Composition Analysis

Emotion Expression

Color Strategy

Text Strategy

The Concrete vs. Abstract Rule

The Falsifiability Test

The 'Nobody Else' Rule

Design & Copy are One

Kaplan's Law of Words

Let's start with a game. Six words. I'm going to ask you which one do you remember? Okay. Seamless transition. Charging pitbull. Muscly Irishman. Better way. Leg of lamb. Which ones you got? Irishman, pitbull, leg of lamb. You remembered the ones which you can visualize.

You have these three rules. Can I visualize it? Can I falsify it? Can nobody else say this? So, you get three nos. You've probably written a lot of rubbish. You get three yeses. You're on to something. I know that you have these three rules that you apply to every sentence. I do. What are they? Can I visualize it? Can I falsify it? Can nobody else say this? So, you get three nos, you've probably written a lot of rubbish.

You get three yeses, you're on to something.

Why should people learn copywriting? It's the number one skill in marketing. Write copy that can't be copied. This one's one of the most famous lines of all time. They're instantly communicating what it is by showing what it isn't. Exactly. That's exactly it. So, when you're writing copy, how do you know that something is going to instantly resonate? Let me give you this test. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. You get it?

Harry Dry is the first person that I call whenever I need help with copywriting. And the reason is that he's not just good at it, but he's really good at explaining it, teaching what he does. I mean, you'll see the guy has frameworks for everything. My favorite one is these three questions that he asks whenever he writes or reviews copy, and he's going to talk about that here. But we got to talk about the elephant in the room, and it's copywriting. It's sort of a smelly industry, right? I always think of hustlers and fraudsters on Twitter who are just trying to game your psychology with whatever deceptive trick they have up their sleeve. And what I like about Harry is he's nothing like that. He's nothing like that. This guy is a craftsman. He's an artist. He cares. That's what I love about Harry. And he's one heck of a teacher, too. Actually, his ideas are so good that when I was building the right of passage curriculum and I started thinking about distribution, how can we help people like you get your ideas out into the world to really spread them?

A lot of it's built on Harry's thinking. But hey, let's get into it. This is the man himself, Harry Dry.

I'll give you two examples of what not to do. So, I saw an ad on the way here. Don't just get a job; change an entire industry. There's a recruitment company. Um, now if I said to you, change an industry, you close your eyes, can you see that? No. Can you falsify that? Falsify: able to be proved true or false. Uh, can nobody else say it? No. Oh, I could start a recruitment company tomorrow and write 'Don't just get a job; change an entire industry. ' Um, now let me tell you which does all three: New Balance worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio. I think that is so good. It's so good. So if you close your eyes, can you visualize the supermodel in London, the dad in Ohio with a pair of New Balance on?

You can. Can you falsify it? It's true. Like supermodels have worn New Balance. Dads in Ohio do wear it; it's true. And can nobody else say it? Well, no because a load of dads in Ohio aren't going with Prada and a load of supermodels aren't really wearing Reebok. Like it's bespoke to New Balance. It's something they can only say. So that's those are three rules.

Now I want to go through them one by one with you. Rule one: Can I visualize it? So let's start with a game. Why does this matter? If you can't visualize it, you won't remember it. Lisa Cron says, 'If I can't see it, it's not there yet. ' So, I'm going to read to you six words. I tell you which ones I'm going to ask you which ones you remember. Seamless transition, charging pitbull, muscly Irishman, better way, leg of lamb. Which ones you got? Irishman, pitbull, leg of lamb. Irishman, pitbull, leg of lamb. I don't even remember the other three. So, what I'm talking about here is the difference between concrete and abstract. You remember the ones which you can visualize.

You can see the Irishman. You can see the pitbull coming at you. You can't see a better way. So this is concrete versus abstract. What abstract is, it's intangible. You can't drop it on your foot. If you try and drop a better way on your foot, it just fades away. But if you try and drop a muscly Irishman on your foot, you know, it hurts.

How do you do this? So how do you go from abstract to concrete? The best way I found is to zoom in on the words. So what I like to do, I get a sheet of paper and I draw a line down the left hand side. At the top, I'll write abstract. At the bottom, I'll write concrete. I'll write the word at the top. Um, and I'll just rewrite it and rewrite it and ask myself what do I actually mean here? What am I actually saying? Until I end up with a concrete object. So here you could have written not very good: worn by pretty people in big cities and old people in non-big cities, but instead pretty people—I can't, I guess I can kind of see that—but a supermodel, absolutely everyone can see a supermodel in London. Oh man, that's sexy, you know, big supermodel London, and then dads in Ohio. Now, that's funny because also the juxtaposition of these two makes me laugh.

So, another example of this, like right on the money, is you might come to me with an app idea. You might say, 'Hey, Harry, I got an app I want to share with you. It's about regaining fitness. ' So, what I do is I go through that little zooming test we did. You write regain at the top. And I'd say, 'All right, what do you mean by regain? ' And you might say, 'All right, it's for getting people off the couch who've been sitting on the couch for the last 6 months. ' And I'd say 'What do you mean by fitness? ' And you might like, what type of fitness? You might say running. How far? Five. 5K. So now we've got from regained fitness, we've got from getting up off the couch to running 5K. Couch to 5K.

Funny enough, that's the name of the most downloaded, the most popular fitness program of all time. Really? And this wasn't made by Nike or Adidas. It was made by a Boston TV producer, but it stuck 'cuz it was good.

Rule two: Can I falsify it? All right. Why does this work? Like, why do we like stuff which is falsifiable? I came up with this tip and I thought about it myself and what I concluded was when you write a sentence which is true or false, it's like as a writer you're putting your head on the chopping block. Um, it makes people sit up a little bit in their seat. Our ears prick up. This is true or false. Galileo got sentenced to 10 years house arrest by the Romans 'cuz he said that the earth spins around the sun. They didn't like it. If Galileo said the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object, they would have said, 'Galileo, go down the pub, have a beer. '.

How do you do this? How do you write copy that's falsifiable? Well, you want to write a sentence which is true or which is false. Best tip I've seen for this is deep in a Reddit thread by a now deleted account so I can't give any credit I'd like to, and it says you can't talk; you can only point. Picture your best friend right now who's single, okay, and I want you to try and set him up on a blind date with somebody, okay. Now we're going to go two versions of this. First version: you got to set them up but you're not allowed to describe them with anything that's objectively true or false. So, you have to write subjectively. So, you could say he's good-looking, he's intelligent, whatever. What would you, how would you describe this friend? Good family, great values. Good family, great values. Smart. He's clever. Hilarious.

He's funny. Funny. You're talking funny guy. I'm a woman right now. If I'm a woman or a man, I would say, you know, you're just saying stuff like is he actually funny? Now, rerun. Now, describe this friend, your single friend, but you're only allowed to say things which are true or which are false. So instead of you said good values, you could say, why does he have good values? Point to something. So, for good looking, I'd be like, looks like Ryan Gosling, 6'2", looks like Ryan Gosling. Exactly. Have you seen the meme? Uh, I haven't seen the meme. There's like this popular meme going around that all these chicks, it's like they hold these signs. It's like 6'5", works in finance, trust fund.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Reads on the tube. You know, it's not. If you say someone's intelligent, it's like, all right, whatever. Does he read? He reads on the tube. That's true or false. Um, that's what I mean by falsifiable. Is it able to be proved true or false?

Now, what's funny? So, what is the lesson with the pointing? This is what I still don't understand. When I say don't talk, only point. Let's say I'm trying to sell you gold. All right. I might say gold, you know it's a great investment, David. You want to get some gold? You know, that stuff's never going to go out of fashion. I'm just talking right now. Or I could point at the graph of gold for the last 50 years and it be like just going one way. I could say look when there was the last financial crash, what happened to gold? Just point; I just point to the graph. So you just point at stuff. That's a better way.

