TCC Podcast #442: Hand Copying to Learn Writing Skills with Derek Johanson

What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Could it be hand-writing sales pages and other great copy from expert copywriters like Mel Martin and Gary Bencivenga? My guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour, a program designed to help you learn to write by hand-copying great copy. We also talked about getting affiliates, mentoring, and a lot more. If you want to improve your copywriting skills, be sure to listen to this episode (and click here to learn about the CopyHour program). Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.

Stuff to check out:

The CopyHour Course
Gary Bencivenga’s Olive Oil Sales Page
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh: What’s the best way to learn copywriting? Would it surprise you that handwriting great copy is possibly the most successful technique? This is The Copywriter Club Podcast.

There must be something like a thousand different courses for copywriters to learn how to write copy. And probably another thousand more that talk about content—as if it’s a separate skill set. And there are probably an additional thousand more free videos in places like YouTube that promise to teach you the skills you need to succeed as a copywriter. With that many choices out there, you would think the world would be crammed full of phenomenally skilled copywriters, but it’s not. This should tell us that not all courses or workshops that promise to teach writers how to write copy and content actually work.

So what does work? Is there a course out there that many copywriters talk about or recommend when it comes to writing engaging sales or conversion copy? And it turns out there is. One course recommended by people like Dan Ferrari, Chris Orzechowski, Elise Savaki, and hundreds of others is called CopyHour. Unlike many other courses, CopyHour focuses on handwriting great copy. Does that really work?

I asked Derek Johanson, the writer who created CopyHour to be my guest for this episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast to answer questions like… why does hand-writing teach copy structure and pacing where other methods don’t appear to have the same level of success? 

We talked about the genesis and evolution of the CopyHour program and what it includes… things like writing great offers, writing headlines and bullets, and how Derek has improved the course over time.

Now I want to be upfront about something… I came to this interview as a bit of a skeptic when it comes to hand-writing copy. I’m all in on studying good examples of emails, sales pages, and other good copy. In fact, I have a swipe file with more than 500 different sales pages that I’ve saved to study… those swipes are part of The Copywriter Underground… But handwriting? I wasn’t so sure… I think Derek may have changed my mind. And if you’re a skeptic on this topic, you may want to hear what he says about the science of handwriting and learning. If you’re convinced by the end of this episode that you want to know more, you can go to thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour to find out more about Derek’s course. It’s open for new members the week this episode goes live, so check it out today… thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour

Before we get to my interview with Derek, this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Underground. You’ve heard me talk about how we’ve recently rebuilt The Underground dashboard to make finding the ideas and insights you need easier. But as I started recreating this new dashboard, it occurred to me that no one has time to watch more than 70 different workshops—even for those workshops that help you gain the skills and strategies you need to build your business. So I’ve taken more than 30 of those workshops on finding clients, having sales calls, using A.I., building authority on LinkedIn, and dozens of others… and I’ve created playbooks that break down the ideas in the workshops into easy-to-follow steps. Each playbook is 3-5 pages long. You can read through one and implement the ideas in minutes. And then if you want more detail, you can watch the accompanying workshop. Each playbook even includes a checklist so you don’t miss any steps and can ensure you get things done. I’m working on completing playbooks for all of the workshops and training inside The Underground. They should all be ready by the end of April. You can get the first 30 or so right now by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

And now, my interview with Derek Johanson…

Derek, welcome to the podcast. I’m thrilled to have you here. Before we hit record, I was mentioning you know, you’re you’re talked about by everyone. Your program is relatively well known. But before we get into all of that, I’m curious: how did you get from the beginning of your career to where you are now, where you are literally on the lips of so many copywriters around the world?

Derek Johanson: Wow. Do you want the long version or the short version?

Rob Marsh: We’ve got an hour. So you tell me how much time we should use up in your story.

Derek Johanson:  Yeah. So, I mean, I can take you back to the very, beginning, oh, man. I got started online about 1516, years ago. And when I first got started, I was bouncing all around to different countries. Actually, I graduated from UCLA and kind of got out of school and was working in the music industry. I wanted to, I wanted to be in the music industry. I wanted to play music actually. But I’m going to tell you the long version, because I don’t really know how to short version, yeah, we might need more than an app. I don’t know. So I wanted to work in the music industry. And I got out of college, and. And immediately got a job and started working for a small publishing company.

And really had one of those moments where, I read The 4 Hour Work Week, and my brain just got destroyed by the possibility of traveling the world and working. I had traveled quite a bit before that, and I was like, Oh, my God, if I can make that work, I can do this, or if I can make that work, that I’ll be set right. If I can make $1,000 a month and live in Thailand, I will be golden. So that book destroyed my life. And then from there, I worked for about eight or nine months at that company, and I started looking around and looking at my bosses, who were all in their 50s, and nobody seemed happy. And I was like, You know what, this is where I’m headed if I don’t get out of here. So I saved up all my money or saved as much money as I possibly could. I shared a bedroom with my best friend at the time, and I actually had a mattress that whenever our landlord would come over, I had to shove into the closet because we weren’t supposed to have that many people in the house or in the room. So basically, I just saved every dollar I could and I quit, then started traveling.

