The Art of Influence with Adil Amarsi

The Amazing Adil Amarsi has (mostly) retired from copywriting, at a young age.

Entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, and author, Adil is a fascinating person and engaging storyteller. Like many creators, Adil is a man of many artistic talents and interests, a brilliant mind and a no-nonsense, how to get things done, kind of guy.

When we asked Adil what he would do to sell more fiction books, he said, “Okay, well that’s quite simple”, and proceeded to offer valuable advice on just that.

In this episode, we touch on:

• How to reach your audience in words
• How Adil began copywriting when he was a child
• A fascinating example of how natural inclinations in children—and anyone—can be developed into a craft over time
• Adil’s upcoming book called, The Alchemy Persuasion
• Adil’s areas of artistic interest, including voice acting
• A rule and goal of of copywriting
• Money making ideas for writers
• The importance in a strong success mindset
• How to sell fiction books
• Adil’s impending fiction book series and strategies for publishing and promoting them
• The best things you can do for your business success and profitability
• Adil’s 3 daily rituals that help his productivity and success

This session becomes an in-the-moment education and example of how to create exceptional copy for content that converts prospects to customers. It’s also a marketing session for fiction writers with loads of ideas for all creatives.

‘Copywriting turns words into money.’ Adil Amarsi

Adil also shares his 15 point checklist for copywriting, which you can download from here.

From North Carolina and London to you, we hope you enjoy this time with Adil as much as we did!

Listen on iTunes – Listen on Stitcher

Resource Links

Adil Amarsi’s Website

Adil’s 15Point Copy Checklist

BOOKS

Breakthrough Advertising, by Eugene M. Schwartz (very expensive due to being out of print)

Triggers, by Joseph Sugarman

Success Forces, by Joseph Sugarman

The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler

The Hero’s Journey, by Joseph Campbell

The Seven Basic Plots, by Christopher Booker – especially helpful for fiction writers in character development

Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins

Confessions of an Advertising Man, by David Ogilby – helpful for artists on how to get clients

FULL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION:

LeAura Alderson: Welcome to the iCreateDaily Podcast. I’m LeAura Alderson.

Devani Alderson: I’m Devani Alderson. We are your co-hosts on this journey of creativity and productivity.

LeAura Alderson: iCreateDaily is for artists in every genre of creating. From musicians to writers, crafters to inventors, bloggers to entrepreneurs. iCreateDaily is a movement for creators serious about your art.

Devani Alderson: If you’re into creating anything this podcast is definitely for you. Thank you so much for joining us on this journey.

LeAura Alderson: Welcome to the iCreateDaily Podcast. A movement for creators serious about their art. I’m LeAura.

Devani Alderson: I’m Devani, and today we’re joined by Adil Amarsi, an entrepreneur, speaker podcaster and author. People read, listen or watch Adil’s material to discover how to make the complex of simple, increase sales and revenue, and turn their passions into profitable businesses. Welcome.

Adil Amarsi: Hey.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. Welcome.

Adil Amarsi: Hi LeAura. LeAura.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah, you have it.

Adil Amarsi: LeAura and Devani. Hey guys, how are you guys doing? Thank you for having me on here.

LeAura Alderson: You’re welcome. We’re glad to have you. You’re coming here all the way from a rainy, cold England right now. What part of England are you in?

Adil Amarsi: I’m in London right now, which …

LeAura Alderson: London.

Adil Amarsi: … isn’t as rainy but it is cold. I’m will say that much.

LeAura Alderson: Okay. Yeah. We’re here in North Carolina, USA. We love origin stories and so we want to start in shortly hearing about yours, but we know that part of yours includes copywriting, though you are a retired copywriter. Before we get into hearing your story, can you clarify for our audience what copywriting is, in particular as it pertains to creatives, entrepreneurs as opposed to say Fortune 500 companies.

Adil Amarsi: Okay. Cool. I’m very glad you asked that because there are two different types. There’s copyrighters, the C-O-P-Y-R-I-G-H-T-E-R and there’s copywriters, who are like me, which is C-O-P-Y and then writer like W-R-I-T-E-R. Essentially what we do is if anyone’s watched Mad Men, the TV show, essentially season one Don Draper, that kind of thing is what we do. David Ogilvy, not Ogilvy in masses now as it is but it was in the 60s. Essentially our job, and the best way I can position what I do personally, because it doesn’t work with everyone, but this is what they’re supposed to do.

There’s two types. There’s brand copywriting, which is what you see with Fortune 500 companies going, “Hey, we got Justin Timberlake eating our burger at McDonald’s. We should go there.” It’s associative. Whereas direct response copywriting, which is what artists should be using and we’re going to talk about that later as well. It is all about the idea of how you can essentially send out an advertisement or do something that is advertise worthy and basically get the money back for that thing that you paid for before the money leaves your bank account initially.

Say for instance you bought ad space on, I don’t know, like Facebook. You bought Facebook ads for whatever it was. You spent $200. A copywriter’s job is to make you that $200 back before it leaves your bank account usually. I mean our job is essentially the idea of salesmanship or salespersonship as I call it, in print. That’s essentially what it is to give you guys an idea. My job is essentially turning words into money or turning your story into something that you can use to bring in clients, prospectives and so on.

LeAura Alderson: Fantastic. We will pick up that theme a little bit more as well because there are some questions that we have about that, that will help our audience to connect that more specifically to their own brand and their own story. Can you now tell us how did you … I think you started at [inaudible [00:04:02] copywriter?

Adil Amarsi: Professionally, yes.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Adil Amarsi: I actually started a lot younger than that actually.

LeAura Alderson: Tell us how … Yeah. How did …

Adil Amarsi: It’s kind of strange because like two days ago, before we did this interview, I actually spoke to a very good friend of mine about what my role was and how I’ve gotten to where I am. Essentially my dad was paralyzed from the waist down when I was five years old, and anyone that studied psychology knows that conscious brains are formed fully and doesn’t stop forming fully until the age of seven. The last two years all your learned behavior and your social interaction dynamics are all built in between five, six and seven.

It’s that time period. Now that time … I have an older sister and she loved watching Nickelodeon and basically Fox Kids and stuff like that. We used to get … They were more teenage shows whereas I was a child so I loved cartoons, so we would always get into an argument about who could watch what. At this point my dad was paralyzed from the waist down for two years. I essentially learned the Codex or key code or the [inaudible [00:05:08] code, if you will, which was sitting next to my father, watch whatever he was watching until he got up and then I could watch what I wanted without having to fight my sister for it.

