The Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

Optimized-11856260_10104505646784533_4608229342249143478_oThis Insanely Smart Guy Teaches You How To Learn Anything At Record Speed – Including Learning How To Engineer Your Own Body. Tap The Mental And Physical Wellness Secrets Of SuperLearner Jonathan Levi.

 

In this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method podcast, the host of the Becoming Superhuman podcast and the bestselling Become a SuperLearner video course and book shares a ton of actionable knowledge with you about learning quickly, efficiently and in ways that honor your memory instead of taxing it.

In this incredible hour, you’ll learn:

* The importance of developing your visual memory.

* How the process of using a Memory Palace can change over time – and become even more powerful when you have the best practices under your belt.

* How to create a powerful Memory Palace – even if it’s just minutes before giving a major presentation.

* How to use the most shocking locations in your personal history to memorize anything (graphic content).

* Why it’s never acceptable – and also never necessary – to have crappy grades in school.

* How Jonathan deals with ADD, both with and without medication.

* How to cope with listening to boring lectures.

* Why traditional education needs to change and what the future of education will look like.

* How to speed up the slow pace of learning as an independent learner on the road to autodidacticism.

* How to use stories in order to memorize and make what you have to say memorable.

* The magical power of tension and distress when learning, memorizing and recalling information.

* How to deal with feeling uneasy about things you don’t want to do and why this kind of action creates such powerful results.

* Why people don’t use memory techniques, even if they’ve mastered them.

* The connection between slouching and bad memory habits.

* How to build confidence in your memory for better conversations and social performance in practical situations.

* How to shape the muscle of your mind in order to increase raw memory ability.

* How to make using mnemonics second-nature.

* How to safely do N=1 experiments on yourself (and why self-experimentation may be the most important activity you ever engage in).

* The danger of doing exercises that aren’t optimized for endocrine.

* The rampant evils of estrogen in everything from your food to your cologne.

* Why there is no such thing as being in the “normal range” and why you need to go much deeper when exploring your own health.

* How to be more attractive to the opposite sex – even if you’re a weird and introverted memory enthusiast.

* Why you have a moral obligation to share what you know with the world.

* Jonathan’s core values and why you shouldn’t waste your memory on appointments and other small details.

* How to create deep knowledge in ways that create dense connections between the neurons in your brain.

* How to harness the power of dual-coding in your use of memory techniques.

* How to share your knowledge ethically as you navigate the changing educational landscape in the 21st century.

* … and much, much more!

Further Resources, People And Items Mentioned In the Podcast

Jonathan Levi Talks About Becoming A SuperLearner on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast

USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis On Memory, Tenacity, & Conquering Anything

Extreme Memory Improvement: How Nelson Dellis Pushes The Limits Of Recall For The Good Of Humanity

Ben Greenfield Fitness

Rob Wolf of Eat Real Food

Loren Cordaine of The Paleo Diet

Kombucha

N=1

Branding You: How to Make $1000 A Day Selling YOUR Knowledge

The post Jonathan Levi On ADD, Education And His TEDTalk Memory Palace appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Direct download: Jonathan_Levi_On_ADD_Education_And_His_TEDTalk_Memory_Palace.mp3
Category:Podcast -- posted at: 12:38pm EDT

Optimized-Dollarphotoclub_92379769Let’s face it – you’re burned out.

Work is killing you. Your Kindle app is bursting with unread books. Your credit card is melting from the heat of buying stuff you want but do not need. And that circles back to the job or entrepreneurial pursuits you need to keep the devil’s circle spinning.

Here’s the good news:

There are specific habits that can get you off of that wheel. They are easy and mostly inexpensive to do. They give you insight into your situation and can spring you from the prison of burnout faster than you can imagine.

The best part is that these seven techniques are also minimalistic. There’s almost nothing to them. And the “zen of almost nothing” is a great way to get started dealing with overwhelm.

 

1. The Shocking Truth About Meditation

 

Daily meditation feels good and creates many benefits ranging from stress relief to increased creativity and improved critical thinking.

The only catch is that taking time for this simple practice can be difficult to remember. And that’s somewhat strange, given how good it can make you feel, even after only five minutes of practice.

One way to make meditation a regular practice you won’t forget is to place a mat beside your bed. When you wake up, sit for even just a moment to connect with your surroundings.

You don’t have a spend a penny on your mat either. Just fold up a blanket, and for extra comfort, place a pillow on top of that. In this way, you can keep your ankles off of the hard floor and give some balance to your spine.

Many people think meditation is difficult. But it’s easy to do and gets even easier when you approach it without a lofty goal, like enlightenment. As Alan Watts said, the best way to approach meditation is “sitting just to sit.”

If you can make this simple approach to meditation a regular practice, even with thunder and lightning jolting through your soul, you have a chance at developing better balance in your life within a week or less.

 

2. How Taking A Simple Walk Can Protect Your From Harm

 

Many hold walking as a form of meditation. But walking also releases regulatory chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals not only create pleasure, but can also help reduce any physical pain you might be suffering.

And you can make walking even more soothing for yourself. Take some MP3s of calming music that you resonate with and focus on immersing yourself in the sound and rhythm as you walk.

Match your movements to the music and pay attention to the feeling of the world around you. It’s only important that the music you choose reduces overwhelm – not increase it.

And if you are interested in meditation, take a break and sit on a bench in a park. Just to sit.

 

3. How To Practice Vegging Out (In A Positive Way)

 

Well, not exactly “vegging out” in the traditional sense.

Practicing Shavasana has a funny catch to it. You will always lose the game. No matter how good you get at the stillness, your body will eventually force you to move.

But in this game, losing is a good thing. As you experience the relaxing feelings of stillness, you’re also studying your impulses and your need to react to the same thoughts and desires that lead to overwhelm in other areas of your life.

As you practice Shavasana over the coming weeks and months, try extending the periods of stillness longer each time. You’ll find that by extending your reactions in Shavasana, you’ll also be able to slow how you react to overwhelming elements of life too.

 

4. Do This With A Pen And Paper Every Day

 

When life hands you a car crash, we tend to react to the overwhelm by piling on worry, concern and more stress.

The way around this is to buttress yourself in good thoughts before tough things happen. That way, you’ll have a reference guide to which you can refer.

To complete this simple exercise, get a notebook and focus on writing down things you genuinely appreciate. Be specific. If you’re grateful to have a computer, list it. If you enjoyed the smile of a stranger on your walk, make a note of it.

And commit to doing this every single day for at least three months. Add these 5 Brain Exercises for bonus points, if you like.

Please don’t think this daily writing habit is silly or will itself contribute to your overwhelm. In 59 Seconds, a book by Richard Wiseman, the author gives scientific studies that demonstrate the validity of journaling gratitude.

But you don’t take the word of science for it. Give it a try and you’ll find out on your own. Within as short a period as one or two days, you may find that you’re already feeling happier about your life and this new recognition of how things are for you will buttress you against future troubles that really can be overwhelming without a daily defense practice in place.

 

5. Have Two-Tiered Positive Goals You Can Achieve Now And Later

 

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals. They are goals that are:

* Specific
* Measurable
* Achievable
* Realistic
* Time-related

These are all great guidelines to keep in mind when making your goals, and they are designed to reduce overwhelm.

As a bonus to the SMART concept, my friend Daniel Welsch down in Madrid adds on two other components that work well. He notes two kinds of things he wants to achieve:

* Goals that cost nothing (like spending more time with a loved one)
* Goals that cost $1000

The former can be scheduled immediately. The latter can be worked towards and earned. It doesn’t have to be $1000, but the benefits of having a monetary goal in mind are huge.

