Gravity<\/a>\nFull Transcript:<\/h3>\n
The Copywriter Club Podcast<\/em> is sponsored by Airstory, the writing platform for professional writers who want to get more done in half the time. Learn more at Airstory.co\/club.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That\u2019s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re invited to join the club for episode 48 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marcella Allison about how she became a copywriter working with A list mentors like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch and her secret for landing a steady stream of clients without a website.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, welcome.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Hi, guys. I\u2019m going to be notorious for that now. Like everyone\u2019s going to be like, \u201cI can\u2019t believe she doesn\u2019t have her own website.\u201d You guys are going to hear about that.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re actually not our first guest that didn\u2019t have a website.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh good.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> At least until they got on the podcast. Ry Schwartz is a copywriter in the internet space, didn\u2019t have a website last year when we talked to him. He does now finally so maybe this will be the spark that gets you a website, Marcella.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Or maybe you just don\u2019t need it because you\u2019re that good.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know about that.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, I think a good place to start is we had met at our titans masterclass, Brian Kurtz\u2019s group and you were my advocate during the hot seat session and I think you were the best. I forget if we called it an advocate. Basically, you were representing my needs and you were the best one there. So I oh you big time and I\u2019m excited to dig more into how you got into copywriting and hear more about your experiences so far. So I think a good place to start is with just your story. How did you end getting into copywriting?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Well, one thing, I have to I\u2019ve a big shout out to Brian Kurtz because I have to say the reason I was a good advocate was I had trial by fire at his titans event being an advocate for 30 people that day.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I did have a bit of practice. I did have a bit of practice.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I did not know that. That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s a whole another podcast story, believe me. So really, I had two entry points into direct response copywriting and it\u2019s kind of come back around full circle which is very funny. So when I graduated from college in 1987, there were no jobs for love nor money as my mother would say because we\u2019re right in the middle of the recession and I had an English degree which was even harder to find a job. Since then, we\u2019ve kind of come around to the idea that we\u2019re sort of these nice, well-rounded humanitarian people. But back then nobody knew what do with an English degree.<\/p>\nSo my first job was actually running a book club that was called The Graphic Artists Book Club for F&W Publications in Cincinnati back in 1987 and I wrote the little blurbs, these were book clubs where you got a little bulletin each month and it would tell you about the books and you would get a book auto-shipped to you every month. Even though it was called The Graphic Artists Book Club like we had maybe one or two books on doing graphic design on your computer, this was before any of these programs existed.<\/p>\n
So I did that for maybe a year and a half and then I left direct response and I didn\u2019t come back until 15 years later. I ended up writing copy for option traders at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research. That\u2019s sort of the start of my second career. So that was about 2003. The funny thing is that right now, I work on retainer on the financial side with the Money Map which is run by a man named Mike Ward who worked with me at F&W Publications in 1987. He was the book editor.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> So it always comes all the way around, right, which I think is pretty funny.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> Yeah, never burn a bridge. You never know.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. But the way I got back into it was that in between time, I had done a lot of stuff. I had run a contemporary art gallery. I had gone back and gotten my MBA. I had worked as a venture capitalist. I had worked for a nonprofit. At one point, I had a friend of mine who was marketing consultant with Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research and he was desperately trying to find someone who understood options, sort of the math of that and the left brain side of that. Again, this was 2003 so options hadn\u2019t really become as mainstream as they are right now. Really, Schaeffer\u2019s was one of the only games in town in terms of newsletters that offered a substantial amount of options services.<\/p>\nThis friend of mine was working with them and he could not find a copywriter who could understand options and translate it into copy in a way that made sense to people. So he needed someone who really could do both left brain and right brain and I think that is one of my sort of super powers is that I tend to be good at translating complicated information into something that people can understand and so that kind of became the launching of my second career in copywriting and I\u2019ve been doing it ever since.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, would you say, maybe I already know the answer to this question, but would you say that all of those things that you did leading up to copywriting made you a better copywriter or was it just sort of a journey through all kinds of options till you found the right thing for you?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> No, I think I was really using the same skillset. I talk a lot about how … So the venture capital firm that I worked for did early stage medical investing so I would literally be sitting down with say a scientist who might even still be in the lab at a university because we were going to be the first venture capital investment and pull that idea, right, out of the university and set it up as its own company. So I was a financial analyst. I\u2019d be sitting there with him saying, \u201cOkay, so explain to me how this cancer therapy works. What are all the steps,\u201d and then I\u2019d say, \u201cWell, what do you do next?\u201d He might say something like, \u201cOh, I go put it in a centrifuge.\u201d \u201cOkay, well, we\u2019re going to need to buy one of those because you won\u2019t be able to run over to the university and use theirs, right?\u201d<\/p>\nSo like I would help him understand how this thing that he was doing turned into numbers on a page that turned into a business that could then be evaluated. So when I\u2019m working say with option traders, I\u2019m sitting down and I\u2019m asking them to explain to me say a very technical model of how they find a trade, right, \u201cWell, how do you know this is going to go up? What are you looking at?\u201d Then I\u2019m trying to take that and turn it into something that I can translate that other people can understand and buy into. So I think that ability to sort of sit down one on one with people and understand what they\u2019re doing, especially in finance, right, it might be this option trading model. On the health side, it might be having a deeper understanding of how inflammation works in the body and all the steps of that and how do I make that understandable to someone in such a way that they can grasp the advantage of the solution that I\u2019m offering.<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> Is that a skill that we can all learn as copywriters? Or some people are just more gifted with that ability to connect and translate information or is it something that we can all learn over time?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s an interesting question. When I was in my MBA program, we did this funny exercise, I\u2019ve never been able to find it since, where you answer like 70 questions to say how left or right brained you are and then it actually turned into coordinates and we had this white painter caps and markers and we drew our brains on them and could see the people who were so left brained, it looked like an arrow, right. It was so narrow, it was like all left, right? Mine was this big square on the top of my hat. I was literally almost 50% left brained and 50% right brained. So I was like, \u201cOh well, that makes sense,\u201d right, that I find a career like that.<\/p>\nBut the people who are at the extremes, right, like an incredibly talented artist, right, or a quant jock in the trading world, most people are going to fall closer to the middle, like everybody has right brain and left brain skills and you probably already know which way you skew, right? So you just have to recognize that you might need to build the other side, whether it\u2019s taking a drawing class or music lessons or like the people I know who are really good at this tend to be really well-rounded and fascinated by lots of things. David Deutsch is a musician and he loves to dance and we read fiction and he also writes copy, right? Parris plays the guitar and he\u2019s had the apprentices a couple, maybe a year ago, he told me they were doing drawing on the right side of the brain which is a drawing book to connect to that part of your brain that observes and notices things.<\/p>\n
So I think anyone can get better at it and I do think that as a copywriter especially in an area that\u2019s heavy information driven like health and finance, right, to the highest paying, right, you really have to have that flexibility. So I think you just have to know which way you tend and build up the other side a little bit maybe.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, after you got that first project, writing about options, options trading, how did that then turn into a career as a writer? How did you get the next project or how did your career develop from there?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yeah, so a couple of things happened kind of simultaneously. So I had no idea, right, back then we didn\u2019t have courses in schools and gurus really. That had just barely began, right? AWAI had just started out, American Writers & Artists, Inc. so AWAI Online. Okay, so they had just started out with their sort of here\u2019s how to write direct response copy programs and courses. I didn\u2019t know about them. But in the beginning when they were marketing because they were co-owned with some folks who had connections to Agora to the financial newsletter world, right, they had been sending their promotion to some of the financial lists and lo and behold, it had been doing well because I think a lot of people think of this as a second career and it\u2019s kind of interesting. If you\u2019re a financial person, writing for financial newsletters would be curious to you.<\/p>\nSo I\u2019m at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research one day, I\u2019ve been hounding my boss saying, \u201cSurely there is some sort of system for doing this.\u201d Like I\u2019m just making this up, right, as I go along. I\u2019m like, \u201cSurely there\u2019s some books, there\u2019s something that would help me here, right?\u201d He comes in, Kevin Addington is his name. He\u2019s actually now with St. Jude Cancer Research. He\u2019s funny as heck. He comes in, he\u2019s like, \u201cHey, Marcella, is this what you\u2019ve been talking about?\u201d And he hands me a promotion that AWAI had sent to Schaeffer\u2019s asking for permission to rent our list and it\u2019s about this bootcamp they\u2019re having and all these courses they\u2019re going to have and all these speakers and I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, for the love of … Yes, that\u2019s what I needed.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYou\u2019re sending me. Put this in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out that that was a intensive little bootcamp with Boardroom which is now Bottomline. Bernie Schaeffer had always admired Boardroom and they had Bottomline Personal, Bottomline Health. They have more personal finance, right, they didn\u2019t have any option trading programs. So it wasn\u2019t like a competitor and he\u2019s always admired them and he said, \u201cYeah, I would be willing to send you.\u201d So I go to this conference and David Deutsch is speaking there and along with a lot other people, Laurie Haller, Monica Day, all these folks that I\u2019ve working with for a long time.<\/p>\n
