If you're both killer & poet, YOU GET RICH.

“Most good copywriters fall into two categories: Poets and Killers.

Poets see an ad as an end. Killers, as a means to an end.

If you are both killer & poet? You get rich.”

Ogilvy once said that about copywriters, but that’s just because he wasn’t around long enough to see the internet blow up.

Nowadays, everyone’s one or the other: Poet or killer.

The poets are running around with their heart placed firmly on their sleeve, hoping that if they do authentic work, it’ll sell itself.

The killers, on the other hand, are the guys who have nothing original nor useful to sell, but can sell it to you, anyway.

Yet neither one of these groups is going to last very long.

Truth is, you might be as authentic as they come, but if you can’t get anyone to pay you for it, you’re a dead fish in the water. The same goes for the killers: You might be great at selling, but if your business is built on empty promises, the world will skin you alive.

It’s the rare combination of poet & killer – he who works hard, AND learns how to sell his hard work – who isn’t just getting rich, but going for broke.

Because he's the only one who can.

When you can’t sell, everything around you becomes a threat: Other people, lower prices, better websites, more clever names.

But when you can?

You're not threatened.

Because you are the threat.

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I run business experiments in remote work, internet publishing, newsletter growth, and using AI to make your projects pay so well your Stripe notifications start sounding like a slot machine at a Reno bowling alley. This is not a newsletter about fish.

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    From the Penguin Random House author seen in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian and The BBC

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