Copywriters Podcast

Sometimes copy fails because it’s just not executed well enough. And also, copy that simply misses the mark — doesn’t align with the target prospects and what’s on their minds — won’t do well either. But you can have all the fundamentals in place and done well, and sales can still fail to happen. Why? That would be because the strategy behind the copy was weak or even non-existent. Today, we’re talking about a blind spot that kills a lot of otherwise good copy—and how our special guest today, Jamie Thompson, coaches copywriters how to see what others miss entirely. That would be, of course, strategy and strategic thinking. Jamie’s a seasoned pro. Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, he’s been writing copy for 10 years and counts among his clients such giants as Amazon, USAID, and Lenovo. But he’s had many other clients—over 500 in all. And lately he’s made it his mission to teach copywriters how to think like strategists. 80% of Jamie’s clients come back for return engagements. So you’ll definitely w

Three weeks ago, we had a very special Old Masters Series show: The Art of War, Copywriting Edition. But we only covered half the book, so that made the previous episode Part 1. Today we cover the rest of the book, Chapters 7 through 13. And that makes today Part 2. Here’s what you need to know: The Art of War was written by Sun Tzu (SOOON-tzeh) about 2500 years ago, as a treatise on military strategy. The Art of War reaches far beyond military warfare, however. Business overachievers like Elon Musk and Mark Benioff, founder of salesforce, are among many who have praised this book. That’s because the principles in this book are universal and very powerful in any situation where you’re in a struggle–and getting people to buy from the written word certainly counts as a struggle. Today you'll see exactly how Sun Tzu's principles, when applied to copy, can help you sharpen your copy, position your offers better, and persuade prospects more naturally. I’ve gotta tell you, I was surprised when I was preparing

In the 1980s, before Internet marketing had even really begun, our very special guest today and returning champion was working as a tech writer in the foreign exchange trading department of Bankers Trust in New York. In his new book “How The Web Won,The Inside Story of How a Motley Crew of Outsiders Hijacked the Information Superhighway and Struck a Blow for Human Freedom,” Ken McCarthy writes: “Working with foreign exchange traders taught me an important lesson about the need for speed in business: Windows of opportunity open and close fast. That understanding, combined with my ‘discovery’ of the rudiments of direct marketing, has been worth millions to me and a whole lot more to my clients.” That’s one of the many powerful lessons from Ken’s new book, “How The Web Won.” He’s been around Internet marketing longer than anyone else I know–and possibly longer than anyone, period. In 1994, he sponsored the first conference about the business potential of the World Wide Web. With keynote speaker Marc Andreeso

$6.7 million. That’s how much mega financial publisher Marketwise paid out to copywriters in royalties in 2024. And now they’re making an offer so good we had to rush today’s special guest, top copywriter and best-selling author Glenn Fisher, on the show to tell you about it. The offer is simple, yet overwhelming: FREE training from Marketwise to 12 lucky copywriters… and one of them will be offered a chance to write copy for this publishing giant. Glenn will tell you all about the training in just a few minutes, but let me tell you first about Glenn: He knows the value of training himself, because he trained with legends Bill Bonner and Mark Ford at Agora. He then went on to run one of the Agora businesses in the UK. He wrote Amazon best-seller The Art of the Click, which was also translated into Chinese and Korean. And, he co-created Financial Copy U with Nick O’Connor and Marketwise, where they will be mentoring 12 writers over 12 weeks, for free, starting in early September. So if you want to pu

Most copywriters know the classics of our field—but today we’re drawing from a master whose work predates modern advertising by more than two millennia. In this episode of Copywriters Podcast, we’re unpacking Sun Tzu’s The Art of War—a book written over 2,500 years ago, yet still shaping strategy for business titans like Elon Musk and Marc Benioff. While it was originally written as a guide to military conquest, The Art of War has long been praised for its universal principles of strategy and persuasion. The battlefield may have been different, but the parallels to winning in business—and especially in copywriting—are undeniable. In this episode, we’ll show you how to translate Sun Tzu’s wisdom into practical tactics for the written word. You’ll discover how ancient principles of planning, positioning, and persuasion can sharpen your copy, strengthen your offers, and give you the edge in today’s competitive marketplace. What’s surprising is how naturally these lessons map to the challenges copywriters face