It basically gets you off the adjective trail. So this is interesting. So say we're going to advertise for gold. And all I can do is I can just point. What I could do is I would point.

At a beautiful castle that is clearly majestic, I could point at a family's gold stash, and we could show them feeling very comfortable being insecure because they have so much gold. I could point at the chart of gold. And now what I'm doing is I'm getting things that are concrete. They're visual. They're falsified. You could point at Warren Buffett and say, 'How much gold does Warren Buffett have in his portfolio? ' That's a reason to buy gold perhaps. I don't know. You have to research stuff. You can't just like this. This takes work. That's why it's better.

Finally, final test: Can nobody else say it? Um, Jim, I think his name is Jim Derky. Um, never write an ad a competitor can sign. Why I like 'can nobody else say it' is it kind of forces you to look a little bit deeper at what you're selling. Volkswagen had this ad back in the day: 'Your car has five numbers on the speedometer. Volvo has six. One could get the impression that the people who made your car lack a little confidence. ' No one else can say that. The only way of saying it is you got to get in the Volvo, see how many dials there are on the speedometer. So, it's visual. The visual aligns with the text. Nobody else can say it. Super simple. Differentiates what you're doing. That's why it works.

Exactly. It's true. It's falsifiable. It's true.

There's a lot of people I talk to and they're like, 'No, copywriting's for chumps. I'm not going to learn that. It's not really important. ' But you are the first person I met who changed my mind on that. Why should people learn copywriting? Um, all right. In this hand, I got a Snickers bar. Imagine, uh, Snickers: you're not you when you're hungry. Bestselling chocolate bar in the world. In this hand, I got a Fuse bar only to be eaten wearing rubber-soled shoes. Fuse discontinued in 2006. Um, both bars look the same. They taste the same, but one's the best selling bar in the world, and one, you know, it didn't get into the mind. And why I like this example is because um, startups businesses are like these two bars. You strip away the wrapper.

You strip away the copy. You strip away the branding. Um, they do kind of the same thing.

Like Samsung, Apple. All right. Um, they both got an app store. They both take great pictures. But what phone you got? Apple. You got an Apple. 17 out of 20 American teenagers choose Apple. Why do they choose Apple? Cuz to quote Ogilvy, um, we don't choose the whiskey we choose the image.

Um, let me give you one more story about why I think you should learn copywriting. Um, I uh my uncle's from Reading, England, and they had a striker. I used to watch a lot of football at the Madejski Stadium, Reading's old ground, and they had this striker up front called Dave Kitson, and he wasn't very good, and we'd all kind of laugh at Kitson despite supporting Reading. Ginger guy. He was very noticeable. Then I went to school in Portsmouth. Um, Kitson at this point got transferred from Reading to Portsmouth. All my friends at school, well a lot of them were Pompy fans. Portsmouth, Pompy. Uh, and we saw Kitson run around Fratton Park, ginger hair again, not scoring very many goals, but you know, he put in a shift. Kitson ended up with one England cap, so he played for England, good player, but you know, innocuous career. Now, um, I'd like to tell you that Dave Kitson wrote a book about football, and it sold more copies than David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, and Michael Owen put together. How did he do that? How did Kitson do that? Um, I think it's an example of a um a real foundational copywriting principle, which is what can I do that no one else is doing that people care about.

So Kitson, they had a bad career. What could he do? Like what could Kitson give you? All these guys have wrote these books about, you know, their career plan for England. Kitson didn't have any of that. So what could I do? Well, I've been in the Premier League. Kitson's been in the Premier League. So Kitson thought, well I'll, you know, tell some home truths about the Premier League. I'll say I'll do an undercover on the Premier League. I'll tell you this player's got a gambling addiction. I'll tell you this player's this; this is what it's like when England go abroad to Greece and everyone's going out. How many drinks are people drinking? He did like a big behind the scenes. Beckham, Scholes, whatever, they don't want to do that.

People care about it. The problem then is it's a book by David Kitson. Like no one wants to read a book by David Kitson. So instead he um he signed it as the secret footballer. Uh, that's copywriting. It's doing more with words. Like you, Kitson's product is objectively so much worse than David Beckham's. But just by positioning it, just by a little bit of storytelling, he could outsell him.

So, what do I have here? These are why don't you explain them? What are these? I printed a bunch of these as a backdrop for my course. You invited me on and I thought, what? Let's instead of putting stuff on the screen all the time, let's um have some vinyl mounted favorite ads. I'm just going to find random stuff and we'll talk about them. Okay, tell me about this. They don't write songs about Volvos. What's going on here? Why do you like this one? It's an ad by Corvette, I think. Um, why I like that? Six words. Um, a lot of white space.

I like this because firstly again we got an enemy. All right, so we talked about enemy before. They're selling the Corvette by having a little cheap shot at Volvo. But secondly, what can Corvettes say about the Corvette that no other car can? They can say that Post Malone sings about Corvettes. They can say all these American country singers love a song about a Corvette. It's romantic. Like what's good about this and I think what's good about all copywriting is you get it instantly.

There's um an intuitive test with copywriting. Sometimes you know more in 2 seconds than you know in 2 hours. Let me give you this test. I can't remember who came up with it but it's called one Mississippi, two Mississippi. So, I got this ad. I show it to you. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. You get it? Oh, let's try that. You get it? That's how it works. If it takes longer than 2 seconds, you know what? You printed this one out. I did not get it. I did one Mississippi, two Mississippi, 8,000 Mississippi, and I did not get it.

What is going on in this ad?

'You're going to need a smaller cabinet. ' So, I had to crop these to fit them on mounted um mounted covers. So, I've missed off the logo. 'You're gonna need a smaller cabinet. ' Um, Athletic Greens, you know what does Athletic Greens replace? Positioning 101. What do you replace? That to me says this does everything in one go. So, you know that what's the pain point? The pain point is morning routine. I want vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin C. I want some zinc. I want some whatever you're going to need. You don't need a cabinet. You use all-in-one Athletic Greens.

Is clean. You think that sometimes a risk that you have to take when you're writing ads is that you're going to do something that really relates to your in crowd, but then the out crowd won't get it. Cuz I don't get this, but I don't take vitamins like that. So maybe that's why I don't get it. Yeah. I think if everyone gets it, you possibly doing something wrong. Like I think that's not a problem at all. I tell you what, what's funny is you don't get it but you talked about it. Like I don't think it's a problem if you don't get it. You might text that to a friend like what is this? I don't get it. That's fine. It's got your attention. What's worse is something which is just like so a bad way of doing that ad. 'You're going to need a smaller cabinet' might be um one drink to replace them all.

You know, it's been said you want to write something that no one said before. That's what I think. Can nobody else say this?

What else you got for me? This one rips. This one's one of the most famous lines of all time. 'A thousand songs in your pocket. ' Why? Why do you like it? You tell me. You know what? We need to show these two together. Yeah, because this is why I like it so much. Okay, these Mac and PC ads, this is the problem with PC ads where they were all about features and it was all about, oh, 4 GB, whatever you know, this is how fast it went. Apple said, no, actually none of that stuff matters. All that matters. And I still remember being in fifth grade. I had this little blue iPod Nano.

It was the most valuable thing I'd ever had. My first album I ever bought was Confessions by Usher and it was on there and I could listen to all these songs and that's what made this such a big deal. It's also a metaphor. It's an example of metonymy. What's metonymy? What's I don't know what that is. Metonymy is where a shorthand term stands in for a literal term. It's very technical, but I don't mind technical. So, what actually they're saying there what they should say is 1,000 songs in your media player. That's the that's what it literally is. But they've substituted the literal word media player for um a standing word, a visual word, pocket. It doesn't that sentence doesn't literally make sense. Like, you haven't literally got a thousand songs in your pocket. You've got 1,000 songs in your media player. But you'd rather say pocket because it's more visual.

