edition 5

5 Edition: The Copy Liberation!

June 05, 20254 min read

 Sharpening the Ax

If you are making good money, here’s one thing I can say about you:

You have money-making skills.

Money-making skills don’t make you good… or bad.

They don’t make you smart… or corrupt.

They make you money.

That’s all.

Do I like those skills?

I do. I want to get better at them.

Because a little bit of that made a whole difference in my life.

It didn’t make me good, bad, smart or corrupt.

It made me money.

Not enough to impress anyone on Instagram.

Or Telegram.

But I know what it’s like to be trapped in a polluted mega-city chained to a schedule.

I know what it’s like to pretend I'm interested in the people I'm hanging out with, because I'm stuck with them.

I know what it’s like to sell my time and live for the holiday.

And the worst:

I know what it’s like not to have the energy or the disposable income to invest in myself, to take care of myself. Let alone take care of other people if one day they need me to, as they did.

I could call this little story my "ode to copy".

Copywriting is the earning skill that gave me the option to get paid for my creativity, not my hours.

Copywriting. There's more...

That’s one innocent word that doesn’t even exist in my mother tongue.

One innocent word I never heard about in 20 years of schooling (can I even blame my parents?).

One word that makes so much happen in the world.

I say, learn copy.

Except that one can't learn copy.

It’s more like sharpening a knife.

Then a little breakthrough happens and you swap the knife for a machete.

The machete for an axe. Keep sharpening your axe.

Before you know it, you are holding a sword.

But it doesn't matter how much powerful you think it is...

Talking about copywriting always feels like talking about nail-clippers. it's harmless, it goes under the radar. Doesn't it?

Let it be this way.

I just started a pilot program coaching people on copywriting.

Every week (for 10 weeks) they submit a piece of content and I offer comments and suggestions with regards to:

Hook (capturing attention, how much it persuades)

Frame (angle)

Flow (readability)

Tone (how it’s perceived)

The goal is to slash a 3-year learning curve down to 10 weeks.

Get someone from a nail-clipper to an axe.

If you are interested, tell me and I include you on the list for the next time. Which I'm launching when I get in Taiwan for the first time in a couple of months: The Taipei Copy Cohort

It's going to be more like a collaboration than coaching.

I'm working out the details in the pilot now.

My humble goal today is to simply inspire you to write more.

A day you write copy is a happy day.

It didn't change my life just because of the 'earning skill' thing.

It changed my life because it's what I like to do first thing in the morning, every day.

Strategic Note 4:

Sometimes your flaws are the only thing going for you.

ChatGPT can get you written content that is a 7 out of 10.

That's like a knife in my nail-clipper to katana scale.

But it doesn’t matter, because everyone can have a knife now and it doesn't mean a thing.

Everyone have a super camera in their pocket.

With billions of people carrying a super camera in their pocket you'd expect at least one Steven Spielberg born a year.

Instead we have a handful of good Tik Tokers.

It's the same with writing.

Mediocre writers continue to be mediocre writers with ChatGPT.

But now it’s machine-made mediocre, which is a lot less interesting.

There’s beauty in human mediocrity. We see the flaws, the pain.

There’s absolutely no beauty in machine mediocrity.

Sometimes your flaws are the only thing going for you (be strategic about your flaws 🤔).

Many breakthroughs start from human error or accident.

And when there’s no breakthrough, there’s a certain poetry, a certain tragedy and comedy in it.

But machine-made mediocrity is perhaps the purest form of mediocrity.

Who wants that?

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