Dear Reader,

You are the reason we do this show.

You were on my mind seven months ago.

I was thinking about your marketing and was wondering:

“Do you know why your ads should be about your customers, and not you?”

“Do you know that the best brands are built on stories that bond and entertain?”

“Do you hear a voice of reason in this overcrowded market?”

You were on my mind when I asked Roy if we should put this show together… for you. 7 months ago.

Many of you have told me that this show has changed the way you think about marketing.

Thank you. That’s why we do this show. It’s for you.

Watch/listen above or read below.

Todd Liles: Hey, Roy, I want to talk about making the customer the center of the story today, the center of the ad, and not always just talking about yourself, the client. What do you think about that?

Roy Williams: It’s a big idea. It’s unbelievably important, and it’s actually very hard to do unless you know this one little secret.

Todd Liles: Well, I look forward to hearing that little secret. So for those that are curious, Roy’s gonna tell it to us in just a moment. But today’s episode is to expose that fatal flaw that can happen in so many advertisement campaigns, which is when you make yourself the hero as opposed to your client.

Great, because segment one is all about the fact that the customer is the hero, not you. So with that being said, Roy, tell us that secret.

Roy Williams: I’ll begin by saying there are only nine declarative sentences in English. And the way those nine sentences come into existence, the first thing you do is you choose consciously or unconsciously, and frankly, most people do it unconsciously, first-person perspective. First person is me, I, we, our. Our company, we do this. Me, my, we, our. Second person, you. The reader, the listener, the viewer, you. Third person, not me, not you. Him, her, they, them.

So years and years and years ago, probably 20 years ago, when I was first teaching this, Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg put together a little calculator and it went viral because they have huge influence, and they said that it was the We-We Calculator. And what you would do is you would upload into this thing ad copy, and then it would simply score how often you referred to me, my, we, our. First person. And it would give you the score… And so how often were you talking about they or them or those people over there?

But then the important thing is… And here’s the shortcut. The shortcut is if you open with the word, “You,” you are now talking to the customer about the customer. And the more often you use the word “You,” the better your ad copy. And the less times you talk about I, me, my, we, our. First person. Everybody wants to write in the first person because they want to talk about themselves and their company. And you just look for, go down through there, and how many times did I refer to I, me, my, we, our? And then you said, okay, if I reframe this and come at it from a different angle…

And this is the thing that I did and what now is an extremely famous radio ad for Rolex. Now, stay with me.

“You are standing in the snow, 5-and-one-half miles above sea level, gazing at a horizon hundreds of miles away. It occurs to you that life here is very simple. You live or you die. No compromises, no whining, no second chances. This is a place constantly ravaged by wind and storm where every ragged breath is an accomplishment. You stand on the uppermost pinnacle of the earth.

This is the mountain they call Everest. Yesterday it was considered unbeatable, but that was yesterday. As Edmund Hillary surveyed the horizon from the peak of Mount Everest, he monitored the time on a wristwatch that had been specifically designed to withstand the fury of the world’s most angry mountain.

Rolex believed Sir Edmund would conquer the mountain, and especially for him, they created the Rolex Explorer. In every life, there’s a Mount Everest to be conquered. When you have conquered yours, you’ll find your Rolex waiting patiently for you to come and take it up at Justice Jewelers. I’m Woody Justice, and I’ve got a Rolex for you.”

Now, if you count the word you and your in there, it’s loaded up with you and your. That’s why it’s engaging. That’s why you’re involved in the ad. Something’s happening to you and it’s happening right now. The three choices you make is first-person, second-person, third-person perspective. You make that choice.

Then you use past tense, present tense, or future tense verbs. And so that was second-person perspective about you are standing in the snow. Now, the “Are standing,” oh, that’s present tense. And so that’s one of the nine sentences, is second-person present tense. Second-person past tense, second-person future tense. “You will be feeling too warm and you turn the thermostat down and it doesn’t help. You need…” And then you name the company. And what happens is you’re not saying, “I do this” or “We do this.” You talk to the customer about a moment they will experience in the future.

