The Secret

Copy-Boarding
System
Five Dead Simple Steps to
Writing a $1,000,000+ Sales
Letter Even if You’ve Never
Written Sales Copy Before

Joe Schriefer
The Secret Copy-Boarding System

Created with:
90-Minute Books
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Copyright © 2018, Joe Schriefer

Published in the United States of America

180220-01011-2

ISBN-13: 978-1947313873
ISBN-10: 1947313878

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to the author of this book.
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Here’s What’s Inside…
Introduction...............................................................1
What The Hell is Copy-Boarding? It Sounds
Like Torture! Like Waterboarding!...................5
A (Quick!) Word about Big Ideas ........................7
Step 1 - Form Your Pitch ..................................... 10
Step 2 - Conduct an Objection Audit ............... 12
Step 3 - Organize Those Objections ................ 15
Step 4 - Overcome Objections with
Your Subheads ....................................................... 19
Step 5 - Fill In the C-P-P-P-B Loop
In-between Each Subhead.................................. 23
Bonus- Live Read! ................................................. 27
Kick Your Copy into Overdrive ........................ 29
Introduction
Have you ever struggled to write sales copy?
Have you ever stared at a blank page, wondering
where to start?
Have you ever been frustrated by writing,
rewriting, and then rewriting something, only to
reread it and be left wondering…what's right?
Do you spend hours tearing up your drafts only
to tear up the next draft as well?
Well, my name is Joe Schriefer, and I feel your
pain. I help to run Agora Financial, a subsidy of
Agora Incorporated. We have taken our
company, Agora Financial, from about $35
million in sales a few years ago to a high-water
mark in all of Agora, which reached $248 million
of sales in 2017. I direct all of our copywriting at
Agora Financial, which employs a total of 27
copywriters and publishes more than 42
different financial research products. In 2017
alone, Agora Financial published more than 152

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different sales letters, a bit more than 30,194
pages of actual sales copy, which equates to
about 1.3 million words of sales copy.
And in all that copy I read, I see two big
problems that lead to bad sales copy.
Number one is that the copy lacks a good big
idea.
The second thing that ruins copy, even if it has a
good idea, is that the good idea is presented very
poorly.
What’s the simple fix?
It’s copy-boarding.
Think about copy-boarding this way; if you tried
to drive some place that you've never visited
before, you wouldn't start driving without a GPS
telling you which turn to make. In the same way,
no writer should ever stare at a blank piece of
paper and start writing a sales letter aimlessly
without knowing which persuasion will be
needed to reach the financial destination -- a
‘subscribe now’ / ‘buy now’ button. Copy-
boarding will give you the necessary turn-by-
turn persuasive directions to take your customer
from the big idea to the close of that sales letter.
Don't just take it from me; I have received
hundreds of testimonials from successful people
who have gone through my copy-boarding
system.

2
“I’ve been through dozens of copywriting courses
and have read over 60 books on the topic
(including all the classics). The training that Joe
has put together is by far the best I’ve ever
experienced. In fact, saying, “it’s worth more than
gold” is an understatement…because this course
gives you the blueprint to out-convert your
competition in the next generation of direct
marketing.” – A. Contrares

“Copy-boarding transformed the way I write sales

letters, and I’m about to launch my own product,
so the training will fatten my wallet.” – Finn

“Copy-boarding resonates too much with my style.

I was a Software Engineer for 15 years, before
turning to copywriting! For that reason, I use a lot
of processes, but copy-boarding is one of the best!”
– Maria

“After going through your copy boarding session, I

feel as though my brain has just been re-wired.
Your training has simplified the copywriting
process for me, and I’d like to say that I’m
immensely grateful.” - Chu

