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Bob Bly, Clayton Makepeace, Wendy Makepeace

Bob Bly: Welcome everyone to the Total Package Conference number three
in our series. The title of today’s conference is Write Better Copy
Faster. Produce up to twice as many products per year and get
bigger winners more often. So this is everything you want. You
want to get more packages out. You want more winners so
everybody wants you as a copywriter and you are more productive
so you are actually making more money on the advance on the
front end in addition to all those packages becoming control so you
are making money on the backend.

With me are Clayton Makepeace. Hi Clayton.

Clayton Makepeace: Hey. How you doing?

Bob Bly: Good. And Wendy.

Wendy Makepeace: That’s me, the red head. I’m here.

Bob Bly: So just before we start, a little bit of feedback. We are back up
with our email system so you can begin sending email questions
which we will get assuming there is no more server problems, but
we think we’re back up and running so you can email your
questions as always to feedback@[Link].

And with that, let’s dive into the beginning of Write Better Copy
Faster and produce up to twice as many projects per year. The first
bullet we found from experience, our best way to do this is go
down what we promised you in the promotion. If you look at the
promotion to which brought you to this call. Our first bullet was
five secrets for finishing each project in half the time it takes you
now. So obviously a copywriter, royalties aside, a copywriter has
the same problem. If you are a copywriter, you work. Let’s say
you don’t have employees or you don’t farm out to other
copywriters, but you work for yourself. You are a freelance writer.
We have the same problem that dentists have. Dentists have this
expression, Clayton. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this one.
“If you’re not drilling and filling, you’re not billing.”

Clayton Makepeace: Uh huh.

Bob Bly: Which means as highly paid as they are, they are limited by their
own labor. If they’re not in the dental office filling cavities, they
don’t make money. We on the front end at least, have the same
thing. Obviously we have income beyond that with royalties and
mailing fees, but on the front end if you’re getting paid a flat fee of

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$5,000.00 or $10,000.00 or if you write a package that doesn’t pull

a royalty in, you just get your upfront money. We have the same
thing. If you were getting $1,000.00 a project and you can do one
a week, you make $1,000.00 a week. But, if you can do two a
week, you can do it in half the time it takes you now, you can
$2,000.00 a week and you certainly can double your income from
$50,000.00 to $100,000.00 a year.

I want to know how it takes you. I have my own methods but I

want to know Clayton, how can people listening to this call do
projects twice as faster? Get them done in half the time? What are
your methods?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, again, I just want to – I want us to step back from what we’re
doing here for a second and think about copy writing as what it
really is which is a business. It’s fun. It’s easy. It gives you
freedom, but first and foremost, it’s a business. You are doing it
for money. How do you measure your income? If someone asks
you how much money you make, you say, “Well, I make
$100,000.00 a year.” There are two components to that, the
amount you make and how long you take to make it.

The more projects that you do in a year and can bill for, the more
money you’ll make. So it’s very important to understand that
when projects are moved into next year, that money is lost forever
to this year. This year’s income is reduced by exactly that amount
so the number of packages that you can create in a year is
absolutely crucial in order to maximize your income.

A lot of people really don’t think about that and they think that
“Alright, so I make the money on January 15 instead of one
December 15.” But what you’ve just done is reduce your income
by that amount. That’s really important for clients to know too. A
lot of what I do with – in marketing consultants with my clients is
speeding the process so that we get more mailings per year.

With copywriters everything is bigger winners more often. With

clients it’s bigger winners more frequently during the year so that
you get – and bigger mailings more often. And so that’s an
absolute key to this.

In our last call we talked about – actually we got a little ahead of

ourselves. We talked a little bit about some of the things that a
copywriter can do to finish the projects quickly. We talked about
outsourcing research or getting the client to provide the research
for you. We talked about having – compartmentalizing each

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project and maybe have a typing service do the long typing work.
Like when you do work for boardroom and there are a lot of proof
elements that you are copying directly out of a book or some other
product. A typing service or – I of course have staff and I have a
girl who is just absolutely a wise on the keyboard. She types very
quickly and saves me days on each boardroom project by just
typing the highlighted copy that I have selected for my proof
element.

Another thing to look for is to ask your client when you are asking
for background research and so forth, to ask for digital documents.
I actually have a major, major client that has never converted their
back newsletter issues into PDFs. PDFs are great because in the
little task bar at the top on the page, there is something that says
select. If you push that button, you can scroll through a PDF and
copy any copy out of the PDF and paste it into your word
document that you want to. That can save you enormous amounts
of time.

Later on we’re going to be talking about outlines – starter outlines

for packages and how they can save you time. Once you have one
of these outlines that you are comfortable with and you have it laid
out in a word document. Then it’s very easy to go through and
very quick to go through if you are doing work for publishers
particularly, to go through back issues or whatever and copy
directly out of a PDF or another word document into your outline.
That can save you hours on every job.

Bob Bly: Let me issue a warning to the listeners. If you do this, even if it’s
the publisher’s own material, you have to acknowledge the source.
I put in a legend at the top of my copywriter – at the beginning of
my copywriter that says sources. Here is where I basically took all
the research. I’ll have symbols so it will be FA = Federal Aviation
Report and when the client has a report called the Federal Aviation
Report and I list half of page two and put it in page promotion, I
put in squiggly brackets the key code FA so they know where I
took it. Even if it’s their material, they’re going to ask you.

I’ve actually been asked when I didn’t go this, I’ve had clients ask
me, “Where did you get this?” And I’ll say, “It was in the bunch
of stuff you sent me.” And they’ll say, “We need to know where.”

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. I just had that with Agora and actually what I tend to do is I
will – when I copy out of something, I’ll paste it into my outline,
but then I’ll also paste it into a research document that I’m
creating. I tend to go through newsletters for example in order so

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I’ll say on my research document; I’ll say January 2003 and that’s
the issue date. Then I’ll copy whatever I want to use out of that,
paste it in the research document and paste it into my outline.
When I’m finished, if anybody wants to come back to me and say,
“Yeah, well where did you get this number?” This actually
happened with a major client a week ago. It was Agora. They
were all worried because there were dozens of references that they
didn’t know where I got them from. Every single one of them was
from their own newsletters and so all I had to do was find a key
word in my research document and I was able to tell them what
issue and even what page the information was from.

