The Boron Letters: Chapter 9

It’s here. Gary Halbert’s Boron letters, chapter 9.

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 8…

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, do it for a little bit. You’ll probably continue after that.

Next, he rehashes advice he’s given Bond. Listen to what people do with their wallets, not what they say they do. Read about mailing lists. Save the good ads you find. Get on mail order lists. Etc etc.

He closes with a beautiful breakdown of the profits he can squeeze out of his next scheme. His overhead is 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. Per month.

But that was all last week. 

This week, we’re tackling chapter 9.

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

So, what do you do when you find the perfect list of potential customers?

According to Gary, it’s simple. Customize the pitch.

Chiropractors, for example. He commissions a report on how chiropractors can make extra money.

Then, the letter looks like this:

He explains how much money this would make him. And even if it doesn’t make a ton of money, the strategy is sound and will eventually produce a winner!

If Bond isn’t convinced, he re-words the letter.

It’s the difference of “How to buy real estate with no money down” vs “How to buy L.A. real estate with no money down.”

Notice the difference? Let’s talk about it.

Takeaways from Gary Halbert’s ninth Boron letter

Customize your message or die

You ever wonder why your Google ads say “Big news for solar power in (your city)?”

You’re much more likely to read material if it’s personal to you.

Joseph Sugarman had a great example. You might not be too interested in a 3,000-word article about leaves. But if you saw a 3,000-word article titled “(your last name) inherits mega-fortune”, you’d read every word.

Gary customizes his messages because it helps his open rate. People want to read things that are relevant to them.

Learn the pain points and interests of your customers, and customize the messaging.

Sometimes a win might be small, but the strategy is big

Gary makes a point to mention that he can reuse the first half of his report (how to make money on the side) for ANY report. The second half (...as a chiropractor) is tailor-made. But the first half is a winning strategy for anyone.

He calls this the “winning formula.”

If something works, use it until it doesn’t.

Bonus: Talk casually to your readers

Pay close attention to these words.

Now for the numbers. I'm going to stop here a moment and check the "SRDS" and see how many bone snappers there are.

That took 4 minutes. There are more than 33,000 chiropractors

Gary took more words to say “let me pause and look this up.”

By saying this, it breaks up the cadence. Even better, you connect with him more. You envision him looking up the numbers.

Talking like this draws (and keeps) people in your copy.

See y’all next time.