one of the og direct response copywriting GOATs, joe sugarman, sold roughly $1 billion worth of products across his career in the 70s and 80s.
(that’s nearly $3 billion in today’s money)
blue light glasses, pocket calculators, electronic chess computers, and a bunch of other products were bought by millions of people because of the words that he wrote.
pretty nuts.
and the secret to his success was a simple writing process.
he called it his ‘seven step formula’ for writing copy…
which looks something like this:
first, he’d become an expert in whatever market he was selling to.
second, he’d define exactly who his customer was.
third, he’d write the headline & first sentence.
fourth, he’d write the first draft.
fifth, he’d edit the first draft for grammar & punctuation.
sixth, he’d let that draft sit for a day or so.
seventh, he’d thoroughly improve the first draft and turn it into the final draft…
to finally send it out.
and ya know, from the outside looking in, it seems like a simple process…
until you realize that he was doing most of it completely manually.
my guy was literally writing the first rough draft on a legal pad…
typing it out again on a typewriter for better formatting…
and then physically cutting out sentences from the page and rearranging them with glue.
it was only once he had a draft that he liked (and would’ve made his 5th grade art teacher proud), that he sent it off to be published.
eventually, he got a secretary to typrewrite (is that a word?) everything for him…
but even still he’d use a red ink pen to cross out, add or move words around the draft for her to retype.
(they did this 3-4 times every writing session btw)
it’s lowkey funny how much they had to do back then just to share an idea with the world.
but i think there’s a very important lesson here.
back then, a HUGE value proposition copywriters had was that they were the ones actually writing the copy.
there were no macbooks, no wispr flow, no grammarly - you just had to rawdog it.
and this was on top of coming up with the creative ideas that would actually sell the product!
nowadays, that’s all we have to worry about.
we have robots at our fingertips that cost 20 bucks a month to write copy for us, and all we have to do is say the word.
and this is great and all.
but no matter how good your claude is after that skill prompt you got from commenting ‘i <3 robots’ on someone’s ig reel…
it still needs a general.
someone in control who can give it the VISION and guide it to a decent outcome.
so the value that copywriters & creative strategists bring to the game in 2026 is a lot less about writing copy…
and a lot more about thinking like a copywriter.
tapping into your inner joe sugarman and using the power of your creative mind to orchestrate and oversee the copy that you send to your clients, or use for yourself.
this is the key that unlocks true leverage.
telling claude to write you an email can get you 100 horrific emails in 5 minutes…
which may help to hit your deadline a lot quicker, but will 100% make an unhappy client.
instead, telling claude to write an email with the strategy plan you thought through first containing the subtext that speaks to your reader’s specific pains / desires…
that’s where you hit the copy sweet spot - high quality AND high quantity.
but you can only get to that point by understanding how a copywriter like joe thinks.
not by telling your claude that it’s joe sugarman…
but by actually understanding the game, and learning how to play by the rules.
so naturally the question becomes,
how do you learn to think like a 10 million dollar direct response copywriter?
well, the answer’s easy, but you won’t like it.
brace yourself…
stop. using. ai!!!!
i know.
bet you thought i was never gonna say that.
but it’s true.
despite everyone telling you to ‘use ai or get left behind’…
when it comes to writing copy, you are quite literally getting paid for your ideas.
and in order to come up with compelling, unique ideas, you need to train the part of your brain that creates them.
there’s only so many books you can read, videos you can watch, courses you can buy…
before you realize none of them actually makes you any better, except for writing copy yourself.
so why not get it over with and start now?
it’s not sexy, but this is what you must do to become the dragon master my friend.
write the dang copy.
whether it’s for clients you already have or for a random influencer / brand you saw on instagram.
as long as you’re getting the reps in, you will get better over time.
your brain will start to come up with good ideas more naturally and be able to express them more easily.
i’m telling you this because i’m living that right now.
i was a copywriter before ai took over, so i had no choice but to write everything by hand (or keyboard, i guess).
but looking back on it i’m thankful that i did, because all those months i spent writing helped me truly understand the language.
and even though i still hand write a lot of our clients’ copy now, i have a ton of leverage using ai to help me write 100x more than what i ever could have 2 years ago.
so don’t believe the hype bro, ai cannot save you.
you have to do the work upfront.
but when you do, and you stick with it, you’ll be thanking yourself.
trust me
gabe