So the being able to paste into an outline will beach the blank page
blues for you and if you’re not feeling creative and have no idea
which direction you are going to take with the overall – with the
organization, a copy of the outline will save you time. Also by just
pasting the stuff in, it does two things. One it gives you content
and immediately you can edit. Secondly you will be speaking in
the editor’s own voice so it’ll pick up the richness of his tone
writing style and take on more of his tone.

Bob Bly: That’s terrific.

Clayton Makepeace: And then we talked about the typing and we also – the final one
really was office chores. I tell you what. Wendy just went to work
for me fulltime for the first time in our 12 years together. She has
come to work fulltime and she’s taken over the scheduling, book
keeping, the invoicing, phone chores, and everything that doesn’t
have to do with actually writing copies for me. Immediately this is
now a 50 hour a week job for Wendy and I have to wonder how in
the world I ever did it all. The thing is when you’re not writing
copy, you’re not making money and when you’re not making
money, you’re spending it because you have ongoing – even if
you’re not taking your wallet out, you have ongoing overhead,
ongoing expenses.

You are always in one of two modes. You are either making it or
you’re spending it. When you’re answer the phone or doing
scheduling or calling clients that you are going to be working for in
a couple of months and juggling schedules or keeping the books or
paying the taxes or doing the invoicing or any of those other
extraneous jobs, anything that isn’t actual copywriting, you are
spending money. Many of us have spouses or significant others
that can help with those tasks who would be happy to do it. As
you more along and you start establishing a decent income from

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copywriting, you need to be looking at opportunity costs all the

time.

Sure, a book keeper to handle the bookkeeping and invoicing may

cost you a few hundred dollars a month if you hire one – not hire
one, but engage a professional service. It may cost you a few
hundred dollars a month, but if you’re a copywriter and you have a
capacity to earn a half a million dollars a year like Carlene does or
many others of us do, then you have to figure out that every hour
that you are spending doing that, you are losing a substantial
amount of money.

I just – let me digress for a second. One of the key things that I did
early on was I sat down and I figured out how much I wanted to
make per year and then how much that was per hour. That
immediately gave me a measuring stick that I could use to decide
which tasks were important enough for me to do myself and which
ones were cheaper to pay someone else to do. So you figure 40
hours a week times 52 weeks and you divide the amount of money
that you want to make per week – per hour by that. Or the amount
of money you want to make in a year, you divide it. It tells you,
“Oh, well, I’m worth $1,000.00 an hour.” That’s my goal.

So if you can find somebody to do one of these tasks for you for
$20.00, it’s a no brainer.

Bob Bly: And I’m going to stop on this for a minute. I tell everyone and I’m
giving a talk to a local New Jersey group next week called MJ
Creators where they are writers and graphic designers. It’s a talk
on how they can double or triple their income. The first thing I tell
them is they have to establish a dollar value per hour for their time.
If you meet people, almost no one that you meet actually does this
and therefore if you don’t have a dollar value for your time, the
value of that time in your mind is zero. You’ll always do other
things.

I’ll give you an example. I was in the grocery store the other day
on the way home picking something up and I was picking up some
butter. This older gentlemen next to me says, “You should put that
back.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “Tomorrow it will be a
dollar cheaper.” And I smiled at him and I picked the butter up
and put it in my cart and he looked at me like I was nuts. He
doesn’t get the value of time. He thinks I’m losing a dollar.
People do that all the time.

Clayton Makepeace: They sure do.

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Bob Bly: So if we look at how you can be more productive, the first tip you
gave us is outsource the research. You do this, I do this. When I
start a project, I make a list of the research questions and if they
client hasn’t provided it, I give it to my freelance Internet
researcher.

Step number two, you say have someone else do the _____ and
other copy.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. I like to – I kind of skipped over that one. I’m just tired of a
guy who does editorial work. He has no sales background at all
and yet he’s perfectly equipped to go through task mail packages a
client has done and put together – and just copy out the guaranteers
response device or institutional copy, biographies, the company
history, those kinds of things. For me I was able – I have a
fulltime guy who is helping me with editorial. His name is Steven
Banks by the way. You all are going to be meeting in the total
package in the weeks ahead. He’s really excellent. He’s also
getting quite an education. But even if it’s a typing service, do
those things. I’m sorry, go ahead Bob.

Bob Bly: So you have someone else do the stuff that is a waste of your time
to do? That someone else who makes much less money then you
make or somewhat less money than you make can do just as well
and just as easily.

Clayton Makepeace: Exactly.

Bob Bly: Step three you talked about asking for digital documents. It used
to be where people – a client would send you a big Fed Ex and you
said, “Can you email me the PDFs? Can you email me the
premiums as a word document? Can you email me the issues or
give me website access to the issues?” And a lot of the times you
can cut and paste not only text, but images. If you want to use a
graph for example.

Clayton Makepeace: Absolutely.

Bob Bly: Step four you said when typing is needed, have someone else do it.
I talked about last time, we like optical scanning. You do have to
proof it carefully, but it says a lot of time. My assistant, my
secretary has an optical scanner _____ with the OCR software and
we scan stuff where we don’t have an electronic file.

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Number five you said you hired Wendy and other people to run the
office. You mentioned things like bookkeeping, phoning,
scheduling – making your schedule and so forth. I’ve also done
that for years. The way I express that to people – I said, “I have
not been to the post office in 17 years.” Why should you go to the
post office, to the copy shop when you can hire a high school kid
to do that or a college kid to do that for $10.00 an hour?

Clayton Makepeace: You know, I think as a copywriter, goofing off is actually a better
use of your time than mowing your lawn, unless you enjoy
mowing the lawn and you find it a relaxing exercise and you
actually do some thinking while you are doing it.

Bob Bly: Right.

Clayton Makepeace: I really find that doing the chores around the house and those other
things, they take my time and that I don’t enjoy, those kinds of
chores are not really constructive, but time off can be very
constructive. I did an article in the Total Package not too long ago.
The Human Brain and Owner’s Manual. In that we talked about
how your brain works and how when you’re conscious mind is not
fully engaged, it allows – with a particular subject like for example
you are writing a package. Anytime that when you’re awake or
asleep, you’re away from that work; your mind is still chewing on
it. You may not be thinking about it, but you are still chewing on
it. Riding my Harley, going down to the shooting range, just
doing things where I’m goofing off and freeing my mind for an
hour or two tends to really get my juices flowing again and I get a
completely different look at it when I get back. So if there are
chores that you enjoy doing and that you find kind of mindless and
you don’t mind doing the chores, then fine. But, if you’re really
trying to maximize your time, I think it’s important to
compartmentalize what you do for a living and assign tasks to
people who can do things cheaper or better in many cases than you
can.

