Here is my take on the core fundamentals to succeeding in this industry. And there are many technical answers, but the overarching truth I keep coming back to is that skills combined with time in the game guarantee success, it's just a matter of time.

Skills come from deliberate practice/learning and putting your learning to the test in the real world (in our case by launching ads, getting feedback, and iterating). The core skills in my career have been:

1) Direct response copywriting

2) Strategic decision making

3) Designing systems

So simplifying complex situations and making high-leverage decisions, and being skilled in direct response.

The business/systems skills came from operating ecom businesses starting when I was 19 and solving bottlenecks that got bigger and more complex as the business expanded.

The copy/DR skills came from making thousands of ads, studying other winners, and learning from books and courses and putting what I learned into practice.

I wrote a VSL a day for a year, I wrote 1,000 words of copy every day for 3 years, I studied hundreds of sales letters, VSL scripts, and funnels. I gave it my all for years day after day. So when I wrote my first VSL 3 years into my ecommerce career, it was a massive winner that took me to new levels of revenue very rapidly.

The second thing I mentioned was time in the game. And this is by far the most important thing. If you spend years focused on trying to make something work, a few things happen.

One, progress compounds, and it's only a matter of time before luck meets preparation and things take off.

Two, you gain skills as you spend time building, testing, learning.

And three, you meet people, make connections, and build out your network.

So, for anyone reading this, my biggest recommendation is to choose 1-2 core skills to develop and go all in on learning and developing these, and then make a vow to yourself that you're going to stay in the game for the next 5 years at least, no matter what.

You have to really sit down and decide, am I willing to stick with this industry (not one specific method), for half a decade? Because if you do, you will be on an entirely different level. If you look at all the top guys in our game, they all got huge success years after they first started, usually year 4 or 5.

If you want to take your skills to the top of the industry, I've compiled all of my VSL/DR/copywriting knowledge into a private community that now has 115+ ecom founders inside. Check it out here: https://www.skool.com/ecom-blueprint1​

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