After all, you’re going to work one way or another and saving up for a specific goal that costs money not only engages you in your work in a more meaningful way. It also lets you give yourself a gift for all that you do.

The trick is to make sure that your goals in and of themselves reduce overwhelm while leading to even greater states of calm and freedom in the future.

 

6. How To Make Your Favorite Poison A Cure

 

It was often said in Ancient Greece that the cure is always a poison, and the poison is always a cure. In fact, the word “pharmacy” partially descends from this concept (Pharmakia).

Computers are like that too. At the same time you can use them to achieve miracles, you can also let them run you into the ground.

Set specific limits. For example, no matter what, hit the off-switch at 10 p.m. and stick to it. Then go for a walk and sit on that bench.

Of course, everybody knows that setting limits is tough, but the benefits of doing so reduce overwhelm and open you up to receiving so many good things in life that cannot be achieved when you and your brain are chained to a machine designed to bombard all your senses.

 

7. How To Reduce Overwhelm While Chilling Out With Friends

 

Social media has many positive aspects. But it’s not a substitute for real life contact. It doesn’t cause your brain to create any of the healthy and helpful chemicals that social interactions bring. And in fact, keeping up with all those posts and liking all those likable links can bake your brain.

You also don’t get the challenges your brain needs while using social media. These include being asked questions and asking questions in return, complete with the body language and innuendo that only real life contact can offer. That said, like meditation, social contact needn’t have a lofty self-improvement goal. It can be valuable in and of itself just as something to do.

But if you do want something specific to do with your friends, tell them about your minimalist plans to bring more balance into your life. After all, they’re helpful for everyone else too.

And teaching something helps you organize information in your brain, leading to streamlined thoughts and crystal clarity that also help reduce overwhelm in your mind.

So what do you say? Are you ready to get out of the soul-crushing loop that you’re in and bring in some new habits that will help you reduce overwhelm and boost your success? I hope so, because the truth is that you can free yourself from the suffering of burnout, one small positive habit at a time.

The post 7 Minimalist Ways To Boost Success In The Face Of Soul-Crushing Overwhelm appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.


Optimized-Image_1_1

Check out this guest post by Camilla Hallstrom of 99 Smart Ideas. She teaches you how to use powerful psychological tools to make finally crossing that language off your bucket list simple and fun. Take it away, Camilla!

Have you ever started learning a language only to find yourself still no better than a beginner years later?

If so, you’re certainly not alone.

Learning a language is often considered extremely daunting and takes a long time.

After all, you’ll have to cram all this information into your brain. For example, you’ll have to memorize new vocabulary, including regional variations, slang, cultural concepts, grammar rules, and numbers. If you’re not some sort of a memory prodigy, you’re in it for the long term – and who has time and energy for that?

But here’s the thing:

The conventional wisdom that learning a language is a long and arduous path is…

 

Just Plain Silly

 

As a native speaker of two languages, Swedish and Finnish, and fluent speaker of three more languages, English, French, and German, I can communicate in two other languages, Norwegian and Danish, and I’m a beginner in an eighth language, Italian.

Am I a language prodigy? No way.

Do I have superhuman memory skills? Not really.

Is it in my genes? Nope. No one in my family speaks as many languages with the same fluency.

The key to every language that I’ve learned is that I have learned how to motivate myself to keep on learning and memorizing.

Being motivated to learn a language might sound intuitive, but still, this is one of the most basic things language learners struggle with.

Motivation also applies to learning in general and learning memorization methods that can be applied to other things.

For example, you know from Anthony’s Magnetic Memory Method that there are structured frameworks that can be applied to language memorization.

And if you’ve used the Magnetic Memory Method, you know it works.

Yet, it’s easy to fall back on the same old excuses – you don’t have time to create those Memory Palaces right now, you don’t have time to learn the techniques, etcetera.

So how do you continue to motivate yourself to keep on learning? How do you master those Memory Palaces and learn a new language?

Read on to learn exactly how you do this – once you’ve mastered motivation, there are no limitations to your learning.

(Note: I’ve put together an eBook at the end of this post that will give you 19 actionable ways get motivated and achieve your goal.)

 

What Does Motivation Do to Your Memory?

 

Years ago, back in high school, I wasn’t very diligent. German was one of my least favorite subjects. Yet, I had to undertake a rigorous and important exam at the end of my senior year. Everything that I had ever learned in my German classes throughout school was going to be tested.

I didn’t have very much time to revise. Also, I had to take three other exams at the same time. I pretty much gave up at the starting line.

Instead of trying to frenetically revise grammar books and dictionaries a month before my test, I decided to do something unconventional.

Quite simply, I watched my favorite movies, read my favorite books, and watched the news – all in German. I did this for a month and I enjoyed doing it.

At the end of that month, the result for my exam took me by surprise – I scored nationally in the top 20% and was one of the best in my class.

This success happened despite the fact that I had been one of the poorest performing students just a few months earlier. How come?

 

Don’t Overlook This Little Known Secret:
It Supports All Successful Language Learning

 

The fact that I enjoyed the way in which I was revising for my test meant that I was motivated to do the tasks I did.

And as it turns out, motivation can affect cognition. In fact, many of those who achieve success in learning a language are highly motivated.

Of course other things play in as well.

When learning a language, your success is – beside motivation – determined by your aptitude skills:

Working memory. Your working memory is what enables you to both temporarily store and process information. Working memory is crucial for our language learning because it enables us to understand and communicate in our target language.

Associative memory. Your associative memory helps you remember associations between unrelated items, such as the name of someone you just met and it helps you connect old and new information. For example, when learning a language, your associative memory can help you build links between words in your native language and your target language.

How strong your mechanisms are for implicit learning. Implicit learning is what you learn without realizing that you’re learning. For language learning, implicit learning means that you unintentionally learn complex and subtle regularities in a language. Implicit learning is common for children, but for adults it can be more challenging.

However, you’d think that my classmates were also motivated. Some of them had been much more successful language learners throughout school – why, then, did I perform better?

What was it that set me apart from other students – those who were diligently reading the textbooks set out in our curriculum?

To answer this, we need first to understand how motivation works.

 

Here’s Exactly What Motivation Is And How It Works

 

There are different forms of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is our internal motivation. For example, hobbies are often driven by intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation builds on:

  • The natural motivation to direct our lives.
  • Being able to continuously improve something.
  • Being part of something that is bigger than us.

Beside these motivational factors, intrinsic motivation can build on different factors, such as having a clear goal.

Clear goals should be defined goals that:

Have personal meaning to you. Intrinsic motivation builds on our internal motivation. Subsequently, your goal should build on something that’s important to you and not caused by external motivators.

Are attainable. Self-esteem is tightly linked with motivation. If you don’t believe that you have the capacity to do something, it’s hard to muster the motivation for it. Subsequently, if you don’t gain momentum, you lose self-esteem for that particular task or goal and as a result, you lose interest in your goal. You need to find the sweet-spot between attainable goals and too easy or unachievable goals.

Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is external. It refers to incentives that come from outside of the individual. Such incentives could be a good grade or monetary compensation.

 

What Motivates You To Learn A Language?

 

Intrinsic motivation is key both to mnemonic processes and specifically, language learning. Consequently, intrinsic motivation has a huge impact on how you use the Magnetic Memory Method or any set of memory techniques. Extrinsic motivation, again, has shown not to be as effective as intrinsic motivation when it comes to learning a language.