It's more surprising. It's more punchy. One of the great ads. I well you I you should judge an ad by how much it sells. Everyone had an iPod. Everyone walked around with an iPod. You look at the Vision Pro. I went straight to the Apple store. You went like look at the Vision Pro. I don't know what how they sold it, but no one bought one. That's why copywriting matters.

I'm sure, I'm sure if Steve Jobs was around, the Vision Pro would have been a little bit different. It would have been positioned a little bit differently. They'd have had some, some, you know, great line and they'd have sold a few. But they didn't.

You read this one. The Sports Sedan. People who inherited brains instead of wealth. I love this because who said this? Um, I'm paraphrasing someone here, but they said if you can ever make your customer feel like they're making a smart decision, you're doing something right. So they're making you think, you know, God, if you want to be clever with your money, you're going to buy one of these sedans because you've got everyone wants to be the person with brains and not wealth. And this is kind of a lame car. You know what I mean, right? Like look at that car. No one pulls up in that car and says, "Oh, that's right. " It's nothing like the Corvette that we saw earlier. So, what they're doing is they're saying, "You know what? We don't have the coolest car in the world. " Now what is it that we can do to sell this thing? Ah, okay.

This is for people who inherited brains instead of wealth. Because the people with the brains, they know that, oh, if I'm going to drop a load of cash on a Ferrari, spending four million on an object that I could crash and break at any time. Okay, you know what? This is the smart decision. You're right. Bang on.

I've never read The Economist. Management trainee, aged 42. What's going on here? It's a classic. That's one of the most famous of all time. Um, and it's sold a lot of Economists. I think um there's a quote by Neil French. He says um most people think in any ad you need four elements. You need a header, a subheader, um a picture, and a logo. And what Neil French says is if you can do an ad with just one of those elements, you're on to a winner. So there's no subheader. Well, maybe management trainee, but there's no picture. There's no logo. The logo is the I've never read the Economist. That's why it doesn't look like an advert.

Adverts look when they've got you know that logo in the bottom right picture logo. It doesn't look like an ad. So you read it. Two other things. The color is Economist red which people know. And then the other thing is you like look at the visual hierarchy. You read I've never read the Economist. Wait what? Management trainee, age 42. Oh now we have a story. Best thing also about the ad is like it's basically what's if you strip away the saying it well part, what are they actually saying? They're just saying that the Economist like is a good newspaper. You want to be smart. It's not that interesting.

How can you make two months salary last forever? The diamond engagement ring. Talk about this one. God. Um, this is a classic. So this came after um what was the bloody ad about a diamond is forever. So this was the follow-up for a diamond is forever. I think it was Mary Gerity 1948 for De Beers. They sold diamonds. Um at the time wedding rings were sapphire rubies, emeralds. How do you create demand for diamonds? You say when's it for? It's for marriage. Um how can you make two months salary last forever? I like I love that line because um of the juxtaposition like how can you make two months salary last forever?

You can't. It's two months of your salary. It's forever you know it shouldn't work. There's contrast there. Um the answer the diamond engagement ring. I think now 85% of engagement rings are diamonds and this campaign by Mary for De Beers uh the diamond company is the reason why.

All right. So you sit down, you're now okay. I'm Harry. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to write some copy. Tell me how does your process then unfold from there? I start with what am I trying to do? What am I trying to do here? There's a quote by John I'm going to say Hangley, forgive me, John. Um the current attitude of the consumer is the starting point and the desired attitude is the finish line. You can't start a race in the middle. So when I sit down and write, I'm thinking what's the current attitude? What's the desired attitude? That's point A. That's point B.

It's my job to get the customer from A to B. Think of picture two telephone poles. You've got the telephone poles. Now we got to string the wire.

So, how do I string the wire? Well, there's three pieces here. First one piece one, who you're talking to? Who who who am I talking to? Is it someone at the tube looking at their phone? Is it someone who's been on my app for 6 months but hasn't upgraded yet, but they know the problem? So, let me give you a funny example. Who you're talking to? Uh Snapchat took out a Super Bowl ad this year, 7 million pounds and um and the ad was more Snapchat, less social media or something like that. The average age of a Super Bowl viewer is 39. So you think a 39-year-old um picturing my dad here, like my dad's a little bit older, but who's just worked out Facebook, who's got six friends left in his life, is going to use Snapchat. If you use Snapchat at 39 you're a pedophile. They spent 7 million on that because they didn't think who are we talking to. One more example, I'm in St. Ives um last year and doing the coffee run and there's a couple of shops, there's a couple of cafes um and getting the coffee on the first day and the first cafe has this big um menu outside, like a blown up huge menu and it's got like all the prices of different lattes and whatever and 17 different quasonons we do.

And the second one just says coffee and pastry equals £5. And that's the yellow canary. It was cool. Like everyone's queuing outside the yellow canary and no one's at the other one. And I thought why is this? Well, it's because who are you talking to? You're talking to someone tourist just walking down the street as you do when you visit a new place, not really paying attention. Kind of taking in the sights. What's your job? Form follows function. So what do you want to do? You want to tell them I need a cup of coffee. You don't need to tell them that follow us on Instagram and like communicate all this stuff about you the price of this is this and whatever who you're talking to. Say you're walking down. What's going on?

You're on a walk and you're maybe going to the beach and when you see that sign, you're looking out of the corner of your eye and you need something to It's not even one Mississippi, two Mississippi. It's instant.

But the problem is when you're sitting down to write copy, you're spending hours in the mode of thinking. So when you're writing copy, how do you know that something is going to instantly resonate when you don't have the privilege of seeing something in the way that the consumer is going to read it? I think that's where we go wrong. I think this is OG what Ogle said, but like if you take out a billboard ad, you want to pin it up on Photoshop, not as the ad you made in Photoshop where it's just that and it's not competing against anything. You want to do that and then you take that ad and you pull it into a picture where you've got seven ads around it, people walking by. Does this actually grab my attention or not? So, I like putting things in reality. Like you got to another way of doing this is um if I write a newsletter for example, I write the newsletter in just as the reader will see it. So, I don't write it on a Google doc and then take it in. I write it I write it on directly onto ConvertKit so you see it just as I'm writing it. And I like that because like I don't trust when I drag it on a line might spill to three lines or it might be four lines. I don't like that. I want to see it just as the reader reads it. That's my answer. So piece one, who you're talking to.

Piece two. Piece two, you got to have something to say. We touched on this. We touched on this a little bit earlier. So piece two. So you got to have something to say. That means that you need to be building things for more than the money that's going to come out on the other side. You need to be building things because of something you believe or a vision that you have or something that you think is wrong with the world. That makes it a heck of a lot easier. Dave Gart says to me once, why did you start this business in the first place? Like, why? I run marketing examples. Why do you start marketing examples? Why am I teaching a copywriting course? Well I think that every marketer should learn to write.

That's what every marketer should learn. Copywriting. It's the number one skill in marketing. I believe something. What do you believe? I think Andy Rascin um Zura Zura was the subscription economy idea. All the investors in Zuru weren't buying into it because they like believed in the product. They just believed in the idea that everything was going to be subscription. It can show up in the most mundane of things like how I write. The reason that I started the show is because there were so many podcasts where people talk about what they wrote. They talk about, oh, I wrote a history book. Let me talk about history. Hey, I wrote a finance book. Let me talk about finance. I was like, what?

Why is there no podcast that just talks about how they wrote the book? Doesn't exist. And I would really like that. And beyond that, this is what my career is about. Writing is important. Learning to write in all the ways that we do it stinks. It's boring. It's super academic. It's very left-brained. There isn't a sense of vitality in it. And I think that's ridiculous. So for me, those are the things that I'm like, I don't want that. So I'm going to go counterposition and build the opposite. So Market was exactly that. I didn't have a career in marketing when I started that website, but I was just fed up of trying to learn marketing and it will be two pages on theory.

