My correspondent Andrew Gadsden who flogs tea to the discerning regularly sends me droll stuff.
For example today he emailed me saying that in his LinkedIn updates he found that:
“Someone has joined a ladies’ group. This is how it’s described:
Damsels in Success is where magic happens. It’s where amazing, passionate, like-minded women get together to learn, laugh and grow.”
To be honest those two sentences make me want to throw up violently, but never mind that. As Andrew observed:
“For goodness’s sake.
One day I will start up a club just for men. No, hang on, they used to have them, but they were forced to admit women…”
Well, I guess that will lose me a few readers.
Meanwhile my day was brightened by an e-mail from David Garfinkel, who – as I have mentioned before – is running an event in California this week.
I have never met David. I think the only thing we have in common besides scribbling for a living is that I think, like me, he used to work at Ogilvy & Mather.
He is one of the best copywriters in the U.S., though. He wrote one letter for a firm called Abacus that pulled in $40 million. And like all good people he studies. I follow his stuff, and he follows mine.
The question is, can someone who is among the best get better?
David seems to think so, because today he wrote this to me:
“You taught me how to write a completely new kind of email… and I just sent this to my list.”
Then he attached this:
I used to love stories my parents told me when I was a kid.
One day my dad told me a story I’ve never heard before and never heard since.
It was mid-summer in humid Maryland, the fireflies were out.
I asked him why they lit up the way they did.
Always trying to provoke me to think, he said,
“David, why do you think garden slugs don’t light up at night?”
My dad loved cars. He grew up in Detroit, and he used to invent big, vacuum-tube computers to time drag-racers and even once, they used one of his machines at the Daytona 500.
I told him I didn’t know.
“It’s because,” he said with a slight grin, “the fireflies move so fast, and the slugs barely move at all.
“So as a reward, the fireflies got built-in tail-lights so they could zoom around at night.”
And then, the knockout punch:
“If you learn to be really fast, David, then maybe some day you will have lights of your own.”
I never quite knew what Dad meant… was I going to grow light bulbs out of my body?… but I did get the message, that getting things done faster could make a difference in your life.
Now it turns out that we still have a few seats left at our High Speed Copywriting workshop this weekend.
Brian McLeod and I will walk you through my method to create a full sales letter… or sales video… or magazine ad… in two days or less.
Craig Eubanks will share with you how he writes irresistible emails in 25 minutes.
Is this something you should attend?
http://HighSpeedCopywriting.com
Firefly or slug?
Cheers
David.
