Because you’re not gross. You’re a lovely human being who takes care of things and cleans them properly.

So why — when your butt is dirty — do you rub it with a piece of toilet paper and say:

“WELP, GUESS I’M TOTALLY CLEAN NOW…”?

Because, while you might be dry, you’re not clean...and you’ve always kind of known that deep down, haven’t you?

The Trouble With Toilet Paper

Wipe. Wipe. Wipe.

*Fast forward 5 minutes.*

Wipe. Wipe.

*Fast forward 5 more minutes.*

Wipe.

“Holy shit. Will this ever be over!?”

Toilet paper is the devil. There. We said it.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. But here’s what is true:

Toilet paper is not good at cleaning up poop.

It’s too dry. Well, it’s actually completely dry. Because of that, it’s good at wiping, but bad at cleaning.

If you want to wipe poop, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you want to actually clean yourself, keep reading.

The Convenience of Toilet Paper. The Cleanliness of Soap.

There’s one thing toilet paper gets right:

Convenience.

It’s everywhere. You know how to use it. It’s not great, but it’s familiar.

So — what if you could get the ultimate feeling of clean without changing your wiping process at all?

What if you could cure The Dirty Butt with something that’s portable, effective, and familiar?

Introducing Wallet Wipes.

What are Wallet Wipes?

They’re the best thing to happen to your bum since heated seats.

Wallet Wipes are wet wipes, formulated with distilled water and an all-natural antibacterial essential oil blend.

They give you the convenience of toilet paper and the cleanliness of a high-grade all-natural antibacterial soap.

The best part?

You can take them anywhere.

Wallet Wipes are delivered in our patented Cleaning Kit, which contains 3 Wallet Wipes (because sometimes you need more than one) and fits conveniently in your wallet.

We Know Our Sh*t.

As veteran wet wipe connoisseurs, we’ve scoured the market for a product that was:

  • All-Natural

  • Antibacterial

  • Portable, but not skimpy

  • Affordable

And we found nothing. Some products came close, but when it came down to it, we know that, if we wanted the ultimate in booty botanicals, we’d have to make something of our own.

So, we developed Wallet Wipes to meet all 4 of these criteria.

  • They’re made with all-natural, 100% organic ingredients, so you can use them with confidence and peace-of-mind.

  • We’ve formulated a natural, antibacterial blend to completely eliminate The Dirty Butt.

  • We made it portable but included 3 wipes in each kit. Other companies only have 1 wipe in their portable packages, but we know you need a little more sometimes. ;)

  • Everybody poops. Our market is endless. We respect you too much to try to make a fortune off you.

What Does a Package of Wallet Wipes Include?

Each Wallet Wipes Beautiful Bum Care Package contains 12 Cleaning Kits. Each Cleaning Kit itself contains 3 Wallet Wipes for convenient cleaning, no matter where you are.

You can choose from any of our 3 proprietary blends.

Forest Fanny

An invigorating blend of pine and cedarwood that brings to mind fresh spring meadows

Breezy Backside

A light and airy blend of chamomile and jasmine that leaves your backside feeling fresh and pure

Pumpkin Posterior (Seasonal)

A sensual blend of pumpkin spice and cinnamon, perfect for curling up next to a special friend

Get Wallet Wipes Today

Today, you can take control of your hygiene. You can defeat Dirty Butt once and for all and give your butt the cleanliness it deserves.

Stop wiping, and start cleaning. You deserve it.

[Get Wallet Wipes Today]

100% natural. 100% organic. Antibacterial. Portable. Affordable.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I have to stop doing these at night. It’s killing me.

That said, this one was fun,  yet challenging. And it could still use a lot of work.

Product

I wrote about an imaginary product called Wallet Wipes. This is something my friend Jeremy and I have talked about. Basically, it’s a package of wet wipes that can fit in your wallet.

It’s not a completely new idea, but I think with the right marketing there could potentially be a market for it.

Writing this letter was fun because, not only was I using my creativity with the writing, I was also creating certain product features on-the-fly. So that was cool.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is an urban millennial, male or female, generally liberal, concerned with hygiene and prefers to buy all-natural and organic when possible.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is unaware. They are not aware that the way they’re currently wiping is “incorrect,” but they do have an unspoken desire for cleanliness.

I was able to reference Breakthrough Advertising for this (as it contains some extensive guidance on how to write for unaware customers) and “lead into an unacceptable problem by starting with a universally-accepted image” — or, at the very least, an eye-catching image.

This customer is probably at the second stage of sophistication. They’ve seen products like this before, but never legitimately considered them.

That said, looking back, I’m not sure the sales letter adequately addressed that level of sophistication. Ideally, it would have contained some sort of claim that makes it better than the other wipes the customer may have seen.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that people are walking around with dirty butts and they don’t know it.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Wallet Wipes can give the customer the cleanliness they want in a natural, convenient way.

Lessons Learned

This was a fun one. The idea that my profession has taught me to write about poop and butts is something that my 7-year-old self would absolutely love. And quite frankly, 26-year-old me loves it too.

But I don’t think this letter is perfect, by any means. This is certainly a sensitive topic, and there’s a very thin line between being playfully humorous and being crass.

I’d love to have had more time to determine where exactly this letter lies in regard to that line. I think TUSHY, who I drew a lot of inspiration and information from, does this pretty well with their target market.

I think one of the main takeaways from this is that, just because a topic is humorous doesn’t mean it will be easy to write about. I honestly thought I would just be able to throw this together, but it was a lot harder than I expected.

Beyond that, I think I do my best work when I write in the morning. There’s something about researching right before bed and then sleeping on it that gives my brain time to organize all that info.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 10: STRAVA

The Only Fitness Tracking App Made Exclusively to Help Cyclists and Runners Continuously Beat Personal Records...

...And Brag About it to Others

They say “practice makes perfect.”

We say they’re wrong.

Practice alone isn’t good enough. It’s trite, but it’s true: If you do the same thing over and over again, you’ll get the same results you’ve always got.

So, no, “practice doesn’t make perfect.” That phrase is close, but it’s missing a word:

Purposeful practice makes perfect.”

Purposeful practice is practice with a plan. Practice with a clear goal in mind. A goal that was chosen logically.

Thankfully, with the fitness wearables and apps available today, athletes have a huge number of options to help them track workouts and gather data to help define what those clear goals should be.

But if you’re a dedicated athlete, someone who’s striving to be their best — you want more.

Mile Times and Step Counters Aren’t Enough For You

Don’t get us wrong — tracking steps is a great place to start for many people. But if you’ve made it this far, we’re guessing you’re not “many people.”

You’re an athlete. You may not think of yourself as one, but you are.

Each time you hit the pavement, you’re striving to get just a little better. To us, that’s a real athlete.

Not someone who gets paid to work as hard as possible, but someone who does it for free because they want to see what they’re made of.

If that’s you, mile times and steps aren’t enough anymore. They’re helpful, sure, but they don’t go deep enough.

They don’t let you know how you stack up against the competition.

They don’t let you know how you’re better than the past version of yourself.

And most importantly — they look backward, not forward. They don’t give you something to strive for.

If you want to practice purposefully, to continuously challenge yourself to beat PRs, you need something more.

The Fitness Tracking App for Real Athletes

Strava was created for you.

It’s been purposely designed to give you the data you need to continuously break personal records and perform at your highest level.

Not only does it give you average pace, split times, mileage, and total activity time, it also tells you:

  • The exact point at which you slowed down so you can pace yourself better next time

  • Where that big hill climb was so you can conserve your energy before you get there

  • How you stack up against others who ran the same Segment as you

  • Whether or not you beat any previous PRs

Claim Your Bragging Rights — You Earned Them

One of the most popular features of Strava is its Segments. These are specific parts of a route that Strava immediately identifies and tracks your time on.

Each Segment has a leaderboard, showing who has earned the best time on it.

So — if you’re ever bored with racing against yourself, race against other Strava users and see how you stack up.

If you find yourself on the leaderboard, enjoy your bragging rights — while they last. ;)

35 Million Athletes Can’t Be Wrong.

Strava is used by 35 million athletes in 195 countries.

Those athletes put up a grand total of 15 million uploads per week.

With 32 activity types — Strava is perfect for every athlete, no matter how you like to challenge yourself.

Who will you be tomorrow?

Will you be better or worse?

A more appropriate question:

How will you know?

Will you keep guessing? Going on “how it felt today?”

Or —

Will you take advantage of the tools at your disposal?

Using what’s available to make yourself better…

Tracking your progress with numbers, data, and facts…

Making measurable steps toward your goal…

Until, one day, you look back and realize, “I did it.”

Become who you want to be — And tell everyone about it.

When you complete a workout, it’s automatically posted to your Strava profile, where other athletes can leave comments and give Kudos to recognize your hard work.

With Strava, your hard work is noticed — and applauded.

You earned it.

Download Strava Today for FREE

Today (and every day), you can get Strava completely free. Just click the button below.

[Get Strava for FREE]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Some days, you write something good.

Others, you write a turd.

Today, I wrote a turd.

Product

I wrote about Strava. I use it to track my runs, and I like it pretty well.

Who is the Customer?

Middle-aged, middle-class male who participates in endurance sports

Customer Level of Awareness

Solution-Aware. This customer understands that fitness trackers are beneficial to helping him achieve better training results.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, if you truly want to improve at something, you have to measure your results.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Strava can help you track your fitness results, enabling you to practice more purposefully and eventually reach your goals.

Lessons Learned

Well, it’s 2:06AM.

So — I guess one of my lessons is that I gotta start doing these much earlier.

I got behind on my research the other day, and I’m still paying the price.

Ideally, I’d do research for the next day’s letter the night before, then write the letter the next morning.

The past three days, I’ve done the research in the morning, and written the letter at night.

I’ve known for a while that my best copy generally comes in the morning. So I’ve got to try to shift my schedule to accommodate that.

This letter was a turd because I didn’t have the brainpower or the time (I’m tired AF) to think more critically about the words I put on the page.

This one was very much a “throw some words up there and roll with it” type thing.

That said, one of my main reasons for doing this challenge was to prove to myself that I had the grit to work hard at something — even when it wasn’t easy.

I can’t exactly say I worked hard tonight, but I can say that I worked — and it sure as hell would have been much easier to go to bed early instead of staying up and knocking this out.

So yeah, the sales letter wasn’t that great. But I did it. And today, that’s what’s important.

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DAY 11: CLEAN CLOSET CAPSULE WARDROBE

Men: You Never Have to Shop for Clothes Again

The easiest way to get a classic, masculine look with almost no effort

I hate clothes shopping.

No joke, I wear basketball shorts and a t-shirt when I go shopping, so I can try clothes on as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there.

I can hardly ever find anything that fits. As a tall, slim guy, I can tell you this:

Most clothes in America were not made for people with my body type.

For me, a successful shopping trip means I come home with a few new items that look halfway decent. Out of those, there’s probably only 1 or 2 that I’ll wear for longer than a year.

The rest?

I’ll wear them for a few months, then get tired of them, and they’ll collect dust in my closet for a while.

About a year later, I’ll get disgusted with the amount of unworn clothes in my closet and spend an entire Saturday sorting them all into “Keep” and “Give to Goodwill” piles.

Then I’ll throw the “Give to Goodwill” garbage bag of clothes into my trunk, where it will sit for 2 - 3 months or more before I finally say “screw it” and stop by Goodwill on my way home from work to drop them off.

By that point, I’ve invested money on clothes I’ve barely even worn and countless hours looking in my closet thinking “Do I want to wear this?” before ultimately deciding “Nope. It doesn’t look good on me.”

And on top of that, there’s the hidden cost of decision fatigue.

The hidden cost of decision fatigue and how to eliminate it

You make a lot of decisions every day.

What to eat for dinner, whether or not you should respond to that text from your ex, and what workout you’ll do at the gym.

Those are just a few examples.

Your brain can only make a limited number of decisions before it starts to get tired. Its decision-making abilities get slower. You make decisions that are objectively worse than the ones you’d make earlier in the day.

Think about it — how do you normally feel at the end of a work day?

Exhausted. Drained. Wiped out.

Right?

That’s decision fatigue.

It’s what makes it easy to say, “Yeah, I can just skip the gym tonight,” or “Damn — a pizza for dinner sounds really good.”

Think about it.

How many bad — or just straight-up lazy — decisions have you made because you were just too tired to give a shit?

If you’d had more energy, you would have gone to the gym. You wouldn’t have eaten that entire pizza while watching Ozark.

Right?

So, how do you eliminate decision fatigue?

Reduce the amount of decisions you make every day.

For example, some of the smartest minds in our generation (Steve Jobs being the most popular one) have opted out of deciding what to wear every day.

They just wear the same thing.

It seems crazy, but it’s not. Here’s why:

People who wear the same thing every day are simply reducing the number of decisions they make, so they can save their energy for the important decisions, like how to shape the future of their companies.

You can do the same, whether it’s eating the same thing for breakfast every day, following the same workout routine each week, or even wearing the same outfit every day.

Reduce decision fatigue without wearing the same thing every day

I know.

You’re not a robot. And the idea of wearing the same outfit every day sounds a little crazy.

“Will people notice? Will they think that this is the exact same shirt I wore yesterday?”

Well, I have good news:

You can use your wardrobe to reduce decision fatigue — without wearing the same thing every day.

Have you heard of a capsule wardrobe?

Think of it like a toolbox.

If you have a toolbox with too many tools, you can never find what the hell you’re looking for. You waste time, and you just end up frustrated (and your sink is still leaking).

But if you’re toolbox has all the tools you need — and none you don’t — you can find that wrench quickly, fix the sink, and get back to watching The Office.

That’s what a capsule wardrobe is like. It has everything you need, and nothing you don’t.

But if you were like me when I first started learning about capsule wardrobes — you have no idea what clothes you’re supposed to buy.

Right?

I mean, if your goal is to only have 9 shirts, how do you choose which ones to buy?

And, more importantly, how do you do it without spending an entire afternoon trying on ill-fitting clothes at the mall (and eventually ending up with something you don’t actually like)?

Finally, how do you choose clothes that actually look good on your body type and match your unique style?

Introducing Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobes: The Easiest Way for Men to Get a Clean, Masculine Look Without Shopping

I had all those questions, and I couldn’t find an answer for them, so I created one:

Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobes.

Each Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobe is custom-crafted to match your unique lifestyle and body type.

We use a diagnostic quiz to learn more about who you are and what you like, then generate a Style Report that tells you exactly which clothes to buy to create a complete capsule wardrobe (40 items total) that will work year-round for any social, business, or fitness activity you find yourself in.

The result?

You get a clean look, a clean closet, and a clean mind — so you can look your best and reserve your mental brainpower for the decisions that actually matter (like whether or not you should text that ex back...on second thought — you probably shouldn’t).

Every Single Item in Your New Clean Closet Wardrobe

Every Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobe includes:

  • 2 pairs of jeans

  • 2 pairs of shorts

  • 1 pair of chinos

  • 2 Tees

  • 3 button downs

  • 1 white oxford

  • 1 suit

  • 1 belt

  • 2 jackets (light and heavy — can be layered)

  • 1 sweater

  • 1 vest

  • 3 active wear shirts

  • 3 active wear shorts

  • 5 pairs of socks

  • 7 pairs of underwear

  • 1 pair of dress shoes

  • 1 pair of boots

  • 1 pair of casual leather shoes

  • 1 pair of athletic shoes

Each Clean Closet Capsule gives you everything you need, and nothing you don’t.

Why I created Clean Closet Capsules

Simple:

It’s exactly what I would have wanted.

Looking good shouldn’t be as complicated as solving a rubik’s cube. Achieving a clean, masculine look (one your grandfather would have been proud of) should be simple.

But we’re bombarded with so many options that looking good has become complicated.

Clean Closet makes it simple again.

Take the Clean Closet Quiz Now

Take the Clean Closet Quiz now to see exactly what we’d recommend for your unique style.

Then — buy what you want, ignore what you don’t.

If it were me, I’d ditch my entire current wardrobe and buy everything Clean Closet recommended.

But hey, you’re free to make your own decisions. And now — you’re free from clothes shopping ever again.

You’re welcome. ;)

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

This one went really well. Probably because I am my own target customer — and because it’s a company I legitimately want to start. (It doesn’t exist, yet.)

Product

I wrote about a product I intend to create called Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobes.

Essentially, they’re lightly-customized capsule wardrobe recommendations for men, based on a quiz.