“…I love how Agora understands that offers are

won during the “thinking stage.” – Andrew

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Now, maybe you’re wondering, “why would Joe
share this information if it’s so valuable”
The answer is simple…
I believe there are two mindsets wrapped
around sharing your trade secrets; an
abundance mindset and a scarcity mindset. The
scarcity mindset says, "Oh, I don't want to share
the secret with you because every dollar you
make is a dollar less I'm going to make." I don't
think that way. I believe in the abundance
theory. I believe that there is a lot of money that
can be made by ethical people, and if we're all in
it together, then a rising tide lifts all boats. I'm
going to share everything I know because it's a
small world. You never know where friends lead
in the future and where we could do business in
the future with each other, even if we can't do
business right now.
When you learn copy-boarding, words will
almost spill out of your brain onto your sales
letter in a persuasive way to close deals with
your customers, so that you can spend more time
doing the things you love without frustration.
Let’s get started...
Joe

4
What The Hell is Copy-
Boarding? It Sounds Like
Torture! Like
Waterboarding!
When I was telling my wife that I planned to put
this material into a book, she thought that copy-
boarding sounded like waterboarding; somehow,
we were going to torture the copywriter until we
got the sales letter we wanted out of them. Copy-
boarding is not like waterboarding! It's designed
to make your life easier, not to torture you.
Copy-boarding is a mix-up of storyboarding used
by all writers, (such as novelists and
filmmakers)… and copywriters.
It's that merging of the two ideas: copywriting +
storyboarding.
Think of it this way…

5
Filmmakers wouldn't begin to shoot a movie
without doing a storyboard first. They would
rearrange the storyboard until all the scenes
were placed in the right order. They wouldn't go
out and begin filming with thousands of dollars
and dozens of people on the crew without
already knowing if the love story belongs before
the breakup story, or if that breakup story
belongs before the two people meet.
That's exactly what you will do with copy-
boarding. You're going to take a storyboarding
perspective to ask, "Which scenes do we take the
customer through in this sales letter, to persuade
them?"
That’s how copy-boarding works. But, there IS
one problem. And we’ll cover that next…

6
A (Quick!) Word about Big
Ideas
Please remember what I said earlier -- the first
major problem with all of the sales letters that I
review every year is the lack of a big idea. Before
you ever enter into copy-boarding, make sure
that you have a big idea worked out on paper.
Make sure you have pitched that big idea to
many different friends or coworkers or
prospects, and gather some feedback.
Let's define a ‘big idea’ for just a moment. A big
idea is an emotionally and intellectually
compelling idea with an opportunity for your
prospect. It MUST to consist of each one of those
three components: (a) emotionally stimulating,
(b) intellectually curious, and (c) an opportunity
for prospects to better their lives.
Let me give you an example…

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A big idea in the financial publishing space is
not…
“Get Rich With Dividend Stocks!”
That’s an ordinary idea.
A better big idea with the same concept might be
something like this…
“Americans can now legally piggyback
Canadian Social Security to earn anywhere
between $400 to $4,700 in extra income each
month.”
See the difference?
It ‘s the same general concept of making money
with dividend stocks, but presented in a much
more emotionally compelling, intellectually
stimulating opportunity that includes a benefit
for the reader.
So before you begin copy-boarding, make sure
that you have a good big idea.
One tip that I give to all of our writers comes
from a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
"If you give me five hours to chop down the tree
I'll spend the first four sharpening the ax."
That is exactly the way I think about a sales
letter. If you give me a month to write a sales
letter, I will spend the first three weeks thinking
about the idea. Once I have the idea, I'll use this
copy-boarding technique to write that idea very
quickly.

8
If you're not spending the majority of your time
thinking about the big idea while constructing
your sales letters, then you're beginning your
copy-boarding process by placing yourself in a
very poor foundational situation. Make sure that
you have a big idea before you begin the copy-
boarding exercise.
Okay, now that you have your big idea, let’s get
started…

