Gary C. Halbert Quotes

“I'm the last guy to ask for advice on how to have a successful copywriting business. I'm not in the copywriting business. I'm in the self-aggrandizement business.”

“It’s a matter of timing. Selling is like seduction. If you ask a woman to go to bed with you, whether or not she says ‘yes’ is largely a matter of when you ask her.”

“Motion beats meditation.”

“Selling is not yelling. Selling is not tricks.”

“The most important thing is a hungry market. Not a brilliant burger.”

“The primary and most important thing in all of Direct Mail Land is to get the envelope delivered and opened.”

“The written word is the strongest source of power in the entire universe.”

“A support system is like a garden and you always need to be on the lookout for weeds to pull.”

“A time-dated communication carries considerable more weight than one which is not.”

“All first attempts are sloppy and lame. Most people quit after first experience with things that don’t go so well, but if you are like my pop and me, then you know that the first attempt is almost destined to fail.”

“All great copywriters write their nugget notes, bullets, and headlines by hand.”

“Always be ready to catch a break. You know, if you play enough poker, sooner or later, after thousands of hands, everybody in the game will more or less have been dealt the same amount of good hands, bad hands and mediocre hands.

What determines the winners? It's how they play the cards that were dealt them. Were they alert and ready to exploit the good ones? Did they perceive that the bad ones were in fact bad in time enough to dump them without huge losses? Were they ready to exploit or abandon their mediocre hands as the different situations dictated?”

“Another simple way to get a reader interested is to tell their story by telling your story with the problem your solution solves.”

“Be careful. You want to know what people actually DO buy, not what they SAY they buy.”

“Constantly be on the lookout for groups of people (markets) who have demonstrated that they are starving (or at least hungry!) for some particular product or service.”

“Describe what it looks like when happy customers receive the benefit of your product.”

“Don’t focus on writing better copy. We focus on creating better deals.”

“Everyone wants to climb the mountain, but the big difference between those at the top and those still on the bottom is simply a matter of showing up tomorrow to give it just one more shot.”

“Fight any urge to sound like a cliché and use phrases which a reader could finish on their own.”

“Find a market first. And then concentrate on a product!”

“First catch his interest. How do we do this? Well, let’s start by feeding him interesting facts. Like how much money there is to be made by investing in Maui real estate. By telling how much sand (cubic tons) is on the beach where we got the sand in that baggie. By telling how this is one of the best beach front investment opportunities in Maui. By telling how many pretty girls there are around. By telling the specific kinds of fish you can catch right off the beach. Etc...”

“Guys in prison take care of themselves. They exercise their bodies, pay attention to their grooming, read, study and much more. You see, you never know when opportunity will knock (and it does, even here) and, if you are smart, you must be ready.”

“HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you should never make a decision when you are any of those things.”

“Here is something to remember: Defensive behavior invites aggressive action.”

“How precious the good times and the good people are. I hope I have learned never again to not take care of my special relationships.”

“I don't exactly know what I'm going to write about today so what I am going to do is just keep putting words down on paper until I start to get some direction.”

“I found a way to show my customers that he was unique and valuable to me.

"Since you are one of the world's leading gynecologists, we feel you are in a unique position to appreciate this picture book of unusual ..."

"Since you have proven yourself to be an astute judge of art, ..."

"A mutual friend of ours, Tom Smith, said I should write you because, he says, you are the best judge of value of a book like this that he knows.”

“I have suggested that you do one hour's worth of road work every morning right after you get up for six days a week.”

“I should tell you that another additional way to achieve this bond of intimacy and immediacy in your letters is to describe where you are and what you are doing as you are writing the letter.”

“I try to structure my deeds so that I get paid often. You see, when there is big money involved it is very hard for the clients to write those checks.”