2005 - 05-23-05

He has never given a seminar like this
before. Never will he ever again. He deserved his turn in the
limelight and to shine in public. And boy...

Did He Ever Shine!

His seminar was only about
copywriting. It was very straight forward and revealed
exactly what you have to do to be a world-class copywriter
for the world's biggest clients. What came through to me
more than anything else, was the amount of work and
discipline involved to be such a great copywriter. On
average, it seems on each new project Gary Bencivenga would
spend (over a period of 90-days) 40% of his time doing
research, 40% of his time writing, and the remaining 20% on
"polishing" his work. As near as I can calculate, that's an
average of more than 748 hours of work on each new project.

He's retiring. I would be too. Even if I
didn't have the money, I'd be forced to retire out of sheer
exhaustion.

He and I are very different animals. He made
his reputation on ability, talent, iron-clad discipline, and
a monstrous amount of work.

On the other hand, I have concentrated more
on strategy, marketing breakthroughs and "cheap tricks"
which increase response and profits.

Yes, in the beginning, I did an enormous
amount of study. I still study marketing because it
fascinates me. But I don't study it like the crazed fiend I was at the
beginning. I used to write copy during the day, study it in
the evening, and dream about it at night.

That's a recipe for burn out. It was a
price I felt needed to be paid and I was willing to pay it.
There was no other choice. You see back then, there was no
one like ME to teach me. If back then, I would have had ME
to teach me, I could have...

Shortened That Learning Curve By 95%!

Think of it like this: Let's say there is a
bank vault with a 13-digit combination lock. That means,
there are millions of possible combinations and only one of
them will open the vault. Then, let's say I spend 10 years
trying every single combination until I hit the right one.
Then, suppose I write the correct combination on a piece of
paper and give it to you. Maybe it's 6794302187656.