Yesterday’s thread in The Gary Halbert Copy Club on Facebook about how to become a top copywriter reminded me of something my dad did to everyone who came to learn from him.

Usually he wouldn’t but on rare occasions he would teach them a little bit about writing headlines or bullets and sometimes he just went straight into the following routine.

Step One- He would welcome them aboard and ask them to write an ad which was to be completed that day.

Step Two- Gary would then do a little work, make a call or something else which took about 20-30 minuets.

Step Three- After less than half an hour, Gary would walk in and tell the student to drop what he was doing and come with him.

Step Four- My dad would then have the student drive him to a movie, a bookstore, and out to lunch. Not necessarily in that order but he would keep them out of the office all day.

Step Five- Upon returning to the office, he would tell the student not to forget that the entire promotion needs to be done and and on his desk when he gets in the next morning.

Step Six- The next morning, Gary would call the student in and have them sit there as he silently read what they wrote.

Step Seven- They would watch as their hero Gary Halbert crumpled up what they wrote, throw it away, and then tell them it was garbage and to go rewrite it without telling them what was wrong with the promotion or how to improve it.

This process was both good and bad and I am probably the only person who knows why he did this because he never explained it to anyone.

My father got his in person teaching style from military boot camp

I know this from the stories he told me and because of how he taught me

He wanted to teach me how to speak on stage so one day at a conference he  said, “ I have to go pee, go up there and give my A-Pile B-Pile speech”

Gary Halbert believed the best way to teach someone to swim was toss them in water over their head without warning. It’s how he learned when he was a kid

He once read in Skin Diver Magazine that the toughest divemaster school in the country, if not the world, was less than a 100 yards from where we lived in Marathon Florida so without asking me, he went and enrolled me in the program which most students spent months preparing for and told me “you start in three days.”

Everyone in the program but me was able to spend weeks or months studying for the tests and working up to the physical tests which included:

1 – Swim 400 meters nonstop, without swimming aids in under 6:30 mi

3 – Swim 800 meters face down, using mask, snorkel and fins, nonstop, without flotation aids and without using arms to swim in under 14 minutes.

4 – Tow (or push) a diver for 100 meters/yards nonstop, without assistance  both divers equipped in full scuba equipment in under 2:10 minutes.

Rescue Demonstration

Respond to an unresponsive, non-breathing diver including:

Enter the water, locate and surface a submerged diver who is about 25 meters away.

Turn the diver face up and establish buoyancy

Remove the divers mask and regulator, open the airway and check for breathing

Call for help

Give two initial rescue breaths, and continue with an effective rescue breath every five seconds with no or very few interruptions

Tow the diver to safety while protecting the airway, continuing rescue breathing.

Remove both sets of equipment.

Exit the water with the diver and perform full CPR without missing one beat.

By the way, this program was so difficult, lots of students failed and they never issued anyone a refund.

Other programs gave people a scale of points for slower speeds but because most of these students were actually going to work on boats and take lazy out of shape tourists out diving, the divemasters were all stress tested and had to be elite.

They yelled and cussed at you on purpose and constantly told you that you needed to do better.

Halls Dive Center was so tough, NAUI eventually told them not to be so rough.

So during the day I had to perform these tasks and much more and at night I’d come home exhausted and study for all the knowledge part of the program.

I don’t know if anyone else went into the program with such little notice and zero prep like I did but in the end I did pass.

In fact, they wanted me to spend just one more week giving speeches to become an instructor but I said no because I knew how little they get paid and as an instructor you can become liable even when you are out diving with regular dive trips where you just want to be another passenger.

Anyway, the point about what my dad did to his students, what drill sergeants do to their recruits, and Hall’s did to their students is put them under so much pressure is to take away their ego and get them in a place where they just focus 100% on the job.

This is good for copywriters because the best will often take a well thought out and polished piece of copy and toss what they took so long to write out and start all over again because their gut tells them the promotion just doesn’t make have that magic quality of shocking the reader into paying attention and giving the prospect an intense desire to buy.

The bad part of over stressing a person is it can demoralize someone into quitting when with a little guidance, they could have become great.

Raw brutal feedback is critical to improving any skill but guidance speeds up the process and my father gave very little guidance.

All of his trainings were about 5% actual writing advice and 95% how to think like a persuader.

To prove my point, I have a student who was able to beat the results of one of the highest paid copywriting mentors in the world on his first go round after a few short months of learning from me because he asked for feedback.

In the past, I spent less than five minutes giving three different copywriters separate pieces of advice which they each used to break records or get ahead of their competition at Agora publishing.

Pressure and stress are great for getting over yourself and getting on with what you need to get on with but guidance speeds up getting to where you need to be.

TL/DR Seek brutal and honest feedback but get it from someone who will tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Namaste

PS FYI, in Halbertizing we give you all the education you need to become a top copywriter and Kevin and I make ourselves available to give you necessary feedback but we won’t be the ones to push you. Your drive to become great is all on you.

Links about the program and the trainings are above.