I have a confession to make:

I can get pretty into stuff sometimes.

In fact, I often catch myself browsing the Interwebz for hours, searching for the next new “thing” I want to buy:

New clothes… new sneakers… a new mid-engine Corvette… a new house in a new city… or most recently, a new desktop computer so I can play all the new video games in VR at max resolution with zero lag (even though I never play video games anymore).

This habit is nothing new.

And on the surface, it’s easy to label as “materialistic.”

But what I eventually discovered is that my problem is a whole lot different than that.

In fact, it’s actually a symptom of a much more common issue:

Procrastination.

You see, I often waste time buying shyte on Amazon — not because I desperately need it — but because the activity offers an easy escape from the hard work at hand.

“Buying socks is a lot easier than building a business.” I rationalize to myself.

And almost every time, I wind up with the same results…

When I indulge in these impulses to buy new things, it feels good for maybe a week or two (especially BEFORE the item has even arrived as I’m waiting for it in anticipation). But then, the dopamine rush wears off. This “thing” doesn’t feel so new anymore. And I start to regret trading this temporary thrill for a permanent dent in my bank account.

My point is:

Buying more stuff doesn’t make me any happier than I am right now.

I have a good life.

And I know deep down that I won’t be any happier “once _______ happens,” or “when I can finally afford to buy_______.”

Sure, it would be nice to live in a 50,000 square-foot mansion, drive super cars, and own more Hawaiian real estate than Mark Zuckerberg.

But day dreaming about how “happy” I’ll be when I finally get these things won’t move me closer to my goals.

And it won’t make me enjoy life any deeper.

Instead, I’ll be so busy thinking about the future that I won’t savor the present.

And if you can’t do that, then what’s the point of it all?

Anyways…

If your experience with resistance is similar, then ask yourself next time you’re shopping online:

“Do I really need this? Or am I just procrastinating?”

The answer may surprise you.

Your pen pal,

Matt Rizvi

Need to hire a copywriter?

(Or want to get hired?)

Then listen close, because this decision can have a major impact on your business.

Choose right and you can enjoy years of fresh offers, new customers, and a growing stream of sales.

But choose wrong and you could be doomed with a copywriter that struggles to produce… ignores deadlines… writes non-compliant copy (that gets your biz in hot water)… repeats mistakes over and over… and at best, breaks even on the money and time you invest in them.

Now, as someone who’s spent the majority of their career in the copywriting trenches — as well as training, recruiting, and hiring copywriters — I’ve given this topic considerable thought.

And frankly, the things I look for in a budding copy star are not what you’d expect…

Because for me, it comes down to 2 factors:

What I can teach… and what I can’t teach.

I CAN teach “creativity” and how to identify big ideas (and early on, I can simply feed them to the copywriters). I can teach how to write well and how to write fast. I can teach copywriting structure and theory.

But what I can’t teach are the intangibles.

I can’t teach work ethic… or attention to detail… or motivation.

So when I’m testing out a copywriter, I want to make sure they do the little things…

• Do they go the extra mile in their research (i.e. get on the phone with the client, read existing copy, search through testimonials, test the product, etc.)? Or do they make hyperbolic, unspecific claims… or worse, simply make up facts?
  
• Do they follow your instructions the first time? Or do they repeat the same mistakes over and over again?
  
• Do they seek feedback early in the process and often? Or do they wait until the very end to get your thoughts on the copy?
  
• Do they hit their deadlines… or even deliver their copy early? Or do they chronically miss deadlines… ask for extensions… and then still deviler shoddy work?

Anywho…

Those are the big questions I ask when evaluating potential copywriters.

They may not be a magic bullet for everyone (for instance, if you — or someone on your team — doesn’t have the skillset to train copywriters).

But they’re the key things I look for.

And I recommend you do the same.

Your pen pal,

Matt Rizvi

Want more customers?

Dumb question, right? Of course you do…

Join me this evening, and I will show you how to get more customers buying from you more often, and buying more expensive product and services.

I’ll answer your questions, clear away the obstacles, and make the path to growing your business simple and straightforward.

See you at 6pm (eastern time).

Here are the details…

• WHAT: How To Get More People To Buy From You
• WHO: Rich Schefren
• WHERE: Facebook Live
• WHEN: 6:00pm ET (3:00pm PT)

And as always…

I’ll stick around afterwards to answer any follow-up questions, business questions, or even personal questions you might have.

Click Here To Watch My Facebook Livestream

To higher profits,

Rich Schefren

P.S. If you missed any of my previous livestreams, you can watch them right here.

It’s true – The #1 reason businesses go out of business is…

They don’t acquire and retain enough customers.

