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Highwayman

Learn copywriting backwards


Learn Copywriting Backwards is relaunching as Copywriting Night School

If you're an existing student, you can still access your LCB account here. Otherwise, head on over to the new and improved course by hitting the button below.

Go to Copywriting Night SchoolThe first week of training is free

If you have any problems, email me: bnonn@informationhighwayman.com.

Designed from the ground up to avoid the “lizard brain” problems of other training materials

Let me be blunt. In the past, I created some of the best training available—on everything from technical copy tricks to broad sales strategy.

This is not me blowing my own trumpet; it’s the opinion of other copywriters I admire. For example, Donnie Bryant comments:

Bnonn Tennant is the one of the few writers who consistently makes me feel…pedestrian. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read his copy and kicked myself for being so ineloquent. Or how many ideas he’s expressed that I wish I’d thought of first.

Unlike many of our peers, you never have to worry about Bnonn stretching the truth or writing fluff or hype. He’s persuasive and pithy, emotionally compelling and intellectually engaging. He’s every bit as capable of writing long-form sales letters and uber-short landing pages. Both seem to flow effortlessly from his pen.

Not only does he know how to write high-converting stuff, but he understands the whys of human psychology—the forces that cause people to act. Bnonn is one of the best. I can’t recommend him highly enough.

You’d think, given such flattering remarks, that I’d have been killer at teaching copywriting.

Yet when I saw the results people got from my training, I was always puzzled and frustrated that they struggled to implement what I taught.

I finally figured out why. It was because I was modelling my training on what other top copywriters and experts had already created. And here’s the problem:

:/

Just about all copywriting training material is unlearnable by design

I don’t mean that copywriters intentionally make their books and courses hard to learn from.

Rather, like most people, they simply haven’t studied learning psychology. They teach “intuitively”—thinking that if they simply walk you through writing copy, from headline to CTA, then you’ll come out the other end knowing how to do it.

Unfortunately, as with many things in life, the way we naturally teach doesn’t actually mesh with the way we naturally learn.

The lizard brain gets in the way.

I first realized this after I had been coaching people one-on-one. The more I did that, the more my teaching changed. After a while, I realized that how I taught people in person was utterly different to how I taught them in my training material.

It was a heck of a lot more effective.

So I set about creating training material that followed the same teaching method I use with my personal coaching. And the result is Learn Copywriting Backwards.

Why you should learn to write copy backwards

I didn’t call this program Learn Copywriting Backwards because it’s a nice figure of speech. I literally teach you by starting at the end of your copy and then working toward the beginning.

For a long time, I would start with the headline and work forward. And for a long time, students struggled right out of the gate.

Why?

Yeah, that’s right—because the headline is the hardest piece of copy to write!

So the lizard brain goes into flight mode—and your well-intentioned effort to learn is instantly crippled. Only after I started really studying how people acquire new skills and knowledge did I realize that starting at the beginning, which seemed totally natural (and nearly all copywriting courses, books etc do)…was actually backwards.

This program is designed to work with your natural learning psychology—rather than against it. I identified 6 key ingredients for effective learning, and baked them into the course. These make your lizard brain happy and content—or even put it into fight mode, where it sees each task as an enemy it can beat, and devotes all your energy to whooping ass. Either way, you avoid Mr. Lizard getting scared and flighty—so he never stops you from getting the job done.

Let me lay out how different this teaching format is from the usual suspects—especially copywriting books and “guru” courses. I’ll use a grid format so you can easily see how they compare; you can click the links to see a fuller explanation in a popup window:

A training program designed around 6 key ingredients of effective learning…


Other training

Learn Copywriting Backwards
Focuses heavily on the sexy “ninja” techniques and persuasion “chokeholds” which make up the top 20% of copywriting skills used by experts
1 Focuses just on the minority of “Pareto skills” that make up the bottom 80% of copywriting skills used by people who just need to write good copy. Explanation 
Teaches copywriting by trying to convey large, complex ideas first (headlines, leads etc)
2 Breaks copywriting into its minimal useful “parts” so your brain doesn’t blow out. Explanation 
Fails to establish the underlying similarities between seemingly different types of copy, and expect you to learn by rote
3 Explains and link components of copy through unifying principles that lets you understand why they are effective. Explanation 
Expects you to simply follow the structure of a sales page or letter, and stay motivated when you start struggling with hard techniques early on
4 Makes adherence easy by intelligently progressing through easy components first, building a positive feedback loop of successful action. Explanation 
Assumes that once you’ve learned something, it’s in your head, and that repeating it is wasteful
5 Ensures retention of key concepts and techniques through repetition. Explanation 
Expects you to figure it out on your own, or offer you overpriced “consulting” that fails to produce results
6 Optional: personal coaching that quickly identifies how to overcome obstacles, fix your technique, and ensure you get results. Explanation 

6 principles for learning = lizard brain ally

By designing the training program around these 6 principles, your lizard brain becomes an ally to your cause, rather than an enemy.

Happy lizard

The result: in 4 months, you have strong, compelling copy written by your very own self to use in your business—and a skillset that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life. Speaking of which, now that you know how you’ll learn in this program, let me tell you more about what you will learn—starting with 3 critical elements of salesmanship…

Discover the 3 keys of salesmanship you’ll focus on Try module #1 free