The Boron Letters, Chapter 2

Last week, we looked at the first letter in famous copywriter Gary Halbert’s Boron letter series. 

Quick recap: he’s one of the most successful copywriters in history. He went to prison for mail fraud. While in prison, he wrote 26 letters to his son, teaching him everything he knew.

The first chapter taught us to use simple language. Write in a conversational tone. And most importantly, add a banger call to action.

But that was all last time. Today, we’re looking at chapter two.

Before we get to the summary and the takeaways, as always, take out a pen and paper and write the letter out by hand. 

TL;DR of the letter

We’re back to health advice. Gary doubles down on a few concepts.

First, road work. Running, jogging, or walking for an hour a day. He’s not letting Bond off the hook for that.

Next, he talks about all the benefits of fasting for the kind and the body. Ditto for diet, but really all he talks about here is fruit.

Lots of fruit. Fruit every day. Fruit fruit fruit. And some “bran type” cereal. That's the key to a killer diet.

He closes on talking about this camp cat named Crackers. Crackers terrorizes some cute squirrels. He’s obsessed with how Crackers bullies these squirrels. The cat catches the squirrels, lets them almost escape, and captures them again.

A cruel cycle.

This letter seems innocuous, and even Gary admits there’s probably no point in that last story. But we still learn something.

Takeaways from Gary Halbert’s second Boron letter

We learn a lot about Gary in this letter.

Understand your sales funnel and where your copy fits in.

The first thing we learn is that he understands the sales funnel well.

He has a captive audience - his son - who just learned about road work and staying healthy in the last letter.

He has Bond’s attention, and wants to keep him interested. So he gives him even more details on how to stay healthy. Spending eight paragraphs on diet (six of them on fruit!)

Blind optimism is a strength. Take advantage of it.

The second thing we learn is Gary doesn’t want doubt to stop his son.

When he tells Bond about fasting, he mentions that Bond shouldn’t tell anyone what he’s doing. He knows people will ask questions and sow doubt in Bond, and that self-doubt will only get in his way.

His son mentions this at the bottom of the letter. Gary was someone who just pushed towards his goal, outside noise be damned.

By telling Bond to keep his goals to himself, he’s trying to protect Bond from doubt.

See you next week.