I went down through Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Argentina, and all along the way, I was working with one of my other friends. We were just trying to figure out how we’re gonna make money as we’re going. So my first foray was into affiliate marketing. So I set up some blogs. I had a blog on acne. I had a blog on dating—just setting up kind of weird, random little websites, and started to actually make some money with those. And what I really didn’t understand at the time is what I was doing, and when I say a little bit of money, I really mean a little bit of money. What I didn’t realize was that I was actually doing copywriting.

And so fast forward a little bit. I came back to the States, and I met a guy in Thailand that I became fast friends with. He had a publishing company or wanted to start a publishing company. We called it dangerous publishing. We were trying to find “how-to” experts in various fields. We had an acting coach. We had a yoga instructor, like he was like a yoga master for yoga instructors, and a few other small clients, some in kind of on the business side, biz, op stuff. And so I traveled to Philadelphia, where he lived at the time. After we met in Thailand, he came back to where he was from, which was Philly. We started working together, building this publishing company. And then about, let’s see. About six months into that, we get a knock on our loft. We had this loft in Philadelphia, and my wife is in the other room right now, and she’s laughing because she was there. And we get a knock on our door in the morning. On a Saturday morning, I hear and then I hear keys jiggling, and our landlord runs into the house—I have problem with landlords. I’m just realizing, as I’m telling you the story—he runs into the apartment and he’s like, “David, where’s my money?” And at that time, I had no idea that there were any problems at all, but it turns out my then-business partner was funneling money from our business bank account into his own personal account to pay down a DUI.

I’m from San Diego. I live in San Diego. I was on the East Coast in Philly, 3000 miles from home, and I was still young at the time, like 24-25 in that range, and decided that this was not somebody that I wanted to be in business with. And so from there, I left that business, I basically dumped all of the money that I had into that business, and then I took a couple of clients that I had or that we had from that business. I started working with them and trying to help them grow and doing all of the online business activities and marketing activities that we’v all heard of. So setting up a blog. I was running Facebook ads, building landing pages, and writing sales pages. I wrote some VSLs and we actually started publishing some books on Kindle with a few different people. And so I realized that I was copywriting, right? Everything that I was doing, I hadn’t really figured that out. Up until that point. I had read some stuff by Carlton. I knew that. I knew what copywriting was, but I didn’t realize that everything I was doing centered around writing and writing copy. So I did that for about six or seven months. I considered it like marketing consulting, and I was working with an actor. Again, he had a business of acting course, and so I was helping him grow. I started to see the amount of money that we were making, I was making for him, and basically, I was running everything for him and not making a ton of money with it. So I was like, Huh, what could I do? How could I start something on my own?

And I knew that I really liked writing. I’d always loved writing, and I really enjoyed the copywriting that I was doing for that client. So what I did was I posted in this forum. It’s called the Dynamite Circlefor entrepreneurs that are trying to travel. And, yeah, sorry, Rob, this is the long, long version.

Rob Marsh: It’s all good. I’m there with you. I remember Dynamite Circle. It was a really big thing not too long ago.

Derek Johanson: Yeah, it’s still going. And so I posted in that forum. You know, I was in the kind of in the copywriting subgroup in there, responding to people talking about things. I was talking about, the Facebook ads that I was running and for that client. And so I eventually stumbled on Gary Halbert, the hands-on experience newsletter. So it was like that hit, you know, Gary Halbert newsletter, and then the title of it was hands-on experience. And in it, he talked about hand copying and handwriting. And so I thought, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” And I started to do it, the handwriting, and I really enjoyed doing it. It just kind of seemed to fire something new in my brain. I always felt very motivated and ready to write after I did it.

But the problem that I had is that I just kind of fell off from doing it. Certain ads that he recommended that we hand copy. Had no idea, like, why it was working. What was the point of all of this? Like the one about the expedition, I can’t even, I don’t know why. I can’t remember because I didn’t really end up hand-copying it all that much because I hated it. So there were little things like that happening. I started to want to hand copy more and realized that was kind of hard. And I was in this copywriting group, and I just kind of pitched a few of the people in it. John McIntyre was in that first group, and I just pitched some people. I said, “Hey, send me $20, and I’ll send you the ads, and I’m going to deliver it via email. I’ll just send it every single day. I’ll send you the ads to hand copy. I’ll set up a little forum, and we can talk about what we liked about the ads, why we thought they converted, and what made them good, right?” And so I set that up like, kind of woke up one morning and just or woke up like very early morning, woke up at like 3 am and was like, I’m gonna write a sales letter for this. And wrote a sales letter for the just basically like an accountability hand copying program, right? And the first time I put that out in the Dynamite Circle, I got 20 people, 20 people paid me 20 bucks. And I was like, maybe there’s something here. And so that first group went through, and everyone was just jazzed, really excited about it. I wasn’t teaching anything in those first, first few versions of copy hour. I was just literally sending ads to people. And everyone seemed to be getting great results. Just, like, wow, this is really cool. Like, I learned XYZ. John McIntyre—I don’t want to exactly put words in his mouth—but I think, literally, that inspired him to start his entire business going through and he became the autoresponder guy before auto responders were really even a thing.

