Why Kris Kristofferson Failed at First

When he first tried to make it as a songwriter in Nashville, Kris Kristofferson couldn’t catch a break.

He eventually became a country music legend, but, at first, he couldn’t tame his literary side.

Kristofferson, who died on Saturday at age 88, studied English literature and graduated with honors from Pomona College. He earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford. He wrote poems and prize-winning short stories. And he nearly took a job as an English teacher at West Point.

But when it came to writing country songs, all of that literary genius added up to a whole bunch o’ nothin’ — at least at first.

In a 2003 interview the New York Times, Marijohn Wilkin, Kristofferson’s first music publisher (and his occasional songwriting collaborator) said, “He had been a poet and an English teacher, so his songs were too long and too perfect. His grammar was too perfect. He had to learn the way people talk.”

Write like people talk.

That’s great advice for songwriters. That’s great advice for marketers.

I know many “accomplished writers” who had to unlearn much of what they knew to become profitable marketers.

My seventh-grade English teacher, Clara Fieselmann, would turn in her grave if she saw my emails.

Sentence fragments? Crazy-making for Ms. Fieselmann. But that’s how we talk so you get ’em in my emails.

Anyhow, there’s a right way and a wrong way to create country songs…

…and marketing copy.

I’ve written some songs, but I ain’t expert at that.

I’ve written some marketing copy, and I’m darn good at that.

I’ve packaged everything I know in a new do-it-with-you workshop called the “7-Figure Content Blueprint.”

Last chance…

I’m closing enrollment on Thursday. No more chances after that. If you’re interested in how to create client-attracting, profit-generating content — without ever getting stuck…

…reply to this email with “What would Kris do?”

I’ll get back to you with the details.