I wanted just give me examples. I learn personally.

From examples and a lot of other people do. That was my why. Like I wanted it you same with you. Um peace free. Peace free. Peace free said it well. So this is what most people think copywriting is. Most people you ask people what's copywriting, they'll say um they'll say it well. Let's say ride and rhythmically, visually persuasively, um, and visually. So Hinge, the dating app designed to be deleted. That's, in my opinion, near like a near perfect um near perfect. Yeah, it's you can't beat it. But that's something to say.

So, the brief for Hinge would be something like I'm sure the writer got something like we're making an app and it's for people who want long-term relationships. It's for people who fed up of dating apps. That's not that catchy. So it's the writer's job to turn that into something memorable. And here like the most obvious how do you make it memorable alliteration ddd data designed to be deleted. Also again juxtaposition the same things crop up like who makes an app that wants to be deleted you know like no one. Also what it implies oh I I'll meet somebody and I'll live happily ever after. I'll delete the app. This is the app that's designed so that I can finally fall in love which is what people are looking for. It's write copy that can't be copied. No over app can say that now. H owns that phrase.

And we're talking about how a great ad can tell a story. You can look at this image and there is so much cultural scaffolding that it's yeah resting on top of. So when they released this they I didn't like it. They released this with a a mascot called Hingi and I hated it. So, when I actually did that uh a couple a couple of days ago, I got rid of this mascot. I didn't like it. And I went to their website and this they had this beautiful image which I just thought it told the story way better. Um Oh, so you made this one? I I wouldn't say I made it but I got rid of the the damn mascot cuz I I didn't I I didn't think someone, you know, Duolingo has a mascot. Duolingo is silly. It's funny. Hinge isn't silly or funny. It's like it's real. It's about trying to, you know, get married, right? Um, yeah.

There you go. Piece one, piece two, piece three. Who am I talking to? You got to have something to say and you got to say it well. That's copywriting.

So, I want to show you this for real. I want to show you what what how an ad comes together. So, I I'm making a course on copywriting. Uh this is an ad I wrote probably for the landing page. Um, probably a little bit too much going on for a billboard, but I want to give you the process cuz it's like there's a lot to it. Um, it's probably about 20 rewrites. Are you looking at the same thing as me now? Yes, sir. You are.

So, the difference between 1% and 2% is not just 1%, it's 100%. I saw this like 4 years ago on um on Twitter. And I thought it's a great argument for copywriting um because if you can increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2%. That's not too hard. Like I could do that. You could you could do that. It's not too hard for most landing pages. You've literally doubled growth. So, I loved it. I was like, there's something here that that's the seed of an idea. I just wrote it on the sheet. I was like, "All right, maybe I can do something with this. " Hm. Um,.

Luke Sullivan, great copywriter. We're talking about conflict earlier. He just tells me now, what Luke Sullivan tells me, just draw a line down the middle of the page and write any two conflicts that come to mind. So on the right, we got increased landing page conversions from 1% to 2%. That was like the idea from the tweet. What's the what's what's an obvious conflict there? Well, it's spending twice as much on ads. That's like the the parallel of that one or two. Explain what you mean by conflict. How I look at a conflict is just like it could be red and blue. It could be Christianity and atheism. It could be white shirt, red jumper. Like it doesn't have to be complicated. There's three types of enemy. If you want to be really technical, you got ABC.

A different approaches, different way of solving the same problem. B beliefs. I believe this, you believe this. C competitors. So that would be Apple and Mac what we looked at earlier. Um here it's a bit of a before and after. Like I don't take this too seriously, honestly. just draw a line and just write stuff that comes to mind that are opposites that are opposites. So I had that idea. I was like, "All right, we need to set this up a little bit. So how can I write a header? Want to grow twice as fast? You've got two choices. Spend twice as much on ads or increase landing pages conversions from 1% to 2%.

Now, at this point, this is why I feel like what what you take in as a writer is so important because a couple of years ago, uh I I saw this Volkswagen um ad which I loved. How to how to prepare your car for winter. Volkswagen ordinary car. And with the ordinary car to prepare it for winter, you've got to drain the radiator, flush thoroughly check rubber hose, refill, blah blah blah. With the Volkswagen, all you got to do is change the oil. I love the layout. And what they're trying to show is just the simplicity, the ease. They're trying to show simplicity. They're trying to show ease, but again enemy. And I actually, more than anything, I just like how this ad's laid out. I love the layout. So, I thought how can I turn what I've got, like my seed of an idea, into this? So, I rewrite it again for the for the upper team of time. Um, here I drop in two placeholder images. So, just forget the images, but I just thought like I like the that you've got the Volkswagen and the ordinary car image.

So, I wanted two like placeholders just so I could work around that. And then I copied the squares, the checklist, and then I couldn't just have one on the left. So I wrote, "Want to grow twice as fast? You have two choices. Raise twice the cash, hire twice the staff, spend twice as much on ads, or learn to write and increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2%. " starting to take a little bit of shape.

And where are you at now? What do you like about this? What don't you like about this? Critique this and just give me a sense of I Well, at the time David, at the time I wrote this, I was like, you know, there's something here. I like this. But it gets in my in my opinion, it gets like 200% better. And I think that's like a lesson like you can like something and you just keep going until you literally can't you bleed the ink dry. Well, also there's a moment in the creative process where you have an idea and then you're like, I know that this is going to be good. What I have now is fine, but you have this inner knowing that what you're going to make is great so long as you live inside of those iterations. And I feel like that's where you are right now. You've got to you Yeah, you've got to like I think this is about talking about standards. Like I wouldn't sign this ad off right now. I'm just I wasn't happy with it. But I just thought I'm going to keep walking down this blind alley to see if it's blind or not. and it ended up not being blind.

So I rewrite it again. This time what's missing? I thought like look at the Volkswagen ad. It has headings. So I needed to make this simpler. So I want to grow twice as fast. You got two choices. You got the corporate way or the copywriting way. Set it up like that. Um and then also I like that there was more boxes on the Volkswagen. So, I added raise twice the cash, hire twice the staff, spend twice as much on ads, cross both your fingers or learn to write and increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2%. Now, at this point, something was like really irritating me. Uh, I could not put this out with that line being two lines on the right hand side. Learn to write and increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2%. It was just too long.

It was messy. So, I thought, I got to I got to make that one line like by hook or by crook. Um, easy to remove. Cross out landing page, learn to write, and increase conversions from 1% to 2%. And then I think, how can I make that even shorter? I can get rid of learn to write and put that as the header. That ends up being learn copywriting. So now I've got learn to write as a header, increase conversion from 1% to 2%. This creates a problem. This is how messy the whole process is. This creates a problem. I like parallelism in the headings and the corporate way as option A and learn to write as option B. There's no symmetry between them. Whereas the the corporate way, the copywriting way that worked. So I've created a problem and I've solved a I've solved a problem.

One forward, one back.

So then I think, all right, I need to write something like a similar ilk to learn to write. So I just start spitballing. Go full Zuckerberg. Scroll down. Roll Monopoly dice. Hidden hope. Spaghetti at war. These aren't good, but I'm just trying to go go. And what you're just doing is you're getting ideas out without even judging them really. It's like the edge shear and tap thing from way back. You just write one idea without judging it. You write another one. You're getting the dirty water out the tap. So, you're just flowing the tap. It's clogged up at the start with a little bit of mud, a little bit of dirty water, but you just flow.

And after a couple of minutes, a couple of rewrites, it will start being clean. You just trust it gets clean. So, I'm just doing that right now. Spaghetti at wool. And I end up with throw money and pray.

Now, at this point, um I don't know what's good and what's not cuz I've been I've been um I've been writing this now for probably I don't know 2 3 hours and I just I don't know. I can't I can't work out if it's good or not. So, I text a few friends. Go on. One thing that's really revealing you just said I've been writing this for 2 to three hours, but design is a crucial component of your writing process. This is writing design.