Because I’m like, “I put in time. I can sit here.” I essentially ended up just doing that. My dad’s favorite thing to watch for some reason was the Home Shopping channel. He loved watching QVC on the Home Shopping channel, so like two hours a day, six days a week for two years I was watching the greatest pitchmen of all time pitch products. Of course their structure, their words, everything, just fell into my brain and it’s always been there.

It really kind of came as a realization when I look back at it, when I was eight years old my mother kind of said … She meant it … She didn’t mean it in a bad way but she was just saying to me as she would. She was like, “You know what, you’re a really good manipulator.” Because I used to wait for her to get on the phone to talk to my aunt and when she was talking to my aunt I’ll run and bug her so I could watch or play on my PlayStation. That would annoy my sister and my cousins because they were like, “We were watching something.”

I was like, “Mom said I can play it.” I just go to do that. They used to hate me for it a lot. Fast forward like to like 13, 12/13 years old, my parents were called into my teacher’s office during parent-teacher day and the progress that my teachers gave to my parents was, “Here’s very good at art. He’s very skilled as an artist.” Because I used draw from memory. You could show me one thing once and I would sit there and sketch it permanently. Like I’d have a visual memory for it always. I always think in pictures.

Like even to this day I think very visually. I’m terrible at artwork right now as an adult because I stopped doing it for so long, but essentially … There was a reason I brought that up. What happened was my parents were told by my teacher, “When Adil writes a page or anything, any sort of work, if he makes a single mistake, instead of crossing it out, all of that and B, he tears out the page and starts again.” Which one of my friends who’s a teacher, she said, “Be sure you get tested to see if you’re on the autistic scale.”

Thankfully back then they didn’t throw drugs at you right away when they saw this. They kind of let you develop and just thought it was me being slightly slower than I should be. My parents at this point … My commute to school and back was 20 minutes, so I went to a high school, or middle school I think it is for you guys. I was 12, 12/13 years old [crosstalk [00:07:25].

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. That would be middle school. Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: I went there … For us it’s secondary school, which is strange as a thing as it is because I know we have college and university as well. While I was there I essentially got told … Like I just … Essentially my parents used to drive me … my dad used to drive me back to his company because my dad started walking again. His legs were okay underneath them and so was his back. I used go to his office and I used to write stories for him just about whatever I could see around me. It could be just like a pencil. It could be a stapler.

It could be anything I saw or his desk. I’d write stories about it or I’d write about his products because I thought they were fun. I did this for a while and then my parents separated for a short period. I mean we moved to one part of the city and my dad was in another. My commute to school went from 20 minutes there and back to two hours a day. An hour on the bus an hour back. I spent a lot of my time around a lot of creative people, so I was very much into the early 2000 … Like start of 2000, late 90s to mid-2000s R&B, hip hop and rap scene.

I loved producing music. I loved playing instruments. I loved rapping to it. It was just a thing for me as I grew up and I grew up in a really tough neighborhood. Around that, I stopped doing artwork because my teacher was very rigid in how he wanted art to be done, as you know you don’t really force rigidity into art forms. It’s always free flow and that’s how you create. It just got to a point where I left art and I was like, “I don’t want to draw anymore. I’ve done. I’m hanging up my pencils and I’m over with this.”

I focused on songwriting, and all at the same I’m still writing stories. My teachers would always tell me that I’m writing really well at school. Fast forward to 15 … By the way I’m taking the long way round because …

LeAura Alderson: It’s okay. It’s great.

Adil Amarsi: … this is just stuff I’ve discovered recently. I went from art to hip hop and rap music and production and songwriting to poetry slams and writing slam poetry. I have three published poems. I don’t know where they are anymore but they were published in the UK. They’re really good poems for a 16 year old to write. Eventually I turned 18 and I remember when I was 18 … When I was 17 I got my results back for my first year of … What is this? I think … What’s the grade system over in the U.S? Like when you’re in high school, at the end of high school are you in the 12th grade or 11th grade?

LeAura Alderson: 12th grade. Yeah.

Devani Alderson: 12 grade yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Okay, so 11th grade for us for … At 10th grade you leave traditional schooling then you go into college, which is optional and then you go to university. Essentially at the end of the 10th grade … Wait was it? It’s 11th grade for you guys, right?

LeAura Alderson: For the U.S. it’s 11 yeah. UK it’s 10. Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah. 11, right.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: At 10th grade I got my results back to get me into what would be my 11th grade. My teacher fails me because she couldn’t read my handwriting because we later found out I’m dyslexic.

LeAura Alderson: Oh yeah.

Adil Amarsi: I have ADD and trust me those are both blessings to anyone who’s listening. I’ll explain why as well. At 17 years old I decide to leave schooling, just start … I decided to start working in a game store because I love games. I turn 18 my martial arts mentor at the time takes me into network marketing. I start my first network marketing business. I do really well. We unfortunately fall out at the time and I start looking at the internet as a way to actually grow my business. I wasn’t very good at getting people to look at my website, but I was really good at getting them buying.

I don’t know what was going on. It wasn’t until I reached the seminar a year later just short for … I think it was like a 20th birthday, where someone said to me, “What are you good at?” I said, “I’m really terrible at getting traffic, but I’ve had 10 people visit my website and seven of them have given me money.” They were like, “70 percent of your visitors give you money?” I’m like, “Yeah, isn’t that normal?” They’re like, “No, 3% is good. 70 is astronomical. You’re a copywriter. Go tell everyone this.” I essentially started doing that.

I remember going back home and it’s one of the few times me and my dad have actually had a really good conversation about this. I said to him, “Dad I’m going to be a copywriter.” He was like, “Okay, wait here.” My dad went upstairs … [inaudible [00:11:36]. “Went upstairs and pulled down a folder. He showed me his folder. He goes, “Read the first three ads and tell me what you think.” I read the first three ads and I was like, “These look really familiar.” Turns out my dad used to take my stories down to his copywriter to have them edited.

Write the headline, tweak my grammar, put a call to action and mail it out. It’s basically everything I’ve done for so long. It all very, very naturally came to me from a very young age. That’s essentially how I started my journey. Now I’m 28 and 39 days old exactly to that exact point of the recording of the show. Yeah, we’re closing into $400 million in confirmed sales for my clients. I’ve just signed one of my biggest deals that Devani knows about, and it’s just incredible. It’s been one hell of a journey through ups and downs though.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Devani Alderson: Yeah. For sure.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. All entrepreneurial journeys are, and that’s the thing. Those who succeed are those who keep on going and also tweaking as we go to what makes the most sense next. For instance, on your bio basically it says you’re retired from copywriting but you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a podcaster and you’re a speaker. What is it that you’re spending most of your time doing now?