So David is talking the writing and Laurie is talking about the design and Brian Kurtz is there. I get to know everybody there. What happens is while we\u2019re there, we\u2019re told we have to write sort of a headline, headline and lead for a new book. I think it was their annual, their health annual. So I\u2019m like, \u201cAll right. I\u2019m game, right, I\u2019ll try that. They\u2019re kind of showing us how to do it and I\u2019m practicing and then at the end, on the very last day, Marty came in, Marty Edelston, the founder of Boardroom. We all put them up on a presentation and Marty made comments on them. He pointed to different ones and said what he thought about it.<\/p>\n
So they put mine up and Brian said, \u201cOh, this is really good. You know and Marty really liked it,\u201d and Marty says to Brian, \u201cWho wrote it?\u201d Before Brian can answer, Marty says, \u201cA man or a woman?\u201d I\u2019m looking at this headline and there\u2019s like nothing in the headline, right? The headline was something like, \u201cDid your doctor read 4,826 studies this week? If not, he might have missed the one that could have saved your life.\u201d It was about how no doctor has time to keep up with this but if you get this annual, right, you can go through and find those stuff up, okay. So Brian Kurtz says to Marty, \u201cWell, it was Marcella.\u201d Marty says in this great sort of low voice that he had after the stroke, this low grumbling voice, \u201cI think that deserves a kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Now, what would he have said if a guy had written it.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I have no idea. But Brian is looking at me like, \u201cMayday, mayday, right, what am I going to do?\u201d I said, \u201cOf course it does, right.\u201d Marty is like 80 at this point, right, and I ran over and I get to give Marty this kiss. So when Marty passed away, I wrote a note to Brian and to Marty\u2019s family and I said, \u201cYou know, I like to think that that was the kiss that turned me from a frog into a copywriting princess,\u201d because Marty\u2019s kiss began this crazy chain of events where a year later Parris Lampropoulos calls Michelle Woke at Boardroom and says, \u201cHey, I want to train a group of apprentices. I want to grow my agency. Do you know of anybody?\u201d<\/p>\nMichelle says, \u201cFunny you should ask. We did this thing with AWAI. We had a bunch of people do headlines and leads there. I can send you this woman who\u2019s lead Marty picked,\u201d then Parris gets my information from Kathy at AWAI and literally called calls me in the middle of the day at Schaffer\u2019s to say, \u201cWould you like to come and be my apprentice?\u201d At the same time, David Deutsch and I have met at that conference, had formed a friendship and I had said to him, \u201cWould you be willing to coach and train me?\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t usually do that.\u201d But I said, \u201cWell, what can I do for you? Right, what can I do for you?\u201d He said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m writing copy for the Weiland Sisters for this woman\u2019s book. If you could review it and tell me as a woman, have I … What did he say, he said, \u201cHave I offended the broads?\u201d Which cracked me up.<\/p>\n
So I did, I reviewed it and he said, in all seriousness and I adore David, he said, \u201cYou know, your copy is so terrible. This point, I don\u2019t know how to help you but you\u2019ve got amazing instincts because I find your critiques really helpful.\u201d So we just started swapping. I would critique something for him and then he would give me another lesson or tell me a book to read or help me try to get to the next step. It was pretty funny. So it all kind of came together, like all in this one moment in time. It was very serendipitous and I\u2019m very grateful, right, for all of the pieces that made that come together.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> That sounds so much like our relationship, Kira. My copy\u2019s bad, I tell you what to read. You tell me how to improve my copy.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Yeah, good to have those people. It\u2019s good to have your copy.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh God.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I had like that idea with the kiss and how that transformed your career. I think it really speaks to what you did there, the power of showing up, going to conferences. What we were speaking about before we started recording, showing up at the right places with the right people and how that can really change everything. I think that\u2019s a perfect segway into mentorship. I had wanted to ask you why mentors are so critical in the copywriting space?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> There are more and more courses now, right, and you definitely learn from courses and books and online communities and I participate in all of those. But I think what happens in a mentoring relationship is you have that one on one hands on teaching and you\u2019re actually going through a real project together step by step. There is something magical that happens in that. It\u2019s why medical students, right, don\u2019t just learn on books then they actually have to go through a residency where they\u2019re standing side by side with someone else who\u2019s showing them how to do it and teaching them how to do the thing they\u2019re trying to learn to do.<\/p>\nI think it is better now, right. Like when I first started out, if you didn\u2019t have a mentor, you had some old books. You had maybe one or two courses and that was it, right? But now, you have a lot more materials to choose from but I still feel like that intensive learning and training one on one with a mentor is so important, just so important.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> This is a hard question to answer maybe but can you point to two or three things that you learned specifically from a mentor like Parris or David that just really moved your career forward exponentially?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I\u2019ve had a lot of mentors in my life. I\u2019ve had David Deutsch, Parris Lampropoulos. I\u2019m working with Mike Ward again right now. Mark Ford, Clayton Makepeace, each one of them taught me something unique and different. I guess I\u2019m going to turn it around a little bit and if this isn\u2019t helpful for your audience, you let me know. But when I was thinking about your questions that you\u2019d kind of sent me before the call, one of the things you said to me is, \u201cYou know, how does this work?\u201d I was thinking about that each mentor offer something different, not just in he information they give you but in the style of how they do things.<\/p>\nSome of the thing things I learned from them had to do with the style of their teaching. So for example, Parris, more than anyone I know, he has studied what works. He hasn\u2019t just studied it. He has broken it down into systems, patterns, formulas, rules, right, which the left brain part of me adores because then if I\u2019m having trouble starting something, he gave me a structure, like rules like I wasn\u2019t looking at a blank page anymore, I was like, \u201cOh, if I need to start a sidebar, I go to my lesson on how to start a sidebar. If I need to write bullets, I go to my lessons on how to write bullets. If I …\u201d do you know what I mean? If I\u2019m doing a close, I know these are the six things I have to do. So Parris gave me a real structure and as the part of that is left brained loved that because then I had a process and I love having a process because then it wasn\u2019t vague, right?<\/p>\n
What David gave me were these gifts of humor and playfulness. So David was a standup comedian. David is far more right brained, like in terms of just sort of creatively riffing on things. Now, that made it very hard sometimes for him to communicate with me about what needed fixed in something and he\u2019s changed and evolved over the last 10 years that we\u2019ve been working together to just be this amazing teacher now, right? But in the beginning, he was learning how to be a mentor in some ways and I was learning how to work with him. He didn\u2019t have this really left brained structured way. He used to tease me, \u201cIs that Parris rule 486?\u201d We would crack up and laugh. He was much more about humor and playfulness so he taught me that one way to be an entertaining in copy was simple things like a double entendre or playfulness in my headlines or alliteration with words or just a little bit of humor, not like telling a one-liner but you know what I mean?<\/p>\n
That was a gift, right. So each person brought something new to the equation that allowed me to become a richer and better copywriter because now I had not just one or two tools in my toolkit, I had dozens of them, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Yeah, it does make sense. I want to ask a follow up question to that. How does a new copywriter who may not be able to afford exposure to someone like Clayton Makepeace or get on the radar of Parris, how do you find the right mentor? How do you connect with somebody who actually knows what they\u2019re doing and they\u2019re not just a charlatan selling a course trying to make a buck?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yes, I think that is a huge issue. So I say to my writers and this is a funny story, so I say to them, \u201cYou have to do your due diligence. You must qualify your mentor first. You have to do your homework. Yes, it\u2019s flattering that they are asking you but you should do the same thing.\u201d I did this on Parris. I think it surprised the heck out of him, right? Because the irony is that I didn\u2019t know who he was. I was working for an obscured little option trading firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. I didn\u2019t even know this world of these guys existed. I knew about David, right, because I\u2019d met him at this Boardroom thing but I didn\u2019t know about Parris nor did I know because no one told me, right, that Parris had called Michelle Woke and Michelle Woke had called Kathy and there\u2019s this whole connection, right.<\/p>\nSo I just get this call in the middle of the day from this guy named Parris Lampropoulos and Parris assumes that I know who he is but I don\u2019t know who he is and he starts asking me questions that would be considered illegal if you were applying for a job because what he wants to know is that I will understand the health audience because I was, at that time, I was just 40, right, so he wants to know, \u201cHave I had any chronic incurable conditions and what did I do to try to solve that?\u201d He\u2019s trying to figure out have I tried alternative, have I tried mainstream medicine, do I know what it\u2019s like to be in pain, do I know what it\u2019s like to be frustrated and not have a cure for something, right?<\/p>\n
