I was 26-years-old.
I moved across the country from Vancouver, WA., to Delray Beach, Florida, to work at Agora as a Junior Copywriter.
Keep in mind, my wife was a teacher in Vancouver. She just quit her job to move to Delray Beach with me.
On top of that, I just signed a 12-month lease.
Dan Kennedy was my first real mentor. I didn't meet him in person for several years. But, through his books, No B.S. Marketing Letter, etc., he changed my life.
He taught me the importance of getting your hands on Controls.
That should be your first objective.
Whenever you're writing a new sales letter or creating a marketing campaign. The first step of your research "ALWAYS get your hands on the controls" so you know what's been tested, what's worked, and likewise, what's flopped in the past.
When I arrived at Agora, this led me to print 80,000 pages.
That's 16 boxes of paper.
Everyone thought I was fucking nuts.
..."Dude, what's the new guy doing?!"
..."Who hired him?!"
..."Would someone tell him to knock that shit off?"
The office manager made me pay for the toner replacements because she said my printing was not "normal use."
Fine I said, and she took it out of my first paycheck.
Flashback two days, though, here's why I hurried to print everything I could as fast as I could.
For those who don't know, Agora is a financial newsletter publisher. As the copywriter, my job was to understand the financial markets to sell the editor's ideas.
However, in the first company-wide meeting I attended, people were talking about bulls and bears, which I had no clue what that meant. (In hindsight, I should've just kept my mouth shut and Googled the terms later. But I didn't.)
I sheepishly raised my hand, "What's a bull? What's a bear?"
Nobody answered.
Everybody just stared, as if to say, "Dude, are you the stupidest person alive?!"
The guy who hired me shook his head, like, "Oh shit, I made a mistake."
After the meeting, he approached me.
"Ryan, I think maybe we made a mistake. I was under the impression you understood the financial markets."
I knew nothing about the financial markets.
I didn't lie or mislead him.
He just never asked.
I said, though. "No, I can't leave. I can't. I just signed a 12-month lease. My wife was just hired as a teacher here in Florida. I just moved all my stuff 3,000 miles..."
As fast as I could, I just started rambling off reasons for why he couldn't fire me.
He compromised.
"Fine...You got 30 days to prove yourself."
He assigned me to a product.
I was expected to write the sales letter and full promotion for that product in 30 days, to sell it successfully.
That's when I recalled Kennedy's advice. Step 1, "Always get your hands on the Controls."
So, that's what I did.
I asked, "How do I access the entire archive with all the Controls?"
A few hours later, I had a Username and PW.
The archive was huge!
It contained every Control over the past 10+ years for every Agora division.
• Which sales letters performed best!
• The stats & numbers.
• The conversion rates!
Everything!
• Which competitors lost in the A/B split-tests!
• Tons of stuff.
And I started printing.
My understanding of the financial markets was weak.
I knew that.
But I also knew if I figured out the shared-commonalties of the winning promotions: the kinds of headlines, big ideas, opening stories, themes, formats, etc., then I could compensate for that.
Long story short, I spent 2 weeks printing 80,000 pages.
I spent 24 days researching.
I spent 6 days writing.
On the 30th day, I finished my sales letter. Now, famously known as the Beta-Tester promotion, and the rest is history.
The Junior copywriter who didn't know shit about the financial markets and almost got fired in his first week, wrote the largest promotion of the year.
Btw, this was the first long-form sales letter I had ever written, too, that went head-to-head against Clayton Makepeace's.
And I won.
A few days later, Clayton wrote a blog post about this, "How Clayton got spanked."
My copy beat his by a lot.
At its peak, that sales letter did a $1mil+ in sales per day.
PER DAY!
Needless to say, I didn't get fired.
With my hands on those Controls, I wrote five back-to-back multi-million-dollar promotions. An unheard-of feat for any copywriter, especially a junior copywriter.
Within 6-months, I became a Senior Copywriter.
And 6-months after that, I became the CMO and Copy Chief, replacing the guy who hired me.
After generating $30 million in sales in 18-months, 6-months after that, I stepped down to start my own business.
...Putting all client-work and W2-positions behind me.
And, using the 3 secrets above...
In 12-months, I built my first 7-figure business.
So, that's how it played out, but, as I stated, that was just the beginning!
-RYAN
Other notes of interest:
With my business partner, Ryan Sloper, when the pandemic hit in 2020, we used the same 3 secrets to build our ACS investment business to lock up $2.3 million profit in its first 15-months after launch.
I used these same 3 secrets, again, to build ImpactClub® that's donated over $2.5 million to local charities.
For every new business I start, or promotion I consult on, it doesn't matter...
...I use the 3 secrets.
Like novocaine, it works every time.