It may have been the furthest thing from what he was thinking when our special guest today, John Caprani, ventured into copywriting. But he’s come up with a fascinating specialty that’s worth paying attention to, and that’s Local Celebrity Advertising. See, we all know what so-called “omnipresence” is online. That’s when your prospects see you everywhere, and so they become familiar with you, in the same way they become familiar with a celebrity. John was working as a construction project manager in 2016 when his boss asked him to start selling projects, too. It was a logical transition to starting his own copywriting business a couple years later. He ran the gamut of direct response copywriting. Niches like health, wealth, relationships. Fairly familiar stuff. But last year he found something he really liked–promoting US home service businesses become really well known in their physical, local communities with a method he calls Local Celebrity Advertising. He’s joining us today to tell us all about it. Here’

One way that AI can save you from expending massive amounts of blood, sweat and tears is a way that a lot of people aren’t using. And that involves its incredible ability to analyze, find trends, and organize information. On the face of it, all that sounds pretty boring and hardly applicable to copywriters and business owners. But today’s returning champion, Cath Reohorn, has used her impressive imagination to come up with some incredibly simple, smart and powerful ways to use AI that are VERY interesting… and could be useful to you as well. You probably remember Cath because her podcast, titled Selling Them With Kindness, got a lot of engagement and some heartfelt comments from listeners. Cath’s business is called Kind Copy. She lives in Wales in the UK. She has a true family business, since it employs herself, her husband, her sister and 2 other team members. What’s even more impressive, they grew with organic marketing to over £1m/month before she ever ran an ad. Today, we dig into Cath’s personal, pract

Can you picture yourself having the guts and imagination to bring 14 of the top copywriters in the business together to share their best action steps using AI to make money and/or save time? I certainly couldn’t, but our guest today is an adventurous man and a successful copywriter-wrangler. Because he did it. Please welcome John McIntyre, who recently invited me and a host of others. This wasn’t a theoretical roundtable. Each of us had to give ONE workflow, technique, or method we were using AI to make our own copywriting business better. Some of the other guys were David Deutsch, Bob Bly, Daniel Throssell, Chris Orzechowski, and Jon Benson–to name a few. We each had 45 minutes to jump right into it. John encouraged us to treat it like a mentoring session with him on our topic. No fancy sets, no intro, no slide decks–just real, hands-on stuff. I’ll confess, I spent the entire available time in the 24 hours before my session preparing. Because, and here’s a secret, it takes a lot of prep to make a sessio

Yesterday, Facebook wiped out a bunch of groups without warning. And just like that, some creators lost their entire audience. That’s why today, we’re talking about the one platform you actually own — your email list. Apparently some of the groups were deleted by accident and reinstated. But others were deleted permanently. No one outside of Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters really knows why this happened, but it does point to something our guest a couple of shows ago, Evelina Kaganovitch, said, “Having your own email list is business insurance.” It’s even more true today than it was two shows ago. Because, again, email is the one platform you actually own. So, with our heightened threat awareness, Nathan suggested we do an emergency show on our latest findings on email marketing. We’ll walk you through the essentials of email marketing that actually works in 2025 — including subject lines that get clicks, the #1 factor affecting your open rates, and the biggest mistakes we still see peopl

With the rapid spread of AI, will there even be a future for copywriters? Both new and experienced copywriters are plagued by that same question. And it’s a good question. Because there are plenty of solid arguments that go like this: With the rapid growth of AI, soon there won’t be any need for human copywriters. And in some cases, that’s 100% true. The good news is, there are also some powerful counter-arguments that say there will definitely be a need for copywriters, and still some great opportunities to make a lot of money. But there’s a catch: If you want to survive, you’re going to have to learn some important new skills that only the top-of-the-crop copywriters needed in the past. Culminating in one top skill that no AI will ever be able to attain. I’ve figured out what they are - the lead-up skills, and the one top skill - and I’m going to share them with you, in detail, today. Now I’ll spend a lot of time mentioning my mentoring, and I just want to say it’s not for everybody. You need to b

