David Garfinkel and Brian McLeod on Fast, Effective Copy
Danny Iny
Do you want copywriting advice from a guy who charges his mentoring clients $25,000?
(Without paying $25,000?)
Well, today is your lucky day.
David Garfinkel is known as “the world’s greatest copywriting coach”, and is the co-author (with Jay Conrad Levinson) of Guerrilla Copywriting and Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich (and lots of other books).
And yes, he charges his mentoring clients $25,000.
Well, he’s launching a new program called Fast, Effective Copy. I’ve seen it, and it’s very good.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I got him and his partner Brian McLeod on the phone to tell you all about what he teaches in there. đ
(And hey, they’re also going to put on a special webinar for Mirasee readers next week – more on that later!)
So without further ado, here’s the interview, 32 minutes for you to enjoy:
Interview with David Garfinkel and Brian McLeod
Hereâs the full transcript:
Danny: Hi David, Hi Brian. Itâs a pleasure to speak with you, I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview.
David: Hey Danny.
Brian: Hey There, I just want to say Iâm really impressed with what you guys are doing. I really enjoyed the material that you sent to me and everything Iâve seen that you guys are working on. I think itâs great to be able to talk to the smart folks that, I know, are taking advantage of what you do. I think theyâre probably going to be pretty interested in what weâre doing, so this is great.
Danny: I think so too, thank you very much. And for the benefit of our listeners, Iâve got David Garfinkel and Brian McLeod on the call. They are the creators of Fast, Effective Copy which is a program that teaches you how to write fast and painlessly to produce amazing copy. Itâs jam-packed with useful information and resources so would one of you be able to tell me what inspired you to create this program to begin with?
David: Sure, David here. Thereâs really two parts to this. Thereâs the engine of Fast, Effective Copy which I created about seven years ago, and then thereâs Fast, Effective Copy itself which I never could have done and wouldnât have done without Brian. But let me take you back to the beginning, which is almost 20 years ago. I had this audio cassette, and it was about how to get referrals which, you know, I felt a lot of people in small business needed, and I actually got national press for it, and it was like a $30 cassette, which was very high priced, but I thought the information was valuable. However, I didnât have any way to sell it en masse. I didnât know how to close sales, how to go through the whole sales cycle without talking to someone, and for a thirty dollar product with shipping cost and everything, that was… Selling them one by one on the phone wasnât very profitable, so I happened to find. I got this thing in the mail from Gary Halbert, he was a copywriter, a very popular and outrageous copywriter at the time, and I started to learn about copywriting. I realized this would be my salvation. If I knew how to close the sale just with the written words, because Iâd already been a writer â great! Things would work out. Well, fast forward to ten years later, where Iâd finally learned how to write copy, I started to write letters that had made millions of dollars for clients, and I was, I was angry, Danny, because I felt the way people had been taught to write copy â what I had to go through, and I felt I had found the best teachers out there, was way too difficult. And it was much too important a skill to remain that difficult, and so I went about, first of all, coming up with simpler systems for myself, so I could write copy, because I was a professional copywriter, people were hiring me and I was using this to promote my own products. And then I ended up teaching other people and they just wanted to be able to write stuff faster and easier that would make sales. And so, I came up with Copywriting Templates, which makes writing every piece of copy easier, and that was quite a bit of work, that was in 1985. And it was a CD, DVD, workbook course, three ring binders, bound books, all kinds of stuff⌠just a big thud when it landed on your doorstep. And from the day it came out people said: âYou should put this online.â Because I was charging $1,200 for it and the only way you could get it most of the time, was if you signed up to be a mentoring client of mine, and that was $25,000 dollars, and thatâs, I realize, out of the range of a lot of people, and many people wouldnât really want that level of one-on-one intensity, that level of instruction. But no one was able to put it together as an online course. Several people tried and failed â really good, successful people, by the way, so I donât think it was their fault â I think it was technologyâs fault. And then, about a year ago, Brian got a hold of a copy of Copywriting Templates, and Brian, want to take it from there?
