Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

Proof I’m not a guru :(

I’m on a copywriter’s email list.  Today’s email had this line:

“Copywriters are NOT writers! We are marketers. We are strategists. We are salespeople in print.”

She said that quote was “every copywriting guru’s favorite line in the world”.

I thought not only have I not used that line before but I’ve never heard or seen it before either.  

See, and just when I thought I was one of the cool kids…

I do agree copywriters can be strategists and we are certainly salespeople in print.  

That first part bugs the hell outta me though.  It’s like wearing only a furry itchy wool trench coat in the middle of summer.

And I live in Phoenix by the way…

When we use the fire emoji here it’s cause it’s 114 degrees, not because we think something is cool.  

Anyhoow, back to copywriters are not writers.

This is why there is so little creativity in marketing nowadays.  If you rely on formulas and short sited tactics your marketing will stop evolving.  And then you’ll take another course and learn one more thing.

You’ll keep living your life and running your business off borrowed time.  

Albert Einsten said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

This is why studying some of the old direct response marketers can be so effective.  NO, you don’t want to model most of their ads but you DO want to learn how they think.  

Read about Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, John Caples, or Robert Collier.  And plenty of others.

Also study good writing.  You can learn just as much reading Michael Crichton or Mark Twain.

Good writing is good writing.  

Not only will your marketing get better but you will develop your own voice.  

Your own approaches.

Your own techniques.  

That’s when writing your copy and emails gets easier.  And you start to enjoy it.

You still will have to start with a blank screen when you write.  But at least you’ll reduce your urge to jump out of your office window.

Want less stress when you write?  https://adamstreet.net

Adam

Candy coated Kale

I don’t mind Kale but I don’t love it either.

But what if it was wrapped in candy?  

Like white chocolate?

Jolly Ranchers or…

M&Ms? 

That may sound gross, especially if you love Kale.  But if you’re like the millions of people who don’t like the stuff, a candy coating may give you some incentive to give it another shot.  

Imagine this at your state fair.  Right next to the deep fried Twinkies.

This sums up how you want to market on social.

Fun and deliciously entertaining on the outside with a strong message on the inside.  

Pew Research did a survey and they found more than half of Americans get some or all of their news from social media.  And 1/3 get their news from Facebook alone.

YES, you may coach people with some serious problems.

YES, your course may solve some un-funny problems but people won’t stop to look at your posts on Facebook if they aren’t interesting.  

If your focus is always “giving value” and teaching.  Or worse, giving your stuff away for free.  Do you think you have a shot against the cucumber vs. cats videos?  Or all the little adorable toddler Tiktoks out there?  Girls in bikinis?

Fat chance.

Use what I teach in the Blockbuster Marketing Club.  

What Ben Settle teaches and many others.

Be fun.

Be interesting.

Be curious.  

Do that and people will watch.  They will care.

They will eat right past the crunchy candy coating and go straight to the nutritious center.

Gotta bon appétit? https://adamstreet.net

Adam

PS  If you want to read the study:  

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-research-shows-that-71-of-americans-now-get-news-content-via-social-pl/593255/

Beating Entrepreneurial Fibromyalgia with 1%

When my mom was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia her doctor gave her a cheery little nugget of wisdom.   

He said something like…

You will have pain everyday for the rest of your life.

Well, that was harsh I thought…

But he wasn’t doing it to be crass, or to be a dick.  

He was doing it because to him, that was the reality of Fibromyalgia.  And he said if she could internalize that now, it wouldn’t be as bad.  

This doc’s philosophy goes against my overly Pollyanna-ish like nature but I get it.  

This is also why I tell entrepreneurs and service pros that marketing is hard.

Copy writing is hard.

Figuring out your product, your message, and the best media for you is hard.  

This is why Swipe and deploy and copying ads have a tipping point.  They work and they’ll get you started but you almost never see the success of the original.

Eugene Schwartz said it best.

“Each and every formula is simply the written solution to a particular problem that occurred in the past.  Change even one part of that problem, and you need an entirely different formula.  That’s why memorizing theories won’t make you a scientist…or rewriting somebody else’s headlines won’t make you a copy writer.”