I am like, \u201cWho are you? Any why are you asking me these questions?\u201d Oh, he wants to know how old I am of course because he wants to know do I have arthritis. Anyway, it was pretty darn funny. At the end of that call, he tells me what he\u2019s doing in this apprenticeship and I\u2019m like, \u201cCould you give me a few references that I could call? Find out like who you are and what you<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That\u2019s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re invited to join the club for episode 48 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marcella Allison about how she became a copywriter working with A list mentors like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch and her secret for landing a steady stream of clients without a website.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, welcome.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Hi, guys. I\u2019m going to be notorious for that now. Like everyone\u2019s going to be like, \u201cI can\u2019t believe she doesn\u2019t have her own website.\u201d You guys are going [inaudible 00:00:53].<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re actually not our first guest that didn\u2019t have a website.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh good.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> At least until they got on the podcast. Ry Schwartz is a copywriter in the internet space, didn\u2019t have a website last year when we talked to him. He does now finally so maybe this will be the spark that gets you a website, Marcella.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Or maybe you just don\u2019t need it because you\u2019re that good.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know about that.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, I think a good place to start is we had met at our titans masterclass, Brian Kurtz\u2019s group and you were my advocate during the hot seat session and I think you were the best. I forget if we called it an advocate. Basically, you were representing my needs and you were the best one there. So I oh you big time and I\u2019m excited to dig more into how you got into copywriting and hear more about your experiences so far. So I think a good place to start is with just your story. How did you end getting into copywriting?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Well, one thing, I have to I\u2019ve a big shout out to Brian Kurtz because I have to say the reason I was a good advocate was I had trial by fire at his titans event being an advocate for 30 people that day.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I did have a bit of practice. I did have a bit of practice.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I did not know that. That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s a whole another podcast story, believe me. So really, I had two entry points into direct response copywriting and it\u2019s kind of come back around full circle which is very funny. So when I graduated from college in 1987, there were no jobs for love nor money as my mother would say because we\u2019re right in the middle of the recession and I had an English degree which was even harder to find a job. Since then, we\u2019ve kind of come around to the idea that we\u2019re sort of these nice, well-rounded humanitarian people. But back then nobody knew what do with an English degree.<\/p>\nSo my first job was actually running a book club that was called The Graphic Artists Book Club for F&W Publications in Cincinnati back in 1987 and I wrote the little blurbs, these were book clubs where you got a little bulletin each month and it would tell you about the books and you would get a book auto-shipped to you every month. Even though it was called The Graphic Artists Book Club like we had maybe one or two books on doing graphic design on your computer, this was before any of these programs existed.<\/p>\n
So I did that for maybe a year and a half and then I left direct response and I didn\u2019t come back until 15 years later. I ended up writing copy for option traders at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research. That\u2019s sort of the start of my second career. So that was about 2003. The funny thing is that right now, I work on retainer on the financial side with the Money Map which is run by a man named Mike Ward who worked with me at F&W Publications in 1987. He was the book editor.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> So it always comes all the way around, right, which I think is pretty funny.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> Yeah, never burn a bridge. You never know.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. But the way I got back into it was that in between time, I had done a lot of stuff. I had run a contemporary art gallery. I had gone back and gotten my MBA. I had worked as a venture capitalist. I had worked for a nonprofit. At one point, I had a friend of mine who was marketing consultant with Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research and he was desperately trying to find someone who understood options, sort of the math of that and the left brain side of that. Again, this was 2003 so options hadn\u2019t really become as mainstream as they are right now. Really, Schaeffer\u2019s was one of the only games in town in terms of newsletters that offered a substantial amount of options services.<\/p>\nThis friend of mine was working with them and he could not find a copywriter who could understand options and translate it into copy in a way that made sense to people. So he needed someone who really could do both left brain and right brain and I think that is one of my sort of super powers is that I tend to be good at translating complicated information into something that people can understand and so that kind of became the launching of my second career in copywriting and I\u2019ve been doing it ever since.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, would you say, maybe I already know the answer to this question, but would you say that all of those things that you did leading up to copywriting made you a better copywriter or was it just sort of a journey through all kinds of options till you found the right thing for you?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> No, I think I was really using the same skillset. I talk a lot about how … So the venture capital firm that I worked for did early stage medical investing so I would literally be sitting down with say a scientist who might even still be in the lab at a university because we were going to be the first venture capital investment and pull that idea, right, out of the university and set it up as its own company. So I was a financial analyst. I\u2019d be sitting there with him saying, \u201cOkay, so explain to me how this cancer therapy works. What are all the steps,\u201d and then I\u2019d say, \u201cWell, what do you do next?\u201d He might say something like, \u201cOh, I go put it in a centrifuge.\u201d \u201cOkay, well, we\u2019re going to need to buy one of those because you won\u2019t be able to run over to the university and use theirs, right?\u201d<\/p>\nSo like I would help him understand how this thing that he was doing turned into numbers on a page that turned into a business that could then be evaluated. So when I\u2019m working say with option traders, I\u2019m sitting down and I\u2019m asking them to explain to me say a very technical model of how they find a trade, right, \u201cWell, how do you know this is going to go up? What are you looking at?\u201d Then I\u2019m trying to take that and turn it into something that I can translate that other people can understand and buy into. So I think that ability to sort of sit down one on one with people and understand what they\u2019re doing, especially in finance, right, it might be this option trading model. On the health side, it might be having a deeper understanding of how inflammation works in the body and all the steps of that and how do I make that understandable to someone in such a way that they can grasp the advantage of the solution that I\u2019m offering.<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> Is that a skill that we can all learn as copywriters? Or some people are just more gifted with that ability to connect and translate information or is it something that we can all learn over time?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s an interesting question. When I was in my MBA program, we did this funny exercise, I\u2019ve never been able to find it since, where you answer like 70 questions to say how left or right brained you are and then it actually turned into coordinates and we had this white painter caps and markers and we drew our brains on them and could see the people who were so left brained, it looked like an arrow, right. It was so narrow, it was like all left, right? Mine was this big square on the top of my hat. I was literally almost 50% left brained and 50% right brained. So I was like, \u201cOh well, that makes sense,\u201d right, that I find a career like that.<\/p>\nBut the people who are at the extremes, right, like an incredibly talented artist, right, or a quant jock in the trading world, most people are going to fall closer to the middle, like everybody has right brain and left brain skills and you probably already know which way you skew, right? So you just have to recognize that you might need to build the other side, whether it\u2019s taking a drawing class or music lessons or like the people I know who are really good at this tend to be really well-rounded and fascinated by lots of things. David Deutsch is a musician and he loves to dance and we read fiction and he also writes copy, right? Parris plays the guitar and he\u2019s had the apprentices a couple, maybe a year ago, he told me they were doing drawing on the right side of the brain which is a drawing book to connect to that part of your brain that observes and notices things.<\/p>\n
