Copywriters Podcast

These days people talk about neurochemicals a lot. Chemicals like dopamine, and cortisol, and the love chemical, oxytocin.

I’ve always wondered how these chemicals are affected by copy, and how much it matters.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered what our very special guest was doing! His name is Clive Cable, and he’s not only written a book about this, he has a complete system to evaluate copy based on the neurochemistry the copy will cause, and the buying behavior that chemistry will lead to.

The book is called Neurocopy, and it’s the first systematic work I’ve ever seen that shows how copy stimulates certain chemicals, and how those chemicals make people want to buy.

Clive is a trailblazer with his pioneering work. But I want to make it clear that he’s not some ivory tower guy sitting in a white coat in a lab measuring blood levels of dopamine and endorphins with a clinical chemistry analyzer.

No, Clive’s one of us. He got started as a door-to-door salesman, offering home improvement products and services for as much as $25,000 a pop–and closing an amazing two out of every three people he talked to.

He’s also an experienced copywriter, and has generated over £40 million, which is over 50 million dollars, across 12 different industries.

Clive also built a supplement company that generated £24,000 a month, selling products including colloidal silver, prebiotics and aerobic oxygen.

All of which to say that nothing he says about the process of buying and selling is theoretical. He’s lived it and he lives it.

And he’s a great salesperson!

I can also say that after I read through his book, I started to feel the effects of cortisol, which is a feeling of high stress, right before high-stakes events, and the effects of endorphins, which is a feeling of relief and satisfaction, after those events ended well.

There’s a lot more to all this, as we’ll find out today.

Link to get Clive’s new book, “Neurocopy”

https://www.lulu.com/shop/clive-cable/neurocopy/paperback/product-w4qjdmn.html

Download.

We’re really at a crisis point for a lot of marketers.

It’s not just that ads keep getting more expensive.

It’s that it just gets harder and harder to get and keep prospects’ attention.

And with everything being engineered and optimized by AI and CRO, stuff ends up looking more and more the same. And that only works against you.

You know you need to stand out–but how?

Well, the best way to get and keep attention is, and always has been, a story.

But how long is a story?

I mean, a Hero’s Journey story can take hours.

And even the type of compact tales I introduced in my book The Persuasion Story Code can take two to three minutes. That’s not very long, but at a time of shrinking attention spans, it’s still too long.

Now, you can try using outrageous hooks. But in addition to shrinking attention spans, you’re also fighting against rising levels of skepticism and outright distrust.

If you say something that gets attention but just isn’t believable, you’re still sunk.

So, what would be ideal to solve this problem?

It would be a persuasion story you could tell in 15 or 20 words.

Impossible, you say?

That’s what I thought until I really started working on it.

One of my clients, Ari Nirsissian, helped me quite a lot in the development of my thinking and writing of these new kind of attention magnets, the one-sentence microstory.

It really is a story. It really is persuasive.

And it really is short!

Just the right size for today’s attention spans.

Today I’m going to show you, step by step, how I developed three of them… and how I combined them into one electric three-sentence paragraph, which takes less than a minute to read out loud.

Resources:

To find out more about my book The Persuasion Story Code, check out this link to the Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

And to find out more about my coaching for experienced copywriters and business owners, go to:

https://garfinkelcoaching.com

Download.

Today’s show is for every talented copywriter stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle of business and would much rather get paid well, to reflect the enormous value their copy is bringing to their clients.

We have a very special returning champion on the show today, Dr. Harlan Kilstein. He has just released a book called Value-Based Copywriting. Originally presented in a $997 seminar, this material has changed the lives and of course careers of some very fortunate copywriters.

This book solves the problem faced by thousands of copywriters–not getting paid for what their work is worth.

Harlan is a renowned entrepreneur and copywriting expert known for his innovative approaches in marketing, mindset, and personal development.

With decades of experience at the intersection of psychology, persuasion, and business strategy, Harlan has built a reputation for helping individuals and companies unlock explosive growth through compelling communication and breakthrough thinking.

He’s also a former educator with a doctorate in education. And, Harlan’s a very successful copywriter himself and an expert in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis.

He’ll bring all of this, and more, to bear today. So you may want to take notes while you’re listening to today’s podcast. Lots of money-making information you will be able to use immediately.

Harlan’s new book:

Value-Based Copywriting: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GCCR64DC

My book The Persuasion Story Code: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

Download.