(Similar to what Hawthorne does with cologne.)

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a young to middle-aged male. He likely works at a white-collar or creative job. And, while he wants to look good, he simply doesn’t have the interest in learning about fashion or shopping regularly.

Instead, he would prefer a done-for-you wardrobe that tells him what looks good and where to buy it.

Beyond that, he realizes the importance of conserving mental energy and is open to trying new things (like a minimalist/capsule wardrobe).

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

He realizes that he doesn’t exactly love all his clothes and that he doesn’t exactly love shopping either. But, he doesn’t realize that there is a solution for these problems.

That being the case, he’s also in the first stage of sophistication, since he’s never seen a product like Clean Closet before.

Big Idea + Rationale

There are two big ideas in this sales letter. If I could re-do it, I would pick one.

One of the two big ideas is that shopping is not fun. The customer knows this and will resonate with it.

The second big idea is that decision fatigue leads to bad decision making. In the letter, this isn’t fully developed, and the tie-in with the product is a bit loose. This could definitely use more work.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Clean Closet Capsule Wardrobes will give the customer a brand-new, clean, masculine look without shopping and eliminate the decision fatigue that comes with choosing what to wear every day.

Lessons Learned

I’m starting to think of these sales letters the way an artist would think of her sketches.

They’re not fully developed, and they’re certainly not masterpieces, but they hold the bones and ideas of greater things — if you give yourself the time to fully flesh them out.

That’s the beautiful (and tragic) thing about this project. Creating a new sales letter every day forces me to continually come up with big ideas and tie them back to a product — which is an incredibly beneficial (and fun) exercise.

However, it doesn’t give me enough time to fully flesh out those ideas into the best possible sales argument. Rather than polished letters, I end up with sketches.

And sketches are great — but they need some finessing if they’re going to become masterpieces.

All that to say, I’m realizing the HUGE importance of editing and allowing yourself to stew on an idea for a while before calling it “done.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 12: THE WAR OF ART

SPECIAL REPORT FOR STRUGGLING ARTISTS AND CREATIVES:

It took him 17 years to get paid for anything he wrote…

...but the lessons he learned could help you conquer creative blockage once and for all.

Steven Pressfield shouldn’t be an author.

Not because he’s a bad writer, but because it seemed for 17 years like the Universe was telling him:

“No. This is not for you. Quit. Give up. It won’t work.”

It turns out, the Universe was telling him something different entirely. A message that took 17 years to be fulfilled.

I’m sure Mr. Pressfield would have loved to achieve success much more quickly, but during those 17 years, he was learning (and living) a lesson that could help you conquer your creative blocks forever.

Who is Steven Pressfield, and why should he matter to you?

Steven Pressfield has been many things:

A bartender, trucker, migrant worker, schoolteacher, and more.

He was even homeless at one point.

I say this to let you know he was not born with a silver spoon, and he was not an overnight success.

Yes, his first novel, The Legend of Baggar Vance, was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and Will Smith, but do you know how long Mr. Pressfield had been writing before The Legend of Baggar Vance was published?

27 years.

You might be thinking:

Why in the hell did he keep writing? This guy is an idiot.

Far from it, actually. Mr. Pressfield graduated from Duke University in 1966. His success cannot be attributed to blind luck or foolish consistency.

While he may have started without knowing what he was doing, somewhere along the way, Mr. Pressfield began to learn (and use) the lessons that would remove all the barriers to his success that he could control.

And now, you can do the same.

Overcome the invisible force blocking your creativity

You probably don’t realize this, but you are in a war.

Not against a nation or a person, but an invisible, insidious force that will do everything in its power to keep you from pursuing your dream.

It will make you fearful, lazy, inconsistent.

It will lie to you.

It will put on a mask and pretend to help and, at the same time, work behind the scenes to sabotage anything that could help you reach your goal.

He’s one of the nastiest forces you will ever face. But until now, you probably didn’t even realizing you were in a battle with him.

How to know if you’re losing the battle

Before beginning your war against this invisible foe, here’s how to find out if he’s been beating you.

Have you found yourself thinking — “I can just wait until tomorrow to write. Tonight, I’m going to have some ice cream and relax” — and then, when tomorrow comes, you tell yourself the same thing?

Constantly putting off the project you know you need to do because there’s never a good time to start?

Or pouring time into things you know aren’t important to you?

Working late at a job you hate — even though you don’t need the money?

Reading books or watching TV shows you’re not really interested in?

Eating, drinking, or smoking habitually to “take the edge off?”

Lashing out at others when they tell you of their dream to write a book, become a musician, or move to a big city? Then later, asking yourself “Why did I do that?”

Or — and this is the worst one of all — actually making the time to work on what’s important to you, only to find yourself “blocked.”

So, after trying to work for a few minutes, you put down the paint brush, the pen, whatever, and say “The ideas aren’t coming today. I’m just going to stop.”

Don’t let your dreams die. Here’s how to conquer creative blockage forever.

It’s surprisingly simple.

You don’t have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to go to a seminar and learn a new “technique” from some guru.

You don’t have to stand on your head and rub your tummy while reciting the ABC’s backward.

You don’t have to complete an online course and learn everything about creative blockage or learn a bunch of theory that doesn’t work in practice.

Mr. Pressfield has distilled everything he’s learned about conquering creative blockage (forever) into a book called The War of Art.

You won’t find any complicated techniques within its pages.

What you will find is a simple, straightforward battle plan to help you defeat the invisible foe sabotaging your dreams and goals.

Get The War of Art Today

Henry David Thoreau said “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Those people are losing the battle. They live with regrets. They push their dreams down until they forget they even had any to begin with.

Maybe you’ve been living that way too. Maybe you’ve been losing the battle. But you don’t have to.

You can win, because now you have a battle plan.

It would be easy to read this page and move on. Nothing immediately bad is going to happen. No one is going to stop you.

But before you do — ask yourself “Who is making this decision?”

Is it you — the bravest version of you — who wants to achieve your goals and will do what it takes to follow your dreams and remove all the obstacles you can control?

Or — is it the invisible foe? Disguised as indecisiveness, laziness, self-doubt.

The decision is yours, but if you’ve been creatively blocked…

If you have a dream that’s not yet a reality…

If you want to know how to remove every obstacle in your control to reach your goals…

Think hard about that decision.

[Get The War of Art Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Today felt good.

Product

I wrote about a book titled The War of Art.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s by Steven Pressfield and it discusses how creatives battle Resistance with a capital R, and how you can win that battle.

It’s especially interesting, because Steven’s story is one of true perseverance, as you’ll see in the sales letter.

Who is the Customer?

The reader/customer is an artist or creative who recognizes that he/she isn’t living up to his/her full potential.

They don’t know what the solution to that problem is, but they’re looking for it — whether that search is conscious or unconscious.

They’re uninspired, unmotivated, unsure of themselves. They’re making excuses for why they’re not working harder or haven’t succeeded yet — and they know they’re making excuses. Maybe not consciously, but deep down they know that. That’s why the book resonates with them, because it hits this deep chord they know is true.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

They know that they’re not achieving their full potential, whether consciously or unconsciously. For those who are at the unconscious level, the Pre-Headline of the sales letter calls out that struggle to get them at the level of awareness necessary for the letter to be effective.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that the reader is creatively blocked and facing an invisible foe that’s continuously sabotaging them.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that, since Steven Pressfield has been fighting this battle for years, he knows how to win. The book is essentially a “battle plan” for conquering creative block and defeating the invisible foe (Resistance).

Lessons Learned

Headlines are ridiculously important throughout a letter.

I’ve always recognized the importance of the main headline, but in today’s letter, I used some templates from Copyhackers, as I’ve been doing for the past few days, to beef up the headlines throughout, and they made a huge difference.

I’ve read before that the main purpose of headlines is to break up copy, and I think that’s true. But headlines shouldn’t just do that. Each headline should instill a serious desire to continue reading.

If you’ve been studying copywriting for a while, you’re probably thinking: “Duh. Every sentence should instill a desire to read the next one.”

Yeah, I know. But for whatever reason, I didn’t apply that to headlines until today. So, this might be something you’ve been aware of for a long time, but PSA:

All your headlines are important AF, not just the one that starts your letter.

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DAY 13: BUSINESS OF COPY

Six-Figure Copywriter Reveals Exactly How She Runs Her Business, So You Can Steal Her Processes and Use Them to Make More Money

For Copywriters Who Want to Run Their Business Like a Professional

So, you’ve made it this far.

You’re the proud owner of a copywriting business with more than a few happy clients.

But when someone at a dinner party asks, “So, what do you do?”, you still say something like:

“I’m a freelance copywriter.”

That feels a hell of a lot better than what you used to tell people. But still, you feel like you’re selling yourself short.

“Technically, I’m a business owner. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to. But I feel awkward saying that.”

Maybe it’s a confidence thing.

Maybe you just have to start saying, “I run a marketing consulting company and help my clients define their brand voice and sell more products.”

Or maybe it’s something else...something unconscious.

Maybe you know, somewhere deep down, you’re not really running a business.

You’re just freelancing.

If you want to stop freelancing and start running a thriving business, keep reading.

The Problem with Freelancing

“Freelancers work in their pajamas.”

“They sleep until noon.”

“They work from wherever they want.”

“They’re flakey and inconsistent.”

That’s what your clients think.

The problem with freelancing is that the best clients don’t want to work with a freelancer. They want to work with a professional — a business owner.

Now, hear me:

I’m not saying the best clients don’t outsource copywriting. But I am saying that the best clients only outsource copywriting to people they can trust to get the job done effectively and deliver on time.

More often than not — the best clients want to work with someone who positions themselves as a business owner, not a freelancer.

Because freelancers are flakey, remember? ;)

Full transparency (and I probably shouldn’t tell you this):

You’ll eventually get it right.

Through trial-and-error, you’ll eventually figure out what your dream clients expect from you, and you’ll make it happen.

But before that, you might lose some of your favorite clients.

You might wait years before gaining the confidence to go after your dream clients.

And (maybe worst of all) you might lose money in the process (whether it’s due to clients not paying, not charging what you’re really worth, or being afraid to go after those perfect clients who would love to hire you if they knew you existed).

How to Stop Freelancing and Start Running a Profitable Copywriting Business

You could just start presenting yourself as a professional.

Call yourself a “marketing consultant,” get some business cards, go to a few networking events.

And that’s part of it.

But presenting yourself as a professional without doing the legwork to actually be a professional is a bit like faking a smile:

It might seem genuine at first, but eventually, people will realize you’re faking it.

The best way to present yourself as a professional is to actually become a professional.

But how?

For most copywriters, this involves learning more about the craft (and it should!):

  • Sleeping with Breakthrough Advertising under your pillow…

  • Reading Bencivenga’s Bullets until you can recite them from memory…

  • Watching CopyHackers Tutorial Tuesdays so religiously you begin to feel a deep personal connection with Jo…

But if you do what everyone else is doing, how are you going to stand out?

Quite often, what makes a professional is not just her copywriting chops, it’s the way she runs her business.

Does she communicate expectations?

Can she lead a new client through a standardized onboarding process?

Does she have systems in place that automate the biggest time-wasters?

These are the types of things that will separate you from your fellow copywriters. Not just that you do the work, but that you do it professionally, consistently.

Again, you could figure these things out on your own. You’re smart.

But what if you didn’t have to?

What if you could get all the systems, tactics, and templates behind a six-figure copywriting business?

Then use them to grow your own business, land your ideal clients, and make more money?

All without the learning curve.

Introducing Business of Copy: The Only Copywriting Course Designed to Help You Go from Freelancer to Business Owner

Meet Abbey Woodcock — the copywriter who runs a (multiple) six-figure copywriting business and has worked with some of the revered brands in the copywriting industry. Brands like:

  • Agora Publishing

  • Ryan Levesque

  • Ramit Sethi

  • Jeff Walker

A few years ago, she noticed something:

There were basically zero copywriting courses that actually helped copywriters run their businesses.

Everyone was so focused on getting good at their craft that they forgot to get good at their business.

That’s where Business of Copy comes in.

It’s got everything you need to go from freelancer to business owner and land your dream clients, set your own terms, and make more money — all without the learning curve.

How good would it feel to hop on an onboarding call with a brand-new client and know exactly what to say to present yourself as a total expert?

What would it be like to get a deposit in your bank account with your dream client’s name on the statement?

Or to negotiate a contract that you control, instead of just accepting whatever the client wants?

That’s what Business of Copy can give you.

It’s the only copywriting course designed to help you actually grow your business.

Sure, you’ll find some tips on writing better copy. But more than anything you’ll find the systems, techniques, and templates Abbey has used to grow a (multiple) six-figure copywriting business.

That includes training like:

  • How to Quote Projects

  • The Anatomy of a $24,000 Proposal

  • Accounting and Taxes for Freelancers

  • How to Structure Deals (with Brian Kurtz)

  • 7 Phrases to Say When You Screw Up To Save the Situation (and the Client)

  • 50 Questions to Ask Prospects Before Work Starts

  • Client-Getting Strategies for Introverts: Dealing with Nervousness, Fear, and Anxiety at Live Events

  • And a lot more!

Join Business of Copy Today

Business of Copy isn’t a static course.

Abbey consistently adds new training based on what members request and need. So if there’s something you need, just ask for it!

It’s also a community.

Once you join, you’ll be granted access to the private, members-only Facebook Group. You’ll be able to connect with and learn from other members who aren’t just freelancers — they’re professionals. ;)

Join Business of Copy today to get access to the systems, tactics, and templates behind a six-figure copywriting business and ongoing training from the copywriter behind it.

[Join Business of Copy Now]

Freelancer or Business Owner?

Which are you?

Which do you want to be?

And how do you plan to get there?

Like I said earlier, without the right guidance, you’ll figure it out eventually. But why wait?

Why waste another year missing out on your ideal clients while other copywriters are so busy they’re turning clients down?

Why waste another year “just getting by” when other copywriters are raking in cash?

Why spend another year being a freelancer when you could be a profitable business owner?

[Join Business of Copy Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Damn, this one was intimidating.

Product

Today, I wrote about Business of Copy — a copywriting course/membership site that focuses extensively on teaching copywriters how to run their business as opposed to teaching them how to write.

It’s literally a course I had been wishing for before I found it. I remember thinking, “I wish I could just know exactly how successful freelance copywriters run their businesses.”

But when I came across BoC a few weeks later, enrollment was closed. So I reached out to Abbey Woodcock (who created the course with her partner KC), and she graciously opened the doors for me.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is someone like me, honestly.

A copywriter who is getting by, but knows they’re not doing everything as effectively as they could be.

They’re fairly confident in their copywriting skills, but they’re hesitant to go after their dream clients.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

The customer is Problem-Aware.

They know there’s a problem with the way they’re running their business, but they don’t know there’s a course out there that has the answers they want.

That being the case, this is the first course of this nature they’ve seen. And to my knowledge — it’s the only course like this. So — they’re in the first stage of sophistication.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that the best clients, i.e. the customer’s dream clients, want to work with people who present themselves as professionals. They want to work with business owners, not freelancers.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Business of Copy provides everything you need to go from “freelancer” to “business owner,” including systems, tactics, and templates, so you can start going after your dream clients and earning more money.

Lessons Learned

Writing for other copywriters is intimidating.

This letter was fun as hell to write (and most of them are), but it was also scary. Knowing (or hoping) that Abbey would see this put me on my A Game.

At times, it felt hard to get words on the page, but loosely following Clayton Makepeace’s sales letter template helped a TON.

So, if you’re a copywriter who needs some direction, TEMPLATES ARE YOUR FRIEND.

Beyond that, I’m realizing that these sales letters are just sketches. I might have mentioned this yesterday, but they’re not finished products by any means.

That said, it’s still cool to develop a “sketch” for a new product every day and test my mind to come up with new sales angles.

Finally — if you’re having trouble working or putting words on the page — just sit down and decide to do the work. Grab some tea or coffee, put in the headphones, and commit to putting shitty words on the page.

You can turn them into good ones later.

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DAY 14: LEADPAGES

ARE YOU A BUSY ENTREPRENEUR BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST? HERE’S HOW TO...

Get More Leads Today with 150+ Proven Conversion-Generating Landing Page Templates and a Simple Drag-and-Drop Builder

The landing page builder designed for busy entrepreneurs who can’t afford to waste time

New software isn’t fun.