And so from there, I kept my client work, but kept running different versions of CopyHour and just kind of honing and refining and making it better. Eventually, I got to the point where I decided I was just going to start training a little bit, adding in some extra exercises and structure to the entire program, like how to do leads. How do you write a headline? How do you write a lead? What do you think about what comes after the lead, which is the sales argument? How do you write the offer? How do you do bullets? And kind of added in my own flair to it based on personal experiences that I was having. And then from there, I just started adding in extra programs to CopyHour and in 2017 Copy Hour became a full, complete program. Then I quit my client work in 2017. So to get back to the very first question that you asked me is, why are people still talking about it? Handwriting works, number one. And number two, I’ve been working on it for 12 or 13 years now. And when you can iterate on a product for 12 or 13 years—which some people have told me, is a mistake, to keep updating and making things better or making things different—I’ve just continued to do that for 12 years. I’ve actually talked to a couple of different business coaches who said, stop editing this product, stop and focus on new stuff. And I’m like, this could be better. I can do this better. I can teach this better. And I think that’s probably why, 15 years later, people are still talking about it.

Rob Marsh: I want to get into what CopyHour is, but before we do that, I think I saw you mentioned that in your launches last year, you know both, both of your launches for this program were over six figures, which I think in the marketing space right now is a little bit of an anomaly. There are definitely programs out there that are doing well, but I’ve heard so many people talk for the last almost, almost two years now that, you know, course, sales are really hard, you know, and launch numbers are down, and you know, all this stuff’s going on, and yet you still had success, aside from the content of the program. What do you attribute that to? Why are you still able to have these big monster launches when other people are struggling?

Derek Johanson: Okay. That’s a really good question. There are a couple of different things, I think. First of all, let me start with the sales page, right? So after all of this time, I’ve built up some pretty incredible social proof, or testimonials, or whatever you want to call it, where I have various people who have gone through the program, who have gone on to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products and not everyone is like CopyHour is the thing that made me sell $200 million, but CopyHour seems to be this launching point, like that launch pad, the starting point for a lot of different copywriters, a lot of different people. So Sam Parr, who sold the hustle for $30 million, ended up creating his own version of CopyHour and tried to call part of it CopyHour, or he said that he called it his CopyHour. But anyway, Sam Parr tried to rip off CopyHour. And it’s out there if you want to look for it. But he went through CopyHour, then sold the hustle for $30 million. here’s Dan Ferrari who went through and he sold, I don’t even know how much he sold…

Rob Marsh: Dan is famous for being Motley Fool’s big copywriter and has sold probably hundreds of millions of of dollars worth of products at this point.

Derek Johanson: Yeah, for sure. And then also, you know, Ian Stanley went through it. Ning Lee, who I think is probably going to do about a million dollars in per. Personal income this year from his copywriting. So I’ve got some of those big, big testimonials we’ve I’ve been around again for like, 12-13, years, so people kind of hear it. And also, I think that depends on what type of course you’re trying to sell as well. So copywriting seems to be still something that people are interested in. Copywriting courses still, still seem to be something that business owners know about. People are still interested in that topic, versus maybe some of the other topics that people might be struggling to sell a little bit. And then also, on top of that, the type of traffic that that I get, I get a lot of word of mouth, which I think, obviously, is I’ve been around for 12-13 years. A lot of people who have copywriting courses have gone through CopyHour. So I’ve trained almost up some. I really sound like I’m bragging or something right now, but I’m just answering the question. So I’ve got that. Then there are some bigger affiliates that, when you have a sales page that has amazing testimonials, frankly, they’re amazing. When you have that page and you have a good affiliate who’s willing to push hard and send hard you can, you can sell quite a bit. And so I think that that that played, played a big factor in, in those big launches. I don’t know if there’s much else that I can think of right now that would say that, and then also, just like the way that I email now, after all these years, I think is the right way to email people, and just giving as much value upfront. We can talk about this later, but just giving as much value upfront, I think, is extremely valuable, and I’ve proved that to myself this past year.

Rob Marsh: Is there a secret to finding good affiliates? And this is maybe a selfish question. I know a lot of copywriters aren’t really out there looking for affiliates, but obviously, you’re building a relationship with somebody, and so that’s something all copywriters need. But do you do anything special in order to connect with the people who are selling your courses?

Derek Johanson: I would sell this to you, Rob, if I could. If I had that one magic secret, I would sell it. And I’ve thought a lot about this, because one of the major parts of my business is getting those initial customers into the door. And I always say this, that’s how I pay for traffic. At this point, you have to pay for traffic in some way, shape, or form. The way that I do it is, I pay affiliates. Then once you have those good customers in the door from the affiliates, then on the back of that, you can promote your own stuff, promote other affiliates, and kind of boost that lifetime value. I’m kind of talking against paid ads right now, but like on top of that, you also get upfront money. You’re typically getting paid to get a new customer, which is something that paid traffic doesn’t allow you. So affiliate traffic can be great. It can also not be so great because of the reasons that you’re mentioning where it’s very hard to find people that are good affiliates. The way I’ve done it is not necessarily super replicable, but I go meet people, that’s the way I’ve done it—meet people in person and so, and you meet kind of networkers in person, if possible. Networking is kind of a terrible word that nobody likes, but it really is the truth. So if there are people going to events that you know of, you should probably be going to those events. If I was just starting out now and I didn’t have a family and two very young kids, I would be traveling… Does Brian from Titans have a mastermind coming up?

Rob Marsh: He’s got something coming up in late summer or early fall, and obviously, there are all kinds of content and different events out there.

