Gary Halbert · whole document (72)
2005 - 09-15-05
Or, maybe he
will be stupid about customer service and making refunds and
get closed down by an alphabet agency before he really gets
the project going.
Most likely, however, your client will
suffer from a built-in mental barrier which makes him very
uncomfortable if he happens to be taking in large amounts of
money.
Of all the times you get screwed by clients from
simple theft... you will get screwed 50 times as often... by
people who don't have the brains, the balls or the skills to
properly exploit the money-making possibilities of the
advertising you have given them.
Think about this: Years ago, Ray Kroc walked into a restaurant
called "McDonald's" in a small city in California. He was
impressed with the cleanliness of the restaurant and the
efficiency of how it was run. The guys who owned it (I think
they were two brothers named McDonald) were happy to sell
him the rights to franchise their restaurant operation. Of course, the rest is history. There are now McDonald's
restaurants in every civilized corner of the world and they
sell billions of burgers every day.
Get this:
Often the client to whom you are giving your
precious advertising copy is going to be more like one of
those McDonald brothers... than... he or she is going to be more
like Ray Kroc.
Let's say you decide not to write
for clients and only write for yourself. There are a few
people like Joe Sugarman, Ben Suarez, Ted Thomas and a
handful of others
who have done this very successfully. But, they are very
much the exception. Here's the way it most often
(99.999% of the time) it happens: You write a killer piece
which is very profitable and has a very high ROI. You want to keep all the money generated by this piece
for yourself. So, you decide to start and operate your own
business to exploit your own copywriting ability. My friend,
you have no idea what lies in store for you. If you haven't
tried to do this already...
You Don't Have A Clue
Of The Obstacles You Are
Going To Have To Overcome!
First of all, you're not going to have time
to write any more copy for any more projects. Nope.
Someone's going to have to man the phones to take the
orders. Your time will be spent either taking those orders
yourself or supervising your employees or keeping a close on
the telephone answering service you might hire.