Sure — the first 30 minutes might be interesting, but at minute 37, when you’re gritting your teeth and grumbling “Why in the HELL won’t this work?”, the fun is over, traded for high blood pressure and more stress than Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws.

You’re busy. We get it.

If...

You don’t have time to learn a new software because you’re busy running a business...

You don’t need “perfect,” you just need “done,” so you can move on to the next thing…

You’d rather focus on generating results than perfectly polishing a landing page…

We have something for you.

Pre-Designed, Proven Landing Pages Optimized to Convert

We’re conversion nerds.

We’re also design nerds.

And we know a bit about coding too.

So we combined the three and made Leadpages —  the landing page builder for busy entrepreneurs.

We’ve identified the types of landing pages that convert and the types that don’t.

We kept the ones that actually convert (150+ of them) and made them templates in our drag-and-drop builder.

That way, you don’t have to chug coffee until 1 a.m. so you can stay up watching YouTube tutorials about UX/UI.

We’ve done that for you.

When you sign up for Leadpages, you get 150+ pre-built landing page templates for things like:

  • Landing pages

  • Squeeze pages

  • Webinar registration pages

  • Thank you pages

  • And more

All you have to do is add your own branding, copy, and integrations, then BOOM — you’re done.

Drag-and-Drop Builder, So You Can Spend Time Building Your Business — Not a Landing Page

“We need to move quickly on this.”

Speed is important to an entrepreneur. Being first doesn’t always mean you’ll get more customers than the other guys, but it helps.

Our drag-and-drop builder was built for speed.

The 150+ templates we mentioned earlier have been optimized to convert, so other than adding your own branding, there’s not a lot you have to do to make them work.

But sometimes you want to personalize things a bit. We get that.

With our drag-and-drop builder, you can customize your landing pages to fit your unique brand — all you have to do is point and click.

What You Get When You Try Leadpages

Along with 150+ conversion-optimized landing page templates and our easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder, you also get:

  • Automatically generated Facebook ads, so you don’t have to spend time creating an ad after you’ve created a landing page. You do still have to set it up on Facebook, though. They wouldn’t give us their login info — something about a breach…

  • Easy-to-Read analytics and tracking, because the best businesses are built on practices that actually work. Our tracking tools give you full transparency into how your Leadpages are performing, so you can make changes or pour a celebratory drink — depending on the situation.

  • Integration with all your other tools. Got an email service provider you love? Or a CRM that has literally all of your customer information in it? Perfect. Leadpages easily integrates with all major marketing platforms.

...and that’s just to name a few.

Try Leadpages For Free Today

Keep your money — for the first 14 days, at least (hey, we gotta eat, too).

If you sign up for Leadpages right now, you can have your first landing page created (with lead magnet delivery and a Facebook ad pointing to it) and generating new leads within 30 minutes.

We know you’re busy, but it doesn’t get much faster than this.

[Try Leadpages Free Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Have you ever watched a horse race?

You can almost always bet that the horse who comes out of the gate first will finish somewhere near the end. It gasses out too quickly.

That’s how I felt about this sales letter.

Product

Today, I wrote about Leadpages, a popular landing page builder.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a busy entrepreneur. Anywhere between 30 and 60.

He/she understands marketing funnels at a high level and knows that the company needs to build an email list, but the knowledge stops somewhere around there.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is Solution Aware, maybe even Product Aware.

Regardless, they’ve seen other landing page builders before. So you’ll notice that the letter doesn’t hardly sell the concept of an email list or WHY landing pages are important, because it’s assumed the reader knows that already.

Instead, it works to position Leadpages as the best builder for their particular situation.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that a busy entrepreneur has limited time. They don’t need “perfection,” they just need “done.”

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is this:

Because Leadpages comes with a substantial amount of templates and the builder is so simple to use, it’s got an incredibly quick learning curve and requires little effort to get up-and-running (i.e. generating leads).

Lessons Learned

One of the difficulties of doing a sales letter per day is that I can’t get incredibly deep into a product, which means that writing to a Product Aware or Solution Aware market is challenging.

You’ve got to develop an intimate knowledge of a product in order to describe it in a way that’s both simple and enticing.

Oddly enough, I have little interest in writing for SaaS products at this point. Maybe it’s because it was so hard to put words on the page, but I think I enjoy writing for products where I can use a bit more of a narrative structure, instead of hyping of features and benefits.

That said, I realize that I need to get a lot better at writing features and benefits regardless, because I often find myself reverting to the same bullet structure or using the same phrases repeatedly — not cool.

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DAY 15: THE POWER POTATO BY MEDITATER

DO YOU FEEL BUSY, ANXIOUS, OR STRESSED? TRY…

The “Ugly” Miracle Plant That Completely Eradicates Anxiety Almost Instantly

The Irish have known about it for centuries, but with a modern twist, its power can now be harnessed by people across the globe.

Life moves pretty fast...

Revered philosopher Ferriss Bueller understood this universal truth, but with the advent of smartphones, emojis, and cat GIFs, we seem to have forgotten it — trading our slow life for a fast one filled with fans, followers, and fake friends.

But it’s still possible to attain the same peace brought on by the truancy of youth.

Most try to access this peace by drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana cigarettes, yoga, or even meditation — which I prefer to call “sitting.”

It hasn’t worked.

Now more than ever, we are busy, anxious, stressed. And we can’t seem to find a solution, no matter how hard we try.

The Irish know something we don’t, though.

Quietly, almost secretly, they’ve been harnessing the power of a plant to sustain themselves and find lasting inner peace.

They nearly lost the plant centuries ago, leading to a nation-wide panic.

Today, the plant is plentiful not just in Ireland, but in nearly all parts of the world.

But until recently, no one has known how to harness its power.

You’ve probably seen this plant in your supermarket, in a friend’s garden, and even in the trash.

It’s been adopted by people of nearly every culture, but they’re all using it wrong — failing to take advantage of its full potential.

How do I know this? Because I was one of those people.

My Embarrassing Experience With The Miracle Plant

As a member of the modern world, I feel a constant anxiety due to the busy-ness of life around me.

My throat tightens. My heartbeat quickens. My mind races constantly — never slowing down or stopping.

I had tried all the popular ways to eliminate these symptoms:

  • Supplements

  • Alcohol

  • Marijuana

  • Yoga

  • “Sitting” (meditation)

Some of them worked for short periods of time, but none provided lasting relief from my constant anxiety.

Until I found the miracle plant I’ve been telling you about.

I’d been around it my entire life but never thought twice about its potential powers. I’m embarrassed to admit, I had thrown this plant away countless times before I realized its true potential.

Why?

Because the plant, in its natural form is unremarkable, forgettable, even ugly, if you can believe it.

It wasn’t until I paired this plant with modern technology that I realized its power to completely eradicate my anxiety nearly immediately.

More on that in a moment, but first, I need to introduce you to The Miracle Plant.

Introducing: The Surprisingly “Ugly” Miracle Plant

The potato.

Humble. Hardworking. Healthy.

But certainly not handsome.

The potato is the most humble of plants, preferring to let its work, rather than appearance, do the talking.

Undoubtedly, you’re thinking:

“The potato? That’s the miracle plant? Ridiculous.”

Until recently, I would have agreed.

But remember, I’ve told you The Miracle Plant is often overlooked.

It’s been hiding in plain sight all these years, waiting for someone to realize how it can help.

Until now, the power of the potato has been ignored, but not anymore.

Thanks to an unexpected modern tool, humans now have the ability to harness the infinite power of the potato to propel human consciousness to previously unknown places.

The Unexpected Modern Tool You Need to Harness the Power of the Potato

Most plants require human intervention to become useful. Cotton and hemp are two examples.

This Miracle Plant is no different.

In order to become useful, it needs a little help.

The technology you’ll need is incredibly simple. I’ll bet you even have it in a drawer next to you right now.

A marker.

That’s the most important tool you’ll need to transform The Miracle Plant from its natural form into an anxiety-extinguishing tool.

The Only Thing That Comes Close to the Potato

There’s something I’ve avoided talking about until now.

Next to the potato, it’s the best way to drastically diminish distress in any person.

Short philosophical quotes.

If there’s anything that we’ve learned in the past few years it’s this:

Phrases like “Keep calm and carry on,” are definitely NOT useless and are guaranteed EFFECTIVE 100% of the time.

Your grandmother passed away?

Just keep calm and carry on.

You got fired from your job and don’t know how you’ll support your family now?

Keep calm and carry on.

You’re homeless and your tent got destroyed by a storm and it’s 16 degrees outside and you’re afraid you’ll freeze to death if you sleep outside tonight?

Keep calm and carry on! Why are you even worried?

The Ultimate Cure to Completely Eradicate Anxiety Almost Instantly

You’ve likely realized this by now:

Potatoes with short philosophical quotes written on them are the ultimate cure to completely eradicate anxiety almost instantly.

I call it the Power Potato.

The combination of the lasting inner peace brought about by short philosophical quotes and the infinite power of the potato create a potent pairing that can’t be matched by even the most powerful drugs or spiritual dogmas.

I know what you’re thinking:

“I’m going to make my own Power Potato right now!”

Yes, please do.

But after that — consider sending one to a friend.

The world we live in is busy, stressful, and wears all of us down sometimes.

Sending a Power Potato to a friend could be the act of service that completely turns their life around.

“That’s a great idea! I’m not sure what I’ll write though.”

That’s where Meditater comes in.

Meditater: The Power Potato Purveyor for the Planet

Meditater is a company devoted to sending Power Potatoes to people all over the planet.

Our Power Potatoes are so effective they even work when you’re doing something as pointless as “sitting.” (Otherwise known as “meditating.” Can you guess how we got the name?)

We use our patent-pending Potato Portal to create a personalized potato for you pal based on whatever problems are perplexing them at the present moment.

You can choose your own phrase, or use one of our proven TaterTips, guaranteed to completely eliminate anxiety for the recipient.

In addition to the insightful TaterTip, each Power Potato comes with instructions on how to correctly harness the full power of each potato.

Get Your Power Potato from Meditater Today

Say goodbye to stress and anxiety. Goodbye to screens and bad dreams.

Say hello to a permanent, lasting inner peace that can only be created by short philosophical quotes written on potatoes.

[Get Your Power Potato Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I feel like I start a lot of these with “it was fun,” or some variation of that.

But my hope is that today wasn’t just fun for me to write, but will be fun for you to read as well.

Today was my 15th day writing these, and I figured I’d give myself a little break by writing something that would require very little research and that would let me be as ridiculous as possible.

Product

I wrote about a product called Power Potato by Meditater.

This is an idea my friends and I came up with and shot a (yet to be released) Kickstarter video for.

We’re planning to eventually launch that Kickstarter, but probably won’t use this whole sales letter — it’s a little too ridiculous. I’d imagine parts of it make the cut, though.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a millennial with disposable income.

Interested in health, self-actualization, and memes.

Likely suffers from anxiety, but isn’t crippled by it and doesn’t take himself/herself too seriously.

Customer Level of Awareness

This one would work best for a problem-aware customer, but preferably not one desperate for a solution, as they would just get pissed off when I say “oh yeah, it’s a potato, btw.”

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that there is a “miracle plant” that the reader is familiar with, but hasn’t been able to “harness its power” yet.

Big Promise + Rationale

The Power Potato allows them to “harness the power of the potato” and send one to their friends to help them through tough times.

Lessons Learned

Now that I’m writing this, I think the biggest issue is that the big idea and the big promise aren’t tied together well enough.

The big idea is engaging and inspires a lot of curiosity, but I didn’t do a great job of tying the product to that idea — or at least describing why someone would send a Power Potato to a friend instead of just writing on a potato and keeping it for his/herself.

Beyond that, I loved using an opener that teases the product and hints at a lot of details, but doesn’t figuratively spill the beans until pretty far down the page.

If you’re wanting to write an opener like that, I think the key is to be intimately familiar with the product. Know its story and know its features and benefits, so you can sprinkle them throughout a narrative without saying exactly what you’re talking about until it’s absolutely necessary.

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DAY 16: SCRIVENER

Overcome The Major Flaw Of Most Word Processors That Keeps You From Finishing Your Novel

Scrivener Is Writing Software Made Exclusively To Work With Your Creative Process — Not Against It

Writing is a messy craft.

You don’t start with “once upon a time” and write all the way through to “the end.”

The process looks a little more like this:

Day 1: Write an opener.

Day 2: Develop a character’s backstory.

Day 6: Rewrite your opener.

Day 7: Get very lost in research about the history of Rome, but take some notes you think will be helpful.

Day 21: Give the character from Day 2 an entirely different name and backstory.

Day 39: Finally reach a chapter where you can use your Rome research. Spend 3 hours looking for it. Realize you’re never going to find it. Change the setting to Greece and hope it still works.

If you use a conventional word processor, your different chunks of writing are scattered across different files, pages, comments, you name it.

Tracking down all the different pieces can become as difficult as the writing itself.

I know I have some incredible notes about Roman philosophers in 3rd century B.C., but I’ve searched my entire computer and can’t find my notes anywhere…

Depending on what you lose, it’s not just inconvenient, it’s potentially disastrous.

No matter what you’re writing, your success depends on having the information you need, where you need it, when you need it, so you can use it to write something amazing.

The #1 Problem With Most Word Processors

Most word processors aren’t designed to allow your natural creative process to express itself.

They’re created to store words. That’s it.

Because writers work in chunks, they need software that not only stores those chunks, but organizes them in a way that lets you keep track of them and access them quickly.

You know when you’ve been writing for what feels like 30 minutes, only to look up and realize 3 hours have passed?

That’s when your best writing happens.

Conventional word processors can kick you out of that state when you’re looking for character development notes or a passage you know was really good but you can’t seem to find.

Not Scrivener.

Write In Chunks. Save & Find Them Easily.

Scrivener is like a digital binder that lets you organize everything about a writing project.

That means everything you need to finish your novel is all in one place: notes, research, random ideas, pictures, webpages, and more.

Here are some of the features writers love most:

Corkboard

It’s exactly what you think it is.

A digital corkboard that lets you jot down notes and drag and drop them into a structure that makes sense for you.

Visualize your best ideas all at once, and rearrange them however you want.

Tags, Colors, and Icons

Goodbye black-and-white.

Scrivener lets you color code your notes, research, and chapters.

Use them in whatever way makes sense to your brain.

Color-code chapters, characters, or different points of view.

Tag research as “helpful for now” or “helpful for later.”

Use icons to indicate which part of your outline corresponds to your work-in-progress.

Snapshot

About to take your story in a whole new direction and not sure how it will turn out?

Take a snapshot to save your work before you conduct a major word-surgery. Then, if you don’t like the results, revert back to the snapshot like nothing ever happened.

Template Sheets

Got specific information you know you need to develop for every character?

Create a character template that has info about characters’ professions, relationships, upbringing, you name it.

Full-Screen Mode

Just you and the words. Nothing else.

Use full-screen mode to eliminate distractions and finally get to work.

It’s Not Just A Word Processor. What Scrivener Really Is.

Scrivener lets your creative process express itself naturally.

Instead of conforming your process to a conventional word processor, Scrivener was designed to conform to how your brain works when you’re writing.

That means it’s designed to let you take all the ideas jumping around in your brain and put them into a format that actually makes sense.

So you can go from “work-in-progress” to “work-in-print” as painlessly as possible.

Scrivener: Designed To Help You Do What Most Writers Can’t.

Becoming a successful writer is much more about the desire burning inside you than any tool or program you use.

But if you’ve got that desire — why not give it the best tools to express itself?

Why not use everything at your disposal to get to that day where you write “the end?”

With features that conform to the way your creative process works, Scrivener was designed to help you do that thing writers seem to struggle with most:

Finish.

Try Scrivener Free for 30 Days

Don’t put your creativity into a box any longer.

Your mind was designed to generate ideas. Scrivener is designed to capture those ideas so you can create something beautiful with them.

Try it free for 30 days to see what it feels like to work with your creative process — not against it.

[Try Scrivener Free for 30 Days]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I’m learning that how smoothly each letter goes depends on how much research I do the night before.

No research = A lot of pain the next day

A lot of research = Very little pain the next day

Product

Today, I wrote about a writing tool called Scrivener. I’d worked on a blog post about Scrivener for a client before, so I was pretty familiar with it before starting the research last night, but it was fun to dig into customer reviews and learn more about the selling propositions of Scrivener instead of just its functionality.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is an aspiring author; in this case, a novelist. The customer isn’t a novice writer. They know their creative process works, and they’ve been writing long enough to know that they don’t exactly love conventional word processors.

