"Value: What separates the men from the boys and the ladies from the girls in copywriting? It's this!" by David Garfinkel
I know a copywriter who's so good he got me to write a check for $5,000 today before I even knew what he was really selling.
I have absolute faith and confidence that it is money well spent. Well, not just spent. Invested.
This is not some cute little story I made up for my blog. It's true. I have taken some liberties, because...
... the copywriter in question -- I'll be telling you about him in a future rant -- wouldn't actually let me send him a check. He said he might be doing something and it would cost $5,000 to participate. I told him my credit card was ready the minute he was ready to accept it... and I meant it.
What was he selling? You think it matters, but it doesn't. What matters is that he knew how to create value in my mind.
It didn't hurt that two street-smart sharp cards, guys coincidentally both from Brooklyn (yeah, I have roots there... that's where my Mom's from), had both asked me in the last 24 hours, "Did you hear about so-and-so's seminar? Are you going?"
Both of these dudes are friggin' geniuses. They have made millions for their clients with the copy they have written (they're both copywriters, too). The more successful of the two told me he was going. One specific result he was pretty sure he could get, he told me, would more than pay for the event in toto.
Now in case you think this whole rant is about copywriters who make a lot of money for other people spending a lot money on other copywriters...
... may I invite you to think again?
Because what this is really about is value. How it's created and how it's perceived. And what it causes, sometimes forces, people to do.
Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But as a copywriter, value for someone else starts in your mind's eye.
Hey, I'll give you an example. A friend of mine told me today he's going to put a comment on one of my other rants in this blog about a single piece of advice in that other rant, that he said was drenched with value. He said the advice I gave solved a problem he had had in an earlier business...
... a problem he and a partner had paid marketing consultant Jay Abraham $10,000 to solve. My friend told me my solution was better, in the way I conceptualized, templated and articulated it, than all the advice he and his partner had gotten from Jay in two hours... which, he said, was well worth the money all the same.
Now the question is: What is value? I urge you to go back to Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and read about the exercise the author's Rich Dad used to give him.
The exercise was to take a blank balance sheet, and within it, draw up a plan to create a money-making business without having to invest any capital.
Sound like sorcery? Financial bullshit? An old master giving a young kid a task he knew he couldn't complete, just to teach him the importance of plowing through frustration?
I suppose you could look at Rich Dad's assignment to young Robert in any one of those three ways.
But as a copywriter, you should consider looking at it in a fourth way: He was teaching Robert to create value first in his mind's eye, so that later he could realize it as cash in the physical world.
I promise you, this is an ethical, viable skill you can learn and bring to term. For yourself. For your clients. For people who are neither copywriters nor protegés of Rich Dad.
You can do it for every consumer, client and business-to-business customer on the face of the planet. It is the mental skill of millionaires, fund-raisers and the visionaries who midwife businesses into being.
David Garfinkel is one of the best copywriters on the internet and was a speaker at Armand Morin's Big Seminar Series and Carl Galletti's Internet Marketing Super Conference. You can learn more about his books and training courses by clicking the links below.
David Garfinkel is founder of the World Copywriting institute and is considered by many people to be the best teacher of copywriting in the world. The stated mission of the World Copywriting Institute is to “eradicate copywriting illiteracy in the world.” Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the world’s best selling series of marketing books, Guerrilla Marketing, says, “David Garfinkel is the best copywriter I know.” Sign up for David’s free World Copywriting Newsletter. and you get a free one-hour downloadable teleseminar on copywriting. Also visit David’s World Copywriting Blog:
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