And when this happens to you, walk to the phone and… See what I mean? And so now all of a sudden, choose your perspective. And the more often you say you and your; you, your home, your air conditioner, your comfort, and so that forces you into that perspective of making it about the customer. Open with the word you, and that’s the simplest way to do it.

Now, you can get there without it being the opening word, but I’m saying just if you’re gonna practice this and you just want to do an exercise, write down the word you, and you’re talking to the customer about the customer, and then finish that sentence. And then decide, consciously, “I’m gonna make this a past tense story about something that happened in the past,” or is it a present tense story as though it’s happening right this minute in their imagination, or do I make it future tense, something that will happen in the future? But it doesn’t matter. The more often you use the word “You” and “Your,” the stronger the ad. Mic drop.

Todd Liles: Segment number two today is, “Make Me Feel Seen.” Because what we know is that great ads mirror the inner world. And Roy, I just love when you give us the Rolex ad like you did. And I was listening to the number of “Yous” and “You, you, you, you,” and Woody only came in at the very end. “I’m Woody Justice, and I’ve got a Rolex waiting for you.” And I probably didn’t say it like you do, because you have a wonderful memory. But if you have one of those moments in your life, and then they walk in the door and they’re looking for that Rolex, like, I’m automatically following one of these principles of yours, which is “Make Me Feel Seen.” Now, I want to read a quote from The Important One Is You. This is from a Monday morning memo, The Important One Is You. “If the ad makes the listener feel smart, understood, and powerful, it will win. If it makes the company look smart, it’ll fail.” You introduced me to Charles Duhigg, and I have become such an admirer of his books. I read Super Communicators, and he says this in the book. He says, “Don’t talk about your well-being too much if you want to be heard, because it turns people off.” So how can an owner tell the difference between trying to look smart versus making the customer feel seen, Roy?

Roy Williams: To make the customer feel seen, you need… The word is empathy. You need to describe a thought they have had. You need to describe a feeling they have felt. And then they feel like, “Oh, wow, you know where I’m coming from.” Okay. And if you ever want to make the customer the hero… Okay, I’m just gonna ad-lib this. I’ve never written this ad, but I was thinking, okay, if I was gonna give somebody an example of how they could do this in home services. Okay, I’m gonna make this up on the fly.

Todd Liles: I look forward to it.

Roy Williams: You open the door. The man says, “Yep, it’s just what I thought. You’re gonna need a whole new system.” But you’re smarter than that. You know that the one you have can probably be fixed. You know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know that you know what he’s doing. So you say, “Give me some time to think about it.” And then, you tell them what they do next. Then you call Todd Liles, and Todd sends out a guy and says, “Okay, this can be fixed. Here’s what it needs, and here’s what it would cost to fix it.” Now, here’s what’s interesting. Now, this is not the ad anymore. Here’s what’s interesting. If the system really does need to be replaced, see what I mean? Who’s gonna get the gig?

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: The person who told them, “It can be fixed. This is what it’ll take. This is what it would cost. Would you like us to fix this, or do you want to consider replacing it?” Now, you’ve just given them a simple… If he goes, “Yeah, go ahead and fix it.” And then when you say, “How much would it cost to replace it?” If you know that number immediately, you already have that number, so you can just tell them. And now they have a binary choice: “I can fix it for this, replace it for that.” And then you just wait until they say which one they want to do. But the bottom line is the customer’s the hero because you’re telling them, “Of course you’re not gonna fall for that. You’re smarter than that.” This guy doesn’t realize you’re smarter than that. You see what I mean? And so talking to the customer about their perception, their self-confidence, and you’re describing them maybe better than they really are, you’re giving them credit for things that they wouldn’t actually perceive, but they will believe good things about themselves. And so you see them in a positive light, you describe them in a positive light, you talk to them, and you lead them through this journey, not as… That’s what’s called the omniscient outsider. And so, how does this person…

Todd Liles: Omniscient outsider.

