EPISODE 88: How to Write Copy that Converts with Aaron Wrixon
Meet a professional writer who specializes in writing conversion copy. We’re thrilled to welcome Aaron Wrixon back to the show for a copywriting deep dive.
This episode with guest Aaron Wrixon covers how to write copy that converts. We talk about:
- What conversion copy actually is.
- How to write copy ethically.
- How copywriting has changed over time.

Marie here, and I have the pleasure of chatting with Aaron Wrixon once again this week on the podcast! Seriously, he’s my new bestie.
The super-duper official bio:
Since the mid-90s, WRIXON founder Aaron Wrixon has been paid for writing well over 8 million words. That’s the equivalent of more than 10 copies of the King James Bible.
Aaron has written for more than 120 different industries across the English-speaking world, with a focus on writing for agencies and their clients. (He also works directly with service-based businesses and smart SaaS companies with great products.)
He lives in Canada, with his wife, two children, two dogs, and a bearded dragon. In his spare time, he reads, writes music, watches a surprising amount of HBO, and listens to Frank Zappa.
Additionally, his mom says he is handsome.
Aaron and I sit down for a chat about how to write copy that converts, including all kinds of gems, like:
- Aaron’s definition of copywriting. It’s a great one, and you may discover that (even if you don’t like writing sales copy) you’re already doing it.
- How to overcome nervousness around writing sales and conversion copy. It doesn’t have to be high-pressure or gross. Plus, check out our episode on Empathy Points.
- Ethical copywriting. Copy can get a terrible reputation because of all the icky, manipulative (and, sadly, effective) ways it gets used. But copywriting has just as much power for goodness. So we talk about ethical copywriting, what it is, and what it isn’t.
- The history and evolution of copywriting. Aaron takes us back 110 years to show how ad copy has changed dramatically with the onset of television, the internet, cookies, and targeting.
- Copywriting tips and tricks. We talk about lessons learned, like “clarity over cleverness,” “honing your craft… without sounding too pretentious, we hope,” and “please stop using manipulation gimmicks, for the love of god.”
You’re going to love this conversation!
Homework:
- Grab Aaron’s P.S. This is Magic resource! If you aren’t taking full advantage of the power of the P.S. in your (and your clients’) copy, this is definitely an opportunity for greater impact.
Services/Products/Offers/Freebies Referenced (for affiliate links or list growth):
- WRIXON
- P.S. This is Magic
- Aaron Wrixon on Spotify!
- Episode 64: Writing Empathy Points Instead of Pain Points
- Episode 87: How to Become a Successful 6-Figure Copywriter with Aaron Wrixon
TRANSCRIPT
Jessi:
Welcome to the copywriter collaborative podcast, where we're digging into how you can build a sustainable writing business. We're your hosts, Jessi...
Marie:
...and Marie. We're the co-founders of North Star Messaging + Strategy. When we started our business in 2010, we had no idea what we were doing. We just knew we wanted to write. Since then, we've learned a lot and we've grown into a successful multi-six-figure copywriting agency with a talented staff of writers and project coordinators. We've served hundreds of clients and we've seen it all. We wish we could have had a resource like this way back then. So we created it for you.
Jessi:
We're here to share our and top tips to help you achieve personal and professional success in the copywriting industry. Every week, you'll get valuable insights from us, members of our team, and special guests. Whether you wanna write better copy, create a stronger copywriting business that can support you financially or both, grab your earbuds.