When I was looking through Amazon reviews of Scrivener, I looked at the other reviews a few people had written (besides their Scrivener reviews), which was very helpful.

When writing about a product, I think there’s a tendency to overplay its importance in someone’s life and present whatever problem it solves as the only problem they’re experiencing, which isn’t always the case.

It was good to realize that these people were indeed 3-dimensional. They don’t just care about writing. They have other hobbies and passions, too.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is either unaware or problem-aware. I think the letter could potentially work in both cases.

For the unaware customer, it brings attention to the problem solved by Scrivener.

For the problem-aware customer, it validates that there is actually a problem and presents the solution.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that the creative process is messy and that conventional word processors aren’t designed to accommodate the messiness of creativity.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Scrivener was created specifically to take the jumble of ideas in the customer’s brain and help organize them in a way that will actually lead to progress on their writing project.

Lessons Learned

Toward the end, most sales letter templates call for a description of “the consequences of not taking action” or something similar.

Today, I realized that I have a tough time doing that tactfully. It’s a tough thing to do without coming off as “preachy.”

I haven’t identified a perfect answer yet, but when I do, I’ll let you know.

On that note, presenting the consequences on inaction seems like an odd thing to do for a software product sales page. In general, they focus heavily on features, so getting into an emotional narrative feels a bit unnatural.

I’m sure there’s a way to do it tactfully, but again, I haven’t found that answer yet.

Additionally, I think there’s something I need to be asking myself more when I write these:

Am I convinced? Would I buy this?

Because Scrivener is a product that would absolutely be beneficial for me. I almost downloaded it last night after reading customer reviews. But I’m not sure the letter I wrote today would take me from “I’m interested” to “Sign me up!”

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 17: THE COPYWRITER UNDERGROUND

FOR COPYWRITERS WHO WANT TO GET BETTER CLIENTS, CHARGE MORE FOR THEIR WORK, AND OVERCOME IMPOSTER SYNDROME ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL...

The Copywriter Underground Gives You The Hands-on Coaching And Support You’ll Need To Get To Six Figures

It Won’t Be Easy, But You (Yes, YOU) Can Build A Scary-Successful Copywriting Business. And We Can Help.

Man — it’s comfortable in here, isn’t it?

Maybe even a little too comfortable.

Whether you’ve been a copywriter for six days or six years...

If you’re freelancing, it can be easy to coast.

I’ll start cold emailing new clients tomorrow.

And then “tomorrow” turns into “next week” — which, in most cases, means “I’ll do that shit when I absolutely have to, and not a second sooner.”

Even though you know you should be working to build your authority, charge more, or get a few extra clients, it’s hard to motivate yourself once you’ve reached a “safe” spot.

And that’s the problem. Freelancing isn’t safe. Your clients could find a cheaper, more qualified copywriter tomorrow.

Or they could decide they’re not getting enough ROI to afford you anymore.

Or that they “want to go in a new direction.”

There’s a lot that could go wrong.

But that’s just the risk of being able to work in your PJ’s and take the afternoon off to watch The Crimes of Grindelwald, right?

Not exactly.

See, the most successful copywriters, the ones who are making six figures per year or more (and are still working in their PJ’s — don’t be fooled) are probably doing something you’re not.

What Successful Copywriters Do Differently

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

Yeah, it’s cliche as hell, we know. But it’s more than just a clever line from Shawshank.

It’s a universal truth that the best copywriters practice every day — whether they realize it or not.

This job, fun as it is, requires constant growth. You’re either consistently improving or you’re getting left in the dust.

(How many cliches can we throw in one section?)

So, if you want to be a member of The Six-Figure Club (we should copyright that — no pun intended), you’ll need to work. A lot.

But what should you work on?

Growing your email list?

Reading Breakthrough Advertising until your eyes are so red it looks like you’ve spent all morning in an Amsterdam coffee shop?

What You Really Need To Earn Six Figures Per Year

See, the road to six figures isn’t paved with concrete blocks labeled “work.”

Instead, it’s paved with “the right work.”

But if you haven’t joined The Six-Figure Club yet (unlike “fetch,” this is going to be a thing — sorry, Gretchen), it’s hard to know what the hell you should be doing.

And if you spend your time on the wrong things, you’ll wake up one year from now in the same spot.

  • Charging the same rate…

  • Working with the same (mediocre) clients…

  • And doubting, almost every day, whether or not you’re actually a “real” copywriter or just someone who’s pretending to be one for a while.

The Biggest Failure A Copywriter Can Make (It’s Not What You Think)

The biggest failure a copywriter can make isn’t what people typically call “failure.”

It’s not getting turned down because your rates are too high or your samples aren’t good enough.

It’s getting too comfortable. Failing to achieve your full potential. (Is that another cliche? Whatever. It’s true.)

The biggest failure a copywriter can make is being afraid to fail.

Because that fear leads to inaction, which leads to years of doing the same thing over and over again, hoping that, maybe one day, your ideal client will fall from the sky and say:

“OMG. Where have you been my whole life!? Please, please, PLEASE work with us!”

Yeah. If you never take any action, if you’re afraid to fail, that’s never gonna happen. (Trust us, we’ve tried it.)

But we have found one thing that does work:

Doing the damn thing.

Even when you’re scared. Even when you don’t think you’re good enough. Even when you “know” it won’t work.

It’s not sexy. And it’s not always fun.

But with the right resources, it can get a little easier.

The Copywriter Underground: For Copywriters Who Want To Stop Coasting And Do The Damn Thing

We didn’t build The Copywriter Underground for freelancers who are comfortable with being comfortable.

For people who are okay with just getting by.

We built it for copywriters who want more.

For copywriters who are willing to be scared and do the thing anyway.

For copywriters who want to do more than just pay their bills every month.

Sound like you? Keep reading.

What The Copywriter Underground Is — And What It Isn’t

First things first:

(I’m the realest — sorry not sorry, “Fancy” will always have a place in my heart.)

The Copywriter Underground is not a course.

It’s not a one-and-done. It’s not a series of training videos that you can watch and then say, “Welp, guess I’m done now?”

The Copywriter Underground is a membership, a community — a commitment.

It’s a commitment to yourself to start taking your career seriously.

A community of over 150 other copywriters who will be there to support you every step of the way.

And a membership to a site that puts out the copywriting training to help you get better clients, charge more money, and join The Six Figure Club.

When you become a moleperson (That’s what we call our members. Sexy, isn’t it?), you get:

  • Access to training from the best copywriters in the industry (including Joe Schriefer, Copy Chief at Agora Financial, Kevin Rogers, creator of the Copy Chief Community, and David Garfinkel, known as “The World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach”)

  • Copywriting templates the pros use to run their businesses (like Client On- and Off-Boarding checklists, Client Briefs, Research Templates, and more)

  • The opportunity to sit in the Hot Seat and get personalized advice on your biggest business challenges

  • Juicy extras like the “Direct Marketing Secrets” seminar with Gary Halbert and an interview with Brian Kurtz’s “Mount Rushmore of Copywriters,” including David Deutsch, Arthur Johnson, Eric Betuel, and Parris Lampropoulos

  • Membership in our exclusive Facebook Community of 150+ copywriters working hard to grow their businesses and do the damn thing

These aren’t just bullets on a list.

They’re the tools you’ll use to propel your copywriting business to the next level — whether you’ve been at this for a while or if it’s hard to even refer to yourself as a “copywriter” some days.

What Type Of Copywriter Will You Be One Year From Now?

The copywriter who’s “just getting by?”

Accepting the same rate from the same clients?

Wishing your business would grow instead of actually making it happen?

Or will you do the damn thing, instead?

Take the action you know will help grow your business?

Start putting in the work you know needs to happen to reach your goals?

It’s your call.

But if you want the hands-on coaching and support you’ll need to join The Six-Figure Club, join The Copywriter Underground today.

[Click Here To Join The Copywriter Underground]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I spent longer on today’s letter than I have on most. But that’s because it was another one for a copywriting course I’m part of. That means it was equal parts terrifying and fun to write.

Product

I wrote about The Copywriter Underground. A copywriting course I purchased a few months ago that’s been a huge motivator for me to start taking my career more seriously.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a copywriter who’s been writing for awhile but knows he/she is capable of more.

They’re “getting by” but they know they could do more, they’re just not sure which direction to take.

Customer Level of Awareness

The customer is solution-aware. They likely know that there are copywriting courses that can help them achieve their goals, but they’re probably unaware of The Copywriter Underground.

That said, I probably didn’t do a great job of appealing to that level of awareness. I think the letter as it reads currently is best suited for a problem-aware reader.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that succeeding as a copywriter depends on doing the right work — even when you’re afraid. But — it’s hard to know what the right work is if you’re not a successful copywriter.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that The Copywriter Underground gives copywriters the resources and support they need to work on the right things and join “The Six Figure Club.”

Lessons Learned

I’m learning that writing for more aware audiences is tough. I really like elaborating on the problem in a sales letter, but for more aware audiences, that’s not as necessary, and it’s been a challenge for me to shorten those sections.

I really like writing more personality-driven copy. All the paragraph asides in this one were a blast to write.

Beyond that — bullets are hard. Making features sound fun and elaborating on benefits requires deep thought, and it’s not as simple as throwing some words on the page.

That’s something I need to work on.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 18: THERAPY

FOR MILLENNIALS WHO WANT TO LEARN HOW TO CONTROL THEIR ANXIETY, BEAT DEPRESSION, AND START LIVING THEIR BEST LIVES...

It’s The Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do — But It Works.

The Painful Solution Most Don’t Take Advantage Of Until After They’ve Tried Everything Else And Found No Relief.

Being in your 20s is weird.

Your friends start getting married.

All the stuff your parents said when you were a kid actually begins to make sense.

And people actually expect you to “act like an adult” (even though you have no idea how).

It’s a lot to handle.

And, too often, we don’t handle it at all. We subscribe to the following thought process and trust that everything will work out.

“I’m trying not to think about it right now.”

Sure, sometimes that’s a great solution.

Like — when you’re on a first date with someone. In that scenario, it’s probably not helpful to think about how your ex used to hold an ice cream spoon like a knife murderer.

That’s not gonna be helpful information.

But, when you’re at home by yourself later that night, and you’re scrolling through Instagram wondering why you feel so damn alone all the time

Well, that probably isn’t going to work itself out.

“Trying not to think about it” might work for the night. You’ll watch a new episode of The Wive’s Tale on Netflix and fall asleep.

But what do you do if that feeling shows up again the next day?

What if you start feeling it almost all the time?

At that point, “trying not to think about it” clearly isn’t working. So what should you do?

You’re not going to want to hear the answer.

But before we get to that, it’s important to be honest with yourself about where you’re at.

Are You Dealing With Your Problems...Or Just Running From Them? A Quick 2-Question Quiz To Find Out.

You’ve probably tried alcohol, supplements, essential oils, special teas, CBD, you name it.

And, while all that stuff might work for a short period of time, it feels more like you’re running from your problems instead of actually dealing with them.

Right?

Here’s a 2-question quiz to find out if you’re running from your problems or actually dealing with them:

1. In general, are you comfortable being alone?

A) No. I prefer to be around other people.

Or…

B) Yes. I like being by myself.

2. What do you do when you’re alone? Do you...

A) Pull out your phone as quickly as you can, looking for some sort of distraction?

Or…

B) Actually sit by yourself? Taking in the surroundings, breathing, just being?

If you answered “A” for one, or both, questions, you might be running from your problems instead of actually dealing with them.

When you’re in that mode, being alone is scary.

Your mind runs down 20,000 different rabbit trails every five minutes — and you have no idea how to shut it off.

There are so many thoughts and feelings flying around in there it’s almost enough to give you a headache.

And it’s hard to know what to do about any of it.

How do you know which thoughts you actually need to deal with, and which ones are just your brain being crazy?

Like I said, the solution isn’t fun. For many people it’s one of the most painful things they’ve ever done.

But it’s also one of the most life-changing things they’ve ever experienced.

It’s given them control of their life again. It’s helped them conquer fear and anxiety. It’s helped them realize what they truly want out of life and take the steps to get it.

It’s helped them understand their crazy minds and emotions.

It’s helped them finally become okay with who they are.

So, what is it?

The Painful (But Incredibly Effective) Solution to Anxiety, Depression, and Loneliness

It’s not an app.

It’s not a book.

It’s not a supplement.

It’s not a retreat, and it’s not a course.

It’s a conversation.

The solution to your problems isn’t external, it’s within you. But you need someone to help bring it out. Someone who can guide you through the pain of all your backed up thoughts and feelings.

You need a therapist.

Not because you’re broken. Not because there’s something seriously wrong with you. Not because you have a gigantic problem that’s unfixable —

But because you can take control of your life and happiness, but you’re gonna need some help.

How Therapy Helps You Find a Safe Space to Build Your Best Life

Before we go any further, there’s a hard truth you should know:

A therapist will not fix your problems.

They can’t. Only you can do that.

What a therapist can do, however, is help you achieve clarity about what your problems are and how you can work to solve them.

Here’s how therapy helps:

You get a no-holds-barred open space where you can say anything you want and get an objective, unbiased opinion from an expert who is looking out for you.

Getting advice from friends is fantastic, but sometimes they’re biased.

A therapist is not. More than that, they’re legally bound to not tell anyone about what you talk about during your session.

Now, you have a safe space where you can talk about that thing you swore you’d never tell anybody.

It will be scary. But you’ll feel better afterwards.

You get a safe space to work through your most vulnerable thoughts and feelings.

I know what you’re thinking:

“Ughhh...that doesn’t sound fun at all. Hard pass.”

And you’re right. Remember when I said therapy was the most painful thing many people ever do?

That wasn’t an exaggeration.

But here’s what you need to know:

Those thoughts and feelings that have been eating at you for weeks, months, or even years, will go away a lot quicker if you can process them with an expert who has been specifically trained to help people just like you.

You get the clarity you need to help build the rest of your life.

Forgive me for this analogy, but it’s true:

If you build a house on a shaky foundation, it’s going to fall eventually.

If you’re in your 20s, you’re building the foundation for the rest of your life. If you don’t deal with the stuff that’s been bothering you, then build a life on top of all that depression, anxiety, and fear — you’re not going to build your best life.

Now is the time to work through those feelings you’ve been running from for so long.

Now is the time to build a strong foundation, so that, for the rest of your life, you’re not running, you’re actually living.

Sign Up For Your First Therapy Session Today

Sometimes problems don’t just work themselves out.

Sometimes “I’m not going to think about it” isn’t an actual solution (it’s just running).

What type of person do you want to be?

The kind that runs from their problems their whole life? Or the kind that faces them head-on and overcomes them to build your best life?

Therapy is not easy. But it is worth it.

[Sign Up For Your First Session Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

So — uhhhh, yeah. I wrote a sales letter about therapy.

Product

Not like a cool new app called Thera.py or anything like that. Nope — just actual talk therapy.

Why?

Well, to be honest, I procrastinated pretty hard today. So I knew that, unless I wanted to be up late, I’d have to write about something that I’m familiar with and that I understand the demographic of.

And that’s how you end up with a sales letter about talk therapy for millennials.

Who is the Customer?

The customer/reader is a career-focused millennial who’s affected by anxiety or depression or who just genuinely feels like he/she is running from problems as opposed to actually facing them.

Customer Level of Awareness

I’d say this customer is Solution-Aware. But I don’t think the reader would immediately resonate with a message of “therapy is important, you should do it.” So, the letter drills down into the pain points of being a millennial who experiences anxiety, depression, and a racing mind before presenting the solution.

The idea is that, by presenting the pain in a tangible way that the reader can resonate with, when the solution is presented, he/she will be more receptive to it instead of discounting it immediately.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, while millennials often consciously or unconsciously adopt the philosophy of “I’m not going to think about it right now” to solve problems — that doesn’t always work.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that, in therapy, you’ll get a safe space and an experienced professional, to help you deal with the problems you’re facing, so that you can stop running from them and start fixing them.

Lessons Learned

Time, time, time.

I might have mentioned this before, but up until the last few months, it’s been my belief that, if someone is paying me to write, I should be writing.

At face value, that makes sense. But here’s the deal:

The writing is infinitely better when I’ve had more time to do research and immerse myself in the idea.

