Learn Great Copywriting in 76 Minutes | Harry Dry

let's start with a game six words I'm going to ask you which ones you remember okay seamless transition charging Pitbull musly Irishman Better Way leg of lamb which ones you got Irishman pitball leg of lamb you remembered the ones which you can visualize you have these three rules can I visualize it can I falsify it can nobody else say this so you get free NOS you probably ridden a lot of rubbish you get free yeses you're under something why should people learn copyrighting it's number one skill in marketing write copy that can't be copied this

one's one of the most famous lines of all time they're instantly communicating What It Is by showing what it isn't exactly that's exactly it so when you're writing copy how do you know that something is going to instantly resonate let me give you this test one Mississippi two Mississippi you get [Music] it Harry dry is the first person that I call whenever I need help with copyrighting and the reason is that he's not just good at it but he's really good at explaining it teaching what he does I mean you'll see the guy has Frameworks

for everything my favorite one is these three questions that he asks whenever he writes or reviews copy and he's going to talk about that here but we got to talk about the elephant in the room and it's copyrighting it's sort of a smelly industry right I always think of huers and fraudsters on Twitter who are just trying to game your psychology with whatever deceptive trick they have up their sleeve and what I like about Harry is he's nothing like that he's nothing like that this guy is a crap Craftsman he's an artist he cares that's

what I love about Harry and he's one heck of a teacher too actually his ideas are so good that when I was building the RIT passage curriculum and I started thinking about distribution how can we help people like you get your ideas out into the world to really spread them a lot of it's built on Harry's thinking but hey let's get into it this is the man himself Harry dry I know that you have these three rules that you apply to every sentence I do what are they I do U Can I visualize it can

I falsify it can nobody else say this so you get free NOS you probably Ru a lot of rubbish you get free yeses you're on to something I'll give you two examples of what not to do what to do so I still an add on the way here don't just get a job change an entire industry there a recruitment company um now if I said you change an industry you close your eyes can can you can you can you see that no can you falsify that falsifier able to be proved true or false H can

you can nobody else say it no I could start a recruitment company tomorrow and write don't just get a job change an entire industry um now let me tell you now which does all three New Balance worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio I think that is so good it's so good so if you if you close your eyes can you visualize the super model in London the dad Ohio with a barbecue bu pair of new balance on you can can you FAL if y it it's true like supermodels have worn New Balance

dad know how I do where it's it's true and can nobody else say it well no because a load of dads in aren't going wear with PR and a load of super models aren't really wearing rebook like it's it's bespoke to New Balance it's something they can only say so that's there a three rules now I want to go through them like one by one with you um rule one can I can I visualize it so let's start with a game why does this matter if if you can't if you can't visualize it you won't

remember it Lisa cron says um if I can't see it it's not there yet so I'm going to read to you six six words I tell you which ones I'm going to ask you which ones you remember um seamless transition charging Pitbull musly Irishman betterway leg of lamb which ones you got Irishman Pitbull leg of lamb Irishman Pitbull leg of lamb I don't even remember the other three so what I'm talking about here is the did I get it right you got it yeah there's no right or wrong what I'm talking about here is difference

between concrete and Abstract you remembered the ones which you can visualize you can see the Irishman you can see the Pitbull coming at you you can't see a better way so this is concrete this is abstract what abstract is is it's intangible you can't drop it on your foot if you try and drop a better way on your foot it just Fades away but if you try and drop um a musly Irishman on your foot you know it hurts um how do you do this so how do you how do you go from from abstract

to concrete the best way I found is to zoom in on the words so what I like to do I get a shoot paper and I draw a line down the left hand side at the top I'll write abstract at the bottom I'll write concrete or write I'll write the word at the top um and I'll just rewrite it and rewrite it and ask myself what like what do I actually mean here what am I actually saying until I end up with a concrete object so here you could have written not very good worn by

pretty people in big cities and old people in non-big cities but instead pretty people I can't I guess I can kind of see that but a super model absolutely everyone can see a supermodel in London oh man that's sexy you know big supermodel London and then dad's in Ohio now that's funny because also the ju position of these two makes me laugh so another example of this like right on the money is you might come me with an app idea you might say hey harry I got I got an app I want to share with

you it's about regaining Fitness so I what I do is I go through that little zoom in test we did you write regain at the top and I'd say what do you mean by regain and you might say all right it's it's for getting people off the couch who've been sitting on the couch for the last six months and I say what do you mean by Fitness and you might like what type of Fitness you might say running how far five 5K so now we've got from regain Fitness we've got from from getting up off

the couch um to run in 5K couch to 5K funny enough that's the name of the most um the most downloaded the most popular fitness program of all time really and this wasn't made by Nike or Adidas it was made by a Boston TV producer but it's stuck because it was good um rule two can I falsify it all right why does why does this work like why does why do we like stuff which is falsifiable I I came up with this tip and I thought about it myself and what I what I concluded was

um when you write a sentence which is true or false it's like as a writer you're putting your head on The Chopping Block um it makes people sit up a little bit in their seat our ears prick up this is true or false Galileo um got got sentenced to 10 years house arrest by the Romans because he said that the Earth spins around the Sun they didn't like it if Galileo said um the Earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object they just said Galileo go go down the pub have a beer um how

do you do this how do how do you write copy that falsifiable when you want to write a sentence which is true or which is false best tip I've seen for this is um deep in a Reddit Fred um by now deleted account so I can't I can't give any credit I'd like to and it says um you can't talk you can only Point pict your best friend um right now who's single okay and I want you to try and set him up on a blind date with somebody okay now we're going to go two

versions of this the first version you got to you got to set them up but you're not allowed to you're not allowed to um describe them with anything that's objectively true or false so you have to write subjectively so you could say he's good-looking he's intelligent whatever what would you how would you describe this friend good family great values good family great values smart it's clever hilarious he's funny yeah funny you're talking funny guy I'm a woman right now if I'm a woman or a man I would I would say um you know yeah you're

just you're just saying stuff like is he is he actually funny now run now um describe this friend your your single friend but you're only allowed to say things which are true or which are fce so instead of say you said um good values you could say um why why does he have good values point to something so we good-looking I'd be like looks like Ryan goling 6'2 looks like Ryan goling exactly have you seen the meme uh I haven't seen there's like this popular meme going around that all these chicks it's like they hold

these signs it's like 65 Works in finance trust fund that's exactly it that's exactly it reads on the tube you know he not if you say someone's intelligent it's like all right whatever does he read he reads on the tube that's true or false um that's what I mean by falsifiable can you is it able to be proved true or false now what's funny so what is the lesson with the pointing this is what I still don't understand when I say when I say don't talk only Point let's say I'm trying to sell you gold

all right I might say gold you know it's a great investment David you want to get some gold you know that stuff never go out of fashion I'm just talking right now or I could point at the graph of gold for the last 50 years and it be like just going one way I could say like when there was the last financial crash what happened to Gold just point I just point at the graph so you just point at stuff that's a better way it basically it gets you off the adjective Trail so this is

interesting so say we're going to advertise for gold and all I can do is I can just point what I could do is I would point at a beautiful castle that is clearly Majestic I could point at at a family's gold stash and we could show them feeling very comfortable and secure because they have so much gold I could point at the chart of gold and now what I'm doing is I'm getting things that are concrete they're visual they're falsifiable you could point at Warren Buffett and say how much gold is Warren buffer having his

portfolio that's the reason to buy gold perhaps I don't know you have to research stuff you can't just like this takes this takes work that's why it's better finally final test can nobody else say it um Jim I think his name is Jim d key um never wrri out a competitor can sign why I like can nobody else say it is it kind of forces you to look a little bit deeper at what you're at what you're selling Volkswagen had this ad back in the back in the day your car has five numbers on the

speedometer Volvo Volvo has six one could get the impression that the people who made your car lack a little confidence no one else can say that the only way of saying it is you got to get in the Volvo see how many see how many dials there are on the speedometer so it's visual the visual lines with the the text nobody else can say it super simple differentiates what you're doing that's why it works exactly it's true it's falsifiable it's true there's a lot of people I talk to and they're like no copyrighting is for