Adil Amarsi: I actually spend most of my time consulting, which is fun because I have this very rare unique ability to verbalize sales copy quicker than most people can think. I was talking to a friend mine about this yesterday and he was like, “Yeah, it took me 12 hours to write this full sales page over two weeks.” He goes. “It just amazes me that other people say that you do it so well.” I said, “What do you mean?? He goes, “What’s the fastest you’ve ever written a letter?” I’m like, “If I was sitting down to write it, about six hours.

If we’re talking verbalizing it, it took me seven minutes to write a full sales page, start to finish and I can get it out and then just have it transcribed.” That’s essentially what I spend most of my time with. I look at businesses, optimize the client funnels, all of that, you know? That lead attraction funnels or whatever it is that you guys want to say. It’s basically getting someone from free to paid, work all their emails, strategize their business and show them exactly what they’re doing to see how they can bring in more customers.

The podcast is still probably my thing that I do for fun. I don’t optimize it as much as people think. I essentially don’t edit. I get on there. I do it in one take and then throw it up online. If it’s terrible, it’s terrible. If it’s awesome it’s awesome, but my guests are the ones I really love having on there. Right now I’m actually writing a book as well called The Alchemy of Persuasion, which is all about how …

LeAura Alderson: Great name.

Adil Amarsi: Thank you, which is all about how influence is one side of a coin, manipulation is the other, and persuasion is that tiny little bit in the middle. As you turn it sideways you’ve got to borrow from the light and the dark to have it there. Above that, as Devani knows, I’ve got my sales course coming out teaching people how to write copy as well. Even though I am technically retired from copywriting, which means I’m not actually looking for clients, if the right piece does come along I always say yes. To get the right … It just has to be the right deal for me.

Otherwise it’s a no go for me, but I do love helping people. That’s essentially what I spend most my time doing nowadays, and playing with my cats and doing Jiu-Jitsu and stuff.

Devani Alderson: You’re an awesome … It was a Bengal tiger cat or I forget what it’s called but I’ve seen it.

Adil Amarsi: I’ve got two of them. There’s two Bengals. They’re little Bengal cats. There’s a boy and a girl. One is sleeping on top of my fridge in her bed. The other one is camped out on the right of me. That’s kind of impressive that he’s not woken up yet because he knows if I’m on camera it’s usually his time to shine, not mine.

LeAura Alderson: His turn. Yeah.

Devani Alderson: It’s amazing.

LeAura Alderson: A camera ham.

Devani Alderson: Amazing.

LeAura Alderson: That makes sense. Well, we’re animal lovers too. We have three dogs and one cat right now.

Adil Amarsi: What breed dogs? I love animals so.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. We have, well, one that you’re familiar with in the UK, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. We have one of those. Devani has a …

Devani Alderson: I have a Maltese.

Adil Amarsi: Cute.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. Her brother has a foundling that turns out to be a Rottweiler, which is part … Oh, sorry a Labrottie or a Labrador, a black Lab and part German Rottweiler. Yeah. We have our little gadgets in case the dog alarm goes off during our podcast. We have these little beepers where we … they have these training collars that send them a little beep and let them know that it’s not the time to bark should that happen. I wanted to ask about if we can dive in a little bit to the copywriting and storytelling for artists and creators.

It’s kind of odd. We’re creatives. We have websites. We sell products, and so we need to do sales and marketing, but like many creatives that’s not our strength and not what we most love to do.

Devani Alderson: It’s one of those things where you’re like you know you have to do it. It makes you cringe a little bit when doing it, and sometimes it’s like you know the elements, you know you need to tell a story, you know you need to put yourself out there, but it’s just like where do you even start?

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. Then we’ve been in the marketing genre for like seven years or so now. We’ve been marketed to so much that we tend to immediately hop off if it’s a long copy sales page. You know it’s like, “Okay. I know what this is about. I’m going to hop off.” It’s like we don’t care for those. We’re trying to help ourselves and other creatives as well learn how to tell a story, because really it’s all about story.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: Yet to do so in a way that honors people’s time, so it’s not salesy, not long. Basically it’s like what you were doing when you were a child. The other part of it that fascinates me I don’t want to hop around too much, but so many thoughts are coming to mind as you’re talking.

Adil Amarsi: That’s fine.

LeAura Alderson: It’s like … You’re not a parent yet, correct? You’re …

Adil Amarsi: No, I’m not. I’m a cat dad. I am. That’s what I am.

LeAura Alderson: A cat dad, so a cat. It’s fascinating for parents to consider how your skill developed. I would be interested in knowing from you as well at some point whether or not you have any interest in getting back to art, whether that was a passing fancy, because it’s like there are so many areas and ways that we develop and end up doing what we’re doing, right? Regardless of whether that’s purpose or our soul or happenstance.

Adil Amarsi: To answer that question I am. I actually started doing a lot more sketch art for my own work and I’m also an amateur photographer, so I do a lot of amateur photography. Again …

Devani Alderson: He says amateur but when you look at his photos they’re really great.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Thank you. I had no idea that they were that good, because for me I just look at them and I just see a really good photo. I take it. My personal favorite photo was the one I took about three weeks ago or four weeks ago. I was walking down the street just as the sun was setting over a building and for some reason I took out my phone. I couldn’t actually get the light correctly so I had to like … Initially I tried to take the photo and it was just super exposed, so I dimmed it down.

As I dimmed down it said, “No entry” at the bottom but it didn’t take the entry. It just said, “No” down an empty street. It looked absolutely amazing. It’s my favorite photo I’ve taken so far.

LeAura Alderson: Interesting.

Devani Alderson: It’s awesome.

Adil Amarsi: No, I’m definitely back into the art scene. Art galleries are some of my favorite places to visit. I’m a huge comic book nerd and amine nerd, so one of the things I didn’t really discuss was I used to be a voice actor as well, so I do like doing voices. One of my great characters …

LeAura Alderson: You guys have a lot in common.

Devani Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: She hasn’t done it but she’s great with voices and she’s thought about it’d be fun to.

Adil Amarsi: You should totally do it. Reach out to Jex. You know Lucas’s wife?

Devani Alderson: I don’t know who that is.