Marie:
Hello friends. And I'm excited to welcome back for the second episode, Aaron Wrixon, who like you and me, is a writer. And Aaron's had some amazing success as a writer. He is a full-time copywriter. He's the founder of Wrixon. You can check that out in the show notes. And he has worked with over 120 different industries. We talked actually in the previous episode about his business and about his business model and talked about how a lot of the work that he does actually comes in through relationships that he has with agencies and working on behalf of their clients so that he actually can reduce the amount of marketing work that he has to do to get those clients. So super smart, and does amazing work for them. He has written over 8 million words, has been paid for his writing since the mid-nineties, lives in Canada with his wife, two kids, two dogs and bearded dragon that I'm weirdly obsessed with. And also loves to write music, so you can check him out on Spotify. We've been chatting about TV and Breaking Bad and all kinds of good things. But today the core of what we wanted to chat about is conversion copy, which is Aaron's specialty. So first of all, welcome parentheses back to the show Aaron, we're glad to have you here.
Aaron:
Oh, hi there. I was enjoying listening to you talk about me. Hello.
Marie:
Yes. I'm here to stoke your ego.
Aaron:
I am my number one fan. As many people in our industry, I think there are two kinds of writers, the ones who doubt everything they've ever done and they write stuff and go, oh my God, that's garbage. And then they're surprised that the clients like it. And then there's people like me that are like, yeah, I'm the greatest. Thank you. Thank you for noticing.
Marie:
I like the confidence and I find too that like the more over the years that I've been able to tap into that confidence, lean into it, the more the clients are like, yeah, you are the best.
Aaron:
It's the greatest. It's an awesome situation to be in because this is the thing you can be the best cop in the world and it doesn't matter that there's a million other best copywriters in the world. Like, it sounds like a silly thing to say, but as long as you believe you are the best and your client believes you're the best, that's when you are going to A, perform the best, B make most money and, C get the best results.
Marie:
Yeah. And D honestly have the most fun.
Aaron:
Correct.
Marie:
Because it is really hard to sit down and do something that you're dreading because you're second guessing every millisecond of the process.
Aaron:
So what you're talking about is every sixth project of mine.
Marie:
I mean, I'm speaking from experience.
Aaron:
Five outta six are awesome. Six outta six is that meme about creativity where you're like, oh my God, this is garbage. What am I doing with my life? Oh my God. I can't even believe that I'm such a fraud. They're gonna know. And then all of a sudden, right at the last second, you're like, wait, this is awesome.
Marie:
Yes. Why couldn't I have felt this way the whole time? Cause I definitely like shaved a bit of my life. Fuck this conflict.
Aaron:
Yeah. Uh apropos of nothing. Have you ever heard Ira Glass talk about The Gap?
Marie:
I mean, I'm familiar with Ira Glass, but not The Gap.
Aaron:
Cuz The Gap is really cool. And it might be interesting for people that are listening that are just starting out. Ira Glass talks about The Gap, where creative people like us, you have these, you know, people that you look up to, it doesn't matter whether it's [inaudible] or Hemingway or Colson Whitehead or anybody and you think, or perhaps me, perhaps to you, Marie, you know, like some famous person, like a podcast host who runs North Star or-
Marie:
I don't know what you're talking about.
Aaron:
This doofus Canadian with a bearded dragon and you go, oh my gosh, that guy's so great. Or that woman's so awesome. And so you see this stuff and you go and you try to emulate it, but perhaps your skills aren't there yet, or you haven't been doing it long enough. And you judge your stuff as falling short and you go, oh, this is garbage. Because there's a gap between your skills and your taste. You have good taste and you say, I wanna be like this, and you're just not there yet. And most people quit in that gap. And the secret is pushing through that gap and just continuing to practice until you get to the point where you can achieve what you see in your head. And you start to all of a sudden come into your own and become someone that others now look up to. Pretty cool idea.
Marie:
I love that. And I think the other part of it is like, don't just keep punting your finish line. You know, when you cross over where the finish line was initially some kind of milestone or goal or whatever, don't... take time to celebrate that instead just saying like, okay but now Aaron's doing this. So I gotta be like that.
