The Gavin Letters - Part 1

I’ve reviewed the work you sent me and wrote this for you. If you are able to print out your work, you would be well suited to tear it in half and wipe your ass with it. Because this is shit. There’s a great movie called Whiplash, if you haven’t seen it, I would highly recommend you give it a watch. In it, a jazz drummer is pushed to his physical and mental limits by a demanding instructor who believes greatness only comes through relentless pressure and sacrifice. It shows us that greatness does not come from sugar coated feedback and in the great words of Ron Burgundy, “Life isn’t a fairytale. It’s not, let's play Candyland and take a three hour dump.” So when I give you feedback like this, it’s not to try and attack you, it’s to attack the work, because you need to detach YOU from the work and learn to associate… This quality of work is a dookie pie. So let’s dive into some reasons why: 1. Hooks First off, you flat out stole my hook from the VSL. If I had a white glove, I’d give you a little slap and challenge you to a duel. This is like pulling up to a function with my woman and claiming her to be yours. Write your own hooks and be original. But the other two hooks are what I would call IGNORABLE. We want to write hooks that are HARD to ignore because the person has to scratch that itch! Let’s look at the hook I wrote the other day and yours side by side so you can see this: “I never WANT to shout at my wife, but the other day, I got so worked up, that at the top of my lungs, I bursted out with, “I pay for everything, and this is what I get?” Vs. “Most high-performing men want to know why the drive that built their success is wrecking their marriage.” Think about the difference here. My hook throws you immediately into a scene where you now want to know what’s going to happen. It presupposes that you resonate with this, because if you’ve never felt that way, you probably won’t watch it. It also builds a sense of morality with the viewer because he’s saying he doesn’t WANT to shout out at his wife but he ends up doing it anyway. There’s drama. There’s emotions. There’s a “yeah me too” element to it. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but it’s a damn good hook. Now let’s look at yours. First of all, do they want to know this? Do men wake up in the morning going, “Man I just gotta figure out why the drive that built my success is wrecking my marriage…” NO! Also what does this even mean? It’s just a bunch of words but it has no meaning. Drive doesn’t wreck their marriage. Low EQ and instability wrecks their marriage. Cheating wrecks their marriage. Vices wreck their marriage. Being a narcissist wrecks their marriage. This is what I mean by IGNORABLE. Nobody wants to know what you have to say because…YOU SAID NOTHING! This is why the viewer immediately scrolls to the next ad because it’s clearly an ad. The best ads do not sound like ads. They sound like the viewers thoughts. Stop trying to say whatever. Start saying what they’re thinking. 2. The Body If I asked you, “what would you like to eat?” It would be pretty weird if you said Taco Bell/Outback Steakhouse. Just pick one. Likewise, don’t use / in your writing. It’s indecisive. This was actually your best line in the entire Ad: “Arguments seem to come out of thin air, and there is no passion left in this air. You're exhausted from trying to solve this, and your solutions seem to never hit the mark.” It gives me a glimmer of hope knowing that you do have chops. They are just baby chops. That was a great visual explanation. However, you follow it up with this Indian Shit Parade: “You are willing to solve the problem at hand, but let me tell you the problem at the foundation/root (the real problem): before you can focus on solving your marriage, you have to solve yourself, as much as you can.” I want you to imagine Rick. 43 years old. About to get divorced. He knows it. His wife went to go stay with her sister for a week. He’s in the house by himself. Football on the TV. Dog sleeping at the foot of the couch. Quiet house except for the game. Glass of whiskey by his side. Rick sees your ad and somehow makes it to you saying “the problem at the foundation/root (the real problem)” (whatever the hell that means, you indecisive coon…) And Rick thinks, “Oh what’s the real problem at the foundation/root (the real problem)?” You then tell him, “before you can focus on solving your marriage, you have to solve yourself, as much as you can.” Rick, in utter frustration, goes to the bedroom, shoves a Glock in his mouth, and blows his brains out. He misunderstood with what you meant by solve yourself. I’m only partially kidding, even though what you said is very vague and makes no sense, the real issue here is nobody wants to hear that. You know what you should say? You were almost there. You almost had it. Kind of. Not really. “Before you can focus on solving THE PROBLEMS IN your marriage, we have to solve the way you view yourself. Because let’s be honest, you have confidence, you’re a hardworking guy, you’re not a loser. Yet, somewhere along the way, you started viewing yourself as the guy who just has a difficult marriage. The guy who has a disrespectful or ungrateful wife. What if I told you brother, that you could shift all of this? That you could have a marriage better than anything you’ve ever had. That you could finally get your wife to respect you the way you want and get her to finally appreciate everything you do for her? You can have it, but it doesn’t happen by changing your wife, you get this by changing your communication with your wife. Because communication is what determines respect. It’s how we train people how to treat us. See the difference? All of that versus… “You are willing to solve the problem at hand, but let me tell you the problem at the foundation/root (the real problem): Before you can focus on solving your marriage, you have to solve yourself, as much as you can. And this is not done in some BS therapy session which steals your soul. (time, money, energy, masculinity) this job is worked on in reality.” Who’s getting the cookie, me or you? Now let’s talk about your transition with, “What we focus on in our program is this core issue, which, when better resolved leads to the resolution between you and your wife.” Rick is now thinking. What program? Who are you? What is this? This is a very poor transition that does not explain anything. You did not introduce Tim. You did not introduce Beyond Driven. You slapped your cock on the table and said, “Suck it” without taking Rick to dinner first. I won’t even address the rest of the ad because no one would make it to there. Here’s what I want you to do today. Set a timer to 1 hour. Take this feedback and rewrite your copy. Do not use mt words, be original and THINK for yourself. Do this before our call. Talk soon :-)