Good Examples

Yesterday, I was scheduled to have a minor repair on my car. The driver’s side sun visor needed to be replaced because the mirror was cracked. Once upon a time, that would have meant a 20-minute drive to the dealership – over traffic-clogged highways, through a driving rainstorm.   I would have stood in line…

Back in the 1980s, copywriting legend Gary Halbert once claimed: “More people read any single issue of The (National) Enquirer than have read The Bible since it was first printed!” (Zoinks!) Halbert did not share the “sickening statistic” (his words) to bash The Bible.  He was heaping praise on The Enquirer whose writers were, according to Halbert, “among the best…

Before he stood out as one of the world’s great copywriters, Gary Bencivenga was stuck. So he enrolled in a course called “Overcoming Writer’s Block.” Turns out the course was a bust. The instructor “didn’t have a clue how to cure this problem.” And his classmates turned each day’s class into a whine-and-moan session. Lots…

A few months ago, my friend Nora called to tell me about the new client she landed. He called me “out of the blue,” she said. “We met the next week, and he signed a contract that day.”  The quickest, easiest sale ever, right!? Well, here’s the thing… That “out of the blue” client was…

A few years ago I got an email that claimed to be from my friend Mark. It said, “Hope you are doing well? It takes me great pain to write this email to you and I feel so devastated. My family and I had a trip visiting Manila,(Philippines) unannounced some days back for a short…