Bob Bly: So it’s okay if you want to stuff envelopes, then stuff them, but
make that a deliberate choice that you’re doing because you want
to and you find that therapeutic. Don’t do it because you have to
and do that instead of doing something where you could get paid
for it?

Clayton Makepeace: Right.

Bob Bly: Okay. So, one way to make down time productive is to do – is to
do if you’re going to do any kind of non-creative tasks, do it sort of

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a way to let your mind percolate the ideas you are working on. For
me it happens to be – I have a gardener and a lawn service, but
racking leaves in the fall serves that purpose for me. For you it’s
shooting and riding a motorcycle. What else do you do to make
down time productive?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, it’s important – for me this works great. When I learned –
when I heard that this whole theory about aptitudes, it really helped
me a lot because understanding that you have both the accounting
aptitude and the creative aptitude and when you’re feeling like,
“Oh my God if I have to proofread another word, I’m just gonna
die.” What’s happening there is that your accounting aptitude,
your detail oriented aptitude, your left-brain is exhausted. It’s had
all it can take. The brains like any muscle in the body. It needs
exercise, but at some point, it hits the wall. That’s what happens
with both of these aptitudes.

The same thing happens with creative. You’re sitting there. You
are working on headlines. You’re doing all kinds of creative tasks
associated with copy. You hit the wall. All of a sudden you feel
like your brain is mush. You’d be amazed at those times if you
turn to an accounting oriented task or a detail oriented left brain
task, just even for a few minutes, that you can come back then to
the creative task later on and you’ll be rejuvenated. You’ll have
more energy. Doing that throughout the day allows me to put in,
when I want to, 17 hour days, 18 hour days, go to bed, get six
hours of sleep, get up and do it all over again. Especially in
starting the total package and the holding company for that is the
profit center. You don’t hear much about that, but that’s the
company that owns the total package. In starting this company
over the last year, it was required that I do twice the work that I
normally would do. I have my normal clients and then I’m also
building this up to help business owners, marketing execs, and
copywriters.

It’s required me to do – work two days everyday and having that

approach, being able to shift back and forth between the right and
left brain tasks allows me to put in those kinds of hours, even at the
right old age of 53 without losing steam during the day.

I talk to copywriters all the time, Arthur Johnson who’s one of the
very top writers in the country right now is interviewed in our next
issue and you’ve of course have seen the other interviews we’ve
done. There’s a recurring theme that most of these guys say they
can only write for five hours a day. I can’t write for more than five
hours a day. If I sat down and I just said, well, that’s what I’m

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going to do for the next – for as long as I can, I’d play out probably
around five hours. But, if you do three or four hours of creative
writing and three or four hours of research or sorting tasks or
outlining tasks or other things that are more – less creative, more
left brained, then you can extend the amount of time you can stay
at work and therefore get more done.

Another way to do it we talked about in the total package as well

and I would strongly suggest that anybody who hasn’t read Psycho
Cybernetics, go to [Link] and get it. It’s a wonderful book.
It’s been around forever. I _____ all the time, but Psycho
Cybernetics is basically the study of how the brain works. It was
written by a guy who happens to be a plastic surgeon who found
out that when he went into – as part of his charity work went into
prisons and performed cosmetic surgery on prisoners that were
deformed from birth in so way. They had hair lifts or whatever,
clef pallets. He gave them a better look. The _____ rate among
those inmates who are now comfortable with the face that they
show to the world was a tiny fraction of what it was for the rest of
the prison population. That observation made this guy a passionate
observer of the functioning of the brain and how it works.

In that book he talks about how your conscious mind is basically

the processing center and the subconscious mind is the storage
center. Every experience you have comes in through the conscious
mind and it consciously experienced, but it’s also recorded in the
subconscious. At night when you are asleep, every stimulus, every
thought, every thing that happened to you during the day,
everything is sorted by the subconscious mind and connections are
made between that event or that stimulus and something else that
has happened in your life. That’s what dreams are. Dreams are
where the subconscious is busy doing that work and making
connections between the things that happened that day, the feelings
you had, everything, the feelings that happened in the past, and
sometimes that work is observed by the conscious mind in your
sleep. Just enough of it gets through that it creates a dream and
some of them can be quite vivid and a lot of them make no sense at
all because your subconscious is just trying all of these
connections.

Anyways, so, the very active sleeping – I say all the time when you
are a copywriter, you’re a copywriter 24 hours a day. Well, you
are. If you are mowing the lawn, you’re going to be chewing on it.
If you’re taking a shower in the morning, either consciously or
subconsciously, you’ll be chewing on it. When you’re asleep at
night, your subconscious is making those connections for you.

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The famous story of Tom Edison who would be working on a

problem he couldn’t solve so he’d take a nap in his office. When
he woke up, the answer would be there for him. So, down time,
sleeping is definitely downtime. If you are talking about the eight
hours you get at night, but also napping. If it doesn’t interrupt with
getting your good solid eight hours a night is also another way to
accelerate the writing process. When you come back to the actual
work, you’re going to be – you’re going to see it with new eyes
because you’ll have all those new connections that have been
created for you by your subconscious.

Another way to do it is I make a point that when I’m goofing off,

maybe I’m antique shopping with Wendy or maybe we’re out on
our motorcycles and sitting at a biker bar or something and talking
to people. Wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, I constantly
make a point. It takes practice at first, but if you just try to do it. It
becomes habit fairly quickly. Every hour or so or several times of
the day, just to get back into touch with your creative muse. Just
kind of – yeah, you are out. You are not working, but just think
about the project. Think about an unsolved problem. Think about
a headline challenge. Think about what is it about that project
that’s bothering you? You’ll have a feeling when you are writing
that – I call it having a stone in my shoes. There’s just something
not right. The copy is great. The product is great. The benefits
are there, but there’s just something not right. If you sit there and
focus on it and try to figure out what’s right, nine times out ten,
you just get frustrated, but once you get away from the work and
you allow your mind not to obsess on that for a while and then just
come back to the work mentally and think about it from time to
time. You’ll be surprised how much will come to you that way.
That’s why I think for me, I’ve had some of my best ideas in the
shower. I’m not thinking about work yet, I’m just barely awake,
but I’ve had time away from the work and I’m looking forward to
the day ahead and I think – all of a sudden I think, “Oh yeah. I’ve
got to solve that problem. What is wrong with that? And bang,
there’s the answer.”

