Pete Godfrey’s ‘Business Profits Triangle’

Recently had the chance to interview my good mate Pete Godfrey, one of Australia’s (the world’s even!) best direct response copywriters.

The topic was what Pete calls the “Business Profits Triangle”…

…how mindset, marketing and copywriting combine to deliver sustainable business success.

I’ve split the interview into 3 parts. The first one deals mainly with the issue of mindset.

Without further ado…

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Kevin Francis:

Right, OK everybody and welcome to this special broadcast interview today. My name is Kevin Francis of “Maximum Results Copywriting” and I’m delighted today to have as my special guest master copywriter Pete Godfrey. Pete welcome.

Pete Godfrey:

Hi Kev, it’s great to be here today.

Kevin Francis:

Alright. Pete’s going to talk to us about his “Business Profits Triangle” methodology which is essential for success in whatever business you happen to be in. This is a concept that you need to master if you really want to be successful long term.

Now a brief introduction to Pete, for those of you who aren’t familiar with him. Pete’s been active in direct response marketing for well over a decade now. Known as “The Wizard of Words” he’s developed a very keen eye as to what it takes to successful in business.

Pete’s one of Australia’s most successful and highest paid copywriters because of his uncanny ability to turn the written word into money. That’s why clients line up and almost beg him to do their promotions, and his client list reads like a “Who’s Who” of the world’s savviest entrepreneurs including people like Mal Emery, Pat Mesiti, Tom Caraccio, Rowena Helps, Rick Otton, Daryl and Andrew Grant, Bill Zheng, Matt and Amanda Clarkson, Roberta Faddoul and many, many others.

This “Working class rebel made good” or as he often describes himself the one time “Rebel without a clue” is also a top level copywriting trainer, having trained hundreds of budding copywriters including Bret Thomson, Bill Dimitrovski and Steve Plummer, amongst others, and he’s even managed to teach me a few things as well.

Pete Godfrey:

I was going to say, don’t leave yourself out of this.

Kevin Francis:

Pete is a business coach as well and recently set up his Private Wealth Group which has been extraordinarily successful, People pay him $29,000, almost $30,000 a year to be part of that group. He’s also got a monthly newsletter called “The Emotional Ad Writing & Marketing Letter”, which as far as I’m concerned is essential reading for anyone in business.

His irreverent style and no BS attitude offends some, attracts others. And you can find out more about Pete at www.PeteGodfrey.com and he’ll be telling a little bit more about some of his other stuff later on. But let’s get straight to the point here today.

Pete Godfrey:

Pete’s life story in 2 quick minutes.

Kevin Francis:

His life story in 2 quick minutes and how he came to…

…alright, he’s off now, I’ve completely lost control of this interview so I’ll simply hand over to Pete and say, Pete welcome once again.

The “Business Profits Triangle”. What is it, why is it important and how did it come about?

Pete Godfrey:

Well it’s come about over many years, as you know mate. I’ve been publishing my Emotional Ad Writing & Marketing Letter since 2006, and there’s 3 important elements that I cover in that newsletter that became very clear after a year or so of writing the damned thing I wasn’t quite aware of the first year. But then I started taking notice of the articles and the subject matter and it comes down to 3 things and that’s why I created the business profits triangle.

Because these 3 things are the critical things that you need to grow any business whether you’re a copywriter, or marketer, an entrepreneur, or you own a fish and chip shop. The first one’s copywriting, the next one’s marketing and the third and final one is mindset. So basically copywriting to me is getting the right words, the right message out to the right market. And that’s what I cover in detail in the newsletter.

So copywriting is all about getting that message that’s going to attract and persuade and influence your chosen market. However, I realized early on in my career when I started this about 10 years ago that copywriting doesn’t live in isolation.

The best copywriters, and you’re a great marketer yourself Kev, we’re all great marketers. So we’ve got to understand the principles of marketing. So copywriting without the right marketing strategies is doomed to fail right from the word go. But marketing basically is all the things that we do to attract people to us and to get them coming back again, and again, and again.

Now together, great copy with great marketing strategies, is what you need, is what you should be aiming for. But the third one, and some say maybe the most important one is the mindset. And that’s what I cover each month in the newsletter as well, as you know buddy.