Since today’s letter was thrown together, it’s half-decent, at best.

Aside from The Power Potato (Day 15), the best letters I’ve written have been the ones I’ve spent the most time on.

I’d be willing to bet there’s a direct correlation between the quality of a letter and the amount of time I spent on it.

That said, when doing client work, I no longer feel that my #1 priority should be writing. Research comes first.

After that, the writing will handle itself.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 19: FOUR ROSES YELLOW LABEL

MADE TO HONOR THOSE WHO CLOCK IN EARLY AND GO HOME LATE. LEARN WHY...

Four Roses Yellow Label Is The Hardest Working Bourbon Out There.

He’s been at Ford for 35 years this December.

Every day, he clocks in 20 minutes early and eaves 20 minutes late.

He hasn’t gotten a raise in 5 years.

“I don’t do it for the money. I do it because it’s my job. I do it because it’s the right thing.”

As steady as the Ohio River, Frank knows what it means to work hard.

“I started on my family farm when I was 14, and haven’t stopped since.”

But he also knows how to kick back and unwind after a long day, choosing to sip on a double shot of the hardest working bourbon money can buy.

“I end each day with a double of Four Roses — neat. That’s my reward.”

Why Four Roses is Different

Many bourbons are blended.

Four Roses Yellow Label is too.

But it’s more than a mix of spirits. Four Roses is painstakingly crafted to bring out a flavor that’s mellow, but strong — just like the people who drink it.

We use 2 mashes and 5 yeasts to create 10 different bourbons. Then, we store them in a single-story rickhouse in Lawrenceburg, KY, where they age for at least 6 years.

We’re the only bourbon company who still uses single-story buildings to age our bourbon. This keeps the temperature of all the barrels consistent with one another — so they all age in unison.

Then, when the time comes, Master Distiller Brent Elliot crafts a perfectly balanced combination of all 10 unique flavors to create Four Roses Yellow Label — the hardest working bourbon out there.

Four Roses is For You

Four Roses isn’t for people who take selfies.

It’s not for people who are afraid to get their hands dirty.

No, Four Roses is for you.

The one who clocks in early and stays late — because it’s the right thing to do.

The one who shows up every day, rain or shine.

The one who’s steady, mellow, strong.

Have a pour. You’ve earned it.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Today was interesting. I did a substantial amount of research, yet it was the shortest letter I’ve written. And I really didn’t even think of it as a sales letter...

Product

I wrote about Four Roses Yellow Label bourbon. It’s the entry-level bourbon from Four Roses and is created by blending 10 different bourbons together.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a middle-aged man.

In my research, I ended up on a bourbon review site and noticed that all the people who were commenting were guys with names like Frank, Dan, James, Scott, Tony, and Jeff.

That gave me a pretty good idea of the demographic these guys come from.

I did make the assumption that they would want to be perceived as hardworking, mellow, consistent, and strong — which tied heavily into the ad.

If I was working on this as a legitimate project, I would have done A LOT more customer research. More on that in the Lessons Learned.

But, because I identified these as character traits that were important to the reader, I created an avatar named “Frank” (yeah, unfortunately, he’s not real) who embodies these characteristics — and also drinks Four Roses as a “reward” at the end of every workday.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is either Product-Aware or in the Most Aware stage.

He knows bourbon exists. He’s probably tried multiple brands. He may even have a brand he loves. That being the case, he’s in the later stages of sophistication as well.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that Four Roses Yellow Label is the hardest working bourbon there is, because it’s created from 2 different mashes, 5 different yeasts, and 10 different bourbons.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big (implied) promise is that, if you drink Four Roses Yellow Label, you get to perceive yourself as someone who is hardworking, mellow, strong, and consistent.

Lessons Learned

Writing for products that don’t explicitly solve a problem is tough. But, I realized that, even if the problem isn’t explicit, there’s still an implicit problem that a product can solve for someone.

In this case, I identified that implicit problem as a desire to be perceived with classic masculine characteristics like being hardworking, strong, consistent, and mellow. Now that I type it out, I’m not sure that last one fits the bill, but it’s something that Four Roses consistently emphasizes in their branding, so I wanted to work it in there.

Regardless, drinking Four Roses gives the customer the opportunity to identify himself (at least internally) as someone who embodies those characteristics. i.e. It allows him to become who he wants to be.

I envisioned this as a TV commercial or even a classic Mad-Men-era print ad, which was fun, but very challenging, because I couldn’t use the direct response formulas I’m very used to.

I realized that, while selling any product is essentially selling a better version of the customer to him/herself, selling a product like this leans heavily on the idea and backstory of a brand, rather than the problems it solves or its features.

So, overall, one of the more interesting things I’ve written during this project. It was a unique challenge.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 20: PREFLIGHT DIGITAL

Get The Proven Process Specifically Created And Tested Over 4 Years To Help You Validate Your Idea And Build Your Business

Everything You Need To Go From “I Have An Idea” To “I Own A Business”

Every day at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, we work to bring dreams to life.

I guess that makes us kind of like Disney World...but with more coffee.

We’ve been around since 2010, and we’ve seen a lot of hopeful entrepreneurs come through our doors.

We’ve seen a lot leave too.

Most start with bright eyes, speaking in excited (slightly hushed) tones about their new idea that’s going to be “a complete game-changer.”

And sometimes, it is.

We’ve seen more than one company grow from a single-person startup to a market-disrupting powerhouse.

But that’s not what usually happens.

Usually, entrepreneurs start showing up less and less after a few months. We don’t see them at events as often. When we ask how things are going, their response is short — not disheartened, but not as excited as the day they walked in.

Shortly thereafter, we’ll get an email asking to cancel their membership because they’ve decided to “take a different path” or “pursue something else for now.”

How does that happen?

Why do some entrepreneurs succeed and others fail?

The #2 Thing That Makes An Entrepreneur Successful

Yeah. We didn’t say “#1.” How edgy of us!

The reason we didn’t do that is because the #1 thing that makes an entrepreneur successful is something we can’t help with.

It’s their attitude. Things like perseverance, determination, taking action in the face of fear, decision-making ability, and belief in themselves and their future.

If we could bottle that up and sell it, we wouldn’t be writing this to you right now (we’d be on a yacht in Greece).

But there is one thing we can help with. It’s the #2 thing that makes an entrepreneur successful:

They validate their business idea.

It’s not uncommon to hear a new entrepreneur say they’re afraid to tell anyone about their idea because they’re afraid someone will steal it.

The truth is — those are often the people whose ideas fail.

Their fear of someone stealing their idea makes them keep it too close to their chest. They don’t do their research. And they launch a flawed product to a market who flat out doesn’t care about it.

Successful businesses don’t always start with the best ideas, because the best idea often isn’t the first one.

It’s the 5th one…or the 11th one…or the 17th one.

Successful entrepreneurs put in the work before they start selling. They take advantage of the people and resources around them to determine if their idea is actually good OR if they just love it so much they want to believe it’s good.

There’s a big difference.

So, if you’re reading this right now and thinking about whether your business idea is any good, you’ll want to keep reading.

How To Find Out If Your Business Idea Is Good

First — a question:

Do you type with your elbows?

If you’re like most people, your answer is “No.”

Why?

Because somewhere along the line, someone identified that the best process for typing is to use your fingers.

It’s a proven process that works. And trying to do anything outside of it (unless absolutely necessary) is not just perceived as odd — it’s crazy!

Validating your business idea is the same way.

Your business is not the first business to ever be created, thankfully! You’re not charting unknown territory.

Many people have done this before and succeeded. And many of those people have shared what they’ve learned.

The best way to find out if your business idea is good is to run it through a proven process.

But how do you find a proven process?

You know where this is going…

The Proven Process Designed To Help You Validate Your  Idea And Build Your Business

For the past 4 years, we’ve been helping entrepreneurs get clarity about whether their idea is actually a viable business that could make them money for years to come.

Sometimes, the answer is “yes.”

Other times, it’s “no.”

But regardless, at the end, people have clarity about what they should do next.

We also teach those entrepreneurs how to identify those customers who don’t just want their product, but need it so desperately they’ll buy it the moment they hear about it.

We designed PreFlight to give entrepreneurs everything they need to turn their idea into a money-making business.

But now, we’re doing something we’ve never done before, and it’s a HUGE WIN for you.

Introducing PreFlight Digital: The Never-Before-Offered Foundational Course

Until now, PreFlight was only offered in-person.

Multiple times each year, we’d accept a limited number of applicants into the program and give them exclusive access the proven processes to build their businesses.

Not anymore.

The expert business-building process behind PreFlight is now available to anyone, at any time.

All you have to do is sign up, and you get instant access to 8 in-depth modules that walk you step-by-step from “I have an idea” to “I own a business.”

What You Get When You Sign Up For PreFlight Digital

Here’s a complete listing of all the modules you’ll get access to. (This is as much as we can show without including the videos themselves!)

*Insert Course Modules and Video Titles Here.*

The #2 Predictor Of Your Business’ Success

Again, we left out #1 for a good reason:

It’s your attitude. Your tenacity. Your willingness to take risks. Your belief in yourself.

But can you guess what #2 is?

Your ability to use the resources around you wisely.

The best entrepreneurs are coachable. You should be too. They realize that, while they’re strong in many places, they don’t know everything, so they use the resources around them to fill in the gaps.

PreFlight Digital could be that resource for you.

If you’re wondering whether it’s time to quit your job and pursue your passion…

If you’ve been thinking about a business idea for years and hardly done anything about it…

If you’re tired of waiting and ready to finally take action…

Sign Up For PreFlight Digital Today

In-person, PreFlight costs $1,450.

But today, you can get PreFlight Digital for over 50% OFF that price at just $697.

That’s a savings of $753.

Sign Up for PreFlight Digital today to get instant access to the expert process developed specifically to help you validate your idea and build your business.

[Get Instant Access to PreFlight Digital]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Today’s letter was surprisingly easy to write.

I credit 2 things:

  • I’ve written about the in-person version of this course before. So I was pretty familiar with the messaging, target demographic, and unique selling proposition of the product. (Full disclosure: There are a few recycled phrases/ideas from previous copy in this letter, but most of it is brand-new.)

  • Four Roses bourbon

Product

I wrote about PreFlight Digital. A potential online course from the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. (Not guaranteed the course will go live, though, so don’t shoot the messenger.)

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a middle-aged professional who’s been kicking around the idea of starting a business for years, but hasn’t made any moves to make it a reality.

They know they want to eventually start a business, but continually put it off. This being the case, I think the letter needs a bit more urgency to drive this person to action.

Customer Level of Awareness

This is a tough one. I think this letter would work for a customer from Unaware through Solution-Aware.

I don’t think it provides enough detail to satisfy a Product-Aware customer, but up to that point, I think it does a good job of naming the problem and presenting the product as the solution.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that successful businesses are built on ideas that are validated.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that PreFlight Digital can give the reader a proven process to validate their business idea and build their business.

Lessons Learned

This is one I’m continually learning:

Customer research is important AF. I think this letter is good, but with more time spent learning about the customer, it could be a lot stronger.

Beyond that, it’s super-important to know what the reader needs to believe in order to buy.

One of the things I highlighted before starting writing this letter was that “it has to cut through their bullshit of ‘one day,’ and make them believe that ‘now’ is the time.”

One of the characteristics of the reader I identified was that they believed they would start their business “one day.” After this or after that.

I think this letter could have done a much better job of highlighting the urgency/importance of the decision.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 21: THE COMPLETE KETOGENIC DIET FOR BEGINNERS

The Counterintuitive Diet That Drops Weight So Fast You’ll Say “This Can’t Be Healthy…”

You Can Lose 8 Pounds (Or More) In The First 14 Days

It works so well it’s hard to believe.

Pounds fall off like shedding an old skin.

Energy levels increase to heights you may not have felt since high school.

Friends will be so astonished they’ll worry about whether you’re losing weight “the healthy way” or not.

Little do they know — your diet is probably much healthier than theirs.

The Problem With Other Diets

Many diets leave you hungry, irritable — so much so that you can hardly focus on your work, your family, or your social life.

With most diets, progress is slow. It’s hard to tell a difference when you look in the mirror each day.

Sure, the scale is going down, but does it have to move so slowly?

Beyond that — the food is often bland, boring, and after so many days of self-control, you find your willpower slipping.

The fact is:

Any diet is hard.

Even the one I’ll reveal to you today. (There’s a “catch,” but if you can get past it, you’ll be rewarded.)

But not any diet can give you drastic results in as little as 14 days.

Not any diet can make you feel so good you’ll be angry at yourself for not eating this way your whole life.

Not any diet can let you eat some of your favorite foods (without counting calories) and still drop weight frighteningly fast.

Why This Diet Works Better Than Others

There’s a reason people talk about “watching paint dry” as if it’s one of the most boring things on the planet —

Because it is!

Paint dries slowly and undramatically. It gives you no reason to continue watching.

Most diets are like that.

A pound here. A pound there.

Slow progress, while you eat the same boring food, day after day.

The beginning of a diet is absolutely crucial. If you are unable to see results and harness the motivation and discipline to stick to it, adherence to any diet can be nearly impossible.

But the diet I’m about to reveal to you defeats those problems.

During the first 14 days, you will not become bored. You will never ask yourself “Is this working?”

You won’t have to. You will look in the mirror and know it’s working.

And you won’t just see results in the mirror or on the scale, you will feel them in your mind.

The transition to your new lifestyle might be uncomfortable, but if you can make it through, you’ll experience a renewed sense of mental energy and clarity, likely more than you’ve felt in years if you’ve been eating the standard American diet.

The Counterintuitive Diet That Works (And The “Catch”)

I want to be completely honest with you. When I tell you about this diet, you will be skeptical.

You might think, “There’s no way that’s healthy,” or even “This won’t work for me. I can’t do that.”

But if you adopt this method and stick to it, you will see results.

What I’ve been hinting at is called the ketogenic diet or just “keto.”

If you’ve never heard of it, here’s what you should know:

Normally, your body uses glucose for energy. Glucose is essentially sugar, and it comes from carbs.

When you are on the ketogenic diet, your body no longer uses glucose for energy. It switches to a more efficient energy source:

Ketones.

Ketones are produced when your body is burning fat for energy, instead of glucose.

When you eat a ketogenic diet, you are literally training your body to burn fat, instead of carbohydrates.

This means that your body is better able to burn off the extra weight around your midsection or your thighs.

It’s important to note that a ketogenic diet is not just a low-carb diet. It’s also a high-fat diet, which means that you can still eat some of your favorite foods, like:

  • Bacon and eggs

  • Cheeseburgers (with no bun)

  • Steak

  • Queso (using veggies to dip)

But, there is a “catch.”

Starting a ketogenic diet can be painful.

Some people experience what’s called the “keto flu,” which is not actually a legitimate sickness, but the symptoms resemble that of the flu.

When getting into ketosis (fat-burning mode), your body is undergoing major changes to the way it operates. While this is great, because it puts your body in an optimal weight-loss state, it’s not always comfortable.

You might experience lightheadedness, dizziness, feelings of weakness, constipation, or headaches.

But, for those who can make it past the first week (when keto flu usually ends), they will be rewarded with increased mental clarity and a lower number on the scale.

I tell you this to say:

Starting keto is hard, so you’ll want as much help as you can get.

Today, I want to give you a resource that will help as you transition your body into a fat-burning machine.

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners

When you begin your new lifestyle, you’ll be faced with questions like:

Can I eat this?

What should I put on my grocery list?

Can I go out to eat with my friends or spouse anymore?

Having in-depth answers to these questions can give you the confidence and clarity to push forward with the keto diet, so you can start seeing results.

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners essentially gives you a roadmap to success when starting the keto diet.

It will help you:

  • Reduce keto flu symptoms

  • Make low-carb treats to satisfy your sweet tooth

  • Know exactly what you should order when a friend invites you to dinner

  • Tell people about your new lifestyle (to eliminate judgment and concern)

  • And more!

When you buy The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners, you get:

  • The 5 Steps to Go Keto (and increase your chances of sticking with it)

  • The 6 Items Every Keto Kitchen Should Have

  • A 14-Day Meal Plan that tells you exactly what to eat for the first 14 days of your journey

  • Mouth-watering keto recipes so you don’t miss your old way of eating at all

  • A complete grocery list to get you stocked up on everything you’ll need for your first 14 days

Which One Are You?

There are two types of people who read this.