Some people are naturally intrinsically motivated to learn a language. For example, intrinsic motivators for learning a language are:

  • Learning a language for a trip to a country.
  • Learning a language to communicate with friends and family.
  • Learning a language to be able to read a certain book in its original language, watch a certain movie, and so forth.
  • Learning a language when moving to a country.
  • Learning a language as a hobby.
  • Learning a language to better understand a culture.
  • Learning a language because it appeals to you, e.g., because it sounds beautiful.

Now that we know what motivation is, we can return to why I performed better than my classmates in my exam despite not having performed as well in the past.

I was intrinsically motivated to watch movies and read books as these things are things that I would have done even if I hadn’t had to prepare for my exam. I was preparing for the exam because of an extrinsic reason, but I was able to turn it into something that I liked doing. This gave me intrinsic motivation.

My classmates, on the other hand, were – at least for the most part – extrinsically motivated. They took the tests to get good grades. This, again, isn’t as effective as intrinsic motivation.

 

What Can You Do When Your Motivation Fizzles?

 

It’s worth noticing that motivation is not static.

It changes according to circumstances, like your mood and your goals.

For example, if you have a particular task – like I had in my example – you might experience a sudden burst of motivation. The risk is that you lose that motivation once you’ve completed your task.

This, again, can lead to a serious problem – procrastination.

 

What Is Procrastination Anyway And …

What Makes It So Bad?

 

Motivation fluctuates. As we’ve discussed, intrinsic motivation has a big impact on your mnemonic processes. The risk is that once you become unmotivated, you don’t take the actions you should.

However, while there are times when you’re not motivated to do something, there are ways in which you can ensure that you continue to work towards your goal. In this case, it’s learning a language and therefore, continuing to create Memory Palaces.

So how do you keep up working on memorizing your target language even when you don’t feel like doing so?

First, it’s key to understand why you procrastinate when you lose your motivation.

You procrastinate because your decisions are processed in two different parts of your brain.

Take the limbic system. It’s a primitive part of the brain. It assesses the instant rewards of any decision. It’s also the part of your brain that makes you procrastinate.

For example, you might decide not to build a Memory Palace, which has long-term rewards, and instead log in on Facebook, which has instant, but useless rewards. By swapping Facebook for memory methods, you immediately do what you want to and not what you should for long-term gain, which is learning a language.

The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, evaluates long-term gain and processes decisions accordingly. To keep from procrastinating, you should always consider what consequences your action holds for you in the long run.

Of course, isolating these consequences is much easier said than done. However, there are ways in which you can optimize that you’ll make a decision based on these consequences.

 

Never Settle For Multitasking

 

For example, you should focus on few goals at the same time, and never settle for multitasking. This way, it’s easier to keep your goal on the top of your mind at all times and consequently, make decisions based on it.

You should also make a plan for how you will achieve your goal. This way, you always keep up with what your next step is. Also, when you’re tired or hungry, your decisions are processed in your limbic system. Sleeping enough hours and eating regularly helps you identify what consequences your actions have in the long run.

Now that you know why you lose motivation and procrastinate, we’ll look at what remedies there are for this in relation to language learning and memorization.

 

How Habits Help You Achieve Your Goals …

Even When You Lack Motivation

 

#1. Seinfeld’s productivity secret as a habit-building method

First, by establishing habits, you ensure that you continue to build your memory palaces and learn your target language.

Habits are behavior patterns that are constantly repeated and ultimately become almost inevitable.

For example, you brush your teeth and shower almost by automation.

Even if you feel like not brushing your teeth, you do it – it’s more difficult not to do it than to do it. In this case, you don’t even make a decision, and therefore, you don’t need to worry about the limbic part of your brain interfering with your action. Consequently, you don’t have to determine the long-term reward of your action, which means that it’s hard to procrastinate on your task.

Habits can naturally be applied to your memory goals.

By building Memory Palaces and using them as part of your language learning activities every day and making the process a habit, you keep up the practice.

To hold yourself accountable and make the habit-keeping process easier, I suggest that you make use of Seinfeld’s productivity secret.

Seinfeld’s productivity secret is a habit-building system.

It’s quite simple: get a wall calendar and a red marker. Now, decide the habit you want to build – right now, that habit is building and using Memory Palaces. For each day that you complete the task (more like a game, really), mark that day with a big, red X.

Soon, you’ll have a chain that grows longer and longer. Your task is not to break the chain. That’s the only task – keep the chain growing.

After a while, you have a habit that sticks.

#2. Tiny habits as a habit-building method

Another habit-building technique is building tiny habits. According to Mark Channon, tiny habits are easy, digestible habits that take you closer to your goal – small steps you take to approach your goal.

For example, if brushing your teeth isn’t already a habit, the smallest step you could take is to place your toothbrush so that it’s right in front of you when you wake up. The next step would be to brush one tooth, then another, and so forth.

In this case, you want to learn a language. (And if you’re reading this, but for some reason don’t, here are 15 Reasons Why Learning A Foreign Language Is Good For Your Brain.)

Take the smallest step you can and program your mind to repeat it at a set time. Let’s say you want learn vocabulary in your target language every day. Your tiny habit might be to put paper and a pen on the table.

By making the habit small and specific, you significantly lower the threshold to getting started and in the end, your habit becomes automatic.

If you memorize just one word a day using just one Memory Palace and make this a habit you can build upon, your language learning will skyrocket. And once you’ve done just one, it will be hard for you not to do another.

 

To Skyrocket Your Language Learning – Find Your Intrinsic Motivation

 

As already discussed, I used movies and books to learn a language, because I like doing these activities.

Even if I was learning German for an extrinsic reason (getting a good grade in my exam), I was intrinsically motivated to read books and watch movies. Subsequently, I used methods for my language learning that I was intrinsically motivated to do.

In the same sense, when you feel unmotivated to use memory methods and learn a language, you can do activities that you’re intrinsically motivated to do, and that help you reach your goal.

The action itself is already an immediate reward and therefore, you don’t procrastinate on it.

And how do you decide whether the activity in question is worth acting on?

In her celebrated TEDx talk, relationship and career expert Mel Robbins gives a good rule of thumb for these situations.

If you come to think of something and don’t act on it within five seconds – kill the idea.

To take action on an idea or activity, you could make a note of the first step you should take, Google if you can find a certain book, check if the movie you’re looking for is available on Netflix, or check if you can find a language partner online.

As to specific activities you can undertake to learn a language, you could watch a relevant travel program in your target language, read a book on fishing if you’re interested in fishing, keep a journal in your target language if you like writing or play a memory game in that language.

However, to properly use this method, there are a few things to note.

First, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with a difficult movie that’s impossible to follow in the language you try to learn. This kind of choice will only lead to procrastination.

Instead, you should choose movies and books that:

  • Are easy to understand.
  • A movie or book you’ve already seen or read in your native language (or any other language you fully comprehend).
  • Don’t have subtitles in your native language.
  • In best case scenario, you’ll read a book in your target language and then watch a movie based on it to fully understand the plot.

Second, optimize your activity for memorization and language learning.

Actively apply the Magnetic Memory Method and the use of mnemonics to get the most out of your language learning.

For example, you can pick one of the locations in the movie (or book) – the location that is most appealing to you – and reconstruct it in your brain. Now, build a Memory Palace using words from the movie. Maybe there are characters and other details that help you construct your Memory Palace?

I’ll give a specific example to help you out.