Roy Williams: The omniscient outsider. So this is something that’s going to happen in the future, and the person who’s doing the ad is somehow in that future moment, unseen, observing. See what I mean?

Todd Liles: With you.

Roy Williams: So the omniscient outsider, the voice of the omniscient narrator is what it’s called. The omniscient narrator is describing a future scene. And then whenever that scene happens, they’ve already lived it in their mind. They’ve already lived it. It’s like, wait a minute. So, this has been described. They heard the ad several times. You open the door, the man says, “Yep, it’s just what I expected. You need a whole new system.” But he doesn’t know that you’re more clever than that. You know that you can get a quote to fix it, and you know who to call. And so the more times you use the word you, they’re seeing themselves in the picture. They’re seeing themselves taking this really smart action, not being duped, not being a rube, not being a Patsy. And so they’re going, “Okay, then what do I do?” Well, here’s what you do next. And then they go, “Okay, yeah, that’s definitely what I would do.” And so whatever it is you’re describing, they would do. When that moment happens, it’s called a recall cue.

And when the person says, “You need a whole new system,” everything that happens after that is on autopilot because they’ve been there in their mind several times. They’ve been there in their mind. They’ve already lived this moment in their imagination every time they heard that ad. And recall, it’s involuntary automatic recall. They will remember the name of the company, even though they couldn’t have told you the name of the company 30 seconds earlier. But when this happens, this event, this triggering event that has been described to them so many times in this ad, they are living the moment you’ve been describing. And you’re describing it, that this happened, you open the door, the man says to you this, and you immediately think, “Ah, here’s what I’m going to do.” And so now why is that ad more interesting than the ad about the company? Because in this ad, the customer is the star of the movie.

Todd Liles: Right. Right. And you teed up my third segment perfectly. You didn’t even know I was going to do this third segment. But the third segment… We might have known, but you went into it without us talking about it. Third segment is, enter the world of the customer. And that’s what happened in the Rolex ad. That’s exactly what just happened in that automatically off-the-cuff ad right there. And you actually talk about this. You teach about this. This isn’t just random thoughts that you’ve had here at the table. Now, that ad was, but not your teaching. I want to read a quote, another Monday morning memo, The Second Gravitational Field. The quote is, “The story you tell must not be about you. It must be about your customer and their life.” And inside of that article, you talk about using empathy. And empathy gets the story started, and then the gravity takes care of the rest. Once you get it rolling, it just sort of goes downhill. And I like that. I like it so much that I almost don’t even have to ask you my question, because I’m going to tell you what it was anyway. How does this look in practical terms for a $5 million HVAC company? But you did it. You rolled us out with an example of an ad.

Roy Williams: Well, I’m going to give you one that… I hesitate to give it to you because it wasn’t my idea.

Todd Liles: All right.

Roy Williams: But it’s a genius idea, just a freaking genius idea. And I cheat. I cheat like crazy. And the way that I cheat is I always work with companies that I know could definitely succeed without our help, and we just make them succeed bigger, faster. That’s it. We only accelerate what was going to happen anyway. And good marketing will not save a broken company. Good marketing will actually damage a broken company because now more people get pissed off quicker by being disappointed. And I’m just going, so, no, you always have to be super careful. Can this running back carry the football across the goal line?