One type says: “This isn’t for me. I can’t do that.”

The other says: “It’s different. Maybe even extreme. But I’m in. Sign me up!”

Which one are you?

The ketogenic diet might be different than anything you’ve ever tried before. But think about this:

You wouldn’t still be reading if the diets you’ve tried before had worked.

Maybe it’s time to try something new. Something different. Maybe even something extreme.

[Get The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I got to nerd-out with this one, and that was a blast.

I’m super intrigued by the ketogenic diet. I’ve done it myself multiple times (and I’m half-assing it right now), but I’ll freely admit it’s hard to stick with — even though I’ve seen great results from it.

That said, if I were to create a legitimate ad for a keto-related product, I’d want to be careful with the wording I used around adherence to the diet.

Product

I wrote about a book called The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners.

Truthfully, I wrote about this book because I wanted to write a letter about a keto product. And I wanted to be able to educate the reader about ketosis, instead of writing to a reader who already knew about it.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is middle-aged and overweight.

They’ve tried diets before, but results come slowly, and the diets are hard to stick to.

This person has seen all the promises before, and, while they haven’t completely given up on the idea of losing weight, they’re not incredibly hopeful, either.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

They know they are overweight, but to them, it feels a bit like an unsolvable problem — as they’ve tried other diets before, but been unable to stick with them.

This customer is definitely in the later stages of sophistication, as they’ve seen all the weight-loss promises and the mechanisms by which weight loss is achieved.

If I had more time with this letter, I’d work to make sure the headline appeals to that level of sophistication.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that other diets are ineffective. They work slowly, and because of that, it’s hard to stay motivated.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that the keto diet gives drastic results quickly (within the first 14 days), but there’s a “catch” (keto flu) and starting keto is hard, so it’s important to get all the help/guidance you can.

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners essentially provides a blueprint to starting keto the “right” way and increasing the odds of adherence in the first 14 days.

Lessons Learned

Writing about health products is hard — at least in this challenge.

The medical practice is indeed that, a practice. It’s continuously evolving, and while I, personally, may believe in the power of the ketogenic diet, it’s hard to state that confidently in a sales letter until there is a massive amount of data to back it up — at least in regard to the effect keto can potentially have on cancerous cells, diabetes, etc.

But, I really enjoyed writing this letter, because I’m passionate about the topic and find it incredibly interesting.

I also think I need to do a better job of addressing objections. The sales letter template I’ve been using doesn’t specifically call out an FAQ section, so, while I think I’ve done a good job of walking the reader through my arguments, I could do a better job at addressing their objections.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 22: HINGE

The Only Dating App Built To Help You Stop Using Dating Apps

Hinge Is Designed To Give You Genuine Connections, Not Meaningless Matches

Damn, matches feel good. Don’t they?

The hottie on the screen is into you, and that dopamine hit feels great.

But it doesn’t last.

So you keep swiping...and swiping...and swiping.

If Dora the Explorer could see all the swiping you’re doing, she’d be pissed.

That’s the problem with dating apps. They’re not designed to create genuine connections.

They’re designed to keep you glued to the screen, swiping until you look up from your phone and Netflix asks “are you still watching?”

Because if dating apps “succeed” — meaning they actually get you into a meaningful relationship and you (hopefully) stop using the app — they lose.

It’s an interesting business model.

Present the veiled promise of a meaningful relationship through blurred out pictures in a queue that promises to tell you exactly who those pixelated faces are if you’ll just fork over $8 per month for the next 12 months.

But who are we to talk?

We’re Hinge — and we used to be just like all those other apps.

Until we changed.

The Dating Apocalypse of 2015— Why We Killed Our Own App

In 2015, an article came out that announced our society had reached an apocalyptic state in the world of online dating.

One dominated by superficiality and swipes.

And we got called out, because we were contributing to the problem.

Back then, Hinge was just as bad as every other app out there. People were swiping, “but only 15% of matches were turning into actual conversations,” choosing those continuous dopamine hits over genuine relationships with other human beings.

So, we did something crazy.

We killed our app.

The best relationships are those built on honesty and vulnerability. And after looking at ourselves in the mirror, we realized we could do better.

We got honest about what we were actually doing, and we realized it wasn’t in your best interest.

So, we changed.

Why We Don’t Do Swipes

We don’t do swipes.

So, if you’re looking to get high on dopamine, we might not be for you.

We do genuine, authentic connection.

Your hinge profile is just that — a profile. Not a “playing card,” like those other apps.

Include information about your education, career, height (because apparently, that’s a thing), spirituality, and more.

But the beauty of Hinge is that you no longer have to spend hours trying to come up with a witty blurb that tries to show you’re funny, smart, and totally not basic in 500 characters or less.

We’ve handled that by giving you different “prompts” to answer on your profile.

Things like:

“I’ll know I’ve made it when…”

“A life goal of mine…”

“I’m convinced that…”

Why do we do it that way?

Because you’re more than a picture.

You deserve to be seen as a whole person, not just a picture that’s either discarded or tossed into the “keep” pile.

How Hinge Works

When someone looks at your Hinge profile, they won’t see a playing card.

They’ll be able to scroll through your whole profile.

That means they’ll see more than a filtered picture of you the last time you got dressed up to go out.

They’ll see who you really are.

And, while “likes” on other apps leave you guessing, “I wonder why this person is into me? What should I say first?,” Hinge lets people like specific aspects of your profile.

So, if a life goal of yours is to run a marathon, someone can specifically “like” that part of your profile and add a comment about it. (Maybe they’ll even send you some training tips.)

A Hinge profile is more than just a face you put on to try to impress other people. It’s a genuine representation of who you are.

And that’s great news, not just for your self-esteem, but for your future dating prospects.

Because we can learn about who you really are, we’re better able to connect you with people we think you’ll really like.

That means less time with your screen and more time with actual humans.

Hinge Features We Designed So You Can Stop Using Hinge And Actually Connect IRL

We Met

A short while after you exchange digits on Hinge, we’ll ask if you ended up meeting that person, and if you did, whether or not you’d want to hang out with them again.

That tells us whether we’re doing a good job or not. Because if we keep setting you up with terrible dates, we need to do better.

It’s our way of measuring what matters.

Most Compatible

It’s like your best friend setting up you up with somebody.

We take the information on your profile and compare it with other people who seem to be your type. Then, we choose the person we think you’d be most compatible with, and show them to you.

From there, it’s your call. We just create the conditions for a genuine connection.

Try Hinge For Free Today (And Stop Using It ASAP)

No games. No gimmicks.

We didn’t build Hinge to keep you swiping.

We didn’t build it to give someone an opportunity to send you weird messages.

We didn’t build it to get you high on dopamine.

We built it to help you form genuine, authentic relationships with people we think you’d like.

So, if you prefer staring into an endless void of faces, stuck in your phone looking for the next dopamine hit — we’re not for you.

But if you’re done with dating apps, if you’re ready to form an authentic connection with a real human being, give Hinge a try.

And then put down your phone and go get coffee with someone amazing.

[Try Hinge For Free]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

The actual writing today wasn’t too challenging, but it has been rough making the time to be at my computer while I’m at my family’s house for Thanksgiving.

Product

I wrote about Hinge — a dating app that’s made a point of being vastly different from both Tinder and Bumble.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a millennial who likely lives in an urban area. While I have no data to back this up, I’d guess there’s a 50/50 split between male and female users. If this were a project I was being paid for, I’d do more research on that front.

Customer Level of Awareness

This customer is solution-aware.

They may be product-aware, but even in that case, I think the letter does a good job of explaining why Hinge works the way it does. Even if they’ve used the app, they may be unfamiliar with the logic behind its UX.

Big Idea + Rationale

Other popular dating apps in the market aren’t geared to get you dates — they’re geared to keep you using the apps.

Hinge, on the other hand, has been created to match you with someone you’d like so that you can stop using the app and get out in the real world.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that, by using Hinge, you’re taking advantage of a more authentic and genuine dating experience

Lessons Learned

Writing for a product you genuinely believe in and have researched is nearly effortless.

If you’re convicted about what you’re writing, the words flow from your brain to the page seamlessly.

I think there’s something to learn in there about the projects we choose to work on.

Not only does writing for products we believe in feel better mentally and emotionally, it actually makes the work itself easier too.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 23: FELIX GREY

Yes, They Look Great, But Wait Until You Hear What They Can Do

If You Spend Most Of Your Day On The Computer (Or Your Phone), You’ll Want To Hear About This.

“This can’t be healthy.”

Whether you’ve said it out loud or just internally, it’s true on some level.

It can’t be healthy to spend all day staring at a screen, can it?

I mean, our bodies really weren’t designed for that sort of work. Computers haven’t even been around that long.

But, we gotta pay the bills.

And we’re sure as hell not going back to typewriters. (Yeah, we’d look super cool, but no backspacing? Miss me with that.)

Odds are, you’re probably experiencing some of the negative side effects associated with prolonged screen time without even being aware of them.

What’s Wrong With Screens?

The screen you’re staring at right now is #lit with LED lights.

LED lights, while being energy efficient AF, put out blue light. And if you haven’t heard of blue light, it’s great! But only in the right doses at the right time.

Because blue light is basically what keeps us awake.

Our bodies are able to recognize blue light from the other different types of light and use that information to tell us to stay awake.

And that’s awesome — during the day. But at night? Not awesome.

Decreased Sleep Quality

Ever lay in bed scrolling through Insta because you can’t sleep?

Blue light may have been the culprit. And unfortunately, staring at those over-saturated Instagram pics was only making the problem worse.

Instead of signaling to your body that it should rest, the blue light was effectively saying:

“Yoooooo, let’s keep this party rollin’!”

Headaches

Ever found yourself with a headache after a long day of work?

I’m sure you were using a lot of brainpower, and that probably contributed to it, but did you ever think it could be something else?

Something like *gasp* BLUE LIGHT!?

Not only does blue light mess with our melatonin production and Circadian Rhythm (which tells our body when we should be awake and when we should be asleep), it also causes digital eye strain.

Because LEDs are such powerful lights, they (and the blue light they produce) can be overwhelming to our eyes — which aren’t designed to handle such an extreme form of light.

The end result?

Your eyes work too hard and you end up with a headache by the end of the day.

Dry Eyes

If you’ve ever found yourself rubbing your eyes during the day, it might not be because you’re tired.

It might just be because your eyes are dry.

That’s another culprit of our screen-centric culture. The truth is:

The stuff on our screens is interesting!

So interesting that we find it hard to turn away. Our bodies are so engaged they actually forget to blink, leading to dry, itchy eyes.

The Easiest Way To Lessen The Problems Caused By Blue Light

We’ve used eyewear to protect our eyes for years, whether it’s to protect them from the sun, the water in a pool, or any of the other infinite risks to our delicate little vision-givers.

So you probably won’t be surprised to hear that the easiest way to lessen the problems caused by blue light is to wear blue-light-blocking glasses.

Problem is — most of those glasses look like something your dad would wear when he’s sawing lumber to build his newest artisan wine rack.

Look, blue light is dangerous, we know, but you shouldn’t have to look like you’re working at a construction site to be protected.

We believe that safety shouldn’t look silly.

If you want to protect your eyes from blue light, get better sleep, experience less headaches, and give your beautiful baby blues the rest they deserve, you should be able to look like a normal, stylish person when doing it.

That’s why we started Felix Gray.

How Felix Grays Are Different From Other Computer Glasses

Felix Grays were designed for those of us who want to protect our eyes — but don’t want people to think we’re the office weirdos.

(Look, you’ve already got a standing desk and you drink kombucha every afternoon. How many more quirks do you need before people start giving you weird looks?)

Felix Grays were designed for protection with a purpose.

Our frames are modern, contemporary, and — yeah, we’ll say it — stylish AF.

Thanks to our frame development technology, we’ve been able to get rid of those yellow lenses that make everything look like a scene from Mad Max and still block 50% of blue light.

Get Your First Pair Of Felix Grays Today

Now you can protect your eyes, experience less headaches, and get better sleep without looking like you’re working with heavy machinery.

[Get your first pair of Felix Grays today.]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

I thought doing these sales letters during the holidays would be easy, since I haven’t been doing much client work.

But they’ve actually been some of the hardest days.

I’m at my parents’ house, and for most of the time I’m working on these, I feel guilty for not spending time with my family.

I’m definitely learning that, while work is important, it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) take precedence over time with family.

Product

I wrote about Felix Gray — a company that makes computer glasses that actually look good.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a millennial living in an urban area who spends most of his/her day on the computer or staring at a smartphone.

Customer Level of Awareness

This customer is unaware. They’ve got a sense that staring at a screen all day is probably not good for their health, but they can’t pinpoint exactly why that is. So, the letter puts a name to that fear and provides the solution to it.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea behind this is that our bodies were not designed to stare at screens as much as we do, due to the blue light they emit.

This is something Felix Gray does a great job of highlighting on their site, so credit for it goes to them — not me, unfortunately.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that Felix Gray glasses block 50% of blue light and actually look stylish  — unlike most computer glasses. Again, credit to FG for this one.

Lessons Learned

Research isn’t something that can be improvised. You can’t do most of it day-of and expect for it to enter your subconscious for effective use. If you want to research effectively and be able to use that information, do your research long before you start writing.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 24: FLYBY

No More Hangovers.

The All-Natural Supplement That Ends Hangovers Forever.

Who has time for hangovers?

Let’s ignore the fact that they’re one of the worst feelings in the world for a moment.

Seriously, who has time to lie in bed half the day, nursing a Gatorade, popping ibuprofen like candy, and watching Friends to try to forget about the slightly desperate text you sent your ex before passing out on the couch?

You’re an adult, which means that — in addition to enjoying the privilege of eating cookies whenever you want:

You have shit to do.

Whether it’s work, the gym, or a Sunday Funday — ain’t nobody got time for a hangover.

If you’ve ever experienced the nearly heart-attack inducing anxiety that comes from simply waking up after a night of heavy drinking…

If you’ve ever prayed to the porcelain gods and thought “No way will I ever do this again…”

If you’ve ever lifted your head off the pillow only to feel like you’d been bashed with an invisible brick…

We have the answer.

The Classic Hangover Solution (That Doesn’t Always Work)

Here’s what the answer is NOT:

Step1: Chug water and/or Gatorade.

Step 2: Take an ibuprofen.

Step 3: Hope for the best.

Until recently, this was the best solution for a hangover.

Many of the symptoms of a hangover are caused by dehydration, and ibuprofen is good at dulling the pain when it feels like your brain is going to explode.

But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the force of a hangover is too strong for the standard weapons you use against it.

So, some (very smart) people do their best to prevent hangovers entirely.

They drink water in-between cocktails, and they pace themselves — until they don’t.

Sometimes, even the most responsible drinkers get a little too lit.

And, in addition to drinking more alcohol in general (increasing your likelihood of a hangover), that means forgetting to drink water in between shots, probably mixing alcohols, and believing the lie you tell yourself as you get into bed:

“I feel fine right now! There’s no way I’ll be hungover tomorrow.”

*Cue head throbbing, heart pounding, stomach churning hangover.*

The Easiest Way To Beat Hangovers Forever

We know you’re busy. You can’t afford to get slowed down by a hangover.

But we also know you’re human. One drink turns into six drinks reeeeeaaalllyy easily.

And somewhere around that fifth or sixth drink, you stop thinking about tomorrow. You stop pacing yourself. You ignore anyone when they try to tell you that you should drink more water.

That’s why we made Flyby.

It’s the easiest way to beat your next hangover, and the one after that, and the one after that, too.

What Is Flyby?

Flyby is a unique formulation of natural herbs designed to fight the things that cause hangovers and help your body take care of itself when you drink.

That way, you can wake up the next day and actually live life instead of hiding from it.

We’ve packaged the most potent hangover-fighting ingredients into capsule form so you can pop them and get on with your night.

How Does Flyby Work?

Take 3 Flyby capsules before your first drink, then 3 more before you fall face-first into your bed.

The all-natural ingredients in Flyby help your body process the alcohol you’re putting into your system so that, when the alarm goes off in the morning, you can say:

“Good morning, world!”

And not:

“Holy shit. I can’t do this.”

Get Flyby Today

Thanks to Flyby, you never have to be hungover again.

Get your first bottle today and say goodbye to wasted days and hangovers forever.

[Get Flyby Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

The good news is that I’ve gotten pretty decent at churning out “okay” sales pages with little research.

