I ignored my coach's advice — here's why

'm working with a new client in the "spiritual space" — think manifesting and all that good stuff.

When I write copy for her, I use a lot of complex, head-in-the-clouds-y type language... because that's what you do with spiritual copy.

I sent some copy I wrote to my coach for review. He told me that the Fliesh-Kincaid score was too high, which basically meant that the writing was too complex. He wanted me to rewrite it at a 3rd grade reading level.

I see where he's coming from. The famous rule of thumb in direct response copy is that you want your writing to be simple. That way people can read it.

But there are exceptions to that rule of thumb. 

For example, imagine if you were reading an advertisement for the New Yorker and it was written at a third grade reading level. Wouldn't that seem off-brand?

I think my new client is one of those exceptions. If I wrote 3rd grade level copy for her, it wouldn't sound like her, and her audience would know that something was up. 

Spiritual copy needs to sound a little head in the clouds-y, which you can't do writing at a third grade level!

So I did something I don't normally do: I ignored my coach's advice and kept the copy complex.

(Well, at least that part of the advice. He had tons of other great suggestions which I followed.)

2 lessons from this email. First, there are exceptions to every rule, especially in something as complex as marketing.

I hate it when people mindlessly follow best practices because "that's the way things are done". It's good to default to the best practices, but there's tons of nuance in everything, especially marketing. So if you have a good reason to not follow best practices, don't follow best practices!

And second, you don't want to sacrifice your brand just to sound more direct response-y. If your emails are too direct-response-y and they don't sound like you, it'll hurt the relationship you have with your email list, and it'll hurt your sales numbers in the long run. (And probably the short run too.)

-Theo

10 euros, 10 minutes

I walked by a store in Paris where you can buy glasses. It promised you could get glasses for "10 euros, 10 minutes".

A couple weeks later my glasses broke. 

Can you guess where I went to get new glasses?

Alex Hormozi would be proud of this glasses store, because "10 euros, 10 minutes" is a great offer. 3 reasons why:

1. It makes it super obvious what you're getting. "10 euros, 10 minutes" communicates a ton of value and differentiates you from other glasses stores in just 4 words. It also answers people's questions about glasses without them having to ask. (That's important because most people with questions won't go in and ask them.)

2. 10 minutes is really fast. One of my copy mentors Ning Li says that offers should feel like a "magic button": they should feel fast and easy. You want to get as close as possible to your customer just pressing a button and instantly getting what they want.

Normally getting glasses requires a 30 minute eye examination. But I was in and out of this store in 10 minutes. (They had some fancy technology that made the eye exam unnecessary.)

3. 10 euros is really cheap. I paid way more for an eye exam last year in Istanbul. (The actual glasses cost more, of course... but it got me in the door.)

4. Bonus points: "10 euros, 10 minutes" is written the same way in French as in English. So Parisians and American tourists walking by the store both get the sales pitch in their native language.

How can you communicate the benefits of your offer in just 4 words?

I accidentally did an experiment on you

Here's the experiment I accidentally did on you last week:

The email software I use has a new feature called "SpinMax," which basically uses AI to rewrite your email over and over again.

The purpose of SpinMax is to help you avoid Spam folders when you send cold emails. Google gets mad when you send the same cold email copy over and over again, so SpinMax can help you vary it up.

I had no intention of ever using SpinMax for anything other than cold email. I planned to turn it off and forget about it.

But when I sent you last week's email, somehow I had it on.

In other words, the email you were reading was an AI version of what I originally said.

I caught this mistake before all the emails went out, and I could have stopped it. 

But instead I said "let's just go with this and see what happens".

Why? Because I believe that doing random weird experiments every once in a while is a good way to learn stuff. 

Sometimes you can learn something from an experiment that you can't learn from a course or a coach. You gotta just get your hands dirty and try something.

I got this idea from James Altucher, who talks about the "10,000 experiment rule". His idea is that it doesn't take 10,000 hours to get good at something — instead you just have to try stuff.

(This is how I'm teaching myself AI automation right now. I'm not taking any courses, I'm just building stuff.)

Marketing is basically an ongoing process to figure out the best way to sell stuff to your audience. Doing little experiments here and there can help you do that faster.

Next time you get a chance to do an experiment, do it!

-Theo