make more money using proven writing...

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Make More Money Using Proven Writing Formulas

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John: Hello, hello. John S. Rhodes here and I am thrilled to have Carlos Redlich

here with me. He is the author of, The Copywriting Playbook, and he is a

highly sought after direct response copywriter and he is also a marketing

consultant. As you can imagine, he’s worked with all levels of entrepreneurs

from six figure startups to nine figure mammoths. As he travels the world and

learns about new cultures and has a great time, Carlos’ primary mission is to

deliver as much value as possible to his fellow marketers and copywriters,

entrepreneurs and far beyond. He is truly an authentic and straight forward

individual and I am just thrilled that he’s here for this interview. So Carlos,

thank you so much for joining me today and I can’t wait to dive into the

questions.

Carlos: Hey man, I really appreciate you having me. I’m pumped up.

John: Yeah very excited. We had a little bit of a conversation before the interview

here, and so many fireworks, so many great things that are going to come

out of this. I’m so excited. So let’s start with the basics, Carlos. So what

is copyrighting exactly and maybe more specifically you can go into direct

response copywriting for folks who are following along.

Carlos: Yeah, definitely. So, I mean the classic definition is salesmanship in print. So

the way I kind of like to word it though is whenever we’re writing copy, we’re

essentially trying to get the person on the other side who’s reading the copy or

listening to it or whatever it is to actually take action on something. So whether

that’s to buy or to opt into your email list or whatever it might be. That’s really, I

mean at its core, is really what direct response is. It’s writing the words that are

going to make people want to take action.

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John: Powerful stuff and a direct response is a response to that writing then I

suppose.

Carlos: Yes absolutely, yes. So it’s kind of like if you think of it like old classic

advertising in magazines or whatever, they would have a little coupon at the

bottom, and whenever you would mail that coupon back in for whatever the

product was or whatever it would have a special code there, and so they would

know that specific advertisement generated x amount of sales because of that

coupon code. So we do the same thing online in that way exactly. You can test

your advertising, so instead of kind of you know hoping and just taking a big

shot gun approach, we really laser in on who we want to target and then you

make sure you get trackable results.

John: Awesome! So these clients with money that you work with are obviously

looking for talent. They are testing. They are doing, you know A/B test; this

versus that. And so there is this tremendous demand for your copywriting and

for your skills. So that’s really, really exciting that these clients with money

obviously are businesses, they’re entrepreneurs and that’s who you work with

obviously. Correct?

Carlos: Yeah a lot of them…I’ve actually I’ve kind of steered away from working with

small businesses and the only reason why is as a copywriter it was easier to

sell internet marketers or big publishing companies like Agora. Those guys

know about copyright and they know about the value of it and a lot of the small

businesses, when I first started going after them, they didn’t know. I couldn’t

charge them $10,000 for a sales letter. They were like, what is that? That’s

insane! Ten thousand dollars you know. So yeah the people I work with are

generally entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs who are already savvy about direct

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response. Not folks who are just learning.

John: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s much more of a shooting fish in the barrel

type of situation if there’s already money and already awareness there. You

literally just have to show up. So we’re going to talk about that. We’ll put a

pin in that and we’ll absolutely come back to clients and client getting. First I

want to sort go back a little bit in time. You know, what do you really love about

copyrighting? What really gets you excited about direct response copywriting

and really you know turning thoughts and ideas into the written word?

Carlos: You know what’s funny? It’s actually though the, kind of the lifestyle I get from

that because once you’re able to…it really comes down to formulas. I don’t

think I’m the best copywriter in the world but I’ve written for a lot of the best

companies, like Agora and a lot of top internet marketing companies as well,

and the reason why is because I just follow a specific structure that works

really well like 90 percent of the time. So, but what I like about copywriting has

basically allowed me to do what I love which is I love training martial arts.

I used to own two martial art gyms and then sold those a few years ago to

my business partner at the time because I took up copywriting and went fully

online. One of the things that quickly resonated was just freedom. I’ve already

moved a few times. I’ve traveled more than most folks. And it’s because I

can just literally write for my clients, generate a ton of great results for them,

hopefully get some royalties, depending on the client and live freely. Literally,

you know I guess it’s kind of like the same how internet marketers do it. But

this is my first…so for me it was basically the freedom that I was able to

achieve and it blew me away that it was just by writing words.