9
Step 1 - Form Your Pitch

To get started you simply need the two items you

see above – a sharpie market a stack of Post-it
Notes.
The copy-boarding system has five steps in total;
out of those five steps you will end up with a
sales letter.
10
Step number one is to form your pitch of your
big idea. Again, you MUST to have a big idea, and
you should have spoken with at least six other
people about that idea and sought their
feedback.
At Agora Financial, we have 20 or more writers,
so at any point when we come up with
something we believe is a big idea, we begin to
pitch it to our fellow copywriters.
When you pitch to your fellow friends, prospects,
writers, or coworkers, make sure it lasts less
than 120 seconds. Also make sure that it
contains these three things: emotion, curosity,
and opportunity. It needs to be emotional, it
needs to be intellectually curious, and it needs to
provide an opportunity for your reader.
For the recipient of that pitch, look for one single
thing: critical feedback in the form of ‘what if’
statements. Instead of that person just saying, "I
don't like the idea," or that the idea isn't urgent
or emotionally curious enough, instead they
should say to you, "What if you added urgency by
saying that something would happen to the
prospect by this date if they take advantage of
this idea?" So in exchange for that person
listening to your idea, you would ask that person
to provide you with what-if statements to
improve your idea. That's the very first thing to
do before you move on to the second step of
copy-boarding.

11
Step 2 - Conduct an
Objection Audit

The second step of copy-boarding is to conduct

something I call an ‘objection audit’.
Why do we start with objections?

12
Put yourself inside the prospect's mind. As soon
as they hear your pitch, the prospect will throw
up (literally) every objection and every reason
NOT to buy from your sales letter. It's up to us to
convince prospects that they need your product
by addressing those objections with the benefits
If you don’t know the objections and can’t
overcome them, your sales letter will never
work.

That’s why we always start with the objection.

We want to meet the prospect inside their mind.
So how do you conduct an objection audit? With
three to six people, you will pitch them the idea
from step number one. Grab a series of Post-it
Notes, ask your audience to throw out any and
all of their objections after hearing that pitch,
and then write down every objection on an
individual Post-it Note.
At Agora Financial, we write about the stock
market every day. If we had a pitch like the one
mentioned earlier, i.e. how Americans can now
legally piggyback Canadian Social Security and
earn between $400 and $4,700 a month, how
would the audience object after hearing that
idea?
Maybe it’s something like…
• Who are you and why are you writing to
me?
• Can you explain how this is legal?
13
 • Can I collect my typical American Social
Security on top of this?
• Do I have to live in Canada?
• How much money can I earn?
• I've never dealt with the stock market
before. [Note: not every objection ends
with a question mark]
• I've invested in other newsletters in the
past, and they've only proven to be a
scam.
• How much does this research cost?
• How quickly will I receive my
information?
• Is your order form secure?
• What else do I receive with my
subscription?
During an objection audit, you're not thinking
about organizing these objections; you're
throwing out top-of-mind objections after
hearing that pitch. After writing every objection
on its individual Post-it Note, by the time you've
ended an objection audit, Post-it Notes should fill
your entire desk.
Got your objections covered?
Then let’s move on…

14
Step 3 - Organize Those
Objections
Once these individual Post-it Notes have been
arranged on your desk in a haphazard order,
then you will move on to step number three.
Organize those objections from top to bottom in
anticipation of the reader’s order of objections. If
we pitch that idea of Canadian Social Security,
readers may want to know how much money
they will make before knowing how much this
research costs.
I suggest you find a wall; stick the first objection
that you think the reader will have after hearing
your idea at the very top of that wall. All you will
do is move down from the top of that wall to the
bottom of that wall by putting Post-it Note after
Post-it Note of objections from top to bottom,
organized in such a way that it will overcome the
objection in the order presented (or conceived)
by the reader. It will look like this…

15
16
Often during this organizational process, you will
begin moving around Post-it Notes.
Once you step back and look at your objection
organization, you may start to read your
objections from top to bottom and see that
certain objections are out of order. This is
normal during the copy-boarding process. Just
like a filmmaker may look at all of his scenes in a
certain order, and then begin rearranging scenes
to better tell the story, do the same thing with
copy-boarding. After reviewing all of your
objections, you may begin to notice objections
that you missed, or the holes in your sales
argument, so you will throw another Post-it Note
into the middle of this organizational structure.
Maybe an objection placed low on the sheet will
be rearranged to a higher place on the wall
because you see a hole in the letter’s logical
persuasion.
By the end, your entire set of Post-it Notes
should be organized from top to bottom on a
wall; in the logical way that you think the
customer will face those objections.
In the financial markets, if we have a ‘front-end
promotion’, which is defined as acquiring a new
customer that we've never dealt with before,
typically the customer will want to know who is
talking to them very early in the process. In a
typical front-end sales letter, very early in that
sales letter we will overcome the "Who are you