Derek Johanson: I met Ian Stanley in person, basically after he had gone through CopyHour and we became business partners. At one point, Ian actually bought my business, and I bought it back from him, if you we could talk about that if you want to want a little bit. But so, Ian’s an amazing affiliate. And so it’s really just like getting out there, meeting people in person, developing those relationships, and then you got to kind of get a little bit lucky. You can kind of see from how people run affiliate promotions, who’s good at it too. So like, Justin Goff is great at it. He retired. Obviously, people probably know that. And then Ian is fantastic. I know just through Daniel Throssell‘s never promoted me, but I know through other people that he’s extremely good. And so there are people like that. If you see people doing heavy promotions, and they seem to be having success with it, it’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, but that’s kind of the way that you get yourself in the door, and you start to find people.

Rob Marsh: So let’s talk a little bit about hand copying copy and CopyHour. I have to admit, for a long time, I’ve sort of pushed back against this idea of hand copying, primarily, probably because it just makes my hand hurt, because my hand aches when I when I try it. And I’ve always thought that more important than actually copying the words is the studying of the sales page that you’re doing. But obviously, there’s some science around handwriting and neural connections. So let’s talk about this. Why do you do it? Why did you do it? Why does it work? And obviously, it is working. You’ve got lots of successes from your program.

Derek Johanson: Yeah, so there is some science, and I think it’s probably best to start there, just for people that are, that are listening in, because that is, I mean, it’s much more. There are woo connections. And then there’s the scientific side of it. And the scientific side of it is not, is not directly tied to sales copy itself, but the little science that we do have on handwriting is that it is basically recall. So, handwriting helps with the recall of characters. And recall of language is the science that’s out there. You’re better able to recall what you learn. It’s in a testing situation, and so college students who handwrite their notes tend to do better on tests or do better on tests than people who don’t.

So the way that I’ve thought about it, if we’re speaking from more of a scientific standpoint, is that sales copy is a language, right? Like, you know sales good sales copy, when you read it, you know what it looks like, you know what it feels like. You know how it makes you know how it makes you feel, right? And so my thinking is that when you are hand-copying stuff, you are better able to recall that kind of sales language. It almost kind of flows out of you naturally when you’re when you’re sitting down to write. And I think speed is really important when you’re writing copy. When you are trying to write something right, like, so you’re trying to write a sales letter, and you start typing, you’re writing the headline, and then you get where you get to the point where you want to write the lead, or kind of depends—I typically start with the offer. I’ll write out the offer and then I’ll go back from there.

But say you’re starting out, you’re writing the headline, and then you get to the part where you want to write the lead, and you’re like, “Hmm, what I want to say for this part?” And then you go and check your notes, and now you’re in another document. And you’re away from the actual writing itself. And what I think happens is it just becomes choppy. If you have to constantly reference your notes when you’re writing, you’re just not going to write as well. You’re going to be kind of scattered. It’s gonna hurt your focus when you’re actually in flow, right? So you kind of lose flow whenever you have to go back and reference the things—reference your notes and reference everything else when you’re writing. So hand copying and this is basically just my opinion, but backed by a little bit of science, is that when you hand copy, you are now able to recall things much more quickly, and that helps keep you in the flow for writing, which is, in my opinion, is extremely important. When you’re actually in the act of writing, you are not only in a state of flow, but you’re also in a state of hyper-confidence in what you’re doing. And if you’re not extremely confident in what you’re going to say, how things are going to flow. It takes you out of that kind of subconscious writing and back into your conscious mind. And we can talk about all of that stuff if you want. I can, you know, I can talk about Zen Buddhism and some of these other things, and some other states of states of flow, that that I think come into it, but that’s generally why I think it works. And, I mean, my sales page goes into it, into it a little bit more if you want to, if people want to dive into that, but that’s, that’s generally what I think, what I think is going on with hand copying.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ll link to the sales page in the show notes so people can check that out, because the copy there is, it’s a great sales page, and you talk about some of that stuff, but it also feels like there’s something else that’s going on in addition to just like the flow or the writing, like there’s some other learning that starts to happen. And maybe this is separate from the handwriting itself. But as you’re constantly looking at a Gary Halbert sales page or a Bencivenga sales page or a Carlton sales page, right? Like you’re going back and you’re seeing their ideas. You’re almost thinking through the copy the way they’re thinking through, at least the final draft of their copy. And so, you know, even if the hand hurting part, it doesn’t work for you like it doesn’t work for me or hasn’t in the past, there’s still something really valuable about going through that mental exercise.

Derek Johanson: I agree. So are you? Are you a baseball fan at all?

Rob Marsh: A bit. I’ll dip in and out. I live in Salt Lake, so I don’t have a major league team yet, although we’re hoping that we might get the Florida team here. But, yeah, I’ll watch, I’ll watch games from time to time.

