Copywriters Podcast

Our returning champion today is Kim Krause Schwalm, and she is going to share some amazing and unique information with you.
The late Clayton Makepiece, a legend himself in copywriting, said, and I quote: “Kim Krause Schwalm is one of the hottest copywriters alive.”
Here’s a little background:
Kim was always a marketer who could write copy. Before she launched her freelance career in 1998, she spent years in corporate marketing — from Brand Manager to Publisher — including building the Healthy Directions supplement business to the equivalent of nearly $40 million in sales within its first three years. 
But we’re talking to Kim today as one of the top A-list direct response copywriters in the country. She's racked up dozens of controls, beat legendary copywriters head-to-head, and was the first female copywriter to create a package that became a Boardroom control. 
Her clients have included Bottom Line, National Geographic, Green Valley Natural Solutions, and other leading companies across the US, England, Germany, and Singapore. 
Kim has a bachelor’s in Math and Statistics and an MBA in Marketing. She brings that rare combination of creative instinct and analytical rigor to everything she writes. And, she is the author of the number-one Amazon bestselling book, Client Badassery Secrets.
Today, she’s going to share secrets about writing bullet points you simply won’t get anywhere else.
Here’s Kim’s offer. There’s really more than I can tell you about. Seven deliverables and three bonuses. Some highlights include• Her Get Dangerously Good Copywriting System• The bullet writing boot camp, which today’s show was drawn from• Kim’s Million Dollar Controls Master Class
• Her Supplement Copy Boot Camp… and much, much more.
Six more pieces, in fact. Copywriting education I wish I had when I got started.
This bundle will only be available until midnight Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, June 19. You’ve got to read about it for a sense of everything you get, and then you can decide if this is for you.
Here’s the link:
https://kimschwalm.lpages.co/kims-copywriting-vault-for-david-garfinkels-followers/

If you’ve always wondered about content marketing, you’re not alone. It’s a confusing term and there’s no standard definition to describe what it means.
It really depends on your point of view.
Well, we have a point of view on this podcast, and it is the point of view of direct-response copywriting.
Now, to be sure, not EVERY word you write is part of a sales letter, even from our point of view.
But every word should lead in some way to a sales process at best or build up the business another way at worst.
And a lot of people get lost along the way, chasing shiny objects and striving for accomplishments that really don’t mean very much, outside of the momentary thrill of bragging rights.
We’re going to sort things out today so you can decide for yourself what matters and what you should be going after with your content marketing.
Links:
Cultish Content
https://cultishcontent.com/
Garfinkel Coaching
https://garfinkelcoaching.com

My new book, The Persuasion Story Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

Social media can be a HUGE waste of time, but sometimes when you’re scrolling you come upon a gem.
I did last week, and it led to all kinds of crazy thoughts.
I was on Twitter/X, and I discovered this post by lesser known but A-plus screenwriting expert Tom Vaughan, who has written eight films.
On Twitter/X, he wrote:
I have noticed many younger writers prefer to forgo a romance in their screenplay. This is fine. You don't NEED a romance in a story that's not about the romance.
But you do need to fill that space. It's the RELATIONSHIP that is vital. A friend, parent, child, or sibling.
Audiences care about relationships. Perhaps more than anything else. And we want to see how those relationships affect the protagonists. For better and for worse. A key job with your screenwriting is to know the most important one in your story.
My first thought was, yeah, he’s right. Second thought: Uhh, I need to know more about this.
Third thought: OK, wiseguy, that’s fine for MOVIES. But what about copywriting?
I did some research and some thinking and you’ll be surprised how much the most famous ads in history involve relationships, as well as the most profitable one ever tracked.
I’ll share some interesting and useful information about all this today.
Resources
Tom Vaughan’s Twitter/X handle: @storyandplot
Tom Vaughan’s website:​​https://storyandplot.com/
Coaching with me: https://garfinkelcoaching.com

If you’re noticing the advertising landscape changing a lot and changing fast, it’s not your imagination playing tricks on you.
Things really are changing.
Our special guest a few weeks ago, Mike Pavlish, pointed this out. He noted that “ugly” ads were outperforming “pretty” ones–that is, user-generated content, UGC, homemade ads of a sort, were vastly outperforming slick, polished, high-production-value ones.
He’s right, of course.
UGC puts a person just like you in the ad. Or at least that’s the intention. Real people, not models and spokespeople. Talking about the product in their own real-life experience.
You’re seeing these ads all the time. But how do you make one for yourself?
We’ll take a deep dive on that question today.
If you’d like help putting together a user generated content program, drop me an email david @ davidgarfinkel . com andwe’ll figure something out together.

People always talk about opening your copy with a story, but most of the time, when you say what kind of story, they’ll look at you like you’re an idiot and say, “Hero’s journey, of course,” like there were no other viable options.
Well, the problem with that is, the way the great purveyors of hero’s journey stories, Hollywood Screenwriters, use them is as a macro story. The whole two hour movie is one long hero’s journey.
Within that framework are a lot of micro stories. And today we’re going to look at three types of micro stories. Two of them opened blockbuster movies you’re probably familiar with: The Dark Knight and Inception. The third type of micro story propelled the hit movie Rocky to a rousing finish, and provided its most memorable scene.
I’ve never known anyone, including my friends in the screenwriting industry, identify these story types, much less show how they can be used to increase attention and desire in sales letters.
So you’re in for a world premiere of these techniques. Get out the popcorn.
And… if you’d like some help writing stories that are much simpler and more compact than hero’s journey stories, let me invite you to check out my book, The Persuasion Story Code.
I walk you through writing 25 different kinds of proven micro sales stories in there. We’ll put a link in the show notes:
The Persuasion Story Codehttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