Hey Reader,

Back two careers ago…

… Before I got into copywriting…

… Before my days as a Parole Officer…

… I was “Special Agent Jordan,” an officer of the Defense Security Agency (a now-defunct branch of the Department of Defense).

As sexy as my job title was, the actual job was not.

I was a background investigator.

If someone applied for or held a security clearance, it was my agency's duty to look into their background and make certain they could be trusted with “our nation's most sensitive secrets. “

That’s a fancy way of saying I traveled around Washington D.C., interviewing the co-workers, neighbors, friends, grade school teachers, etc., of security clearance applicants.

By and large, it was a pretty boring job… at first.

Eventually, I worked my way up to the point where I would get “issue investigations.”

Issue cases happened when someone with Secret or Top Secret security clearance did something to compromise themselves.

For example, getting arrested, having an affair, receiving questionable amounts of money from an unknown source…

… Or “mishandling” classified documents. Yikes!

If you follow the news, you’ve probably heard about how our current and ex-president have been stashing classified files under their mattresses… and anywhere else they store old junk.

In fact, the other day, I caught a soundbite about this classified documents nonsense that really perked up my ears and titillated my marketing mind.

Here’s what Congressman Mike Turner (R) from Ohio had to say about the discovery of classified materials in President Biden’s Garage:

“… And now, he has them in his garage behind his Corvette, next to the leaf blower.”

Wow — what a rip!

Listen, as a “Special Agent,” I took classified information home with me every night.

Not in the illegal or “accidentally on purpose” sense.

And NO, I didn’t declassify it with my mind before I took it out of my field office.

Everything on my laptop was potentially classified.

And all my handwritten case notes and files I carried around…

… they were classified as “Secret” the second my investigations were closed.

The reality is “classified” documents wind up in places maybe they shouldn’t be every day. Most of the time, with authorization.

And most of this material would be of no interest to the general public, much less foreign spies.

Yet, despite the fact that I know all this… congressmen Turner’s barb still sticks in my brain.

Can’t you just picture it?

A cardboard box marked “Top Secret,” with the lid slightly askew, sitting on President Biden's garage floor, tucked between his “Corvette” and his “leaf blower.”

I can see him strolling by these documents every time he takes the dog out for a walk.

Or accidentally kicking the box with his foot when he goes to the garage fridge to grab a beer.

Or when his wife asks him to clean the garage:

“Joe, what’s in this old box over here?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that honey. That’s just some junk Barack asked me to get rid of. I’ll put it out with the recycling next week!”

What makes that sound bite play so well is the specific, vivid picture it paints — “... behind his Corvette, next to the leaf blower.”

Once you hear it, you can’t “unhear” it.

It sounds true. It could be true, I suppose.

And the picture it immediately creates in your mind is one you can’t forget.

You can create this same type of “indelible” soundbite in your marketing.

Here’s the recipe for it:

You need a dash of truth combined with specific and vivid yet simple imagery.

For example, take a look at this masterful John Carlton headline that takes vivid imagery to the next level:

That one paints a mental image you can’t unsee, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this type of wordplay fascinates me. And it is well worth experimenting with.

Because all it takes is one “indelible” soundbite to transform the marketplace in your favor.

Hey, speaking of fascinating, top-secret stuff…

Right now, I am working on a secret project to reveal the World’s Best Re-Engagement Campaign.

This campaign was sooooo frigin’ good it re-engaged close to 50K long gone, checked-out subscribers… and turned them into active readers, as well as customers!

And it did it all with four simple emails just about anyone can mimic.

I am hoping to unearth this sequence before the end of January.

So stay tuned for that.

Also, if you want to hear my juiciest story from my days of investigating espionage, deceit, and depravity…

You can check that out in the postscript👇

Hope you enjoy it.

I also hope that if you decide to engage in deceit and depravity this weekend…

… you do it under the highest level of security and with proper clearance!

Kyle Jordan
The Full Funnel Copywriter

P.S. The following information is classified for "our eyes only."

It was the summer of 2004.

I was about a year into my “Special Agent” career when I got handed what turned out to be a whopper of a case!

The subject of the case was a V.P. at a major defense contractor.

Investigating "executive level” defense contractors was my bread and butter.

You see, the active military types hated talking to me.

They didn’t like some just-out-of-college punk snooping through their background.

On the other hand, the management-level contractor types figured they could schmooze my dumb ass and peddle me out the door without divulging any hint of their indiscretions.

So, when I interviewed them, I leaned into their assumptions.

I played the role of the star-struck, broke-ass government employee who envied their corner office and BMW.

Then after about 45 minutes of allowing them to snowball me, I would let on that I knew they were full of shit.

After that, they would pretty much spill the beans.

Usually, those beans were not so hot.

The big secrets they were hiding were typically something along the lines of a DUI they didn’t want anyone to know about.

Or a citation for soliciting a prostitute (that they "didn’t know" was a prostitute).

Or money troubles that were more of an embarrassment than an issue of national security.

But one case, the spicy case I mentioned, had all three of those and then some.

As it turned out, on his travels to the other side of the world, the contractor I was investigating had met a beautiful woman.

And he had been spending a lot of time with this woman. (Far more than the guy was spending with his wife.)

It also turned out this woman wasn’t just beautiful.

She was enterprising too.

Because she agreed to help make Mr. Contractor's money troubles go away.

Apparently, he had made some bad investments at one point or another…. (also something he was hiding from his wife).

But his new girlfriend was there to rescue him.

She had hooked him up with some folks who were happy to pay him tens of thousands of dollars for a little bit of information.

What kind of information?

Well, that’s where I entered the picture.

As I said earlier, I found the best way to get this type of subject to give up the goods was to get them comfortable.

So, I interviewed Mr. Contractor at his office.

We bantered.

I went through my scripted questions, starting with the softballs.

“How often do you travel? Where to? Have you developed any foreign contacts? If so, who are they?”

He didn’t mention his girlfriend.

I doubled back on that one.

“Do you know a woman named REDACTED?”

His face went white. And his jaw just about fell open.

Safe to say, he was not a good poker player.

“No, I don’t think so, why?”

“Because it appears, when you were arrested in REDACTED for suspicion of DUI, she was the one who came to pick you up.”

He didn’t know anyone knew about the arrest.

It had shown up on the records our State Department people pulled prior to my interview with him.

And the info on the girlfriend was an unconfirmed tip up to that point.

I was taking a big swing by playing all those cards in a “voluntary” interview.

But he bit on it.

He admitted he knew the girlfriend.

And from there, he admitted that several other answers he had given about his travels and foreign associates were not “fully accurate.”

His interview with me was flagged as “deceptive."

Which meant he got handed off to a polygrapher and put on “the box.”

Our polygraph guy told me Mr. Contractor had a rough go of it on the box.

As a result, he was referred to intelligence for a full-blown espionage investigation.

It felt pretty cool knowing I helped nail someone who was actually leaking government secrets.

Especially since our country was at war at the time, and the whole reason I got into that job was to help protect the men and women on the front lines…

… and also for the cool job title, of course.

I’ll never top that one… unless someday I can become a “TOP SECRET SPECIAL AGENT COPY CHIEF IN CHARGE.”

But until then, I’ll be here writing these weird but true emails.