Chumps I'm not going to learn that it's not really important but you are the first person I met who changed my mind on that why should people learn copyrighting why should people learn copyrighting um all right in this hand I got a Snickers bar imagine uh Snickers you're not you when you're hungry bestselling chocolate bar in the world in this hand I got a fuse bar only to be eat and wearing rubber sold shoes fuse discontinued in 2006 um both bars look the same they taste the same but one's the best selling bar in the

world and one you know it didn't get into the mind and why I like this example is because um startups businesses are like these two bars you strip away the rapper you strip away the copy you strip away The Branding um they do kind of the same thing like Samsung Apple all right um they both got an app store they both take great pictures but what what phone you got Apple you got an apple 17 out of out of 20 American teenagers choose Apple why do they choose Apple because to quote Ogie um we don't

choose the whiskey we choose the image um let me give you one more story about why I think you should land copyrighting um I uh my uncle's from reading reading England and they had a Strikers I used to watch a lot of football at the medeski stadium rin's old ground and they this Striker up front called Dave kitson and he wasn't very good and we'd all kind of laugh at kitson despite supporting reading Ginger guy he was very noticeable then I went to school in Portsmouth um kitson at this point got transferred from Reading to

Portsmouth all my friends at school a lot of them were pumpy fans Portsmouth pumpy uh and we saw kitson run around fratton Park Ginger hair again not scoring very many goals but you know he he put in a shift kitson ended up with one England cap so he played for England good player but you know innocuous career now um I'd like to tell you that Dave kitson wrote a book about football and it sold more copies than David Beckham Frank Lampard Steven Gerard and Michael Owen put together how did how did he do that how

did kitson do that um I think it's an example of a um a real foundational copyrighting principle which is what can I do that no one else is doing that people care about so kitsen had a bad what could he do like what could kitson give you all these guys have wrote these books about you know their career plan for England kitson didn't have any of that so what can I do well I've been in the Premier League kitson's been in the in the Premier League so kitson thought well I'll you know tell some home

truths about the Premier League I'll say I I'll do an undercover on the Premier League I'll tell you this player's got a gambling addiction I'll tell you this players this this is what it's like when England go abroad to Greece and everyone's going out how many drinks are people drinking he did like a big behind the scenes Beckham skull is what whatever they they don't want to do that people people care about it the problem then is it's a book by David kitson like no one wants to read a book by David kitson so instead

he he um he he signed it as the secret footballer uh that's that's copyrighting it's it's doing more with with words like you kitson's product is is objectively so much worse than David Beckham's but just by positioning it just by a little bit of Storytelling he could out sell him so what do I have here these are why don't you explain them what are these I printed a bunch of these as as a backdrop for my for my course you invited me on and I thought what let's let's instead of putting stuff on the screen

all the time let's um have some vinyl mounted favorite ads I'm just going to find random stuff and we'll talk about them okay tell me about this they don't write songs about Volvos what's going on here why do you like this one it's it's a ad by Corvette I think um why I like that six words um a lot of white space I like this because firstly again we've got an enemy all right so we talked about enemy before they're selling the Corvette by having a little cheap shot at Volvo but secondly what can Corvette

say about the Corvette that no other car can they can say that post Malone sings about Corvettes they can say all these I all these American country singers love a song about a Corvette it's romantic like what what's good about this and I think what's good about all copyrighting is you get it instantly there's um there's an intuitive test with cop copyrighting sometimes you know more in 2 seconds than you know in 2 hours let me give you this test I can't remember who who came up with it but it's called One Mississippi 2 Mississippi

so I got this ad I show it to you one Mississippi two Mississippi you get it oh let's try that you get it that's how that's how it works if it takes longer than two seconds you you know what you printed this one out I did not get it I did one Mississippi two Mississippi 8,000 Mississippi and I did not get it what is going on in this ad you're going to need a smaller cabinet so I had to crop these to fit them on mounted um mounted covers so I've missed off the logo you're

going to need a smaller cabinet um athletic greens you know what does athletic greens replace position in 101 what do you replace that to me says this does everything in one go so you know that what's the pain point the pain point is morning routine I want vitamin A vitamin D vitamin C I want some zinc I want some whatever you're going to need you don't need a cabinet you just all in one athletic greens it's clean you think that sometimes a risk that you have to take when you're writing ads is that you're going

to do something that really relates to your In Crowd but then the outcrowd won't get it because I don't get this but I don't take vitamins like that so maybe that's why I don't get it yeah I think I think if everyone gets it you you're possibly doing something wrong like I I think that's I think that's not a problem at all I tell you what what's funny is you don't get it but you talked about it like I don't think it's a problem if you don't get it you might you might text that to

a friend like what is this I don't get it that's fine it's got your attention what's worse is something which is just like so a bad way of doing that ad you're going to need a smaller cabinet might be um one drink to replace them all you know it's been said you want to write something that no one said before that's what I think and nobody else say this what else you got for me this one rips this one's one of the most famous lines of all time a thousand songs in your pocket why why

do you like it you tell me you know what we need to show these two together because this is why I like it so much okay these Mac and PC ads this is the problem with PC ads where they were all about features and it was all about oh 4 gigabytes whatever you know this is how fast it went Apple said no actually none of that stuff matters all that matters and I still remember being in fifth grade I had of this little blue iPod Nano it was the most valuable thing I'd ever had my

first album I ever bought was Confessions by Usher and it was on there and I could listen to all these songs and that's what made this such a big deal a metaphor it's an example of momy what's momy what's momy I don't know what that is momy is where a shorthand term stands in for a literal term it's very technical but I don't mind technical so what actually they're saying there what they should say is 1,000 songs in your media player that's the that's what it literally is but they've substituted the literal word media player

for um a standing word a visual word pocket it doesn't ites that sentence doesn't literally make sense like you haven't literally got a thousand songs in your pocket you've got a thousand songs in your media player but you'd rather say pocket because it's it's more visual it's more surprising it's more Punchy one of the great ads I well you you should judge your ad by how much it sells everyone had an iPod everyone walked around with an iPod you look at the Vision Pro I went straight to the Apple Store like look at the Vision