Visual with images and visual with words working together in harmony. So, so I couldn't if I was doing this on a word doc, I couldn't I couldn't let I couldn't do it like this. This is a v copy I Jason said this on on on your podcast, but copy and design are one and the same. Like I can't do them differently. You did it in Figma. I did it in Figma. I never do anything. This I never do anything which is not on the tool I'm using ever. So if I'm doing the as I said if I do the newsletter, I write the newsletter in the newsletter. It's weird. If I do an ad, I'll do it directly into Figma. If I do a landing page directly and if I do a billboard I'll get it up amongst all the other billboards and I'll put it in like where it is. I don't like doing stuff not where it is.

So, I'm confused at this point and um I like getting feedback. So, I sent this to a bunch of people who I you know respect their taste. Feedback comes in. Definitely prefer Go Fool Zuckerberg over the corporate way blah blah blah. But the consensus was throw money and pray being the header on the left worked worked best. So, I settled on that.

Now, I had an idea like what if I do a really long list like Volkswagen because I like the de I like depth. It didn't work. So, I then reverted back. At this point, it's kind of there.

Um but the last thing I do with most ads is I I try and add a little bit of design to it. Little bit more design. Easiest thing to do here was just bold. So, back up a second. Raise twice the cash, hire twice the staff, spend twice as much on ads, cross both your fingers. There's rhythm in those lines. is the repetition of twice and both. I want to pull that out. Header want to grow twice as fast. I highlight twice as fast and I add a little line increase conversions from 1% to 2%. That's twice as many. Just in case anyone didn't understand that the difference between one and two is 100 which is where I got the whole idea from in the first place. Want to grow twice as fast? You have two choices. Throw money and pray, raise twice the cash, hire twice the staff spend twice as much on ads, cross both your fingers, or learn copywriting.

Increase conversions from 1% to 2%. That's twice as many. And that's what I ended up with.

Finally, I got these two illustrations which are just placeholders. So, I I go on a go on a Fiverr and I pay someone called Kenzia to make me illustrations. She starts off with this guy praying and a load of a load of um notes falling. I gave her the oil once as references cuz that was the style. And then she gives me this pen and I say to her like I want it to be the same person on both of them. So do it like do you mind doing it again? I think I I paid her a little bit more. And then she gives me this guy praying but he's smiling. And then the second one has got this random like um messy four in a speech bubble which I I didn't like. So I said look Kenzia throw money and pray. These are great. I really like them. But throw money and pray. The guy's pissed at this point. Like he's an idiot.

He's throwing money and praying. He's He's We don't like this guy. And the guy who's writing, uh, turn that into a typewriter and add a light bulb. Um, and there you go.

Let me synthesize a few things here. So the first thing this is I just realized what I love about the way that you approach this craft. It is that you when most people think about copywriting, they think of it like a fishbait. We're going to get the consumer to spend money. We're going to trick them. That's not what you're doing here. What you're doing here, this is the art of simple communication. This is what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say something and then in one image I'm trying to capture attention, tell a story and there's you've actually made it delightful. Like this is beautiful in terms of what has happened and that is the way that you approach copywriting. It is the art of simple communication. It's like an art project the way that you do it. So this is is copywriting is arguing. Is it just an argument? It's like what's the best argument for learning copywriting? Well, you got two choices.

You could throw money at, you know, a cliche and hope that it works and it probably won't because we've seen a sana or you can learn this and you can increase conversions from 1% to 2%.

Also, what I like about this is it's not a big claim. I'm not being like learn copy and be a millionaire. No, I'm saying just like you could improve conversions from 1% to 2%. You can probably that's believable. It's not it's it's sincere. This ad's really sincere. And then there's a few other things that stuck out. First of all, we started off with that quote from visualized value that you can increase from 1% to 2%. So you had this little C and you said, I can do something with that. So you started with that and you built and built and built off of that. That was your first piece of inspiration. Then your second piece of inspiration was the the Volkswagen ad. So now you have these two pieces of inspiration. One in terms of the copy one in terms of the visual, the way that the information is going to be organized and how it's the hierarchy that is going to show up.

So both of those things and then what you do is you're designing in Figma as much as you're writing in Figma. So design and writing are working together and what you're doing is you're using both of them to amplify the other and then you're tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until the copy comes alive tells a story that once again one Mississippi to Mississippi instant. That's it. That was it was um this was probably 2 days and 25 rewrites. And I'm not trying to make out like it's like that's you can do it. You can do it. There's no right way of doing it. But I I rarely get from I can't I couldn't write that as it as it is on the screen right now. You can't just say go write that. Like the only way in my opinion you can make this ad is if you build it up piece by piece by piece by piece by piece. That's how it worked.

Quick break from the episode because I got to tell you about write a passage. The training that we do is rigorous, but I promise promise that it won't have the sludge of your fifth grade English class. You know how I roll. I like energy and enthusiasm. And because we've now had more than 2,000 students, the program's gotten pretty dialed in. And like this episode, we're going to dive into the mechanics of writing. And then as a student, you're going to get lineby line edits on everything that you write so that you can ship work that you are excited about and just fired up to share. And if you want to join us, go to writeofpassage. com. Okay, back to the episode.

All right, Harry, I like this ad from you. Here's what it says. Marketers, you'll spend 22,000 hours of your career writing. Spend two learning how to do it well. Copywriting's arguing. The conclusion is to buy your product. I thought to myself, like, how long does a marketer spend writing each day? That's was my seed. That was my seed, my idea. How long does a marketer spend writing? Well, they write emails. They write social media posts. They might write landing page. They might write an ad. Uh they'll write in Slack.

Um they'll sell, you know, about 4 hours a day. four hours a day times by 300 days a year times by a 30-year career you end up with give or take 22,000 hours. I think originally it was 20,000 but I wrote 22,000 because I wanted the parallelism word of the day really with spend two learning how to do it well. Um, so I had the 22 and the two. It's deliberately done. It's deliberately done that way.

Let me pop in here. I got to add something. The other thing that I like about this is the context is important here. You're Oh, learn copywriting. That sounds so boring. 2 hours. Harry, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I do not have time for that to do 2 hours with you to learn copywriting. I got too much going on. But what you've done is you've changed the frame here where rather than costing me time, you're saving me time because now you're saying you're going to spend 22,000 hours writing in your career and spend just 2 hours just 2 hours learning to write. Oh, that's so easy. It's funny if you said, you know, you spend 4 hours a day writing, nowhere near as good. So you got to you got to you can make a you can make a small number bigger, which I've done here, 4 hours a day, just by expanding the time frame. That's the technical side.

Um, yeah, one of my favorites.

Tell me about this Tesla ad that you made. Better truck than an F-150, faster than a Porsche 911. I took that from Elon. Elon Musk tweeted a line along those lines and I liked it and I um stuck it on an ad. Why I like this is cuz when the Cybertruck came out like no one knew what it was. So, how do you make a product make sense? You compare it to products we know which make you you compare it. So we all know what an F150 is like. It's a brilliant truck. But apparently this is what better than F150 faster than a 911. Cybert truck's complicated. Explain it to me so I get it. Based on what I've learned from you there's two things I would do to improve this. Better I would make more concrete. Better.

Okay. Give me tougher. Give me sturdier. Give me a word like that that's a little bit stronger. You also get to get rid of a word that way. Tougher than an F150. Gets rid of the word truck. It's shorter. Shorter. Shorter is better in copy most of the time. Well, it's not just shorter, but then you get the parallelism. Stronger than an F-150. Faster than a Porsche 911. Sounds better to me than what you have right now. Yeah.

I like tougher than F150, faster than 911. It's great. You That's why you should buy. Also, what we said, can nobody else say this? What other car can say they're tougher than F150, faster than 911? There's no there's no car which exists which can say that. Read that one. This from the ad professor. The ad professor.

