I think it was the early 2000s when I was deep in the trenches of building sales funnels, learning copywriting, and direct response advertising, spending hours handwriting famous ads thanks to a great old school course from CopyHour.com.
I’m not even kidding. I had yellow legal pads filled with my handwritten ✍️ versions of these old school ads, trying to understand why and how they worked.

There’s a quote from David Lynch that reminds me of those times around my kitchen table, rubbing my cramping hand. He says…

“You need to understand the rules before you can break them. Otherwise, you’re not breaking them, you’re just doing bad work.”

In my opinion, this is the exact opposite of what most “gurus” tell you. The unsexy truth? I spent YEARS grinding through old advertising books, reading a bit, then trying it out in the real world.

In case you’re wondering, here’s a list of my favorite direct response copywriting books:

• “Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
• “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz
• “The Boron Letters” by Gary Halbert
• “Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
• “My Life in Advertising & Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins
• “Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got” by Jay Abraham

I studied these essential books because I wanted to understand the machinery before I could even THINK about trying something different.

I don’t care if it’s music, marketing, or standup comedy –> you need to master the fundamentals.

Once you start to understand it, then you can start to create something new and original.

THE BOTTOM LINE: True creativity isn’t about random rebellion. It’s about understanding the game so well that you can rewrite the rules.