Aaron:
For sure. There's this constant- it's also a very comparative industry. Cause A, there's so many people doing it. B there's always people that are like, you know, there are some people who are lucky enough to make six figures. There's some people who run million dollar agencies. There's some people who get paid $10,000 to speak and have four books, you know? It's always easier to say, oh, I'm not that person. But then you lose sight of the fact that no screw that I made $2,000 a month this year, you know, I crossed 2000 a month. The first time ever, I should be proud of myself where, oh, I crossed $5,000 a month. Let's see if I can do it again. You know? And I think I used to compare myself to other people and then somebody told me you don't need to, the only person you need to compare yourself to is you.
Marie:
Yeah.
Aaron:
You just need to be better than you yesterday. Which is, I think really important for a writer to hear. Cuz it's so easy to get locked in our head and go, oh, this is just total crap. I'm garbage. This is garbage. My life is garbage. I need to quit.
Marie:
Hot steaming garbage, everywhere.
Aaron:
Hot steaming poop. My life is poop.
Marie:
You know, another tidbit I heard from Jen Gottlieb, who co-run Super Connector Media with Chris Winfield, she was talking about writing a badass list where like you just go down and you write everything that you feel makes you a badass. I mean, it could be, I got out of bed today. Like some days that is qualifying right. Then there's other days where it's like, yeah, I mean, I did, I got this degree or I managed to survive that client project that was really tough, or I summited a mountain, or it doesn't have to be work related, right. But it's like whatever you've done.
Aaron:
Or, I just watched my 60th Nicholas Cage movie.
Marie:
There you go. You badass, you. Also Nicholas Cage gets a badass award for having 16+ movies.
Aaron:
Yeah. He's like a 120 of them. I've seen half of them.
Marie:
Are you serious? 120?!
Aaron:
Yeah. Many of them are very bad. Let's not kid around.
Marie:
Yeah. That's shocking that number's shocking to me actually. But anyway.
Aaron:
Yeah, he had a lot of tax debt. Sorry, we wanted to talk about copywriting, not Nicholas Cage.
Marie:
I mean, I'm here for the side tangents. It's good. So specifically I wanted to chat with you about conversion copy cause that's your specialty. So for anybody who's like a new copywriter, let's just define what that is first of all. What is conversion copy? So tell us about your perspective and how you define it.
Aaron:
For me, conversion copy is the same as copy, it's a short form. You know, I talk about copy as opposed to content. Content for me is about educating, entertaining. And copy is about really three things: getting attention, engaging someone, and then persuading them to do something. For me, that's it. If you are persuading someone to do something, that piece is copy. So, I mean, it gets confusing, but you can have copy on a homepage. You can have copy in the middle of a lead magnet. You can have copy on a big ass sales page with the yellow highlighter and the flashing red lights and all that stuff. If you are asking for something, whether that's click here or sign up or donate now or buy this, then you are engaged, as far as I'm concerned, in the business of copywriting. And conversion copywriting is just a fancy way of saying I'm out for conversions. I want to turn somebody from a something into a something else. I wanna turn them from a website visitor into a subscriber. I wanna turn them from a subscriber into a lead, or I wanna turn them from a lead into a buyer or from a buyer into a referer. What's the conversion here, you know?
Marie:
I love it. I love you breaking that down. Cuz I think a lot of especially early stage writers, they feel good about writing content. They feel a little nervous about conversion copy, cuz they're like, I don't know anything about sales and like, yes, that is part of it. But it doesn't have to be the whole thing. So do you have any tips, I guess for anybody who's sort of nervous about stepping into conversion copy cuz it sounds like, oh gosh, I'm gonna be responsible for this conversion actually happening.
Aaron:
Right. Okay. So it is in some ways about sales you're right. But it's not all about sales. It's about sales in that you are asking someone for an order or for an action. And you know, just like that person is not gonna know that you wanna go out on a date with them unless you ask them out on that date. There's a chance that they're gonna figure it out and ask you out on a date, but there's less of a chance. So no one, you know, that the percentage of people that are gonna go through the work to say, Hmm, yeah, I don't really know if they're interested in my business, but I'm gonna reach out to North Star anyway to see if they can help me with branding. That's a very slim percentage. Right?