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I mean words really matter that much, and once you figure that out, that one

tweak of a headline or one tweak of an offer, especially man that can make a

huge difference, a huge difference.

John: Yeah, I put some words to this as you were talking using my own copywriting

skills here. Freelance freedom with formulas.

Carlos: Oh I love it.

John: Yeah, we’re going to come back to that because I know that you have some

resources that we can talk about regarding these formulas and also the

structure and materials that you utilize and exploit. So we will come back to

that as well. Let’s kind of jump forward a little bit and sort of take the words

that you put into the computer and let’s talk a minute about the businesses

again, just for a moment. I want to make sure that everyone understands that

these businesses that are ready, willing and able to pay (the client’s money),

why do they really care about copywriters and copywriting. Why do clients

(your clients), why do they really need you?

Carlos: Well it comes down to really two big elements and the two big elements are

the copywriting and the person who’s sending the traffic. So whenever I’m

working with a client, the reason they need me is I’m basically the other piece

of the puzzle, right? The person who is driving all the traffic, regardless of how

great they are, if they’re driving you to a page that doesn’t push any emotional

hot buttons for the person going there. If it doesn’t actually make you want

to take action, you are losing money. So my clients depend on those two

elements. You almost can’t have one without the other.

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As much as I’d love to say copywriting is the king of everything, I can have the

best sales page in the world, but if I only got 10 people going to it a day, it’s not

going make that big of a difference, right?

John: Right. Yeah you know what that makes me think of, and I want to simplify for

anyone again who’s following along, is that pretty much all business is traffic

and conversion. At a minimum, all marketing is traffic and conversion. So

traffic is one thing. It could be Facebook. It could be email; could be from any

number of sources. And then there is what we call conversions. And Carlos,

you are conversions. That’s the way that you fit in. You’re the wedge. You’re

the square peg in the square hole. Or maybe the round peg in the round hole.

But basically you are conversions. You persuade and convince and it’s a

specialized skill. Again we’re going to talk more about this in just a short while.

Let’s actually jump into your history a little bit because I know a lot of folks are

very excited about the freelance freedom with formulas that you enjoy. So,

how did you get started as a copywriter? As I like to ask, you know, what is

your superhero origin story here?

Carlos: I love it, I love it! So it’s kind of a funny story I guess. When I first heard about

copywriting, it was probably when I was about 19 or 20 years old. I’m 30 now,

or 31 in a few days. So it was a while ago when I first heard about it, it was

actually from my martial art instructor. So I used to… I trained in martial art

ever since I was 12 years old and by the time I was 19 or 20 I started assisting

in classes. I started helping him teach and all that stuff. The thing was I was

really, really bad at speaking to people. I mean I just I couldn’t get the words,

you know from my mind out of my mouth properly. It just didn’t work. So

when it came down to trying to teach, I wasn’t able to keep people interested.

You would think hey man just do this punch, do this kick and people were

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interested. But the delivery matters, and if you don’t have the right delivery, the

people don’t come back for the next class. And if they don’t come back for the

next class they don’t stay members and if they don’t stay members the school

shuts down. So the thing that my martial instructor taught me, he was like well

you know, he was honest and he said a lot nicer than this, but he was basically

like, well you really suck at the whole talking to people thing, right? That whole

trying to sell people, you’re really not so hot on that.

So why don’t we show you some of this copyrighting stuff. It’ll show you the

skills. It will show you the base, and then we can start working on the actual

in person talking. So, copywriting was almost like a self-development tool

that I used to learn how to speak to people and communicate properly. It

wasn’t even about selling. And then it transitioned into how do I use this in my

classes, right? So, if I’m showing people how to do a right kick, you know do I

just say here’s how you do a right kick or do I say,

OK guys so based on what you guys did before, I explain a little bit and I really

walk them through the journey of this right kick. They started catching it better.

