Hey, it’s Pieter…

We were on our 2nd bottle of red, so the conversation was getting more open and fluid. For some reason —in between discussing girls and ordering a next round— the conversation shifted to startup marketing…

Caspar, a good friend of mine, was intrigued.

I told him how one of my clients spent nearly $500k to build a product, and we just couldn’t get any traction on it. It just didn’t work.

At the end of our line—only 2 weeks of runway at hand—we decided to “pivot”, and do things entirely differently. Over the course of the next months we’d acquire over 5.000 paying subscribers using Facebook ads. That company is a happy, profitable company now… and the biggest player in it’s niche!

It’s a funny story how things like that can happen, and by the end of it Caspar was hooked.

He loved the story, and he wanted his piece of that…

To get an idea and more context of where he would need to focus his attention, he asked me an interesting question:

“If you could pick only 1 skill to be absolutely killer at, what would it be?”

Smart reframe.

Got me thinking…

But even through the fog of the wine, the answer was pretty obvious to me. There is only one skill that clearly stands above anything else.

So I zoomed out, and gave Caspar my ‘overview’ of how you build growth quickly.

First, you need to think in terms of systems. But that’s not really a skill.
There’s only 7 of them, and once you know them, you’re good.

But the systems alone are not enough. On top of the systems you need the ‘magic sauce’.

The tomato sauce that makes (or breaks) your lasagna, so to speak…

There’s one skill that I continuously keep investing in, because whenever I do that I see my growth rates bump up.
It’s the only skill that I know that could literally add an extra zero to your bank account.

So what’s that skill?

What’s the magic sauce of growth…?

.
.
.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the backbone skill of every growth marketer, and — by far and away — the most profitable skill you could ever hope to acquire.

Copywriting is writing with the purpose to sell. Simple as that. (simple, but not easy)

It’s the equivalent of great salesmanship, but put online.
It’s automated sales.

Caspar was blown away. He’d been a successful salesman almost his entire career, but never heard about it.

“Tell me more…”

So I gave Caspar an overview of everything I knew about copywriting. And even though there’s a lot to it, and it takes years and years to attain mastery…. it’s surprisingly simple to get pretty good at it.

The truth is, copywriting is just one of those skills where you need to really nail the essentials.
Back to basics.

Catch. Pass. Shoot.

Once you have that…

It’s just incredible what happens:
+ Your ads convert better (thus clicks become cheaper)
+ Your email open rates go up
+ Your website starts to convert better… way better, actually
+ You craft better offers, that people love
+ All your advertising costs drop, while conversions rise
+ Channels that previously were too expensive, now become profitable
+ People ‘get it’ when you talk about your product
+ Finally you get that viral loop to work… referrals start working
+ Etc.
+ ​Etc.

I can’t say enough good things about copywriting. If there’s only one skill you’re gonna master, then copywriting is the most profitable one.

Imagine what would happen if every conversion rate across your funnel would go 20-30% up. It compounds. It adds up quick!

Anyway… I’m losing track here!

I actually haven’t told you the most interesting thing yet…

Copywriting is a skill that hardly changes over time. Stuff that was relevant in the ’30s, still works today. It’s all human psychology.

Some of the best resources on copywriting, are quite old… but anything from dated. That’s why I always make the same recommendation to everyone that wants to learn copywriting:

Study the masters.

More specifically, here’s how I recommend you start:

Get a copy of ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ :: a book by David Ogilvy, the godfather of advertising… Click here (http://a.co/d/b4IgvcX) to order it on Amazon (yes, that’s an affiliate link)

Read the ‘Gary Halbert Letters’ :: written by -surprise, surprise- Gary Halbert, who is without a doubt the most famous direct-response copywriter. This one is a great start!

Until tomorrow.

P.S. you know what’s funny about entrepreneurship?

Almost every success is preceded by a seemingly endless array of failures. Failure is as much—if not more—part of the formula than is success.

On my end, it took me ~5 years of entrepreneurship before I got any kind of traction. In my first business I wasted 4 years and nearly $25,000 of my own life savings—nearly everything I had back then.

It was only when I started learning from “growth hackers” like Brian Balfour, Andrew Chen and Chamath Palihapitiya that I started hitting successes.

These guys are the marketers that built the biggest startups in the world: you might not recognize the names, but I’m sure you know Hubspot, Uber and Facebook—the companies they did growth for.

So when I became a student of growth, I said:

“If I’m gonna learn marketing… might as well learn from the absolute best”

Granted, not everything that applies to a billion-dollar behemoth works for a scrappy entrepreneur working from a single-bedroom apartment. You need to adjust things.

So the question became:

“How can I take their ideas, and make it simpler?”

…turns out that “simpler” is really just about how you look at things. How you see things. Focus and clarity. Essentialism.