17
and why should I trust you" objection, aka the
Trust Objection.
If it is a ‘back-end promotion’, defined as a
promotion sent to our internal audience that is
meant to monetize that customer (by selling
them a second or third subscription), then we
typically don't have that Trust Objection. Usually
the customer has already built a relationship
with that particular guru.
You can see that copy-boarding is based on
anticipating those objections of the audience
who will hear your big idea; it's trying to
organize all those objections and overcome
them, giving you an emotional, persuasive GPS to
hit the next objection, rather than blankly
writing from a piece of paper. By step three you
should have no Post-it Notes on your desk, only
on a wall; the team surrounding you should read
those objections from top to bottom to make
sure it overcomes everything that you believe
the prospect will feel after hearing that big idea.

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Step 4 - Overcome
Objections with Your
Subheads
At that point, your copy-boarding meeting is
done. You can thank your friends and coworkers
for participating and dismiss them back into
their normal lives.
Please leave all the Post-it Notes on the wall with
all of the objections. Then, to the right of those
Post-it Notes objections, put another series of
blank Post-it Notes on the wall.
In step number four, you will take every one of
those objections on the left hand column and
rewrite it as a benefit-driven subhead on the
right hand column.
For example…
When trying to acquire a cold customer, we may
want to overcome the Trust Objection by telling
them a little bit about who is writing to them,

19
and giving them a benefit regarding what they
will learn when they read on today. Maybe I say,
"My name is Joe Schriefer. I've written three New
York Times bestselling books in the financial
markets. I've worked at a hedge fund, and there's
no one better in the world to show you how to
generate extra income in the stock market."
You're taking that Trust Objection and writing a
subhead for your promotion that overcomes that
objection.
Another objection might be, "How much money
can I make from this situation?" You could turn
that into a benefit-driven subhead by saying,
"The average American can collect between $400
and $4,700 in extra income every month by
piggybacking off of Canadian Social Security."
From top to bottom, you're turning each and
every one of the objections into benefit-driven
subheads for the reader.
This process can take anywhere from one hour
to half a day, depending on how many objections
must be overcome to get that prospect to hit the
buy button at the end of the day.
It will look like this…

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21
After you’re finished, you should be able to re-
read your pitch out loud, and then read your
subheads going all the way down the wall. Your
pitch and all of those subheads should tell the
full story of your sales letter. Now your entire
sales letter should be known.
At this point, you should be able to see what is
missing, if anything, from that persuasive
structure.
If you have organized all of your objections in the
proper way and turned them into benefit-driven
subheads, then simply forming and reading your
pitch, and then reading all of your subheads from
top to bottom, should tell the full story of your
sales letter.

22
Step 5 - Fill In the C-P-P-P-
B Loop In-between Each
Subhead
In step number five, the entire flow of your sales
letter should be seen through your pitch and all
of your subheads.
Now it’s time to open up Microsoft Word… or
Google Docs… and begin writing your sales
letter.
Your 120 second pitch from Step #1 is your
headline and lead.
Your subheads get listed in order of what’s on
your wall.
Then, you simply fill in the gaps between the
subheads with something we call the C-P-P-P-B
loop.
In the C-P-P-P-B loop, C is the claim. You have to
make a Claim the reader.