Pro I don't know what how they sold it but no one bought one that's that's why copyrighting matters I'm sure I'm sure if Steve Jobs around the Vision Pro would have been a little bit different it would have been positioned a little bit differently they'd have had some some you know great line and they'd have sold a few but they didn't you read this one the sports sedan for people who inherited brains instead of wealth I I love this CU who said this um I'm paraphrasing someone here but they said if you if you can

ever make your customer feel like they're making a smart decision you're doing something right so they're making you think you know God if you want to be clever with your money you're going to buy one of these cuz you you've got everyone wants to be the person with brains and not and not wealth and this is kind of a lame car you know what I mean right like look at that car no one pulls up in that car and says oh that's a right it's nothing like the Corvette that we saw earlier so what they're

doing is they're saying you know what we don't have the coolest car in the world now what is it that we can do to sell this thing ah okay this is for people who inherited brains instead of wealth because the people with the brains they know that oh if I'm going to drop a load of cash on a Ferrari spending A4 million dollars on an object that I could crash and break at any times okay you know what this is the smart decision you're right bang on I've never read The Economist management traine aged 42

what's going on here it's a classic that's that's one of the most famous of all time um and it sold a lot of economists I I think um it's a quot by Neil French he says um most people think in any AD you need four elements you need a header a sub um a picture and a logo and what Neil French says is if you can do an ad with just one of those elements you're onto a winner so there's no there's no subheader well maybe management triny but there's no picture there's no logo the

logo is I've never read The Economist that's why it doesn't look like an advert adverts look when they've got you know that logo in the bottom right picture logo it doesn't look like an ad so you read it two other things the color is Economist red which people know and then the other thing is you like look at the the visual hierarchy you read I've never read The Economist wait what management traine age 42 oh now we have a story best thing also about the ad is like it's basically what's the what's if you if

you strip away the saying it well part what are they actually saying they're just saying that the economist like is is a good newspaper you want to be smart it's not that interesting how can you make two month salary last forever the diamond engagement ring talking about this one good um this is a classic so this this came after um what was the bloody ad about a diamond is forever so this was this was the follow up for diamond is forever I think it was Mary gy 948 for debers they sold diamonds um at the

time wedding rings were Sapphire rubies emeralds how do you create demand for diamonds you you say when's it for it's for marriage um how can you make two month salary last forever I like I love that line because um of the J's position like how how can you make too much salary life forever you you can't it's two months of your salary it's forever you know it shouldn't work there's contrast there um the answer the diamond engagement ring I think now 85% of engagement rings are diamonds and this campaign by Mary for the beers uh

the diamond company is the reason why all right so you sit down you're now okay I'm Harry I'm going to sit down I'm write some copy tell me how does your process then unfold from there I you start I start with what am I trying to do what am I trying to do here there's a quote by John I'm going to say h hangley forgive me John the current attitude of the consumer is the starting point and the desired attitude is the Finish Line you can't start a race in the middle so when I when

I sit down and right I'm thinking what's the current attitude what's the desired attitude that's point a that's point B it's my job to get the customer from A to B thinker picture two telephone po you got you got the telephone po now we got to string the wire so how do I how do I String the wire well there's three pieces here first one piece one who you're talking to who who who am I talking to is it someone at the tube looking at their phone is it someone who's been on my app for

six months but hasn't upgraded yet but they know the problem so let me give you a funny example who you're talking to uh Snapchat took out a Super Bowl ad this year seven7 million and um and the ad was more Snapchat less social media or something like that the average age of a Super Bowl viewer is 39 so you think a 39y old um picturing my dad here like my dad's a little bit older but who's just worked out Facebook who's got six friends left in his life is going to use Snapchat if you use

Snapchat at 39 and you're a pedophile they spent seven million on that because they didn't think who are we talking to one more example I'm in St Ives um last year and doing the coffee run and there's a couple of shops as a couple of cafes um and getting the coffee on the first day and the first Cafe has this big um menu outside like a blown up huge menu and it's got like all the prices of different lattes and whatever and 17 different questons we do and the second one just says coffee and pastry

equals 5s and that's the yellow canary it was called like everyone's queuing outside the yellow canary and no one's at the other one and I thought I thought why is this well it's cuz who who you're talking to you're talking to someone tourist just walking down the street as you do when you visit a new place not really paying attention kind of taking in the sights what's your job form follows function so what do you want to do you want to tell them I need a cup of coffee you don't need to tell them that

follow us on Instagram and like communicate all this stuff about the price of this is this and whatever who you're talking to say you're walking down what's going on you're on a walk and you're May going to the beach and when you see that sign you're looking out of the corner of your eye and you need something that it's not even one Mississippi 2 Mississippi it's instant but the problem is when you're sitting down to write copy you're spending hours in the mode of thinking so when you're writing copy how do you know that something

is going to instantly resonate when you don't have the privilege of seeing something in the way that the consumer is going to read it I I I think that's where we go wrong I think this is OG what ogy said but like if you take out a billboard ad you want to pin it up on Photoshop not as the ad you made in Photoshop where it's just that and it's not competing against anything you want to do that and then you take that ad and you pull it into a picture where you've got seven ads

around it people walking by does this actually grab my attention or not so I like putting things in reality like you got to another way of doing this is um if if I write a newsletter for example I write the newsletter in just as the reader will see it so I don't write it on a Google doc and then take it in I write it I write it on directly onto convert kit so you see it just as I'm writing it and I like that cuz like I don't trust when I drag it on a

line might spill to free lines or it might be four lines I don't like that I want to see it just as the reader reads it that's my answer so piece one who you're talking to piece two piece two you got to have something to say we we touched on this we touched on this a little bit earlier so piece two so you got to have something to say that means that you need to be building things for more than the money that's going to come out on the other side you need to be building

things because of something you believe or a vision that you have or something that you think is wrong with the world that makes it a heck of a lot easier Dave Gart said to me once why did you start this business in the first place like why I run marketing examples why do you start marketing examples why am I teaching the copyrighting course well I think that every marketer should learn to write that's what every marketer should learn copyrighting it's the number one skill in marketing I I I believe something what do you believe I

think Andy Rasin um zura zura was the subscription economy idea all the investors in zura weren't buying into it because they like believed in the product they just believed in the idea that everything was going to be subscription it can show up in the most mundane of things like how I write the reason that I started the show is because there were so many podcasts where people talk about what they wrote to talk about oh I wrote a history book let me tell about history hey I wrote a finance book let me talk about Finance

I was like what why is there no podcast that just talks about how they wrote the book doesn't exist and I would really like that and beyond that this is what my career is about writing is important learning to write in all the ways that we do it stinks it's boring it's super academic it's very left-brained there isn't a sense of Vitality in it and I think that's ridiculous so for me those are the things that I'm like ah I don't want that so I'm going to go counter position and build the opposite so so

marketing examples was exactly that I I didn't have a career in marketing when I started that website but I was just fed up at trying to learn marketing and it will be two pages on Theory I wanted just give give me examples I learn I learn personally from examples and a lot of other people do that was my why like I wanted it you same with you um Peace free peace free peace free say it well so this is what most people think copyrighting is most people you ask people what's copyrighted they'll say um they'll

say say it well they say rri and rhythmically visually persuasively um and Visually so hinge the dating app design mind to be deleted that's a in my opinion near like a near perfect um near perfect yeah it's you can't beat it but that's something to say so the briefer hinge would be something like I'm sure the writer got something like we're making an app and it's for people who want long-term relationships it's for people who fed up of data apps that's not that catchy so it's the writer's job to turn that into something memorable and

here like the most obvious how do you make it memorable alliteration ddddd data na design to be deleted also again J to position the same things crop up like who makes an app that wants to be deleted you know like no one also what it applies oh I I'll meet somebody and I'll live happily ever after I'll delete the app this is the app that's designed so that I can finally fall in love which is what people are looking for it's right copy that can't be copied no of rap can say that now Hing Jones