So I think anyone can get better at it and I do think that as a copywriter especially in an area that\u2019s heavy information driven like health and finance, right, to the highest paying, right, you really have to have that flexibility. So I think you just have to know which way you tend and build up the other side a little bit maybe.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, after you got that first project, writing about options, options trading, how did that then turn into a career as a writer? How did you get the next project or how did your career develop from there?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yeah, so a couple of things happened kind of simultaneously. So I had no idea, right, back then we didn\u2019t have courses in schools and gurus really. That had just barely began, right? AWAI had just started out, American Writers & Artists, Inc. so AWAI Online. Okay, so they had just started out with their sort of here\u2019s how to write direct response copy programs and courses. I didn\u2019t know about them. But in the beginning when they were marketing because they were co-owned with some folks who had connections to Agora to the financial newsletter world, right, they had been sending their promotion to some of the financial lists and lo and behold, it had been doing well because I think a lot of people think of this as a second career and it\u2019s kind of interesting. If you\u2019re a financial person, writing for financial newsletters would be curious to you.<\/p>\nSo I\u2019m at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research one day, I\u2019ve been hounding my boss saying, \u201cSurely there is some sort of system for doing this.\u201d Like I\u2019m just making this up, right, as I go along. I\u2019m like, \u201cSurely there\u2019s some books, there\u2019s something that would help me here, right?\u201d He comes in, Kevin Addington is his name. He\u2019s actually now with St. Jude Cancer Research. He\u2019s funny as heck. He comes in, he\u2019s like, \u201cHey, Marcella, is this what you\u2019ve been talking about?\u201d And he hands me a promotion that AWAI had sent to Schaeffer\u2019s asking for permission to rent our list and it\u2019s about this bootcamp they\u2019re having and all these courses they\u2019re going to have and all these speakers and I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, for the love of … Yes, that\u2019s what I needed.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYou\u2019re sending me. Put this in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out that that was a intensive little bootcamp with Boardroom which is now Bottomline. Bernie Schaeffer had always admired Boardroom and they had Bottomline Personal, Bottomline Health. They have more personal finance, right, they didn\u2019t have any option trading programs. So it wasn\u2019t like a competitor and he\u2019s always admired them and he said, \u201cYeah, I would be willing to send you.\u201d So I go to this conference and David Deutsch is speaking there and along with a lot other people, Laurie Haller, Monica Day, all these folks that I\u2019ve working with for a long time.<\/p>\n
So David is talking the writing and Laurie is talking about the design and Brian Kurtz is there. I get to know everybody there. What happens is while we\u2019re there, we\u2019re told we have to write sort of a headline, headline and lead for a new book. I think it was their annual, their health annual. So I\u2019m like, \u201cAll right. I\u2019m game, right, I\u2019ll try that. They\u2019re kind of showing us how to do it and I\u2019m practicing and then at the end, on the very last day, Marty came in, Marty Edelston, the founder of Boardroom. We all put them up on a presentation and Marty made comments on them. He pointed to different ones and said what he thought about it.<\/p>\n
So they put mine up and Brian said, \u201cOh, this is really good. You know and Marty really liked it,\u201d and Marty says to Brian, \u201cWho wrote it?\u201d Before Brian can answer, Marty says, \u201cA man or a woman?\u201d I\u2019m looking at this headline and there\u2019s like nothing in the headline, right? The headline was something like, \u201cDid your doctor read 4,826 studies this week? If not, he might have missed the one that could have saved your life.\u201d It was about how no doctor has time to keep up with this but if you get this annual, right, you can go through and find those stuff up, okay. So Brian Kurtz says to Marty, \u201cWell, it was Marcella.\u201d Marty says in this great sort of low voice that he had after the stroke, this low grumbling voice, \u201cI think that deserves a kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Now, what would he have said if a guy had written it.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I have no idea. But Brian is looking at me like, \u201cMayday, mayday, right, what am I going to do?\u201d I said, \u201cOf course it does, right.\u201d Marty is like 80 at this point, right, and I ran over and I get to give Marty this kiss. So when Marty passed away, I wrote a note to Brian and to Marty\u2019s family and I said, \u201cYou know, I like to think that that was the kiss that turned me from a frog into a copywriting princess,\u201d because Marty\u2019s kiss began this crazy chain of events where a year later Parris Lampropoulos calls Michelle Woke at Boardroom and says, \u201cHey, I want to train a group of apprentices. I want to grow my agency. Do you know of anybody?\u201d<\/p>\nMichelle says, \u201cFunny you should ask. We did this thing with AWAI. We had a bunch of people do headlines and leads there. I can send you this woman who\u2019s lead Marty picked,\u201d then Parris gets my information from Kathy at AWAI and literally called calls me in the middle of the day at Schaffer\u2019s to say, \u201cWould you like to come and be my apprentice?\u201d At the same time, David Deutsch and I have met at that conference, had formed a friendship and I had said to him, \u201cWould you be willing to coach and train me?\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t usually do that.\u201d But I said, \u201cWell, what can I do for you? Right, what can I do for you?\u201d He said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m writing copy for the Weiland Sisters for this woman\u2019s book. If you could review it and tell me as a woman, have I … What did he say, he said, \u201cHave I offended the broads?\u201d Which cracked me up.<\/p>\n
So I did, I reviewed it and he said, in all seriousness and I adore David, he said, \u201cYou know, your copy is so terrible. This point, I don\u2019t know how to help you but you\u2019ve got amazing instincts because I find your critiques really helpful.\u201d So we just started swapping. I would critique something for him and then he would give me another lesson or tell me a book to read or help me try to get to the next step. It was pretty funny. So it all kind of came together, like all in this one moment in time. It was very serendipitous and I\u2019m very grateful, right, for all of the pieces that made that come together.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> That sounds so much like our relationship, Kira. My copy\u2019s bad, I tell you what to read. You tell me how to improve my copy.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Yeah, good to have those people. It\u2019s good to have your copy.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh God.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I had like that idea with the kiss and how that transformed your career. I think it really speaks to what you did there, the power of showing up, going to conferences. What we were speaking about before we started recording, showing up at the right places with the right people and how that can really change everything. I think that\u2019s a perfect segway into mentorship. I had wanted to ask you why mentors are so critical in the copywriting space?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> There are more and more courses now, right, and you definitely learn from courses and books and online communities and I participate in all of those. But I think what happens in a mentoring relationship is you have that one on one hands on teaching and you\u2019re actually going through a real project together step by step. There is something magical that happens in that. It\u2019s why medical students, right, don\u2019t just learn on books then they actually have to go through a residency where they\u2019re standing side by side with someone else who\u2019s showing them how to do it and teaching them how to do the thing they\u2019re trying to learn to do.<\/p>\nI think it is better now, right. Like when I first started out, if you didn\u2019t have a mentor, you had some old books. You had maybe one or two courses and that was it, right? But now, you have a lot more materials to choose from but I still feel like that intensive learning and training one on one with a mentor is so important, just so important.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> This is a hard question to answer maybe but can you point to two or three things that you learned specifically from a mentor like Parris or David that just really moved your career forward exponentially?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I\u2019ve had a lot of mentors in my life. I\u2019ve had David Deutsch, Parris Lampropoulos. I\u2019m working with Mike Ward again right now. Mark Ford, Clayton Makepeace, each one of them taught me something unique and different. I guess I\u2019m going to turn it around a little bit and if this isn\u2019t helpful for your audience, you let me know. But when I was thinking about your questions that you\u2019d kind of sent me before the call, one of the things you said to me is, \u201cYou know, how does this work?\u201d I was thinking about that each mentor offer something different, not just in he information they give you but in the style of how they do things.<\/p>\nSome of the thing things I learned from them had to do with the style of their teaching. So for example, Parris, more than anyone I know, he has studied what works. He hasn\u2019t just studied it. He has broken it down into systems, patterns, formulas, rules, right, which the left brain part of me adores because then if I\u2019m having trouble starting something, he gave me a structure, like rules like I wasn\u2019t looking at a blank page anymore, I was like, \u201cOh, if I need to start a sidebar, I go to my lesson on how to start a sidebar. If I need to write bullets, I go to my lessons on how to write bullets. If I …\u201d do you know what I mean? If I\u2019m doing a close, I know these are the six things I have to do. So Parris gave me a real structure and as the part of that is left brained loved that because then I had a process and I love having a process because then it wasn\u2019t vague, right?<\/p>\n
What David gave me were these gifts of humor and playfulness. So David was a standup comedian. David is far more right brained, like in terms of just sort of creatively riffing on things. Now, that made it very hard sometimes for him to communicate with me about what needed fixed in something and he\u2019s changed and evolved over the last 10 years that we\u2019ve been working together to just be this amazing teacher now, right? But in the beginning, he was learning how to be a mentor in some ways and I was learning how to work with him. He didn\u2019t have this really left brained structured way. He used to tease me, \u201cIs that Parris rule 486?\u201d We would crack up and laugh. He was much more about humor and playfulness so he taught me that one way to be an entertaining in copy was simple things like a double entendre or playfulness in my headlines or alliteration with words or just a little bit of humor, not like telling a one-liner but you know what I mean?<\/p>\n
That was a gift, right. So each person brought something new to the equation that allowed me to become a richer and better copywriter because now I had not just one or two tools in my toolkit, I had dozens of them, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Yeah, it does make sense. I want to ask a follow up question to that. How does a new copywriter who may not be able to afford exposure to someone like Clayton Makepeace or get on the radar of Parris, how do you find the right mentor? How do you connect with somebody who actually knows what they\u2019re doing and they\u2019re not just a charlatan selling a course trying to make a buck?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yes, I think that is a huge issue. So I say to my writers and this is a funny story, so I say to them, \u201cYou have to do your due diligence. You must qualify your mentor first. You have to do your homework. Yes, it\u2019s flattering that they are asking you but you should do the same thing.\u201d I did this on Parris. I think it surprised the heck out of him, right? Because the irony is that I didn\u2019t know who he was. I was working for an obscured little option trading firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. I didn\u2019t even know this world of these guys existed. I knew about David, right, because I\u2019d met him at this Boardroom thing but I didn\u2019t know about Parris nor did I know because no one told me, right, that Parris had called Michelle Woke and Michelle Woke had called Kathy and there\u2019s this whole connection, right.<\/p>\nSo I just get this call in the middle of the day from this guy named Parris Lampropoulos and Parris assumes that I know who he is but I don\u2019t know who he is and he starts asking me questions that would be considered illegal if you were applying for a job because what he wants to know is that I will understand the health audience because I was, at that time, I was just 40, right, so he wants to know, \u201cHave I had any chronic incurable conditions and what did I do to try to solve that?\u201d He\u2019s trying to figure out have I tried alternative, have I tried mainstream medicine, do I know what it\u2019s like to be in pain, do I know what it\u2019s like to be frustrated and not have a cure for something, right?<\/p>\n