Adil Amarsi: I’ll do an introduction. She’s an amazing voice actor out in California. Her husband’s [inaudible [00:19:24] also. I’ll introduce you guys.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Adil Amarsi: To get back to the point though, is how does someone actually do this? First thing I want to address is, don’t worry about the letter that’s reading. The rule is quite simple. Your goal is to always get someone to read the next sentence. That’s it. That’s how you make it easy. The second is you want to be clear and not so much concise, but you want to give enough information for someone to make an intelligent decision, an emotionally intelligent decision. Here’s what I mean.

You can say, “I will give you a million dollars … I’ll teach you to make a million dollars in two weeks if you buy this product for 50 bucks right now”. Now that sounds far … Again, you got to keep it in the realms of reality. I’m using an absurd version but stuff like that used to work 10/20 years ago online. Now that worked simply because it was absurd. It was out there. People didn’t write long pages. They wrote very short.

They told you what you were getting and you will emotionally, but then you’d always get buyer’s remorse, refund rates would be really high and everything goes down the toilet. The way you minimize all of this is by giving enough information for someone to make an intelligent decision, but you make it emotional enough for them to do so. The way you do this is quite simple. As an artist myself as someone that I do consider myself an artist because my art form is also martial arts as in the sense of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It’s human movement as well.

LeAura Alderson: Awesome.

Adil Amarsi: And writing because I am an author as well in fiction. I always say …

LeAura Alderson: Did you know that?

Devani Alderson: No.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Devani Alderson: We’ll get into that later.

LeAura Alderson: I didn’t even know that.

Adil Amarsi: We’ll get into that. Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Adil Amarsi: No, I’ve got something coming out next year so I’ll discuss that in a moment.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Adil Amarsi: What I do essentially is when you’re sitting down to write a story you want to start with five questions that you want to answer essentially. Number one is, who am I selling to? I don’t mean like a customer [inaudible [00:21:10]. That’s been done at [Wazoo [00:21:12]. Essentially what you’re going to do is very basic work and very basic, by that I means sense are they male or female or are they both? Their age range, whatever it is. What is their biggest pain and immediately right after, what is their biggest pleasure.

Like what would bring them the most pleasure? The reason I bring that up is because I don’t like copywriters that say, “You want to stab a knife in someone’s back, twist it until they’re in pain and then your solution that you’re selling will remove the knife.” Don’t do that in my opinion because you end up with a lot of painful people as artists. You end up in the starving artist mode because you hate the corporate bullcrap that people put out there in the rhetoric.

The easiest way around this is you want to be the pleasure giver, and I wrote a post about this recently. What you want to do is you want to highlight the pain, which is why you notice the greatest pain for instance for artists I’d say attention starving artist, how about you no longer have to worry about getting clients by using this very simple system that allows you to just plug and play and bring clients coming to you to give you cash in hand.

What I’ve done is more or less I’ve said, “Okay, starving artists is a pain point and getting clients is pain, but what’s the ultimate pleasure? That you don’t have to hunt for clients anymore. They come to you and pay you.” You eliminate that. You become the pleasure giver. By doing so when you’re telling your story … And this is the key area that you always tell people. There is a checklist I use. I will run through it very quickly and at the end of it, Devani, I will send you a copy of said checklist, 15 points. You guys can give it away or we can put it on my site or something.

I don’t really care, as long as people can use it. Essentially the run-through is this. You want to have a strong headline that’s beneficial to the person. You want to have a sub-headline that continues on and creates intrigue, then you want to have an opening paragraph. The opening paragraph is continuing the sub-headline. What you see with a lot of sales letters is they’re work-ish but they don’t do well, is they say, “Discover how you can create … Discover how you can stop being a starving artist tomorrow.”

By the way the key thing here is always using ellipsis at the end of big headlines because it keeps people reading. The three dots. It’s a very powerful psychological thing.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Your sub-headline is, “If you are a starving artist and you don’t like selling then read every word below.” If I went from that to, “Dear friend, my name is Adil Amarsi.” That’s just sounds really weird. If I said to you from that position and said, “Go and read every word below. I know where you’re coming from right now because I was in that position myself. The thing is I hated selling because a lot of the corporate shills actually sell out. A lot of people that become big-time artists sold out and didn’t put in their time of work.

I get it. Creating something imperfection of the art form is more important than getting paid for it, but so is rent and so is being able to afford the ad space that you want and live the life you deserve. My question to you is, what would it be like if you can have both? Some of those made it on the other side. I can tell you it’s fantastic. I can spent days just sitting and looking at my sculpture and thinking, ‘How am I going to make you and I have no time and I’ve no pressure from other people telling me when I need to do it.’

More importantly my client book is completely booked out with commission work that is coming in for months at a time. In a moment I’m going to share with you how you can do the exact same thing, but first allow me to introduce myself.” At that moment I’ve given you every reason under the sun to listen to me. Now the next question that psychologically comes up is, who is this person? Which is point number four. Introduce yourself. When you talk about who you are you talk about, “Hi my name is so and so and this is my journey.”

You tell them, “I was …” If you were like them or you can just say, “Unfortunately I’ve never been in that starving artist situation but my friends have. I come from a position where thankfully my parents, who are artists, gave me the exact formula or system, or I have a friend in sales that taught me how to sell or I’m very good at it naturally and I found that a lot of my friends are not very good at selling. What I did was I devised a system to help them and myself and I broke it down and gave it to them and they did this amazing stuff.

That’s how I came to the discovery that I could help more people using the internet and this is why you’re reading this today.” Now you’ve got …

LeAura Alderson: You just wrote a complete copy for someone’s course.

Devani Alderson: Right.

LeAura Alderson: That’s …

Adil Amarsi: Pretty much. Yeah. This is what I do. When I jump on course it’s just very much like my brain just runs through its own thing. You would do something along those lines and then you’d introduce the product, which is … Do you have any story of how you found the product? Which is point number five. Point number six is introduction to the product. Point number seven is as much detail as you can about what’s inside said product, or if you are an artist from here you go from your stories and why they should hire you.

Let’s just say that you’re an artist trying to sell your work. Your headline would be along the lines of, “Imagine how good that bare wall in your bedroom would look with a fantastic piece of art that is dedicated to you and you alone. It has symbolism to you.”

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Or something along those lines. You can just say, “If you are a fan of art but always wondered how you can fill your home looking like a massively … look like a professional art studio gallery with amazing pieces but you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars then read every word below.” Then you can just go into, “My name is so and so.” You just say, “One of my clients” or you can just say, “Jennifer was like this. She came to me and she said all these things and she wanted it.