When you turn a prospect into a customer, are you delivering and getting the most value you can? A lot of people have lame, generic welcome sequences because they know they have to say something… but they really don’t know what to say or how to say it. Our very special guest today aims to change all that. She’s Evelina Kagonovitch, and she has gotten big numbers that should make you sit up and pay attention: a 64% average open rate on win-back email campaign for marketing agency A 7.6% increase in article views over the last 90 days for personal brand A 20-30% average open rate on weekly marketing emails for marketing agency A 5% CTR on ads for local soccer academy business How does she do it? That’s what we’ll find out today. She’s formally trained as a fashion designer, and has had experience as a freelance writer for magazines and digital publications. When covid struck, whe found herself in Melbourne Australia, stuck in the house under what she says was the worst lockdown protocol in the world. So to

Our returning champion is Sam Woods, who’s been using AI for business in very big ways since 2016. That’s a lot longer than most people, including me. And Nathan. And we’re both big fans of AI for copywriting! But more important for today’s show, we’re big fans of Sam Woods! And last time he was here, Sam gave us some highly valuable insights and hands-on tips for using AI with copywriting. But over the past 10 years, Sam has also developed his own methodologies, training, and frameworks for building and growing online businesses in areas outside of copywriting. Systems. Automations. In ways you might have imagined on the surface, and ways you could not possibly have imagined. A refresher about Sam’s background: He got started with machine learning in 2016 and generative AI in 2019. He was a pioneer in prompt engineering for AI copywriting, and marketing. Sam has advised Fortune 1,000 companies and teams across the world, as well as advised and consulted with CEOs and other C-Suite executives. He describes

In 1911, psychology pioneer Alfred Adler resigned from the presidency of a prestigious society in Vienna—and Sigmund Freud took it personally and deemed Adler an enemy. It didn’t stop there. Freud continued to rail against Adler until Freud’s death in 1939. The details of the dispute are kind of technical and petty, and we won’t get into them today. The effects, however, were massive: Because of Freud’s opposition, Adler’s work was suppressed for decades. And this is important. See, Adler had some powerful ideas that, decades later, have found their way into a number of well-accepted branches of psychology today – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Positive Psychology, Family Systems Therapy, to name only a few. Yet Adler’s original work remains unknown to most people. Where this fits into copywriting is that some of Adler’s core ideas are enormously useful. They can help you with big ideas, hooks, headlines, and understanding customer motivation at a deep level. Download.

Nick Lowe had a big hit on the top 40 back in the day called “Cruel to be Kind.” Interesting idea, but how about this one? “Kind to be Kind.” Now there’s a novel idea. And it’s the guiding principle of copywriter and agency owner Cath Reohorn, who has taken this philosophy to £1 million/month in revenues for her clients. So you don’t have to do the math, that’s about $1.3 million per month. Now, how does she do it? Today, on Copywriters Podcast, you’ll find out exactly how. Now, back to the idea of “Kind to be Kind.” Cath’s agency is called Kind Copy, and she defines the guiding principle this way: “Kind copy stands for not twisting the knife. This anti-cruelty stance isn’t just an ethical standpoint. It’s a tactical advantage for services where the client needs to be actively involved in their process (like coaching and consulting).” We’ll dive deep into that in a moment. First, A little more about Cath and her business: She lives in Wales in the UK. She has a true family business, since it employs herse

What do you do if you’ve tried and tried, six times, and what you’re trying to make happen… never happens? That was the dilemma facing our special guest today, James Allen. “I built 6 different funnels and courses that didn't make me a penny until I changed my strategy,” he says. “Finally, I built one that sold for me in my sleep—on repeat.” In my mind, that’s an evergreen money machine. James got so good at this that he helps coaches and content creators enjoy the same benefits of automated and scalable income that he has. James started out in construction, and left that to become a spiritual life coach at age 22. Then, he became a productivity coach and subsequently shifted into helping people create evergreen funnels. He’s shared plenty of money-while-you-sleep secrets that really work on our show today. Here’s what we asked him: 1. What would you say is the biggest mistake course creators make when it comes to building products? 2. What are some tips for making sure you're building something people