When I started using stories, they started understanding why this right kick

was really good. So, I guess the long and short of it is kind of like what I was

saying. The copywriting was introduced to me by my martial art instructor. I

used it as a development tool and then eventually I started my own gym. I

guess we’ll go into it a little more because it wasn’t that short.

Eventually I started my own gym, my own martial arts school. We ended up

having two of them and I built those primarily through going with flyers, but the

Flyers… the copy was good and all that stuff, but I didn’t have enough money

back then, when I first started my gym. We were paying $10k a month in as

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were paid ten grand a month in overhead just for the location. So I had to go

and meet people in person. So, fortunately it was in Florida and we went to

the beach, my partner and I, and we just worked out. And then after we’d get

some attention. We’d hand flyers out to people in person, get their contact info

and started kind of working it that way.

And so eventually once we did that enough, and we got you know 60, 80, 100

people, we started testing some direct mail campaigns and I started noticing

that if I put, you know, melt your fat away over, you know learn how to lose fat

or something, it was puling better. I’d get more people calling, wanting to try

it free trial at our gym. So, that was kind of one of my first jump into it. Then I

read, The Four Hour Workweek, and The Four Hour Workweek blew me away

because I was like, man I can just outsource websites.

I don’t know how to build a Website, but I can definitely write some letters to

some companies and these companies can respond to that letter. Maybe I

can sell them on the phone for a $1500 website and outsource it for a couple

hundred bucks and that’s exactly what I did. And so after doing that for a little

bit, I realized that I was better at the writing of the copy and the selling of the

stuff, than I was at the management of the whole thing.

So that business quickly rose and quickly went down because my own fault I

wasn’t able to manage everything, so I was like well what if I can just do this

copywriting thing for people. And I had already had a few friends reach out to

me saying, hey can you help me with my website. I wrote some copy for them

and they were starting to see results, and you know I guess without going into

how we got all the clients and everything eventually got some more clients and

turned into my full-time deal. I believe I made 6 figures in about six, seven or

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eight months or something like that just writing copy and that’s when my life

changed. I was like man, I can literally just write a word document or Google

Docs and get paid a lot of money for it and these people are happy because

they’re seeing results. I’m happy because I’m like a piece of the puzzle. I get

paid a lot, but I don’t have to deal with all the stress. This is perfect. So that’s I

guess the long and short, a little long.

John: Well that’s absolutely fascinating. And again the freelance freedom there that

you’ve outlined is really fantastic. I picked up a few words that I want to sort of

reflect back. Engagement and engaging. Interaction. Conversation. And you’re

doing it with the spoken word but in print. But you can also use it in the real

world. So that came through.

It’s very powerful, and I also liked the fact that the real world value quite

literally, in the real world, allowed you to improve yourself; interpersonal skills.

And I picked up something else which was, you learn about and you’re able to

do a much better job with your writing and business that you do and interacting

with others through stories and also sort of outlining, explaining the journey

just as you as you did now.

It’s really powerful stuff. And then the last thing that I picked up on was

focusing in on what you’re great at. Not trying to do everything. Not trying to

run and managing an entire business, but deciding on the lifestyle that you

wanted. Focusing in on one essential skill that’s always in demand, versus

trying to do something like run the full business or be a manager. So I really

extracted a lot out of that. And Carlos thank you for sharing that superhero

origin story. So let’s shift a little bit here.

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You mentioned that, you know you did this and you did that. And I want to get

into the details here. So what skills, what exact skills are absolutely essential

for freelance copywriters? What’s absolutely required? What’s necessary to

sort of win the game and enjoy freelance freedom?

Carlos: Okay so what I would say it’s less… so if we’re talking about the freelance

freedom thing, I may get some pushback from this, but I would say you don’t

necessarily have to be the best copywriter but you definitely have to be the

person who is…I mean sales and all that stuff. I guess we can classify it as

this, but the reason I’ve been able to see success a little bit faster than some

of my colleagues who we started around the same time, or they started before

me trying to get clients, is because whenever I’ve met a person online that

I think could be a client, if they’ve paid me six, seven, a thousand bucks or

something,

I’ll just go fly and meet them because if I think I can turn… if they’re qualified I

mean they make millions of dollars, I can get a lot of money from them etc., I’ll

go fly meet them. I’ll go fly and meet them at a conference. I have no shame

in doing that and I spent thousands of dollars doing it. But I’ve made a lot

more money doing that as well because now who are they going to trust? The

copywriter who’s pitching them on Facebook or the copywriter who pitched

them on Facebook and then went, flew to them on their dime, met them for an

hour or a day, and then flew back the next day. I mean nobody does that stuff

anymore. So, I don’t know if that’s a skill, but it’s definitely something if you

want to be… if you want to see success fast, go meet the people in person.