that phrase and we're talking about how a great ad can tell a story you can look at this image and there is so much cultural scaffolding that it's yeah resting on top of so when they released this they I didn't like it they released this was a a mascot called hingi and I hated it so when I actually did that uh a couple a couple of days ago I got rid of this mascot I didn't like it and I went on their website and this they had this beautiful image which I just thought told the

story way better um oh so you made this one I I wouldn't say I made it but I got rid of the the dad mascot cuz I I didn't I I didn't think someone you know duelingo has a mascot Jingo is silly it's funny hinge isn't silly or funny it's like it's real it's about trying to you know get married um yeah there you go Piece One Piece two piece three who am I talking to you got to have something to say and you got to say it well that's copyrighting so I want to show

you this for real I want to show you what what how how an ad comes together so I I'm making a course on copyrighting uh this is N I wrote probably for the landing page um probably a little bit too much going on for a billboard but I want to give you the process because it's like there's a lot to it um it's probably about 20 rewrites are you looking at the same thing as me now yeah it so the difference between 1% and 2% is not just 1% it's 100% I saw this like four

years ago on um on Twitter and I thought it's a great argument for copyrighting um because if you can increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2% that's not too hard like I could do that you could you could do that it's not too hard for most landing pages you've literally doubled growth so I loved it I was like there's something here that that's the seed of an idea I guess wrote it on the sheet I was like all right maybe I can do something with this um Luke Sullivan great copyrighting we talking about conflict

earlier he just tells me now what Luke Sullivan tells me just draw a line down the middle of the page and write any two conflicts that come to mind so on the right we got increased landing page conversions from 1% to 2% that was like the idea from the Tweet what's the what's what's an obvious conflict there well it's spending as much on ads that's like the the parallel of that one or two explain what you mean by conflict how I look at a conflict is just like it could be red and blue it could

be Christianity and Atheism it could be white shirt red jumper like it doesn't have to be complicated there's three types of enemy if you want to be really technical you got ABC a different approaches different way of solving the same problem B beliefs I believe this you believe this see competitors so that would be apple and Mac what we looked at earlier um here it's a bit of a before and after like I don't take this too seriously honestly just draw a line and just write stuff that comes to mind that are opposites that are

opposites so I had that idea I was like all right we need to set this up a little bit so how can I write a header want to grow twice as fast You' got two choices spend twice as much on ads or increase land and PTI conversions from 1% to 2% now at this point this is why I feel like what what you take in as a writer is so important because a couple of years ago uh I I saw this Volkswagen um ad which I loved how to how to prepare your car for winter

Volkswagen ordinary car and with the ordinary car to prepare it for winter you've got to drain the radiator flush furly check rubber hose refill blah blah blah with the Volkswagen all you got to do is change the oil I love the layout I love and what they're trying to show is just the Simplicity the ease they're trying to show Simplicity they're trying to show ease but again enemy and I actually more than anything I just like how this ad's laid out I love the layout so I thought how can I turn what I've got like

my seed of an idea into this so I write it again for the for theth time um here I drop in two placeholder images so just forget the images but I guess thought like I like that that you've got the Volkswagen and the ordinary car image so I wanted to like placeholders just so I could work around that and then I copied the squares the checklist and then I couldn't just have one on the left so I wrote want to grow twice as fast you have two choices raise twice the cash hire twice the stuff

spend twice as much on ads or learn to write and increase Landing p page conversions from 1% to 2% starting to take a little bit of shape and where are you at now what do you like about this what don't you like about this critique this and just give me a sense of I well at the time David at the time I wrote this I was like you know the stomach here I like this but it gets in my in my opinion it gets like 200% better and I think that's like a lesson like you

can like something and you just keep going until you literally can't you bleed the ink dry well also there's a moment in the creative process where you have an idea and then you're like I know that this is going to be good what I have now is fine but you have this inner knowing that what you're going to make is great so long as you live inside of those iterations and I feel like that's where you are right now you got to you yeah you've got to like I think this is about it's talking about

standards like I wouldn't sign this ad off right now I'm just I wasn't happy with it but I just thought I'm going to keep walking down this blind alley to see if it's blind or not and it ended up not being blind so I rewrite it again this time what's missing I thought like look at the Volkswagen and it has headings so I needed to make this simpler so want to grow twice as fast you got two choices you got the corporate way or the copyrighting way set it up like that um and then also

I like that there was more boxes on the Volkswagen so I added raise twice the cash hire twice the staff spend twice as much on ads cross both your fingers or land to right and increase landing page conversions from 1% to 2% now at this point something was like really irritating me me uh I could not put this out with that line being two lines on the right hand side learn to write an increase landing page conversions 1% to 2% it was just too long it was messy so I thought I got to I got

to make that one line like by hook or by crook um easy to remove cross out landing page learn to write and increase conversions from 1% to 2% and then I think how can I make that even shorter I can get rid of learn to write and put that as the header that ends up being learn copywriting so now I've got to learn to write as a header increased conversion from 1% to 2% this creates a problem this is how messy the whole process is this creates a problem I like parallelism in the headings and

the corporate way as option A and learn to write as option b there's no symmetry between them whereas the the Corporate Way the copyright and way that worked so I've created a problem and I've solved a I've solved a problem one forward one back so then I think all right I need to write something like a similar ilk to learn to write so I just start spit falling Go full Zuckerberg scroll down roll Monopoly dice hidden hope spaghetti at wol these aren't good but I'm just trying to go go go and what you're just doing

is you're getting ideas out without even judging them really he's SL the edge here and tap thing yeah way back you just write one idea without judging it you write another one you're getting the dirty water out the tap so you just flowing in the tap it's clogged up at the start with a little bit of mud a little bit of dirty water but you just flow and after a couple of minutes couple of rewrites it will start being clean you just got to trust it gets clean so I'm just doing that right now spaghetti

at wo th and I end up with throw money and prey now at this point um I don't know what's good and what's not because I've been I've been um I've been writing this now for probably I know two three hours and I just I don't know I can't I can't work out if it's good or not so I text a few friends going one thing that's really revealing you just said I've been writing this for 2 to three hours but design is a crucial component of your writing process this is writing design visual with

images and visual with words working together in harmony so so I couldn't if I was doing this on a word dog I couldn't I couldn't let I couldn't do it like this this is a v copy I Jason said this on on on your podcast but copy and design are one of the same like I can't do them differently you did it in figma I did it in figma I never do anything I never do anything which is not on the tool I'm using ever so if I'm doing the as I said if I do

the newsletter I write the newsletter in the newsletter it's weird if I do an ad I'll do it directly into figma if I do a landing page directly in if I do a board I'll get it up amongst all the other Billboards and I'll put it in like where it is I don't like doing stuff not where it is so I'm confused at this point and um I like getting feedback so I sent this to a bunch of people who I you know respect their taste feedback comes in definitely prefer Go full Zuckerberg over the