I could steal all Lebron’s moves and the Laker’s wouldn’t be calling me anytime soon.  

Great teachers help you learn and understand foreign and complex ideas.  That’s what makes them great teachers.  

That is what I aspire to do.  

That’s why I do what I do.

That’s how I’m wired.

But I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it’s easy.   Or that if you take my course you’ll become the next David Deutsch and 10x your income in six months.

But when you KNOW it’s hard.  All you have to do is little things.  

Like get 1% better everyday.  

The compound effect of daily improvement will make you an entrepreneurial bad-ass.  It might take 6 months it may take 6 years.      

But it WILL happen.  

Better to put your faith in that than some mamby pamby hocus pocus course.  

If you need a little “Riddikulus”:  https://adamstreet.net

Adam “Expelliarmus” Street

The entrepreneur puzzle

I read an article about a female Montana Army National Guard soldier.

I figured if it’s in the media, surely it’s gotta be about sexism.  

Inequality.

Politics.

Or some other crazy topic.  But it wasn’t.  

The Army graduated it’s first woman ever from the their intensive, seven-week sniper course. 

She chose to keep her identity unknown.  I’m guessing because she doesn’t want her dating life effected.  Piss her off guys and she could take you out from 100 yards away.  

I kid of course but here’s why I bring up this story.

The Army news release said:  

“The soldier met every standard required to graduate the United States Army Sniper Course.”  She arrived prepared for training and physically conditioned to succeed. We are proud of the results of her efforts and the quality training provided by the Sniper Course Cadre.” 

-Capt. David Wright, Battalion Commander, U.S. Army Sniper School

I started thinking about entrepreneurs and how we get so frustrated sometimes when things aren’t going our way.  We can’t control the market and tons of other factors but we can control what we think and what we do.

Capt. Wright said, “She arrived prepared for training and physically conditioned to succeed”.  

I started thinking all the times I didn’t arrive prepared in the beginning.  The many times I took too many factors for granted.  

Writing ads or emails that I knew weren’t up to scratch. 

Selling at trade shows with little preparation.

Not eating the kinds of food that could give me the energy to power my actions.

Getting a business to succeed is like a puzzle.  You have to have unity between your market, your message, your media, and your offer.

That’s why I created the Blockbuster Marketing Club.  It’s support for coaches and course creators so marketing can get easier and you’ll get more opt-ins, clicks, and sales.

https://adamstreet.net

Adam

P.S.  Here’s the link to the article:  https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-sniper-course-woman-first/ 

Swipe and deploy big ideas like Disney

When I first wanted to get my copywriting biz off the ground I was stalled.  

I thought it was…

Time.

The market.

Money.

What really slowed me down was my crappy beliefs.  I thought I couldn’t ‘start’ until I did something BIG and original.  

I’m not talking about a unique mechanism or niching down.  I wanted something fancy like a proprietary system that could knock your socks off.  Something no other copywriter was doing.

And then I started thinking about Walt Disney…

In 1937 Walt Disney released the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney crushed it.  The success of Snow White literally saved Walt Disney from going belly up.

Was Snow White some original idea Walt had stewing in his mind for years?  No, Snow White is a Brothers Grimm story.  He took the idea from the them.

And movies like Cinderella.

The Little Mermaid.

Tangled. 

They are all based on existing stories.  Disney just took the stories and made them their own.

The same is true for some of the marketing peeps that I like.

Dan Kennedy has tons of ‘original material’ but he credits much of his success to people like Claude Hopkins, Robert Collier.  

Perry Marshall is another fav.  What is he known for?  

The 80/20 principle (amongst other things).  Also known as the Pareto Principle.  And the kicker is Pareto’s work didn’t blow his mind, Richard Koch’s book did.

Perry took one little part of the 80/20 principle and magnified it!  

When you approach any marketing you gotta do this week, don’t make the mistake I did.   Don’t spend your energy swinging for the fences trying to hit creative home runs.  

Think about the little things that you can make bigger, expound on, and highlight.

Maybe it’s IN your industry.

Maybe it’s OUT of your industry.

Just find something small, make it bigger, and tell somebody about it.

https://adamstreet.net

Adam