In the movie The Intouchables (Les Intouchables), one of the main characters (a street kid), gets to live in a fancy room in a mansion. I could reconstruct that room in my Memory Palace (or use it as a Memory Palace itself) and then name its different objects in French.

I could add other associations, both from the movie and outside of it. In the room, there’s a painting of a man – now, I’ll remember that “painting” is masculine in French (“un tableau”). And voilà – I’d have a new Memory Palace full of French words.

 

How To Pump Up Your Motivation And Learn a Language

 

Now you know exactly how motivation affects your memory and language learning and what you can do to prevent procrastination.

You also know what to do when you lack motivation. The key is to either be intrinsically motivated to learn a language and if not, then build lasting habits or do activities you’re intrinsically motivated to do.

There’s just one thing left…

Implementation.

This is what I want you to do. Go ahead. Get something to write with. I promise, it will help you.

  • List the language you are trying to learn and why you’re trying to learn it. Are you already intrinsically motivated to learn that language? Are there parts of the learning process that you’re not so motivated to complete?
  • If you need to find intrinsic motivation to learn your target language, you should list 5 things you love doing in your spare time. These should be things that you could do anytime and that are effortless to you.
  • Now, determine how you can use these five things to help you get your memory exercises done and consequently, move towards learning your target language.

Let’s say you love watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians (Don’t worry, I’m not judging you!)

This TV-series is probably dubbed at least in the most commonly spoken languages. You can use that TV-series to your advantage and build memory palaces out of it with your target language (I can also imagine that you could have great fun doing so).

Remember, this method works even if you’re not naturally intrinsically motivated to learn the language, as long as you’re intrinsically motivated to do the specific activity in question.

So that’s it – that’s the secret to how I’ve successfully learned so many languages.

And I know you can do it, too.

Want 19 more tips on how you can achieve any goal through motivation? I’ve put together a free eBook that helps you with just that.

Sound good?

Then grab the eBook here.

The post How Motivation Affects Your Memory When Learning A Language appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.

Direct download: How_Motivation_Affects_Your_Memory_When_Learning_A_Language.mp3
Category:Guest Post -- posted at: 5:53am EDT

Optimized-Kevin-Rogers-photo-300x202Have you ever thought about getting into marketing?

Or perhaps you’ve just wondered … what on earth makes the people who write all those ads tick?

If so, then today’s your lucky day, because on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast, the remarkable comic turned copywriter, Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief, holds the truth about …

 

How To Be Memorable On The Stage And On The Page

 

So go ahead click on the play button above, download the transcript for this interview or read Kevin’s many words of wisdom right here below.

Anthony: Kevin, I’m really excited to have you on the podcast today. There are a number of reasons why I wanted to speak with you in particular. Maybe you could tell everybody listening to this a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Kevin: Sure, thanks Anthony for having me. I’m really glad to be here. An interesting, I guess, resume, I am now a freelance direct response copywriter, which means I write the ads that force people to make a decision. Essentially, direct response compared to more sort or traditional advertising means that there’s always a call to action at the end of it. An extreme version would be an infomercial – buy now, buy now and you’ll get an extra set of knives and all that good stuff. We certainly have much more subtle ways to do all that, but that would be the one big distinction between what we do and other types of marketing.

My story is that I was a stand-up comedian. I actually left high school a little early because I was restless and after doing some labor jobs that I didn’t feel were a perfect fit, I was dared by friends to do an open mic night at local comedy club. It turned out that was a better fit for me. I was fortunate to excel pretty quickly at that and actually won a contest to take over as the house MC at this club here in Clearwater, Florida. It was a really great opportunity because it meant that I was doing eight shows a week and stage time is everything to a comic.

Kevin Rogers On Stage As Comic And Copy Chief

For instance, in New York City, there are so many comics there, and they will club hop. They might be taking cabs from club to club from 5:00 in the afternoon to 2:00 in the morning just trying to get on everywhere. It was a big deal to get that much stage time at a popular club here in town. Then I went on the road at about 19 and stayed on the road for almost 7 years as a comic. That was an incredible adventure.

 

How To Turn Your Hair Into A Calling Card

 

I knew at some point that I didn’t have any control over whether I succeeded or not in that business. Show business is one of those things where it takes a little bit of luck and some knowing the right people. For me, I had no business sense whatsoever. I do know a few comics who had marketing backgrounds and certainly used that to their advantage, Carrot Top being one really good example. Carrot Top was having stickers made of his image when he was still just a road comic. He really understood that his shock of orange hair was his calling card. I had none of that. I had no business sense.

I just kind of knew that at some point I would need to make a decision that if I wasn’t getting signs from the business that this was going to pay off for me, somewhere around the age of 30 maybe, I did not want to risk becoming some of the older very bitter comics that I worked with. Because they were amazingly funny and talented, and, they were also really tortured. It was clear to me, and to them, that they had no alternatives. When you spend most of your life as an entertainer and that does not manifest into a big win, then what do you do? It’s a really sad state of affairs for a lot of people I have a lot of respect for.

Anthony: We know the image of the tortured comic, or many of us do anyway because we see it again and again. What do you think it is that tortures them? Is it something that links to memories that they’re trying to deal with? What would it be maybe from your own experience?

Kevin: Yeah, it’s absolutely that. I think there is an incredibly thin line between pleasure and pain when it comes to how we express ourselves. You know funny comes from pain, period. We laugh as a healing device. Comics – I can’t tell you about a stable person I’ve ever met who is like gut-busting funny. It just doesn’t equate. Not everybody grew up in some terrible condition, although that’s often the case.

A very true statement is comedy is therapy for the comic. Very often, these people would be in dire straits mentally without that outlet. It’s funny because hanging out with them or being around them offstage is very often not what you would expect. People just assume a comedian is funny all the time and loving life and it’s nothing but laughter. There are parts of that which are true. For the most part, it’s a bit of – I don’t want to call it miserable – but….

 

How To Hold The Most Depressing Dinner Party In The World

 

I’ll never forget a story a screenwriting teacher told about his wife wanting to liven up a dinner party so she invited comedy writers. It turned out to be the most morose dinner party she had ever thrown. It made perfect sense to me.

Anthony: I’m curious, how do you remember sets and when you’re doing eight sets like that back to back, are you doing the same thing? Are you embedding it into memory as you go along? What is the artistry there in terms of your own delivery and the role of how you prepared and how you performed?

Kevin: That’s a great question. I think what I did, and what I saw, is very typical among comics. There wasn’t a lot of strategy to it other than you always wanted to be coming up with new material.

We would start with what we call a premise. A comic would say to another comic, “Do me a favor and watch my set because I’m trying out a new premise.” They wouldn’t really say I’m trying out a joke. Sometimes jokes come to you just done out of the aether. The first thing you do when that happens is you call four other comics, and you go have you heard this before? Because you are afraid that your memory is playing tricks on you and telling you it’s got something new when it’s actually something you heard somewhere else. The worst think you can encounter as a comic is being labeled a thief. We are all very careful that we’re not accidentally repeating someone else’s bit.

You bring up the premise, you have some idea of what the punchline will be and you work it into a place in your set where it feels safe because you’ve got momentum and then you know that you’ve got some great jokes after that. You slide it into sort of a safe place in your set and you just work it out.

I think most comics prefer to have the magic happen live. It’s almost more about how you introduce the premise than how you execute the punchline when you’re developing a joke. Because at its best, the process is letting the audience sort of dictate live which way the joke should go. Very often things happen in the moment that you couldn’t sit with a pad and pencil and create.