Corporate Way blah blah blah but the consensus was throw money and prey being the header on the left worked work best so I settled on that now I had an idea like what if I do a really long list like Volkswagen cuz I like the de I like depth it didn't work so I then reverted back at this point it's kind of there um but the last thing I do when most ad is I I try and add a little bit of design to it little bit more design easiest thing to do here was just

bold so back up a second raise twice the cash hire twice the staff spend twice as much on ads cross both your fingers there's rhythm in those lines the repetition of twice and both I want to pull that out header want to grow twice as fast I highlight twice as fast and I add a little line increase conversions from 1% to 2% that's twice as many just in case anyone didn't understand that the difference between one and two is 100 which is where I got the whole idea from in the first place finally I got

these two illustrations which are just placeholders so I I go on a go on a fiver and I pay someone called Kenia just to make me illustration she starts off with this guy praying and a load of a load of um notes falling I gave her the oil ones as references cuz that was the style and then she gives me this pen and I say to her like I want it to be the same person on both of them so do do you mind doing it again I think I I paid her a little bit

more and she gives me this guy praying but he's smiling and then the second one has got this random like um messy for in a speech bubble which I I didn't like so I said look gen throw money and pre these are great I really like them but throw money and pray the guy's pissed at this point like he's an idiot he's throwing money and praying he's he's we don't like this guy and the guy who's writing uh turned that into a type wrer and add a light bulb um and there you go add one

want to grow twice as fast you have two choices throw money and prey raise twice the cash hire twice the stuff spend twice as much on ads cross both your fingers or learn copyrighting increase conversions from 1% to 2% that's twice as many and that's what I ended up with let me synthesize a few things here so the first thing this is I just realized what I love about the way that you approach this craft it is that you when most people think about copyrighting they think think of it like a fish bait we're going

to get the consumer to spend money we're going to trick him that's not what you're doing here what you're doing here this is the art of simple communication this is what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say something and then in one image I'm trying to capture attention tell a story and there's you've actually made it delightful like this is beautiful in terms of what has happened and that is the way that you approach copywriting it is the art of simple communication it's like an art project the way that you do it so

this is It's copyrighting is arguing this is just an argument it's like what's the best argument for learning copyrighting well you've got two choices you could throw money at you know a cliche and hope that it works and it probably won't because we've seen aana or you can learn this and you can increase conversions from 1% to 2% also what I like about this is it's not a big claim I'm not being like learn copy R and be a millionaire know I'm saying just like you could improve conversions from 1% to 2% you can probably

that's believable it's not it's it's sincere is that really like I believe I believe this I believe it and then there's a few other things that stuck out first of all we started off with that quote from visualized value that you can increase from 1% to 2% so you had this little seed and you said I can do something with that so you started with that and you built and built and built off of that that was your first piece of inspiration then your second piece of inspiration was the the Volkswagen ad so now you

have these two pieces of inspiration one in terms of the copy one in terms of the visual the way that the information is going to be organized and how it's the hierarchy that is going to show up so both of those things and then what you do is you're designing inigma as much as you're writing inigma so design and writing are working together and what you're doing is you're using both of them to amplify the other and then you're tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until the copy Comes Alive tells a story that once again one

Mississippi to Mississippi instant that's it that was it was um this was probably two days and 25 rewrites and I'm not trying to make out like it's like that's you can do it you can do it there's no right way of doing it but I I rarely get from I can't I couldn't write that as it as it is on the screen right now you can't just say go write that like the only way in my opinion you can make this out is if you build it up piece by piece by piece by piece by

piece that's how it worked quick break from the episode because I got to tell you about WR a passage the training that we do is rigorous but I promise promise that it won't have the sludge of your fifth grade English class class you know how I roll I like energy and enthusiasm and because we've now had more than 2,000 students the program's gotten pretty dialed in and like this episode we're going to dive into the mechanics of writing and then as a student you're going to get line byline edits on everything that you write so

that you can ship work that you are excited about and just fired up to share and if you want to join us go to write a pass.com okay back to the episode all right Harry I like this ad from you here's what it says marketers you'll spend 22,000 hours of your career writing spend two learning how to do it well copyright and arguing the conclusion is to buy your product I thought to myself like how long does a marketer spend writing each day that's was my seed that was my seed my idea how long does

Market has SP writing well they write emails they write social media posts they might write landing page they might write an ad uh they're write in slack um they'll sell you know about 4 hours a day 4 hours a day times by 300 days a year Times by 30-year career you end up with give or take 22,000 hours I think originally it was 20,000 but I wrote 22,000 because I wanted the parallelism word of the day really with spend two learning how to do it well um so I had the 22 and the two it's

deliberately done it's deliberately done that way let me pop in here I got to add something the other thing that I like about this is the context is important here you're uh learn copyrighting that sounds so boring two hours Harry I'm so busy I'm so busy I do not have time for that to do two hours with you to learn copyrighting I got too much going on but what you've done is you've changed the frame here where rather than costing me time you're saving me time because now you're saying you're going to spend 22,000 hours

writing in your career and spend just two hours just two hours learning to write oh that's so easy it's funny if you said you know you spend four hours a day writing nowhere near as good so you got to you got to you can make a you can make a small number bigger which I've done here four hours a day just by expanding the time frame that's the technical side um yeah one of my favorites tell me about this Tesla ad that you made better truck than an F-150 faster than a Porsche 911 I took

that from Elon Elon must tweeted a line along those lines and I liked it and I um stuck it on an ad why I like this is cuz when the Cyber truck came out like no one knew what it was so how do you make a product make sense you compare it to products we know which make we you compare it so we don't know what an F50 is like it's a brilliant truck but apparently this is what better than an F50 faster than a 911 cyber truck's complicated explain it to me so I get

it based on what I've learned from you there's two things I would do to improve this better I would make more concrete better better okay give me tougher give me sturdier give me a word like that that's a little bit stronger you also get to get rid of a word that way tougher than an F50 gets rid of the word truck it's shorter shorter shorter is better in copy most of the time well it's not just shorter but then you get the parallel get stronger than an F-150 faster than a Porsche 911 sounds better to

me than what you have right now yeah I I like it's tougher than F50 faster than 911 it's great you that's why you should buy also what we said Can nobody else say this what other car can say they're tougher than F50 faster than i1 there's no there's no car which exists which can say that read that one this from the ad Professor the ad Professor my old friend it takes 3.1 seconds to read this ad at the same time it takes a Model S to go from not to 60 why do you like it

well it's falsifiable it breaks the fourth wall so what it's giving me is it's telling me how fast that Tesla car is which I really like and it's also saying okay interesting takes 3.1 seconds that also feels really precise and I feel like the ad is talking to me so there's just multiple layers there and then the way that the image is done it just looks fast I like it as well because it's Dave I think I got this from Dave Gart first line second line he got this from Joe Joe Sugarman what I mean

by that is you read the first line it takes 3.1 seconds to read this ad you like what's going on you you you need a read that gets you to the second line which is the same time it takes a Model S to go from nor to 60 um there you go you completed the ad what do you think of facts David do you like facts they're fine they're fine facts are you're ambivalent towards facts sort of dry I I love facts what I love facts so in this episode I start with aana a spend