You can’t fake it. It seems like you can’t force it. But when creativity shows up at the right moment — your copy comes alive. Sometimes it’s the difference between a flat headline and a breakthrough idea. Between a click and a sale. Between a promotion that falls flat and a control that blows the doors off. On the other hand, when it doesn’t show up — that’s when things get rough. Here’s the thing, though. Creativity isn’t magic. Oh, I know it seems like magic–especially when great new ideas spring up, seemingly out of nowhere. And sometimes you feel like only a magic trick—or a miracle—would save you, when you’re stuck or going through a dry spell. But the truth is, creativity is something you can spark, pretty much on demand. All you need is the right tools. And that’s what we’ll talk about today. (Here are the 10 techniques we talked about.) 1. Get Moving — Walk, stretch, get your body moving. 2. Quantity Before Quality — Don’t stop at the first idea. Write twenty-one. 3. Creativity on Demand — Build

For many people, actually doing a podcast is a lot harder than it seems. A few months ago, Riverside.fm, a major podcast platform, published an article that said, "90% of podcasts don't get past episode 3," and "of the few that continue, another 90% will quit after 20 episodes." Here at Copywriters Podcast, we understand this, but to be honest, we just haven’t done a lot ourselves to solve this particular problem. Not our jam. Our special guest today, Dumi Mabhena, has done a LOT to help podcasters at all levels of skill and experience. His own podcast is called Zimbawean Voices, and he’s based in Washington, DC. Dumi knows, as Nathan and I do, that the effective use of personal stories is key to making a podcast work. And today he’s going to talk about the enormous impact of everyday stories have on sales. He has founded businesses in multiple niches, including solar energy and student housing. Dumi is also the author of a children’s book, Tuku’s Dream. As for his work supporting other podcasters,

So a man says into his phone, “Siri, play Pizzetti’s Rondò Veneziano.” Siri says, “Calling Roundtable Pizza.” Pretty frustrating, right? Well, that was what AI seemed like to me just one year ago. Especially when it came to writing copy. Completely out of the question. But that has changed, in a VERY big way. So for today, I’ve put together a special report on how AI is changing copywriting. This is a report from the field. What pro copywriters and business owners are actually doing with AI. And I’ll give you a hint. What they’re doing with AI includes writing copy, for sure. But it also includes a WHOLE LOT MORE than just writing copy. So to set the stage for today, a little over a year ago, we did a show on my 10 rules for mentoring copywriters and business owners. At the time, I was still a hard-core AI skeptic and I didn’t think AI had any place in copywriting or content creation. So I didn’t include anything about AI at all in that show, or in my 10 rules for mentoring copywriters. My rea

One name comes up more than any other when I talk to people about copywriting and AI. That name is Sam Woods, and he’s our very special guest today. Sam has been in the game for nine years, while most of us haven’t been there half as long. And I don’t know of anyone who’s been in it longer than Sam has. He got started with machine learning in 2016 and generative AI in 2019. He was a pioneer in prompt engineering for AI copywriting, and marketing. Sam has advised Fortune 1,000 companies and teams across the world, as well as advised and consulted with CEOs and other C-Suite executives. He describes himself as “a strategic AI architect who advises C-Suite leaders on turning artificial intelligence into their most powerful competitive advantage.” But more important to us, he’s a seasoned and successful expert using AI for writing copy that gets results. Here’s what we asked him: 1. What would you say is the most important thing about AI that most people in marketing and copywriting haven’t really realized yet?

What’s the opposite of a confident salesperson who makes it easy for you to buy? A nervous salesperson who jumps the gun and makes you want to run away! Today’s returning champion, Brenna McGowan, understands this difference all too well. She has mastered the arts of the pre-launch and the launch, and she knows all the big and little differences. Because besides the successful implementers, Brenna’s she’s also seen nervous copywriters and offer owners jump the gun all too often. And ruin their chances at having a successful launch down the road by spilling too much information too early on! Brenna believes there’s a lot of misunderstanding of what a pre-launch does, as well as what it should NOT do. So she agreed to come back on the show and tell us today. Brenna’s specialty is pre-launches—warming up your market by letting them get to know you even before your launch begins. Perhaps the best advantage it gives you is it puts you front and center in your prospects’ minds, and at the same time gets th