Life must have been at least a little frustrating for our Old Master on today’s show. His name was Walter Weir. He was a very active and successful copywriter and advertising professor, but he must have constantly run into resistance along the way, since so many of his ideas were ahead of their time.

Walter Weir was born in 1909 and he died in 1996. He published a couple of books which are nearly impossible to find today. Maybe the publisher, my old employer McGraw-Hill, took them out of print quickly because the ideas were so far ahead of their time that they didn’t sell very well.

I don’t know. What I do know is I was fascinated by his ideas.

Here are 5 takeaways from an exploration of Weir’s writings and thinking, from today’s show:

1. Write copy that you truly believe, because people can feel it when you don’t.

When you don’t believe it, your reader won’t either. And if your reader doesn’t believe it, they won’t buy.

2. Use words that people can FEEL as well as merely understand.

Forget about clever word-plays. Say stuff they can feel in their bones.

3. If you’ve got a group going over the copy, write the copy yourself. By yourself. Just you.

While a committee can review, only one voice can lead.

4. Forget about features and benefits. Instead, present a description of something someone would feel good about using.

People don’t tend to buy just to HAVE something. They buy to FEEL something.

5. Cut everything that doesn’t sound like something a real person would actually say.

Because unless it sounds like a human, it won’t reach one.

Download.

If you’re involved in copywriting in any way, you know right now we’re at an inflection point.

Things have been changing fast over the last two years, and show no signs of slowing down.

People who hire copywriters tell me it’s harder than ever to find a good one… yet people who write copy for a living, many of them, tell me it’s really hard to find good-paying work.

There’s clearly a disconnect. AI has a lot to do with it.

The very definition of what a copywriter is, and what a copywriter does, seems very much in flux.

Today I want to suggest five copywriting goals for 2026. These are based on how I was able to help my own mentoring clients solve problems and develop their marketability over the past 12 months.

I work with established copywriters and business owners who use direct response, and what I helped them with on a very personal, customized basis would be a good idea for most everyone who listens to this podcast.

Links:

Copywriting Mentoring: https://garfinkelcoaching.com

Persuasive storytelling: The Persuasion Story Code

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFD2KXNQ

Download.

It takes a lot of courage and a lot of confidence to do what our special guest today has done… and that’s fire all his clients and start an email-based business.

But Alin Dragu did just that, and he’s here to tell us about it.

He’s the best-selling author of the book Meaningful Marketing, he spent 5 years as direct of marketing at one of the fastest growing churches in the US, and 3 years as the VP of growth at a Christian marketing agency.

Alin is definitely a copywriter’s copywriter. He’s obsessed with reading novels and old fiction letters. And he admits he’s secretly obsessed with luxury watches, something Nathan’s a collector of as well.

Finally, in case you end up taking Alin to dinner, which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, you should know he says he’s never refused a steak, ever in his life.

Now, here’s what we asked him:

1. So Alin, could you give us a quick tour of what you do?

2. I’m very interested in your S-L-O framework that you use to write all your emails. Could you walk us through that?

3. So as I understand it, your funnel works something like this:

- you make youtube videos that promote your lead magnets

- when people get the lead magnets, of course they opt-into your list

- every day you send one, and I quote, “very entertaining story” while also plugging one of your products

- and you get sales every day.

I was wondering if we could go through one of those stories and you could break it down for us–like, say, the “I spent $613 on coffee” story? And talk about what makes a great story?

4. You are in a very email-list-dependent business. How do you deal with the issues that come with that, like trolls, unsubscribes, and delivering content every day?

5. You need to come up with a new idea every day. How do you do that without running up against burnout?

6. OK, you do something a lot of people are afraid to do. It’s something Nathan and I strongly recommend, though. Tell us how you sell in every email and get people to keep opening the next email?

7. So tell us about who your list is for and how someone can join.

--

Link to get on Alin’s list:

https://alindragu.com/

Download.

Last fall, our returning champion Glenn Fisher and his business partner Nick O’Connor teamed up with mega financial publisher Marketwise for a bold experiment:

Offer FREE training in financial copywriting to 12 people who competed for the spots. There were 500 people applied. Of the 12 who were selected, Glenn says, four were offered jobs… and two are being mentored by financial copywriting legend Mike Palmer.

You know, in many stupid businesses, when something works, the business immediately stops doing it and decides to try something else.