I am like, \u201cWho are you? Any why are you asking me these questions?\u201d Oh, he wants to know how old I am of course because he wants to know do I have arthritis. Anyway, it was pretty darn funny. At the end of that call, he tells me what he\u2019s doing in this apprenticeship and I\u2019m like, \u201cCould you give me a few references that I could call? Find out like who you are and what you<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That\u2019s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re invited to join the club for episode 48 as we chat with freelance copywriter Marcella Allison about how she became a copywriter working with A list mentors like Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch and her secret for landing a steady stream of clients without a website.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, welcome.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Hi, guys. I\u2019m going to be notorious for that now. Like everyone\u2019s going to be like, \u201cI can\u2019t believe she doesn\u2019t have her own website.\u201d You guys are going [inaudible 00:00:53].<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> You\u2019re actually not our first guest that didn\u2019t have a website.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh good.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> At least until they got on the podcast. Ry Schwartz is a copywriter in the internet space, didn\u2019t have a website last year when we talked to him. He does now finally so maybe this will be the spark that gets you a website, Marcella.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Or maybe you just don\u2019t need it because you\u2019re that good.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know about that.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Marcella, I think a good place to start is we had met at our titans masterclass, Brian Kurtz\u2019s group and you were my advocate during the hot seat session and I think you were the best. I forget if we called it an advocate. Basically, you were representing my needs and you were the best one there. So I oh you big time and I\u2019m excited to dig more into how you got into copywriting and hear more about your experiences so far. So I think a good place to start is with just your story. How did you end getting into copywriting?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Well, one thing, I have to I\u2019ve a big shout out to Brian Kurtz because I have to say the reason I was a good advocate was I had trial by fire at his titans event being an advocate for 30 people that day.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I did have a bit of practice. I did have a bit of practice.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I did not know that. That makes sense.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s a whole another podcast story, believe me. So really, I had two entry points into direct response copywriting and it\u2019s kind of come back around full circle which is very funny. So when I graduated from college in 1987, there were no jobs for love nor money as my mother would say because we\u2019re right in the middle of the recession and I had an English degree which was even harder to find a job. Since then, we\u2019ve kind of come around to the idea that we\u2019re sort of these nice, well-rounded humanitarian people. But back then nobody knew what do with an English degree.<\/p>\nSo my first job was actually running a book club that was called The Graphic Artists Book Club for F&W Publications in Cincinnati back in 1987 and I wrote the little blurbs, these were book clubs where you got a little bulletin each month and it would tell you about the books and you would get a book auto-shipped to you every month. Even though it was called The Graphic Artists Book Club like we had maybe one or two books on doing graphic design on your computer, this was before any of these programs existed.<\/p>\n
So I did that for maybe a year and a half and then I left direct response and I didn\u2019t come back until 15 years later. I ended up writing copy for option traders at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research. That\u2019s sort of the start of my second career. So that was about 2003. The funny thing is that right now, I work on retainer on the financial side with the Money Map which is run by a man named Mike Ward who worked with me at F&W Publications in 1987. He was the book editor.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> So it always comes all the way around, right, which I think is pretty funny.<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> Yeah, never burn a bridge. You never know.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. But the way I got back into it was that in between time, I had done a lot of stuff. I had run a contemporary art gallery. I had gone back and gotten my MBA. I had worked as a venture capitalist. I had worked for a nonprofit. At one point, I had a friend of mine who was marketing consultant with Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research and he was desperately trying to find someone who understood options, sort of the math of that and the left brain side of that. Again, this was 2003 so options hadn\u2019t really become as mainstream as they are right now. Really, Schaeffer\u2019s was one of the only games in town in terms of newsletters that offered a substantial amount of options services.<\/p>\nThis friend of mine was working with them and he could not find a copywriter who could understand options and translate it into copy in a way that made sense to people. So he needed someone who really could do both left brain and right brain and I think that is one of my sort of super powers is that I tend to be good at translating complicated information into something that people can understand and so that kind of became the launching of my second career in copywriting and I\u2019ve been doing it ever since.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, would you say, maybe I already know the answer to this question, but would you say that all of those things that you did leading up to copywriting made you a better copywriter or was it just sort of a journey through all kinds of options till you found the right thing for you?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> No, I think I was really using the same skillset. I talk a lot about how … So the venture capital firm that I worked for did early stage medical investing so I would literally be sitting down with say a scientist who might even still be in the lab at a university because we were going to be the first venture capital investment and pull that idea, right, out of the university and set it up as its own company. So I was a financial analyst. I\u2019d be sitting there with him saying, \u201cOkay, so explain to me how this cancer therapy works. What are all the steps,\u201d and then I\u2019d say, \u201cWell, what do you do next?\u201d He might say something like, \u201cOh, I go put it in a centrifuge.\u201d \u201cOkay, well, we\u2019re going to need to buy one of those because you won\u2019t be able to run over to the university and use theirs, right?\u201d<\/p>\nSo like I would help him understand how this thing that he was doing turned into numbers on a page that turned into a business that could then be evaluated. So when I\u2019m working say with option traders, I\u2019m sitting down and I\u2019m asking them to explain to me say a very technical model of how they find a trade, right, \u201cWell, how do you know this is going to go up? What are you looking at?\u201d Then I\u2019m trying to take that and turn it into something that I can translate that other people can understand and buy into. So I think that ability to sort of sit down one on one with people and understand what they\u2019re doing, especially in finance, right, it might be this option trading model. On the health side, it might be having a deeper understanding of how inflammation works in the body and all the steps of that and how do I make that understandable to someone in such a way that they can grasp the advantage of the solution that I\u2019m offering.<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> Is that a skill that we can all learn as copywriters? Or some people are just more gifted with that ability to connect and translate information or is it something that we can all learn over time?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That\u2019s an interesting question. When I was in my MBA program, we did this funny exercise, I\u2019ve never been able to find it since, where you answer like 70 questions to say how left or right brained you are and then it actually turned into coordinates and we had this white painter caps and markers and we drew our brains on them and could see the people who were so left brained, it looked like an arrow, right. It was so narrow, it was like all left, right? Mine was this big square on the top of my hat. I was literally almost 50% left brained and 50% right brained. So I was like, \u201cOh well, that makes sense,\u201d right, that I find a career like that.<\/p>\nBut the people who are at the extremes, right, like an incredibly talented artist, right, or a quant jock in the trading world, most people are going to fall closer to the middle, like everybody has right brain and left brain skills and you probably already know which way you skew, right? So you just have to recognize that you might need to build the other side, whether it\u2019s taking a drawing class or music lessons or like the people I know who are really good at this tend to be really well-rounded and fascinated by lots of things. David Deutsch is a musician and he loves to dance and we read fiction and he also writes copy, right? Parris plays the guitar and he\u2019s had the apprentices a couple, maybe a year ago, he told me they were doing drawing on the right side of the brain which is a drawing book to connect to that part of your brain that observes and notices things.<\/p>\n