 

Notebooks … The 51st Shade Of Grey?

 

As far as memory, people would say all the time, “How do you memorize all that?” I guess it just starts with five minutes. You memorize it enough to –

The first time I went on stage that was my biggest challenge. I got on stage. And it felt nothing like I could have imagined. I was very nervous. I couldn’t see. I didn’t expect that. I’ve got these lights in my face. I was just trying to remember the jokes and listen for something that sounded like good news coming back from the crowd. Then you just remember that and then you add on bit after bit, and guys could have hours of material.

George Carlin famously would do a new HBO special every year. He would build up new material for that year, and then he would throw it away after the special was recorded. That was done. That was part of the magic of George Carlin. He was dedicated to the craft and to developing and evolving new material. He would take about the best 10 percent of the previous special, use that as the foundation, sort of the safety net to give audiences their money’s worth.

Other than that, he’d bring up a notebook and basically just be working out new material in front of a crowd of hundreds or thousands sometimes.

Anthony: I was going to ask you about that. Because there are some comics that have trademarks like Carrot Head. There are very few comics that have actually made a bit of a trademark of actually having lines written on a notepad or whatever that they bring up. I wonder if you ever did that too, or had any sort of visible triggers, notes written on your hand or anything like that to prompt yourself?

Kevin: It’s a good question. There was like a phase – a thing in the 1990s all of a sudden called alternative comedy. It was the early days of Patton Oswalt and Marc Maron and these San Francisco comics. Janeane Garofalo was a big alternative comic.

They would all bring their notebooks up. That was their thing. It was like we are so cool we are not pretending to perform. We don’t care. There is no formality here. Honestly, it was a bit like torture a lot of times. It was just very self-indulgent. It’s not that there should be some hard rule that you can’t bring up a notebook and refer to it if you’re working out new stuff. No problem with that, but it almost became a cliche. You know, like this is all so fresh that I have to look at my notebook to even remember it. With some people, it was BS. They knew the bits. They were just using the notebook as a prop.

For me personally, I did later start recording my sets. To be honest, I don’t know how often I actually listened back to them. If I was trying to work out a new joke, I would record and at least listen to that part. Then I might go I forgot the funniest line I had or whatever. It would have benefited me to formalize that a little bit more. For the most part, again like I said, for me and a lot of comics it was about creating a moment.

Believe me, when you do create a moment with a new premise and it hits, you will not forget what made it work. It just becomes a part of you because that’s your lifeblood. It wasn’t too formal.

 

How To Build An Empire Without Wearing Any Pants

 

Anthony: As a way of seguing from comedy into copywriting and Copy Chief, there is a real funny and compelling marketing video that you put out at one point recently for the Copy Chief community. You were apparently wearing no pants. Maybe by way of saying a little bit about how you went from comedy into marketing you could also talk about, “What is it about comedy that helps persuade people to buy?” and, “Have you ever really left comedy?”

Kevin: Great question. So I’ll try to really give the condensed version of this. I did leave comedy and that was a painful exit for a couple of reasons. One, I was really done with touring clubs. That part wasn’t hard. My heart I knew would always be in it and there would be potential jealousy to see friends make it when I had kind of thrown in the towel. I had convictions about it, and I knew it was the thing to do.

The other part that was difficult was logistically trying to go get work. That same problem I talked about wanting to avoid. The good news was I was only about 30 so I had plenty of energy and some time.

I knew I liked to write and so I would take classes at the local university, University of South Florida here in St. Pete after moved to Florida from Chicago, my wife and I. I would just take all the writing courses I could before I had to actually choose a major and go to real college.

Writing was always there for me, and I just had no idea there was this thing called copywriting. I always said I wanted to be a writer. I had no idea outside of comedy writing, which I had decided probably wasn’t for me just because of what I had seen of it in Hollywood and how it worked. It really turned me off. I was doing like these no resume jobs. I bellman, I was a bartender and then I just got really lucky and got into a situation where I met a guy who was a direct response marketing junkie and he introduced me to copywriting. He knew I liked to write and he said I think you’d be a good copywriter. You should check it out.

 

Here’s Why Comedians Might One Day Rule The World

 

I slowly became indoctrinated and learned and was able to make a career of it. What is interesting is in trying to sort of transition and “go legit” from an entertainer to a guy who you should hire to push people’s luggage around at your hotel, I realized that bringing up comedy was bad news. People don’t want to hire somebody who wants to talk about how great it was to be a comic. They assume that’s still what you want to do.

I was finding other things to put on my resume and really kind of burying that story. When I got into copywriting, I still had that mindset. It just wasn’t on my radar anymore at that point. It was my friend and mentor John Carlton, the legendary copywriter, who, when we began in the early moments of our friendship, said to me – that was sort of what bonded us. He was really fascinated by the idea of standup comedy and that I had actually made a career of this. He had a lot of questions about it.

Then he said to me at one point, “Why aren’t you talking about this?” He said right now you are just another copywriter but if you were the standup comic turned copywriter, that’s a much more interesting conversation. He said, “Do you realize how few people in the world have had the experience you’ve had and how many would love to?” I didn’t. I just knew most of the people I knew were comics. It was normal to me. That was a huge revelation to me. It still took years.

Then what I began doing was teaching copywriting through the lens of comedy. Then I wrote the book The 60 Second Sales Hook where I took a joke formula and I showed people how to just change the last part of it and it becomes a perfect condensed marketing story. That was very popular.

 

To Be Memorable, You Gotta Make A Commitment 

 

It wasn’t until recently, Anthony, where I realized it was kind of my duty to strive to be funny again with marketing. Part of it was me just getting comfortable enough in the market to feel like it wouldn’t hurt me to do that. Then it became about, “Well how do I do it? What approach do I take?” I started to just post up videos on Facebook and sometimes they would just be tactical giving copy tips and other times it would just be me doing something stupid like lip sinking to Sympathy For The Devil in my car. It’s funny because I never stop. I commit to the entire song, right. I realize that it’s not funny if I show 20 seconds of it, but the fact that I did the entire song and never broke character for a second. That resonated with people.

I slowly started learning what’s funny. How do I merge into now this new technology, this new ability to reach people? That’s when I started having fun with video. It’s interesting that you bring up the no pants video, because that is the result of me spending two days in this very office that I’m talking to you from right now with a camera set up, the lights just right and trying to do a straight pitch for my copywriting course. I was feeling incredibly frustrated and it just not feeling right. I finally got just annoyed enough to go, “You know what dude, just like relax. Go sit at the desk and just look into the camera even if it is babble for a minute.”

You know what it was? It was like just going right back to that idea of just take the premise and go with it and see what happens. I literally sat down, turned on the camera, and for whatever reason, I guess because I was sitting at a desk, that’s the line that came out of my mouth. I said, “Hi, I’m Kevin Rogers, the founder of Copy Chief, and I may or may not be wearing pants right now.” Then I kind of ran through some stuff.

I literally wrote that video which is about four minutes long in a minute. I jotted down. I came up with the premise of I want to teach something. To me that is the most important thing we can do to brand ourselves is to deliver value. Always be teaching is my motto.

I thought, “What can I teach?” Well, I will teach the difference between good copy and bad copy. I just wrote down real quick good copy means this and bad copy means that. I went into these characters. Then I realized at some point well I have to at least tape the part where I don’t have pants. The punch line has to be here that I’m actually not wearing pants.
So I sat there pantless in my office making this video and then of course the joke was that I cut away for a second and then I stand up and I’m not wearing pants. I actually didn’t know which part I would actually show. It just seemed obvious to me that it’s not nearly as funny if I don’t end up pantless.