At the end of the day when we complete the art piece for her she was so happy. Before I tell you a little bit more about how Jennifer met me, let me introduce myself. Hi, my name is, I don’t know, James Lee and I’m an artist from New York City or from North Carolina.” Wherever it is. “Essentially what I do is I create custom art pieces for people that are dedicated to them. This is why I’m different.” Tell them why you’re different. Like do you have a specific style of art that you work in? If you work in the art, what makes you different?

Like for me when I’m writing about being a writer or a copywriter what makes me different is I can take anyone’s brain and within five minutes be able to write amazing sales copy for them to bring customers through the door. The only reason is because I’ve done it so many times. I’ve practiced for so many hours.

LeAura Alderson: Right.

Adil Amarsi: That same thing is you can just say, “I may have practiced for 10,000 hours using the same technique.” More importantly what you can say in positioning is, “I’m the foremost expert in” or “I am known as … My clients know me as” and then give yourself a name. “As the paint whisperer or the, I don’t know, the sculpting master, or the reason they call me these is just quite simply because what I do is when I sit down …” and tell them about your process. Like Devani something that you do because you are an artist.

You can actually just say something along lines of, “When I sit down to do graphic pieces I listen to what my client wants, but more importantly I take their words and remember the visual images that come to me with the emotion they give me. If I have those emotions then I try and I translate that emotion into the image that’s in my mind onto a canvas that you can see and fall in love with, because that’s exactly what an artist job is to do. I can tell you I’m one of the best at what I do or I’m very good at what I do because I’ve done it.

This is what all my clients say.” That leads you to point … You’ve told them headlines, sub-headline, opening paragraph, who you are, story of how you became such a good artist. An introduction to the idea of hiring you or buying your product. Now you back it up with testimonials, then you follow up with the price point and you tell them exactly how much it is to hire you. For artists out there thinking of going down this path I’d always say, get them to your consultation. For you it’s paid not free.

Just say it’s only … Just say, “The average price of my work sells for under a thousand dollars.” Say that it only costs you $50 to actually book a 30-minute to an hour-long consult with me where we get an idea if we can work together. If at the end of the thing you do want to move forward we move that $50 towards a thousand dollar down payment. If not then you can either refund them or just say, “Or I can give you an idea of sketches that you’ve actually paid $50 for.” It’s completely up to you how you want to [inaudible [00:29:18] model.

Then you just ask them to take the action. This is where everyone fails, in my opinion. A lot of people don’t get direct with the action. They just say, “Okay. If you feel like doing this then bye.” No, you want to tell them. Say, “If you want to work with me, if you want to book this call, if you want to buy my thing here’s what you do next. Click this button, fill out this form, send me money, do this, book some time with me.” This is something else I wrote about recently. It’s all about removing fear. Tell them what happens next.

Once you send me money you’ll receive an email. An email that will say this. Or once you click this link you’ll see a page. This is our order page and you can just complete your order. After that you’ll be taken here. Tell them what they’re going to see next. As soon as they do that because if they click on something and they don’t see what they think that you already described then ultimately you’ve lost them, because at that point their fear kicks in. They’re like, “Okay. I don’t need to be here.”

If it goes correct, which it should because it’s a system of online variables and stuff what you’ve done is essentially tell someone that, “Hey, this is normal.” You’ve been there. You’ve gone there in the mind. Now go there in the body and they’ve removed all the fear around them. That’s really powerful. It’s all about removing fear. Then finally just if you have a reason to get a guarantee, you give a guarantee. If you have any bonuses you can give them a bonus.

Such as if you’re the type of person that’s booking a consult just saying, “If at the end of the 30 minutes you’re not 100% satisfied with our consultation and you don’t move forward,” you can do the guarantee and say, “I’ll refund you” or you can just say, “As a bonus what I’ll do instead is I will sketch out an actual idea for you and send it over to you to your email and you can use it to any length that you want. You can either hire me or another artist and show them what I did and you can tell them why I did it so they have an idea to my work.”

Plain and simple. Then you just sign off quite normally. I look forward to seeing you on the inside. I look forward to hearing from you.

LeAura Alderson: The way you lay it out it’s almost like I can imagine you picturing in your mind the exact sequence you go through in writing it. What I hope our audience recognizes … Because if people aren’t familiar with the industry, copywriters get paid tens of thousands of dollars if not hundreds of thousands to write copy like what you’re describing. For you to be just sharing that freely, the exact structure and the way for people to arrive is amazing. Very much appreciated. You have a great way of describing and explaining it.

Adil Amarsi: Thank you very much, but no, I was just … Just to jump back into it as well very quickly. Guys just to give you an idea, that structure took me eight years to figure out. At that moment I think I was at $200 million for my clients in confirmed sales. My average client pays me $25,000 to sit down and even do this. It’s like $5,000 to get me for an hour to consult with them or two and a half depending on what it is. Go back, listen to this again.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah definitely.

Adil Amarsi: Transcribe if you want to do it to.

Devani Alderson: Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: We’re doing it.

Adil Amarsi: Please do.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. We’re transcribing it and so I highly recommend people go through and print out the transcription, highlight it, et cetera.

Devani Alderson: Because I think of what this ties into too for any artist that’s struggling between … If you’re in that stage where you’re almost between the I know I want to make this my work and I also still have the starving artist mindset, something that is a great mindset shift in between making that leap is there’s this concept and I think Chase Jarvis coined it, but it’s like I do my big ticket work so I can do the art that I want to do.

If you can get a system down where you can get leads and people buying your art in whatever format it is, whether it’s commissioned, whether it’s just buying your prints or whatever, your custom pieces, then you have the time created to create whatever you want and do the big visionary artwork that you really want to do, without needing to freak out about bills or money or all that stress that takes away from your creativity.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. Plus what he’s described if someone is an aspiring writer or is a writer, and it could be a fiction writer or a non-fiction writer, it could be a blog writer et cetera, a poet, but if they are writing and wanting to make a living with their art it could be that learning how to do copywriting, taking a three to six months course studying, what Adil has just shared with us, could be a way for them to, like you said Devani, support their avocation, their vocation rather through earning something while … Because the thing is if you’re writing copy for someone else then you also know how to do that for yourself.

That brings me to the next question I wanted to ask you. Feel free to jump back in. Did you have any comments to what we said first before I jump on from that?