So I think anyone can get better at it and I do think that as a copywriter especially in an area that\u2019s heavy information driven like health and finance, right, to the highest paying, right, you really have to have that flexibility. So I think you just have to know which way you tend and build up the other side a little bit maybe.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, after you got that first project, writing about options, options trading, how did that then turn into a career as a writer? How did you get the next project or how did your career develop from there?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yeah, so a couple of things happened kind of simultaneously. So I had no idea, right, back then we didn\u2019t have courses in schools and gurus really. That had just barely began, right? AWAI had just started out, American Writers & Artists, Inc. so AWAI Online. Okay, so they had just started out with their sort of here\u2019s how to write direct response copy programs and courses. I didn\u2019t know about them. But in the beginning when they were marketing because they were co-owned with some folks who had connections to Agora to the financial newsletter world, right, they had been sending their promotion to some of the financial lists and lo and behold, it had been doing well because I think a lot of people think of this as a second career and it\u2019s kind of interesting. If you\u2019re a financial person, writing for financial newsletters would be curious to you.<\/p>\nSo I\u2019m at Schaeffer\u2019s Investment Research one day, I\u2019ve been hounding my boss saying, \u201cSurely there is some sort of system for doing this.\u201d Like I\u2019m just making this up, right, as I go along. I\u2019m like, \u201cSurely there\u2019s some books, there\u2019s something that would help me here, right?\u201d He comes in, Kevin Addington is his name. He\u2019s actually now with St. Jude Cancer Research. He\u2019s funny as heck. He comes in, he\u2019s like, \u201cHey, Marcella, is this what you\u2019ve been talking about?\u201d And he hands me a promotion that AWAI had sent to Schaeffer\u2019s asking for permission to rent our list and it\u2019s about this bootcamp they\u2019re having and all these courses they\u2019re going to have and all these speakers and I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, for the love of … Yes, that\u2019s what I needed.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYou\u2019re sending me. Put this in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out that that was a intensive little bootcamp with Boardroom which is now Bottomline. Bernie Schaeffer had always admired Boardroom and they had Bottomline Personal, Bottomline Health. They have more personal finance, right, they didn\u2019t have any option trading programs. So it wasn\u2019t like a competitor and he\u2019s always admired them and he said, \u201cYeah, I would be willing to send you.\u201d So I go to this conference and David Deutsch is speaking there and along with a lot other people, Laurie Haller, Monica Day, all these folks that I\u2019ve working with for a long time.<\/p>\n
So David is talking the writing and Laurie is talking about the design and Brian Kurtz is there. I get to know everybody there. What happens is while we\u2019re there, we\u2019re told we have to write sort of a headline, headline and lead for a new book. I think it was their annual, their health annual. So I\u2019m like, \u201cAll right. I\u2019m game, right, I\u2019ll try that. They\u2019re kind of showing us how to do it and I\u2019m practicing and then at the end, on the very last day, Marty came in, Marty Edelston, the founder of Boardroom. We all put them up on a presentation and Marty made comments on them. He pointed to different ones and said what he thought about it.<\/p>\n
So they put mine up and Brian said, \u201cOh, this is really good. You know and Marty really liked it,\u201d and Marty says to Brian, \u201cWho wrote it?\u201d Before Brian can answer, Marty says, \u201cA man or a woman?\u201d I\u2019m looking at this headline and there\u2019s like nothing in the headline, right? The headline was something like, \u201cDid your doctor read 4,826 studies this week? If not, he might have missed the one that could have saved your life.\u201d It was about how no doctor has time to keep up with this but if you get this annual, right, you can go through and find those stuff up, okay. So Brian Kurtz says to Marty, \u201cWell, it was Marcella.\u201d Marty says in this great sort of low voice that he had after the stroke, this low grumbling voice, \u201cI think that deserves a kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Now, what would he have said if a guy had written it.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I have no idea. But Brian is looking at me like, \u201cMayday, mayday, right, what am I going to do?\u201d I said, \u201cOf course it does, right.\u201d Marty is like 80 at this point, right, and I ran over and I get to give Marty this kiss. So when Marty passed away, I wrote a note to Brian and to Marty\u2019s family and I said, \u201cYou know, I like to think that that was the kiss that turned me from a frog into a copywriting princess,\u201d because Marty\u2019s kiss began this crazy chain of events where a year later Parris Lampropoulos calls Michelle Woke at Boardroom and says, \u201cHey, I want to train a group of apprentices. I want to grow my agency. Do you know of anybody?\u201d<\/p>\nMichelle says, \u201cFunny you should ask. We did this thing with AWAI. We had a bunch of people do headlines and leads there. I can send you this woman who\u2019s lead Marty picked,\u201d then Parris gets my information from Kathy at AWAI and literally called calls me in the middle of the day at Schaffer\u2019s to say, \u201cWould you like to come and be my apprentice?\u201d At the same time, David Deutsch and I have met at that conference, had formed a friendship and I had said to him, \u201cWould you be willing to coach and train me?\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t usually do that.\u201d But I said, \u201cWell, what can I do for you? Right, what can I do for you?\u201d He said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m writing copy for the Weiland Sisters for this woman\u2019s book. If you could review it and tell me as a woman, have I … What did he say, he said, \u201cHave I offended the broads?\u201d Which cracked me up.<\/p>\n
So I did, I reviewed it and he said, in all seriousness and I adore David, he said, \u201cYou know, your copy is so terrible. This point, I don\u2019t know how to help you but you\u2019ve got amazing instincts because I find your critiques really helpful.\u201d So we just started swapping. I would critique something for him and then he would give me another lesson or tell me a book to read or help me try to get to the next step. It was pretty funny. So it all kind of came together, like all in this one moment in time. It was very serendipitous and I\u2019m very grateful, right, for all of the pieces that made that come together.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> That sounds so much like our relationship, Kira. My copy\u2019s bad, I tell you what to read. You tell me how to improve my copy.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Yeah, good to have those people. It\u2019s good to have your copy.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Oh God.<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> I had like that idea with the kiss and how that transformed your career. I think it really speaks to what you did there, the power of showing up, going to conferences. What we were speaking about before we started recording, showing up at the right places with the right people and how that can really change everything. I think that\u2019s a perfect segway into mentorship. I had wanted to ask you why mentors are so critical in the copywriting space?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> There are more and more courses now, right, and you definitely learn from courses and books and online communities and I participate in all of those. But I think what happens in a mentoring relationship is you have that one on one hands on teaching and you\u2019re actually going through a real project together step by step. There is something magical that happens in that. It\u2019s why medical students, right, don\u2019t just learn on books then they actually have to go through a residency where they\u2019re standing side by side with someone else who\u2019s showing them how to do it and teaching them how to do the thing they\u2019re trying to learn to do.<\/p>\nI think it is better now, right. Like when I first started out, if you didn\u2019t have a mentor, you had some old books. You had maybe one or two courses and that was it, right? But now, you have a lot more materials to choose from but I still feel like that intensive learning and training one on one with a mentor is so important, just so important.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> This is a hard question to answer maybe but can you point to two or three things that you learned specifically from a mentor like Parris or David that just really moved your career forward exponentially?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> I\u2019ve had a lot of mentors in my life. I\u2019ve had David Deutsch, Parris Lampropoulos. I\u2019m working with Mike Ward again right now. Mark Ford, Clayton Makepeace, each one of them taught me something unique and different. I guess I\u2019m going to turn it around a little bit and if this isn\u2019t helpful for your audience, you let me know. But when I was thinking about your questions that you\u2019d kind of sent me before the call, one of the things you said to me is, \u201cYou know, how does this work?\u201d I was thinking about that each mentor offer something different, not just in he information they give you but in the style of how they do things.<\/p>\nSome of the thing things I learned from them had to do with the style of their teaching. So for example, Parris, more than anyone I know, he has studied what works. He hasn\u2019t just studied it. He has broken it down into systems, patterns, formulas, rules, right, which the left brain part of me adores because then if I\u2019m having trouble starting something, he gave me a structure, like rules like I wasn\u2019t looking at a blank page anymore, I was like, \u201cOh, if I need to start a sidebar, I go to my lesson on how to start a sidebar. If I need to write bullets, I go to my lessons on how to write bullets. If I …\u201d do you know what I mean? If I\u2019m doing a close, I know these are the six things I have to do. So Parris gave me a real structure and as the part of that is left brained loved that because then I had a process and I love having a process because then it wasn\u2019t vague, right?<\/p>\n
What David gave me were these gifts of humor and playfulness. So David was a standup comedian. David is far more right brained, like in terms of just sort of creatively riffing on things. Now, that made it very hard sometimes for him to communicate with me about what needed fixed in something and he\u2019s changed and evolved over the last 10 years that we\u2019ve been working together to just be this amazing teacher now, right? But in the beginning, he was learning how to be a mentor in some ways and I was learning how to work with him. He didn\u2019t have this really left brained structured way. He used to tease me, \u201cIs that Parris rule 486?\u201d We would crack up and laugh. He was much more about humor and playfulness so he taught me that one way to be an entertaining in copy was simple things like a double entendre or playfulness in my headlines or alliteration with words or just a little bit of humor, not like telling a one-liner but you know what I mean?<\/p>\n