So that’s kind of how that evolved. It is interested you ask that because I did leave comedy. It wasn’t until smarter people than me made it painfully obvious that I needed to be using that and then putting in action and effort. If that’s my brand, if I’m the former standup comic turned copywriter, I’ve got to deliver some funny once in a while.

Gary Halbert Letters All-Star Audio Series

Anthony: I mean it stuck in my mind in such a way that I came back to it and it was an interesting moment for me as someone who is interested in copywriting and in marketing as such because I had first encountered as a voice only on the Gary Halbert All-Stars Audio.

Kevin: Oh, interesting.

Anthony: I had always noted a sense of irony in your voice. I’ve listened to that thing probably four times, the Part 1 and Part 2. There is always this kind of flavor of irony especially because of a particular part that you narrate. Getting to actually then see you and know you through video made it, I guess, exceptionally interesting, but what I really am wondering is, is there something about the comedy that you find that persuades people to ultimately buy?

Kevin: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know about buy, but I do know about that “know, like and trust” are major factors in why we buy from one person over another. I do know that if you can get a laugh from somebody, and, in particular a couple of laughs in one sitting – two or three laughs – that is a real bond. People did share that video quite a bit.

I had one woman tell me she loved it so much and thought so much of it that when she shared it outside of the marketing community on her personal Facebook wall and nobody liked it, she was angry. She felt like you people don’t get it. That was really interesting to me.

I don’t know if that makes somebody a “buyer.” It’s interesting because I’m in direct response. Like I said, our job is to get a reaction whether it is sign up, give us your email and let us give you more value and let’s have a conversation and ultimately of course you would like that to lead to that person being a customer or it is buy right now.

 

“Look Like You’re Having A Good Time Being Yourself”

 

It may not be an immediate thing but yeah, if you can show some personality and really look like you’re having a good time being yourself people find value in that. They go I want more of that. I’d love to be that comfortable in my skin. I’d love to wake up happy to be me, and be able to turn on my iPhone and make people laugh or share these bizarre thoughts I have.

I think it does make people buy, but not immediately and certainly not in every market. When you’re talking about healthcare or health supplements or things like that, outside of male enhancement products that have been able to use humor occasionally, there’s not a lot of funny going on in those subjects. If you’re marketing and you’re teaching people how to do what is ultimately at least a 50 percent creative endeavor, which is like write better sales copy, guys like me, Frank Kern and others have a pretty good license to let loose and have some fun.

Anthony: I’m really glad you made this distinction between buying and knowing and liking and trusting and then deepening a relationship towards having a financial transaction because this to me has a lot to do with making yourself memorable with many touches over the long haul and in a way that hopefully to basically quote Frank Kern that’s “always cool,” but still moving towards the sale.

You know, so many people complain about sleazy marketers and all the sales tactics that assault us thousands of times a day. There certainly are those kinds of people in that world. How do we make that many touches that are sometimes necessary to move towards the financial traction of the “know, like and trust?” Knowing that we cannot 100 percent not insult some people or offend some people or annoy some people, but what is the fine line there so that we’re remembered but not rejected so that when that moment comes when the person is readily to buy that they think of you.

 

Do You Know What You Stand For?

 

Kevin: Another great question. I think part of it is what you just said in that we can’t please everybody. Some people are going to reject us. I would take that further and say decide up front who you would want to be rejected by. Because if you are, as the great Gary Bencivenga said, (I don’t know if it was his quote but he emphasized the quote), “If you are not against something, what are you for?” I am actually totally screwing that up. I don’t remember how he said it. Basically, you have to have a rally cry.

You have to let people know this is the enemy. This is who this is not for. You look at a copywriting colleague of mine, Colin Theriot, who has a thing called the Cult of Copy, 14,000 members in a closed group. Now not all loyal followers but 14,000 people requesting to join a group about copywriting. Pretty amazing feat, right?

Anthony: Right.

Kevin: Colin is constantly reminding people who that group is not for. It’s not for the timid. There’s going to be a lot of language and there’s going to be things that make people uncomfortable, and if it’s not for you, no problem but never, never tell me not to do these things, because you just don’t get it. So he’s against are the people who don’t get it or feel so righteous and indignant that they need to scold him or recommend to him that he should tone it down or these things. Those are the opportunities he sees to attack. It only strengthens his bond with his followers.

That’s probably an extreme case of a guy who like honestly not only doesn’t care if you are not interested but goes after people who raise their hand that explain why they’re not. That doesn’t work in every market, but if you just allow yourself the freedom to be yourself and not hold back, and that doesn’t mean you have to swear.

 

Why Are Some Words Offensive?

 

I don’t swear much. I don’t know why, Anthony, I as I mature, because I’ll be honest with you, around the house I swear a lot. I’m sure I’m looser with language with my children than most other parents would be, but to me, I take sort of the George Carlin approach because we talk about why are some words dirty. Why are some words offensive? We don’t get it. At the same time, something in me, there is a filter like in my podcasts, one of guests on podcasts my default is to not swear for whatever reason. I don’t know why, but I point that out to say that it doesn’t mean that you have to swear or go out of your way to be edgy or annoying.

Take a minute, I would say to anybody with a product, anybody who wants to build a following, take a minute and open up a notebook and say who am I for and who am I for not. Who does not qualify to be in this group, this tribe I’m building and go out of your way to point those people out? Not in a judgmental way, but in a way that the people who do belong will feel strengthened to identify that with you.

Anthony: It’s a good life principal for sure in in many areas. I wonder, you know, speaking about I think what is sometimes called repulsion marketing so that you’re attracting the people that you want, I want to mention your podcast, The Truth About Marketing so people can look it up and it seems like a good example. There is an episode that you recorded with Ben Settle who sort of has that kind of down pat, you know, defining who is with him and who isn’t with him.

Kevin: Yes, a big part of his marketing. Almost every email has some shade of that. It’s very strong to him.

Anthony: So I just mention that to people listening that your podcast is called the Truth About Marketing and that would be a great example of that to listen to and remember some principals from.

Speaking of podcasts, you’re also involved with in Psych Insights with John Carlton who you already mentioned. There is one particular episode on that podcast called How to be a Damned Good Road Dog & Sneak Into “Insider” Status  and it connects to something that you’ve talked about on The Truth About Marketing when you were discussing how to impress Michael Jordan.

What I like about all these episodes combined, and that really switches certain things on in my mind, is that you’re teaching through examples about getting it wrong when you’re trying to connect with influencers and that is the opposite of repulsion marketing.

That’s where you’re repulsing people with, you know, not being consciously aware of mistakes that you are making, or just being kind of awkward. I know I’m often an awkward person. I wonder, first, what do you think if you could define them or list them some of the wrong ways that rookies try to get the attention of a influencer and wind up making themselves forgettable by that person or disregarded and maybe not forgotten but put on the “black list.”

 

How To Be Socially Awkward And An Epic Failure … Guaranteed!

 

Kevin: Wow, I’m loving these questions man. I have a great example of this. What is interesting is this is sitting on my desk now for months because I’ve been waiting to teach this. One classic way of doing a poor job of getting the attention of an influencer is to kick the door in. I always coach people to be confident and sort of take the reigns of their business and all that and not wait for permission to go forth and be an expert, because there is always somebody who needs to learn what they know.