Marie:
Yeah.
Aaron:
So it's about sales and that you have to ask for the order, but it's also about other things. It's about clarity. Like you have to make your writing super clear so that people don't get confused. Cuz confusion is the enemy of conversion. You can put that one on an embroidery sampler.
Marie:
Yes. I love it.
Aaron:
And it's about emotion. There's the old cliche about how people buy with emotion and then justify with logic. We get locked in this rut where we think we should just be able to logically explain why something makes sense to do. And therefore someone else is gonna jump on board. We can logically explain that, you know, a couch is comfortable. Or a sofa, whatever you call it, wherever you live up here, I call it a couch. A chesterfield. Yeah, no I, as a side I'm obsessed with sort of regionalisms, you know, the difference's between a cottage and a cabin and a lake house and a camp. They're all versions of the same thing, but I digress. So you can describe that your sofa is comfortable and it's 80 inches long and you can talk about what the fabric is. But you are simply gonna sell more couches if you paint a picture for the person who wants to sit on that couch, putting their feet up and relaxing after a long day or watching a movie with the family or, you know, getting amorous on the couch, whatever you might wanna do. Those are emotional appeals. So copywriting is all about painting these emotional pictures for your readers and helping them see the benefits of using your thing. It's about creating futures, not necessarily describing features. Does that make sense?
Marie:
Ooh, put that on the embroidery sample too.
Aaron:
Yeah. I'm dropping bombs, man. I'm just, I'm spitting bars.
Marie:
Quality content y'all!
Aaron:
I'm telling you my kid, 11 years old, came home from school today with a rap she had written. She had decided her name was Mr Mi$ta with what Mi$ta was like with a dollar sign to the S. And it's some rap that she wrote about her classmate's rat named Lil Drip. I'm not, I can't make this stuff up. But she starts spitting this flow and I'm like, oh my God, you're actually a good at rapper. Where did this come from?
Marie:
She's gonna clip you on Spotify.
Aaron:
Seriously. You asked me to rap and I'm like, my name is Aaron and I'm here to say, I'll teach you about copy writing, today. And no, you know, and she's like just, she had flow and I was just stunned. The 11 year old kid's got bars. Anyway.
Marie:
Next episode she's coming on.
Aaron:
Yeah for sure. We'll just get her to freestyle for half an hour.
Marie:
Hey, I'm here for this. Yeah, no, I love that. I love what you're talking about, about making the emotional appeal. Also sort of that if you have to pick, you know, clarity over cleverness every time, if you can do both, great, but every time pick clarity.
Aaron:
No. You know what even, yeah exactly. Because what you think is clever is these runs a super huge chance of being misunderstood.
Marie:
Yeah.
Aaron:
Yeah. And you see it in the work that I do. I try to, I will often try to do an advertising style headline and then back it up. Like on a homepage, for example, I might do for the H1 main headline, I might try to do an advertising style thing that pulls people into the page. And one in three is just not understood for my client. And I go, oh yeah, it's just me getting smart again. Like I need to make that more clear, you know?
Marie:
Yeah. For sure. Actually, that's one of my favorite things to do. Side note tip, I guess, for anybody listening is like, if I'm doing headlines, I'll give like options. I'll write one and then I'll put a comment to the side and say alternates, and I'll give a few more because you never know which one is gonna be like, that's the one. Plus it gives you something to split test if that's something they're gonna be doing. So, yeah, no, I love it. And I love too how you're, you know, I can tell that you enjoy it right. Because there's creativity involved and it's so I think, yeah, if anybody's nervous about it, know that like it's an opportunity to really stretch that creative muscle and have fun with it. But I think a lot of the other reasons that people get nervous about copywriting is it feels unethical and there are ways to do it that are extremely unethical.
Aaron:
Oh yeah.
Marie:
So, what's your take on sort of best practices for ethical copywriting?