Bob Bly: Do you rush upstairs to the computer to write it down? How do
you make sure you don’t forget that?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, I tend not to forget those kinds of things, but I have no
advice for what to do in the shower to remember something. Make
a mental note when you get out to make a note.

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Bob Bly: My wife criticizes me that one thing – the habit I have – because I
agree with you, you are a copy writer 24 hours a day, but she
doesn’t get this. She criticizes that I always walk around – I don’t
know if you noticed it when you sit with me, I have a little CVS
notepad and pen always in my front shirt pocket. In fact, I don’t
wear t-shirts because I always want to wear a shirt where I can
have a pocket for a pad. I’m never without a pad.

Clayton Makepeace: I think that’s smart. Other people buy these little micro voice
recorders.

Bob Bly: Yeah, the micro digital voice recorders.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah, they are smaller than a fountain pen and you can – heck –
my BMW has a memo function where you just push a button and
you can dictate while you are driving. That was nice.

Then the other things was – and it really ties back into the Tom
Edison things. Keep a tablet by your bedside too. Carry one
around with you like Bob does if that helps you or some kind of a
recorder. Find a way to keep notes, but some of the best
impressions you will get are in those first waking hours – minutes
in the morning. If you are Wendy, it’s the few waking hours in the
morning. She is a little slower in the mornings. I’m better in the
mornings. She’s better at night.

That time is really important because that’s where you start getting
the feedback from all the work your subconscious did at night.

Bob Bly: It makes sense. Any other things we can think of for – these are
good suggestions for getting the creativity flowing and using the
down time or have we covered that?

Clayton Makepeace: I think that’s it. Use both aptitudes. When one gets out used, use
the other. Use the sleep – the Edison sleep trick. Stay in touch
with your muse even when you are taking time off. _____ your
mind back at your project. And keep a way to keep a record of
impressions or thoughts that come to you when you’re not engaged
with work.

Bob Bly: Notepad in the pocket or digital recorder.

Clayton Makepeace: Yep. Absolutely.

Bob Bly: Now, the next item we promised is we talk about the six types of
writer’s block and how to overcome each. I had one fairly recently

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and you’ve called this in writing intimidation where in my case it

was a package for a product that maybe I haven’t written about or
financial, but it wasn’t stocks which I’ve done a lot of. It was
another type of investment that I hadn’t done and I just kind of put
it off because I was intimidated. It was just – it just seemed too
difficult. What are the six types of writer’s block that you see the
writers you work with encounter and can we get passed them?

Clayton Makepeace: Oh, absolutely you can get passed them. I think the first key
though is to recognize what is behind the writer’s block. The first
one you just mentioned for example is intimidation. There are a
lot of different kinds of intimidation. I’m working with young
writers. I’m working with Andrew over in the Netherlands. I’m
working with Daniel up in Canada, several others. One of the
down sides of this whole doing the total package for me is that it
kind of creates an aura. People see you on the net. They see your
picture. They read your stuff and then when they start writing for
you or working with you, they feel pretty intimidated. It’s like in
the old days, the copy ____ I had would just say, “Oh, yeah,
Clayton’s a writer. He’s got a lot of winner. I’ve heard of him.
I’d love to have him enter me.” Now, though, there’s this kind of
– I’m sorry anybody opposed to R-rated profanity, stop your ears
right now, but it’s bullshit. Its just bullshit. All of this celebrity
stuff is just -.

Bob Bly: But, is a real emotion. Can I tell you something?

Clayton Makepeace: It’s a real emotion, but the sooner you can cut through it and get
rid of it and realize it’s not about me, it’s not about you, it’s about
the work, then the sooner you can get rid of that kind of
intimidation and be successful. If you’re thinking about pleasing
the senior copywriter who is mentoring you or if you are thinking
about anything other than the product and the customer, then it’s
zapping your energies and it’s counter productive. So that kind of
intimidation is a real problem. You were going to say something
Bob?

Bob Bly: Yeah. Well, give me an example of anytime you or a writer you
work with were intimidated when starting a direct mail project and
how you handled it, although I can’t image you ever being
intimidated.

Clayton Makepeace: Okay. Well, Andrew – I’m not going to actually read the email I
sent you, but just two weeks ago a young writer that shows great
promise and who I knew could do the work or wouldn’t have
gotten the assignment in the first place began working for me. I

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sent an email and said, “You are hired.” We worked out a

financial arrangement and a deadline. He then spent the next three
days telling everyone he knew that he was walking with Clayton
Makepeace. He then went through the emotional swings from
excitement to Oh My God. What’s going to happen when Clayton
sees my first draft? Right now he’s probably smiling and nodding
his head. He went through this whole emotional roller coaster.
“Oh this is great. I’m going to be a millionaire to oh my God,
maybe not because Clayton’s not paying me a million dollars on
my first project.” It’s a little disappointed that he’s gonna have to
work his way up. Probably a lot trepidational over showing his
first draft to me and having me eviscerate it; worried about me
kind of stomping his dream for him by criticizing his copy.

So he was dealing with all this emotional baggage instead of just

saying, “Look, what is the product? What does it do for the
customer? Who is the customer? How does he feel about those
benefits? Let me focus on that.” So all of that other stuff was just
distracting him so I sent him an email after I saw his first rough. I
just said, “Andrew, get over yourself. This isn’t about you. It’s
not about me. I promise I’ll be gentle with my crits. You don’t
have to worry about it. I don’t expect the final copy on the first
rough draft. Just relax. Take a deep breath and do the work.”

So when you find yourself lost sometimes – whenever you find

yourself lost, ask why am I blocked. If the answer is intimidation,
then say, “Oh. I’m intimidated. Okay. Cool.” That’s an invalid
emotion. You may be feeling it, but it’s not logical and it’s
counter productive because the outcome if you produce kick butt
copies, the outcome is going to be everything that you’re dreaming
about now in terms of income, freedom, all of the other things, the
praise from your clients, all of those. So recognize what it is and
then deal with it whether or not it’s valid. It’s never valid to be
intimidated. I don’t care who you are talking to. They put their
pants on one leg at a time. It’s really just about the work.