Being cocky – John Carlton has told this story a few times on our podcast. It is a great example. When Gary Halbert was his mentor and they were very close friends and when they would do live events they would have a lot of fun with each other and they would bust each other’s balls and do a lot of that from the stage.

He said, “Once an event there would be that guy who thought the way to come bond with them would be to walk up to them and the bust Gary’s balls.” It was an epic fail every time. That’s a sure sign of showing that you just don’t get the joke. You don’t recognize and appreciate that that’s a bond that only happens after a certain comfort level between two people has been achieved. That’s a classic.

Then I received a letter from somebody in three different ways: it was emailed to me, it was hard mailed to my house, and it was hard mailed to my office. This is somebody who clearly believes that they’ve figured it out, they’ve really nailed it, and all they need to do is get this in front of me. I’ve never responded to this person because of the first line of the letter.

It says, “Dear Kevin, I need our help. Now I know that sounds selfish so I’m going to offer to help you.” Now that’s probably supposed to be what Frank Kern would call a pattern interrupt because maybe he would think most people who would write to me would start by gloating or trying to flatter me or something.

It doesn’t work for a few reasons. Of course, it did get me to read it. If somebody sends you a letter, you know, that is usually enough to get you to read it. He was just so cocksure in how he was offering to help me, and he made so many different assumptions about whether that would actually be valuable to me or not without ever asking, “Hey, would this be valuable to you?” It made me instantly discount him as somebody I would ever want to invest time in or reply to. I think the worst thing you can do is (a) ever make assumptions, or (b) try to open with the joke that can only exist after you’ve been friends for a while.

I’ll tell you another great story based on this. Do you know who Mark Ford is? He’s one of the great copywriters. He doesn’t get credit for it. He’s also known as Michael Masterson and he wrote a course called the Accelerated Guide to Six-Figure Copywriting and when I started it was the only course out there really on copywriting. The guy is amazingly brilliant. He runs a thing now called the Palm Beach Letter and he was a big player in Agora Publishing.

Anyway, the first time I met Mark Ford it was outside of a conference and every time the guy would stop and talk to one person a group would quickly form around him because he’s a very magnetic person. In such a group, a guy came up to him and he said, “Mr. Ford, I have a question if you don’t mind.”

He said, “Sure, what’s up?”

The guy said, “You know, I’ve always heard that the best way to connect with an influencer is to offer to help them, but I’ve been walking up to some of the influencers and saying hi, I’m Larry, how can I help you, and they just look at me funny and it doesn’t go anywhere. It feels awkward.”

Mark said, “Well, what is it you do and how could you help somebody like Clayton Makepeace that you’ve just had this encounter with?”

He goes, “Yeah, that’s the thing. I’m not really sure. I’m just starting out in the business. In fact, that’s what he asked me and I didn’t have a good answer for him.”

Mark said, “Well that’s the problem. You don’t even know what you do yet.”

The point of going up and offering to help somebody is to know that (a) you really can help them and (b) first make sure that it’s something they need or have interest in. I always remember that story and I thought it was really funny that people just take the really core meaning of the device and then go out and try to implement it and are shocked when it doesn’t work.

 

How To Really Get The Attention Of An Influencer

 

I will give you just as an alternative what I think is a great way to get in front of an influencer and what I teach the freelancers that I coach. I say, “Look, if you have somebody who is an active marketer, just do a case study on a piece of their advertising and teach other people what you see going on in the piece. Show what you know. Showcase your own expertise through the lens of what you admire about their copy and make sure that gets in front of them.”

When they see that, it’s kind of like hearing your name – you can’t not listen. If somebody says, “Hey, you know, this copywriter did a breakdown of one of your ads.” Of course, they are going to go look at it and if they’re impressed, they’re going to call you. I promise you because they are always looking for copywriters.

That’s a really great way to get results in advance and display only your value and sort of generously give to somebody. Even though they never asked, but you also never asked them for anything. You don’t send it to them and go, “Hey I did this breakdown of one your ads. Hopefully you’ll learn something from it! You idiot. You were missing these four key factors that I call dah, dah, dah.”

Just teach generously to other people using their stuff and they’ll think wow this person is cool man. All they want to do is teach and I happen to agree with what they’re teaching so why I don’t I get on the phone with this person. Suddenly you’re equals instead of some guy hanging out by their doorstep.

Anthony: With this alternative example that you gave, what is an example whether you either have personally or through the mechanisms of the Internet created results in advance for people as part of making yourself memorable and moving forward towards goals that you have for yourself?

Kevin: Probably the best example would be the book, The 60 Second Sales Hook. Because the whole point of the book, like I mentioned earlier, is I took a joke formula which is relevant to my story. Then I show people in a very short (it’s only a 50-page book that sort of gets right to the point and talks about story) and I give them the device to write their story and use this formula to make it really effective.

That was a big turning point in my career because anyone who read that book and did the exercise was instantly compelled to share it with me sort of as a thank you and because it really did create a special moment for them. A lot of times, it was the first time anybody ever wrote anything that actually looked like copy and worked like copy. People who just thought they couldn’t write their own copy. They would of course naturally also want my feed back and see if – or maybe they would be stuck and say here’s what I’ve got but I feel like it’s missing something. I was giving them results in advance but I was also opening the door for them to want more from me.

I found that was a great opportunity because with that opportunity I could kind of do whatever I wanted. I did everything from offer 20-minute what I would call sales hook perfection sessions for like $350.00. I realized that was unscalable and then that evolved into what is now Copy Chief because it was the simple premise of I’m teaching the same things over and over to people one-on-one, what if I could just let a bunch of other people watch that lesson and learn from it and implement it in their own stuff. It would very often solve their problem for a lot less money and deliver similar value. That is how Copy Chief was born and that’s sort of the premise of any effective membership community I think.

Anthony: Would you think it’s fair to say that an effectively memorable marketing campaign essentially creates a kind of ecosystem?

 

Always Be Teaching

 

Kevin: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I guess so, yeah. I’d say that’s a fair thing to say, if the campaign is teaching along the way. This is why I say, “always be teaching.” Teaching is everything. If one of your top priorities for your marketing campaign is to deliver actionable value to anybody who comes into the funnel, the campaign, then you absolutely are creating an ecosystem because especially on Facebook and anywhere if you have a site dedicated to it, people are naturally going to share something cool that they’re value from.

Anthony: Well, one thing that I wanted to talk to you a little about is the actual use of words. We’ve already been touching upon it with comedy and it’s come up a few times the idea of having structures and formulas and sort of setting something up so that it almost falls into place later when you come to the punch line. People listening to this may not be familiar with copywriting but we know that there are some particular structures like AIDA and related acronyms. How could you describe those kind of structures even if it is just one or two of them and how a person absorbs them into their memory so they can sort of use it on autopilot or using a crib sheet or something like that but still have an authentic ability to write according to structure?

Kevin: I sure you can educate me a lot more on this in regards to how memory works, but I think the best way to do it is not to just recognize a formula but to immerse yourself in the formula. Sort of like what I mentioned about the book being so effective for people because it gives them a very simple formula and then they’re inclined to do it, to use it. It’s sort of fun to use and everybody has a story so they are instantly qualified to use this. They don’t need to go do research or anything like that first. Then they immerse in it.

 

The Insider’s Guide To Sales Hooks

 

Part of why that took off for me was that people began to take ownership of the formula. It’s the ISDR (identity, struggle, discovery, result). People would call it that ISDR or the KLT formula (know, like, and trust formula). Because they immersed in it, they knew it and they took ownership of it.

