I hadn’t been to a dentist in years.

Now before your mind goes to a deep, dark place of disgust…😨

I want to be clear:

I actually have really good oral hygiene habits overall.

I brush my teeth at least 2x per day…✌️

Floss 3-4 times a day (after every meal, I’m pretty obsessive about it)…

And use Listerine at least 2x per day, etc.

So to me, my mouth didn’t really seem all that bad…

Which is why I kept putting off going to the dentist.🛑

Then, something changed.

One night, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep…

When I noticed that my breath didn’t seem to smell all that great.🙄

It wasn’t like “corpse breath”…

But there was some funk, even though I’d just brushed my teeth and used Listerine.

I kind of shrugged it off that night…🤷

But then the next day and night, I kept noticing the same thing…

My breath seemed kind of bad…😣

And by the second night that this happened…

I found myself in bed with my mind racing, thinking all kinds of crazy thoughts:🥴

“Maybe my breath has been bad for a while and everyone knows it, and they’re just too nice to tell me. Maybe people laugh at me behind my back. Maybe my wife knows it too, and that’s secretly the reason our relationship has been in a rough spot for the past 8 months – she’s grossed out by me! Maybe people at events don’t want to talk to me. Maybe I have mouth cancer! Maybe my teeth are about to fall out. Maybe I’m about to die!”

I’m only slightly exaggerating…

But the very next morning I asked my assistant to find a highly reviewed dentist in my area who could see me as soon as possible.

At first she found a dentist who could see me in about two weeks, and I said “nope, not soon enough, keep looking!”…

So she canceled that appointment and found another dentist with 4.9 stars on Google that could see me within 4 days.

I went in at 7:30am for my appointment…

They took X-rays and did a deep clean of the first two quadrants of my mouth (the right side)…

Then the next morning, I returned and they did the other half of my mouth.

Now the good news (for me) is that the dentist was almost pissed by how good of shape my mouth was in.

He said something to the effect of:

​​”Well you must have pretty good genetics because you haven’t been for this long…and honestly you got lucky, your teeth are good, your gums are pretty good, everything is pretty good honestly.”

Obviously, my good hygiene meant less money for him, haha…

But that didn’t mean my mouth didn’t still need that really good deep clean.

The cleaning took 5+ hours over two days…

And because I just paid out of pocket…

The entire thing cost me about $1,500.💰

Money well spent.

I can’t tell you how happy I am knowing that my mouth is in great shape, my teeth are clean, years of “gross stuff” has been blasted and scraped away by high pressure jets and hooks…

And that my breath doesn't stink. ​​

I feel more confident already…

And I’m also pretty happy knowing that, as long as I keep going back regularly and continue to practice good oral hygiene, my breath should continue to be pretty damn good.

So why am I sharing?

Because this, my friend, is the difference between a bleeding neck problem and a “meh” problem.

Over the past several years, I would, of course, think to myself, “Well I really should go to the dentist”…

But there just wasn’t enough pain to make me do it. My teeth didn’t hurt, my gums weren’t bleeding, my breath seemed fine…

So I just said “meh, I’ll do it later” and put it off.🥱

Then something changed.

Suddenly my breath seemed to get bad…

And whether it really did, or it was psychological…

Within a few days of noticing the change, I was in that dental chair…😷

Where I happily spent 5+ hours and paid $1,500+ dollars to remedy the problem.

So, as a copywriter or a marketer, who would you rather sell to?

The meh guy, or the bleeding neck guy?

The answer is guy #2, every single time…

And that’s why, in your marketing and copy, you always want to find your prospect's most urgent pain point…

And sell to that first.

In my case, the urgent pain point wasn’t “I haven’t been to the dentist” or “if I don’t have regular dental visits I could have plaque or tartar buildup, or be at increased risk of gum disease”…

I knew all of that intellectually, but it didn’t motivate me emotionally, right?

Instead, it was bad breath…

And my fears of how having bad breath could lead to social ostracization and ridicule, wreck my relationship, or even be the symptom of something much worse.

That got my ass out the door…

And it’s the same reason nobody really sells multivitamins via direct response…

But they sure as hell sell plenty of supplements that help with things like “performance” or lowering blood sugar or improving memory, etc.

If you can’t perform in bed and you’re single and lonely, or you’re married and the intimacy has died…that’s a bleeding neck problem…

If your blood sugar levels are consistently high and the doctor is talking about amputation or more injections or another costly drug you can’t afford, or you've got nail fungus that grosses your spouse out…that’s a bleeding neck problem…

If you’re forgetting simple things, and your friends are teasing you, while your kids are starting to treat you like a geriatric and hinting about a nursing home…that’s a bleeding neck problem too.

So you sell to that, as much as you ethically can…

Because that's the kind of pain that'll motivate a person to take action.​

​​
– SPG

P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link