Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Wes writes a weekly newsletter about backyard BBQ and grilling.
It started the summer he burned every single burger on a cheap little grill.
To him, great BBQ isn't luck — it's a few simple habits anyone can learn.
And his readers? They want the same thing — ribs and brisket the whole street can smell.
⛳️ Problem:
Wes writes a solid issue every week, packed with good tips.
But readers open it, skim the first couple of lines, and click away.
His best advice sits near the bottom, and almost nobody ever gets that far. Brutal.
His struggle:
His dull opening makes readers quit before they reach his best advice.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Slippery Slide
In 1971, a man named Joe Sugarman started a mail-order company out of a basement.
He sold gadgets — pocket calculators, digital watches, tiny chess computers.
He had no store, no salespeople, and no TV ads. Just a page in a magazine.
Get this — he wrote ads that didn't look like ads at all.
They read like stories — long ones that were somehow impossible to stop reading.
By 1979, that little company was making about $12 million a year, from words alone.
His secret was one simple rule he called the slippery slide.
Every sentence has just one job: to make you read the next sentence.
The first line's only job is to get you to read the second, and on you slide, all the way down.
Then, in 1986, he found a pair of sunglasses and named them BluBlockers.
His ad opened, "When I put on the pair of glasses, what I saw I could not believe."
Wild, right? You could not help but read the next line, and then the next.
That one idea — words built to keep you reading — sold over 20 million pairs of sunglasses.
Sugarman had no rare gift here — just this one simple rule.
He knew the only job of any line is to earn the next one.
🚗 So Wes tried it his way.
Remember Wes and his backyard BBQ and grilling newsletter?
Readers skimmed a couple of lines, then clicked away.
He decided to build his next issue like a slide, so no one could stop reading.
Spoiler: this time, they couldn't stop reading.
First, he threw out his clever opening and made the first line tiny and easy.
His new first line was just this: "I ruined a whole rack of ribs last Sunday."
It's short, it's simple, and you can't help but wonder what went wrong.
So you read the next line — which is exactly the point.
Then he rewrote his tips as short, simple lines that each led into the next.
Every line ended with a little reason to keep going.
A small question, a hint, or an unfinished thought that pulled you along.
Finally, he read the whole thing back and cut anything that made him pause.
Long sentences, big words, and slow, dull middles all got deleted.
Now his issue slid from the very first word all the way to the last.
Bingo bango — start to finish, no one clicked away.
🧸 Make the first line tiny and easy. Then let every line pull them to the next.
The prompt below rewrites your issue so each line pulls to the next.
You just tell it your rough draft and who it's for.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
My rough newsletter draft (paste the whole thing, messy is fine):
{e.g. a weekly issue on backyard BBQ about how to get a good smoke ring on ribs}
The one idea I most want readers to reach at the bottom (one sentence):
{e.g. a slow-and-low smoke beats a hot-and-fast cook every time}
For Audience: {e.g. weekend backyard grillers who want ribs and brisket the whole street can smell}
For Outcome: {e.g. the same issue rewritten so each line pulls the reader to the next, all the way down}
Outputs:
1. A tiny, easy first line — short and simple, so reading it takes no effort.
2. The full issue rewritten as short, linked sentences — each one ending with a small pull toward the next.
3. A list of the bumps I should cut — long sentences, big words, and dull middles that break the slide.
4. The bottom line rewritten so the reader lands on my one big idea with full attention.
Then mark the exact line where most readers would drop off, and tell me how to fix it.
That's it, my fellow renegades!
Yours 'helping you gain years of experience without putting in the years' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️