That was a gift, right. So each person brought something new to the equation that allowed me to become a richer and better copywriter because now I had not just one or two tools in my toolkit, I had dozens of them, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Yeah, it does make sense. I want to ask a follow up question to that. How does a new copywriter who may not be able to afford exposure to someone like Clayton Makepeace or get on the radar of Parris, how do you find the right mentor? How do you connect with somebody who actually knows what they\u2019re doing and they\u2019re not just a charlatan selling a course trying to make a buck?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Yes, I think that is a huge issue. So I say to my writers and this is a funny story, so I say to them, \u201cYou have to do your due diligence. You must qualify your mentor first. You have to do your homework. Yes, it\u2019s flattering that they are asking you but you should do the same thing.\u201d I did this on Parris. I think it surprised the heck out of him, right? Because the irony is that I didn\u2019t know who he was. I was working for an obscured little option trading firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. I didn\u2019t even know this world of these guys existed. I knew about David, right, because I\u2019d met him at this Boardroom thing but I didn\u2019t know about Parris nor did I know because no one told me, right, that Parris had called Michelle Woke and Michelle Woke had called Kathy and there\u2019s this whole connection, right.<\/p>\nSo I just get this call in the middle of the day from this guy named Parris Lampropoulos and Parris assumes that I know who he is but I don\u2019t know who he is and he starts asking me questions that would be considered illegal if you were applying for a job because what he wants to know is that I will understand the health audience because I was, at that time, I was just 40, right, so he wants to know, \u201cHave I had any chronic incurable conditions and what did I do to try to solve that?\u201d He\u2019s trying to figure out have I tried alternative, have I tried mainstream medicine, do I know what it\u2019s like to be in pain, do I know what it\u2019s like to be frustrated and not have a cure for something, right?<\/p>\n
I am like, \u201cWho are you? Any why are you asking me these questions?\u201d Oh, he wants to know how old I am of course because he wants to know do I have arthritis. Anyway, it was pretty darn funny. At the end of that call, he tells me what he\u2019s doing in this apprenticeship and I\u2019m like, \u201cCould you give me a few references that I could call? Find out like who you are and what you’re like.\u201d Oh my God. People now are like, \u201cYou didn\u2019t.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah, I did. I\u2019m like you know.\u201d I say to people, \u201cYou know, do your homework.\u201d I did. I called every number that Parris gave and asked them about him. If someone says to you, \u201cHey, I\u2019m starting this business. We\u2019ll have a whole team of copywriters and I\u2019ll train you,\u201d find out. Have they written copy before? Do they have a great reputation for leading copy teams? Even if they don\u2019t write copy, do they have a great reputation as a chief of good copy?\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a couple of ways to find a mentor. So I started out as an in-house copywriter. There\u2019s a lot of people like Ray Robinson is now with Stansberry and I\u2019m working with Mike Ward at the Money Map. Clayton has apprentices like Chris Allsop works with Clayton. So there are ways in which you can go to the company that that mentor is the head of or the copy chief of, right? So if you work with Parris, then you write for Advanced Bionutritionals. You can join a copy team with an amazing mentor or copy chief who leads that team. If you can\u2019t do that, then you can take those courses, right? Again, do your homework. So Clayton Makepeace has a whole bunch of courses and a mastermind program that he offers through AWAI. John Carlton has this simple copywriting system that is amazing. Kevin Rogers has RLF.<\/p>\n
You can find the courses that are connected to the people who have the reputation, who have they written for, have they proven themselves in the market and then there are this whole other area that\u2019s developing like people who train you to write in the ask method or people who\u2019d train you to write for product launch formula, right, that\u2019s a whole another area. So it\u2019s kind of a combination of what area do you want to write in, who\u2019s the best mentor in that area or who has the reputation for being the best copywriter in that space, are they hiring, right, can you go to work for a company where you\u2019ll at least get them chiefing you which is how I started with Mark Ford, I started writing for Early To Rise and that was how I had Mark Ford chiefing my copy and I did that deliberately. I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, if I write for Early To Rise, then Mark Ford chiefs your copy. Done. I\u2019ll write for Early To Rise.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the beginning, I wrote for far less but I would say to people, \u201cI\u2019m willing to do this for dirt cheap but I want your promise that this guru is reading my copy, not someone else. Like if he\u2019ll promise to critique it and give me feedback on it, then I\u2019ll do this for you at that rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kira:<\/strong> Incredible. So once you have the mentor or mentors, how can you take the feedback and criticism? How do you work with that so that you\u2019re actually improving? Because it\u2019s like there\u2019s an art to that as well.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> There absolutely is. I have two ideas around that. The first is what I said at the beginning which is understand what type of teacher you ware working with and adjust accordingly. So that\u2019s like the first thing I learned is, \u201cOkay, if I work with Parris, the man has spent decades breaking this down, studying it, creating processes and structure. Use the structure, right?\u201d So anything I give to him is in his structure following the things that he\u2019s taught me. Now what I learned with David is for us to get to the same outcome, I would have to give him, it was almost like the spaghetti at the wall, right, \u201cHow about this? How about this? How about this? How about this? How about this?\u201d He would say, \u201cNo, that\u2019s not it. Well, that\u2019s closer. Well, maybe this.\u201d<\/p>\nHe couldn\u2019t say we\u2019re driving to Chicago, right. Parris says, \u201cWe\u2019re driving to Chicago. Here\u2019s the map. Get in the car. Go to Chicago. I know I\u2019m going to Chicago. Now, trust me, there\u2019s a whole lot of stuff that happens on the way to Chicago that takes a ton of effort, right? But sometimes David\u2019s like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know.\u201d David\u2019s very, his mind is very open so he\u2019s the kind of person who hates to close down possibilities. With him, he\u2019d be like, \u201cWell, we can go to Chicago or we could go to New York or I heard Baton Rouge is really cool. Have you ever been to Hawaii? Maybe we should go to Hawaii, right?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cAh.\u201d Right? Because I got to get the car to some destination.<\/p>\n
So we had a process that evolved off staying open for maybe longer than I would with someone else, throwing a bunch of stuff out, almost we used to say that we would argue like this Jewish married couple. He\u2019d say, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t like that idea.\u201d \u201cWhy not? I like this.\u201d \u201cWell not that and like this.\u201d We would come to answer, right, together. So you have to understand the teacher and the style and adjust accordingly. The second thing you have to understand is when you are an apprentice, you are writing in their voice. You are not writing in your voice. You are not writing like Stephen King. You are writing in the voice of the person that you are apprenticing under. It\u2019s not that you\u2019re a parrot but it\u2019s that you are in that voice.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no different than you\u2019re writing in the voice of a guru, right, because you\u2019d … I don\u2019t sign my promotions. They\u2019re all signed by the guru, right? So you are writing in the voice and you have to understand that. I didn\u2019t try to write like somebody else when I was working with Parris. My goal was to write in Parris\u2019 style so I hand copied Parris\u2019 promotions. I read all of Parris\u2019 promotions. I studied what he was doing and I wrote in that voice. So the first thing you have to understand is you are writing in the style of the mentor that you are working with.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, trying to study 15 other mentors at the same time can actually confuse you, right? You can do that to add in or learn new things but you have to remember, your primary voice needs to be the voice of the guru that you are working with. As I said, you need to understand their styles. So arguing is a really difficult thing, right? What I see many apprentices do in the beginning is they want to argue every point. Well, that is exhausting for the person who is mentoring you and in many ways it\u2019s not respectful of the fact that they have 20 years in this career on you. So at a certain point, you just need to shut up and listen. I mean, it\u2019s true, right? You just need to listen and learn and assume that they are correct.<\/p>\n
Now that said, as David and I evolved and we\u2019ve been working together for a long time and I was catching on to things, I learned that sometimes it wasn\u2019t that the thing I was proposing was boring, it\u2019s that I hadn\u2019t said it in an interesting way. So I finally learned, and this was not my first day working with him, right, after many years of working with him, I learned that if I had this real gut excitement over some topic, that I just felt was so cool, so my radar my going off again because I developed it over years of writing for alternative health, I would say to … He\u2019d say, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good idea.\u201d I would say, \u201cNo, it really is.\u201d I would get all worked up and I would make my case and it was famous.<\/p>\n
He would do this every time. We get to the end of the … It would be this pause and he\u2019d say, \u201cWell, when you say it that way, it\u2019s interesting.\u201d Then we would capture whatever that phrase is. But in the beginning, arguing every point with him and why you know more than them, why did you want to work with a mentor in the place if you thought you knew everything? Then go do it by yourself. The final thing I\u2019ll say is ego, it is so hard for people to get out of their own ego and to understand that this is not about you, it\u2019s about actually getting the best piece of copy for the client in front of the customer such that everyone makes the most amount of money. Or that you heal the most amount of people or help the most amount of people save their retirement.<\/p>\n
I see that ego come out in ways that we talk about a lot. So one way is that people get so attached to their words that they refuse to change them. They fall in love with their own copy, even though there is a better way or a better idea like you have to be zen like about this. You have to just stay open and curious that there could always be just one more better solution or one more tweak or a change or a different way of looking at it because the more locked in you are to those words, the less likely you are to actually find the best solution.<\/p>\n
You got to pull yourself away and I told this story the other day, the best lesson I ever had in ego actually came from David Deutsch. This was after we had worked together, I don\u2019t know, maybe almost 10 years at this point, done I don\u2019t know, 10, 12, 15 projects for Boardroom, Bottomline. I get this call at the middle of the afternoon and it\u2019s David. David used to do this thing to me, I\u2019d pick up the phone and it\u2019d be like, \u201cJoe\u2019s Pizza. Pepperonis at the door.\u201d I\u2019d be like, \u201cWhat?\u201d I\u2019d go, \u201cWrong number,\u201d and I\u2019d hang up and then I\u2019d look and I go, \u201cBlast it,\u201d and I call him back and David would just be cracking up. He\u2019d say, \u201cGod, you\u2019re so easy. I can get you every time.<\/p>\n