Derek Johanson: Nice. Okay, so you know, like when somebody is just on a on a hit streak, oh, yeah, or if you even played baseball yourself, when, when you’re locked in, right? What ends up happening is there these, these things called mirror neurons, which basically, like the studies that they’ve done, are on on monkeys. So if, like, a monkey is watching another monkey use a tool, it will the same neurons that are firing in the monkey that’s using the tool will also fire in the monkey that’s just watching, right? So when you’re using a tool, pen, pencil, whatever, what’s what’s happening is, and then again, this is just kind of just getting out there a little bit. What’s what’s happening is that some of those same neurons that were firing for the copywriter themselves might be firing for you as well. Again, I know that’s kind of that’s kind of out there, but that’s something that I’ve thought about. And then back to the baseball reference. Is whenever a hitter gets on a on a streak they talk about, and I experienced this. I played baseball growing up. You get the bat almost becomes just an extension of your hands. Right. The Bat becomes an extension of your arms, and so and what that does is, when you are in the zone, you’re kind of freed up to think about what the pitcher is thinking. And so you’re thinking about what the pitcher is going to throw. The bat is just like this extension of your arms. It’s like it’s nothing in your hands. It’s like you’re literally just throwing your hand out to hit that ball. That’s how easy it is. And so. I think what’s going on when, if, if it’s not memory and recall, if it’s not getting into flow, it’s being able to when you’re hand copying, you’re kind of in that state where you are thinking along the same lines as what the copywriter himself or herself is thinking as they’re going through it, and it makes sense to me, I and like, literally, like, I have to say all of this with like, this is me just going back and trying to explain what the hell is going on with everyone that goes through the program that’s like, this is the best exercise I’ve ever done. And I have no clue why. I don’t know why this is working. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: I mean, again, I love studying sales pages, and so, you know, as I’m going through and I’m thinking, Oh, that, that line there, it’s not saying, hey, this proves it, but obviously he’s showing proof, right? And, and I think the more you do that, the more you see that, the more it copy almost becomes like Lego bricks that you kind of fit together and like. So, you know, it’s like, okay, yeah, I get headlines subhead, you know, lead, hook proof, introduce the expert, like all of the elements that are typically there. But as you see different copywriters just doing it in different ways. It’s almost like your toolbox just opens up and suddenly there’s way more possibilities than you ever had on your own.

Derek Johanson: for sure. And I think part of it too is like, almost like a synthesis of notes, or like when you people that take notes generally do better remembering things or learning, right? So when you are hand copying, and as long as you’re not doing it, I mean, you can do it mindlessly, but as long as you’re not doing it too mindlessly, I think what’s going on is that you are, you’re slowing down, right? And you’re, you’re better analyzing what it is that you’re you’re doing, and you’re looking at your notes and and, and you’re taking notes essentially on a sales page, whereas if you just try to go through and read it, you can read it, but you can also add in this, this connection here, which is very powerful for stimulating your brain. So oddly, my my uncle, is a like a United States famous, I wouldn’t say, world famous, hand surgeon, which I didn’t know until after I had started copy hour, and he was talking about this connection here between your thumb and your pointer finger stimulates brain activity at a higher level than than not. So like when these two things are together, your brain is at is firing, is activated at a higher level, more neurons are being stimulated when those two things are working together and so that notes slowing down, yada yada, yada. Yeah, it makes sense. Hand copying rocks.

Rob Marsh:  Obviously coffee hour includes more than just, hey, copy this. You’ve added some other elements. What else does it include that helps with that learning and growing, you know, beyond just the handwriting.

Derek Johanson:  Yeah, so it’s, it’s a full training course, and so the you basically just get, kind of my take on on how to write sales pages, and then how I broken copy our down Now is that we focus on the four different sections of a sales page, or a sales letter, and this is kind of all, you know, the four sections are not anything new. I tried not to create, like, new terms for different sections of the sales page, just to eliminate some confusion, like, I know a lot of copywriters like to name, or, you know, gurus like to name every single
thing. You got to come up with your own stuff so you can talk about it. No one else can. Yeah, exactly.
So there’s I, you know, like, basically the program follows five different modules. We start with the offer, then we get, like, so I like to start with the offer, because a lot of times what you can do is you can extract from your product, whatever it is that you’re selling. You extract that that main benefit, and then you kind of put it back up into the headline. Is generally what you want to do, not always, but that’s, you know, good rule of thumb. So start with the offer. I teach how to basically write a good offer, how to come up with with an offer. And then we go into the lead, we go into the sales argument, then into the close and then kind of putting it all together. And and. And, you know, at the end of it, at the end of it, not only have you hand copied all of those different sections. So, like, when I’m talking about the offer, I’m showing you offers. When we’re talking about the lead, I’m showing you leads and how they work. And the there are eight different types of leads that I talk about in copy hour, which is eight different ways to start a sales message. And then, you know, with sales argument, same thing and close, same thing, we’re looking at each individual element of the close and, yeah, at the end of it, you’ve seen all the different versions. You’ve seen all the different pieces of of writing. You’ve hand copied. If you want to hand copy, you don’t have to hand copy, but that’s part of it is you want to do it, and at the end of it, you should have a sales page ready to go, sales letter ready to go.

Rob Marsh: How does this apply to email writing? You know, if I’m listening, I’m thinking, I don’t write sales pages. So I’m not sure that this is helpful. How does this translate to, I guess, not even just email writing, but other kinds of copy, even content that other copywriters might be working on.

Derek Johanson: Yeah, so I’ll start with email. And I do, we do cover email marketing in copy hour, and I have a separate program on on writing email that that I sell as well. It’s called Email Copy hour. But the the idea
genius at naming, aren’t I? So the basically, you can view a lot of different kind of depends on what type of emails you’re sending, but the headline, a lot of the stuff that I talk about with hooks and headlines is going to be your subject line. And then, and actually, you know, we do some, some hand copying of of emails. And so, yeah, you can view your email as, like, just a lead, really like. So I teach you how to write a lead, how to how to have a start. And basically, if you successfully do your lead, people want to read the rest of the message right?

