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 Andreeson, at the time, the 23-year old co-founder of Netscape, an early Internet browser and the first important one.

Time magazine pointed out that Ken was the first person to identify the importance and business power of the click-through rate, which today, of course, is the basis of the roughly half-a-trillion-dollars a year Facebook and Google make selling pay per click advertising.

In 2002, Ken started an event called The System Seminar, which I attended a few years later myself. Met Frank Kern, Gary Halbert, Harlan Kilstein, and a whole bunch of other people who were, or became, legends in direct marketing.

We could spend the rest of the show talking about all of Ken’s accomplishments, but I’d rather he tell you about his book, “How The Web Won.”

So Ken, welcome, and congrats on your new book!

1. So in 1993, you attended a conference called One BBS CON. I’m not sure from your book if that was the moment that changed your life, since you’d been doing some pretty good pulling rabbits out of hats with direct marketing before then. But could you talk about if that was an inflection point and how what you learned at that conference influenced you going forward?

2. Could you talk about being invited to Dan Kennedy’s conference in 1993? I can’t imagine a lot of the hard core direct marketers who paid $5000 to be there were all that receptive at that time to what you had to say. Were they?

3. Until 1989, it was forbidden by the U.S. government to use the Internet for commercial purposes. How fast did that change in the 90s, and what were the key moments for that? How did your San Francisco conference fit into all of that?

4. When did Internet marketing as we know it today really start to get traction?

5. What would you say was the big mistake made by many of the companies that went bankrupt in the dot-bomb of 2000 – and how long did it take for the direct marketing way of thinking take to catch on?

6. What prompted you to launchThe System seminar in 2002?

7. Any other key moments between the early days and today, that you’d like to talk about?

Ken’s book, How The Web Won

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM2GN91Q

HowtheWebWon.com

Get in touch with Ken at: https://kenmccarthy.com

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$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 put your name in the hat, today would be a good day.

Links:

Financial Copy U: financialcopyu.com

The Fix, Glenn’s and Nick’s other program: thefixcopywriting.com

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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 every day. From anticipating objections, to winning quickly before attention fades, to making your offer feel like the natural choice—Sun Tzu laid out the playbook centuries before advertising even existed.

This is part one of a two-part series, covering the first six chapters of The Art of War. If you’ve ever felt like writing copy is a battle for attention and trust, this episode will give you a fresh perspective—and some timeless strategies—to help you win more often.
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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’s what we asked him:

1. How did you get into the idea of the Local Business Celebrity Program?

2. Could you walk us through a case study or two? Not just the numbers but also comments people have made to you; comments customers or people in the community have made to them; any funny or unexpected things that have happened that you'd enjoy sharing.

3. Did you try anything else before for local marketing that didn't work? Why do you think it didn't work?

4. What are the big mistakes you see other people making in promoting local service businesses?

5. What are some insider tips for video marketing you could share with our listeners?

6. What are some direct marketing ideas that you think more people should embrace and implement?

7. Tell us more about your program; who it's for and who it's not for; how it works; and how people can contact you if they're interested.

If you’re interested in his Local Celebrity Advertising service on Facebook & Instagram for 90 days, he’ll send you the equipment you need so you can record professional videos with him right from your office computer.

You can reach John by sending him a friend request on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jdcaprani
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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, practical AI innovations.

–

Cath’s website: https://kindcopy.co.uk/

Cath’s social media links:

https://x.com/kindcopy

https://www.instagram.com/kindcopyuk/

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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 session look spontaneous, if it’s any good.

My session was how to get Chat GPT to pull persuasion stories out of you, in your own words. I would say it was a success.

And John’s a highly successful copywriter in his own right, as well as a terrific interviewer.

But today we turned the tables on him and interview him about what he learned producing and promoting AI Copywriting Secrets.

This is what we asked him:

1. What prompted you to put this together in the first place?

2. What did you find people had to say about when NOT to use AI, as well as how they use it themselves?

3. What was the most surprising thing you heard from the interviews?

4. What were the most valuable things you heard about using AI?

5. How did what you heard from us change how you look at, or use, AI?

6. Based on what you learned, what advice would you give to a copywriter who’s been hesitant to even try AI up to this point?

7.You know this program better than anyone. Could you give us a quick tour of what’s in it overall and what someone either with little experience, or with a lot of experience, will get out of it?

Here’s a link to find out more about the program:

Get It Here

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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 people making with their emails.”

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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 be more advanced than a beginner in your freelance copywriting career, or in your business.

Most of my new clients are already at the six-figure level. I’ve found those are the people I can help the most, and they’re also the people who can get an immediate return on their investment.

So if you’re interested, I do have one or two spots coming open by the fall. Please visit my website to read about the mentoring and then apply if this is something you really want to do.

Mentoring with me: https://garfinkelcoaching.com

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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 make the best of a bad situation, she dove into the world of digital marketing and her marketing career really started to blossom.

Evelina likes sharing how she merges creativity with strategy, and why she believes email is the ultimate “business insurance” for any company or freelancer.

Today she’s going to tell us about her profitable approach to welcome strategies.

But first, I’m going to tell you that

Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time.

1. You've had a lot of success with welcome email sequences for new subscribers that lead to sales. Could you describe one you've built?

2. What are the three most important rules you have when you put together a sequence like this?

3. What are the worst mistakes you see in welcome sequences that don't work?

4. When you're writing a single email in a welcome sequence, what advice would you give someone who's never done a welcome sequence before?

5. What was the most surprising reaction you've ever gotten to an email in a welcome sequence?

6. What advice would you give about subject lines and preview text? Could you give a couple of negative and positive examples?

7. Can you recommend any resources for people to learn more about putting together effective welcome sequences?

Website: https://www.evelinakreative.com/

LinkedIn: Evelina Kagan https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelinakreative/https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelinakreative/

Instagram: @evelinakreative https://www.instagram.com/evelinakreative/

Free email subject line swipe file:

Downloadable PDF

Free how to hire a copywriter guide:

Downloadable PDF

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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 himself as “a strategic AI architect who advises C-Suite leaders on turning artificial intelligence into their most powerful competitive advantage.”

And he’s going to share a little bit of that massive store of wisdom with us today.

So before we start the interview, let me remind you first that

Copy is powerful. You’re responsible for how you use what you hear on this podcast. Most of the time, common sense is all you need. But if you make extreme claims... and/or if you’re writing copy for offers in highly regulated industries like health, finance, and business opportunity... you may want to get a legal review after you write and before you start using your copy. My larger clients do this all the time.

1. You’ve been talking about a mindset shift, away from prompts and more towards how AI can handle small or large portions of a business. Can you remember the first time when this became obvious to you, and what was that like?

2. For one of our listeners who’s juggling client work and marketing, what would you say is the first place they should consider using AI to automate the business?

3. You said in a tweet that AI that really caught my eye that AI systems should run “24/7” like invisible staff. Could you tell us about one or more everyday tasks you’ve automated yourself that have made a major difference in your business?

4. What are some other ways to use AI that most people aren’t thinking about?

5. Could you talk about the concept of migrating mindset from a “factory” model of business to a “neural network” model, especially when working with AI?

6. What’s the biggest mistake you see people making when they start building business systems around AI?

7. Looking ahead two years, what are the best habits and knowledge our listeners can start to develop now so they’re not behind the curve when AI takes over even more of the market?

Sam’s website: https://samueljwoods.com/

Other resources:

https://bionicbusiness.com

https://www.copywriting.ai/
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