Another kind of intimidation happened to me years ago with Jay

Abraham started his newsletter for Phillips and Jay asked for me to
write his launch package for him. I said I would and Jay and I had
a long history together. We had known each other for years. We
had never worked together before. So I said, “Sure, I’ll write the
promotion for you.” The next thing I know, a UPS truck pulls up
and unloaded – I think it was 32 beckon boxes full of everything
this guy had ever written in his entire career.

Bob Bly: And if you know Jay, this is a very believable story.

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Clayton Makepeace: I’ve talked to several other writers who worked with him since that
say that he did the same thing to them. Clients tend not to really
enforce deadlines on me a lot. They would rather have the quality
then the split second deadline thing. So I always knew every
morning when I got up, I knew that the client is not going to know
if I just don’t start on this today. I was looking at a garage full of
stuff, just sorting through it and trying to figure out what was
pertinent and what wasn’t was a major challenge. One I wasn’t
looking forward to. So day after day I found an excuse to put it off
one more day. I have one of my copy ____ who is quite
successful, has the same problem. When a new project arrives,
whether it’s a six or 12-inch stack of research in the start kit, or a
box of stuff, he does the same thing. He says, “Oh. I just can’t
deal with this today. It’s too big of a project. It’s the journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step thing.” He’s looking at
the journey of a thousand miles and thinking, “Oh my God.
There’s just too much work to be done here.”

He should be looking at it as all I have to do is cut the tape on the

box. And then all I have to do – okay, I’ve done that. Now all I
have to do is take that first piece of paper out and look at it. Now I
can do that. And if I get that done by noon today, I’ll be a happy
guy. Now we’re getting kind of into the mental tricks that I use on
myself. I do that all the time. We’ll talk about that more in a
minute. I don’t have to write a package today. All I have to do is
open the box and sort through the paper.

Bob Bly: And maybe put them into files or something like that?

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. And maybe do a little scanning and then tonight when I go
to bed, my subconscious will sort things out a little bit. I’ll be a
little more on top of it tomorrow. Then tomorrow what I’m going
to do is I’m going to start going through and highlighting things
that I think I can use. This is a longer copy; especially this is a
weeklong process of actually producing something you want to
show the clients. Understand that if you’re feeling blocked and
you just can’t get into it, it could be that kind of intimidation, just
being intimidated by the amount of work that lays ahead.

Bob Bly: And your solution is what the psychologists call for educating
children. I don’t know if you’ve heard this called chunking. If a
kids says, “I can’t do the homework.” You say, “Well, why don’t
you just do these five problems.”

Clayton Makepeace: Yep.

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Bob Bly: When you are done with that, do this page three. Then when you
are through with that, do this worksheet tonight. You chunk it and
that makes it so much easier. I have a child who has ADD and
that’s what we do with him and if it can help you, it can help
anyone get through this thing of being overwhelmed.

Clayton Makepeace: Absolutely.

Bob Bly: It’s a great technique. So of course number one is intimidation of

writer’s block and you can chunk things and then the other thing
that you said – if you are intimidated focus on the work, not who it
is. I’ve certainly felt intimidated. You mentioned people working
with you. On the few times that I’ve worked with celebrities or
people I though were really much smarter than I am, I also have
been intimidated. That was great advice which I didn’t have is to
forget about them, forget about you. Just do the work.

Clayton Makepeace: You say you have a child who is ADD and we have a son who had
some issues early on, too. Part of the chunking process is kind of
the same – is kind of the same – it’s very similar to what we were
talking about compartmentalizing. You know, you
compartmentalize the different parts of the task in order to identify
which ones you can do better than anyone and which ones will
reward you and which ones will be better to delegate. But, there’s
another part of that too and it’s thinking as a copywriter, thinking
through the process of writing your sales message. What is the
most effective way to begin? What’s the most effective second
step? What’s the third step and so forth?

Once you’ve said, “Okay, the first thing that I have to do is I have
to read everything I can about this guy’s product.” You go, “Okay,
fine. I can make a nice reading day. I can grab a brief case, chunk
a bunch of this stuff in there and go down to Barnes and Noble and
grab myself a latte and sit there and read for a few hours.” That’s
fine. That’s great. It’s not intimidating. It’s fun. But in order to
chunk, you first have to have sequencing. You first have to have
sequencing. You have to know what’s first, what’s second, what’s
third, what’s fourth and then within each one of those steps, you
can even slice and dice it more finely if you need to, if those tasks
take longer periods of time. So sequencing, chunking, that kinds
of stuff really helps with copywriters too because frankly we’re all
ADD.

Wendy Makepeace: Could I interject something there because -?

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Bob Bly: Sure.

Wendy Makepeace: Because this reminds me a lot of Carlene’s interview where she
talked a lot about the blank page syndrome and she had a lot of
great advice about how to break out the copy in different sections
and just fill in the reply page. Now you’re one page less that you
have to fill in. That was I thought very helpful. So people could
refer back to that issue. It was only like two issues ago I believe.

Clayton Makepeace: I think that’s smart and don’t assume that the best way to proceed
is to begin at the beginning. I know people who get blocked by
writing a headline for days. I think that’s nuts.

Bob Bly: Yeah. You said just forget the headline. Put in a placeholder.

Clayton Makepeace: Forget it. If the best way for you to get a grasp on the product is to
write the offer and the response ____ first, do it. At least once
you’re done that; you know what you’re selling. If the best way
for you to begin is to write the copy about the free gift that the
person gets or the series of free gifts, do that first.

Bob Bly: Or if you are writing a section where you are making a substantial
argument about an investment and you’re at the point where you
don’t understand it and you know what to go onto but you can’t get
passed it write “blah, blah, blah” and go on and fill it in later.

Clayton Makepeace: “Yadda, Yadda, Yadda”

Bob Bly: Exactly. So we know how to give them – one cause of writer’s
block is we get intimidated and we shouldn’t. The next cause you
had told me is procrastination.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. I’m in favor of procrastination.

Bob Bly: You are? I’m against it. I think it’s – tell me why.

Clayton Makepeace: It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Bob Bly: I like it too, but you are going to pay for it.

Clayton Makepeace: No.

Bob Bly: You don’t think so?