Aaron:
It's funny youask cause I'm very much against the unethical stuff. I can't stand it. I've actually spoken on, you know, the dark side of copywriting. I once did a keynote, was Star Wars theme of all things about-
Marie:
I love that also.
Aaron:
Yeah, like it's, you know, you can be Darth Vader. It was a pretty funny keynote. I told this story about how my parents had died at an early age and I was sort of raised by my uncle and aunt and all this stuff. And then it was this emotional appeal and everything. And then I just sort of like stopped and went actually, no, I'm completely lying to you. I'm telling you the story of Luke Skywalker, but I wanted you to see what you can do with emotion and words, you know.
Marie:
Brilliant.
Aaron:
Because that's what they do. Play on sort of your fears and play on your inadequacies. And what people perceive copywriting as, quite rightly, is creating problems that you then sell the answer to. I mean, that's- we're all used to this thing. How many courses have we all signed up for that we'd never ended up picking or, you know, stuff that we've bought that we don't need because they say you have this problem. You are going to go out of business unless you learn how to be a six-figure copywriter. And you go, oh God, I don't wanna do that. And then you sort of get control of yourself and just decide not to buy it. And then they send you the last email that's like the cart's closing in four hours, don't miss out! And you're like, "Oh damn it I need a copy!" you know. This stuff plays to human behavior. And I think plays to it in a bad way and pushes those buttons in the wrong way. But the reality is that we are humans and we act in certain ways and we love to buy. We just love to buy stuff. We don't like to be sold stuff. We love to buy stuff. And for me, the sort of, I think the piece is this, that it's unethical to take advantage of people. But it's in different ways unethical to take a client's money and not do your very best to sell their thing, you know? So if you can find a way to sell your client's thing and still live with yourself when you're finished that job, still sleep at night, that's the ethical line that I walk, right.
So I will not work in particular industries that I don't support. I don't really go for the obvious ones like guns or weed. I'm not really into that. I don't do porn, but I also don't do like beauty or inappropriate teen stuff that's teaching teens to have a crappy self image.
Marie:
Yeah.
Aaron:
So there are places to make a lot of money in copywriting because there are ethical course creators out there that need to sell more of their course. And you can do a better job for them than the nonsense. I think it was you and I talking about it last week in a sort of a, Hey, how are you call where it's exactly that nonsense where you get six emails in a week about how this course is gonna revolutionize what you do. And then you get three emails from the last day that says the cart's closing and then surprise surprise, the very next day, oops, their server went down. So they're extending the sale for just three more days and all this crap. We've all seen it. And it's all just by the book manipulation and that, to make a long answer short, does not have to be copywriting.
Copywriting is simply about saying, look, we have this thing I see you. I know that you're experiencing this issue. We have this thing that can help you with that issue. If you'd like, here's how to buy it. You know, it's gonna do this for you and this for you, and this is how you buy it. And here's what the price is. And if you think that's worthwhile, please go ahead and click this button.
Tinylittlebusinesses.com. Tinylittlebusinesses.com, the only internet marketers that have ever made me feel good. Guy named Andre Chaperone who had a shady past for sure, and a guy named Sean Twing. They work together now at tinylittlebusinesses.com and they are very, very ethical marketers. Now, Andre Chaperone was once responsible for some weird pickup artist stuff and dating things and had kind of a come-to-Jesus moment. And now we'll only do the aboveboard stuff. And he created a big email sequence called soap opera sequence and a product called autoresponder madness, but has evolved over the past 10 years into look at this is what we do. And we have this product and this product and this product, and they will help you do this if you want them to help you. You know, the thing that stands out for me, most that they do is they say, listen, we're gonna be selling this thing. If you were at all remotely interested sign up for this particular list that's only about that thing. And if you don't want to be in that segment, you will never hear about it again. So if you're interested, you can sign up for that segment at which point they say to you, sure here's what it is and here's this and here's this. And you can buy this for this. Don't buy it if you don't want to. And they will only ever say, Hey, 10:00 AM, today's the last day for the cart. Just wanted to let you know. None of this. Oh, there's only eight hours. Oh, there's blah, blah. You know, all this nonsense, hard stuff that we hear all the time. There are ways, you know, to sum up, there are ways to do copywriting, very ethically for very ethical people in a way that makes you feel good and still earns you money and still earns your client's money. So if you're worried about copywriting being shady, it for sure does not have to be.
