Gary Halbert · whole document (20)
Boron - Chapter 20
By the way, I want to maybe surprise you a little at this
point by telling you that everything in this letter has a
lot to do with creating better ads and DM pieces! And don't
even try to guess why at this point because I'll explain it
before I am finished.
Meanwhile, back to my story: As I was saying, there was a
lot of things I didn't do and I'd like to talk about why I
didn't.
The first reason I didn't get tough with this guy is I was a
little scared. Not much, because I am in very good shape and
I am a very physical person now. But I was a little scared
and with good reasons and here are some of them. First of
all, this guy might have hurt me. He's pretty physical too
and he has been working out in prison for years. Secondly, I
might have hurt him because, as I said, I'm not exactly a
guy who routinely gets sand kicked in his face. And thirdly,
(and this is the big one!) if he and I had gotten in a fight
we would have both been put in chains and immediately
transferred to a higher security prison PLUS we may easily
have lost our "good time" and, I myself, would perhaps have
had to do six months longer before I got out.
So, I think you'll agree I did the right thing but, I'll
tell you, my ol' ego is having a hard time of it.
And, let's talk briefly about why I didn't explain to him a
more mature way he could have handled the situation. One of
the big reasons is:
I Am In Prison!
And, here doing time with me, are a lot of people who would
not be here if they were capable of handling an emotionally
charged situation with any kind of maturity.
So, what does all this have to do with writing sales letters
and ads? It has, as I promised you, quite a lot and here is
the gist of it: Now that I've told you what I didn't do when
this situation arose, I want to tell you what I did
do. What I did do was stay in the room and I worked on
yesterday's letter to you. And, if you will look at that
letter you will see that my handwriting was somewhat shaky
because of all the adrenaline working in my system.
But I did write the letter to you and then I took a walk and
I went to my "thinking spot" and I plotted out my schedule
for the month of July.
And this morning what I did is I did 8 long miles of
roadwork on the hill. That's 10 laps. In the beginning I
walked two to warm up; in the end I walked two to cool down
and in the middle I jogged 6.