The Boron Letters: Chapter 8

It’s here. Gary Halbert’s Boron letters, chapter 8.

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.

In chapter 7, we learned three guidelines to picking a direct mail list.

“Recency”, “frequency”, and “unit of sale”.

• Recency - the more recently a person bought (by mail) something like what you’re selling, the better. Odds are higher they'll convert.

• Frequency - the more often someone buys a specific item, the more they’ll want something like it.

• Unit of sale - A prospect who paid $100 for diet pills is better than one who paid $10.

Of those three, recency is the most important.

Lastly - if you notice an ad a lot, it’s working. Study it.

But that was all last week. 

This week, we’re tackling chapter 8.

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

Gary’s tired.

So this letter is a little all over the place.

He has a great nugget of wisdom - if you’re tired, but need to do something, just do it for a little bit. You’ll probably continue after that.

Next, he rehashes advice he’s given Bond.

1. Listen to what people do with their wallets, not what they say they do.

2. Read about mailing lists. Save the good ads you find.

3. Get on mail order lists.

He closes with a beautiful breakdown of the profits he can squeeze out of his next scheme.

His overhead is just fulfillment, shipping, and paying his partner. Every thousand letters he mails gets him $485.00 in profit. For a mailing list of 120k, that’s almost $60k profi. Per month.

Good stuff. Let’s talk about takeaways.

Takeaways from Gary Halbert’s eighth Boron letter

If you’re tired or procrastinating, here’s a hack to get started

Gary has some great advice here.

Everyone procrastinates. It’s a tough habit to break. And how I break it is simple.

If I need to code, I’ll open my laptop and sit at my desk. Bare minimum. Then, I tell myself I’ll only work for five minutes.

Sometimes, I only work for five minutes. That’s fine.

Most of the time I keep going.

It works.

Repetition works when writing. Use it often.

Gary takes half this letter to rehash what he’s taught Bond so far.

Sometimes, the same old information can mean a lot more if it’s brought up with a new lesson.

Pay attention to where your customer is in the funnel. Repeating a key point can work wonders.

Oh, and keep it simple. Gary writes simple here - almost stupidly so. That’s good. You don’t want your readers to spend time thinking too hard about your words.

Until next time.