Clayton Makepeace: No. Not if you do it right. The key to procrastination is picking
the times to procrastinate. We all love doing procrastination

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because what happens is you’re thinking about this big thing that
you have to do and then when you give yourself permission to put
it off, you feel so free and so wonderful and like they’ve just lifted
a whole burden off of your shoulders. The whole day is a blank
slate in front of you and that you can do anything you want to do.
It’s too addictive and too wonderful a feeling to – it’s like weight
loss. There’s no amount of willpower that’s going to make you
loss weight. There’s no amount of willpower that’s going to make
you stop procrastinating. Everyone’s going to do it. The key is to
do it at intelligent times. Call it creative procrastination if you’re
judicious about it.

I was talking to a writer who was having these problems getting

started. I called it writer’s block. What is was, was there was
some other things going on in his life that were pretty exciting and
pretty fun and he just couldn’t bring himself to get away from
those things and focus on the work at hand. The problem was with
this guy was that there was always something going on in his life
that he would rather do. Okay? So he was always weeks late with
every job and so what I told him was just pick your time. Say, “I
will never procrastinate until I have read the assignment. After
I’ve read the assignment, I’m going to allow myself to take a day
off or to reward myself in some other way.” So you choose a time
to procrastinate.

Bob Bly: So choose your times?

Clayton Makepeace: Now what is happening is you’ve read the research. Now you go
and take your day off. What have we just talked about? You’re a
writer 24/7. Right? So you are taking your day off and you’re
doing things, but you’ve loaded your brain up with everything
about this project and you’ve done some thinking. Your
subconscious has done its sorting. Now you’re doing your
procrastination. You’re not really procrastinating. You’re
working on the job even though you are doing so things fun. I love
procrastination. I love to do it. I don’t do it enough. But, the key
is timing. Just pick your times so you can get enough loaded up
into your brain so that when you are doing other things and
enjoying a beautiful fall day like it is here now, your brain is still
chewing on the project.

Bob Bly: Okay. So overcoming writer’s block, getting passed intimidation

number one, creative procrastination number two. Well, let’s talk
about number three which I think is related. You said it is a
beautiful fall day so don’t you get distracted and – what happens
when you just say – you look out the window and say, “I don’t

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want to do this?” Do you just hang it up for the day or should you
keep going?

Clayton Makepeace: Sometimes – the least productive time that you are going to have is
when you decide I just have to gut this out. That’s when you’re
going to be getting the blank page syndrome big time. You say,
“Oh, I just have to gut this out. I just have to spend this time.”

Bob Bly: That’s the worst.

Clayton Makepeace: That’s the worst because your output is going to stink. You’re not
going to be creative. There are times when you just do have to
hang it up. I do. As you move on through your life and you do
this for longer and longer periods of time though, I think you’ll
find that happens less and less often. It certainly does for me, but
every once in a while I have to give myself permission to just
allow the distraction to take over. If you’re sitting there and you
are working and there’s a rock band practicing next door, what’s
the point of even sitting there? Right?

Bob Bly: Right.

Clayton Makepeace: So you don’t need that kind of frustration. The smart thing to do is
to – well, with me, I feel guilty if I’m not working. It’s just me. I
guess –

Bob Bly: Me too.

Clayton Makepeace: I’ve been in business for myself for 33 years.

Bob Bly: We have what’s called the Puritan Work Ethic.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. I guess so. Everyday I know what I do provides for my
family very directly. There’s no illusion that it’s coming through
paycheck or through – it’ll always be there whether I produce or
not. I know the quality and quantity work I do is going to directly
– there’s a direct link between the quality and quantity of work I
do and the amount of money that I’ll have to lavish on my family.
So if I take time off for any reason, for any selfish reason, I feel
guilty and it’s taken me an awful long time to just learn to give
myself permission to do that, to understand that, that kind of thing
– if you are distracted, it’s not your fault. You’ve done everything
you can to make it work. It’s just not working today. Then, yeah,
just go for it.

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Bob Bly: I’m like you. I feel guilty if I’m not working. I had one that
happened yesterday. I had given a speech in Washington at the
DMA in the morning. I was done real early. It was an 8:30
speech. It was done at 10:30. Got right in the car and came back
here and said, “Oh, I have plenty of time to work.” I don’t know
why, but the five-hour drive just kind of tired me. Maybe because
I ate Popeye’s chicken on the way back and that’s no good for me.
I was so tired and I sat here for two hours and I didn’t do anything.
What do you do when you’re not working because you just –
you’re sick or you’re tired or you didn’t sleep well? What do you
do then? Do you just – is that – you just can’t get passed that so
you just give it up?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, I think when it comes to energy, energy is creativity.

Creativity is energy and I think it’s important to be preempted
when it comes to energy. That Popeye’s chicken cost you some
money.

Bob Bly: Yeah, but it was worth it.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, everything in life is a transaction.

Bob Bly: Yeah it is. It’s a trade off.

Clayton Makepeace: And you made a transaction and you make a couple thousand
dollars an hour and you lost four hours work so that chicken cost
you $8,000.00.

Bob Bly: Yeah, but it was spicy so it was worth it.

Clayton Makepeace: (Laughter)

Bob Bly: And I had the rice and beans.

Clayton Makepeace: If that’s the case, then cool. Good for you. You made a good –
you’re a good consumer. You’ve spent your money wisely and
you are satisfied.

Bob Bly: Of course, now you are making me feel stupid about it, but we get
your point. Energy is creativity. If you are tired or sick, you can’t
be – I don’t think you can be creative without high energy.

Clayton Makepeace: Right. And I think the only time that – what I try to do and again I
hate rules and I tend not to be real good following them, but what I
try very hard to do is to understand that energy is – the amount of
energy you’re going to have and therefore the amount of creativity

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you are going to have is directly related to other choices that you
make in your life and diet is one of them. If you’re eating junk, if
you are eating a lot of fried foods, if you’re not taking
supplements. If you’re not getting the nutrition you need -.

Bob Bly: And exercise.

Clayton Makepeace: If you’re not getting exercise, if you’re going out in the evenings
and getting hammered and coming to work with a hang over,
you’re basically sabotaging yourself. You’re putting yourself in a
position where when you are at your desk the next day, you are not
going to be creative because you have no energy. You have to
understand the 24/7 thing again here. When you’re working out,
you’re being a copywriter. The end result of that workout is going
to be greater energy. That means greater creativity. When you are
making good food choices, the same is true. When you are taking
your supplements, making sure that you’re well nourished, you’re
being a good copywriter. When you’re deciding if you’re going to
drink, to drink only on the weekends, you’re being a good
copywriter or only drinking before you are going to have to work.