The bad news is that writing “okay” sales pages aren’t fun to write. They feel like a cop-out.

Product

I wrote about a product called Flyby. It’s basically a hangover prevention supplement.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is largely the same customer I’ve been writing to the past few days. A millennial in an urban area who’s career-focused, busy, and enjoys drinking socially.

Customer Level of Awareness

This customer is problem-aware. He or she is well aware that hangovers are a problem, but didn’t realize there’s a supplement that could prevent them.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that the reader doesn’t have time for a hangover. If you’re nursing a hangover, it means you’re missing out on life.

This was something I picked up on from the Amazon reviews of the product, as a lot of people were using it to make it easier to consistently drink on vacations.

If I had more time on the letter, it would definitely play into the FOMO aspect a lot more. I think that, beyond the fact that hangovers are legitimately painful, the “you don’t have time for a hangover” angle is pretty strong.

Big Promise + Rationale

The promise is that, by taking Flyby, you can beat hangovers forever.

I’ll admit, the promise in this one could be a lot bigger. Right now, it’s more of a statement of the feature of the product (beating hangovers), rather than the benefit (more time to have fun, etc.).

Lessons Learned

Sometimes a simple headline is best.

I felt weird about a 3-word headline, until I realized that, for the audience I’m speaking to, it provides all the information necessary and gets them to read the next line — which is exactly the point of a headline.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 25: THE ENDURANCE DIET

REVEALED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER…

The Endurance Diet

Get The Surprisingly Simple (And Sustainable) Diet Strategies Of The Best Endurance Athletes In The World

They might not know it, but world-class athletes all over the world are intuitively following the same diet.

It’s not Paleo. It’s not low-carb. It’s not veganism.

And it’s probably much simpler than you think.

Why World-Class Athletes Don’t Follow Any Diet You’ve Tried

It’s not because they have a personal nutritionist who tells them everything they should eat.

Sure, some might have that luxury. But many don’t.

It’s not because they treat their bodies like temples and eat cleaner than you could ever imagine.

They don’t.

And it’s not because some scientific committee got together and decided on an arbitrary “best” diet for endurance athletes.

Far from it.

As a matter of fact, the best endurance athletes across the world intuitively adhere to 5 key eating habits to fuel their training and maintain optimal health.

That’s it.

No fancy technology. No complicated rules.

Just 5 key habits that you can adopt today.

The 5 Key Eating Habits of Nearly Every World-Class Endurance Athlete

These 5 key habits may surprise you, but if you keep reading, you’ll learn exactly why they make sense — not just for world-class endurance athletes, but for you too.

1. Eat everything

Many modern diets advocate avoiding specific food groups, but not The Endurance Diet. Avoiding food groups risks unknowingly leaving holes in your diet.

That’s why the Endurance Diet does not limit food groups or drastically restrict any macronutrient.

2. Eat quality

The Endurance Diet recommends you consume the majority of your food from high-quality, natural sources, as these are most likely to provide the fuel your body needs and the micronutrients to support healthy functioning at all levels.

3. Eat carb-centered

Alert the keto police.

If you’re training hard, carbs can be very useful. The Endurance Diet recommends carbs from natural, whole-food sources at levels that support training, but not weight gain.

4. Eat enough

Food should energize you — not drain you or make you so full you can’t move.

The Endurance Diet is designed to help you learn how to listen to your body’s hunger signals and fuel it appropriately.

5. Eat individually

Modern fad diets are prescriptive and apply a one-size-fits-all approach.

While this might seem simple and convenient, it ignores the fact that people are different.

The way one person responds to a specific type of food is not the way all people respond to a type of food. (Not everyone is lactose-intolerant or allergic to peanut butter — even though some are.)

The #1 Reason Why The Endurance Diet Works For All Endurance Athletes (Not Just World-Class Performers)

If you’ve bought into the hype of recent diet fads, The Endurance Diet may seem controversial.

Why does it advocate carb-centered eating?

Why does it allow dairy and red meat?

Why doesn’t it say I should avoid gluten?

Because restrictions don’t last.

If you’ve tried a low-carb or paleo diet, you may have experienced one (or all) of the following:

  • Decreased energy

  • Overwhelming desire to “cheat” on the diet

  • Intense guilt following a “cheat”

Restricting food groups leads to an unhealthy relationship with food, because it’s based on rules — rather than choices about what works best for your body and mind.

The Endurance Diet works because it gives you a framework to help you make conscious decisions about the food you eat.

Within that framework, you can eat food that nourishes your body and helps you perform at an optimal level, but also have a cupcake without feeling like you should skip breakfast the next day.

How The Endurance Diet Was Discovered

The Endurance Diet wasn’t created in a lab.

It was unconsciously created by elite athletes performing at the highest levels of their respective sports for one simple reason:

It works.

After studying elite endurance athletes for years, author Matt Fitzgerald began to notice commonalities in the way that they ate.

Regardless of the nationality of the athletes or the specific sport they competed in, he knew there were certain threads that tied all of their diets together — though he didn’t have enough evidence to definitively state what those “threads” were.

So he decided to find out what they were.

After two years performing research encompassing athletes from 32 different nations and 11 different sports, The Endurance Diet was born.

And now, for the first time ever, you can get access to all the secrets of The Endurance Diet in Fitzgerald’s new book:

The Endurance Diet: Discover the 5 Core Habits of the World’s Greatest Athletes to Look, Feel, and Perform Better

Get The Book Today

Fitzgerald’s book reveals everything you need to know to get the most out of the endurance diet. That includes:

  • 17 detailed recipes that teach you exactly how to cook nutritious Endurance Diet meals

  • The 22 endurance “superfoods” that continually show up in athletes’ diets

  • A comprehensive breakdown detailing exactly why the 5 key habits of The Endurance Diet are critical for optimal health

  • How to effectively integrate The Endurance Diet with your endurance training to become a complete endurance athlete

  • And more!

Get The Endurance Diet today to get into the best shape of your life and enjoy your food while doing it.

[Get The Endurance Diet Now]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

Today went pretty well. I got to write about a topic I’m very interested in, so the research was super fun.

Product

I wrote about a book titled The Endurance Diet: Discover the 5 Core Habits of the World’s Greatest Athletes to Look, Feel, and Perform Better

Who is the Customer?

The customer is someone in between the ages of 25 - 65. He or she is a runner that has tried restrictive diets before (Paleo, keto, veganism, etc.) and found them so challenging they’ve given up.

Customer Level of Awareness

The customer is problem-aware.

They know there’s a problem with their eating, and they want to eat healthily, but with so much conflicting information he/she isn’t even sure what “healthy” means anymore.

Big Idea

The big idea is that there are common threads that tie together the diets of the best endurance athletes in the world. These threads make up the foundation of The Endurance Diet.

Big Promise

The big promise is that the book will tell the reader everything they need to know about The Endurance Diet, so they can start applying it to their lives.

Lessons Learned

Problems are easy. Solutions are hard.

While it can be difficult to nail down the pain points of an audience, once you do so, it’s easy to write about them.

However, writing about the solution(s) to those pain points is much harder. As it requires not just a deep understanding of the pain points, but also a deep understanding of the product.

Today’s letter started fairly strong (the Systems & Secrets lead was good for that), but my knowledge of the product was limited, so it ends with a bit of a thud.

That said, I think the letter has a lot of potential, and with more time, could be great.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 26: ELEVATE BRAIN TRAINING

Are You Neglecting The #1 Most Important Aspect Of Your Health Without Realizing It?

Surprisingly — It Has Nothing To Do With Your Body Weight Or Blood Pressure.

I have bad news:

You may be ignoring the most important aspect of your health without realizing it.

But it’s not your fault. Your doctor may even be ignoring this too.

You’re unlikely to get a blood test for it, and if it gets bad — medicine alone cannot fix it.

As a matter of fact, if your body declines in this way, you risk turning into a shell of the person you once were, and those around you may not be able to see you as the same person anymore.

But it’s probably not what you’re thinking.

What Is The Most Important Aspect Of Your Health?

Your brain.

Your intelligence.

Your mental ability.

Every action you take in life, every decision you make, every thought you have, every fun activity you enjoy requires an active, healthy brain.

Lose this, and, in effect, you’ve lost your life.

You risk losing your independence, your friends, and the activities you love most.

Neglect this aspect of your health, and you may end up spending your older years alone in a nursing home instead of with grandchildren and close family members.

How Most People Unknowingly Neglect Their Brain

Unless you have a mentally demanding job, it’s easy in today’s society to coast through life.

Now, more than ever, we have an incredible amount of ways to “turn off” our brains — social media, television, mindless internet browsing, you name it.

Our society has been conditioned to believe that comfort is the height of human existence.

But your brain hates comfort.

It wasn’t designed to sit idly in your head taking up space, waiting for the next episode of Friends to start.

Your brain was designed to solve problems.

Have you ever noticed that it tends to create problems out of nowhere?

For example, if you’re lying in bed trying to go to sleep, and your brain reminds you of an embarrassing situation that happened years ago?

“Where did that come from?” you think.

It’s not because your brain is a jerk. It’s because your brain needs problems to work on. It was designed to create things, to fix things, to build.

Here’s What Your Brain Was Designed To Do

Think about this:

Everything you see around you was created by a human brain (obviously excluding nature).

The device you’re using to read this? Created by a human brain.

The clothes you’re wearing? Created by a human brain.

The city you live in? Designed by some very smart human brains.

Your brain was designed to work. But so many of us ignore this — preferring to lead a comfortable life while our brains become so agitated they actively create problems for us to solve.

That leaves us with two options:

1. Continue to ignore what our brains were designed to do, and instead allow them to create problems that keep us up at night, derail our day, and cause unnecessary stress.

2. Feed our brains with what they really need: challenging problems that test (and expand) our intelligence.

How To Give Your Brain What It Really Needs

Many people have highly creative or challenging jobs that test the levels of their ability every day.

But I’m guessing if you’ve read this far, that might not be you.

If you’re bored or unchallenged at work, you need another way to challenge your brain to keep it healthy.

For some people, this is brought about by stimulating conversations with friends. But those conversations are generally rare.

For others, this happens through books, but many don’t have time to read.

In the same way that our bodies need a physical challenge, which we often find in a gym, our brains need a mental challenge — a gym for our brains.

Something we can make part of our routine that gives us maximum challenge in minimum time.

But this can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution — as everyone’s brain works a little differently. Some have naturally higher IQs than others.

So the best mental gym is one where you can continually add a new level of challenge. One that continually adapts to provide increasingly harder challenges as your brain becomes quicker and more effective.

One that is not just challenging in general, but challenging for you, specifically.

Introducing Elevate Brain Training: The Mental Gym

Elevate Brain Training is an app, complete with 35+ games to test the limits of your brain and improve its ability to solve problems.

Now, in the same way that some people make going to the gym part of their daily routine, you can make brain training a part of your daily routine.

Elevate gives your brain the problems it craves, in a controlled environment that’s custom-tailored to what your brain needs.

How Does It Work?

Once you sign up for Elevate, you get access to 35+ games designed to help challenge your brain and make it more effective.

Each day, you can choose the specific areas you want to improve and play games specifically related to those areas.

Elevate creates a custom brain training plan, designed to help you get maximum benefit in minimum time.

What’s most fun is the fact that you can track your progress to see how you’ve improved since using the app.

As a bonus, you can also see how you stack up against other users.

Try Elevate Brain Training Today For Free

Today, you can try Elevate Brain Training for free.

If you don’t like it, cancel after 14 days.

But if you do…

If you notice an increased sense of confidence, a clearer mind that’s more equipped to solve daily challenges, and a happier brain that’s getting the exercise it was designed for…

...get a year’s worth of brain training for just $39.99.

Don’t neglect the most important aspect of your health. For the cost of a new outfit, you can let your brain do exactly what it was made to do:

Solve problems.

[Click Here To Try Elevate Today] 

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

...I gotta start finishing these earlier in the day.

Product

I figured it was time to write about another app. So I wrote about Elevate Brain Training — a “personal brain trainer” designed to “improve the way you speak, read, write, listen, and more.”

Who is the Customer?

This was a bit challenging. I’d love to do more customer research to figure out exactly who’s interested in this type of app. But I made a lot of guesses for this one — which is inevitable when you’re trying to hurry up and write a sales letter instead of spending all day on customer research.

My theory is that this customer is someone who works a white-collar job, but finds themselves bored or unchallenged. They’re concerned with their health, but since they’re probably comfortable at their job and their life in general, they don’t realize they’re neglecting their mental prowess.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is unaware. And, since there aren’t too many of these types of apps on the market, the customer is at one of the earlier stages of sophistication. So, for some members of the audience, it’s sufficient to just say something along the lines of “it’s like a gym membership for your brain.” If I could do it over again, I’d focus more on the how to that statement in order to address slightly more sophisticated audience members.

Big Idea + Rationale

There are really two big ideas at play here. I’d probably narrow down to one if I wrote it again.

The first is that the reader may be neglecting an important aspect of their health that could cause huge problems down the road — their brain.

The second is that the human brain was designed to solve problems. If it doesn’t have problems, it will create them seemingly out of nowhere.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that Elevate gives the reader a clear, controlled, easy way to exercise their brain and let it do what it was designed to do — solve problems, which provides the added benefit of no longer neglecting that #1 most important aspect of their health.

Lessons Learned

One thing I really liked about this letter (that I actually did unintentionally) was to separate the reader from his/her brain.

Sounds weird, but bear with me for a minute.

By positioning the readers and their brains as two separate entities, I was able to take the blame off of the reader for the way their brain behaves. i.e. “Your brain is crazy sometimes, but it’s not your fault.”

Then, I could position the solution — Elevate — as the correct next step forward on their path.

I’d be interested to see a split test between two versions of this letter: one that plays on the readers guilt and does not separate the reader and his/her brain, and the version that I wrote today.

I think it would be interesting to see how leaning into that guilt in the copy affects conversions.

That said, I’m happy with the way the letter turned out.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 27: TREKS TITANIUM HEADPHONES

Cyclists: Are You Unnecessarily Putting Yourself In Danger?

The Once-Common (Dangerous) Practice Among Cyclists That’s No Longer Necessary

Do you listen to music while you ride?

If so, you’re putting yourself in danger — and you know it.

Headphones, by nature, block your second most critical sense on the road (the first being your sight):

Your hearing.

You don’t need to be able to hear to ride a bike.

But for that matter, you don’t need to see that well either. Just make out some vague shapes and keep the wheels turning.

Just because you don’t absolutely need to hear what’s going on around you to ride doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to crank up the Def Leppard every time you clip in.

How Cyclists Give Up Control Of Their Safety

Cyclists put a lot of trust in strangers. They have to if they want to ride.

The problem is, they have to put that trust in people driving 3,000-lb death traps.

People who…

  • Don’t know (or care about) you

  • Are possibly using their phones

  • Are driving too fast

  • Don’t know how to properly pass cyclists

  • Are more angry that you’re in their way than they are concerned with your safety

Consider that for a moment.

You’re entrusting your life and your health to a frustrated and distracted stranger.

It’s a necessary evil if you want to get out there and ride — but it begs the question:

Why would you add another element of danger (like wearing headphones) on top of that?

The Unfair Decision Cyclists Have Been Faced With — Until Now

Up to this point, cyclists who want to listen to something while they ride have been faced with a choice:

Safety? Or Enjoyment? Pick one.

Those who want a higher level of safety forego headphones, sacrificing enjoyment and entertainment in the process.

Those who think the extra risk is worth hearing their favorite podcast while coasting down a hill have to put up with an elevated level of risk.

Not anymore.

The Headphones Designed Specifically To Keep You Safe

Treks Titanium headphones allow you to listen to music, audiobooks, and podcasts without covering your ears.

The headphones sit directly on your cheekbones in front of your ears, leaving them open to hear your surroundings.

This is made possible with bone conduction technology, which produce vibrations from the sound waves. Those vibrations then travel through your bones to your inner ear — rather than through your ear canal, like conventional headphones.

With this technology, you’re able to hear whatever you’re listening to while remaining completely aware of your surroundings, whether you're on the bike or at the office.

That means you no longer have to choose between safety or finishing that audiobook you love.

You truly can have the best of both worlds.

What Makes Treks Titanium Unique

As you may have guessed, these headphones are made of titanium.

That means they are simultaneously light, strong, durable, and flexible. One customer even reported that his pair had been run over “at least a half-dozen times) and still worked!