So that rest of the message could just be a click to a sales page, or whatever it is that you’re sending people over to. So or, you know, there are sales pages, and actually one that we look at in the course that you can write an entire abbreviated sales letter with a lead, a sales argument, an offer, a close within the email itself. And so, you know, email can be viewed like an individual email could be viewed as just like an abbreviated part of the structure of the, you know, of a sales letter. And so basically, my idea with copy hour is I’m going to teach you how to write a sales page, sales letter. I’m going to teach you how to write a 10,000 word sales letter, if you really wanted to, although I don’t necessarily recommend it, especially for my type of business, I don’t write giant sales letters. I don’t think you need to. I don’t think you have to. I don’t think people want to read it for my particular business. But I will teach you how to write that giant sales letter if you wanted to, and then you can abbreviate it. You can take what you’ve learned from that overall structure and apply that to any type of sales writing. I don’t think it really works in reverse necessarily, like I think if you start off by writing emails, which is, which is great. I mean, it’s a great way to get your foot in the door. That type of copywriting, I think it’s going to be harder to learn how to go from email to a sales page. And frankly, like sales pages, sales letters are going to get you paid the most anybody that I know that’s pushing towards a million dollars a year is writing sales pages, sales letters, offers, creating offers, that type of thing, and so I think it’s the best thing to start with, even though it might be a little bit more difficult than other types of copy, I think it’s the best place to start. Yeah, same can apply to content and everything like depends on, you know, I don’t teach SEO writing. But any sort of like content that could lead to a sale, or does lead to a sale, is the type of copy that that we talk about.

Rob Marsh: Do you have a favorite sales page out of the course? One that’s like, wow, this is the this is the top. This is the gold standard.

Derek Johanson: I love. Gary Bencivenga’s olive oil letter.

Rob Marsh: So that is my all time favorite as well. I’ve done a breakdown of that letter in my own community, and our membership is it’s just, it’s a work of genius.

Derek Johanson: And yeah, 100%agree. Yeah, I love it, and I love that it’s still running, as far as I can tell. Like, that same letter still going. Yeah, I think it’s, this has a couple minor tweaks over the years, but, yeah, a version still running.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love that one. It’s fantastic. I’ll link to that for anybody who’s listening, just so you can check it out. It, I mean, it’s got story, it’s got science, it’s it’s so good at selling, it’s really hard to to read that and think, Well, I’m just gonna go to Costco and buy my olive oil after that.

Derek Johanson: yeah, exactly. And then Aaron winter is really good. So he used to work for Motley Fool, and now he’s got kind of his own agency with Dan Ferrari. But Aaron winter stuff is really good. The Trillion Dollar War for your living room from Motley Fool, that’s a giant epic sales letter, but I love that one. Mel Martin has some bangers. I like, I love Mel Martin stuff, just like pure bullets. I don’t really use bullets all that much in my copy, but I love Mel Martins. You know, they’re like, you know, it’s like a direct response, sales space, ad type thing, not, not a sales page, but I love those. And then, you know, like, if Carlton stuff is just wild. You know, a lot of it you can’t use today, but I just love the big, giant, strange, weird ideas. And, yeah, Eugene Schwartz, like Eugene stuff is really cool. Just like, lay down on the ground and cure all of your illness.

Rob Marsh:  yes, rub your stomach and cure cancer or whatever.

Derek Johanson: yeah, yeah, exactly. His stuff was kind of crazy.

Rob Marsh: So talk a little bit about your own approach to email. So as I’ve looked at your email, been on your list, I noticed a lot of stories, a lot of open loops, actually, that you don’t close at the end of your email. Sometimes, you know, multi stage, uh, emails to go on for a few days. Yeah. How do you look at email? And you know what you’re trying to do with your own audience?

Derek Johanson: Yeah. So this is the stuff that I really love to talk about now, especially because I’ve made a big switch in my email approach and also just my business in general. So I have gone from and, you know, actually, this might answer part of the question, that part of the problem that people are having selling courses this day and age is because a lot of the like, I think a lot of the lower level copywriting, freelance copywriting industry has been completely chopped off, partially AI, partially just fear of AI and content farms—
just the market itself.

And so the I made a big switch about a year and a half ago to I just want to talk to I do like talking to copywriters, but I think all copywriters want to start a business, their own business. I know that I did, but I made a switch from talking to specifically freelance copywriters. I want to talk to solopreneur business owners. I want to talk to that audience, because that is who I am. Those are the problems that I’m solving every single day. I haven’t done client work since 2017 so for me to feel good about writing and what I’m doing, I want to talk to the people that want to run the same business that I want to run. And that shift has been awesome for me. I kind of got out of talking to freelancers about what they could do that I did. You know eight years ago, it’s more, hey, I’m running a business right now. Here are the challenges that that I’m overcoming, here’s here’s what I’ve done to solve different problems.