Marie:
Yeah. Thank you for that. I mean, I think a lot of listeners will probably really need that assurance. I'm also gonna link in the show notes to an episode that I think is really aligned with what you're talking about. One of the things that we did is we said, you know, we take pain points and instead turn them into empathy points. And it's exactly the way you were talking about Aaron, was like I recognize that this is a real frustration that you have and I'm sympathizing and acknowledging that. And I'm not twisting the knife, I'm just acknowledging it. And then I'm saying here's an alternate path, a solution, and it's not necessarily gonna solve every problem in the world, but it could maybe help with this problem.
Aaron:
Yeah, exactly. You could help, you know, as opposed to, Hey, you don't have to feel like a worthless person. Wait, who said that? What- I did- I wasn't- wait. Maybe I am a worthless person. Oh God, am I a worthless person? Well, gimme the course. Cause I don't wanna be a worthless person.
Marie:
Yeah, I know. So gross.
Aaron:
Totally.
Marie:
And I think too, a lot of consumers are getting more and more savvy, right. That like they're less and less here for it. They're not here for the manipulation. So yeah. I mean, is that sort of a trend that you've seen over time? Cuz you've been doing this work for decades at this point. What are some, is that one of the trends, are there other trends that you've seen within conversion copy with things like moving to mobile or just whatever.
Aaron:
Funny I have a half written book that at some point looked at how we got here. And you know a hundred years ago, maybe a hundred and let's say 10 years ago, ads were, Hey, look at this soap. It sure does clean. It's made with lye. So burn the dirt right off of you, right.
Marie:
We'll banish it to the netherworld.
Aaron:
Yeah. We'll banish yeah, exactly. And then in this sort of 1920s, there's a couple very famous ads. One was, do you make these mistakes in English? And another was called, it went, they laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play, you know. So clearly the one was about, you know, not embarrassing yourself in front of other people with your dumb country, hick English. And the other was about, you can be the hit of the party by learning how to play the piano with this correspondence course. So from that point, ads started to focus in on pain points or empathy points. Many people do not know that halitosis, bad breath, is an invention of the Listerine company.
Marie:
Hmm.
Aaron:
What we know as bad breath exists because Listerine made it a problem.
Marie:
Interesting. Everyone else had this, let your garlic breath go.
Aaron:
Garlic breath was fine until Listerine started to run ads with women being rejected because they had nasty breath. And therefore halitosis became a thing. That word is an invention of the Lister company, halitosis. So you see these ads in the twenties starting to hone in on pain points and we are pretty much fine for about, I mean I'm oversimplifying, but we are pretty much fine for about 60, 70 years until somebody went, Hey, well, what if we did a half an hour TV show on the Tony Robbins tape program or, you know, on dianetics and Scientology or like Don Lapre and his tiny classified ads or Don Ho and his get rich quick scheme from the boat and his real estate. So then you had these infomercial. But even with those infomercials, you had to be there in front of the television when they were on. Okay.
Then all of a sudden what happens in the late nineties: the interweb. And everybody floods onto the internet and over the sort of 10 to 15 years between 2000-2015, you go from those sales pages where you can double your dating with the David DeAngelo and the pickup artist crap and the Frank Kern get rich quick stuff. And then you move to where the ads literally follow you around all the time now. And so you can get, I won't mention him by name, but let's call him Crant Gardone and his 10X your life, cuz you're worthless at 1X.