23
The three P's that follow all stand for Proof. You
should provide three pieces of proof for that
claim.
You should end with the B, which is the Benefit
to the reader. That loop should occur over and
over again between every one of your subheads.
Using this pitch (how Americans can now legally
collect Canadian Social Security for $400 to
$4,700 a month), and then my first objection
("Who are you and why are you talking to me"), I
have turned them into the subhead, "I'm Joe
Schriefer, I've written three New York Times
bestselling books, and I know more about
income than any other financial analyst in the
world." Now I have to fill in a claim, three pieces
of proof, and a benefit to the reader.
In between that subhead, I would say again, "My
name is Joe Schriefer, and I'm about to show you
an amazing way to collect between $400 to
$4,700 a month by legally piggybacking on
something that Americans don't know is
available to them, which is Canadian Social
Security." That's my claim.
Then I would provide three pieces of proof to
support my claim. I might restate all of my
bestselling books or tell readers that I have
32,000 customers spread across 52 countries. I
may give them very nice testimonials from
famous people. I might say, “Warren Buffet says
that Joe knows what he's doing for income.” If
my claim is that I will show you how to generate

24
income in a way most Americans never know
exists, proof point number one is I'm a
bestselling author, so you should believe me.
Proof point number two is Warren Buffet says
I'm amazing and I know how to generate income.
Proof point number three is I have thousands of
very happy customers around the world.
You end that C-P-P-P-B loop with another
benefit-driven statement to the reader. “After
you act on what I'm about to show you today,
you should be able to collect your first $400
income payment starting on March 12.”
You do that C-P-P-P-B loop in between every
sub-headed section. The great part is that
because you know what you need to overcome,
the next objection will be the next Post-it Note,
and then the next subhead that you've now
written. You know exactly where to end that first
loop ("Who are you and why should I trust you")
and how to pick up the next loop ("How much
money can I make from this") to repeat it for the
second subhead.
In this example, my next three proof points will
be different because it's not proof about me; it's
proof about how much money they can make in
that objection. I will say that I have found three
individuals from around America, and I will tell
their stories.
1. “Susan from Arkansas has piggybacked
Canadian Social Security and she's going to

25
 receive a check for $3,100 this upcoming
Wednesday.”
2. “A man named John K. who never
graduated from high school has
piggybacked Canadian Social Security to the
tune of $52,000 all of last year.”
3. “Harvard Business School says that
collecting Canadian Social Security is one of
the hidden income secrets out there today.”
These are my three pieces of proof. I will end
with another benefit statement, and move on to
the next sub-headed section.
You will move from subhead to subhead and fill
it with that loop series, from the top to all the
way down to the bottom. This will help you write
sales copy because you know exactly where you
have to be in that subhead, and you know where
to go next. No longer can you spin off on tangents
that will not benefit your sales letter. No longer
will you spend 20 or 30 pages writing a piece of
persuasion that the reader doesn’t need.
Instead, you will know exactly where you are in
your sales letter and exactly where you need to
go without getting distracted on any tangents.
By the end of this step, you should have a fully
completed first draft of your sales letter.
Congrats! You’ve moved from idea to execution…
FAST!
Here’s a bonus step to really refine your first
draft into a final letter.

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Bonus- Live Read!
After you have a first full draft of your sales
letter, move on to bonus step six.
Here’s how it works…
When your first draft is done, gather the same
three or six people from the beginning of the
copy-boarding process, and read your sales
letter out loud to the group. Ask them not to
interrupt, but to make a note at any place where
they would stop reading as a prospect.
At the end of your live read, go page by page,
asking for anyone who would have stopped
reading on page number one to tell you they
would have stopped.
If no one would have stopped reading on page
one, then ask the group, "Would anybody have
stopped reading on page two?"
Rinse and repeat on every page.
What you’re looking for is overlap in sections
where multiple people found themselves bored,

27
confused, or claims unbelievable enough to have
put down the sales letter.
If that happens, youi know you need to address
a problem in that section. If one person (out of
the group of three to six people) has an
objection but the rest of the group didn't, just
ignore that objection and move on.
But if two or three people have an objection and
say, "I would have put the sales letter down on
page eight because I found the proof
unbelievable," then you know you have to go
back and find better proof.
Bottom line is this -- In this optional step six,
you're reading your sales letter out loud, trying
to find multiple objections that were not
addressed among multiple people on the same
sales passage. If that's the case, go back and fix
that issue until you get a final draft of your sales
letter. If you were the world's best writer and
persuader who read your sales letter out loud,
and no one found any objections or reasons to
stop reading, then you know you have a final
draft.
Pat yourself on the back. Now it’s time to put the
promotion out to the marketplace and earn some
royalties.
Want more of my help in making that happen?
Then read on…