I’m not saying you have to cold call them or whatever.

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You can cold face with them. Make a relationship. I would get them to pay

you something first so you know they’re not full of hot air. And then if you feel

like there’s somebody you can turn it into a long term relationship or a joint

venture deal or somewhere somehow…I’ve you literally flown to places on a

10 minute call where this guy was like, man I wish you were here tomorrow. I’d

put you on my podcast where I have like half a million people listening. Well,

OK well no worries. I’ll be there. Let me go get a plane ticket for 200 bucks. It’s

worth it, right? So that’s I don’t know if that’s a skill but that’s what I would say.

John: Yeah, that’s extreme leverage and maybe to elaborate on that, extreme

ownership of the relationship. So, I know that the folks who are following along

are thinking well, I’m not necessarily going to jump on a plane. However, these

people who are hearing you and feeling the energy and understanding what

you do and how you do it, they can be thinking about how to tap into other

leverage. Following up, doing personal voice introductions, shooting a short

video. Doing some really cool stuff, maybe sending brownies, right? Have a

conversation, you get their postal address and you send them some brownies

and things like that that other people aren’t doing that are in some cases

extremely low cost, but have high impact. So yeah you’ve got to…

Carlos: I’m with you 100 percent I don’t mean to interrupt, but right when you were

saying that, I just did…I don’t know if you know Ryan Stuben, he’s really big in

the sales world, in the market world. He’s great dude. He’s one of my clients

and I’ve mailed them pizzas before, like to know for no reason really. Here’s

some pizzas for you. He’s already a client, but why not, you know keep that

client. So, when you said mail brownies, I’m like oh that’s so gold. Because

these are things that almost seem like common sense. I like to think of it like

it’s that old school business behavior where you would send an actual thank

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you card to somebody, you know. But why not send brownies, why not send, I

don’t know flowers or whatever. Something that person likes. That type of stuff

is great. So you’re right. I mean I kind of take it overboard. I really…because

I just know no other copywriter is going to do this. So it cost me a couple

hundred bucks and I’ll do it, you know. But those other personal touches, man

that stuff is huge, and it definitely makes a difference because very few people

do it. Yeah, it blows my mind!

John: I love it. I think that’s just absolutely great. And what I want to do is I want to

extract the true golden nugget here because it might seem overwhelming for

someone just getting started, so I want to point something out. It’s a mindset

and a simple approach. What I mean by that is that from day one what you did,

Carlos and what you’re recommending is think about leverage personal touch

and think most about scale and ramping up with these clients with money from

day one. And that’s as important as the actual direct response copywriting that

you do. That’s what I extracted and that is just an absolute golden nugget. So,

thank you for that.

Carlos: Well, absolutely. As a copywriter and I know not everybody here is a

copywriter, but whoever your client is the way I like to look at it is there also a

possible joint venture partner in the future. A lot of my clients, we used to start

off with them paying me a retainer deal every month and we just went off of

that and launched a product or a mini thing together. And I’m like, yo I don’t

even have to have my face on it. I’ll write the copy for free. Give me 30 percent

of all the money and then let’s rock and roll because we both know we’re not,

you know fakers, we’re real. You know what I mean. So when you’re getting

your clients also look at them as possible joint venture partners in the future

and it doesn’t matter if you’re not in an industry… like I’ve written stuff in the

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supplement industry where I get a percentage of the pie, but I’m like, I’m not

into supplements. I don’t brand myself as a supplement dude, but my client

is so always look at your clients as possible partners in the future because a

lot of times they will be… if you can produce good results with whatever it is

you’re doing, I mean a lot of the times from what I’ve noticed they much rather

take you off of a retainer or any kind of here’s x amount of money for this

project. I rather work with you on performance, right? It’s better for everybody.