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And when you choose a business owner who’s capable of running that business and capable of making really brilliant decisions, then all we have to do is bring those brilliant decisions to the media in a way that has the most clarity and the highest impact. And I talk a lot about Aaron Gaynor because Aaron blows me away constantly. And I’m going to go ahead and share this. I don’t think he’ll mind. But he said, “Roy, I’ve decided on a policy, and this is what I want to do, and you need to figure out how to explain this.” Man takes my breath away constantly. And he said, “When a person buys a hot water heater, that day, while the technician is there, we’re going to go ahead and do up to $500 worth of additional plumbing things at no charge.” And I said, “Okay, I know how to explain that.” And he said, “Okay.” So I wrote the ad. And of course, Aaron has a sidekick named Jerry. They banter. And it’s Jerry and Aaron talking to each other, and the customer’s listening in. So the listener’s eavesdropping on this banter between two guys that know each other and are obviously friends, but they’re very different from each other. And so the way it’s explained is, nobody ever plans to need a new hot water heater. It was never on their schedule. It was never in the budget.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: It’s an unexpected surprise. It’s an unexpected expense. And they said, “They’ve got to have hot water, and they weren’t planning on this.” And he says, “The only way to make an unexpected expense feel better is to get an unexpected gift.” And then Jerry goes, “Well, what’s the unexpected gift?” He goes, “You know what? We’re already there. And before we leave, we’re gonna do up to $500 more additional plumbing services at no charge. Just unexpected gift. Things are gonna be better than they were, and no additional.” And he goes, “Well, what kind of things can we do for $500?” And then we have a whole list. And you’re going, “Wow, that’s some pretty impressive stuff.” And people go, “Huh?” And so you hear seven or eight different things, and you’re going, “Wow.” So now all of a sudden, the unexpected expense, we’re gonna offset that with an unexpected gift. Now that, Todd, is empathy. That is Aaron Gaynor entering the world of the average customer and realizing, “Yeah, man, you didn’t have that planned. That’s a real blow. Tell you what, to make it feel better, here’s what I’m gonna do.” And it is a gift. See what I mean?

And people go, “Wow, I love this guy. He’s making my life better by…” It’s like one of the things he can do is install a new water tap. You know what I mean? Fix a leak, as long as it’s an exposed leak and not underground, water leak. And it’s a long list of stuff. And we start listing all this stuff, and people go, “Wow, what about this?” “Yeah, that’s usually $500 less. We could do that.” And then people are going, “Man, when I need a hot water heater, I’m calling that guy, ’cause I get to choose the extra thing that I get at no charge.” And he goes, “Technician’s already there. Technician’s already there.” And this is just the lagniappe. And that’s a word from New Orleans. It’s the little extra we give you because we love you.

And so customer bonding, Aaron gets customer bonding, Aaron gets generosity. And the idea that you’re going to make the customer understand, “Man, I know what you’re feeling. I know what you’re going through. Let me do something to just make it feel a little better, because you didn’t plan to have to do that, but you’re having to do it, and you didn’t have it budgeted. I know how to make you feel better about that, I hope. I’m just doing what I can.” And so people go, “Wow, this guy’s got my back. This guy cares about what I’m feeling.” See what I mean?

Todd Liles: That puts Press PLAY into life. And Press PLAY, the P stands for prepare, and the Y stands for your future. So we’re literally teaching technicians and business owners to begin with the end in mind. Prepare for your future. Right before your future is added value. Right before added value is the labor like a professional. Right before that is presenting the options. So what Eric has put into play…

Roy Williams: Aaron.

Todd Liles: Is added value. And it’s literally what we say: before you leave and before you secure your future, after they’ve already said yes to things, if you haven’t overwhelmed them and delighted them with something they never expected, you’re missing out. Add value into their life that they never saw coming. And he just took it and said, “I’m not even gonna wait. I’m just gonna let you know I’m gonna do this.” I think that’s great.

Roy Williams: And so the thing is, in so very many of his ads, he’ll tell me, “Here’s what I’ve decided.” And I’m not even suggesting these things. These are just things he sits back and he puts himself in the shoes of the masses, and he says to himself, “When a person suddenly has to spend money they weren’t planning on spending, how can I make this easy? How can I make them feel better about it? How can I let them know I’m in their corner, I’m on their side?” And he comes up with so many different ways to communicate that, that you just… In Ohio, where he does business in three different towns, and it’s like, my gosh, people love that guy. And that’s the purpose of marketing.