Adil Amarsi: Just a little bit.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: I was going to say if you guys are going to be studying copywriting make sure you’re studying direct response because it’s a little different that story writing because you actually have to sell. You have to be very good at selling it. It’s a salesmanship in print. It’s a lot simpler to teach a salesperson how to write than to get a writer to sell, but it’s doable. I was going to say remember there’s also other avenues. You can be a ghostwriter.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: That’s another way of actually making great money as well. That’s just an idea that you guys can look into.

LeAura Alderson: Do you have any courses that you know of? I know that you’re pretty much self-taught. You …

Devani Alderson: He’s coming out with a course.

LeAura Alderson: You’re coming …

Adil Amarsi: Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: Okay.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah. I’ve got a course coming out that is teaching people how to go … It’s not so much designed for … The reason I created it was to help entrepreneurs and business owners, particularly the small businesses, take everything I know about websites story writing, by that I mean direct response copywriting, sales letter writing, what we just did right now, email sequences, webinars which are digital, seminars that you would like hundreds of people or tens of people, or thousands in cases, and also video sales letters.

They have to put out video that actually gets people to buy. It has all my information of how I do things. Now, the cool thing is you can use that same stuff, use it in your business if you’re a business owner listening to this. If you’re an artist you can actually use the materials of what I’m showing in there to actually understand the art form because I also teach the art form in there. Now, granted that is a higher ticket price offer because we are going to be released that, I think at like 997 to $2,000 depending on how it is, but for resources to really get started.

My book is not out yet, so I would always recommend The Alchemy of Persuasion when it comes out because it does teach this stuff. The main areas that you really want to look at, there is I’ll say top 5 books. One of them is ultra-rare to find but if you know where to look because Google is your friend, Breakthrough Advertising is a brilliant book by Eugene Schwartz. It’s one of the best on how to understand how the human mind works to sales [inaudible [00:35:53]. Triggers by Joe Sugarman, which is really easy and cheap to get on Amazon. God, there’s like three other books.

If I had to like … I’m looking at my bookshelves around right now because I’ve got so many around me. I’d say from that I’d also go ahead and read Success Forces or Seven Forces of Success by Joe Sugarman as well. It’s all mindset stuff there by the way. It really helps your mind elevate, and the reason you need that is because you need to a strong mind to actually write as well because it’s really good to understand. I’d also recommend The Writer’s Journey or The Hero’s Journey either by Joseph Campbell or … I can’t remember who wrote The Writer’s Journey, but I think it’s Christopher Vogles I think, or Vlogs. I can’t remember. Him.

LeAura Alderson: Vogler, yeah.

Adil Amarsi: The last one I’d say is Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Brooker or Booker. Essentially what he does is he breaks down the seven basic plots that people use all around every form of story. Now the reason I recommend this isn’t so much the idea you need to learn how to write copy, but if you’re someone that’s very … animators and artists that really understands how to tell stories, read that because it really shows you how to interpret your artwork or your stories or your novellas and create them into what people already associate to, to sell more of.

All those recommended resources and books. One final one for a basic understanding of direct response copywriting that’s absolutely brilliant. I would have to say it would either be The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy or Cashvertising by … Actually no. I’m going to take that back. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Scientific Advertising is a brilliant book just for that. If you want to get clients and want to know how to get clients for your artworks … Sorry, I’m just remembering a bunch of books right now.

LeAura Alderson: No. It’s great.

Adil Amarsi: Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy is brilliant for this because David built his entire firm or practice to several millions if not hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. It’s the same thing. Just copy the same stuff for getting clients in your marketplace and it works. That’s essentially what I’d say before we move on. Sorry I just had to give out that.

LeAura Alderson: No. Yeah. That’s fantastic. What I wanted to move onto is a little bit about your fiction writing and like what kind of novel you’re writing. Then … This is a hard thing, you kind of described already for artist how they might sell some of their work, the stories. How they might tell stories about their work right before this, which was perfect. Now, as an aspiring or soon to be published fiction author how will you market your fiction books? How will you write the copy for them?

Adil Amarsi: Okay. That’s quite simple. It depends, where are we selling our fiction books? Are we using online? Are we using …

LeAura Alderson: We … Sorry. Yeah. No, it’ll be both. They’ll probably be on Amazon of course but then if you want to promote them on Facebook, if you want to have a landing page, say, and then through your social networks. Or you could even start with, how are you going to sell yours?

Adil Amarsi: Okay. My strategy is quite simple. I actually went to publish as an issue. The reason I did that was because they had a bigger reach than I do initially and they know a little bit more about book [inaudible [00:39:08]. What I did on the back end of mine was I created a blog for main character and I’ve been populating it slowly with stories from books like The Behind the Scenes but as my character to make him seem semi real, a slightly semi real human. What they do is when someone … I’m not going to tell you guys what it is yet because it’s not yet ready.

It’s another year before we release it. Essentially when someone goes to that website they can opt in for a notification for when the second book comes out. I’ve already written the second and third books as is an they’re going to be self-published. The first book comes out with a publisher, books two and three will be coming out self-published but by that point I’ve built a mailing list of fans. I can just mail and they can buy and I make more money than the company does, so it’s lovely.

Now how I would do this, if you’re not like me and you don’t have all the ridiculous superpowers I’ve built up over the years, here’s a simple way that you guys can do it. The simplest and easiest way to do anything is quite simply build an audience. The way you can do this … We live in a social media world. It’s dead simple. If you have Instagram you don’t have to spend money for it, just start taking photos and excerpts of your book and upload them telling people your book is coming out. Then get other people to share that.

Facebook it’s even easier. Create a fan page and use boost posts. It’s $10 a week to actually boost people checking out your stuff so that way it takes over on automation. The stuff that I would actually do is I’d say that I’d give away the first chapter. How do you sell this on your landing page so simply? It is, what’s the most … Devani, give me an idea or even LeAura give me an idea of a book dead simple. It could be one that’s existing, it could be one you guys have in mind. I don’t really mind. Whichever.

Devani Alderson: Lord of the Rings.

Adil Amarsi: OK. Lord of the Rings. How would I do that? Okay. The landing page for that if I was to sell Lord of the Rings. I was J. R. R. Tolkien in today’s world and selling this. The first thing I do is I would write a Facebook piece that was from my book. I’d find the most enchanting part of the first Lord of the Rinds book, which is not my favorite one because I don’t like Fellowship of the Ring.

Devani Alderson: Agreed.

