YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Parr

lines on the record: 61
first: 2025-12-20
most recent: 2025-12-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That it feels like I know what you were thinking better than you do. And I know your problem so intimately that I must have a solution because no one else has been inside of your head as good as I have right now. Therefore, you feel the way I feel. You could guide me out of this pain. So let me give you an example. If you were selling, I'll do a weight loss thing because that's typically like kind of scammy. But let's say like if I was writing a weight loss ad for women, I would say like I know why you stand on the edge of your friends when you take a photograph with your buddies at the beach. I know why you wear that cover up. I know that you offer to take the photo. I know why you do that. And you like go into like the shame that someone feels. And these are things that she has probably never said to herself. But if I write in such an intimate way, you start to think I know you. Now, of course, you want to use this power for good, not for bad, but I'm just giving you an example. And so long does a better job of getting you to fall down this slippery slope where you are just ready to buy at the end.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this looks like not an interesting title, or you know, it's like a long, it doesn't follow any of the rules, but I'm telling you, this is the best book. So why does long work better? Well, it does for a couple reasons. One, when people skim, you need different areas to grab their attention and get them to come back down. But it's all written in this thing called the slippery slope. So in order to sell anything, I want you to fall down this slippery slope where you start where you're interested, you get a little bit more desire. And finally, I get you to take action. So it's called ADA, attention, interest, desire action. I need to grab your attention. I need to keep you interested. I got to make you desire what I want you to desire. And then I have to make you take action by being very specific and telling you what to do for the next step. It's not necessarily that long. It's better than short. It's that you want the least amount of words to be the most effective and oftentimes you need a lot of words to be incredibly effective. And for a person who's going to buy your product, the goal of good copy is to make me the writer or the marketer write to you in such a way.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who sells a lot of anything knows all these principles. And one of the principles is that long form is better than the short form. And a lot of people listening, they're not going to believe it, but they're wrong.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone says the same thing. So here's what people listening to this. You guys are going to think a couple things. You're going to think a few things. You're going to think ads don't work on me. Obviously, that's nonsense, right? You're going to see long-form copy. So basically there's a lot of sales pages that you go to and it's just tons and tons of words. You're going to say, that doesn't work on me. That used to work then. It doesn't work nowadays. And you're going to like see like cheesy headlines and all that stuff. You're going to think none of that works on me. You're wrong. It does. We could go through examples, but you just had Amazon. Like, for example, long form copy typically is almost always better than short form copy. You just were, Jason, on Amazon.com, the most well-known website potentially in the world. And if you were to look at that book that you just had up and you were to see all of the words that were on there, as well as all the photos, as well as all the reviews, there's probably 10,000 reviews that was probably tens of thousands of words on there. If you go to apple.com and you look at how much an iPhone costs or you want to buy an iPhone, it's going to have a photo, a photo for a thousand. Whereas tons of photos and tons of words are going to be a really long page.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“B. Mather, that was a multi tens of billions of dollar ad firm now, and it's their glamorous, they do all, you know, probably Ford or Ferrari, all this fancy stuff. But he started as a copywriter, kind of a like he would write these like just, they call them sales letters, these letters that they would mail to people to sell anything”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then type in Joe Sugarman on Amazon and buy his ad week guide to copywriting. That one's probably above everything, my favorite. That one was out of print, but all of a sudden do a link where you can get it for cheap. But so here's how it works. So like in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, before the internet existed, you had these guys like David Ogovi and they basically wanted to sell, let's say, a vacuum to a housewife. Well, how on earth did they do that? Well, some of them would go door to door or buy radio commercials, but a lot of them, what they did was they would do these services where you could send a letter to a million housewives in America and it basically meant you had to send pieces of paper with typewriter writing and you had to use words so good that you had to make your money back because it was incredibly expensive to do this. And so they got incredibly good at figuring out what words convinced people to buy and take action and do stuff. And so I love learning from those guys from the 50s all the way up to the 90s, like pre-internet era guys. Those are the best places to learn from. And David Oglevy is one of those.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but it was so successful in terms of a business. And you had guys, I don't know if you remember this, like there was a guy named David D'Angelo. He would write these like 5,000 word emails where he was just plain text and they were making $30 million a year selling ebooks on how to like hook up with the girl. And that is when I got interested in copywriting where I got interested in like the dark arts a little bit of copywriting. And I was like, okay, how do I master this? And then let's actually use it to sell stuff that I love. And so that's how I originally got into copywriting.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't selling anything particularly special. And so I started Googling. This was back in like 10, 2010. How to be a salesperson? And I learned about this thing called copywriting. And what I realized was if I could take my ability to sell one-to-one, which I eventually learned how to do and put it on paper, you could sell one to an infinite number. And so I started reading and a bunch of bloggers and I actually got really interested in the world of internet marketing, which back then was very shady. And there was these guys that would write these books that would teach young men like myself who weren't particularly good with women, basically how to pick up girls. And a lot of it was very shady and weird.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I used to work to own a hot dog stand in college. That's how I made, paid my way through college. And I had a hot dog stand. I called it Southern Sam's Wieners as Big As a Baby's Arm. And I would like sell that's called copywriting.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So basically, there's a lot of sales pages that you go to, and it's just tons and tons of words. You're going to say, that doesn't work on me. That used to work then. It doesn't work nowadays. And you're going to like see like cheesy headlines and all that stuff. You're going to think none of that works on me. You're wrong. It does. Long form copy typically is almost always better than short form copy. Anyone who sells a lot of anything knows all these principles. And one of the principles is that long form is better than short form. And a lot of people listening, they're not going to believe it, but they're wrong.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I wasn't selling anything particularly special. And so I started Googling how to be a salesperson. And I learned about this thing called copywriting. And what I realized was if I could take my ability to sell one-to-one, which I eventually learned how to do and put it on paper, you could sell one to an infinite number. There was a guy named David D'Angelo. He would write these like 5,000 word emails where he was just plain text and they were making $30 million a year selling ebooks on how to like hook up with the girl.”
2025-12-20 · This Week in Startups · Level up your copywriting w/ Sam Parr | E2226 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source