Todd Liles: Because Aaron Gaynor can put himself in the world of his clients, then he can help you put his company into their minds.

Roy Williams: Right. Right, right, right.

Todd Liles: And that’s a thing that a lot of business owners, they actually lack. They come to people like you, they come to people like me, and they don’t want to do the execution part. Chief Executive Officer, they don’t want to be executing. They want us to be executing. It’s like, “No, no, no. You still own the damn thing and have to make the big decisions. You make the decisions, and then we’ll make it come to life for you.”

Roy Williams: Right. And so whenever… And I guess what I’m saying is Aaron instinctively puts himself in the shoes of the customer and tries to feel what they’re feeling, tries to see what they’re seeing. And then he makes decisions and announces it to his very huge team. And I found out about it after he’s made the decision and announced it to his people. And that’s a strong leader. And I’m saying, but it’s so unbelievably easy to write ads for him because he gives you stuff to talk about that people go, “Wow, I like that guy.” See what I mean?

Todd Liles: I totally see what you mean. And in a way, Aaron is practicing one of your principles, which is he is speaking a world into existence, and then you are taking it from there and making it come to life.

Roy Williams: He’s anticipating a future event and how people are going to feel when that event happens.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And then I articulate it in a way so that it’s easy to see in your mind. And then when you’re living that moment, guess what comes rushing in? Because you’ve lived this moment in your imagination several times. Every time you hear the ad, you’re living that moment. So when you’re living it for real, what’s called procedural memory is automatic involuntary recall.

And automatic involuntary recall happens when you have enough repetition of this imagined future moment. When that moment happens and the trigger that you described happens, you need to replace your water heater, you weren’t planning to have to do that, boom, today’s the day. See what I mean? Then when that happens, they immediately remember everything else that was in that ad.

Todd Liles: 100%. I think I have a good example for us to watch for our ad segment today. It’s similar in the sense of Google, in the sense of it’s a technology company, it’s Amazon. It’s similar in the sense of the one that we watched in the last episode, because you begin to see life in it. But it’s dramatically different in its tone and its approach. Roy, this one is what I think is very funny. And I think it’s extraordinarily creative at putting people into the world. So I’m just gonna show you.

Roy Williams: Sure.

Todd Liles: I bet you haven’t seen it.

Ellen DeGeneres: Baby.

Portia de Rossi: Coming.

Ellen DeGeneres: Alexa, turn down the thermostat.

Alexa: Okay. Turning down thermostat.

Ellen DeGeneres: Ready. Huh, here we go. What do you think people did before Alexa?

Rich Old Woman: Alessa, turn the temperature down 2 degrees. Thank you, dear.

Queen: Alexine, tell me a joke.

Jester: Jokes. God, you’d think I know loads? Look at me. [chuckle]

Queen: Next.

Paper Boy: News. Get your news here.

Old Time Guy On The Street: Alex, what’s today’s news?

Paper Boy: Doesn’t matter. It’s all fake. [laughter]

Frontiersman: Al, play that song I like. [music] Al, next song.

Washerwoman: Alexei, tell us something interesting.

Washerwoman 2: Okay. The Earth is flat and a witch stole his pants.

Princess: Aleximus, send this message to Prince Constantine.

Nixon Figure: Alessia, remind me to delete those tapes.

Assistant: Yes, Mr. President. I ain’t deleting…

Portia de Rossi: Yeah, I don’t know what people did before Alexa.

Ellen DeGeneres: Alexa, play my favorite song. [music]

Todd Liles: I like that ad. I think it worked well for bringing people into…

Roy Williams: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. In that ad, we’re the voyeurs. We’re the outsiders looking in. And so that was essentially a series of exchanges between imaginary people. But the costumes, the scenery, the backdrops, it’s big budget stuff. But at the same time, of course, Amazon’s got a big budget to spend.

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: But the idea is we entered a whole series of scenarios over different windows of time. And it was speculative, but you see Ellen DeGeneres and… I forget the other one’s name.