Brian: Sure, Iâd love to. I remember the day that that thing thudded at my house. You had sent this package to me, and I had no idea what to expect, I mean I was thinking âOkay, itâs a course, it will come.â And this just enormous box landed and it had binders and two dozen disks and it was just an overwhelming amount of information. It was, I mean, it was awesome, I was completely pulled into studying the material, but I had really no⌠I had no rudder, you know? I didnât know where to begin, and the physical aspects of it were a little challenging because there was so much material âthree ring binders full of transcripts, all these disks. Where to go to get the stuff because a challenge, so I called David up when I got it, and I said, you know: âWhat would you think about doing something totally different with this? Would you consider it, you know, would you be open to that idea?â And as the story goes, you know David, well, I wouldnât call it scepticism, I think he just realized that heâd been trying in the past a large order of work involved to make something like that happen. But for me, I mean, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the material as soon as I got it. We could digitize this. We could update the material, and we could deliver it in a variety of different media so that no matter how you like to get your information, no matter where you might be at that moment or during the creative process, you could have access to the information. And by indexing it, by making it more searchable, the real power of the thing comes together because itâs really based around situations. People hear the word templates and they immediately thing like â Mad-Libs, or fill-in-the-blank type stuff, and thatâs not really what Fast, Effective Copy, or Copywriting Templates is about. Itâs about finding particular situations that youâre in and knowing that you need a certain outcome from your customer, or the visitor to your website, or whatever it is. You know that thereâs something you want them to do â copywriting templates was really designed to give you those situations to figure out what you want them to do and then the words to say, to engineer that outcome. But itâs very situational, so thereâs no way to get that without thumbing through miles of transcript and, and trying to find that material, until we built it into a membership site, digitized everything, tagged it very carefully, categorized everything and interlocked it and interlinked it in a way that allows you to drill down very quickly to what youâre trying to do.
David: Thatâs one thing Brian can take a lot of credit for. Sorry to interrupt, but itâs a really important point, one of the things I did is, I took, I think my biggest contribution to this whole field is taking all of the different elements of copy which were so mysterious to people and being the first one to break them down into manageable, understandable tasks and activities. What I didnât do such a good job of was making my material searchable, accessible, easy to navigate through. You know, we all have our strengths, and Iâm really good at doing that particular thing for my other clients, who have books and info-products and organizing businesses, but I, you know, I was a little too close to it. Thatâs one brilliant thing that Brian did, he has a very simple map structure; very accessible. You know, in terms of templates, I want to say something else, too. I got an email last night from one of the readers of my book, which is really, the bookâs called: Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich, and itâs really, first, the first module of copy-writing templates, in book form, and I told him about Fast, Effective Copy, and he said âWell, Iâm interested in it, but to tell you the truth, David â templates, I donât want to sound like everybody else. Iâm not sure about that.â And thatâs a very reasonable response, because I know there have been a lot of fill-in-the-blank types of products, Danny, and youâve probably seen them.
Danny: Iâve seen too many of them.
David: Yeah. Yeah, they have their benefits, because at least they, they get you going, in action. But thatâs not what this is about, what this is about is, is Brian was talking about â is actually giving people a guidelines and thought starts and getting them through writerâs block, and in some cases there are some fill-in-the-blanks but the fill-in-the-blanks can go in so many directions that you donât need to look like anyone else. You can, but you donât have to, you have the chance to use your authentic voice, yet send the train down the rails of proven sales success when youâre writing so you donât have to learn the hard way, the way Brian and I have learned as copywriters ourselves what works and what doesnât. And it can be a painful journey to do it the hard way. You do end up learning more, but you have to be in it for the long haul, you know, and for a lot of people who arenât interested in making copywriting their main activity, their main specialty, itâs not practical. For me, it was. For Brian, it was. It isnât for everybody, and so this is a shortcut that actually sneaks in the learning one small portion at a time. You know, for each time you use it you learn one more thing, but it doesnât seem like youâre in class with a teacher and a blackboard and tests and having to sit up straight and raising your hand when you have to go to the bathroom and all of the other things people donât like about school and classes. Itâs an action tool for people in business. Itâs very practical, and it works.
Brian: Yep.
Danny: Cool. So, who are your clients generally, with Fast, Effective Copy. Is it more small businesses and freelancers, or is it larger organizations?