When I was younger, I could drink every night. I was just fine in
the morning. Now I find if I drink on the weekend, it takes me one
or even two days to get back up to speed. Recognize objectively.
No excuses. The choice you make affects the amount of energy
you have and so when you’re making a choice that is going to zap
energy in the days ahead, recognize that you’re spending your own
money. You’re losing productivity. You’ll produce fewer
packages this year. You’ll make less money this year. Keep that
in mind when you’re making those choices.

Bob Bly: That’s absolutely true. Now another problem I’ve had that has
stopped me sometimes from getting out as much as I want to;
you’ve used the term to describe it. You called it post partum
depression for copywriters. What do you mean by that? I know
what you mean.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, that’s – yesterday I delivered this project that has been
plaguing me for about three months and I’ve had a lot of
interruptions. I couldn’t get my mind around the product. The
interruptions that we’ve had have been major. We moved into new
offices, we’re hiring employees, we’ve had business trips, all this
kind of stuff and I had a lot of other things going for this client so I
didn’t feel particularly pressured to get it done really quickly. So I
had the luxury of time. I’m sure there was some – not much, but a
little bit of procrastination in there.

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Anyways, yesterday at long last I got the damn thing off my desk
and I emailed it to the client. I felt – and I do every time I deliver
one of these things, I felt like I just had a baby. Wendy gets mad at
me when I say that because obviously -.

Bob Bly: You and I don’t really know what it’s like to have a baby.

Clayton Makepeace: She’s executive in charge of having babies at our house and she’s
actually done it a couple times and doesn’t think that what I do in a
month or two of my time can compare to what it took her nine
months to produce. I agree with her objectively, but I still feel like
I’ve had a baby. So at that moment the last thing you want to do is
to dive right into another project. I frankly don’t have a solution
for that one other than take the day off.

Carlene talked about this and I think it’s wonderful. When she
delivers a package or when she gets a royalty check, it’s an
automatic day off, absolutely automatic day off. The next day
theirs is no way she’s working. Not only is she not working, she’s
gonna go out and spend money. She’s going to go buy something
for herself. I think for obvious reasons, I think that’s a wonderful
idea. It’s motivating. It’s rewarding.

We all need short-term rewards as well as long term. In my

business where I do a lot of direct mail, I’ll write a package in
February. It’ll be finalized in March. Its get through graphics in
April. It’ll be tested in May. It’ll do its first roll out in July. I
won’t see a royalty on that package until probably August. Okay?
So the work I’m doing in February, the real reward for that work
isn’t until August. How do you stay motivated about that? You
have to find little reward steps along the way.

If I get this done, then I’m going to allow myself that. In setting
those times up, in the progress of the job I think is absolutely
crucial. When I get the first rough – the first complete rough done
– not even something I’m going to show my client – I’m gonna do
this for myself. It’s important to make sure the rewards aren’t
things like – that are actually going to slow the process like I’m
gonna go out and get hammered or I’m gonna take a trip to the
Caribbean or something that is why out of whack or why out of
perspective. You have something short term to look forward to so
you need the baby steps as well as the big steps. You are looking
for the big reward long term.

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In the short term, reward yourself. When you delivery a package,

that’s definitely one of those times. Finding something that you
love and saying I’m not gonna do that until I finish this package,
but when I do finish it, I’m gonna give myself permission to take a
day or a three day weekend or whatever and do this great thing.
Anyway, I think that’s a great idea.

Bob Bly: That is. Let me hit a – let me stop for a second and our listeners a
time heaping issue. As always, Clayton has more contents than
even I anticipate so I think this is a great value, but we’re almost at
the 1:00 mark and we’ve gotten through only three or four of the
seven bullets so what I’d like to do is this. We’ve negotiated with
you guys listening before that we can go and you don’t seem to
mind an extra ten minutes without advance warning which is what
I’d like to do today. Of course if you have to ring off, you’ll be
able to listen on the web audio so you won’t miss anything. What
I’d like to do now and we’ll remind you for next week, I’d like to
extend again as bonus, Clayton if this is alright with you, next
week’s call from 60 to 90 minutes?

Clayton Makepeace: Absolutely. Before we move on too much, I just want to say one
more thing here about this whole thing of writer’s block.

One of the strange situations that you’re going to find yourself in

as a writer is you sit down at – you go down to your desk in the
morning and it’s time to work. You’re broke and you’ve got a
month’s worth of bills that are due and you have no money and
now you are supposed to be creative while you are worrying the
whole time in the back of your mind about how you are gonna put
food on the table for the next three weeks. I went through this all
the time when I was starting out.

How do you focus on the work when the phone’s ringing and it’s a
bill collector? How do you focus on the work when – maybe the
bill collectors aren’t calling, but you know in a week or two you’ve
got a rent payment or mortgage payment due and you don’t have
the cash. How do you do that?

Bob Bly: Or forget the creditors, when you have a parent or spouse or
significant other who didn’t maybe approve of you doing this and
saying, “I don’t see any money coming in. Are you going to get a
real job soon and give this up?”

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah.

Bob Bly: That’s the worst pressure

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Clayton Makepeace: Yeah it is. Frankly I don’t know how to get over that one, the
spouse thing not being fully on board. I had an email from a
couple where the man really wanted to get into this copywriting
thing and was passionate about it and his wife wasn’t supporting
him and she was telling him that everyone that tells you that
copywriting is a good profession, they are just trying to sell you
something. It’s just a big scam and a big con game.

So she was extremely negative and at the time he was extremely

positive and I just – I said – I told him, “I don’t want to talk to you.
I want to talk to the two of you because frankly if your spouse isn’t
on board, this isn’t going to work.” So I replied to them two of
them and I just basically told them that this is real. We are making
excellent money as copywriters. Not as people who teach
copywriting, but teaching has not made me a penny. It’s cost me
$150,000.00 in the last 12 month setting this whole thing up.

The money that I’ve made as been 100% from royalties from
clients and I said, “So it is real and I can introduce you to many
other people that – many other successful writer who can show you
it’s real, but don’t do it if you can’t support each other in it because
it is starting a new business and it’s always tough at the beginning
when you start a new business.”