345 millions of pounds each year on sales and marketing that's a fact Jack kowak lived on the road for seven years he wrote on the road in 3 weeks fact give me a fact give me a fact behind a fact there's a story I like a fact cuz it's true there's three 350 million Americans fact see there's something in that now there 350 million Americans is that interesting genuinely is that interesting 350 Millions I don't think it's interesting no so help me understand what you're saying when I think of a fact I just think of

something that is true about the world but almost by definition uninteresting but it seems like you're trying to say something else I'm trying to say when you say a fact it it guarantees that you say something most people when they open their mouth they say nothing they say wallpaper word shaped air but Ballo balloon smoke a fact is you're giving me some here this is true where did this come from so but 350 Americans I don't think that's I don't think that's interesting so you got to like you got you got to work with a

fact so it's something like this it's something like this so I have a pet peeve where I don't like flying from the east coast to London and the fact behind this is the flight's only 6 hours so the problem is it's too short for you to get sleep and it's too long for it to be a quick and easy flight so it's just in this Middle Ground whereas it's actually way easier to do a 10 to 12h hour flight so Austin where I live San Francisco way better flight so what you're saying is what that

fact is doing is it's grounding what I'm saying it's making it real and then inside that fact then I can tell a story from it facts yeah I'm that's that's I'm saying facts facts facts if in doubt give me a fact that's what I'm saying I think that also the thing with a fact we don't understand with a fact you start with a fact you could turn it into something else but start with a fact it's true then then make something with it fact doesn't have to be numerical I'll give you a fact when you're

in uh when you're in McDonald's or Duncan if I want to be all American when I'm in Duncan um they give you tomato ketchup but often what they give you with a ketchup um is they they take a Hines bottle and they pour in the factory ketchup to the hin bottle that's a fact I've seen it happen it was on the news fact you could make an ad from that the woman pours the Pines sorry the ketchup into the hind she hands it to the consumer even when it's not hind it's Hines so that that

that ad like it's not a fact even when it's hindes it's hindes but it comes from one I think some good stuff just comes from Facts so inside of this though is an implicit critique of how most people communicate and what you're saying is people don't communicate with enough facts they're trying to give you like an egg but what happens is it comes out all scrambled all messy give me like that that egg shape that's what that's what you want the Euros are on all right so I'm listen to Alan Shir the football Alan Shir

yeah and he just he opens his why was England bad today and he says God they're just not playing well it's all wrong Southgate this Southgate that give me a fact Gareth tell me that they're playing Kier and trippy at left back when he a right back that's a fact okay now this is a great example I'll use a golf analogy cuz it's one that I know a lot so all the time you'll be watching the announcers and they'll say oh Bryson deshambo Tiger Woods Tiger Woods just didn't want it bad enough today Tiger Woods

looked a little sloppy on the driving range and he kind of didn't go out as well no no no no no no no that's not good sports announcing good sports announcing is saying Tiger Woods usually averages 11 Fairways per round today he averaged seven he made up for that with an extra 30% Greens in regulation and he was three times more likely to make a one putt today than he normally is because of that this is what I sensed in the round here's how it impacted the momentum and all that now that we're rooted in

facts there is so much more weight and credibility in what the announcer is saying and I love the word that you said Precision there's such a lack of precision in what people say so so um all well all right modern brighten does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning you use a fact it's precise so the point is as a writer as a communicator you should have some facts In Your Arsenal about whatever it is that you're doing don't say inequality the bad way of phrasing I don't you think it's

a bit unequal that's an adjective turn it into reality right show me a graph show me the difference yeah start with a fact work work work from there all right that was fun what I want to do is I want to switch gears I want to just talk about your newsletter your newsletter has easily more than1 ,000 subscribers but it's not the number of subscribers that is worth talking about it's the engagement you unshared the screenshot it's a while ago I don't know if you remember this and you shared the replies that you get for

a newsletter I've never seen a newsletter get as much engagement as yours not once thank you very much it means a lot David coming from you I mean I think I can't remember that I think I Mark examples is back or Mark examples is not back and I um yeah it's it was it was crazy it was really crazy I think that when you see 100,000 people you know you forget that they're all actually somebody 100,000 people actually it's actually well you know 50 50% open it but it's actually it's actually somebody and um no

it's why I write it because people people seem to like it how do you write it how do you actually sit down to write the dang thing I mean It's Tricky I honestly every newsletter genuinely is uh I'm not trying to sound for just here above my station every newsletter is tough like I I it's always a struggle to to get something good um how I write it I I think what's a newsletter why is it different to a Blog firstly like why is it different to a to a tweet an Hanley has this great

line it's it's it's less about the news and it's more about the letter so when I start to write it I think right it's a letter I like start with a bit with an introduction and conclusion um how I do this is time place what's going on in my in my life time place so this is what is is a common in writing I think JK Roland started the Chamber of Secrets with um something like it was um not for the first time an argument had broken out at over breakfast at number four privet drive

so from that you know it's breakfast there there arguing time place what's going on that's how I start so I write I look outside the window see what's happening so I think last one I did was um live from London weather update trees shudder in Majestic hail it wrote it I just looked out the window the hail was really falling you can't get that from Twitter now that's the little you know bit at the start but the actual meat of a newsletter think there three things I do which not sure too many other people do

firstly you get five things in a newsletter six things you'll get five examples um it's dense secondly um secondly we talked about this a lot today but there's conflict in pretty much every single example why why I like conflict this could be a simple as um before and after it could be here's the problem here's the solution it could be here's how they do it here's how they do it now why I why I like that um is because we we as human beings we remember stuff relatively so I want to give you pickle juice

I want to give you orange juice the pickle juice makes the makes the orange juice taste a little bit sweeter and the orange juice makes the pickle juice a bit sourer if I'm riding say about about Lums positioning I did one recently about lumus positioning I don't start with lumus positioning is good I start with how here's how every single other screen recorder positions their product here's how Loom do it what was the difference they started as a screen recorder Tool uh way back they were just in the screen recorder bucket just sitting in the

screen recorder bucket and then they had an idea the world's gone remote but remote communication sucks remote communication sucks like so here we go introducing async video messaging that's the category out of what was a screen recorder everyone else is saying yeah we're we're an easy to use screen recorder they're just saying like way the way remote we talk remotely sucks like no one likes Zoom these long Zoom calls meetings are too long it's emails are too impersonal that's looms positioning and they they now I think they're worth more than that whole screen recordered bucket

combined that's positioning um so I like conflict in in in a news I I really like introducing some kind of conflict the third thing I only noticed this the other day I was reading back previous issues and since March 20 21 I haven't written a paragraph longer than two lines now I'm not saying that's like good or bad to be clear I'm just saying it's ID syncratic to myself why I do this is three reasons um short paragraphs are like monkey barss they're easy to swing between so if you're writing the newsletter you got to

get real like people read it on the train they're not that focused you got to help them swing secondly if I write a sentence which is a paragraph which is three liners long there's a good chance I'm not explaining myself as well as I as I should be or could be so I'll I'll turn the three lines I'll look at it like do we need that word do we need that sentence no two lines finally I I like giving lines room to breathe I like writing to it which is good and giving it room to

breathe walk me through this intro hey it's Harry it's 3:47 a.m. I'm in the Big Smoke alone laptop green tea looking at the Whiteboard like a dozy dog six words on it five with lines through intro glares at me I glare back the final hor Crux sip some tea is this any good I don't know my tea tastes cold I should press send good walk me through that why did you choose that where is this top of the page funny having me read that back Harry hey it's Harry it's 347 I'm in the Big Smoke

alone laptop green tea looking at the Whiteboard like a dozy dog six words on it f were lines through um all right just quickly for the reader what I mean by that is in my newsletters always six things so what I'm trying to say is that five of them are finished intro glares back at me that's the only part I haven't the fight is the final HW crck sip some tea is this any good in italics I don't know my tea tastes cold I what I beyond writing some which is good or not I I

