Greedy copywriter gets married

Welp - 

It’s been a while, eh?

And now, here I am, writing my first email to this list in months (yeesh that happened fast) and begging you for money. 

I wish I was kidding. 

(I am kidding, kinda… as you’ll see if’n you keep reading on.) 

Man, it’s been far too long since I typed “if’n.” My clients don’t have my voice and as their email ghostwriter and copywriter, I must write like them. 

There are three parts to this here email: 

First, I’m gonna tell you where I’ve been. Gotten a lot of replies, particularly recently, about subscribers thinking I got drone striked down. I live in Ohio. I think I’m safe. 

Second, I’m gonna tell you my loose plans for this here list. 

And third, I’m gonna go all greedy internet marketer on you and shamelessly plug my Paypal Pool link, which you’re free to send as much or as little moolah as you’d like to help me celebrate my marriage (well, elopement) properly. 

But first I’m gonna get all warm and fuzzy on you:

The truth is that I’ve dealt with a pretty bad case of burnout. Particularly when it came to writing emails for this list. I used to start my day by writing to you. When I first started, I loved being able to speak in my voice, share my knowledge and insights with you, and hear back from you that it made a difference. 

But then a couple things happened: 

Client demands starting piling up (which sounds good on paper, but really just means more work) and at the same time my lead gen strategy was being mutilated by AI, fake and ghey agencies (almost any lead gen “agency” fits the criteria), and by my staring into the abyss. 

E.g. I felt a deep sense of time slipping out of my hands and so the thought of going back to the “good ol’ days” (which is defined here as: the early days of starting and growing my business when I would spend as many as four hours a day on finding companies I liked and thought I could help with their email) and spending even a fraction of that time not on delivering for clients but for going on wild goose chases through the deeper recesses of the internet to hunt down new clients made me want to curse the world. 

Particularly because, as I see it, it was largely due to the repulsive proliferation of the immensely over-hyped so-called AI. 

AI killed cold email, my main lead gen channel. (It also killed the em dash, my favorite punctuation.) 

It turned my ideal clients into “business idiots” - which is to say, owners of companies were the most duped segment of the population outside of maybe tech journalists, venture capitalists, and anyone who joined companies like OpenAI after Sam Altman allegedly killed that man, Suchir Balaji. 

(It’s not lost on your humble narrator that many of my predictions about so-called AI have become reality.) 

And AI also zapped my energy. Not because I was duped by charlatans to “write better prompts bro” -- which, by the way, there are a few instances in which I use AI for client work and it never fails to amaze me how inconsistent, trite, and downright wrong it often is (even when it’s convinced it’s not hallucinating… yeah, I don’t think so-called AI is the cash cow Big Tech thinks it is - let alone a sort of “digital god” or antichrist delivery mechanism as some Epstein associates like Peter Thiel believe it to me -- but instead, because I was angry so many of my potential clients were getting duped by it, I was frustrated that so many scammers used it to ruin cold email for nearly everyone, and I was anxious that maybe this really is the beginning of the end for humanity. 

(Many lessons embedded into that last incredibly long run-on sentence.) 

I am no longer angry, frustrated, or anxious though. 

But as clients demand piled up and my emotions piled on the client demands, I had to make some smart cuts: 

This list was one of them. 

My cold email strategy was another. (I’ve since pivoted to a direct mail approach. It’s a bit more time-consuming than I’d like. But despite the absurd amount of return-to-senders I get back on an almost daily basis, it’s been effective, fun, and has given me far better positioning than cold email ever could.) 

And I doubled down on client work. The economy’s been a bit weird. People aren’t buying things as quickly as they were. There’s a general sense of angst in the market - and you simply can’t sell someone something they’re not interested in buying. 

As for the cherry on top, I was also in the process of eloping and getting married. A busy and stressful season by itself. 

(The elopement wedding is happening today, mayhap even as you’re reading this.) 

So, what are my future plans for this list?

I’m selling your data, sucker! 

Just kidding (and I’m actually kidding… could you imagine being followed around by a soulless AI robot who can’t say anything other than “it’s not X — it’s Y! And honestly? It’s not even Y—it’s Z” ad infinitum until you just off yourself because whatever happens in the next life is better than being force fed AI slop). 

My actual plans are looser. 

I plan to keep writing these emails. But I also expect the frequency to die down. Maybe not. It’s still up in the air. 

And the last thing I promised to share in this email is… 

Yes, I’m officially getting married. There will be a Mrs. John mayhap by the time you’re reading this. 

And so, if’n I’ve benefitted your life in any way, shape, or form… if’nI made you think differently about copywriting, emails, or even so-called AI… if’n I made you chuckle or cry or wonder anxiously about where I’ve been… if’n I’ve inspired you… if’n you’ve ever used anything I typed into my laptop to make yourself some real dough in the real world… if’n I’ve given you new words to say and use or new ways to spell old words… or even if’n you despise me and have been hate reading me for all these years and you would like to “pay it forward” (and likely get some good karma juice if’n nothing else), you’ll find my Paypal Pool link below: 

https://www.paypal.com/pool/9qvdFoZWOL?sr=wccr 

You don’t have to “donate” anything (and I’m not a non-profit nor an accountant, so no idea if’n you could write this off to owe Uncle Sam fewer doll-hairs come tax szn). 

But if you’d like to congratulate me and the Mrs. and wish us a long and prosperous and happy marriage, then, well, you know where to go. 

(It won’t get you anything today… but who knows what tomorrow could bring.) 

And I promise I won’t take as long of a break next time I force you to go months without so much of a peep from me. 

John 

PS - I'll add pictures here eventually. Maybe...