David: I guess a short answer to that question is, we started out working with copywriters and people who wanted to become copywriters but we are transitioning much more to the small business market. And the whole thing is designed to help small business people more than to help copywriters.
Danny: Cool. So, let me ask you something specific, because one thing I noticed is that you call your lesson training sessions: âRecipes.â Why is that?
David: Okay, thatâs a great question. It was because of something, actually, that happened. I was having dinner with a friend, who is a very skilled entrepreneur and business person, but her strength is not as a writer. Sheâs good at other things. And she was asking me advice on something, and I was telling her she could use Fast, Effective Copy to build on the advice I was giving her, and she looked at me, with all seriousness and said: âOkay. But which template should I use?â And I thought: âOh my God, sheâs serious!â Because I know which template to use and writers know because thatâs what they do all the time, but thereâs a whole level of people who donât. So I realized that was the next step for Copywriting Templates and Fast, Effective Copy. Then I started to look at what we were doing, and not only what we were doing, but what everybody is doing in the copywriting training field and what the next step was. What we were doing was a lot like having a cooking show where you have a chef or a Rachel Ray, or a Julia Child or a James Beard on the show. And we would come on the show and say: âGood morning everybody! Today, youâre going to learn how to cook: food!â Uhhh. What kind of food? And that has been the mindset of a lot of copywriters. They assume they have what the Heath Brothers who wrote Made to Stick called the curse of knowledge. We understand so much about the structure of writing copy that we forget there are a lot of people who donât. So, the recipes are, well, suppose you want to make baked squash, or suppose you want to make ribs. Or suppose you want to make a casserole, or you want to bake a pie, or you want to make a salad. How do you do that? And so this takes it down to a new level of granularity. And if you actually look at the recipes on the site youâll see, like for example, a product review blog post, which is very helpful for people who want to be affiliates. If youâre going to review someone elseâs product on the blog and then say this is what I think is good, this is what I donât think is good, hereâs what I recommend, hereâs my affiliate link â how do you actually do that so it works? So it seems authentic, so youâre playing by the rules and so people buy. Well that requires more than a template, more than a general vague formula like: get their attention, get their interest, get their desire, and ask for action.
Danny: I hate that one.
David: Itâs sort of good looking backwards. âOh, hereâs where they got the attention! Oh Hereâs…â but it doesnât give me any…
Danny: Well, it doesnât help you actually do it if you donât already know how.
David: Thatâs right. Thatâs right. And the recipes are⌠theyâre the step by step. They are the baby steps for people. Even experienced people sometimes would like to know, you know â I guess we could tell them about Kevin Rogers, right? Heâs an incredible copywriter, one of the hottest ones on the internet. We did a whole month putting together recipes â reverse engineering his videos, and showing people â okay, you want to do a video to get people to opt-into a webinar â to actually show up on the webinar, those, those were what he did. He did a webinar launching a new product made over ten thousand dollars the first night. What did he do with his videos? They were a key part of his enrolment strategy, and he was very surprised. And he showed it to his wife because she had no idea what he did all day, sitting there in his little, you know, writerâs hutch. He said she would politely come when it was feeding time, but, but she didnât know what he was doing in there.
Brian: Totally true.
David: Anyway, and Kevinâs also a good friend of Brianâs, and a friend of mine, so, yeah, thatâs why the recipes. Exact instructions that any reasonably intelligent person, or, any normal person can understand, even if youâre not a writer, not a copywriter.
Danny: Cool. And that makes so much more sense than just the, like you said, the Mad-Libs, fill-in-the-blanks kind of templates that you see a lot of â you see them used frequently online and you know that theyâre being used because theyâre consistently, like really bad.