John: I think that’s great. Your client as a partner or an affiliate or someone who

works with you in the future, and that’s thinking about leverage and scale from

day one. I think that’s fantastic advice and very, very insightful as well.

And bravo, bravo for making that so clear. Shifting gears a little bit, how do you get

inspiration for, you know brand new fresh content, especially if you’re using

templates and so forth? How do you get that inspiration for fresh content? And

how do you get into the mind of the buyer? They are closely related I think so.

Carlos: Yeah, so that’s fine. I almost wish now that we had a video because I’ve got

over a thousand books that I ordered. I have read all thousands, and the

reason I order them is because whenever I write for a new client, again for like

the supplement niche, I don’t know anything about like nitric oxide and stuff

like that, so I just bought books on it. So in the books, they literally give you

the gold. I mean if you think about it most people… I wrote my book in like less

than a day. So short of me, most of the books especially if they’re really big

thick books, they’ve put a lot of time and research into this and so when you

look at them, I mean man it’s insane. So what I do is, the way I get inspiration

is I order like 5- 10 books on the subject and I try to order a couple different

kinds, right?

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So, I think of what kind of scientific angle can I go with, right? So if I’m doing

something on supplements, I’m going to try and get some case study books.

Obviously they’re all online of course, but I try to get the books, right? If people

put their name on it and they publish it in a book, a lot of times it’s, you know

they’ve researched it more. Like even my stuff, I already know, that’s why it

took me three hours to write.

So I don’t mind putting my name on it. So if they put their name on it… anyway

let me get back to the things… so the way I get my inspiration is I just get tons

of books, the scientific angle and then the other one is I try to get stories. So

if someone had, if they had some crazy sickness and nitric oxide saved their

life and they wrote a biography about it then I would get that book and I would

quote those chapters into the copy.

And that’s where… that’s really how I dive into it. Another angle or another

kind of little secret that I do is I’ll go into…and I stole this from Jay Abraham, I

didn’t make it up. I’ll go to Amazon.com, I’ll type in say “nitric oxide” again if I’m

in that niche, I’ll look at all of the books that pop up (hundreds of books) and

then I’ll look at the ones who have the most reviews. The ones at 500 or 1000

reviews and then I look at the five star reviews. And the five star reviews are

generally like raving testimonials and if you go through them enough, I mean if

you go through the ones who have tons of reviews, somebody there wrote like

an essay on how it changed their life almost always, right?

So, you get that. That could be a great intro or a great story for your copy. And

then I also look at the negative reviews. Like the one and two star reviews

because now you know what the real pain points are. So how do I get in

their head? I look at those one and two star reviews and they say I hated this

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product. It didn’t help me. Whatever it was and I was really looking for that

solution. Well, now you know that’s something you’ve got to include in your

copy, right? So that’s essentially how I do it.

John: Real wisdom there. I love that scientific swarm method of getting the books

and getting the materials that have the research, the data. Scientific swarm

method, there it is.

Carlos: I love it, man.

John: Yeah, for supplements health and so what you can do this in any market, any

niche that you go into.

Carlos: I’ve done it for personal development, astrology, I mean anything that you’re

going into, there is a book on it and there’s probably quite a few. So just order

them all. There like, it’s nothing. If you’re in business and you’re looking to

make millions of dollars hopefully, then investing like five hundred dollars on

some books isn’t that big of a deal, and it will make you look smart on your

bookcase, even if you haven’t read them.

John: Right. Yeah books make sense as well for another reason. You’re working with

words nonstop. So, it is a great way to sort of immerse yourself in the actual

written word, the language that is written. I think that’s great, Carlos. I think that’s

really wonderful. What’s the number one problem that you have to solve over and

over and over as a freelance copywriter? What’s that number one challenge?

That thing that you just find yourself solving again and again for your clients with

money?

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Carlos: Installing an e-mail campaign that’s longer than like seven days. Most people

have a 3 day… like so you know it really grinds my gears? When people

have like only a 3 email abandon cart sequence and they’re crushing sales

and they’re like oh well that’s all I need. I’m like man, if we threw in like a 90

day email sequence, like I started doing with some of my clients, it’s like free

money. People just keep buying from you. You don’t even know what they’re

buying because they’re in day 66 or something and they’re just getting pitched

something.