Adil Amarsi: I do like 2000. Screw you Pippin. Sorry I really have a real hatred for Pippin. Meri I love. Pippin, jump off a cliff and die.

Devani Alderson: No, I’m the same way.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. It’s a personal thing I can tell.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah. No. He causes everything. It’s his fault. Anyway … Sorry I was just getting that.

LeAura Alderson: It’s okay.

Adil Amarsi: What I would actually do is I’d find the excerpt where Gandalf is actually about to fight the Balrog and is about to say, “You shall not pass. At that moment find the cliffhanger in that moment and put that out as an ad. Find your story as an ad and put it as a cliffhanger. Just say, “If you want to read what happens next click the link.” They click the link. They got here. They see this page and it just says, “Coming date, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Join our heroes as they find the one ring and explore this crazy Middle-earth universe where orcs, elves, Necromancers, wizards, hobbits, dwarves and humans all coincide in what could be the greatest blockbuster or a complete easy mission. Also as a thank you for actually clicking and being here, find out what Gandalf, our wizard, is about to say. Enter your name and email address and I’ll send you that entire excerpt as a thank you.”

Devani Alderson: That just makes me want to reread the book.

LeAura Alderson: I know.

Devani Alderson: Goodness.

LeAura Alderson: That’s fantastic.

Adil Amarsi: You have that and then directly underneath I’d have another author that’s semi well-known or someone that’s read the book just saying … That testimony was key by the way. It doesn’t matter if it’s like a cat testimonial or about a book. It could just be, “Reading The Lord of the Rings up until now I have to say this is probably the greatest writing I’ve read.” Or it could be, “What shocked me most was how well J. R. R. Tolkien took the concept of wizard, combining wizardry, magic and all this and putting it together into a world that’s so real and makes you feel like you’re part of it.

I would definitely recommend reading this.” Print a testimonial like that. Just that would actually increase response because people now trust it.

LeAura Alderson: Right.

Adil Amarsi: I’d have that there. I mean that’s the way I’d actually get my book out. If I was to actually market my book as well and I was marketing it myself, I’d build a website and I’d actually have something along the lines of a video of me as the author if I’m comfortable. If I’m not I’d have an audio. If not I’d have a letter and it would be something along the lines of an open letter to fancy genre specialists. If you are into fancy and really want to understand how I plan to reboot that entire genre into a new stratosphere and raise the bar because that is my singular goal, then read everywhere below.

You probably saw that Gandalf was about to face off against the Balrog and he just said, “You shall not pass” but what did he mean? Why was he there and what’s happening? Our main characters scurry away and I’m here to tell you why. Before we get into that my name is J.R. R. Tolkien and I am a … Talk about your story, how you came up with this. As I was going through the mosh pits of The Battle of the Somme in the first World War I realized that mosh pits were full of dead bodies, and it gave me inspiration and was the only thing that kept me sane through the war in order to create this novel of truly epic proportions in this entire world.

I, dear reader, that I’m sending this to right now, I want to share a very simple thing. This is my life’s work of what I’ve created. It is arguably the best work I’ve ever put out because everyone that has read it has loved it and asked me for another chapter, but in order to complete my work and get the word out there we need to sell enough copies to ensure that the word is out there. Here’s how you can show your support. As someone that is looking to buy this book, if you decide to purchase Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which allows me to write the next two chapters to show you the conclusion, I want you to invest in getting this.

When you do this I will send you two special bonuses. The first bonus is that I will send you a special handcrafted letter and message inside every book that gets sold in the first one hundred copies, and the second bonus, this is applicable to everyone that buys. I will send you a customized character card that is just for you. As it reaches you you’re able to see if you are an elf or, you know, a wizard, a human, whatever it is. You will be able to find your own characters throughout the story and I want say thank you for actually being a part of this.

If this is something that rings true to you click the button below, order the book. If you love it, leave a review and I promise that that will allow me to write the next thing that I want to do. Also you’ll get an exclusive sneak preview through an email that I’ll send you that allows you to read the next two chapters before the book arrives at your doorstep. It’ll get you really ready and focused so when you actually get the book you’ll be immersed in the world from the get-go.

LeAura Alderson: Wow!

Adil Amarsi: Done.

LeAura Alderson: Wow! That’s fantastic.

Devani Alderson: Wow!

LeAura Alderson: That’s good.

Adil Amarsi: Yeah. That’s how I would do it.

LeAura Alderson: Okay. You said it’s too early to reveal anything about your book, does that mean that your site is not yet published?

Adil Amarsi: My site is not yet published. I can tell you about the book. I can tell you what the title is currently working as, it’s called Dark Corners a J Story Memoir … A J City Memoir, sorry. My character is basically a detective, a private detective who in the first book is essentially coming back from seeing his mother, comes back into the city, which basically J City is a fictional city, which is a combination of San Francisco, London, New York and Tokyo. It’s a megacity in its own right.

Essentially it’s being crushed under corruption of its own weight and he is a private detective who basically works out in cases. The whole story leads off to several different backstories that I have set up for the next books on the blogs as well that we’re creating for it. Essentially what it does it follows my character, Riley Hunter Gray, as he is contact … I actually put my cat as one of the characters because I really love him. I made him the main character.

He finds he’s hired basically by the Barrington Family who want their child, Chase, who died as a soldier in the war as a private, they saw him on the streets, saw his unique birthmark. They walked up to him and talked to him and they asked him, “Where have you been?” He looked at them as if he didn’t know who they were and walked away. They knew it was him because of a unique birthmark, so they hire Riley to find out what happened to him and as he starts to uncover the mysteries of what is going on, he starts to realize exactly where all the soldiers are going and why Chase’s death was actually faked.

As the story builds it shows you more into the character of what’s really going on, the sinister plot afoot. It ends on a cliffhanger. I will say this much. Second and third books actually are like the finale and carry on.

Devani Alderson: Wow!

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. That description of course makes you want to read it.

Devani Alderson: Right.

LeAura Alderson: Can’t wait till it comes out. You just shared in the same way that you advised us to share and our audience that are fiction writers to share their work that makes people definitely want to read it and look forward to it coming out.

Adil Amarsi: Well, do you guys have any more questions? Because I’m here for as long as you guys need me really.

