Supertexts
On people stealing other people's stuff and palming it off as their own...
CREDIT: A Fireside Chat from Alen Sultanic inspired this email
If you could learn the Theory of Relativity from Albert Einstein.
Would you choose him, or someone who made a bite sized chunk video on YouTube after reading a bit of Stephen Hawking?
You’d probably choose the YouTube Short right?
(If you’re brave you can read a compilation of Einstein’s 2 Original Paper’s Here)
I didn’t even watch the Short let alone read the paper… Jesus Christ, I got faint just looking at the Content’s Page.
But WHY?
Because copying the copy of a copy is easy.
Far too often, people will be awed by a guru who is repeating lessons from someone from last year, decade or century that came from someone else.
It’s hard to move in the personal development space without somebody quoting something you could learn from Tony Robbins.
Who learnt from Jim Rohn.
Who learnt from Zig Ziglar.
Who learnt from Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill (an incredible personal development scam artist if you care to delve)
Who transposed ideas from Jung to Schopenhauer.
Who built on thought from Socrates and Plato.
(God, I’ve missed so many people out there…)
What’s the point you ask, of learning the original text…
The Supertext.
The original(ish) thought.
Because you can come to your own conclusions.
You can have your own “original(ish) thinking.”
And not be like another stupefied moron who can’t believe how deep and original the “Power of Now” is…
(Sorry, Eckhart)
What these guys are very good at is…
Aggregating information.
Pulling lots of sources together and packaging them together, to create a “new offer” a new mechanism for an old idea.
Eckhart made Buddhism sexy again right?
I mean it is more effort.
You’ve got that right.
Reading is hard.
But you better be tough, if you’re going to be stupid
Gary Halbert
Let’s take this approach to learning copy writing.
Say you want to get REALLY GOOD at writing words that sell things.
Something I try and do most days (poorly I might add)
I’ve only been copywriting seriously for just under 2 years.
And sold over £150K of my own digital products and coaching in that time, as well as $1.5M of client goods.
By accident, while being a pretty average copywriter.
Seriously.
So, a few months ago I was like “Shit!”
I could make good money from this copywriting malarkey.
Let’s get really good at it.
Like…
World Class Good.
Like…
Ogilvy buying a castle in France good…