And so that’s kind of the overarching idea of of my emails, is that I do actually week long tutorials. So I hired a business coach end of last year and or beginning of last year, and he helped me come up with a kind of entire system for sending tutorial emails. So all Monday through Friday, my emails are are all interconnected, right? So I teach a topic like, basically a how to topic, some problem that I specifically myself have solved, and, and, and so I string them all together. Monday is typically an open loop about, like, what exactly I’m going to do for the rest of. The week, what I’m going to teach you Tuesday, I show you an example of of what you know, like, what that particular topic is that could be in story format, or it could just be literally, like, some sort of visual example, or a breakdown of, like, of the topic that I’m going to talk about, I should have a topic in mind when I’m telling you this, because it’ll be easier to describe it. And then Wednesday is kind of a step by step. And then Thursday, I’m basically answering some sort of question that’s probably going to arise from trying to implement those steps. And then on Friday, I’m just kind of doing a recap action plan, type email, and I just cycle through those. And I, you know, my whole thing now is a I am only talking about things that I have actually done and and nothing like, here’s how you could do it. Here’s how I not even like, I got rid of some products that I have or like, here’s what I would do. Everything that I do these days is, here’s exactly what I’ve actually done to produce results. Here’s the step-by-step of it. I try to give away literally, as much as I possibly can. Most of the time, people are telling me that, like, the emails that I’m sending are better than a lot of the different courses that they buy, and I’m sending those for free. I’m literally just trying to give away as much as I possibly can. And like people will talk about, Oh, I gotta give away 90% and leave the 10% for paid products. I found that I don’t even know what the heck that means. So for me, I’m like, give it all away and then in my products, I’m gonna just continue to give it all away and see, yeah, I don’t even know where it’s gonna lead, but it’s like, that’s, that’s my that’s my mindset. And since I adopted that mindset, you know, like these, these bigger launches have happened, it’s really just about owning your expertise. And I’ve, I had to hire a coach and a therapist to kind of tell me, like, Hey, dude, you’re an expert. You’ve sold millions of dollars worth of these products. Like, start talking like you’re an expert. A big issue that that I had in the past was that I was just kind of sending little story emails about my life with no real teaching in them. There wasn’t any sort of value. And that’s great for getting attention. That’s great for having people feel like you’re a friend of theirs, building a relationship in that way. But when when it came time to buy stuff, I was finding that people weren’t buying from me as much as I wanted them to buy.

Now, I’ve kind of switched to hey, I’m an expert. I know how to do this stuff. Like, I’ve been doing this for 15 years now. Here are all the different things that I’ve learned. Here’s what’s worked for me, here’s what hasn’t worked for me. And I get a lot less emails from people being like, Oh, I love you, Derek. And I get a lot more sales now. And for me, I’d rather have the sales at the moment as much as I’d like my ego to be stroked like anybody else. It’s like I got two small kids. I live in the most expensive city, one of the most expensive cities in the entire country, and I’m just trying to make money.
Rob Marsh: No reason, no reason that the bank account going up doesn’t stroke your ego as well. So you mentioned the shift in confidence. Talk a little bit about that, like, because this is marketing industry-wide, you know, where we have so many experts who are afraid to show up as experts. I’m sure that I do it. Almost everybody I know does it. Some people realize that they’re they’re not, you know, they’re not doing that. But this is obviously my mindset issue, getting rid of the head trash that says you don’t know what you’re talking about or but how did you get through that? Like, what was the process? You know, or maybe I’m asking you to help me with some therapy here, help me step through this problem myself.

Derek Johanson: Yeah, well, I’ve got three recommendations, two of which I’m hesitant to tell anybody to do. But let’s start with the first one, hire a business coach. So hiring a business coach was a was a big, gigantic step for me, and what that business coach was able to explain to me that no one really. Had talked about before, was was again, what I had said earlier about owning what you actually have done. So write about what you have actually done, not just what sounds good. And so when I’m writing from a place of what I’ve actually done, I am extremely confident. Because how can you not be confident in something that you’ve you’ve already done? I think where a lot of people get into a lot of trouble when they’re they’re writing, and especially kind of writing in this scenario, where you’re writing to other business owners, or where you where you really need to be the expert. It’s not necessarily like if you’re, you know, writing for a company where you’re selling, you know, a workout program, or you’re writing about like some sort of supplement, but when you’re when you’re writing about what you’ve actually done to to to a group of people that are trying to do similar things to you, it just, yeah, I don’t know it sounds so it kind of sounds, not It sounds too simple or something on the surface, but when you when you’re actually writing about things that you’ve actually done, there’s a confidence to that. And it also just kind of, you know, like you just, you feel better about what you’re doing and, and I think that’s a major issue for a lot of of different copywriters, is they don’t really, like feel good about some of the copy that they’re writing, or that they have to write. And, you know, they almost feel like they’re lying, or like an imposter. Like imposter syndrome is huge. I experience imposter syndrome quite often, until I just kind of forgot all that stuff by writing about what I actually do. Because when you’re writing about what you actually do, then how you How could you be an imposter? Right? So there, and there’s, like, some hard work that’s involved with that too, right? Like, you can’t just kind of phone it in. You actually have to be doing things. So like, for example, I was, I was writing about, forget what exactly the topic was, but I wanted to tell people why I thought something worked, like, some some, maybe it’s like some marketing tactic that I had worked like, how does it work? Like, how well does it work, right? Okay, so I was writing about putting just a simple wait list, like, putting up a wait list for a product that you have on your sales page, put, like, a little wait list box up top. And I was like, how does the strategy work? Does this strategy work? Like? And I was like, writing like, yeah, it works extremely well. And then I was like, Well, how do I know it works extremely well? And I was like, I don’t, I don’t really check the numbers on it, like, I’m not checking my my stats religiously on this opt in box, and how it how it directly relates to the ultimate amount of sales that I got. And so instead of saying, Hey, it works really well, I started talking about, how, about how I don’t have close tracking on the things that I do, and kind of owning the fact that, like, I’ve still built up a pretty successful business without honing in on all the different little metrics, whereas, you know, I feel like most people would kind of just make up, like, make up things and not get specific about numbers. And it was like, I’m not getting specific about numbers because I can’t get specific about numbers, so that’s just a small example. So that’s step one.