If you’ve heard of bone conduction technology before, you may know that a common problem is low-quality speakers that cause sound to “leak” out of the headphones and distract others.

Treks Titaniums are designed with LeakSlayer technology to eliminate excessive sound leakage, so no one can judge you for listening to Justin Beiber’s Purpose album on repeat.

We expect you’ll be getting these things dirty. But with an IP55 certification, they’re sealed and protected from dust, dirt, sweat, and small amounts of water.

And there’s a common problem with nearly all headphones we wanted to eliminate —

A lot of them don’t fit!

That’s why Treks Titanium comes in two different sizes: Standard or Mini. So, whether you’ve got a big head or a small head — you’re covered.

Get Treks Titanium Today

If you’ve searched for quality headphones before, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the high price tag many carry. While they’re great quality, some headphones are simply inaccessible because they’re not worth such a high price.

Treks Titanium finds the balance between affordability and quality at $99.95 per pair.

[Click Here To Get Treks Titanium Today]

Treks Titanium uses state-of-the-art technology to maximize cyclists’ safety and enjoyment any time they’re in the saddle (at a price that’s much less than a hospital bill).

How much is your safety worth?

[Click Here To Get Yours Today]

———————————————————————————————————————————————

ANALYSIS

These past few days have been a grind. I feel like I’m crawling my way to the finish line.

Product

I wrote about Treks Titanium — a pair of bone conduction headphones especially useful for those who run, hike, or cycle.

Who is the Customer?

Since I’m using Bob Serling’s Power Copywriting Formula (as much as I can for a sales letter written in a day), I’m developing a customer profile here. Based on some research (and guesses), here’s what I’ve got:

Anthony

42

Lives in Portland, Oregon

Cycles to work most days (weather permitting)

Has two children. Son, Age 9: James. Daughter, Age 7: Anna.

Software Developer at a …

Went to college at University of Oregon

In addition to cycling for transportation, he likes to hike, run occasionally, and try out new recipes with his wife, Jen.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware. But it’s not a problem they like to admit: they’re putting themselves in danger.

One challenge with this letter was highlighting the pain (cyclists unnecessarily putting themselves in danger) without coming off as preachy. Honestly, I don’t think I did a great job at this, and it’s something I would improve if I had more time on this one.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that cyclists who want to listen to something (music, audiobooks, podcasts) while riding have had to either choose between their safety or their enjoyment. It’s an unfair decision.

They already place a lot of trust in drivers, so it doesn’t make sense to give up something (their hearing) that could keep them safer...but sometimes you want to listen to something while you ride. That’s where Treks Titanium comes in.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, with Treks Titanium, cyclists no longer have to choose between safety or enjoyment.

They can have both.

Lessons Learned

I’m a big fan of Bob Serling’s Power Copywriting Formula. It’s 36 steps and its intensive.

I didn’t follow all the steps in this letter, but followed the ones that were reasonable/made sense for this letter.

One thing I really enjoyed was that it’s not just a process for writing the letter, it addresses the offer and the research as well, which I really like. It’s one of the most comprehensive formulas I’ve come across.

Beyond that, it has you write the features and benefits before writing the headline. I wasn’t crazy about that initially, but once I started, I really liked it, because it forces you to go beyond “how am I going to start this letter?” and starts with “what’s most important about this product?”

And I think that’s a great place to start.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

DAY 28: THE ASK METHOD

The Simple Way To Read Your Customers’ Minds And Create The Product They’ve Been Waiting For (Even If They Don’t Know It Exists)

How To Get Crucial Insights So You Can Stop Leaving Money On The Table

Excuse me. You left this here.

It’s the money you could have made if you knew your customers better.

I don’t care if you’re reading this from a private jet with a Rolex on your wrist and a glass of Cristal in your hand, if you don’t know your customers —

You’re losing money.

Are You Making The Fatal Mistake Of Failed Businesses?

Failed businesses share one thing in common:

Customers did not want their products.

But certainly this isn’t the business owners’ fault, right? How could they have known what customers wanted?

“It seemed like such a good idea at the time...”

...is the refrain of washed up CEOs and people who jump into a pool with clothes on before realizing they have a phone in their pocket.

Many a hopeful entrepreneur believes that, if he can just come up with a good idea, he’ll be a millionaire.

But ideas are cheap. Everyone has ideas.

You.

Me.

Your uncle, Steve.

None of us are millionaires, though.

Because an idea, no matter how good, is not all it takes to build a sustainable business. Unfortunately (or fortunately), ideas are not an acceptable form of currency.

“I’ll give you my best idea if you give me two cheeseburgers.”

“Keep your idea. The burgers cost $3.76.”

More than anything, businesses need customers.

Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a legal entity and a neat idea, but you don’t have cash flow.

And if you own a business, but you don’t have any customers — or you don’t have as many customers as you want — it’s probably because you don’t understand them as well as you should.

How To Know Your Customers Better Than They Know Themselves

I’m not talking about a therapy session. Although that would likely be beneficial for both parties.

I’m talking about something much more straightforward.

It seems so simple that when I say it, you’re going to want to kick yourself...or me.

The #1 way to know your customers better than they know themselves?

Ask.

But the truth is, it’s really not that simple. This might surprise you, but you can’t say:

“Hey Mr. Customer, what kind of product should we create for you?”

Because your customer doesn’t know what type of product you should create.

But he does know two things:

  • His past experience; and

  • What he doesn’t want.

Before the Blackberry or the iPhone, most people didn’t know they wanted a phone with computing power. But now everyone, even your uncle Steve, has one in their pocket.

Before queso, we didn’t know we needed a liquid form of cheese. But I digress.

Your task is not to ask customers face-value questions to get a vague sense of their desires.

Instead, your task is to ask customers the right questions that will draw out deep, insightful answers you can use to create a new product or re-position an existing one...to develop a product that solves a problem so deep, your customers didn’t even know they needed it.

So how do you do it?

Ask by Ryan Levesque — The Extensively-Detailed Roadmap To Learn Exactly What Your Customers Really Want So You Can Give It To Them

Ryan Levesque is bestselling author and an entrepreneur.

But before that, he was a cubicle employee.

He’d always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, and when the market crashed in 2008, he seized his opportunity.

He then started a small business with his wife, Tylene, and grew it from $0 in revenue to $25,000 per month in just 18 months.

That experience revealed to him a process he now calls The Ask Method.

Since its inception, The Ask Method has been used to generate over $120 million in 23 different industries.

It’s even helped one company generate as many as 52,000 email subscribers per day.

In his book, Ask, Levesque does more than lay out a vague thought process. Instead, he bares all, revealing the full details of The Ask Method, all the way down to cut-and-paste copy you can use with your own customers.

What Is The Ask Method?

The Ask Method is the path to your customer’s heart.

It’s a specific series of survey funnels that will take you from “I need to learn more about my customers” to “I’m honestly a little uncomfortable with how much I know about my customers. I think I know them better than they know themselves.”

Because when you truly understand your customers, you can build products that actually help them. Products they won’t buy reluctantly. But products that will make them scramble to pull out their credit cards.

Why Your Customers Will Love The Ask Method

Your customers are fed up.

Hopefully not with you, but undoubtedly with the glut of marketing material they receive on a daily basis.

Most of this marketing is tone deaf. It screams into their ear through a megaphone without regard for what they really want or need.

But The Ask Method forces you to put down the megaphone. Instead of yelling at your customer to “buy, buy, buy!,” you instead sit down with them and ask:

What do you need from me?

(Not in those exact words, mind you. More on that in the book.)

Unsurprisingly, listening to your customers' needs, desires, and pains can help you develop a product they actually want to hear about, and more than that — that they want to buy.

With one fell swoop, you’ve separated yourself from the competition and created a pack of passionate fans who would love to buy from you.

Stop Leaving Money On The Table. Get Your Copy Of Ask Today.

When you purchase Ask, you get a step-by-step guide that teaches you exactly how to implement each of the five individual elements of The Ask Method’s process in your own business:

  • Prepare: The Deep Dive Survey

  • Persuade: The Prospect Self-Discovery Landing Page

  • Segment: The Micro-Commitment Bucket Survey

  • Prescribe: The Profit Maximization Upsell Sequence

  • Pivot: The Email Follow-Up Feedback Loop

Ask is not an exploration of a concept, rather, it’s an extensively-detailed roadmap.

Follow it to the T, and you will learn exactly who your customers are, the biggest, scariest challenges they face, and how you can develop a product they will not just buy — but that they will love.

Stop leaving money on the table. Get your copy of Ask today.

[Get The Book]

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ANALYSIS

I love writing about marketing products.

Because, when writing to marketers, I feel like you encounter less skepticism. While other marketers know exactly what you’re doing, it feels like a bit of an acknowledging head nod, like “I see what you’re doing here, but do ya thang.”

Product

I wrote about Ask, a book by Ryan Levesque that details his survey funnel strategy to learn more about customers so you can serve them better.

Who is the Customer?

The customer is a digital marketer, an early stage startup CEO, or a personal brand.

This is a person who has some background knowledge of marketing, but is humble enough to know they don’t know everything.

They have an idea of who their customers are, but they’re either not earning as much as they’d like, getting enough leads, etc.

In general, it’s someone who has a vested interest in the marketing success of a company.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

This customer is problem-aware.

They know they’re not making as much money or getting as many leads as they’d like. They are likely in the later stages of sophistication, as they’ve probably seen many marketing courses or books by this point.

That being said, I think this letter could do a better job of addressing that deeper level of sophistication by focusing on how The Ask Method helps them understand customers better.

Big Idea + Rationale

The big idea is that, if you don’t understand your customers well, you’re leaving money on the table.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, The Ask Method can help you understand customers better than they know themselves so you can develop a product they love and want to buy.

Lessons Learned

I may have said this in an earlier letter, but I think understanding problems is easy.

It’s framing the solution in the best way that’s a challenge — at least when you’re confined to one day for each sales letter.

In order to truly understand why a product is great, I think you have to spend time with it. Quantity time leads to quality copy in this case.

Because, while it’s easy to understand a solution at face-value, the only way you can get a better understanding of the true essence of a product is to live it and breathe it for a while.

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DAY 29: DESIGN PICKLE

Now You Can Outsource Your Design Work For 1 Flat Rate Per Month

No games. No gimmicks. Unlimited designs and revisions.

Let’s cut to the chase:

You’re not a designer.

Maybe you can put together a brochure if you dedicate an afternoon to it. Maybe you’ve made a t-shirt design for a family trip to Disney World before.

We’re sure you’re great at a lot of things — Scrabble, balancing a spoon on your nose, interpretive dance, whatever.

But when it comes down to it, design isn’t your bread-and-butter.

It’s more like the vegetables you tried to avoid as a kid, but always ended up having to eat before you could leave the table.

And that was okay — until now.

Because, at a certain point, you start thinking “Shouldn’t someone who actually knows what they’re doing be in charge of this?”

Is Your Company Losing Money Because Of Bad Design?

When your business reaches a certain level, people begin to expect high-quality design. It’s just the price of admission to a more profitable business.

The last t-shirt design you cobbled together with a free Photoshop knock-off doesn’t exactly scream “We know what we’re doing” to your customers.

Unfortunately, in business, books really are judged by their covers.

We make snap judgments based on how a company presents itself because, more often than not, a company that can’t present itself professionally is a company that is:

  • Unqualified

  • Underfunded

  • Overworked

  • Struggling

You name it.

Bad design isn’t just bad design.

It’s a signal to the outside world that “we don’t have our shit together.”

Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, because it’s the message your customers receive. Perception is everything, remember?

And more often than not, a bad perception of your business = “you’re not getting my money.”

Think about that for a second —

How much money has your company missed out on because of bad design?

Why Hiring A Designer Is Like Jumping Through Hoop After Hoop After Hoop After…

...you get the point.

In the past, outsourcing design work meant you either had to hire a full-time employee to do it (which is a bit like calling the fire department to hose down your house when all you needed to do was blow out a candle) or somehow track down a freelancer that is:

  • Reasonably priced

  • Qualified

  • Trustworthy

  • Dependable

  • Easy to work with

And the list goes on.

There are a lot of hoops to jump through if you want to find a dependable long-term designer.

But not anymore, thanks to Design Pickle.

What Is Design Pickle?

Design Pickle completely eliminates all the hoops you have to jump through to find and work with a qualified designer.

We’re a graphic design service built for companies who need quality graphic design work done quickly and at a reasonable price.

We’ve simplified the process of outsourcing graphic design to make it as simple and easy as possible to get design work off your plate and into the hands of a professional.

How Does Design Pickle Work?

How does it work?

Once you sign up and send us some info about your needs, we’ll match you with one of our 200+ designers.

That designer will learn all he or she can about your company and get to work on your project ASAP.

Turnaround time is quick. We generally shoot for 1 business day (but sometimes it takes a little longer).

If you get your design and think, “Ugh. I could have done this better myself,” just tell us!

You get unlimited revisions, and we’ll work hard to make sure you’re happy with the final design — no matter how long it takes.

What’s The Catch?

You’re looking for it, aren’t you?

There’s gotta be a catch. This seems too good to be true. How can these guys do this?”

The truth is — there is no catch. The closest thing to it would be this:

Design Pickle does not do logos, websites, or videos.

Outside of that, we’ve got you covered!

How To Stop Doing Design Work Forever

Think about this:

Right now, you have the opportunity to never design another brochure, t-shirt, presentation, you name it, ever again.

How would that feel?

To completely clean your plate of all design work — forever. And to know with certainty that, at the end of the day, you’ll get a professional, high-quality design you can use immediately.

All you have to do is say the word.

Get Your No-Risk 14-Day Trial Today

Today, you can sign up for a no-risk 14-day trial with Design Pickle.

After your trial, you can continue to use Design Pickle’s services for one flat rate every month, no matter how much you use us.

And, if you decide you don’t like us for any reason during those first 14 days, let us know. We’ll give you a 100% refund, and you can be on your way.

Design Pickle has delivered 275,000+ designs to 2,200+ clients since 2015, and we’d love to take some of the work off your plate.

Will you let us?

Click the button below to start your no-risk 14-day trial.

[Get My No-Risk 14-Day Trial] 

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ANALYSIS

It. Is. Done.

This was the last one. Coincidentally — or not coincidentally — it was one of the easiest ones to write.

I initially planned to give myself November 30th to write a blog post about all these sales letters and the lessons I learned from them. I’m still going to write that blog post, but I imagine it will be extensive — and I need a break.

So, I’m taking tomorrow off. I’ll use the months of December and January to work on a kickass blog post compiling all the biggest lessons learned from this project.

So keep an eye out for something big early next year!

Product

A wrote about a company called Design Pickle. It’s basically a simple, reliable, affordable way to outsource graphic design.

Who is the Customer?

This customer is someone who works at a small company and has been managing their graphic design process for a while.

They’re not skilled in graphic design, nor do they actually want to do it, but since the company needed someone to do it, they picked up the slack.

Now, the company is doing more work than ever/has a bigger audience/etc. and they’re looking to outsource design work.

Customer Level of Awareness & Sophistication

The customer is solution-aware.

They realize that outsourcing graphic design is the key to solving their problem (low-quality design or just the stress of having to do it yourself), but they might not know about the challenges associated with outsourcing graphic design.

That said, I think the letter does a good job of highlighting the pain points and consequences of bad design, but it could do a better job at digging into the pain of working with a freelancer.

Big Idea + Rationale

There are a couple of big ideas at play here. If I were to do this again or as a legitimate project, I’d narrow it down to one.

The first big idea is that doing design work by yourself, when you’re not interested or skilled in it, is a pain in the ass.

The second is that bad design keeps the company from getting as many customers as they could with good design.

The third is that outsourcing design work is also a pain in the ass.

Big Promise + Rationale

The big promise is that, with Design Pickle, you can push design work off your plate for one flat rate per month and know you’ll end up with something you like (because they offer unlimited revisions).

Lessons Learned

Customer awareness is one of the most crucial pieces of any sales letter. But it’s not enough to just slap a label on it and say “unaware,” “problem-aware, or whatever.

Copy is best when it seems to know exactly where the customer is coming from.

One thing I like about this letter is that I think the intro would really resonate with anyone looking to outsource design services. Because it directly speaks to their exact point in the customer journey, they’ll be thinking “Wow! This is me!” while reading it.

And copy that resonates with readers and drives them to action is what we’re aiming for.