The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert — Book Summary, Notes, and Takeaways
The only book you need to read on copywriting. Quick, entertaining, and a true pleasure to read. A great mix of practical life advice and actionable marketing, copywriting, and sales strategy.
Ideas
Road work and fasting. Long-term sustainable health comes from a morning "road work" habit and periodic fasting. Starting every day outside walking, jogging, or running. Fasting most of the day and occasionally for the whole day.
The greatest motive of all successful businessmen: not money, but self-reliance.
The best sales candidates are people you have already sold a product to.
The number one rule of sales: sell people a product they want to buy.
How to measure truth: not with what people say, but with what people buy.
Two copywriting books to churn through: Scientific Advertising and the Robert Collier Letter Book.
Key question for generating more sales: how can I make ordering even more seamless?
AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
The definition of a good writer: someone who makes something crystal clear.
The three price points of any product: The Cheapo Option, the Medium Option, and the Supreme option.
HALT - Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Never make a big decision when you feel one of these four things.
Find an audience, then sell a product. Not the other way around.
Highlights
The first thing I want to talk about is "road work". Road work is walking, jogging and running. And, in my opinion, you should do about one hour of road work every day of the week except Sunday. I believe the best time to do your road work is right after you get out of bed.
Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot.
In other words, I think you should do road work every morning to more or less "order your day" and fast every week in order to "order your week".
Anyway, it is vital that you never let the bastards get you down and in this case the bastards are almost everyone you meet.
Rely on your own strength instead of somebody else's compassion!
Never ever encourage people who drag you down to hang around.
He ends the letter with a quote by Rockefeller that self-reliance is the most satisfying thing in the world and it is important to know that often self-reliance is the real motive of great business men and not money.
The money is where the enthusiasm is.
Sorry. But that's the way it is. And, if you want to be a top notch marketing man you have to know how it is. How it really is. Not how people (or you) wish it was or how they think it is. No. You must become a "student of reality".
What I am trying to teach you here is to constantly be on the look out for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or at least hungry!) for some particular product or service.
THE BEST LIST OF ALL IS YOUR OWN CUSTOMER LIST!
These three guidelines are recency, frequency and unit of sale. A brief explanation follows:
- Recency-The more recently a person has purchased (by mail) something similar to what you are selling, the more receptive he will be to your offer.
- Frequency-The more often a person buys a particular item, the higher his desire for that type of production service.
- Unit of sale-Once again, we have a guideline that just plain makes sense.
Sell People What They Want To Buy!
Therefore, truth, my good son, can be determined NOT by how people use their mouth but rather how they use their wallet.
The more honest you are with your true self and others, the fast you will see what really motivates people.
It also illustrates the important concept of customization. As a general rule, the more "custom tailored" your promotion is the more successful it will be.
The first thing I'd like you to do is get a hold of two books. One is "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins and the other is "The Robert Collier Letter Book" by Robert Collier.
And so, my dear son, what is our first objective here, as we begin to design our DM promotion? You are right! Our first objective is to get our envelope into the "A" pile.
And, it's so easy to do! All we have to do is make the envelope look personal. (Or at least we will take pains so it doesn't look commercial.) Here is what our envelope should look like:
How do we do that? Well, let's start by getting his attention. And intriguing the heck out of him right from the start.
And, while I'm on the subject, it just occurred to me that I should tell you that another additional way to achieve this bond of intimacy and immediacy in your letters is to describe where you are and what you are doing as you are writing the letter.
Quite often (most often) your letter will arrive when your prospect is busy, when his mind is on other things. Therefore, you need to work hard to make reading your letter pleasant, easy-read, interesting and unconfusing.
One key question every business owner should ask is “how can I make it so ordering is even easier.”
Keep two task lists. The first list is of every important thing you really should do while at your best. My distraction-free creative time is in the morning when I do most of my writing, editing or consulting because it’s when I am reliably at my best. The second list is of all the important tasks which I can do equally well regardless of my mood.
Describe what it looks like when happy customers receive the benefit of your product. For example, phrases like “My clients wake up all excited and can’t wait for the morning because………… they love to sip coffee while opening their email to see how much money they made while sleeping.”
What does AIDA stand for? It stands for ATTENTION, INTEREST, DESIRE, ACTION.
