If you search YouTube for “St. Crispin’s Day Speech,” you’ll find classically-trained actors like Lawrence Olivier, in character as Henry V, reciting Shakespeare’s rendition of the speech.
Now search YouTube for “Jocko St. Crispin.”
You’ll see an excerpt from episode 15 of the Jocko Podcast where Jocko attempts to recite the speech.
Despite not having any experience or training as an actor, the recitals are night and day.
You listen to Olivier, you hear an actor playing a king.
Playing at war.
You listen to Jocko, you hear a general addressing his warriors.
The difference, obviously, being combat.
Olivier had never experienced combat.
Never even served in the military.
Jocko’s a retired combat leader with a 20-year career in the Navy Seals.
He’s been involved in, and led men through, brutal fighting in Iraq.
You learn a couple things from this:
One.
There’s a world of difference between a teacher, mentor or coach with real experience in what you’re learning and one who knows the subject in theory.
Two.
It’s short-sighted to do tasks yourself you’re no good at, when you can afford to hire an expert to do it better and faster.
For example, let’s say you write your own copy.
You can spend an hour writing 1 email that makes you $1000.
Or you can pay a professional copywriter $1000 to write you 4 emails in 1 hour that each make you $500, or $2000 total.
In doing so, you bought back an hour of your time AND made $1000 more than you would have doing it yourself.
I’ve caricatured the numbers to demonstrate how to think like a CEO.
Even in a sub-optimal scenario–a weak copywriter–you’ve created leverage and profit.
What happens when you work with strong copywriters like Dropkick Copy?
Peace,
Nabeel