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.”

“If a person, secretly in his heart, wants to be an architect, he shouldn’t go into selling real estate, for example, just because he has heard that that is where the money is… The money is where the enthusiasm is. Please remember this!”

“If you can get a person who is not going to order to agree, in his mind, to write and tell you he is not going to, then you will get more orders. Can you guess why? Aha, you didn't get this one, did you, smart Alec? No matter. I'll tell you why. You see, what happens sometimes is that a person who is getting a pen or pencil and a piece of paper in order to write you and tell you 'No' will sometimes start thinking like this: Well, you jerk. I'd kind of like to get in on this deal anyway and now that I've got the pen and paper I may as well go ahead and order.”

“If your prospect gets an instant 'lift' from just looking at your ad, then he will start reading it and looking for reasons to convince himself that the promise of your ad is true!”

“It has long been my belief that a lot of money can be made by making offers to people who are at an emotional turning point in their lives. For example, when they have just had a baby, just gotten married, just lost a loved one, just gotten a raise, just filed bankruptcy, just purchased a new car, and so on.”

“It is almost as if we have all been trained to accept capitalism, but only as part of the workforce.”

“It’s nearly impossible to go through any learning curve and not wish you had known something right from the start or discovered a slightly better way of doing something. These original ideas become your unique solution or hook!”

“Just the second attempt at anything hard will be much easier. Not a little bit but by a lot. It is true of almost everything, not just sports.”

“Know this: the editorial content gets 5 times as much readership as the advertising content.”

“Low culture makes big money. There is the language. There are the words that they use.”

“Money, in my opinion, especially big money, is most often a by-product of enthusiasm.”

“Most of the world's work is done by people who didn't feel much like getting out of bed.”

“Never, ever encourage people who drag you down to hang around.”

“Never, ever encourage people who drag you down to hang around.”

“Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason.”

“Products are a dime a dozen. They are important, but much less crucial to success than finding a hot market.”

“Read Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions.”

“Rely on your own strength instead of somebody else's compassion!”

“Remember this. The very best writing goes unnoticed…”

“Self-reliance is the real motive of great business men and not money.”

“Sell people what they want to buy! So obvious, so overlooked, and so important.”

“Seriously, Bond, you should read my ads and DM pieces and pay particular attention to how I close the sales. Sometimes I devote as much as 25% or more of the entire ad to closing.”

“Sometimes I devote as much as 25% or more of the entire ad to closing.”

“Sometimes there is no use wasting time and energy fighting established beliefs by arguing, and it is better to just silently go about proving or accomplishing your goal.”

“Surround yourself with people who have similar goals or who have already become great successes.”

“Tell him to do all this right now! Today! Tell him what he will get if he hurries and tell him what he will lose if he delays.”

“The best list of all is your own customer list.”

“The key is movement!”

“The key is to switch to talking about them as soon as things get better in the story.”

“The lesson is that when you get stuck or emotionally jammed up one of the ways to get yourself unclogged and flowing again is just to keep moving. Run. Walk. Jog. Write. Do the dishes. Or whatever. But don't sit around waiting for a flash from Heaven.”

“The market is saturated with information products merely rephrasing what most of the industry leaders say but a little originality goes a long way in promoting your info products, and it is very easy to come by.”

“The money is where the enthusiasm is.”

“The more honest you are with your true self and others, the faster you will see what really motivates people.”

“The three guidelines are recency, frequency and unit of sale.”

“The way to deduce what people want to buy is to simply observe what they DO buy!”

“There is no justice. There is only power.”

“There's a big difference between people who make it in any field (including crime) and those who do not. That difference is awareness.”

“Use simple common everyday words. Use 'get' instead of 'procure'. Write short sentences and short paragraphs. Use 'transition' words and phrases to make your writing flow smoothly. Do you notice how I use transition words and phrases such as the following? Well, as a matter of fact, I first blah... Now, naturally, we don’t want to blah, blah...”

“What does AIDA stand for? It stands for ATTENTION, INTEREST, DESIRE, ACTION. So, to make it clearer your letter should:
1. First, get his attention
2. Second, get him interested
3. Third, make him desire what you are selling
4. Compel him to take whatever action is needed to get whatever it is you are selling.”

“What else would they be likely to buy? How about more of the same? That's usually a good bet.”

“What happens when you read your copy out loud is that you will verbally stumble over all the places that are not smooth…”

“What you must learn is what people want to buy.”

“What you really want is for the reader to order from your ad. Listen up dummy. If you are writing for applause… you will go home with empty pockets.”

“When he looks at your page of copy he should be drawn to your copy like a convict is to a Penthouse Magazine.”

“When you tell the day of the week plus the exact time you are writing the letter, it makes it seem a more important communication too, doesn’t it?”

“You can do a better selling job when at first it does not appear you are attempting to do a sales job.”

“You can't always control what happens to you in life, but you do have a lot of control over your responses.”

“You don't have to get it right. You just have to get it moving.”

“You either hook a reader or lose him when he very first looks at your ad or DM piece. Not when he reads it, but when he first looks at it.”

“You know, people don’t always put their money where their mouths are; but they do nearly always put their money where their true desires are.”

“You must always find a market first and then concentrate on a product!”

“You must become a student of markets. Not products. Not techniques. Not copywriting.”

“You need reason for the deal, if there is one. You see, if you don’t have an explanation, your 'deal' won’t be believable, and you may not get the sale.”

“You see, when things are tough I have discovered that a very very simple (but effective) thing to do is just keep moving in some sort of positive direction.”

“You will also find your second choice headlines make good bullet. There are no hard and fast rules; not even the rules of English apply.”