- First, get his attention 2. Second, get him interested 3. Third, make him desire what you are selling 4. Compel him to take whatever action is needed to get whatever it is you are selling.
What we do to create desire is we describe the benefits our prospect gets if he buys our product or service.
“Would you like to get in on this great investment opportunity? Would you like to be one of the privileged few who actually own a piece of the finest beach in Maui? If so, it’s easy to order. All you have to do is fill out the order coupon and send it to me with your payment, etc., etc.”
Another simple way to get a reader interested is to tell their story by telling your story with the problem your solution solves. The key is to switch to talking about them as soon as things get better in the story. For example, you could write: My teenage kids were acting out and it felt like there wasn’t enough time in the day to be a good parent and then I discovered a 40 page book which changed everything. This book shows you how to benefit, benefit, benefit.
As part of your nugget notes, describe the benefits emotionally. You may swap “you will be able to choose what to do with your day” with “you will have the freedom to choose what to do with your day.” Describe all the benefits financially. How many hours would it take customers to learn this on your own?
What is a good writer? Well, in my opinion a good writer is one who makes things perfectly clear. He makes it easy for the reader. Easy-to-understand what he is saying, easy to keep reading.
- Use simple common everyday words. Use “get” instead of “procure.” Write short sentences and short paragraphs. Use “transition” words and phrases to make your writing flow smoothly.
- No. What you really want is for the reader to order from your ad. Listen up dummy. “If you are writing for applause... you will go home with empty pockets!” Write for money!
- The key is to go through many edits……….cutting everything out until….cutting any more would be cutting something the customer would like to know. Chop long sentences into two short ones.
- Isn’t that a lot more powerful? You bet! The words “dramatically increase your sales volume” do not even begin to conjure up the visual imagery of “a bushel of money.” So, write like that. Bring your story down to earth and hit ‘em where they live. (In their hearts and their pocketbooks!)
What's the moral here? The moral is YOU CAN DO A BETTER SELLING JOB WHEN AT FIRST IT DOES NOT APPEAR YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO A SALES JOB.
Ideally you want to offer first-time buyers three price points.
- The Cheapo Option Which Has What You Need The Deluxe
- Mid-Priced Option With Some Bells and Whistles
- The Supreme Package With Prestige Service The buyers then go to order and are offered an upsell AFTER they have put in their payment
You see, I believe the "sale" or "no sale" decision is largely made the instant a prospect sees your ad and reads your headline.
Please remember this word: HALT. HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you should never make a decision when you are any of those things.
What should you do? What I did. Write, run, walk, talk, jog, etc.
My father taught me was to wait 72 hours after being emotional to make any important decisions.
And that little trick is to read your copy out loud. What happens when you read your copy out loud is that you will verbally stumble over all the places that are not smooth. Then, of course, what you do, is rewrite the rough spots and read the copy out loud again. And, what you do, is you keep repeating this process till your copy is completely smooth and you can read it without stumbling at all.
You Must Always Find A Market First... And Then Concentrate On A Product!
Products are a dime a dozen. They are important but much less crucial to success than finding a hot market. I'll tell you this: A guy with a new product cannot always find a hot market for that product but a guy who has uncovered a HOT MARKET can always find a product to fill the needs of that market.
Everybody else here has been eating steaks and "celebrating" the 4th. That's OK but, right now, I've got more important things to do and those are: (1) get my body in shape (2) educate my youngest son (3) make a lot of money and (4) keep up my important relationships on the outside.
This, my man, is the attitude to have. Always be ready to catch a break. You know, if you play enough poker, sooner or later, after thousands of hands, everybody in the game will more or less have been dealt the same amount of good hands, bad hands and mediocre hands. What determines the winners? It's how they play the cards that were dealt them. Were they alert and ready to exploit the good ones? Did they perceive that the bad ones were in fact bad in time enough to dump them without huge losses? Were they ready to exploit or abandon their mediocre hands as the different situations dictated?
Namely: I pay attention to myself and when I am off, I drop out of sight and do what is necessary to strengthen myself.
Unless the hindus are right we all get only one go-round in life and time is too precious to waste on people who undermine your confidence, hold petty grievances and don't add to your enjoyment of life. My dad was a very loyal chap who would stand by all his good friends but he would cut his own mother out of his life if she didn't add more than she took away.