Mindset to me is getting rid of all the crap that interferes with me making money.

So those first few years like, let’s go back Kev, like those first few years that I started, I started there in 1999, in mail order business, writing my own ads, writing my own copy, developing my own products, etc. Back then I was still working as a working class guy doing BS jobs right throughout Australia.

Now I’d been doing that for nearly 20 years and my mindset was really on, lack. My mindset was on “money is hard to make”, my mindset wasn’t switched on to the opportunities around me. So the first couple years yeah I worked hard on my copywriting skills, my marketing skills. I bought every damned product you could imagine, I’ve got you know, a very big library here.

But I also worked hard on the mindset side to get rid of all that crap that was holding me back you know, and every thought I had, every action I’d take, every feeling I’d get, I always ask myself you know is it taking me closer to my end goal, or is it moving me away?

And that’s what a lot of my clients love. They say to me, you know Peter I really dig the way that you keep out of all the bullshit, you know you don’t let things distract you, you don’t get involved in other people’s gossip, you don’t get involved in the dramas. And the answer is simply, no I don’t because that’s taking you away from the end goal. So I’ve got a saying, “Elevate your thinking” and that’s what I try to do.

Kevin Francis:

OK that’s interesting. So let’s go back to that, you know when you were still working at ordinary jobs and things. So what really came first for you, was it mindset?

Pete Godfrey:

Of course. I used to haunt garage sales and I come across a couple of great old books, you know the standard classics “Think And Grow Rich”, “The Magic of Thinking Big” and some of Earl Nightingale’s and all that sort of stuff.

So I immersed myself in that and that was a revelation for me Kev, because I didn’t realize how powerful this stuff is and I didn’t realize that there was an escape route out for me. You know I was in my early 30’s, I’d been doing bullshit jobs since I was 15, just travelling around like a gypsy nomad. I didn’t realize that there was this whole other world that I had access to and I could access it through changing my own thoughts and behaviours, and that was a breakthrough.

Kevin Francis:

Yeah. Was it the case that you just stumbled across one of these books one day? Or did you have a mentor, or somebody recommend these to you, what was the trick?

Pete Godfrey:

I stumbled, and if you believe what a lot of people believe you know, maybe it was the universe calling out to me that day Kev.

Pointing me to that garage sale and placing my hand on that book. I don’t know, but whatever happened I was damned lucky. Then I got obsessed. Obsessed with how could I escape and then I come across the magic world of what we used to call back in the old days, pre-internet. You know mail order.

And that’s basically direct response marketing.

Kevin Francis:

Can you remember the very first you know breakthrough book you stumbled across?

Pete Godfrey:

I bought Peter Sun’s books, oh you mean on the mindset stuff?

Kevin Francis:

On the mindset stuff.

Pete Godfrey:

I think it was The Magic of Thinking Big.

Kevin Francis:

OK, alright, yeah good book, yeah.

Pete Godfrey:

But before that, I tell a lie, before that it was John Keogh.

He’s a great guy, from Canada I think. But it was talking about …each different chapter, they had a chapter on visualization, they had a chapter on affirmations. So I would do this religiously Kev, I didn’t do this half-assed. You know what I’m like, I jump in boots and all and pray to God that there’s some water in the pool then start swimming like mad. And that’s what I did. I immersed myself in this stuff.

One thing, for the listeners too. When you start getting into this mindset stuff, when you start realizing this stuff, there’s an urge to share with everyone this new world that you discovered. The trouble is your outer world hasn’t changed so your friends and family are very, very skeptical. So I learned to keep this stuff to myself after a while because your inner world changes before the outer world does. And you can’t bypass that step. You know, your thoughts and behaviours and actions change, and then eventually your reality changes.

But there’s a time space between when you change inside until the outer world catches up. Now that’s the frustrating part; and that was probably a year or two for me before it came together. And that’s where people can easily just stop and say, oh this positive thinking is bullshit, you know.

But that’s the critical time. Luckily I just kept on pushing on through all those doubts and you know I still work on my mind every day. It’s one of the things I do.

Pete Godfrey’s ‘Business Profits Triangle’ – Part 1

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