So I would say the thing I always recommend and I push and most my clients

agree and end up doing it because they make more money, is as soon as you

acquire the customer, whether it’s with a simple Shopify store, e-commerce

product or a digital, whatever it is, throw them on an e-mail campaign that’s

at least 30 days, but preferably 30 to 90 days. Because if you do that and

you mix it with like five days of value and then another three to four days of

pitching and value then it doesn’t get tiring and the only reason people don’t

do it is because they think they’re emailing too or they’re lazy but they also

think they may be emailing too much.

You have to remember, emailing them once a day for 90 days isn’t…even if

you email them Monday through Sunday, they’re not going…I mean they get

bombarded by hundreds of e-mails. There’s a chance, a very good chance

they may not even see your e-mail because it gets pushed back so far. So

just e-mail them every day because they may not have opened it yesterday.

But there’s a good chance if you e-mail them at the right time for some reason

on the next day, they’ll open it. So that’s my number one thing I always got to

solve. Put me in a long e-mail campaign.

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John: I love it. I absolutely love it. You know the 90 day marketing miracle, roughly

speaking and I think what is also…

Carlos: Gees! I gotta start writing all these down. We gotta hang out more!

John: I love this stuff and what I think is really fascinating for folks who are not

very familiar with internet marketing technology, is that the e-mail delivery,

that technology, is very commonplace. So there are what are known as

auto responders that handle all of the e-mail capturing and all the e-mail

handling and sending those out as well. So maybe make a note on that; auto

responders are plenty out there that serve the purpose and just being aware

of that technology is useful when you’re talking with clients with money. So

Carlos, really, really, really great stuff there. Tell me about your book? We just

barely touched on that when I was going through the intro, The Copywriting

Playbook. I’m especially interested in this thing called the swipe file. What are

they?

Carlos: So it’s pretty cool. That book was actually created not as a book, it was

actually started out because I was talking to a buddy of mine, I think this was

maybe a year, year and a half ago. Whenever, probably a year and a half ago

or so, and we were on the phone and he was talking to me and he was like,

man I’ve been seeing you online doing all these cool things and you know I

just I want to do stuff.

And I’m sure anybody who’s in the Internet marketing world has old friends

who come up to them and say, hey show me how to do this too. So that’s

essentially what happened. I’m like well, what I really do is the copywriting

stuff and we were talking a little bit back and forth and so I was like well I’ll

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just put together like a little simple guide. I’ll show you all the basics, all the

fundamentals and then I’ll include like a bunch of my old copy; a bunch my old

sales letters and e-mails and things like that, so you get an idea of how to do

it and you can put it into practice and it would be a really good first starter for

you.

So I was putting it together and I’m throwing, I mean I’m literally just putting

like formulas and different things that I do just naturally, I’m just putting them

into the book and I include a bunch of different headline templates and swipe.

So anyway well long behold it turns into like a hundred or so pages and I’m

like man that’s like a book. And I did this in no less than a day; four or five

hours something like that and I’m like…and it has typos in it, right? When I

when I finished it, it still had typos. It still has typos in it now, but I gave it to him

and he was like oh my god.

He went through it like a day and a half or two days and he loved it. He was

like, this is great! He’s already rewriting it. One of my friends Mike McDaniels

he’s the one who’s basically this book was geared for as well, and right now

he’s selling… he’s sold like a million dollars in gross revenue. But a million

dollars in fishing reels and he’s done it because of this copyrighting stuff that

he’s just changing some of the words in his ads and doing all that.

So the book is geared towards people who are new to copywriting, who may

have known about copywriter, but don’t know all of the stuff. They don’t know

all the formulas and what this does, it gives you tons of different little formulas

that you can follow so even if you’re not the best copywriter in the world, it

makes it super simple to just plug and play.

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John: I have ordered a copy and really looking forward to diving into it. What I think

is most…

Carlos: Oh, I appreciate it man!

