Copy Chief (and copywriter) Henry Bingaman is in the studio for the 66th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. And he showed up with plenty to share—including his formula for writing great sales copy. Kira and Rob took the opportunity to ask Henry about:

•  his path from fiction writer and flight attendant to copywriter and copy chief

•  not wanting to write for clients and creating his own product (and the lessons he learned)

•  how he landed his first client (and learned to write his first proposal)

•  the critical copywriting skill he learned as a flight attendant

•  what he does to connect with people at conferences

•  when you should feel like you’ve “made it” (hint: you’re probably not there yet)

•  what he teaches the copywriters he works with (and his role as copy chief)

•  how he writes leads that catch attention and shift a customer’s paradigm

•  the various copy blocks he includes in his sales pages

•  what he learned from breaking down Jedd Canty’s sales pages

•  what it takes to create a winning control

•  the collaboration process he goes through on every sales promotion

•  what separates the great copywriters from the good

•  learning from failure (and some of his biggest failures)

Plus we talked about where Henry thinks copywriting is going in the future (it doesn’t look good for some freelancers), how his Cross Fit habit is related to copywriting, and what he is doing to improve his own writing. You won’t want to miss this one. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

 

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

AWAI Six Figure Copywriter

Creative Writer’s Desk

Wealthy Web Writer

Rebecca Matter

John Carlton

Marcella Allison

Boardroom

Agora

Parris Lampropolous

David Deutch

Mark Stockman

Metabolic Living

Jake Hoffberg

Copy Chief

Jedd Canty

Clayton Makepeace

Metabolic Renewal

Scrivener

Money Map Press

Brian Kurtz

Kira’s website

Rob’s website

The Copywriter Club Facebook Group

Intro: Content (for now)

Outro: Gravity

Full Transcript:

Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea to inspire your own work? That’s what Rob and I do every week at the Copywriter Club Podcast.

Rob: You’re invited to join the club for episode 66 as we chat with creative director and copy chief Henry Bingaman on working and writing in direct response, how much effort it takes to get a winning control, persuasion architecture, and applying systems thinking to the feedback process and how Crossfit makes him a better writer.

Kira: Welcome, Henry!

Henry: Hey! Nice to be here.

Rob: Hey, we’re glad to have you.

Kira: Yeah, so Henry, a great place to start is with your path. I know you have a squiggly path, so where did you start? And where are you today?

Henry: My kind of life path is just following the next interesting thing in front of me. (laughs) So, when I graduated in 2007 with a degree in fiction writing, which isn’t really a good degree for a job (laughs)... When I graduated, I went online and there was a job opening for flight attendants at United Airline. So I applied and started flying professionally for about a year. I was an international flight attendant, which was a lot of fun but it paid about $20,000 a year, and I was working up in First Class serving people that paid $20,000 for their seat, so I was a little jealous maybe? (laughs) But I had this writing ability. I’d been writing since I was early high school, just stories and whatnot. My dad actually owned a supplement company when I was growing up. He’d bought the AWAI six figure program at one point and he just gave it to me, he never really did anything with it, so he gave it to me and said, “Here, here’s a way you might be able to make money.” So that’s how I kind of discovered copywriting,