Introduction: Copywriting

Communication is the most crucial life and business skill.

Writing is the most effective method of communication.

Why?

• It's scalable. Tens of millions of people have read our written content.
• It gives YOU time to think. Writing lets you find the right words to communicate an idea effectively.
• It gives THEM time to think. Written content can be read, absorbed, and reacted to.
• It's there forever. Written words can be referenced and re-read infinitely.

Writing is a critical skill for everyone, but...

Writing is particularly important for founders and marketers

Founders and marketers frequently write to convince people of things, such as:

• Sell customers a product,
• Get investors to give them money,
• Negotiate with vendors to lower their price of a product/service,
• Convince rockstars to join the company.

Everything a founder or marketer does, fundamentally, is to convince people to do things.

Copywriting is the most scalable method to do exactly that.

There's no "surefire" way to teach copywriting

Copywriting is a hybrid between art and soft science.

The soft science comes in due how the words you chose interact with human psychology. How you say something, where you say it, when you say it, and who you're saying it to, all combine together in someone's head to elicit a certain reaction.

In general, we all run the same core operating system on the same hardware, and the best copywriting pushes the write buttons to cause people to react a certain way.

But it's not completely formulaic. There is an element of art to the best copywriting. Sometimes the best copywriting also seemingly breaks some of the rules.

To learn the art, you need to do two things:

1. Reading a lot of good and bad writing. Try to determine why something is good or bad and what it makes you feel.
2. Writing a lot. That doesn't mean getting AI to write it. It means actually struggling through it yourself.

Therefore, this chapter is less prescriptive than others

There aren't many good books on writing because of this complex mix of soft science and art.

It's not like teaching math. There is no prescriptive way of doing it.

So instead of a prescriptive lesson plan, we'll instead have a series of lessons that illustrate the difference between good and bad writing, and some tips and tools to be a better writer.

The idea is that you'll walk away a better copywriter in life and in business.

Let's get started.