My old friend. It takes 3. 1 seconds to read this ad the same time it takes a Model S to go from 0 to 60. Why do you like it? Well, it's falsifiable. It breaks the fourth wall. So, what it's giving me is it's telling me how fast that Tesla car is, which I really like. And it's also saying, okay, interesting. Takes 3. 1 seconds. That also feels really precise. And I feel like the ad is talking to me. So there's just multiple layers there. Yeah. And then the way that the image is done, it just looks fast.

I like it as well because it's Dave. I think I got this from Dave Ghart. First line, second line. He got this from Joe Joe Sugarman. What I mean by that is you read the first line, it takes 3. 1 seconds to read this ad. You're like, what's going on? You you you need a read that gets you to the second line, which is the same time it takes a Model S to go from 0 to 60. Um there you go. You completed the ad.

What do you think of facts, David? Do you like facts? They're fine. They're fine. You're facts are fine. You're ambivalent towards facts. Sort of dry. I I love facts. What? I love facts. What do you mean? So, in this episode, I start what Asana Asana spent 345 millions of pounds each year on sales and marketing. That's a fact. Jack Carowak lived on the road for 7 years. He wrote on the road in 3 weeks.

Fact. Give me a fact. Give me a fact. Behind a fact, there's a story. I like a fact cuz it's true. There's 350 million Americans. fact. See, there's something in that. Now, there's 350 million Americans. Is that interesting? Genuinely, is that interesting? 350 millions, I don't think it's interesting. No. So, help me understand what you're saying. When I think of fact, I just think of something that is true about the world, but almost by definition uninteresting.

But it seems like you're trying to say something else. I'm trying to say when you say a fact, it it guarantees that you say something. Most people when they open their mouths, they say nothing. They say wallpaper, word shaped air, but balloon smoke. A fact is you're giving me something here. This is true. Where did this come from? So, but 350 Americans, I don't think that's I don't think that's interesting. So, you got to like you you got to work with a fact. It's something like this. It's something like this. So I have a pet peeve where I don't like flying from the east coast to London. And the fact behind this is the flight's only 6 hours. So, the problem is it's too short for you to get sleep and it's too long for it to be a quick and easy flight. So, it's just in this middle ground.

Whereas, it's actually way easier to do a 10 to 12 hour flight. So Austin, where I live, San Francisco, way better flight. So what you're saying is what that fact is doing is it's grounding what I'm saying. It's making it real and then inside that fact then I can tell a story from it. Facts. Yeah. That's that's I'm saying facts. Facts. Facts. If in doubt, give me a fact. That's what I'm saying. I think that also the thing with a fact we don't understand with a fact. You start with a fact. You could turn it into something else, but start with a fact. It's true.

Then then make something with it. Fact doesn't have to be numerical. I'll give you a fact. When you're in a when you're in McDonald's or Duncan, if I want to be all American, when I'm in Duncan, um, they give you tomato ketchup, but often what they give you with the ketchup, um, is they they take a Hind bottle and they pour in the factory ketchup to the Hines bottle. That's a fact. I've seen it happen. It was on the news. Fact. You could make an ad from that. The woman pours the Hines, sorry, the ketchup into the hind. She hands it to the consumer. Even when it's not Hines, it's Hines. So that that that ad like it's not a fact. Even when it's high, it's hinds, but it comes from one. I think so much good stuff just comes from fact.

So inside of this though is an implicit critique of how most people communicate. And what you're saying is people don't communicate with enough facts. They're trying to give you like an egg, but what happens is it comes out all scrambled all messy. Give me like that that egg shape. That's what that's what you want. The euros are on. All right. So I'm listen to Alan Sheer the football. Yeah. And he just he says, 'Why was England bad today? ' And he says, 'God, let's just not play him well. It's all wrong. Southgate this. Southgate that. Give me a fact.

Gareth, tell me that they're playing Kieran Trippy at left back when he's a right back. That's a fact. Okay. Now, this is a great example. I'll use a golf analogy cuz it's one that I know a lot. So, all the time you'll be watching the announcers and they'll say, 'Oh Bryson Dashambo, Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods just didn't want it bad enough today. Tiger Woods looked a little sloppy on the driving range and he kind of didn't go out as well. ' No, no, no no, no, no, no. That's not good sports announcing. Good sports announcing is saying Tiger Woods usually averages 11 fairways per round. Today he averaged seven. He made up for that with an extra 30% greens in regulation and he was three times more likely to make a one putt today than he normally is. Because of that, this is what I sensed in the round. Here's how it impacted the momentum and all that.

Now that we're rooted in facts, there is so much more weight and credibility in what the announcer is saying. And I love the word that you said, precision. There is such a lack of precision in what people say. So, so um all well, all right. Modern writing does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning. It is a fact. It's precise. So, the point is as a writer, as a communicator, you should have some facts in your arsenal about whatever it is that you're doing. Don't say inequality. The bad way of phrasing. Don't you think it's a bit unequal? That's an adjective. Turn it into a reality. Right. Show me a graph.

Show me the difference. Yeah. Yeah. Start with a fact. Work work from there. All right, that was fun.

What I want to do is I want to switch gears. I want to just talk about your newsletter. Your newsletter has easily more than 100,000 subscribers, but it's not the number of subscribers that is worth talking about. It's the engagement. You once shared this screenshot. It's a while ago. I don't know if you remember this. And you shared the replies that you get for a newsletter. I've never seen a newsletter get as much engagement as yours. Not once. Thank you very much. It means a lot, David, coming from you. I mean, I think I can't remember that. I think I marketed Examples is back or markets is not back. And I um Yeah, it's it was it was crazy.

It was really crazy. I think that when you see 100,000 people, you know, you forget that they're all actually somebody. 100,000. It's actually it's actually well, you know 50 50% open it, but it's actually it's actually somebody and um no, it's why I write it cuz people people seem to like it.

How do you write it? How do you actually sit down to write the dang thing? I mean, it's tricky and honestly every newsletter genuinely is uh I'm not trying to sound pretentious here or above my station. Every newsletter is tough. Like I I it's always a struggle to to get something good. Um, how I write it, I I think what's a newsletter? Why is it different to a blog firstly? Like, why is it different to a to a tweet? Uh, and Hanley has this great line. It's it's it's less about the news and it's more about the letter. So, when I start to write it, I think, right it's a letter. I like to start with a bit with an introduction, a conclusion. Um, how I do this is time, place, what's going on in my in my life. Time, place. So, this is what is is a common in writing.

I think JK Rowling started the Chamber of Secrets with um something like it was um not for the first time an argument had broken out at over breakfast at number four private drive. So from that you know it's breakfast they're arguing time place what's going on that's how I start. So I write I look outside the window see what's happening. So I think last one I did was um live from London weather update trees shuttering majestic hail it wrote itself. If I just looked out the window the hail was really falling. You can't get that from Twitter.

Now, that's the little, you know, bit at the start. But the actual meat of a newsletter, I think there's three things I do which not sure too many other people do. Firstly, you get five things in a newsletter, six things. You'll get five examples. Um, it's dense. Secondly um, secondly, we talked about this a lot today, but there's conflict in pretty much every single example. Why why I like conflict. This could be as simple as um before and after. It could be here's the problem, here's the solution. It could be here's how they do it here's how they do it. Now, why why I like that um is because we we as human beings, we remember stuff relatively. So, I want to give you pickle juice. I want to give you orange juice. The pickle juice makes the makes the orange juice taste a little bit sweeter and the orange juice makes the pickle juice a bit sourer. If I'm writing, say about about Lum's positioning, I did one recently about Lum's positioning.