Todd Liles: Portia something…

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.

Todd Liles: Her wife.

Roy Williams: And then whenever the two of them begin this conversation and then it goes full circle. They’re on their way to the car at the beginning. The next time you see them, they’re in the car. And so you begin and end with these two ladies, and in between, you’re looking at a whole series of vignettes enacting the answer to their question. I wonder what it was like. I wonder what it was like before we had Alexa. And then you see what it would have been like, and it’s funny. And you’re anxious to see what the next little vignette will be, the next little imagined episode. And it’s clever.

And so, yes, entertainment is the currency that will purchase the attention of a too busy public. And that was entertaining. Anything that is a little more interesting than the thought that was occupying your mind, the thought that was in your head, when something comes along more interesting than that, you’ll turn your attention to it. And if your ad isn’t more interesting than the thought they were thinking when your ad began to play, they don’t hear it, they don’t see it, they don’t notice it, they don’t ingest it.

And so, opening. Opening is the moment you either get their attention or not. And then the goal is you have to hold their attention. Holding their attention is listener engagement, viewer engagement.

Todd Liles: That ad, Roy, is one that I think that if I were an owner of a plumbing, electrical, or air conditioning company, that you could very easily repurpose with a smart copywriter. That concept could be reproduced for low budget money inside of someone’s home in just a few little…

Roy Williams: It could be reproduced on radio for nothing. But on television, setting up the scenes, it’s like…

Todd Liles: It’d have to be a lot simpler than what they had.

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah, way simpler. It could be done, but still yet, staging each of the scenes and then editing that thing together, it takes people that really know what they’re doing.

Todd Liles: Yeah, for sure.

Roy Williams: And I’m saying it takes experienced people. And so could it be done? Yeah. And I said if you knew the right people and you’re really well connected and you had a bunch of really talented people that were hungry, you might be able to make that TV ad for five grand, but not for less.

Todd Liles: Not for less.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: Well, like you said, the beautiful thing about radio is that it doesn’t take very many sounds placed in the right spot, with the right engineer. Someone like Dave, they can make that come to life for a lot less money.

Roy Williams: Sure. Oh, yeah. The thing is, radio has its limitations, but radio is also the great equalizer. The average business owner, if they have anybody in their world that understands how to do it, sound effects are basically free. And it’s like you can… A Fortune 500 company with unlimited resources has no ability to create a better ad than you. It doesn’t take money to make an extraordinary radio ad. And money doesn’t mean your ad’s gonna be good.

It is the great equalizer, the person working alone who has the imagination and the time to just create it. Creating radio ads is free. It takes minimal equipment, and like I said, all the things that can make the ad better are effectively free. And so, budget doesn’t help anything. It’s raw talent, is the only thing that matters. Whereas television does take money.

Todd Liles: Yeah. Well, there’s the power of the copywriter, and you can see that. If we just imagine three sources of entertainment; television or movies, take your choice, they have about equal budgets now. We’ve got radio, and then let’s drop down to the book. There’s a reason why there are still books that sell tens of millions of copies every year, and it’s because they have extreme talent behind those pages. Yes, the cover and all that does make an impact. I won’t say that it won’t.

Roy Williams: Sure.

Todd Liles: But at the end of the day, once you’re past the cover, if you’re gonna finish it from beginning to end, it better be a good book. And that’s where talent comes in. And I think that talent doesn’t change. We’ve seen some terrible TV and movies that were like, “Why did I waste my time on that?” Well, it was short, it was relatively free, but it was a waste of energy and money. And then you’ve seen extraordinarily low-budget movies. One of my favorite is Whiplash. When that movie comes on, I’m in it from beginning to end. I think I read that they shot that thing in, like, two weeks and they did it for, like, $300,000. It was…

Roy Williams: Wow.

Todd Liles: Have you ever seen Whiplash?

Roy Williams: Uh-huh.

