For the 81st episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and Rob talk with copywriter and marketing specialist, Mike Saul, about copywriting, sales, marketing, and a lot more. Kira first met Mike at a lunch-time gathering of copywriters in New York City and after talking for a little while, realized Mike had a lot of great advice to share with our listeners. In this podcast we talked about:

•  how a 13-year-old’s newspaper route led to a career in sales and copywriting
•  the book that he used to help a client go from a $500K monthly loss in $1 million in monthly revenue
•  how his sales experience informs what he does today
•  what he learned from selling burglar alarms—price is not the most important thing
•  the relationship between sales and marketing in what copywriters do
•  how to write an “air tight” argument for your solution
•  how to overcome objections on your sales page
•  the checklist he uses when he writes sales pages for his clients
•  why sales people in California have to leave the house after
•  the list of people he has learned sales and copywriting skills from
•  credibility versus believability and which one really matters

Lots of good stuff in this episode. To hear it all, click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.



 
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Staton Island Advance
Mandolin Brothers
NAM Show
Todd Brown
The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
Brian Tracy
Zig Ziglar
Gibson SG
Fender Telecaster
Glen Garry Glen Ross
Chris Haddad
Clayton Makepeace’s Checklist
Joe Schriefer
Bob Bly
John Carlton
Dr. Robert LaPenna
Better Call Saul
Email: tinymjs.gmail.com
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Intro: Content (for now)
Outro: Gravity

 
Full Transcript:


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

Kira: You’re invited to join the club for episode 81 as we talk with marketing strategist and copywriter Mike Saul about how a newspaper route launched his copywriting career, how preconceived notions affect your success, credibility vs. believability, what baby bottles, Santa Clause, and getting a first date have in common, and the learning resources he likes most.

Kira: Hey Mike, welcome to the show!

Rob: Mike, we’re glad to have you!

Mike: Thank you for having me, guys.

Kira: So, we want to start with your story, Mike. How did you end up in marketing and direct response copywriting?

Mike: It probably goes back to when I was 12 or 13 years old. I grew up on Staten Island, which is one of the five boroughs of New York City, so about 13 I started playing guitar. And my parents decided that they weren’t going to buy me a really nice guitar so I had to get a job at thirteen and we perish the thought these days, with all these entitled children, including my three. So anyway, I started delivering the newspaper, The Staten Island Advance. And I actually split a route with two brothers. The two brothers each had a route each but they were too big, so the mother split each of their routes and made a third route. It was kind a rent deed route, it wasn’t officially recognized by the Staten Island Advance. So that route got cycled through the neighborhood kids; most of the kids couldn’t do it so I said alright, I’m going to give it a shot. I had twenty one stops on my route. And I started delivering the paper and anybody I wasn’t delivering to on my route, I would knock on the door, ask if they wanted it, and I started selling.

So, I built the route up to 41 people from 21. Now, why 41? Because I was warned by my friend’s mom, that, if you add one more house, we’re going to split the route again, so I said okay, well, that’s great...