LeAura Alderson: Well, you know, we actually had to just scroll past several. We have lots more questions and we could talk with you all day. You’re fascinating. You’re so brilliant. It’s really interesting to watch how you just immediately fuse a story without a second thought. Yeah. It’s clearly your talent. I’m really glad to hear that you’re writing your own fiction stories. We look forward to closely following your release journey in that way because, you know [inaudible [00:48:52]

Adil Amarsi: Most definitely.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. I think maybe it would be great … We do have one closing question. We have another interview coming up so we don’t have the extra time unfortunately.

Adil Amarsi: How long do we have?

LeAura Alderson: We have like about five more minutes.

Adil Amarsi: Okay cool. Let’s just say you’ll go for your closing question and I’ll try and get through it and we can ask for more. Devani pick a secondary question. LeAura you go with the first one because I want to hear what your closing question is.

LeAura Alderson: Okay. No. Yeah. This closing question is mainly just to … You’ve already covered a number of them like the books and the people that inspired you. Like some of the authors that you mention. The main thing is, what advice and final concepts. Like what are the top things that have helped you make a good living from your art essentially. What are the …

Adil Amarsi: Okay. The first one is controversial, I apologize to everyone, but it’s not hard and I’ll explain why, is understanding the process of selling. I’ll give you guys the best framework for it. To be a great salesperson is like being a great guy on a date. If someone says no, don’t push, just say thanks and move on because that surprises more people than you know than it really should, because you’re like, “No, it’s cool.” You move on. A lot of people are like, “Wait, aren’t you going to keep going?” “No.” “Why do you want my business? Now I want your business.”

It’s a really great turnaround but if you do it sincerely it just works. Learn how to sell. That’s the best thing in the world to do. Number two I’d say would be understand what your worth is. Truly understand your value in who you are. Look at the market definitely, but don’t stare at the market for too long. Look at market and go, “Okay. If I’m charging less than this I’m not doing well. If I’m charging more than this I’m doing really well.” Don’t bring your rates down to match the market. Keep your rates up but make sure you can deliver to what’s there.

Third, always ask for referrals and testimonials from clients, friends, patients, everyone that you work with because that will always get you more people through the door. Four, make sure that you actually upload your work. Share what you love to do. Tell people who you are. Be vulnerable and honest in what you do because that will help you in so many ways. Number five, one of the most powerful thing that’s helped me be who I am is have a good group of friends. Like Devani is a really good friend of mine.

I love her for who she is and this wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t let me know about it. Have people that have your back. Support them. Let them support you and always, always be straight with people because if you’re struggling … And if you’re struggling, fair enough. Tell people that you’re going through a tough time but don’t mope about it. Show them that you’re taking action because to get religious for moment, as Quakers say, when you pray move your feet because when you pray and you’re moving your feet that takes action and actions are rewarded with more rewards, so keep going that way.

Those are five things I’d tell you to do right there, right now. The sixth and seven things, so there are two more. Bonus number one, number six, keep a gratitude journal. A journal where all your wins are and everything that you’re grateful for. Do this every single day and I guarantee you you’ll start seeing things come towards you. It’s just an amazing thing. The seventh thing and the most powerful thing, drop the word learn from your vocabulary when you’re actually selling because learn and honesty and let me be honest with you and all that talk, puts up walls of barriers that you’ve been lying to us and this is going to be hard.

Remember you’re talking to other creatives and other people that want to escape the learning aspect. Rather than helping them discover, show them something. Take them on a journey and definitely check out the stuff I actually mentioned earlier because that always helps.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah we definitely will.

Devani Alderson: Awesome.

Adil Amarsi: Good.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah. Do you have any …

Adil Amarsi: [crosstalk [00:52:19]

Devani Alderson: The last question is, do you have a daily creative habit, ritual, something you do every day that either is creative or supports your creativity?

Adil Amarsi: There’s three. There’s three things I do that are actually daily. Number one, I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu almost every day, so I do some form of exercise every single day. If not I’ve got a Fitbit so I go on my 10,000 steps. Just being out the house, being around that helps my mind clear itself and actually helps me do my own thing. The second is kind of a semi … Yeah. I’m getting back into the habit of doing it and that is do some sort of artwork for fun.

Whether that’s a little bit of doodling on my notepad, a little bit of writing on my own stories stuff, playing on my piano that I’m terrible at or playing on my ukulele that I love, or playing with my cats because I love my pets. There’s another thing that I do. The third is the most vital that I will tell people, always, I take a lot of breaks. I take naps in the day. I play video games during my work time. I do stuff like this because it’s designated time.

The reason I have that there is because if you’re running full … Imagine you’re a sprinter and now you’re put in a marathon, you’re going run full pelt right away and you going to blow your load. You’re not going to be able to make that run. You’ve got to keep taking rests.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: Until you can manage that that’s exactly what we’re given. Rather if you’re creating something set yourself little goals. Okay. Between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. I’m not going to do any work. That’s my time. That’s my time for me to do my thing so I’m going to go enjoy myself. I’m going to play my piano. I’m going to play video games. I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to have a phone call with my best friend. I’m going to do something that’s just not time wasting, but it reinvigorates my creativity.

Then from [12:00] till [3:00] I set myself a goal of writing say a thousand words. I will sit down and write a thousand words from total [12:00] until [3:00]. [4:00] till … or [3:00] till [5:00] I’ll get something to eat and hang out. Then [5:00] till [7:00] or [5:00] till [6:00] I’ll do my last bit of work. [6:00] till [12:00] I’ll watch a movie, play some video games, do something crazy that’s fun and enjoyable. By the way I watch a lot of movies so I definitely recommend doing that as always, and video games. Watch the cut scenes of bestselling video games because they will give you tons of ideas on how to get someone emotionally invested in you know.

LeAura Alderson: Very interesting. Well this has been fantastic Adil.

Devani Alderson: Yes.

LeAura Alderson: We would love to have you back when your book is ready. Yeah.

Adil Amarsi: I would love to be back. Yeah.

LeAura Alderson: Yeah, before then. We’re definitely going to be following you and really, really appreciate the fantastic wisdom and gems that you’ve share with us today.

Devani Alderson: Absolutely.

Adil Amarsi: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

LeAura Alderson: Okay. Talk to you soon.

Adil Amarsi: Take care guys. Bye.

LeAura Alderson: Bye. Thanks so much for joining us for the iCreateDaily Podcast. Please let us know what creatives you would like us to interview and what topics you would be interested in hearing more about.

Devani Alderson: If you enjoyed this show please leave a review on iTunes. We value your feedback. We read all the reviews and it just helps us get the word out on the iCreateDaily Podcast. Thank you so much.

LeAura Alderson: Thank you so much.