9 Things I Wish I Had Figured Out Sooner

9. Enthusiasm is good, but experience is better

Years ago, I was looking at direct-mail response rates. They averaged around 5 percent. Not great, not terrible. Suddenly it struck me: A 5 percent response rate is a 95 percent failure rate! I was off like a thoroughbred, campaigning against these huge failure rates. I had a hunch if we could just write better we could drive response rates up to somewhere around 50 percent.