What else was cool, what I never would have expected, was people started to recognize it out in the wild. They would be watching a TV commercial and they would go that was The 60 Second Sales Hook. They would send me a clip of the TV commercial or they would take a photo of an ad in a magazine and they go look at this. It’s The 60 Second Sales Hook. It was super cool. I think if it had not been for the fact that it was so easy to immerse yourself in that formula that never would have happened because like most things people would have nodded at it and said that makes sense and then just moved on to the next shiny object.

Anthony: I mean it is such a fascinating world and there is so much depth to it all. You mentioned Gary Halbert before, and speaking of depth, he had this idea of neurological imprinting which is something you could perhaps explain better in terms of actually writing out either headlines again and again or entire sales letters. Is that something that you’ve ever done or what do you think is the logic behind that.

Kevin: Yeah, it is something I did early on. It was one of the exercises in that course I mentioned, the Michael Masterson course. I found it useful but I also personally kind of got bored with it quick. Other people I know it’s actually become a bit of a cottage industry. There’s a service that does only that. I don’t know if there’s a fee for it or not. But essentially they send out a letter, a sales letter every day and then your job is to write it out by hand. They have kind of built a community around it. It’s a very popular thing to do. Occasionally, I question if that becomes for people, you know, they feel like okay I did my copywriting today but all they’re really doing is copying other people’s copy and I think there is value in that but it also could be a trap.

What I recommend to people and it was recommended to me as rote learning. As I understand it, it sort goes back to like a Greek philosophy of how to learn just by doing something over and over and over and does sort of imprint it on your brain and become an instinct. Famously other writers have done this. Hunter S. Thompson handwrote Hemingway he said just because he didn’t want to write like Hemingway. He just wanted to feel viscerally what it was it like to write on that level. I think there’s definitely value in that.

Again, I mention Gary Bencivenga, who is pretty commonly regarded as the best ever direct response copywriter. He gives a great piece of advice about a similar thing. His advice is to read a great ad every day, and not just read it, but as you are reading it, ask yourself, “Okay, what’s one thing I would change about this ad that I think would make it convert even better than it did?” To me that’s the real power. So I recommend to people if you’re going to hand copy great sales letters, headlines, stuff and bullets, add that to it. Every time you write a headline, go, “Is there a word I could change here? Is there a line I could add to this that I think would actually make it better?” You’ll begin to recognize that some things are super perfect the way they are.

 

The #1 Question You Need To Ask Your DNA

 

John Carlton famously wrote long headlines but you could not replace a single word in them. That’s something to study.
I think it is very effective. I don’t know the exact science as to why it works. I guess, again, immersing in something that is quality, it forces you to recognize what is good about it. I think the real power is in asking yourself, “How can I, personally, me with my unique DNA, what would I change about this that I think might make it even better.”

Anthony: I think that’s a great way of approaching it. Maybe if I can offer something to you to take back to Copy Chief. There’s a real interesting guy named Kenneth Goldsmith and he runs something called “Uncreativity Courses.” There’s actually a YouTube video, I can send you a link later and maybe you can share it around where he talks about how he gets his students to pick something to rewrite, to retype essentially. He says the surprise assignment behind the assignment is for them to write an essay about why they chose that particular thing to torture themselves to type through. That’s where the insight is. It is in the reflection of the repetitive action. That’s kind of the connection to Greek philosophy that you were mentioning. How do we derive insight from what it is that we chose to repeat? The same thing with Zen archery and so forth, it’s not so much the repetition as such, but the reflection on the repetition.

Kevin: Wow, love that. That’s great. What’s the name?

Anthony: Kenneth Goldsmith. He gave a speech in the White House. It is the most hilarious thing in the world when you hear him saying to Ms. Obama that I think students should be retyping famous pieces of literature and in fact that’s what they do and the look on their faces is completely, like all these old biddies that are in the White House for poetry day. I will send you a link.

Kevin: I’ll definitely share that. I love it. That’s great. Thank you.

Anthony: It’s awesome. This has been really great. I wondered if I could pick your brain with a question for the people listening to this who aren’t going to become copywriters, but they aspire to get great jobs and have amazing careers and they need to write compelling resumes. As someone who relies to a large extent on the written word, what advice would you give to someone sending out applications for jobs that strictly require their details in print. How can they not kick down the door but get remembered and ideally called in for an interview so that door is opened?

Kevin: I’ve got to be one of the least qualified person ever to talk about how to write a resume. I’m like proudly unhireable. I will say, and I’ve heard that it’s basically computers scanning resumes for certain keywords and that’s how you ever make the pile. The only place I could offer advice is on a cover letter perhaps. The advice I would give for that is speak to the reader like the human being they are.

Cover letters that I’ve seen are either desperately boring because they are just trying so hard to sound professional. It’s like mission statements. Companies’ mission statements are typically – you are literally asleep by the fourth word.

Compare that to something like Dollar Shave Club. That famous video, eight million views on an ad. Why? Because the guy just kept it real and made it funny and told you everything you needed to know in a very transparent and entertaining way.

Humor doesn’t belong everywhere. I wouldn’t try to be funny, but if you could be real. You have got to figure these people are just scanning these cover letters over and over and over, and if you can be the one that makes them slow down their reading and go, “Huh, oh, that’s interesting,” and sound like somebody they can relate to or a niece or a nephew or a friend or someone they care about.

 

The Human Elements You Should Never Forget 

 

There’s a reason C-level executives go to lunch with the people they go to lunch with by choice on Friday or whatever. It’s not always business. People are drawn to other people. We’re all human. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes we make saying like B2B copywriting, which essentially this is kind of what this would be. We are so bent on sounding professional, intelligent and qualified that we forget to be human. I would say that would be your one shining example. Take a chance and be human.
If you can make a connection that way, I bet you’ll get an interview and if you do get an interview, it’s going to be the one they look forward to that day because you’ve already raised their eyebrow with how you connected with them.

Anthony: I like that. That’s powerful.

What is coming up next for you and how can people get in touch if they want to learn more about you, learn about Copy Chief and what you teach in terms of enabling people to write better and essentially make a career for themselves as a writer if they wanted to go down that route. How do people find you?

Kevin: Yeah, Copy Chief is pretty much where you’ll find everything. A copy chief in our business is the person who oversees the ad campaign, the copywriting and my premise for the community is that we all need chiefs. We all chief each other and help each other write better and more effectively. There is a membership community with a monthly fee but there’s also tons of great helpful stuff you can get for free at Copy Chief. You’ll see the blog. You’ll see The Truth About Marketing Podcast and lots of fun little formulas.

You can also download The 60 Second Sales Hook book. I would love for anybody – I think anybody no matter what their goal is would find a lot of value in that book if nothing else. I would certainly love to have anybody take advantage of that.

Anthony: Well to end on the note of “the truth about marketing,” if – heaven forbid – some nuclear disaster were to wipe away your entire memory, what would be the one truth about marketing that you would want to hold in your mind and never forget?

Kevin: Wow, that’s a big question. The one thing? That when all else fails, just be honest. When every other framework feels insufficient, try bold honesty. If there’s a flaw, point it out. If there ares people who something is not for, point them out. Help them identify themselves. Again, by doing so you’ll strengthen the bond with people who it is for. I guess that would be the big one. Know who you’re talking to and speak to them like you would a friend.

Further Resources

How to Memorize Classic Copywriting Headlines

The Darkside and the Brightside of How Marketers Manipulate Your Memory Every Single Day

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