Brian: Right. Thereâs an element of that kind of ease inside Copywriting Templates, inside Fast, Effective Copy too, because thatâs one dimension of it â giving people the structure and the doughnuts where the individual parts connect together and make it yours. So there is, a, you know, a part of it where youâre connecting the dots in that way, but thatâs only one part of it. The more important part is, you know, who are you talking to? Why are you talking to them, what do you want them to do, and what are the right words to use to illicit that response from people. Thatâs a whole other dimension from just âwho else wants toâ and then blank, and leave it at that and say, figure it out guys, go forth and prosper â it doesnât work well, for people that way because theyâre still left wondering, âwell, whatâs the right thing to put in the blank? What am I supposed to put in the blank?â
David: Yeah, one of the things that I did with the templates, that Iâm not sure anyone else did, is, Iâll put up a template, first of all, I have pretty stringent tests for whether we could even use a template or not, and the test was: could someone without a lot of experience use it, number 1, and number2, would it apply to more than one industry? I have a friend who says that another guru, way outside of the copywriting field has a brilliant idea that has taken over small business, but the only problem is his idea works only in two industries: fast food and coin-operated laundries. I want it to… I wanted this to apply, you know, to lots of industries, so, I would actually take a headline with the templates, and I would write out ten or fifteen examples that would really work in different industries as well as explain the situation where you would use it and the situation where you wouldnât, and where you would go next. So I wouldnât want to leave the person with just some words and a few blanks to fill in and then say: âOkay buddy, youâre on your own. Good luck!â To me that was not providing enough value. I really wanted to empower people to start to, to start to feel like they could do this, and to, to start to take ownership of their own ideas and their own thoughts â but to give them a structure and give them, not only training wheels, but, you know, actual plans for building real solid structures and structural concepts so that they could start to take off on their own and really become good copywriters and, by the way, Danny, as Iâm sure you know, if youâre not in a hyper-competitive industry, you donât have to be a great copywriter to make money for a business. All you need to do is be halfway decent and understand the basic ideas and youâll smoke the competition most of the time.
Brian:Â Yeah, if you have a running start where someoneâs given you, sort of the structure and the flow and the general bones of the sales argument, a lot of people are actually quite talented, they just donât recognize it. They have the ability to communicate with their customer where they feel stymied or stuck or stalled in the process of beginning. Where to start, what to say, how do I do this and if you give them that running start, a lot of people will carry the ball all the way down the field with no trouble. Itâs just getting up and going that is sometimes the biggest risk.
Danny: So tell me, what is the Copywriting Mastery Club and how does that tie in to Fast, Effective Copy?
David: Sure. Copywriting Mastery Club was a separate program that I developed after copywriting templates when some people said: âDavid, weâd like to go deeper. Weâd like to focus on specific aspects of copy and get not only templates but examples, context, rules, you know, what to do, what not to do, tips and so forth.â And so, this was a very comprehensive membership club, people paid about $1,800 for it, and we had 18 different sessions. I picked the six that were most hands-on and most pragmatic, that you could just listen to or read a transcript of and instantly start to know how to do certain things better. And thereâs a little bit of overlap from Copywriting Templates, but really only in the first session. The first session is called: The Secrets of Irresistible Offers, and an offer is actually twice as valuable as the copy in terms of improving response. If you, if you can tweak your offer that will have twice the impact as just tweaking the copy without touching the offer. So thatâs one, the Secrets of Irresistible Offers. The Testimonials that Dissolve Resistance is number 2. Number 3 is Feeding Frenzy the Secret Formula for how to Get a Hungry Crowd Nipping at your Heels, insisting on buying your offer. Number 4 is Repeat Customer Profit Bonanza. You know, one thing I want to point out about testimonials is you can get other people to say things about your business that you canât really say very believably yourself, and the way you do that is with testimonials.
Danny: Yeah, thereâs a quote that I like from Jeffrey Gitomer, he says that: âWhen you talk about yourself or your product itâs bragging. When other people say it, itâs proof.â
David: Thatâs brilliant. Ok, so letâs see. Month four is about Repeat Customer Profit Bonanza, and this is about the most profitable form of sales which is repeat customers. Why is it more profitable? Because after they know you they will probably buy more, very often. In terms of customer profitability, there is no acquisition cost like there is with a new customer. Month five is Proven Master Sales Hooks. You know, very often one of the biggest problems people have is getting someone to read their copy and to stay glued to it, and a good hook will do that for you. And month six is called Become Rich and Famous or Just A Lot Richer. We use copywriting and other strategic techniques to increase the wealth. So each one of these is a sixty or seventy minute recording, and you can download, you can play it online. We threw this in as a bonus, because we thought it really added value. Itâs actually not part of Copywriting Templates, but again, same structure, thereâs the formulas, examples, and we break it down into steps. The steps wonât write your copy for you, but theyâll make it a whole lot easier.
