The Boron Letters - Chapter 10
Dear Bond,
Well, here I sit for the second day in a row starting my letter to you without knowing exactly what I am going to write about.
Blade tells me there seems to be some confusion over my gambling deal with (name deleted) in Las Vegas. This has me upset. I am trying to get (name deleted) on the telephone and clear up this matter. Unfortunately, though, it is clouding my mind at the moment.
Yesterday, as you will recall, I just started writing and, lo and behold, something excellent came out. You know Bond, that fact contains a lesson in itself.
And the lesson is that when you get stuck or emotionally jammed up one of the ways to get yourself unclogged and flowing again is just to keep moving. Run. Walk. Jog. Write. Do the dishes. Or whatever. But don't sit around waiting for a flash from Heaven.
It doesn't work that way. Not often anyway. The key is movement!
Let's see now. Hopefully I've got you doing road work, strengthening your muscles, fasting one day a week and eating well plus interfacing (isn't that a dandy buzzword?) with hot mail order publications and the "SRDS" list book.
What's next? I know. Let's start teaching you how to actually create an ad or a good direct mail promotion. Here's how to get started. The first thing I'd like you to do is get a hold of two books. One is "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins and the other is "The Robert Collier Letter Book" by Robert Collier. Ask Blade and Eric for help with getting these books. Read both of these books. Read "The Robert Collier Letter Book" two times and read "Scientific Advertising" three times. The first time you read these books do so at your own pace. Don't take notes. Just read for enjoyment. However, after the first reading, I want you to take notes as you read the books the second and third times.
O.K., the next thing you need to do is get yourself a copy of my book that has "2001 Headlines" and read it. Then get Ben Suarez's book "SuperBiz" and read the headlines in his book. Keep going.
Make yourself a collection (a "swipe file") of good ads and good DM pieces and read them and take notes. (Eric and Blade can help.)
Alright, now, after all this you should be ready to start the process. Let's concentrate on DM. Here's how to create a DM promotion from scratch:
Step 1 - Keep going through the "SRDS" book and looking at lists until you find one that you want to try to work.
Step 2 - Let's pretend you have chosen a list of people who have bought a book on how to make money in real estate. Now what you need to do is get three or four hot books in investing in real estate and read them and take notes.
Step 3 - OK now, you should get as many DM pieces and space ads on real estate investing you can find. Read these and take notes.
Step 4 - By now ideas will be churning around in your mind because you have fed your brain a lot of good stuff to work with. What you do at this point is go back and review your notes from "The Robert Collier Letter Book" and "Scientific Advertising" and read those headlines again.
Now, by now, I can almost guarantee that a central selling idea will have emerged from your cunning little mind.
Now, I don't know what that idea will be but let's say you have figured out how to personalize and customize your real estate investment offer as I discussed yesterday. And now, let's say your idea is to promise your potential customer that you are going to tell him how to buy real estate in his areawith no money down. Then, your letter might start something like this:
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Dear Mr. X,
Did you know that there is now a way to buy L.A. real estate without making any down payment whatsoever? Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
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Of course, that first sentence will be customized for every customer depending where he lives. Note: In this example I am assuming we are using computer letters. So, anyway, the letters would say
"to buy L.A. real estate"
or
"to buy Detroit real estate"
or
"to buy Key West real estate"
Etc., etc. Now, pay attention. Let's examine a way to "double customize" this offer. Let's say we have found a list of people in a specific occupation who like to invest such as cardiologists for example. Now, let's start our letter like this:
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Dear Dr. X,
Did you know that there is now a way for a cardiologist to buy L.A. real estate without making any down payment whatsoever?
Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
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Bullseye! O.K. Now we've got the list picked out, we've got an idea for a product and we've got our central selling idea and we are now ready for:
Step 5 - What you do at this point is create your product and here is how you do it. First you go back to those books on real estate investing and you extract in outline form all the good ideas in these books. Then you pick out the best of the ideas and overlay them with the ideas you will have by now come up with yourself. Next you arrange these ideas in some logical form and you start writing. Please remember, what we are creating here is a report NOTa book. I figure it should be something like 100 typewritten pages.
Now, please remember this: If you do this properly you will have created something of considerable value. After all, what you will have done (hopefully) is taken a few good books on real estate investing and stripped away the garbage and created a tight informative roadmap to real estate riches. Hey, how about that? Didn't I tell you that if you just keep flowing that something of value will emerge? Just look what has just slipped out of my mind! Did you catch it?
The Amazing L.A. Roadmap
To Real Estate Riches!
Not bad, eh? Now, we've got the title for our report!
More tomorrow.
I Love You and Good Luck!
Dad