I don't start with Loom's positioning good. I start with how's here's how every single other screen recorder positions their product. Here's how Loom do it. What was the difference? They started as a screen recorder tool. Uh way back they were just in the screen recorder bucket. Just sitting in the screen recorder bucket. And then they had an idea. The world's gone remote but remote communication sucks. Remote communication sucks. Like so here we go. Introducing async video messaging. That's the category out of what was a screen recorder. Everyone else is saying 'Yeah, we're we're an easier to use screen recorder. ' They're just saying like the way the way remote you talk remotely sucks.

Like no one likes Zoom.

These long Zoom calls and meetings are too long. Emails are too impersonal. That is Lim's positioning. And now, I think they are worth more than that whole screen recorder bucket combined. That is positioning.

I like conflict in a newsletter. I really like introducing some kind of conflict.

The third thing I only noticed the other day: I was reading back previous issues, and since March 2021, I have not written a paragraph longer than two lines. Now, I am not saying that is good or bad, to be clear. I am just saying it is idiosyncratic to myself. Why I do this is for three reasons. Short paragraphs are like monkey bars; they are easy to swing between. So, if you are writing the newsletter, you have to get real. People read it on the train, and they are not that focused. You have to help them swing. Secondly, if I write a sentence which is a paragraph which is three lines long, there is a good chance I am not explaining myself as well as I should be or could be. So, I will turn the three lines. I will look at it like, do we need that word? Do we need that sentence? No. Two lines. Finally, I like giving lines room to breathe.

I like writing something which is good and giving it room to breathe.

Walk me through this intro. Hey, it is Harry. It is 3:47 a. m. I am in the big smoke alone. Laptop, green tea, looking at the whiteboard like a dozy dog. Six words on it. Five with lines through. Intro glares at me. I glare back. The final horcrux. Sip some tea. Is this any good? I do not know. My tea tastes cold.

I should press send. Go ahead. Walk me through that. Why did you choose that? Where is this? Top of the page. Funny having me read that back. Harry. Hey, it is Harry. It is 3:47. I am in the big smoke alone. Laptop, green tea, looking at the whiteboard like a dozy dog. Six words on it, five with lines through. Just quickly for the reader, what I mean by that is in my newsletter, there are always six things. So, what I am trying to say is that five of them are finished.

Intro glares at me. That is the only part I have not written. The fight to final. Sip some tea. Is this any good in italics? I do not know. My tea tastes cold. Beyond writing something which is good or not, I want it to just feel like it is out of the oven. That is what I want. It is fresh bread, warm to touch. That is a quote from somebody I cannot remember, but I love it. So, is this good or not? I do not know. But it happened. I was in the big smoke, meaning in London, some random office in London at 3:47 with a green tea, questioning whether the words were any good or not.

I looked at my words like, God, is this good? I do not know, but I have to send it. There is something here that is showing up about the stuff just writes itself. You just need to see what is right in front of you right now. The hail, the green tea, the fear that you have, the six lines, all of this stuff is there. And yeah, I think what you are saying is a lot of writers do not see what is right in front of them.

I like it because it is not particularly clever. Like, it is actually boring. What stands out from that example is that the writing is so simple. Out of everybody I read, I bet that your sentences are the shortest sentences. Number one, shortest. How do you write simply? That is the question. It is not easy. I think the first thing which I learned was that you do not write it simply straight away. Writing simply, what we are really talking about here is rewriting. You do not write simply. You can only rewrite simply, really. So, how do you rewrite? Well, you know, there is a book on writing by Zinsa, Elements of Eloquence, and Forescy. Like, if you want to get into the weeds, those books are great.

So, I will give you maybe a couple of simple things.

First one, my favorite, Kaplan's law of words. Any words that are not working for you are working against you. I love Kaplan's law of words so much. I invented Harry's law of words, which is that you are not taking Kaplan's law of words seriously enough. People talk about writing simply. I am like, your writing is not simple. You can cross stuff out. Kaplan's law of words is true for words. It is also true for ideas. The same thing, like the strength of an idea is inversely proportional to its scope. This is why the word 'and' on a landing page is normally never a good thing. We sell jeans and t-shirts and socks, and we have dressing rooms. I buy jeans from Huy at Denim. We have got shorts today, but I buy jeans from Denim. We make jeans.

That is it. Do one thing well. That is their tagline. Yeah, we make jeans. Meghan Markle, I think, gets stuff from there. You know, dare I say the name, but Meghan Markle gets stuff from there.

The same with album covers. Like, you look at the best album covers. Velvet Underground, The Banana by Warhol, or Dark Side of the Moon, The Prism. It is exactly what I was thinking of. Dark Side of the Moon. What else? Bowie has got one of my favorites of all time with the lightning, Aladdin Sane. He is also got one of the worst, Reality, which is like seven disparate images. Like, who knows what they are. Yeah, it is a weird one.

We talk about simple sentences there. So, I would talk about simple paragraphs. A good paragraph, it is like a burrito. You should be able to throw it to you, and you should be able to catch it, and it should not come apart in the air. What I am talking about here is sentences that do not look awkwardly at each other but that add up to more than the sum of their parts. So, a test for this is you have a paragraph; you pull one sentence out. A good paragraph should be broken. You should break it. If you could pull a sentence out and it still works, the sentence probably should not have been in there in the first place. Refer you to Kaplan's law of words.

Third thing I talk about when I am talking about writing simply. I do not think it is something I do, but I will write a sentence or a paragraph for a headline or whatever, and I will copy and paste. I will write it again. I will try and tweak something. I will copy and paste. I will write it again. I will copy and paste. I will write it again a different way. I will end up with like four or five different versions of the same paragraph in the editing phase. And I am not sure I would recommend this because it has caused me a lot of turmoil over the years, but I like it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it just allows me to refine each time, but more importantly, it allows me to be kind of terrible. Like, a lot of those rewrites I will do are not good, but funnily enough, the freedom to do it wrong allows me to actually be a bit different, try my own way, and do it right. When I show it to my brother, he edits all my stuff. Originally, I give him one paragraph to look at. He will just look at this one paragraph, and his feedback would be like, I like it or I do not like it.

It was hard to get more than that. But when I show him, I can show him three things. Show him three paragraphs now, and he can say that one is the best. That sentence is the best. Use that sentence but put it in that one. I get so much better feedback when I can show people versions of stuff.

One of the things I have noticed in our conversation so far is you are very good at dividing things into 1, 2, 3, 4, like really good at structuring. Is that something that you are pretty intentional about? We have talked about this. You love structure. I love structure. How do I structure things? Structuring is just dividing lines and parallelism. So, we talked about copywriting at the start. How can I divide copywriting into something which is a bit more easy to understand? Copywriting is big. It is kind of scary. All right. Who are you talking to? What are you saying here? And how are you saying it?

Those are the three buckets.

I remember I did a little essay for you a couple of months ago. Yes. It was seven steps to 10,000 readers or something like that. So, I was like, how can I break this essay down into structure? How can I get the structure? And I wrote the line that the first step in getting 10,000 people to read your work is to get 100 people to read your work. And I thought that is the structure. Part one, things that do not scale, 100 readers. Part two, momentum, next 9,900. That is it. Part one, part two, dividing lines and parallelism.

There is a paper, I think it was published in 1971. It is called That is Interesting. And the whole paper is just a formula for different ways to frame an idea to make it interesting. And the structure that stuck with me was take multiple things, take two things that people think are different, actually show however one. Take one thing and actually show however two. And a lot of what you are doing with structure, what you just did there is, okay, you want to get some readers. Well, actually, you think that is one thing. No, it is actually two things. First, you need to get your first 100 readers. Then you have to get the rest of your readers. Now you have structure. It is like a book without chapters. Imagine that. It is long. It is heavy.

Like, chapters are the structure of the book. Same with a course. You take 17 videos. It is like, how do these link together? Give me something cohesive. Give me something I can hold on to. That is structure.