want it to just feel like it's out the oven that's what I wanted to it's fresh bread warm to touch that's a quote from somebody I can't remember but I love it so this is it good or not I don't know but it's it happened I was I was in in the Big Smoke mean in London some random office in London at 347 with a green tea question him whether the words were any good or not I looked at my words like God is this good I don't know but I got to send it there's

something here that's showing up about the stuff just writes itself you just need to see what's right in front of you right now the hail the green tea the fear that you have the six lines all of the stuff is there and yeah I think what you're saying is a lot of writers don't see what's right in front you I like it because it's not it's not particularly clever like it's it's actually boring what stands out from that example is that the writing is so simple out of everybody I read I bet that your sentences

are the shortest sentences number number one shortest how do you how do you write simply that's that's the question it's not easy I think the first thing which I Learned was that you don't you don't write it simply straight away writing simply what we're really talking about here is rewriting you don't you can't write simply you can only rewrite simply really so how do you rewrite well you know there's a book on writing by ziner elements of eloquence for like if you want to get into the weeds those books are great so I'll give you

maybe a couple simple things um first one my favorite kaplan's La of words um kaplan's L of words any words that aren't working for you are working against you I I love kaplan's La words so much I invented Harry's Laur Words which is that you aren't taking kaplan's Laura words seriously enough um people people people talk about Ry simply I'm like your Ry is not simple you can cross stuff out kaplan's law of words is true for words it's also true for ideas same thing like uh the strength of a of an idea is inversely

proportional to its scope this is why the word and on a landing page is normally never a good thing we sew jeans and t-shirts and socks and we we have dressing rooms I buy jeans from H denim I've got shorts today but I buy jeans from H denim we make jeans that's it do one thing well um that's her tagline yeah we make jeans mean Mar where and get stuff from there you know dare I say the gets get stuff from there um the same with album covers like you look at the best album covers

Velvet Underground the Banana by warhole or dark side of the moon the prism it's exactly what I was thinking of Dark Side of the Moon what else um Bo's got one of my favorite of all time with the lightning Aladdin Zay he's also got one of the worst reality which is like seven desperate images like who knows what they are yeah that is a weird one um we talk about simple sentences there so I would talk about simple paragraph a good paragraph It's like maybe like a i' say like a burrito you should you should

you should be I should be I WR a paragraph there I should be able to throw it to you and you should be able to catch it and it shouldn't come apart in the air what I'm talking about here is sentences that don't look awkwardly at each other but that add to more than the some of their parts so a test for this right you got a you got a paragraph you pull one sentence out a good paragraph should like be broken you should break it if you if you pull a sentence out and it

still works the sentence probably shouldn't have been in there in the first place refer you to kaplan's LW of words third thing I I talk about when I'm talking about writing simply um I don't think it's me only I do but I'll write a sentence or a paragraph um for a headline or whatever and I'll I'll copy and paste I'll write it again I'll try and tweak something I'll copy and paste I'll write it again I'll copy and paste I'll write it again a different way I'll end up with like four or five different versions

of the of the same paragraph in the editing editing phase and I would not sure I'd recommend this because it's caused me a lot of turmoil over the years but I like it for a couple of reasons firstly it just allows me to refine each time but more importantly it allows me to be kind of terrible like a lot of those rewrites I will do are not good but funly enough the the freedom to do it wrong allows me to like actually be a bit different try it my own way and do it right when

I show it to my brother it edits all my stuff I'll show this stuff to my brother and um um I originally i' give him one paragraph to like look at he just look at this one paragraph and his feedback would be like I like it or I don't like it it was hard to get anything more than that but when I show him I can show him three things show him three paragraphs now and he can say that one's the best that sentence is the best use that sentence but put it in that one

I get so much better feedback when I can show people versions of stuff that's right and simply one of the things I've noticed in our conversation so far is you're very good at dividing things into 1 2 3 4 like really good at structuring is that something that you're pretty intentional about we've talked about this you love you love structure I love structure I love structure how do I yeah I I how do I I structure things or right how I do that would be structuring just divid in lines and parallelism so we talked about

copyrighting at the start how can I divide copyrighting into something which was a bit more easier to understand copyrighting is Big it's kind of scary all right who are you talking to what are you saying here and how are you saying it those those are the free buckets I remember I I did a an like a little essay for you a couple of months ago yes it was um seven steps to 10,000 readers or something like that so I was like how can I break this essay down into structure how can I get the structure

and I wrote the line that the first step in getting 10,000 people to read your work is to get 100 people to read your work and I thought that's the structure part one things that don't scale 100 readers part two momentum next 99,900 that's it part one part two divide in lines and parallelism there's a paper it was published in 1971 it's called that's interesting and the whole paper is just a formula for different ways to frame an idea to make it interesting and the structure that stuck with me was take multiple things take two

things that people think are different actually show how they're one take one thing and actually show how two and a lot of what you're doing with structure what you just did there is okay you want to get some readers well actually you think that's one thing no it's actually two things first you need to get your first 100 readers then you got to get the rest of your readers now you have structure it's like a book without chapters imagine that it's long it's heavy like chapters are the structure of the book same with the course

you take the 17 videos it's like how do these how do these link together give me something cohesive give me something I can hold on to that's structure another hay Rule and this is something that I value too many years ago I had lunch with a mentor multi-billionaire and he basically looked at me and he said David there's two things that if you do you will be insanely successful he said the first thing is learn how to have a high quality bar and the second thing is never let the high quality Bar Fall and he

said that sounds so simple and we're sitting at lunch right now you're like yeah yeah yeah that's going to be he's like no it's going to be hard there's going to be people who are angry there's going to be people who are anxious there's going be people pissed off there will be people who stop working with you because of this but if you have a high quality bar and you maintain it great things will happen for you and I see a lot of the same thing that happens in your work with with standards like you

have these supremely high standards in everything that you do where did that come from I Love what the mentor said I think your standards are your work I think that's a really simple line but a really true one like your work is nothing but your standards 9 out of 10 plus it goes out if not you won't see it tell me about something you said a few minutes ago about knowing what good looks like what is that feeling like when you're in the presence of something of quality that you've created how do you know I

think it's when you you go for a walk around the garden you go you take a little walk around the garden you come back and you're like I can't take anything away from that like that's as clean as it's ever going to get that works and you just sort of smile I got it um yeah it's mainly when when it just I read it if one line flows to the next I can't remove anything it's good um like warn by supermodels in London dad's in Ohio you can't add a word to that ad and make

it any better you can't take away a word and make it any better it just is tell me more about the conflict how when you're writing how do you create conflict what are the things to avoid what are the things to go for I'm looking I'm I'm basically trying to hinge around the word butt in in a story without actually writing the word butt so you don't want to keep going but this happened but this happened it wants to be like you know natural so I don't know let me go off the top of my

head I I'll tell you how I got here today with some butts in it how I got here today I you know I'm telling it boringly I got on the train I got the train here and I had a coffee and we started talking but bit conflict I'd say I woke up at 8:52 um a.m. and um I started looking for clothes to wear today and my mom runs up the stairs and she tells me Harry you can't you cannot do this interview in little BL in those blue shorts you had at the start and

I'd say Mom just I'm stressed all right I'm doing this thing I want to you know practice and she's like I'm not letting you get out of the house unless you change shorts I got these on now I get here to do the interview and you say Harry what can you can you why are you got longer trousers on like give me some trous like I haven't brought trousers with me you just you just you just put in little you know that's how you create conflict you go but but but what went wrong that's a

butt that's conflict I got to ask how did does AI show up in all of this for you is AI part of your writing and the thing that we've spoken about is that AI or not what matters is having really good taste yeah I I John Long great quote switching from um pens to typewriters didn't make the work better switching from typewriters to laptops didn't make the work better switching from film to digital didn't make the work better AI is a tool it's a tool it's only as good as your taste I saw somebody on