Brian: You didnât mention David, that some of the people that are in the Copywriting Mastery Club recordings are…
David: Oh yeah, thatâs kind of a treat. If youâre a copywriting nerd or follow the career path or a career arch of some of the hotter copywriters of today, itâs kind of a fun trip down memory lane to hear buys like Vin Montello whoâs one of the highest paid, most in demand online copywriters working today as he has his first hit, his big first hit letter just happened, as the session was happening, so you get to hear that happening and
Brian: And Mike Morganâs  on there, David, who allâs on there? Our friend Benâs on there, I know, our friend Ben is in the group, Harlan, a bunch of different people.
David: Yep. Mike Morganâs on there too. Absolutely.
Brian: Mike Morgan, Right. Chris Haddad.
David: Right. Chris Haddad.
Brian: Another brilliant copywriter, who was probably just getting going in his career at that point right?
David: Yeah there was a lot of them. I donât even remember all of them at the spur of the moment, but, itâs not just me holding forth, itâs people talking about what theyâre doing thatâs working, and itâs researched. I mean, again, my stuffâs real pragmatic. Iâm not a particularly good preacher or philosopher, you know, I try to keep it interesting, but Iâm basically giving people practical tools that they can use because of where I came from on all of this.
Danny: Thatâs really cool. Listen, weâre running up on kind of the end of our time, but thereâs a couple more questions I want to ask. Let me first ask you this: you both have, obviously, a huge amount of experience writing copy. What would you consider to be the single most important element of copywriting from the perspective of a small business owner.
Brian: From my prospective, I would say, knowing your customer as well or better as they actually know themselves is probably the single most important thing that you can get good at is knowing your customer. And that really comes from doing the work of walking in their shoes, waking a mile in the shoes of your customer, really figuring out what itâs like to be them and doing really solid research. Thatâs not what people often think of then they think research. They think research and they start thinking charts and graphs and statistics and evidence, and thereâs a whole other level of research which I submit to everybody listening is far more profitable use of your research time, which is getting to know the individual that youâre asking to do something. And if you notice, guys like John Carlton or Gary Halbert, the other legendary and luminary copywriters of, of all time have all preached the gospel of doing the hard work of figuring out who this person is, Gary Halbert famously, would take his letters around to the bar and ask people to read them and really try to figure out what works on the regular guy. John Carlton would call up and talk to people, their sales people and the staff to get to know what these customers were all about. Thatâs the kind of research that you can do that will really, just pay huge dividends compared to just figuring out what the best statistic is to use from last quarter as proof.
Danny: One of my favorite copywriting maxims is that if you can describe and explain your clients or customers problem better then they can then theyâre going to trust that you have the solution.
Brian: Thatâs very true.
David: I would say, what Brian said is extremely important. To me, the most important thing is to learn what works and use it as your model. Â And modify it, donât copy it, donât plagiarize, donât infringe on copyrights, but find the structure of what works, find the steps. Donât try to be creative and come up with something brand new that you think is cool. People have spent years and millions of dollars testing stuff, and there are certain things that work. Human nature is not likely to change. It hasnât really changed much in the last several thousand years, itâs not going to change in the next five or ten years. The words you use could change, the medium you market through, could change, but the basic ideas are going to stay the same. So lean what those are, learn how to do it. Learn what to do. To me, thatâs the most important thing.
Danny: Great. So let me ask you one last question. This is a question that we wrap up all of our interviews here at Mirasee with. Weâve got, you know, a lot of people listening to this, a lot of people reading the transcripts, and itâs been an interesting interview, youâve said a lot of things that are really important, and Iâm going to assume that some of the people who are listening and reading â theyâre taking it to heart. Theyâre saying: âYou know what? Iâm feeling a little bit blown away. Iâve got to revise my copywriting, and Iâve got to revise my copywriting practices because Iâm going to have to start doing things differently.â And theyâre impressed enough that they say: âIâm going to clear my afternoon to start making things happen. Iâm clearing three hours this afternoon.â What should they do with those three hours?