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Kick Your Copy into
Overdrive
I encourage you to try the copy-boarding system
with their your piece of copy. I'm convinced that
it could turn people who have never before
written sales letters into million-dollar sales
letter writers by leveraging the idea of
crowdsourcing those objections, and getting
people to help you organize those objections in a
way that doesn’t mean you need to be
Hemingway on paper. You don't have to be the
world's best writer; you are simply hitting the
objections in order. I have personally witnessed
the way copy-boarding can take people, very
junior people off the streets of Baltimore where
we do business, and turn them into million-
dollar sales letter writers within their first
package or two. I have seen enormous royalty
checks paid out by people using this system
without getting lost in a 30-page tangent. I am
convinced that it will make your job easier, give
29
you the ability to write faster, and produce more
sales for you.
At the end of the day, if you're interested in
kicking your career or your business into
overdrive, then I recommend you do one simple
thing: write to me at Agora Financial so we can
do some business together. At Agora Financial,
we have more than a million people on our sales
list. Our sales figures run into the hundreds of
millions of dollars every year. I am always
looking for new copywriters. Again, I've seen
very junior-level copywriters come into our
business, and these same junior-level
copywriters have received quarterly royalty
checks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In quarter four of 2017, I saw Agora Financial
pay the largest royalty check that we have ever
paid out to a copywriter: a check of $1.2 million.
Think about that…
More than a million dollars in royalties… for just
THREE months of work!
I would love to issue the same type of royalty
check to you, too.
So join us in Baltimore with Agora Financial.
When you do, you will be surrounded by the
world's best copywriters to push your career
forward, as well as the world's best financial
gurus and thinkers in the marketplace. You will
be surrounded by a business on the cutting edge
of all things marketing, a business that has more

30
than a million paid customers; you could put
your sales letters in front of millions of people
every single day. You will be surrounded by a
team that's used to buying $60 to $80 million of
paid media every year to help scale up your
promotion in a big bold way. There is no better
place to learn copywriting skills. There is no
better place to learn marketing, and no better
place to learn about the financial markets than at
Agora Financial.
If you're looking to kick your career into
overdrive, then I want you to do one simple
thing: Drop me an email at my work email
address which is
JSchriefer@AgoraFinancial.com.
But here’s the catch…
I receive hundreds if not thousands of emails
every single day, so get my attention somehow.
Just like we (marketers, copywriters, and
business owners) have to get our prospect's
attention, I want you to get my attention
somehow. I don't care about resumes or your
background. I have seen people with no higher
education succeed in our business very well, and
I have seen people with Ivy League education fail
at our business. I've seen former carpenters
succeed. I've seen some English majors succeed,
and other English majors fail.
What I DO care about is that you have three of
these things: curiosity, an insane work ethic, and
the ability to fail without feeling like a failure.

31
If you have those three things, (1) curiosity, (2)
insane work ethic, and (3) the ability to fail
without feeling like a failure, then I know you
could kick your career into overdrive by joining
us here at Agora Financial.
If you're not a copywriter, but you are an affiliate
traffic driver or a business owner who would like
to swap lists with us, then you can also write me
at JSchriefer@AgoraFinancial.com.
In closing, that’s the secret copy-boarding
system. I hope it helped you. I know it's helped
dozens of people around the world. I've seen it
transform people’s lives off the streets of
Baltimore, earning hundreds of thousands of
dollars if not millions each and every year. Some
copywriters’ salaries would rival any doctor’s or
lawyer’s salary, or even some professional
athletes. These copywriters came in knowing
little to nothing about sales letters, but using this
secret copy-boarding system they’ve earned
fortunes.
I hope the same happens to you.

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