Expert copywriter Clayton Makepeace is our guest for this special episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If there were a list of the world’s most successful (and highly paid) copywriters, Clayton would have a place near or at the top. He’s the kind of expert worth listening to if you want to succeed as a copywriter (and especially if you want to write financial copy). Here’s what we covered in our discussion:
• how Clayton went from running a folding machine to his first copy assignment
• what he learned working in the film industry that applies to copywriting
• how he went from employee to starting his own copy agency
• the raw truth about why he became a copywriter
• what he did to improve his skills early on (and the mentors he found)
• how he went from unknown to the copywriter everyone wanted to work with
• what he did to succeed that copywriters can model today
• the storytelling secret he learned from an old coin
• where you get the best criticism for your copy (it’s not a copy chief)
• Clayton’s thoughts on how you get a prospect to read past page one
• the process he uses with his team today to create a package
• why you need a stick as well as a carrot in your copy
• why leading with a big benefit might not be the best option
• the two ways to overcome objections
• specifics versus abstractions and why one works better in copy
• when you should present the expert’s bio on a sales page
• the “bars on the beach” reason he starts working at 4 am
• the financial copywriting training he’s working on right now
We knew this interview would be great the minute we booked it, but the advice Clayton shared was even better than we expected. To hear it, download it to your favorite podcast app. Or click the play button below. You can also scroll down for a full transcript.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Jim Rutz
Gary Bencivenga
Carline Anglade Cole
Parris Lampropolous
Dan Rosenthal
Agora
Paul Martinez
The End of America
Mike Ward
MoneyMap
Clayton’s Financial Intensive
Jedd Canty
Henry Bingaman
Terry Weiss
Marcella Allison
Makepeace Total Package
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
Intro: Content (for now)
Outro: Gravity
Full Transcript:
Rob: This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground.
Kira: It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently.
Rob: For more information or to sign up, go to the copywriterunderground.com.
Kira: What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts? 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 Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast.
Rob: You're invited to join the club for a special unnumbered episode as we chat with copywriter and direct marketing consultant Clayton Makepeace about writing copy in the most competitive niches, his checklists for writing more powerful copy, what he's learned mentoring other copywriters, and how you can learn to write copy for the financial niche.
Kira: Welcome Clayton.
Clayton: Hey, thank you for having me.
Kira: It's great to have you here. It's an honor. You've been on our list. As I mentioned before we recorded, for a long time, so we were lucky to finally get you on the show. To kick this off, let's start with your story. How did you end up as a copywriter?
Clayton: Okay, well, let's see. I was running a folding machine in 1968 or 9 at a print shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the print shop printed appeal letters for a nonprofit organization. One day this guy came through, his name was Richard Viguerie. He was in his forties, and it was like the second coming of Christ, and we had to clean up the warehouse for this guy. It was like a real VIP. And it turns out he was a copywriter who was writing all of these appeal letters, and he also did a lot more for us.
We had the first mainframe computer west of the Mississippi by any private company to segment our file with, this is in the late 60s. Anyway, someone mentioned to me that Richard was making like $350,000 a year in 1968, and I thought, ‘Whoa!’ And all I had to do at night was just sit around and run the folding machine and read these letters that he had written. And so I figured I could probably write one of these, and I asked the head of the organization, ‘If I wrote one, would you mail it?’
And he said, ‘Well, if I like it, yeah,’ so I wrote an appeal letter. He mailed it and it worked, but I wasn't smart enough to realize I could actually make a living doing this. It was several years before I finally got back into this and it was basically in LA. We had a recession in 73 and 74. I'd been in the film industry and I couldn't get work, so I saw an ad for a small agency that needed a copywriter, and I'd had that previous successful experience, and so I applied for the job and I got it. That was how I got started.
Rob: I love that. Before we jump into the whole copywriting thing, what did you do in the film industry?
Clayton: Well, I had my own sound stage at the old Columbia Studios on Gower St. in Hollywood and I had a three-camera truck. And so during the week I would go around town and I would basically rent the truck out, and I would be technical director or director on the shoot. I had moved there because I was offered a job as a film editor on The Incredible Hulk and Tenspeed and Brown Shoe and Baa Baaa Black Sheep.
A friend of mine was a producer of those programs, but I couldn't get into the union. It was at Universal Studios and they were doing affirmative hiring, and so I couldn't get into the union because I was white, so I ended up having to do these non-union gigs, like my own truck.
Rob: Interesting. Did that experience teach you anything that's applicable to copywriting? Having to sell your services and process of editing and that kind of thing, or was it just simply a totally different career and copywriting was something new?
Clayton: No, no, I think sales is sales. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard, although I didn't follow it, was, ‘If you want to be a great copywriter, forget copywriting, go be an insurance salesman,’ door to door, learn how to handle rejection, learn how to overcome objections, learn how to persuade, so yeah, I had the gig as a used car salesman for a while, and I really was horrible at that by the way. I was really terrible.
And if I ever used that as like a weather vane to see if I should go into copywriting I'd probably said no. And then another job was selling something called ‘Buyer's Club’ door to door,’ where you pay some money to join this club and then you can buy things at a discount. I think that's really good advice. We're salesmen in print, that's all we are.
We're salespeople, and I think we should be compensated like salespeople, which means we should get a commission on what we sell, and it means that if we want to refine our skills, we can look at this, how long have there been salesmen? How long have there been salespeople? There are thousands of years of experience in what motivates people, what moves people, and what gets people to make purchase decisions, so yeah, I think I learned a lot from that.
Kira: I'm just curious, you mentioned your first appeal worked when you sent it out, and then it sounds like you waited a couple of years until you joined that first agency job. What happened in between there when the first appeal worked and you celebrated, why didn't you continue and create another one? What happened at that point?
Clayton: Because it was actually .. no one asked me to. My heart was in the motion picture film industry, because soon after that happened, I was offered a job as associate director on a nationally syndicated television show. So, that's really where my heart was, and I had done the copywriting thing just to see if I could do it because I thought I could. But film was my first love, film and video, and so it really took another several years until we had that big recession and there was no film and TV work in LA for me to break out and to go into copywriting.
Rob: Once you got hired onto that small agency, was it direct response type work that you were doing? Was it more agency grand type work? What were those first couple of clients like and then how did you branch out into doing your own thing?
Clayton: All right, well I'm glad I know what the next question is, so I'll not name the agency. It was a small direct response agency, basically it was a small list brokerage, and they had a franchise for one of the big list companies, a compile list company, but they also rented regular buyer lists and so forth. And the owner of the agency's reasoning was if I get a good copywriter in here, my list will work better, I'll rent more names and I'll make more money.
And so I came in, came to work, but it was all direct response work and right from the get go. In fact, my first two weeks they told me, ‘Don't even come into the office, here's a stack of books, just go home and read them.’ It was Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, Vic Schwab, all of the masters, so yeah, I read professionally for two or three weeks, got paid to do it and then came in and started knocking out copy.
Kira: You mentioned your love for the movie industry. When did you start to feel that love for copywriting and when did you feel that spark?
Clayton: Wow, never. Basically, I was following the money. The job at Universal was $70,000 a year, it fell through. I had a pregnant wife and a two year old, and I had to make a living, and so this copywriting gig came up, and it looked pretty good. He offered me the grand amount of $15,000 a year,