Todd Liles: Roy, copywriting extreme. From beginning to end, you are in all the way. And that’s just about the person that’s writing the copy. Now, I’m gonna give a shout-out to our editor, Alex. His long-time girlfriend, maybe fiance even, her name is also Alex, [chuckle] and she works for the PR company that directly oversees Noah… How do you say his last name, Alex?

Alex: Hawley.

Todd Liles: She works for the PR company that directly oversees Noah Hawley. And for those of you that are interested in that name, he’s the guy that rebooted Fargo, the TV series. Amazing. And then he created a new series called Alien: Earth. And I thought to myself, “This is gonna be stupid. This is gonna be gimmicky. It’s not gonna be good. I’m gonna give it one episode,” ’cause there’s been some terrible Alien movies.

Roy Williams: Right. Right, right.

Todd Liles: Roy, from the beginning, you are in. You are stuck. You are locked in. And he’s taken this extraordinarily imaginative approach to where the story is actually telling the story of Peter Pan wrapped up in the future with aliens and cyborgs, synthetics, and technology…

Roy Williams: Wow. And so I’ve learned two things. I’ve learned two things. I need to go straight home and I need to watch Whiplash and I need to watch Alien…

Todd Liles: Amazing. Alien: Earth…

Roy Williams: Alien: Earth. Alien: Earth. Okay. Now, here’s the thing. So you’re talking about books, and then we started talking about the movies that come from good writers, right? Here’s the thing that helps people understand when we say, features and benefits and information, there is a time that that matters, but it’s only after a person has already decided to purchase. They’re going to buy this product or they’re going to buy this service now.

Now, when they’ve decided to buy the product or buy the service, now they do need some information to support their decision, but not before they have chosen to buy a product in this category or a service from a service provider in this category. Now, here’s the corollary. You said books. Okay. This lets you know where the American mind is. Every year in the United States of America, two million new books that never before existed are written. Two million every year. Most of them, you never hear of.

Now, here’s the statistical thing that will blow your mind. Nine out of ten of those books are nonfiction ’cause all of us think we have something to say the world needs to hear. Now, wait a minute. So nine out of the ten books that are written are nonfiction. Of all the books that are purchased in America every year, nine out of ten are fiction. That is how much we love entertainment and how much we don’t give a crap about information.

Now, you’re rare. You read more nonfiction books than anybody I know ’cause you’re wanting to expand your learning and expand your mind. Writers don’t do that. You know why? Writers learn from reading astoundingly good writing. And as a discipline, I very rarely read a book, only when it’s extremely… I have a number of people in my life that I trust their literary taste. If they recommend a book that wasn’t written by somebody who won the Nobel Prize in literature or the Pulitzer Prize, there’s only a few people I’ll take their word for and read a book that wasn’t written by somebody who is celebrated as one of the greatest that ever lived.

So when you want to be a good writer, read good writing. Read good writing, and it will become second nature to you. And so reading fiction is what writers do because what we’re telling are stories, and you don’t learn to tell stories by reading nonfiction books. Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: It makes sense. So, Roy, I’m gonna wrap this for the listener here. This is what I want the listener to take away from today. There’s been so many things. These are fun journeys for me. I actually adore it when we get into these very real conversations that weren’t necessarily on the scripts, ’cause I think there’s value there, and I think there’s entertainment there as well. So listen, if you already have someone that is doing your marketing, I want you to ask them, what was the last five fiction books and nonfiction books that they read? Because if they’re a good copywriter, they should be reading. So I want to know what they’re reading, and you want to know as well.

And if you are dissatisfied with that answer ’cause it comes back zero, then what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna go to T-O-D-D-L-I-L-E-S.com. You’re gonna fill out a form and you’re gonna say, “Hey, I want to talk to you, Todd. I want to talk to Roy.” And we’re gonna reach out to you, and we’re gonna change your life and your business. And that’s today’s show.

Latest posts by Todd Liles and The Wizard of Ads (see all)