John: Absolutely. I’m always looking to learn from the best. And any time, any time

whatsoever I can get my arms around swipe files or these examples and case

studies, the happier I am and by the way this word “swipe” doesn’t mean

steal, it means look at, understand, possibly replicate the structure. This is the

formula Carlos really that you were talking about previously, if I have it right.

Carlos: Yeah that’s true. I mean what I do, I actually put in there,” swipe file”, I forget

what I actually say but when I get to that section of my book, I’m like don’t

steal this stuff, that’s not what it’s for. Swipe doesn’t mean steel. It means

modify and use. The way I like to swipe, I actually…one of my business

partners, Everte Farnell, he’s a great copywriter, he’s written for top people as

well. He has a really interesting way of writing sales letters and I just learned

from it by watching him write our sales letters, some of our sales letters, and

he’ll start with a story and he’ll start with, you know a few other things and I

was just like man, I could just swipe this.

And so when I say it, I don’t mean I’m going to swipe his story, I mean, well he

starts off with a story right here. His headlines always have some kind of “how

to” in it. Right, so you figure out the structure, you see where the copywriter,

where the person, what they’re trying to accomplish here, and that’s what you

swipe. The elements and the structure, just like what you were saying.

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John: I think that’s extremely good advice and copywriters are aware of this activity

going on because they all do it. There are proven formulas so I…in any event.

Carlos: Absolutely!

John: I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in copywriting to get their

hands on, The Copywriting Playbook. I think it’s probably most fascinating to

me out of everything that not only are there some typos and spelling errors,

grammatical issues and so forth, there was a I believe a review on Amazon

that said, hey there are mistakes in here, and I actually laughed about that.

I did. I laughed because that’s not the point. In other words the point is not

perfection. Humans are messy. What we say, what we write, how we do it, it’s

very messy. So actually having mistakes and typos can give you credibility,

authenticity, in some cases it can actually transform the sales copy. So I’m

actually glad Carlos that you have left the material as is for that reason.

Carlos: I appreciate it. Those are kind words but I think the same thing. Yeah I think

when I when I read one of those comments or something about the typos, I

was like man, but you missed all the good stuff. Like a lot of my like…Ryan

Stealman’s got some good books and he’s got typos all in it. Grant Cardone

has typos in his books and I learned TONS from Grant Cardone’s closing

book, right? So yeah I mean if you’re focused on the little things that’s what

you’re going to get rid of. But every book, I mean in the way I look at all the

books that I have, I’m like there’s a million dollars in there somewhere, right?

So I don’t care about the other stuff. Where’s the million dollars? So you just…

you just pretend it’s like it’s like a scavenger hunt, right? Go find the million.

Don’t focus on the little stuff.

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John: That’s right. And I think the phrase to zero in on is production beats perfection.

Production beats perfection. So getting the copy done and done well, getting

more content out there, more work product, reaching more clients with more

stuff is more important than striving for the you know the ideal or perfection.

It’s impossible you’ll reach it anyway. So production beats perfection. A couple

final questions here, Carlos if you don’t mind, one question I like to ask

everyone is what do you think is the key to your success? Is it your or maybe

your morning routine, your focus on clients, technical skill, something else?

I know we’ve talked already about the sort of the extreme ownership of the

relationship, so we can maybe elaborate on that. Or if you have something

else maybe that you haven’t addressed about the real key to your success.

Carlos: It’s hard to just put it down to one thing, but it’s really I would say down to

consistency. The extreme ownership as you’re saying, it’s always my fault

and it’s always my opportunity, the way I look at it. So…and consistency in

everything is sales in my opinion. So I mean if we have to put sales down

there then sure I would say 80 percent of your time has to be focused on the

getting of money. Whether that’s writing some copy, whether that’s on the

phone with somebody, whether it’s being on a podcast to get more or whatever

it is it has to be on the getting of the money, right? So I would say the getting

of the money, consistency, and I forget the last thing it was I said but those

things are really what stood out for me.

John: That does make sense. A focus on money does not mean that you’re being

greedy. It’s the nature of what we do. If we don’t make money then we can’t

survive, we can’t enjoy freedom and so on and so forth. So you said 80

percent of the time is about getting of the money. That means clients. Now

that also means relationships. It means talking with other folks, it means doing

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those things that drive the business and you don’t have to jump on a plane.