Twitter the other day photoshop's got this new thing like generative fill basically you take a picture and you can like zoom out and it would generate the background and talking about album covers be's Abby Road the four guys walking along the zebra Crossing someone zooms out of this picture generat fills it and it's got like a you know a big balloon in the air now and there's loads of more trees and it's completely not cropped and they write um AI revolutionizing the photography process and I'm thinking God like God help you OG uh ad uh

at 60 MPH the loudest noise coming from the Rolls-Royce is the sound of an electric clock he pulls that out of the motor magazine increased rollsroyce sales by 50% why does he pull out the motor magazine he's got taste he puts as the headline that's conviction another thing AI doesn't have it it can't it doesn't believe something and and also experience why can why can OG right that is cuz he sat in the car or the motor magazine individual sat in the car they drove it at 60 M hour and the loudest noise you could

hear was the electric clock taste conviction experience Bowski worked as a postman for 20 years and he wrote post office Jack kowak lived on the road for um seven years and he wrote on the road in three weeks Michael Lewis spent forever working on Wall Street waited and waited and then was able to write the big short I don't think that it's not a coincidence is it Sy Sylvia ple I've mentioned her a few times today um she worked as an intern at a New York Fashion Magazine her character EST Greenwood guess what disillusioned intern

at a New York Fashion Magazine if you ask me to write about New York City um i' never been so I would just say uh yellow taxis city that never sleeps I'm gumming together long strips of words already set in order by somebody else and unfortunately that's quite literally what what what AI does it's predictive it's predictive you're making a few points with experience the first point that you're making is the David Ogie which is go out and do things and do things and be aware and it is out of that awareness that you're going

to notice things and the things that you notice those will lead to good writing so you're talking about the car that's going fast the loudest thing you can hear is the ticking clock that is the first kind of experience that you're talking about the second kind is the Bukowski kind where you work in something for a long time and you're building experience that is a kind of expertise year after year after year after year and those are very different kinds of experience what's writing you see something you believe something you write about it um any

any kind of robot can't see anything and it doesn't believe anything you ask AI what what do you believe it says I am a robot I don't believe I don't believe anything so how are you going to tell me something surprising a good writer arranges words and ideas in a way that haven't been laid out before and kind of robot lays them out in a fashion which is quite literally from all the stuff which has been laid out before and I'm not saying it's not it's not useful like it's a it's a great research tool

and we don't know what's going to happen but I think if you think it will take your job or you think it's going to do a better job than you it probably will but I don't think it will I don't think it can do what I do it seems like a lot of what you're trying to do is collect Excellence surround yourself with all different kinds of excellence and then use those Inspirations to basically set the standard for the work that you produce um it's like it's in the everyday like I don't know you get

up you read you you get up you're on Tik Tok you get that whole video after video it slows you down you wake up you sit in a bit of Silence you don't talk to people you collect your thoughts silence and action that's what I run on oh yeah you do these writing Retreats with cultural tutor and you don't even talk till dinner right I always think it's so funny when people call him cultural tutor we I that's his name he's the cultural tutor his name is nashy head his name is the cultural tutor on

his British birth certificate that's his name Plato is his face as well I just call him CT even a call cultural tutor yeah we go we go we our last was in coniston he was trying to finish his book and U you wake up fig we used to do these and we' talk um on these and i' be like look man you want a coffee and she'll be like uh you know he's put on maybe maybe not you know I'll come with you he's talking about his girlfriend he's talking about his favorites I'm like like

I've lost my flow here when we sit we don't talk till 5 or 6 when we have dinner and there's an intensity to it there a real like God I'm doing something here if I'm if I wake up and I'm on Tik Tok which I do a lot first thing in the morning or Instagram whatever it is my day is drudge it's slow I'm not up for it if I wake up I'm like God I'm not talking on today I'm going to write something brilliant today take a walk around the park in silence no earphones

on I give myself a better shot um I think I'm I don't know I said what I said David I've said what I said it was a pleasure you said what you said I've said what I said I'm a huge fan of the show and genuinely I should say it's really um genuinely a privilege to come on I've listened to pretty much every episode thanks man I'm a big fan um there you go that was fun we're talking about the craft of writing here and one thing I've noticed is that in the world of food

so much of what I read is overdone and overwritten I think of cookbooks I think of elaborate descriptions on bougie restaurant menus and I don't know about you but all that has deceived me into thinking that writing about food has to be complex in order for it to be successful F but I've come to realize that's just not true you don't need fancy language to write about food common language works just fine and for an example I want to look at John Steinbeck and his book his Masterpiece East of Eden and as I read this

paragraph I want you to notice the Simplicity of the language here okay it goes like this the apple pie was golden and fragrant it's crust delicately Brown and sugar crusted with the faintest hint of cinnamon wafting up the apples inside were tender but not mushy each bite offering a balance of sweet and tart that made my mouth water the warmth of the pie coupled with a scoop of melting vanilla ice cream made each mouthful A Little Piece of Heaven evoking memories of long and lazy Autumn afternoons first of all that is beautiful writing and second

of all I'm hungry I want that apple pie because this paragraph is alive isn't it and the words are so simple there's nothing pretentious there's nothing pretentious about it but what's going on here let's break it down Steinbeck description Comes Alive because it's so layered what he's doing is he's appealing to multiple senses there's sight there's smell there's touch there's taste there's all four and you can see the golden the delicately Brown and sugar crusted crust you can see it you can practically touch the warm pie the scoop of melting vanilla ice cream and then

you can take taste the faint scent of cinnamon that's wafting up the tender but not so mushy apples you can taste all of that and it's the collection of these VAR descriptions the diversity that he has going on here that's what's giving this paragraph life and then there's the pacing Steinbeck wants you to linger on the details he wants you to slow down and save for the paragraph with the same kind of presence that you'd bring to a delicious slice of apple pie and I want to look at how he does that with structure and

with punctuation so we look at this paragraph there's three sentences and the whole paragraph is a single fluid continuous thought that goes from top to bottom every sentence roughly the same length what does that do is it gives every sentence equal waiting there's no one place that he really wants you to focus within those three sentences there's a total of seven commas and what those are doing is they're just serving as gentle pauses gentle pauses gentle pauses because Steinbeck is asking you as the reader to just slow down and feel the deliberate and unhurried Pace

that he's describing right here when he's talking about these long and lazy Autumn afternoons he just wants you to peace out relax it's sort of like being on a hammock you know and then finally there's the sequencing which pulls you into the intimacy of the moment it's like a slow zoom in shot in a film where he's starting from far away and just moving closer and closer and closer and closer adding suspense to the moment how is he doing that he's going from eye to mouth to mind so how can you apply this to your

writing well if there's one takeaway I want you to remember it's this there's no need to show off with super duper fancy $100 words you don't have to do that you can have an uncommon effect on your reader by using common language to describe a common experience just like Steinbeck and I do a writing example like this every single week if you want to check them all out go to writing examples.com and when you get there you can enter email right at the top of the page and if you do I'll just send you an

email whenever I publish one it's about once a week and then you can just learn all about the craft of writing