Brian: Well. Wow. Thatâs an intense question. And an intense activity for those smart enough â thatâs really useful – I really like that exercise a lot, actually, and if folks are doing that, are taking this advice and actually clearing the calendar and spending three focused hours, I imagine thatâs creating massive traction for them. What would I recommend for those three hours? Well number 1 would be assessment. The first hour would be to spend that time assessing where you really are. Whatâs really going on and what you really have to work with. I would suggest that the second hour would be spent on what I like to call industrial espionage, or you know, ethical spying, or, more or less learning everything you can about yourself, your customer and your product or service that you offer through the mirror of the competition. Because, through evaluating the competition and experiencing the process of the competition, it will reveal to you all the strength and holes that you currently have in what youâre offering, youâll see⌠it will become self-evident to you where youâre strong, against this offer and where youâre actually weak and where thereâs holes. So industrial espionage is definitely a valuable use of hour number 1 and hour number 2 would probably be a convergence of both of those two: having done an effective assessment and taken inventory of exactly what youâre working with and how you measure up â start converging those two â thatâs how the big money in USP and Hook and Unique Value Proposition surface and appear. You can sometimes find an entirely new angle and story for everything that you do any how you do it based on assessing, comparing and then converging those two. It becomes radically apparent to most people: âWow â this is really something outstanding about what weâre doing in this market.â That would be a highly useful three hours, in my estimation. Itâs about trying to come up with a roadmap, more or less, or a path of stepping stones between where you actually are and where you want to be. Figuring out what youâre actually, you know, what is actually happening now and what youâd like to see happen â seeing the steps that bridge that gap in between, it becomes again, self evident when you just spend your time doing the work.
Danny: Perfect. So now weâre going to wrap up, but before we do that I just want to give you an opportunity to say a few words about the webinar that weâre going to be doing next week. You know, for the benefit of our listeners, David and Brian have agreed to put on an exclusive webinar for you, to teach you, you know, everything that theyâre in a position to teach you, so why donât you guys talk about that real quick?
David: Sure. Iâll start by saying that we want to give people an actual experience of what weâve been talking about today. We want to show them how these tools that weâre talking about â what they are and how they work so people can walk away form the seminar feeling a little better about their ability to write copy just from what they learned and what we give them on the webinar, and see if they want to go a little further and see if they want to try out Fast, Effective Copy, because they, theyâll know what it really is.
Danny: Fantastic. And if youâre not subscribed to updates on Mirasee then subscribe to those updates to make sure you donât miss the link to register for that webinar, and if you are subscribed like you should be, youâre going to receive that link real soon.
Brian: Iâm excited about doing that webinar, I canât wait to your friends and our friends and bring them all together for a fun experience, because you know, the thing about webinars is that a lot of people tend to view them as pitch fests, and I tend to view webinarâs very differently, I view them as an opportunity to prove to someone that you can do something for them. That your solution is actually, is you know itâs having someone come down and sit down and drink a small glass and taste the wine and have a little hors dâoeuvre and go: âYou know, I like this place. I think I could hang out here. I think I could eat dinner here tonight. This is nice.â Thatâs what a webinar should be for someone they walk away going: âWell, I didnât eat tonight, but I really liked that place, I enjoyed the wine and it was a good time all the way around it was a good use of my time.â And thatâs what a webinar should be, thatâs what we deliver.
Danny: Iâm very excited about it, and I mean, Iâm a writer and Iâm excited about it, so I can only imagine how excited my audience must be. Thatâs going to be happening in a week, and weâve got a lot of prep to do, so in the meantime, Iâm going to say thank you to both of you. I really appreciate your being on the call. This is going to be very valuable for our audience, and I wish you a wonderful remainder of the day.
David: Thank you Danny, it was great talking to you. and I appreciate your taking the time as well.
Brian: It was a fun call, Danny, thanks for taking the time. Glad to be here with you.
Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, and expert marketer, and has been dubbed the Freddy Krueger of Blogging. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark, Mitch Joel, and many others, he is writing the definitive book about how to build an engaged audience from scratch.