Marie:
Uhhuh.
Aaron:
And that shit follows you around. Oh, sorry, I'm swearing now.
Marie:
No, you're good. You're good.
Aaron:
I'm so passionate about it, sorry. Put a little E on it now, right. That stuff follows you around all over the web and you can't escape it. So, that's where we're at now and that's where we've gotten to. And so the short answer to the question is, if you start to pay attention, if you do the work that I do and you expose yourself to all kinds of this stuff, you're gonna see these ads all the time. And every third ad on Facebook is buy this for $37 or you can get, you know, look at me, I'm standing in front of a jet with an open door and a tailored suit and all this nonsense, right. Or like I'm filming this video from my garage. And there's the Lamborghini that I promised I didn't rent this morning for this photoshoot. So for me it feels like it's still everywhere. It may not be everywhere because you said people are showing up for it, or they're not showing up for it anymore. And true. I make the comfortable living with people that don't want that crap and that are more than happy to pay me for an alternative. So there's hope.
Marie:
Yeah. I mean, there definitely is the other side of it still you're right. I feel like sometimes I'm in a bubble, a little bit, of writers and business owners in general, who are very focused on ethical marketing and are really aspiring to do that. And just ethical business ownership in general. You know, they're focused on DEI and they're focused on like everything. Right. And they wanna use their platform to make the world even a smidge better while also making a good living for themselves and their family.
Aaron:
Yeah.
You're right though.
Aaron:
I'll give you some keywords, if you wanna- oh please I cut you off, sorry.
Marie:
No. I mean you're right though. Like there's still a lot of crap out there. Go ahead, sorry.
Aaron:
I was gonna say, if you want to get into it you can look at hustle culture. I mean, here's basically what you can do if you wanna start at the North Star, no pun intended. If you're looking to set a North Star as what is my North Star value? What is my ethical compass going to be? You could do worse than say, I want to do the opposite of, and Google these phrases: hustle culture, or the phrase is a mouthful, but female empowerment lifestyle. Gosh, once you read about female empowerment lifestyle, you will never not see it again.
Marie:
Okay.
Aaron:
You know, it's the pantsuits and the Blonex and the almond nails and the long straightened hair and the like, look at me, I'm a hustle babe. And you know, fully ignoring the reality of the fact that most women business owners are not that. It's the myth that's online. It's this sort of, I'm certainly not disparaging Marie Forleo because she's built a multi multimillion dollar business reasonably ethically. But sort of left of Marie Forleo there's like a layer of Forleo disciples that have gone through the B-School program and are now hustling with these kinds of things and the drippy watches and the coach bags and the... I'm dating my stuff now. Remember when coach bags were popular?
Marie:
I do. I have one in my closet. I haven't touched it for 15 years.
Aaron:
I'm an almost 50 year old man. I have no idea what's popular in fashion.
Marie:
Same, and I just never did.
Aaron:
I'm wearing a pair of too tight Levi's jeans and a Toronto Blue Jays ball cap. Please don't come to me on what's good. What's good, Miley. No, I dunno.
Marie:
Actually, my very first baseball cap was a Toronto Blue Jays cap, despite not being Canadian and having not been to Toronto until like 10 years after I got that cap. So I, you know, holds a special place in my heart.
Aaron:
The Toronto Blue Jays are easily the best team that will let you down every year. There is nothing like the Blue Jays for, oh, maybe this is the year. Oh, Nope. It's not.
Marie:
Oh, there's some emotional appeal.
Aaron:
Yeah. I don't know. It's something about the lovable losers. I don't know. They got a good team this year. I know you didn't bring me on to talk about baseball, but they got a good team this year. Hopefully they can go all the way. They can win their thing.
Marie:
Well, we'll touch base the end of the season. See how you feel.
Aaron:
Yeah, I know. I don't whatever touch base at the end of the month, by the time the end of may comes around, there'll be like eight games back and I'll be like, yep, there'll be another one of those years.