So I can\u2019t remember if it was like the Indian restaurant or the pizza delivery so he gets me. I call him back. I\u2019m cracking up. I\u2019m like, \u201cI hate you,\u201d and he\u2019s laughing. Then he says, \u201cHey, I\u2019m calling you because Michelle Woke at Boardroom called me and I just finished this package. I turned it in and she said it\u2019s a little flat, it\u2019s kind of boring and she suggested that I call you and get some ideas for how we might rework these sidebars.\u201d He\u2019s going on and on. He\u2019s still talk, he\u2019s still talking and I say, \u201cShut up.\u201d He goes, \u201cWhat?\u201d I said, \u201cShut up for a minute. You just gave me the best lesson on ego and copywriting I have ever had in my life and I just want to take a moment to appreciate you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s like, \u201cWhat?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m your Cobb. I\u2019m your mentee, right? Like you\u2019ve been training me for 10 years. I write for Boardroom. You write for Boardroom and you are calling me with no ego to say, \u2018Hey, Michelle said this package that I turned in was a little flat. Do you have any ideas?\u2019 I\u2019m like I don\u2019t even know if I could do that, like would I be able to do that to someone I was teaching?\u201d Say, \u201cHey, my client that I taught you to write for just said that maybe I should call you and I said to him, this is like unbelievable.\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t care. I just want to make royalties, right?\u201d She didn\u2019t think it\u2019s … But he had no ego and he had been in this industry for well over 20 years. He\u2019s like the top 1\/10 of 1% and he had no ego and I just said, \u201cThat is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is why he is in the top 1\/10 of 1%. That is why. So when I see somebody who hasn\u2019t even been writing six months and wants to argue with someone like David or Parris or whoever about how they actually know more about something, I think you cannot, you cannot get attached to this. The copy is just the copy. It is not you. It is something that you created but it is not you. It is not your child. This is not your baby. It is just copy that needs to go out in the world and do this bigger thing but that can\u2019t happen if your ego is so big it\u2019s in the way of it going out in the world and doing that bigger thing.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Marcella, I can think of a few people who might be listening to the podcast thinking, \u201cWell, obviously Marcella\u2019s career track is maybe one of a kind. She had all these early exposure to these great writers.\u201d If somebody were trying to break in to direct response writing today, they want to write a control for Agora or Boardroom or one of these other great places that hire these kinds of writers. What would they do to break in and get noticed?<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> Absolutely. Okay, so the first thing is, look, you don\u2019t have to decide that you\u2019re going write in this area for the rest of your life, right, but this is a huge broad market. So pick your beginning space, right? It kind of helps if it\u2019s sort of tied to something you\u2019ve been doing, right? Doesn\u2019t have to be but it could, right? So let\u2019s say you\u2019ve always had an interest in the stock market. Maybe you inherited some money from your mom and put it into whatever and you decide, \u201cI really think I want to write for the financial newsletter market.\u201d So again, you\u2019re like, \u201cWho are the biggest players in the financial newsletter market and where are the best mentors?\u201d Jedd Canty and Mike Ward are at the Money Map where I am now, they are amazing, right? Or you\u2019ve Mike Palmer at Stansberry.<\/p>\nSo you find who\u2019s the best in that field, who has the best sort of marketer, copywriter guru at the helm, right. I\u2019m not talking about the person who\u2019s trading now. I\u2019m talking about the person who\u2019s leading that organization. Then you subscribe to absolutely everything you can for free. Because as soon as you\u2019re on their free daily email list, you\u2019re going to get every single promotion that they put out. The once that you\u2019re getting emailed five and six times a day for the course of three or four weeks, I can guarantee you those are controls. Then you\u2019re going to print those out and you\u2019re going to sit down and you\u2019re going to study them.<\/p>\n
Think of what, do you remember how people used to learn how to paint, right? You would go to the Louvre or the MET and you would see students with their easels sitting down, copying the Mona Lisa in charcoal or whatever they\u2019ve been assigned to do. You\u2019re going to find the company, find the division, find that person that you want to follow. You\u2019re going to print everything out. You are going to study it. You\u2019re going to hand copy it. You have to do everything you can to prepare yourself and then there\u2019s a lot of interesting things you can do like when you think about the fact of how many lift letters we need for one of those massive promotions or videos, you could offer up like write 10 of them for free and send them.<\/p>\n
You can go to say AWAI\u2019s job fair and complete their spec assignment because almost all of them will have one there. You can go to any other conference where that person is speaking or attending like Parris\u2019 is talking Kevin Rogers\u2019 even, okay, well you can go there and you can come armed with this understanding of everything they\u2019ve written and what they\u2019re working on so that you can communicate to them intelligently. So you have to be deliberate. But what I see people do is just go up to somebody like, I don\u2019t know, a Clayton Makepeace and go, \u201cSir, are you guys hiring anybody?\u201d I just want to smack them up side the head, right. I\u2019m like, \u201cThat is not how you do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
You almost become a stalker, right? Pick your area first, just pick one thing to start with, one thing you\u2019re interested in. It helps if you\u2019re really jazzed about it and you really love it. Then go study everything that they do. We had a lovely woman from Hay House pop into the Titanides the other day. They\u2019re looking for writers, right? Okay, so if you adore self help books and you have 486 of them on your shelf and you\u2019ve read all of Louise Hay\u2019s books, well, that\u2019s a great place to start. Now start looking on their promotions. Study their website. Read all their copy. Get on their list so you\u2019re emailed. Try your hand at a few small simple pieces of copy and send it to them and say, \u201cThis is who I am. I\u2019m a copywriter. I love your work. Here\u2019s five things I\u2019ve done.\u201d I\u2019m not saying it will work every time but I\u2019m saying it will increase your odds because now you\u2019re learning their voice and find out if they hire copywriters. Do they work with freelancers? Are they interested in looking for new writers?<\/p>\n
I will tell you, I get calls daily. They are always looking for new writers and they\u2019re especially looking for new writers who already know and understand their voice. Take their copy and reverse engineer it. What are they doing? Oh, it looks like they have the short little intro here. It\u2019s kind of a get to know you, three paragraphs then it looks like they got a benefit then it looks like … You can turn that almost into a formula, right, if you\u2019re looking at what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
Rob:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> That means you are ready and I do believe that these opportunities still exists. I don\u2019t believe that things have changed and I don\u2019t believe that I was a one-hit wonder. I did this exact same thing, right? I did a lot of stuff for free. I just reviewed David\u2019s copy for a year before I was actually at the point where he could even look at a headline and give me some tips. I mean, it was awful. He didn\u2019t even know what to say. He was like, \u201cHere\u2019s three more books to read,\u201d right? It was exactly what I needed. But I didn\u2019t tell him he was an idiot and he didn\u2019t understand my copy. I went and read the three books and started hand copying his promotions and learnings. I think in any area today those opportunities exist. I think you do have to do your due diligence before you decide you\u2019re going to jump on board with someone because don\u2019t you want to learn from the best, right? You want to learn from the best.<\/p>\nAt the same time, you can still take assignments for a smaller player because that\u2019s how you get your writing chops. The only you get better at writing is to write. That\u2019s the secret. You want to get better, write, right? It\u2019s not like rocket science. I like to say to people that working for Schaffer\u2019s in the beginning of my career was a blessing because it was the wild west of the internet. People were so excited when they got an email message. They would read a message from your dry cleaners, right. Anything that came in your inbox was exciting because you got about three a day. So option traders were really early on to adapt this technology because they were already online because you had to be online to trade options and they were, either they were just a little bit more early adapters in terms of technology.<\/p>\n
Okay, so literally, I would get an assignment on Monday and that email usually went out by Wednesday. It was like maybe seven to 10 pages and it would be about a particular strategy or something Bernie was seeing in the market but it was selling, right? One of our specific services, right, so here\u2019s, I don\u2019t know, earnings tips or whatever it was. So literally, I wrote two promotional emails a week, day in and day out, sometimes there were more because sometimes we wanted a special offer or one on the weekend. I just wrote nonstop for about two years. Just start writing for anybody and everybody and at the same time, set your compass for that mentor that you really want and start working towards them.<\/p>\n
The first thing Parris said to me, \u201cWell, send me what you\u2019ve done.\u201d I said, \u201cWell dude, I\u2019ve done nothing in health but I got about 4,000 quick and dirty hot copy for option traders. You want to see that?\u201d Right? Parris was like, \u201cOkay, send it to me.\u201d He said to me, this was interesting because I said to him once years later, \u201cMy God, what did you think about that crazy stuff I was writing.\u201d He goes, \u201cI ran it through that language measruing thing and you were the only one who was consistently writing at that point in no more than 7th<\/sup> grade. You naturally got the you had to keep it simple and short and yet you were writing about a very complicated thing but you had managed to do it at a 7th<\/sup> grade level and that\u2019s what convinced me you could do this.\u201d<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> Oh, I\u2026<\/p>\nMarcella:<\/strong> You never know, right, how well those dots connect. You just [inaudible 00:41:57].<\/p>\nKira:<\/strong> No, you don\u2019t. But I think it comes down to what you\u2019ve said. It\u2019s the self awareness to know where you are, what you need at that time, being really honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses and then doing the work, doing your homework. I mean, everything you\u2019ve described, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh yeah, but that … Oh, that takes time. That takes effort. That takes research.\u201d But that\u2019s what you need to do in order to make these connections and just being humble and open. I think these are just really great reminders. I wanted to ask you a lot of other questions but I just realized we\u2019re already at the hour. So I think we could wrap by asking you what you\u2019re working on now, where we can find you, what you\u2019re really excited about right now?<\/p>\nRob:<\/strong> The nonexistent website website question.<\/p>\n