Another Harry rule. And this is something that I value too. Many years ago, I had lunch with a mentor, a multi-billionaire, and he basically looked at me and he said, David, there are two things that if you do, you will be insanely successful. He said .

The first thing is to learn how to have a high quality bar. And the second thing is never let the high quality bar fall. And he said, 'That sounds so simple. ' And we're sitting at lunch right now. You're like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's going to be hard. ' He's like, 'No, it's going to be hard. There's going to be people who are angry. There's going to be people who are anxious. There's going to be people who are pissed off. There will be people who stop working with you because of this. But if you have a high quality bar and you maintain it, great things will happen for you. ' And I see a lot of the same thing that happens in your work with standards. Like you have these supremely high standards in everything that you do. Where did that come from? I love what the mentor said.

I think your standards are your work. I think that's a really simple line, but a really true one. Like your work is nothing but your standards. Nine out of 10 plus it goes out. If not, you won't see it.

Tell me about something you said a few minutes ago about knowing what good looks like. What is that feeling like when you're in the presence of something of quality that you've created? How do you know? I think it's when you go for a walk around the garden. You take a little walk around the garden, come back, and you're like, 'I can't take anything away from that. Like, that's as clean as it's ever going to get. That works. ' And you just sort of smile. Like, 'I got it. ' Um, yeah, it's mainly when it just—I read it, one line flows to the next. I can't remove anything. It's good. Um, like 'worn by supermodels in London, Dad's in Ohio. ' You can't add a word to that ad and make it any better. You can't take away a word and make it any better.

It just is.

Tell me more about the conflict. How when you're writing, how do you create conflict? What are the things to avoid? What are the things to go for? I'm looking—I'm basically trying to hinge something around the word 'but' in a story without actually writing the word 'but. ' So, you don't want to keep going 'but this happened, but this happened. ' It wants to be like, you know, natural. So, I don't know. Let me go off the top of my head. I'll tell you how I got here today with some 'buts' in it. How I got here today. You know, I'm telling it boringly. I got on the train. I got the train here and I had a coffee and we started talking. But in a conflict, I'd say I woke up at 8:52 a.

m. and I started looking for clothes to wear today. And my mom runs up the stairs and she tells me, 'Harry, you can't—you cannot do this interview in little blue in those blue shorts you had at the start. ' And I'd say, 'Mom, just—I'm stressed. All right, I'm doing this thing. I want to, you know, practice. ' And she's like, 'I'm not letting you get out the house unless you change shorts. ' I got these on now. I get here to do the interview and you say, 'Harry, what—can you—why you got longer trousers on? ' Like, 'Give me some trousers. ' Like, 'I haven't brought trousers with me. ' 'You just—you just put in little—you know, that's how you create conflict. You just go but—but what went wrong. That's a 'but. ' That's conflict.

'.

I got to ask how does AI show up in all of this for you? Is AI part of your writing? And the thing that we've spoken about is that AI or not, what matters is having really good taste. Yeah, John Long, great quote. Switching from pens to typewriters didn't make the work better. Switching from typewriters to laptops didn't make the work better. Switching from film to digital didn't make the work better. AI is a tool. It's a tool. It's only as good as your taste. I saw somebody on Twitter the other day, Photoshop's got this new thing like generative fill. Basically, you take a picture and you can like zoom out and it will generate the background. And talking about album covers, Beatles' Abbey Road, the four guys walking along the zebra crossing—someone zooms out of this picture, generative fills it, and it's got like a, you know, a big balloon in the air now, and there's loads more trees, and it's completely not cropped. And they write, um, 'AI revolutionizing the photography process. ' And I'm thinking, 'God, like, God help you.

'.

Ogilvy—ad—at 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise coming from the Rolls-Royce is the sound of an electric clock. He pulls that out of the Motor Magazine. Increased Rolls-Royce sales by 50%. Why does he pull it out of the Motor Magazine? He's got taste. He puts it as the headline. That's conviction. Another thing AI doesn't have. It can't—it doesn't believe something. And also experience. Why can Ogilvy write that? Is 'cuz he sat in the car—or the Motor Magazine individual sat in the car. They drove it at 60 mph and the loudest noise you could hear was the electric clock. Taste, conviction, experience. Bukowski worked as a postman for 20 years and he wrote Post Office.

Jack Kerouac lived on the road for seven years and he wrote On the Road in three weeks. Michael Lewis spent forever working on Wall Street, waited and waited, and then was able to write The Big Short. I don't think that it's not a coincidence, is it? Sylvia—Sylvia Plath—I've mentioned her a few times today. Um, she worked as an intern at a New York fashion magazine. Her character Esther Greenwood, guess what? Disillusioned intern at a New York fashion magazine. If you asked me to write about New York City—I'd never been—so I would just say yellow taxis, city that never sleeps. I'm gumming together long strips of words already set in order by somebody else. And unfortunately, that's quite literally what AI does. It's predictive. It's predictive.

You're making a few points with experience. The first point that you're making is the David Ogilvy, which is go out and do things and do things and be aware. And it is out of that awareness that you're going to notice things. And the things that you notice, those will lead to good writing. So, you're talking about the car that's going fast. The loudest thing you can hear is the ticking clock. That is the first kind of experience that you're talking about. Second kind is the Bukowski kind where you work in something for a long time and you're building experience that is a kind of expertise year after year after year after year. And those are very different kinds of experience. What's writing? You see something, you believe something, you write about it. Um, any kind of robot can't see anything and it doesn't believe anything. You ask AI, 'What do you believe? ' It says, 'I am a robot. I don't believe—I don't believe anything.

' So, how are you going to tell me something surprising? A good writer arranges words and ideas in a way that haven't been laid out before. Any kind of robot lays them out in a fashion which is quite literally from all the stuff which has been laid out before. And I'm not saying it's not—it's not useful. Like it's a—it's a great research tool and we don't know what's going to happen. But I think if you think it will take your job or you think it's going to do a better job than you, it probably will. But I don't think it will. I don't think it can do what I do.

It seems like a lot of what you're trying to do is collect excellence, surround yourself with all different kinds of excellence, and then use those inspirations to basically set the standard for the work that you produce. Um, it's like it's in the everyday like I don't know, you get up, you read, you—you get up, you're on TikTok, you get that whole video after video, it slows you down. You wake up, you sit in a bit of silence, you don't talk to people, you collect your thoughts. Silence and action. That's what I run on. Oh, yeah. You do these writing retreats with Cultural Tutor. And you don't even talk till dinner, right? I always think it's so funny when people call him Cultural Tutor. Wait, that's his name. He's the Cultural Tutor. His name is Nash. His name is the Cultural Tutor on his British birth certificate. That's his name. Plato is his face as well.

I just call him CT. Even Cultural Tutor. Yeah. No, we go—we go—we last was in Coniston. He was trying to finish his book and uh—you wake up—thing is we used to do these and we'd talk um on these and I'd be like, 'Look man, do you want a coffee? ' And he'd be like uh—you know—he's put on—maybe—maybe not, you know—I'll come with you. He's talking about his girlfriend, he's talking about his favorites. I'm like like I—I've lost my flow here. When we sit, we don't talk till 5 or 6 when we have dinner and there's an intensity to it, there's a real like god I'm doing something here. If I'm—if I wake up and I'm on TikTok which I do a lot first thing in the morning or Instagram whatever—whatever it is, my day's drudge. It's slow. I'm not up for it. If I wake up, I'm like, 'God, I'm not talking to my own today. I'm going to write something brilliant today. ' Take a walk around the park in silence.

No earphones on. I give myself a better shot. Um, I think I'm—I don't know. I said what I said, David. I've said what I said.

It was a pleasure. You said what you just said. I've said what I said. I'm a huge fan of the show and genuinely I should say it's really um—genuinely a privilege to come on. I've listened to pretty much every episode. Thanks, man. I'm a big fan. Um, there you go.