The two that I have a hard time like recommending to anybody will be therapy. Therapy has helped me immensely. I’m not going to tell somebody to go out and get a therapist, because that just sounds I don’t know, I don’t know that I would hear that well, but a therapist just kind of helps you talk through any of the, any of this shit that’s floating around in your head. That’s helped me a lot, and and then psychedelics, so, mushrooms, so, and I can’t really recommend that to anybody, but mushrooms, basically, just help you understand that everything’s gonna be okay.

Rob Marsh: At the very least, a business coach or a little help from somebody who’s been there. And we’ll, we’ll leave those last two steps if, if it feels right for anybody.

Derek, this is, this is great, I believe, as we’re going live, CopyHour is open for new students, and we’ll link to it in the show notes. And there’ll be a bonus if you obviously, they can search for it online and find it, but if they buy it through the link on our website, there’d be a little bonus for people to consider. But where else should people go to just find out about you be on your list? You know, to hear to be more in your world?

Derek Johanson:  Yeah. So the the easiest thing to do is to go to copyhour.com one word. If you want to dive in and kind of hear about my methodology for writing a sales page, go to copy our.com/framework and that’s a big, long article. I think it’s like things 22 minutes read on exactly how I look at writing a sales page. And you can kind of get your feet wet there, and then, yeah, and then that’s, that’s the best place. I think

Rob Marsh: Amazing. I appreciate you taking the time to talk through this, especially salespage handwriting, you know, it’s, it’s always out there in my brain, I’m thinking, you know, I should do this, and then I do it, and my hand hurts, but like, I get the science maybe this time, maybe, maybe I’ll start writing this week. We’ll see.

Derek Johanson: It doesn’t have to be for the rest of your life type of thing. I think a lot of us get caught up in, in, oh, this has got to be the thing that I do forever, and then that just makes it so daunting. But it’s like select like bursts of time, like 30 to 90 days of concentrated effort has lifelong effects. Like, even from an from an exercise standpoint. Like, I’ve done some programs, or it’s like a 90 day program, and then I’m done, and I might get a little bit fat again, or whatever you want to, you know, say, like, put on some pounds, and if I wanted to get back in shape, I generally, I mean, I’m 40 now, so I don’t know how true this is, but, like, I generally, I generally know that, like, I can get back to a decent place a lot more quickly than than if I hadn’t done that initial uh, 90 day workout program when I was younger. So I think the same thing applies with with this. It’s like, you got to learn. I mean, copywriting like, this is your podcast, right? Like, copywriting is such a foundational piece. It’s, it’s the thing that has enabled all of the income that I’ve made in an online business situation. Being good at copywriting is, like, the number one skill, if you’re good at copywriting or good at coding, like, those are the two things, like, what else is there? You know, like, what else? What else is going to allow you to make a really, really good income? I don’t know. So it because copywriting is sales, right? Sales, salesmanship and print.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, exactly. That’s good advice.

Thanks to Derek for talking about his program, learning copy by handwriting, and how he attracts new customers using affiliates, which seems to be working even over the past couple of years when so many online course sellers have struggled… which may be another reason to check out copy hour by visiting thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour to learn more. A course that continues to sell this well is likely effective at delivering on its promise… helping copywriters get better at what we all do for our clients.

Let’s talk a bit more about the science of handwriting… there aren’t any studies specifically about learning the principles of copywriting when writing things out by hand, but activating the connection between your hand and, specifically, your forefinger and thumb and the brain has a proven impact on learning all kinds of skills. So it’s not too crazy to think it has an oversized impact on learning how to write copy. In addition to the nerves that fire between your hand and brain, when studying a sales page, your brain is also breaking down why the words work the way they do… why they are in the order they are in… and how the words impact your thinking. If you’re going to practice this on your own, make sure that the copy you are hand-copying is effective and actually sells because practicing on bad copy could result in bad writing habits… again, this might be where checking out Copy Hour at thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour will help you become a better writer because you know all of the examples you’ll be handcopying in the course are proven winners.

If Copy Hour isn’t right for you, or if what Derek said about hiring a coach a few minutes ago resonates with you… This is something I help copywriters with in The Copywriter Underground. I can’t help with mushrooms or therapy, but I can help you build a more resilient, successful copywriting business in The Underground. In addition to the coaching, you also have access to more than 70 workshops and playbooks that help you implement the strategies they teach, templates, and accountability as you build your business—that’s in The Copywriter Underground at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu.

One more thing… Derek mentioned his emails and what people have said about them. He’s right, I’m on his list, and they are very readable. You may want to jump on his list as well, just to see what he’s doing. Again, you can do that at thecopywriterclub.com/copyhour 

All of the stuff I’ve mentioned is linked in the show notes for this episode.