Copywriters Podcast

Our returning champion Mike Pavlish has written dozens of VSLs that have brought in $10 million or more. In fact, over the last 30 years, Mike’s copy has brought in over $810 million in sales.
And his work is still bringing in the big bucks today.
How good is Mike? On his website he’s got testimonials from legends like Gary Bencivenga and Bob Bly. But this one from an eye doctor named David Tavel, who has 24 clinics across Indiana, really stood out to me:
“Your copywriting pulled two to one compared to a big New York ad agency. I have been in business for 45 years and this is the best response ever. The results speak for themselves.”
Recently, Mike sent out an email that started out this way:
I've been in direct response for over 30 years.
I've written over $810 million in sales.
I've seen a lot of trends come and go.
But what's happening right now is different.
The speed of change is like nothing I've everseen.
Here are the trends I think every directmarketer needs to watch.
I asked Mike to come back on the podcast to talk about these trends.
A few days later one of our subscribers who lives in Spain, Norm MacLeod, asked me to invite Mike as well!
Mike graciously agreed, and we’ll get to those trends today.
Mike’swebsite: https://mikepavlish.com

We’re going through massive and disruptive upheavals all over the place, and of course copywriting is no exception.
I’m seeing the need for a complete mindset shift to survive, thrive and even dominate in copywriting.
It’s curious to me that the mindset shift is a return to the garden. I know that phrase means a lot of things, depending upon your background.
What I mean by a return to the garden is, going back to basics. From the first glimmers of online marketing to the original Facebook analytics and now the unstoppable march forward of AI… ironically, all the non-human things those advances caused are being stripped away from the copy that gets results.
What stands out is genuine human messaging, just like in a store or at a bar or at a Starbacks, one person talking to another. These days, more than anything else, that’s what works.
With everything that’s happened, we need to make a conscious shift in mindset to get back to the garden and write the kind of copy that was working before all this technological intrusion started and messed things up.
And that’s what I want to talk about today. Listen closely–it will make a big difference for you.
If you’d like help shifting to this new mindset and developing the skills to go with it, check out my coaching program:
https://garfinkelcoaching.com

As we return to our hit Old Masters Series segment, Copywriting 101, I’d like to let you know that the first edition of John Caples’s book Tested Advertising Methods was published in 1932–that’s 94 years ago!
Caples updated the book more than once over the decades–the last edition was published in 1998.
But the interesting thing is, over that 60 plus year span, the fundamentals remained the same. And they haven’t changed in the last 30 years, either.
Just in the same way that storytellers still refer to Aristotle and scientists and engineers still depend on Newton’s three laws of motion, copywriters can reliably depend on the fundamentals Caples laid out.
We are going to explore six more of them today.
And if a little voice in your head is asking, “What the heck are we doing reviewing fundamentals?!”, let me remind you of what basketball legend Michael Jordan said: “Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”
RESOURCE
Tested Advertising Methods, 5th Edition, by John Capleshttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0130957011

The future for copywriters and AI is pretty clear:
AI will not replace copywriters.
But… copywriters who know how to use AI will replace those who don’t.
Sounds simple enough.
However, once you get into it, you realize using AI to create copy that converts sounds easier than it is.
And the question boils down to: How do you do it?
I’ve been wrestling with that question for a couple years now, and I’ve found the answer.
If you already know how to write copy without AI, there’s still some work involved to write copy with AI… but it’s a lot easier.
If you really don’t know how to write copy, there are some things you need to learn… or help you need to get… in order to create copy that works using AI.
Either way, there’s a path for you to be one of the copywriters of the future… one who knows how to use AI to write copy.
That’s what we’ll talk about today.
Finally, the best way to find out about the upcoming workshop where I’ll be teaching the five skills and how to get a superior competitive position is to make sure you’re on my Friday email list.
If you get an email from me every Friday, you’re on it. Obviously.
If not, go to
https://persuasionstorycode.com
And sign up at the bottom of the page.
You’ll also get the first two chapters of my bestseller The Persuasion Story Code, absolutely free.
And we’ll post the link in the show notes.

Once again we’re back to our Copywriting 101 segments in the Old Masters Series, picking up where we left off a couple weeks ago.
This is about copywriting fundamentals. It never hurts to review them, and if you weren’t grounded in fundamentals to begin with, it’s never too late to learn what they are.
One of the best sources of an expert list of the fundamentals is John Caples, in his book Tested Advertising Methods. There was nothing fancy or intellectual about what Caples said or did, and yet he was one of the greatest direct response copywriters of all time.
So our Old Masters Series turns to the late John Caples for source material. Based on his book, we’ve put together a list of fundamentals that everyone should remember and practice. It’s easy to forget or get distracted by the latest shiny object, but ultimately, to win, you alwayshave to go back to the fundamentals.
That’s what we’re going to do today.
–
Tested Advertising Methods, 5th Edition
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0130957011