You don’t have to go wild and crazy, but the person the copywriter in their mind

they need to be thinking, OK where is my ideal client. Where do I need to go?

Carlos: You’re 100 percent right. I almost want to put …I can’t believe I forgot the

extreme ownership one, I was like the last one I forgot. That’s probably one

of the most important ones. I mean consistency, sales; I almost feel like those

should be givens, like you can’t be in business if you’re not consistent and

you’re not focusing on sales. But that extreme ownership thing, I’ve noticed

a lot of people don’t have because I’ve tried coaching my friends who are

copywriters and they’re great copywriters.

Some of these guys and gals are better than I am, but they’re struggling to

get clients and they’re struggling not necessarily to get clients, but to get more

work from those clients. And I’m like well why aren’t you…why aren’t you like

their go to copywriter?

They’re like, oh they’re testing a few other people, and I’m like, yeah I get it but

what are you doing to make yourself the go to copywriters, so you don’t have

this issue anymore. This is crazy, you know. And I don’t know what it is. I mean

everything is your fault. So if you’re not getting your… if you’re not your clients

go to whatever it is, that’s your fault.

That’s because you haven’t demonstrated enough value, you haven’t become

their best friend. You haven’t done something that stands out from every other

whatever it is; web designer, copywriter, traffic person, doesn’t matter. So I

would just definitely say exercising extreme ownership that it’s always your

fault. Whether it’s good or it’s bad and then, I mean shoot if it’s always your

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fault then you’re in control, right? That’s why, and again, I always pushed to

this flight thing because I know it’s so dramatic. It’s really one of the things that

I think has made me more successful because nobody does this because they

always think, man that flight is too expensive.

But if you charge somebody a thousand bucks for whatever it is and you just

take 200 bucks or whatever it is to go meet them because flying isn’t that

expensive, right? You can use skiplagged it’s an app on your phone. You can

get really cheap flights. So that’s one of my little secrets. I just use that as

well. But OK, so I won’t keep dragging along. But yeah that’s definitely, that’s

definitely one of them, extreme ownership.

John: I love it. And you know it’s almost if you flip things around if it’s always “your

fault” in quotes there, it’s almost too expensive not to invest in yourself and

your clients. It’s expensive not to.

Carlos: 100%. These people have to be your best friends, man like Ryan Stuman

wants me to hang out with him and I keep bringing him up. Even if you don’t

know, he could be like it doesn’t matter the name, but I mean there’s a lot of

people who want his business. I know it because they told me they want his

business and they’re like, I know you’re his copywriter, but I want some of that

too. And he won’t hire anybody else.

He just hires me and it’s because I go, I meet and I make them the best…

whatever it would take to make somebody your best friend, go be authentic

with them because if you’re in business with them, you’re working with them,

hopefully you actually like them and you’re not just taking their money, right? I

mean that’s not cool. You should like the people you work with. So assuming

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you do, what’s wrong with having a few extra best friends? I mean it shoot,

I went and visited my best friend in Connecticut just to go visit her and her

husband. And then, I mean I met some people there at the same time. So

yeah, man. Make everybody your best friend that’s … gain some leverage.

John: Great stuff. I want to be respectful of your time, Carlos. Thank you so much.

Appreciate you and your knowledge and for sharing so much especially

the personal stories and some real insider secrets. Golden nuggets, things

I haven’t heard of before and I’ve been around. It was great to actually

experience that and spend time with you. How can people reach you? What’s

the very best way to interact and become your best friend, Carlos?

Carlos: Yeah. Well I appreciate it. I would do Facebook is the best way. That’s how it

will communicate with everybody. So just add me, Carlos, and my last name

Redlich, and just add me as a friend. Preferably shoot me a private message

so I know you came from this call. And then we can chat and see what’s up

man. Appreciate it.

John: Yeah, really fantastic stuff. Thank you again. And to be respectful of your time

we are. I have so many more questions, so many thoughts swirling, but it is

time and Carlos thank you so much, sir. And with that we are signing off.

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