Back in early 2015, my mentor Yi came out to San Diego for an extended visit.

He stayed at my house with me…🏠

And we decided to build out an in-house team of copywriters for his company, Lion’s Publishing. 🤝

The thought process was that, while I had been pumping out 10+ sales letters a month…

It was unsustainable long-term…

Plus I was a single point of failure in the business…🤏

So we figured, let’s hire and train a bunch of brand new copywriters…📇

And then I could shift from writing all of the letters…

To overseeing and training a team of writers…

And I’d still maintain the same bonus structure I had before too (which meant not losing my comp structure).

So I put some postings on Craigslist looking for aspiring writers (I didn’t even mention copy in the post)…

Then I did interviews at the local Starbucks down the street.

Ultimately I ended up hiring 5 copywriters…

Then Yi and I rented a beach house in Encinitas for two months…

And that served as our impromptu office.

Then for the next 60 days, it was an immersive copy experience for everyone…

I’d spend a few hours in the morning teaching the new writers…

Taking them through RMBC…

Having them review “swipes” and “controls”…

Whiteboarding the crap out of stuff…

And in general, talking and writing copy non-stop.

When my “copy cubs” were doing their assignments…

I’d spend time actually writing sales letters…

And I remember how hard Yi pushed me…

He’d challenge me to write these crazy sales letters in a day…

And one time, I wrote an hour-and-a-half infomercial script in about 24 hours…

A script which, while cringe-worthy in its claims, was one of my favorite things I ever put out.

Looking back at that time now, I have such happy memories of this whole time…

It was fun, exciting, and stimulating…

And when I really think about it…

Many of my most productive and happy times as a copywriter all have one commonality…

Which is that I wasn’t just writing alone, in a vacuum…

Instead, I was with other marketers in a more collaborative environment.

A few more examples…

In 2017 I spent over a month in Medellin, Colombia…

Staying at the house of a business partner at the time…

And I remember in one single day at his house, I wrote a health offer that has gone on to gross at least $50MM…

Might be pushing $100MM by now because it’s still running at scale…

And while I have to be “vague” about the details since the partner is still running it and he’s pretty secretive…

What I can tell you is that it was SO MUCH FUN to write that letter at his place…

I’d stop and read parts of it out loud to him…

Share ideas…

We’d brainstorm on ideas and hooks…

It was just amazing.

Then I think about how in 2018, when I had my agency…

The business was a disaster…

But there were a few times where I was writing sales letters for clients in an office with 3 other people…

And the same thing happened – we’d be sharing ideas, talking copy, high-fiving…

And I loved it.

Then, just yesterday, I had Brooks Briz out here with me…

We rented the conference room at the local Regus…

And spent the whole day brainstorming, planning, and mapping out this new publishing company.

We didn’t cover everything, but we covered A LOT.

As I write this, Brooks is with me in my home office…

And we’re going to be spending a few more hours planning and mapping things out…

Which I’m already so excited about.

So anyways, why do I share this…

Well, I guess I just find it interesting…

I definitely need my alone time…

Especially for deep work…

But sometimes I forget how beneficial the collaborative time is too.

As such, it makes me want to have more of that in my life…

And so I’m going to be honoring that moving forward…

In as many ways as I can.

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One such way is continuing to be involved in masterminds – because the in-person connections and camaraderie happen there…

But another idea I have is for the next office I open (which will be in San Diego).

For that office, I’m going to create an environment where I have “open office” days…

And where anyone who is in San Diego is welcome to stop by and work.

I think this will be really cool…

If you’re in town, you’ve got a spot to get stuff done…

If you live here – you’ve got a community to a part of…

And we’ll host little mini-masterminds once a month (or more)…

That way, there’s always an opportunity to be brainstorming, sharing, and collaborating.

So yeah, just wanted to let you know…

I have an office space in mind that I already really like (it’s basically next door to the Del Mar Racetrack)…

And I’ve been on the fence about pulling the trigger…

But given how positive and productive my day was yesterday…

I’m gonna go ahead and do it…

That way, I can get the ball rolling…

And create a collaborative environment where all of us can thrive.

I’ll let you know once the office is all set up…

But make a note now…

Because if you’re on my list, you’re invited 🙂

 

– 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.