The Hustler vs. The Hitman

A cautionary tale for coaches

Early in my copywriting career, I was fortunate to work with 2 amazing mentors.

Both were expert marketers and exceptionally talented.

And like me, they both placed a high value on helping people live healthier, happier lives.

I worked closely with them for years. Honestly, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was!

My first mentor — a legend in the copywriting world — is like a copywriting hitman. I apprenticed with him for 6 ½ years.

He has one of the highest success rates in the industry for beating controls. That means when his sales copy goes up against the best performing copy (the control), his sells even more… usually much more.

And he was teaching me all of his secrets!

These are secrets you can’t find in any book, course, or copywriting workshop. (I even had to sign an NDA promising not to divulge them to anyone.)

Everything The Hitman taught me was about writing high-converting copy… copy that hits the bullseye.

Things like…

• How to write in a way that’s practically impossible to ignore

• How to keep people reading

• How to overcome their doubts and skepticism

• How to show them why the thing I’m selling is exactly what they need

And so much more…

To him, everything was about quality.

In fact, whenever I submitted my copy for him to review, he would ask me this question:

"If your life depended on this working, is this the copy you’d put out there?"

He called it having a “gun to the head” mentality.

So that gives you an idea of what The Hitman was about. Now let me tell you about my other mentor… the one I came to call The Hustler.

The Hustler’s clients were building online businesses. And my role was to help them create digital marketing campaigns designed to help them.

The thing I loved most about working with The Hustler was helping his clients develop their unique positioning.

I knew from my training with The Hitman how important it was to have unique positioning. It was one of the key factors in creating a successful marketing campaign.

This is especially true when you’re competing in saturated niches, which The Hustler’s clients were. So I worked hard to make each of them stand out.

I loved that I was applying the advanced skills I was learning with The Hitman to support the work I was doing with The Hustler. It made everything I was doing feel so connected and aligned!

And then… the whole vibe changed.

The Hustler started to shift his thinking. He became laser-focused on growth and profits. His mantras became speed is king and done is better than perfect.

Now don’t get me wrong. I believe in growth and profit, too. But there’s a tipping point where the drive for growth and profit comes at a price. I saw that happen over and over again in the corporate world.

Fast Food vs. Home Cooking

The bigger a business wants to scale, the more automated and repeatable their processes need to be. That’s a simple fact.

Just think of fast food restaurants. They can’t offer healthy, home-cooked meals. That’s impossible at scale.

So they systematize, automate, and streamline.

Fast food restaurants like McDonald’s design everything to squeeze out the most profit:

• Where they get their ingredients

• The quality of those ingredients

• How the ingredients are processed to fit into a highly automated system

And The Hustler was doing something similar.

He had a well-oiled marketing engine. But to scale it, everything had to be simplified and super-efficient. It had to become as “plug & play” as possible.

And that’s when things started falling apart for me.

The Hustler didn’t want me to bring a “gun to the head” mentality to create quality marketing assets for his clients anymore. That approach slowed things down, which didn’t align with his obsession with speed.

So he revamped the system. He figured out a way to build plug-and-play marketing assets for his clients. If they didn’t like them, they were told to trust the process.

Then when they had spent enough money on ads to prove the funnel wasn’t working, they’d come to me to help them fix it.

By that point, they were often very upset. They had already spent oodles on the program, and oodles more on ads.

When I looked at their funnels, I could often see immediately what wasn’t working—and exactly how to fix it:

• How to help them sound different from everyone else out there

• How to make their videos so compelling people wanted to keep watching

• How to position them as the perfect person to solve their audience’s problem

When I got to do that kind of work, people on the team said it was like watching The Mentalist in action.

But my approach didn’t fit with The Hustler’s new direction.

I was about home cooking from scratch. But what he wanted was ultra-processed fast food.

I was told to simplify my coaching… to give people one surface-level tweak and get them back out there fast, pouring their hard-earned money into ads that led to a generic sales video.

I couldn’t do it.

The Hitman’s precision training had become second nature to me. It was part of my copywriting DNA.

Besides, I saw too many of The Hustler’s clients “trust the process” and end up going broke and getting burned out.

I wasn’t okay with that.

To be fair, some of The Hustler’s clients had plug-and-play funnels that worked great. And a rare few even knocked it out of the park.

But there were so many people who floundered. Some even had to drop out and get a job to pay off the debt they had wracked up.

Maybe “done is better than perfect” has its place.

But personally, I like to create assets that are more like a home-cooked meal, made from scratch, crafted with attention and with, well, love.

That’s how I work with my clients. (And that’s why I’m no longer coaching The Hustler’s clients.)

When your dream clients scroll past you…
When your webinar flops…
When your funnel is a dead end…

You don’t need “fast.”

You need focus.

You need copy that connects…
Messaging that moves people...
And a strategy that positions you as the best and obvious choice.

That’s how I help my clients win.

If you enjoyed this article, please give it some joy back by clicking that adorable little heart below. And if something about it resonated with you, please leave a comment letting me know. I’d love to hear from you!