“Reading is supposed to be an educational tool, and most people use it like sleeping pills.”

Your mind will only allow you to create bad work for so long. Either it will force you to quit, or it will force you to make the work better. 

Publishing this book has been a gratifying experience. Seeing people post pictures of it highlighted, bent up, or stained with coffee has brought me so much joy.

Recently, I’ve been having trouble generating new ideas for my daily blog. 

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

Occasionally, I’d hit a “hot streak” and write four or five blogs I was really excited about on back-to-back days. I also discovered dry periods—days when I had no good ideas, no inspiration, and not much desire to write. 

“Don’t try to write a book; try to become somebody who enjoys writing everyday.”

When I send an email blast, one of five things will happen. Four out of five of them are good.

The first challenge of writing is this: can you trim the weeds around the flowers?

The amazing thing about writing is this: anyone can do it. It’s all the other stuff that gets in the way. 

In my years producing commercials, I’ve been involved in countless creative builds. This required me to digest the brand, understand the product, learn the audience, and create something that speaks to all of that. Now, I do something way easier. 

I realize my best videos came naturally out of my writing. My best-selling product is a 15,000-word guide that started as a blog post. My most impactful emails came from writing sessions where I really opened up my heart on the page.

The Freewrite Alpha is a romantic machine. It looks and sounds like a typewriter. It can go off the grid. It’s the kind of thing you can hammer away on at a coffee shop and turn the heads of a few hipsters.

Have you touched a duck before? Have the majority of people touched ducks before? Then why do we say “get your ducks in a row” so often?

A staple in our culture has always been the theater. It’s taken different shapes over the centuries, but humans have always gathered to see a show.

There was once a man who knew all things. No joke. All things.

When I write sales pages, I make sure the very first thing a website visitor sees is a concise description of the product, and a clear button to buy it immediately. If someone arrives at the page, already convinced to buy from a previous ad or email, why is your sales page getting in the way of that?

Finding what’s priceless about your offering is essential to good copywriting–in marketing campaigns and one-off emails. It can be the backbone of the marketing that takes your business to the next level.

3. Jump straight into the action. In pitch decks and creative treatments, people feel like they need to ramp up into the action.

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”