So in today’s livestream we are going to tackle getting customer.

Giving you the key to having a growing business.

A business that gets new customers daily and retain them for a long time.

Here are the details…

• WHAT: How To Get More People To Buy From You
• WHO: Rich Schefren
• WHERE: Facebook Live
• WHEN: 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT)

And as always…

I’ll stick around afterwards to answer any follow-up questions, business questions, or even personal questions you might have.

Click Here To Watch My Facebook Livestream

To higher profits,

Rich Schefren

P.S. If you missed any of my previous livestreams, you can watch them right here.

Don’t get it twisted…

I’m more than willing to spend BIG buckeroos on ads.

But before I do, there’s 3 specific questions I need to answer:

QUESTION #1: What exactly do I want from this campaign?

First, I’ve gotta define what my ideal result would look like. For example, is the purpose of this campaign to generate qualified leads? Sales? Or perhaps a specific type of engagement?

QUESTION #2: What ad channels will I use?

Next, I have to decide which channel I’m going to advertise on. Will my traffic come from Facebook ads… Youtube ads… native… paid search… email drops… or a combination of sources? But whatever I pick, the channel should make sense for my ultimate campaign goal.

QUESTION #3: What’s the fastest and easiest path to get it done?

Lastly, what are the steps I need to build into my marketing campaign to achieve my objective on the ad medium I chose? Don’t overthink this one. Instead, I like to map out my “minimum viable funnel” and get it launched ASAP. Then I can start testing and making improvements based on the results.

Alright, now it’s your turn to ask these questions and see if you’re ready to run ads on cold traffic.

And if you are…

Then make sure you tune in tomorrow at 1pm ET (10am PT) for a free training session with my good friend, Kim Walsh Phillips. On the call, she’s going to reveal the exact strategy she used to generate $2.73 million in revenue by building her audience from cold traffic.

So if you’re looking for a simple system that enables anyone to generate high-quality leads that literally pay for themself, then make sure you register here right away.

Your pen pal,

Matt Rizvi

P.S. If you don’t know Kim, she’s the leading direct-response social media marketer behind the biggest names out there – including Dan Kennedy, Rich Schefren and Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary from Shark Tank.

And on this training she’s promised to share with you her exact strategy for quickly growing an audience, building a list and generating customers…that pays while it works.

Click here to register for this free masterclass now.

In yesterday’s morning meeting with the team at Strategic Profits, Rich stopped everything (as he’s prone to do with his ADD) and gave me a new directive…

“You’ve got to watch the interview I just recorded with Walter Burch,” he said.

“You should watch it too, Jack (who’s our copywriter). The call was about Youtube ads but what he shared applies to every form of advertising going forward.”

In short:

Walter — who’s helped deliver targeted campaigns for more than 200 national clients including eBay, Orbitz, BestBuy.com, Overstock.com, Staples, and Target — revealed that there’s a paradigm shift happening in marketing.

And after burning through over $400K in Youtube ads, he discovered that the common copywriting approach of the past doesn’t work anymore.

You can’t just TEASE your prospects with value.

Open loops that simply promise an eventual payoff, like…

“In a minute I’m going to show you…”

“Do you want to…”

“What if you could…”

…Aren’t converting like they used to!

Plain and painfully simple.

Instead, you’ve got to follow the exact opposite approach and lead with VALUE (but not in the conventional sense of giving away the farm for free).

Frankly, it requires a bit of nuance and goes against the instincts of many marketers.

But Walter has boiled it down to a brain-dead-simple process that he refers to as “taste vs. tease.”

And you can get all the details inside Walter’s interview featured in the upcoming issue of Steal Our Winners.

This big release is this Sunday.

So if you want to get it, you’ve gotta sign up to Steal Our Winners by Saturday at midnight.

You won’t want to miss it.

Your pen pal,

Matt Rizvi

When it comes to online business noobies who’re eager to burn the boats… quit their 9-5… and set out on the perilous path of entrepreneurship… I hear the same story over and over again.

Often they want to:

(A) Sell a product or service they’ve never sold
(B) Teach a skill they’ve yet to master
(C) Target prospects they don’t understand
(D) Enter a market where they have zero credibility
(E) All of the above

Now, if you only suffer from one of the above, you can probably make the leap.

For example…

When I started selling courses on copywriting a couple years ago, that was something I had never sold before.

However, at that point, copywriting was a skill that I had been practicing for half a decade. I knew the prospects intimately because I used to be one of them. And I had a decent amount of credibility because I cut my teeth writing copy at Agora and had achieved a successful career as a freelancer.

