Lessons From Reading The Gary Halbert Letters
As you’ll all know, January’s been dedicated to completing – or attempting – Gary Halbert’s Copywriting Challenge.
This involves reading several books, Gary Halbert’s letters and then doing a bunch of other stuff on top of that. I’ve finished reading all the books I could get a hold of (I’m missing one, and 90% sure I’m out of time anyway.)
Here are the lessons I’ve learned from the various books so far:
Today, I’m going to write about Gary Halbert’s newsletter, which is also on the recommended reading list.
You can find the letter archive on Gary Halbert’s site. There is a link to all of them in order, but I can’t think of where off the top of my head. A quick Google search will turn it up though.
Anyway, as with all of these articles, I’ll talk a little about the source and then move on to the lessons I’ve learned.
Gary Halbert Letters Review
The Gary Halbert Letters are something I read and return to on a semi-regular basis.
I’m not going to pretend to have read them all – either as a part of the Gary Halbert Copywriting Challenge or otherwise.
They are useful though; think of them as a mentoring session with one of the world’s best copywriters and business minds. You can read them at your leisure, or as and when you needinspiration.
In particular, if I’m ever short on ideas for what to write on this blog and no errant web-browsing works, I’ll read Gary’s letters and see if that jogs anything loose. It usually does.
As your skill and knowledge as a copywriter improves, you’ll find new lessons in the letters.
Here are some of the meta-lessons I’ve learned from reading many of Gary Halbert’s letters.
Lesson One: You Craft An Identity Over Years
One of the interesting things about Gary Halbert’s letters is that they are adverts in and of themselves. Sure, he’s teaching you how to be a copywriter and giving you all kinds of business advice – but you, or at least, the people who paid for the material originally – were also prospects that Halbert was gaming… and he did it this in the same way as he taught his readers to.
That makes you think: What you think of as Gary Halbert’s writing voice was actually a sales pitch. Copywriters spend a lot of time trying to get the language for selling right; to not come off as too salesy and to seem authentic.
Halbert’s letters are the perfect example of how to craft a voice, sell and create an identity over the course of years.
Lesson Two: Your Reputation Is Everything
In many of Halbert’s letters, he is giving you the soft sell. Whether it’s his girlfriend’s modelling portfolio, seminars he will be running or his friend’s products, he’s constantly engaged in the process of selling his readers on something.
Now, this is great for everyone, provided you keep your reputation at the forefront of your mind when selling to people.
People will buy from you for as long as they value your opinion on whether a purchase is worth it or not.
In short, your reputation makes you money.
If you sell products that you don’t believe in, then eventually you’ll suffer. If you try and get one over on your audience by selling them stuff that doesn’t work, then they’ll abandon you.
Lesson Three: Storytelling Is A Tangible Skill
How many millions of people like to bleat on and on about “tangible skills” and “humanities degrees” and “STEM subjects?”
Too many.
I’ve written before about writing being a tangible skill. A good writer can bring a company massive returns on their investment. I won’t argue the point again here.
What anyone can learn from Gary Halbert is that storytelling specifically is a powerful, powerful skill. When you are hooked on a text within a couple of hundreds words because you know you’re about to read a crazy adventure story, and by the end of it you want to buy a washing machine, you can’t deny that the story has had a powerful effect on you.
Storytelling is as old as humanity is, and that’s not because it’s useless or a perfunctory skill.
If you can improve your storytelling skills, then your business life, social life and personal life will improve massively.
Lesson Four: You Can Sell Anything
Over the course of however many years Halbert wrote his letters, the schemes he was involved in had massive breadth and made massive money.
He’d say things like, “I can sell anything” and I believe it.
What’s important though is that you can sell anything.
Copywriting is a pretty basic skill. It has layers of complexity, but ultimately you’re convincing someone to act with words.
You don’t need any particular intellectual capacity like a nuclear engineer does.
Nor do you need a ton of money like you would if you were starting the next Facebook or BP.
You don’t need an education, good looks or a particularly charismatic constitution.
What you need is a word processor and the willingness to learn how to write copy.
When you learn copy, you can sell anything; the same principles apply because they’re based on human psychology.
Final Thoughts
Gary Halbert’s letters are worth reading. Yet, they are so numerous that you’ll probably be better served by dipping into them every so often.
As you grow as a copywriter and/or businessman, you’ll find that you get different lessons from the letters – whether you’ve read them before or not.
I don’t really do them justice, so I suggest you go and find them here.
P.S. Gary Halbert charged $99.95 for his newsletter every month… mine is free. You should probably sign up.