Marie:
Friends this is a man who's been burned.
Aaron:
Seriously. The last time they were good was like, they were briefly good for a bit in the mid 2010s. And the last time they were really good was like 92, 93 when I was like 18, 19 years old.
Marie:
Yeah. But those are like [inaudible] years, right. And it feels kind of like yesterday.
Aaron:
For real. Fun fact, my first baseball game, my first Blue Jays game was when I was four years old opening season. So I've been in Blue Jays fans since 77.
Marie:
Aw. I'm just imagining adorable.
Aaron:
I was pretty adorbs.
Marie:
I believe it.
Aaron:
Pretty adorbs. Yeah. I dunno what happened once I was adorable. Now I'm just abominable.
Marie:
This is not true. This is not true at all. I'm finding these conversations excellent.
Aaron:
I here's the takeaway from today, ethical copywriting exists and the Blue Jays suck.
Marie:
But we don't want them to.
Aaron:
No, we don't want them to.
Marie:
So I want to swing back around to a resource that you have, P.S. This is Magic, all around-
Aaron:
Oh yeah.
Marie:
All around like a really under-utilized part of writing. So can you tell us a little bit about this resource?
Aaron:
Sure. So the P.S, is the domain almost exclusively of copywriting. You'll see it on sales pages and you'll see it in emails. P.S. obviously, post script, a little bit at the end of the page, it says, P.S. the offer only lasts for 20 hours, or P.S. If you're interested in buying now give us a call, or reply to this email. After the headline, this is the thing, after the headline, the post script is statistically the most read piece of copy on the page.
Marie:
Woo.
Aaron:
So if you don't, if you don't have one or if you're not using it to full effect, you're missing out. So I wrote this thing called P.S. This is Magic, about the power of the P.S. and you can get it on my homepage.
Marie:
Awesome.
Aaron:
And I promise you, I promise if you've learned nothing else from this conversation, hear me now. You may download this P.S. thing in an exchange for your email address you'll get precisely one email that says, here you go, thanks. And then maybe you'll get added to the biweekly newsletter if I have my act together. You will not get a string of 10 emails about what a piece of human garbage you are. And you're the dumbest human on earth because you're not paying me $3,000 for my fabulous copywriting course.
Marie:
Exactly. You're here to empower now tear down.
Aaron:
Yes. Correct.
Marie:
Cool. So we're gonna link to that resource in the show notes. But yeah. Any other words of wisdom or shall we just wrap her up?
Aaron:
I've always been hesitant to say that I have any words of wisdom. I just like to ramble. I enjoy talking. I hope that people have maybe learned something. Maybe all they've learned is that I'm insane, but I do really enjoy what I do. And I hope that if nothing else that I serve as an example that yes, you can make a very comfortable living doing this by letting your freak flag fly. By being who you wanna be, by focusing on the work that you wanna do saying, no to the work that you don't wanna do, charging lot and, you know, generally just plugging away. You know, I love what I do and I hate what I do. I think everybody listening to this understands exactly what I mean.
Marie:
Yeah, I do.
Aaron:
I hate, I can't stand what I do, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I love what I do and I never want do it again, right.
Marie:
Till maybe tomorrow.
Aaron:
Yeah. Until maybe tomorrow. The essential paradox.
Marie:
Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, those are beautiful words to leave us with. Thank you so much for being here, Aaron, for this double feature. By the way, listeners, if you wanna hear more again about Aaron's actual business and business model, check out the previous episode because he's dropping all kinds of knowledge and wisdom there as well. So thank you so much for the generosity of your time and coming on for two whole episodes. I super appreciate it.
Aaron:
Weee! Thank you.
Marie:
Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Copywriter Collaborative Podcast. Make sure to visit our website, northstarmessaging.com/podcast, where you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, and more.
Jessi:
If you found value in this episode, we'd love for you to leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and share it with your friends. Thank you, and happy copywriting.