As a result, I didn’t fall on my face.

But the less and less experience you have in your new venture… the more likely it is to fail.

And that’s why I’m always skeptical when people ask:

“If you had to start all over again, what would you do?”

Because if you’re truely starting from ground ZERO, failure is almost certain — no matter what strategy you’ve got up your sleeve.

…At least, that’s what I thought for a long time.

But recently I was listening to an interview with Rich and Seth Greene that made me question this wisdom.

Now, for those of you who don’t know Seth, he’s the co-host of the Sharkpreneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington, a 3x Marketer Of The Year nominee, and a legendary direct-response marketer.

And during the start of the interview, he made an audacious promise:

“We’re here to talk about how you can build a cult of 50 evangelists who will go out and promote your business, your marketing, your message, your company, [and] your brand to the world every week for a year,” he said.

And boy did he deliver.

During the call, he revealed his 5-step approach for doing exactly that — even if you have zero experience… zero credibility… and a tiny budget to get started.

In other words…

Starting from ground ZERO.

In fact, Seth was so confident in his approach that he even conducted a real-life experiment where he used this strategy to jump into a brand-new niche and create a successful business in just 90 days.

I was shocked.

It rocked my long-held beliefs.

And now I know that if I had to start all over again, THIS is what I do.

And you can discover the same approach when you check out Seth’s interview inside the February issue of Steal Our Winners, which comes out this Sunday.

So if you want access, make sure you sign up by Saturday at midnight.

Clock’s ticking.

Your pen pal,

Matt Rizvi

What’s the real key to changing your life?

It’s not setting bigger goals… Or mapping out your 5-year plan… Or reading another book on personal development.

Sure, those things can be valuable.

But they won’t create the massive level of change that you’re hoping for.

Instead, if you want bigger and better results in your life (aka your output), then you’ve got to identify the simple actions you need to take every day to achieve them (aka your input).

There’s one caveat though…

Some inputs create more output than others. And those are the ones you should focus on.

Think of this as the “80/20 Lifestyle.”

And during today’s livestream, I’m going to show you how to live it.

Here are the details…

• WHAT: Your Input Determines Your Output
• WHO: Rich Schefren
• WHERE: Facebook Live
• WHEN: 6:15pm ET (3:15pm PT)

And as always…

I’ll stick around afterwards to answer any follow-up questions, business questions, or even personal questions you might have.

Click Here To Watch My Facebook Livestream

To higher profits,

Rich Schefren

P.S. If you missed any of my previous livestreams, you can watch them right here.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t the actual “Shark Tank.”

But I did do an interview on the Sharkpreneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and his co-host Seth Greene (who’s also a contributor in the upcoming Steal Our Winners Issue).

If you’re not familiar…

Kevin Harrington is the original Shark on the hit TV show Shark Tank, and the inventor of the infomercial.

And Seth Greene is one of the world’s most trusted authorities on direct response podcast marketing, a best-selling author, the only 3x Marketer of the Year Nominee, and the founder of Market Domination.

On the podcast, Kevin, Seth, and I covered A LOT.

But here are just a few of the topics we discussed:

• How COVID-19 allowed for direct response marketing to be really effective.
  
• Why Clubhouse rooms have become so popular with business owners.
  
• How every big breakthrough in direct response came from a change in format.
  
• Why new formats make it easier for direct response marketers to make a sale.
  
• How 51% of traffic from Google search doesn’t leave Google.

It was epic!

And you can listen to the interview for free right here:

• Listen Online
• Apple Podcasts
• Youtube

If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and leave a review to let us know what part made the biggest impact.

To higher profits,

Rich Schefren

They work without you being aware of them.

Yet they shape your perception, how you make decisions, and what actions you take.

The mental models you operate within will determine whether you are successful or not. Which is why we are revisiting the topic today.

You’ll discover you use more mental models than you realize.

And even more importantly, understand where a single upgrade in a model can make a profound difference to the growth of your business.

As an entrepreneur or marketer, it’s crucial to have a wide set of mental models to aid you in thinking clearly, rationally and strategically.

Then as you grow in experience, you can layer new mental models on top of others to build your latticework of models and have your own unique expertise.

Join me today and I’ll show you how.

Here are the details…

• WHAT: Mental Models to Grow Your Business
• WHO: Rich Schefren
• WHERE: Facebook Live
• WHEN: 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT)

And as always…

I’ll stick around afterwards to answer any follow-up questions, business questions, or even personal questions you might have.

Click Here To Watch My Facebook Livestream

To higher profits,

Rich Schefren

P.S. If you missed any of my previous livestreams, you can watch them right here.