So that’s the only advice I have there, but I do have some other
advice and I gave it to my son-in-law who decided to become a
direct response graphic artist. That advice is no matter what, pay
yourself first. When you get a check in, set a number and 10% is
the absolute minimum, but set a number of that money – some
percent that you are going to sock away and that you are not going
to touch no matter what. The only time you get to touch that
money is if you come up on a dry spell – there are a lot of reasons
businesses go through dry spells. The financial markets may have
gotten very mature or taken a lot of hits and people aren’t buying
financial products right now that could go on. I’ve seen it go on
before for a month or two, more recently it went on for a year, a
little over a year before it finally started picking up again.

During those dry spells, you’ve got to have reserves. You have to
have money set aside or you’re going to be sitting there staring at
major financial problems and that’s going to be a – you’ll be
obsessing on those instead of trying to figure out ways of how to
solve them. You can either worry about a financial problems or
you can set about solving it. The problem is that the worry keeps
you from solving it because you are gonna be obsessing and

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thinking negatively about all the terrible things that could happen if
you don’t come up with a bunch of money instead of working hard
and doing the things that are going to be necessary to bring in
money to solve the problem.

This is just the real nuts and bolts, the real nitty gritty of this – of
business. There are dry spells. You’ve got to pay yourself first.
One of the things – and a lot of people don’t have a lot of financial
discipline and I’m certainly infamous for that one. I found having
a safe deposit box or even a storage box at ____ or some place like
that and buying gold coins or socking cash away in it. In other
words, make it hard to spend that money. Don’t keep it in a
checking account where you can just flash a debit card or start
drawing it down. Make it a deliberate difficult decision to get to
that money and only use it if you absolutely have to pay the
mortgage while you’re getting cash flow going again.

Bob Bly: I agree. I agree. Another great way to do it. Get enough to put a
deposit on a house and buy an investment property. You’re much
more likely to sell it. You’re unlikely to turn around and spend it.
You’ll keep it.

Clayton Makepeace: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Bob Bly: So we’re almost at the end here. Let me – what I’d like to do is
defer ‘till next week which we’re going to extend next week. Next
week’s call which is the four in our series is The Secret That
Pushed Clayton’s Income To Well Over To One Million Per Year,
which is exceptional. Three, this is the session that I’m waiting for
because I’m not at the million a year mark and that’s my goal. I’m
hoping he’ll – I know he’ll tell me how to do it and we’ll cover
what’s on the agenda for that, but we’re also going to move.
We’re going to add a half an hour.

First we are going to do two items from this week. The number
one productivity killer and the three mental tricks that kick its butt
every time which we’ve sort of done, but we’ll review that next
week.

Some of this we’ve already covered a little, but to answer the last
bullet of this week. You promised us six ways to keep your
creative juices flowing even when you think your brain is toast and
how do you – because you can’t always say I’m going to take a
break or a day off. Sometimes even if you have a client who is
understanding about deadlines, sometimes the deadlines are

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Bob Bly, Clayton Makepeace, Wendy Makepeace

coming and you’ve got to do the work. How do you keep creative
maybe when you’re kind of at the end of your rope?

Clayton Makepeace: Well, I think we’ve covered most of these Bob.

Bob Bly: Do you want to go over them quickly?

Clayton Makepeace: Sure. Number one, keep the momentum going. You can do that
by – shifting from right to left brain tasks during the day. It’s like
one of the things that I’ve learned when riding a motorcycle over
long distances is if you stop every hour. Your butt will hold up for
the entire trip. You can ride coast to coast. If your first hour on
the bike, you do two hours, the rest of that trip, you are going to be
sore. So before you reach the fatigue mark, before you get to the
point where you are hurting, where you’ve hit the wall, shift off.
Try to schedule your work so that you’re shifting right to left-
brain.

The second one is the idea of taking a 15-minute accounting break.

If you are working on creative tests and you’re blocked, add up a
column of numbers, divide it by Pi and do it manually. Do
something that fully involves the left side of your brain. Then
return to it and in fifteen minutes you can be back up and running
again. But, again you have to do it early, not after you hit the wall
and have been struggling creatively for an hour or two. By then
it’s going to require more than just that 15-minute break. If you
just work that in during the day, that will help.

The – we talked about doing detailed oriented personal tasks.

Balance your checkbook. Pay the taxes. Do something like that.
That’s another way to keep your productivity, your creativity
going. We talked about mowing the lawn, doing something that
you enjoy doing that allows your brain to disengage and just kind
of flirt with the work rather than really being fully engaged with it.

We talked about the napping approach. We talked about how

sometimes all you can do is hang it up. When you’ve tried
everything else and you just can’t get it and you don’t have detail-
oriented tasks to do, then go ahead and hang it up and forgive
yourself for it. It’s okay. It’s okay not to feel creative. It’s okay
not to feel motivated when you hit the wall. Everybody has those
times, but don’t then go do something self-destructive.

Some of the greatest writers ever like Hemmingway for example,

the writing brought money, money brought freedom, freedom
brought alcohol, alcohol brought writer’s block. And then finally

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Bob Bly, Clayton Makepeace, Wendy Makepeace

that ended very badly in a suicide. That was a self-destructive

cycle where he was using unhealthy things to compensate for his
inability to write or for his block creativity. Keep that in mind as
you are choosing what do to times when you are hanging it up and
just walking away.

Bob Bly: It makes total sense and on that note, we will end for today and
next week we are going to do – we’re going to finish the couple of
items from this week’s movement and next week that will be our
first half hour from noon to 12:30 and then we’ll go from 12:30 to
1:30 on our scheduled session Conference 4, Secret That Pushed
Clayton Makepeace’s Income to Well Over One Million Per Year,
which is I think something only a few copywriters have ever done.
You probably were the first I would think. There’s only a handful.

Clayton Makepeace: I think Gary Bensivenga probably had some million dollar years
too before he retired, but the things that we’re going to be talking
about have really took me very close to three million a year.

Bob Bly: Yeah, I don’t think anybody’s doing that so you’re gonna hear how
to make more money at a level very few copywriters, including me
have reached. I’m eager and we’ll see you guys next week. And
again, remember feedback, if you want to email anything. I did
not get any email questions. I hope there were none. If they were
sent over our server, then perhaps there was a problem and we will
get to them next week as well, but you can send your questions and
comments to feedback@[Link].

Alright. Folks, thanks and we’ll speak to you next week.

Wendy Makepeace: Bye everyone.

Clayton Makepeace: Thanks so much everybody.

Bob Bly: Bye, bye.

[End of Audio]

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