Lucky for you, Marketwise is anything but a stupid business. They know a good thing when they see it.

So they decided to keep working with Glenn and Nick and run more programs through 2026.

And Glenn’s back on the show to tell us what they learned and what’s next… and how you might be one of the lucky 12 in a future cohort!

Links:

Financial Copy U: https://www.financialcopyu.com/

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

Download.

So a lot of people are building their brand by pouring tons of money into traffic… A/B testing… tracking every click… but deep down, you feel that something’s not landing.

It’s almost like you wonder if you’re coming across as desperate, rather than confident.

Maybe it’s time to take a look at a cherished assumption in online marketing:

Namely, that more information and more volume equals more authority.

Not really, says our own Nathan Fraser. He’s given me an advance peek at his new book, The Signal. I was so excited by the refreshing ideas he has in there that I wanted him to talk about it on today’s show… and he agreed.

Look. Nathan says you should stop begging the algorithm and start commanding attention. And he has some proven ideas on how to do that.

Which he’ll share with us today.

Here are the questions I asked him:

1. In your book, you say, “Marketing that begs for attention becomes noise. Marketing grounded in conviction becomes signal.”

What do you mean by this, and how can someone make sure their marketing has minimum noise and maximum signal?

2. You talk about the Pratfall Effect and how not coming across as “perfect,” or trying to, actually bonds a business with its customers better than trying to appear cool and flawless. How does this work?

3. I love what you say about overexplaining–that it indicates insecurity and this repels rather than attracts the right people. Could you talk about that?

4. So there are two philosophies I’ve seen these days: Omnipresence, where you show up everywhere all the time, and being very selective and making it difficult to get access to you. You’re in favor of the second approach. Why do you feel that way?

5. Your advice for building an attractive signal that draws the right customers to you is to “select, not sell.” What does this look like?

6. You identify five buyer beliefs in a very interesting chapter called “Belief is the Real Funnel.” This is so different from what anyone else I have heard says. I notice that in the five-step funnel you outline, Apple somehow got the first belief to become part of the popular culture.

Could you go through these beliefs and make some suggestions about how to create them in an actual funnel?

7. You write "Identity closes deals long before logic ever enters the room." How do you determine how your product changes your prospect’s sense of identity?

Get your copy of The Signal at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G5FGMH21

Visit Nathan's site at CultishContent.com
Download.

What was discovered and perfected over 100 years ago, that is one of the most important marketing strategies online today?

We have a special Old Masters Series show today. It’s a hybrid between marketing discoveries of the early 1900s, and top moneymakers of 2025.

Our old Master is Claude Hopkins. Most people don’t realize that there’s a strong connection between two of the most important principles he wrote about and used – sampling, and demonstration – and what makes for an effective lead magnet in today’s world.

For this episode, I went back into two of his most important books, Scientific Advertising and My Life in Advertising. We’ll talk about those first.

There are tons of gems in there and these books are well worth reading many times, which I have done myself.

So we’re going to focus on a narrow slice of the wisdom on today’s hybrid Old Masters Series show.

And then, we’ll catapult into 2025 to see how those ideas have evolved.

My Life in Advertising/Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins https://www.amazon.com/dp/0844231010/

Sample Lead Magnet: First Two Chapters Of The Persuasion Story Code https://PersuasionStoryCode.com

Download.

Our returning champion today, Dr. Doug Pew, is well known in two different worlds: The world of high-powered copywriting for online course creators, where he has done many six and seven figure launches.

And the other world where Doug is known is that of music. He is a composer whose work was actually performed at Carnegie Hall! And he wrote an opera that was performed at the Kennedy Center.

Those worlds overlap in certain ways sometimes for Doug, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

He’s written copy for music businesses like Creative Piano Academy, Lauren Bateman Guitar, Become A Bassist, and J209, an a cappella singing group, who he helped grow their Instagram following to over 15,000 in a couple of months.

Most of his work for these businesses has been to create sales, and, as you might expect, selling students into an online music instruction business is different in some ways than other types of copywriting.

Yet the differences are fascinating, and they may help you with your own copy, even in non-musical niches.

Contact Information:

Doug’s Copywriter website is where you can book a call about a copy project:

www.dougpewcopywriting.com

or can email him directly at [email protected]

If you want to check out the music business, you can visit…

https://latterdaymusiversity.com/

Download.