Persuasion
Write Copy You’re Proud Of
There’s a category of businesses I call “cookie-cutter” because they all look the same. You can tell who runs a cookie-cutter business because they’re obsessed with business “formulas” for scaling. And they do it quite well. If you want to run a cookie-cutter business it will probably work, at least for a little while. Books (…)
How to Improve When You’re Not “Naturally” Talented
PSA: The Copy Workshop is open for enrollment for our January 2022 session. The workshop is $1,200 but for the next week, Akimbo is offering it for $800 in celebration of something I’ll tell you about later. For now, what you need to know is the price for the workshop will increase in one week. If you’d (…)
How To Reach Someone Who Doesn’t Want To Listen
A topic that has come up a lot in my life lately is “people you can’t reach.” How do you reach someone who doesn’t want to hear what you have to say? How do you *convince* them to see your point of view? How do you help someone change their mind? Open their eyes? Get (…)
What The Inner Game of Tennis Can Teach You About Copywriting
We recently moved to a new city in which I have approximately two IRL friends. Those two friends thought it would be fun to play tennis. I did not. I do not play tennis nor am I interested in learning tennis. At my spouse’s urging to invest in new relationships (also peer pressure) I accepted (…)
How To Write Cold Emails That Get Opened
The latest bro marketing trend, which you will recognize from your spam folder, is offering business owners a “chance to be featured” in a bogus media outlet for the low low price of $2,500. That pitch isn’t the problem. It’s not my cup of tea, but I’m willing to bet there is a market for (…)
Why Is No One Reading My Newsletter?
Back in April, I had the privilege of speaking at Newsletter Fest (“A FREE online conference to ignite your newsletter strategy!”) and you can watch the talk here. The polite version of how this talk came to be is that Curated asked me to come on and talk about email newsletter myths. The real version is (…)
See You On The Other Side
Few years ago Robert Cialdini wrote the book Influence that outlines the ways in which you can persuade people. [cue ethical debate here] We’ll talk ethics another time because today I want to talk consistency. It’s been a while since I read that book, but the chapter on commitment and consistency stands out as the (…)
Remote Bartending Is A Thing Now
Few years ago, I had my own column at Inc. Inc sold my email address to some company named Meltwater that has since distributed it to every bad PR company in the Western Hemisphere. No matter how many requests I make to be removed (and how many years go by that I am no longer an Inc (…)