Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Sifu Edward & Sifu Julliana Armstrong Sit Down With Tom Yevsikov

Adapted from the recorded conversation; the guest's words are verbatim. The questions are reconstructed and voiced by Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong.

🎥 Video podcast coming soon. The complete interview will play here once published. The full conversation is transcribed below, and the audio edition will be available on sifuarmstrong.tv.

In a new Sifu Armstrong interview, a copywriter who’s generated roughly a million dollars a year admits he can’t fully explain his own best work, and that trying to be original nearly cost him everything.

Tom Yevsikov joined Sifu Edward and Sifu Julliana Armstrong for the latest Warrior Intelligence Series conversation carrying an unusually honest résumé: two and a half years of losses before his first real profit, and a confession that his biggest skill still isn’t something he can fully teach.

Yevsikov (a digital marketer and copywriter based in Israel, and creator of the software product Rank Snap) built his success almost entirely on copy, crediting it with “70%, at minimum 60%” of Rank Snap’s roughly million-dollar run. But he’s candid that the writing itself doesn’t come from a formula. “My results speak for themselves, but I still don’t feel as confident as I should,” he said. “I could sit down and write copy with no template, rely on nothing, and it will most likely sell, but I would not be able to tell you why I did what I did over those hours.”

That instinct-first approach only becomes a template afterward, when he reverse-engineers what worked. It’s part of why, he says, he’s never taken on copywriting coaching clients. The process is genuinely hard to hand off in words.

The lesson Yevsikov most wants beginners to hear, though, is about a trap he fell into himself. For years, he was afraid to borrow language other sellers were already using successfully. “My problem for the longest time was that I was scared to use anyone else’s words. I had this mindset of reinventing the wheel, thinking I needed to bring something unique,” he said. What changed his results was what he calls the law of commonalities: opening several top-selling sales pages in the same industry and pulling out the words and angles that repeat across all of them, then building a swipe file from the overlap. “The market really doesn’t care about unique. They already know what they want, and you just get in the mix,” he said.

He’s equally direct about the discipline required to get there in the first place. Before any of this worked, Yevsikov spent two and a half years earning nothing, chasing a goal as modest as $1,500 a month. He also credits a deliberate choice to walk away from a friend running MLM schemes, choosing instead what he calls a more “legit” path into digital marketing and copy.

Part of what made the difference, he says, was partnering with someone who filled in the gaps in his own skillset, a people-person who handled the excitement and the pitch while Yevsikov, by his own description more of a sit-behind-the-desk type, handled the words. He’d never written copy for a client before that partnership began, and had no formal training in it at all; everything since has come from what he calls trial and error.

The Armstrongs read Yevsikov’s story as a case study in two forms of mastery at once: the years of unrewarded persistence that precede any real skill, and the moment a skill goes so deep it stops living in conscious thought and starts living in the body, the same transformation any student on the mat eventually has to earn.

In This Conversation

Two and a half years of losses before the first real profit
Walking away from a friend’s shady MLM path toward something legit
Rank Snap and copy’s outsized share of its success
Why Yevsikov can’t fully explain his own best writing
The “law of commonalities”: swiping proven patterns instead of reinventing
Where to find his free template, built from roughly $9-10M in sales

The Full Conversation

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Tom Yevsikov generates around a million dollars a year, mostly on the strength of one skill (copywriting), and he's refreshingly humble about it. He lost money for two and a half years before he ever turned a profit. And he gave our operators a piece of advice that saves years of wasted effort: don't reinvent the wheel. Study what already works, and get in the mix.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: And what fascinated me is that Tom is so good he can't explain how he does it. He'll write copy that sells with no template, on pure instinct, and only afterward reverse-engineer what he did. That's the deepest kind of mastery, when the skill sinks so far into you that it becomes unconscious, part of your body instead of your thinking mind. Every warrior who's ever hit a technique perfectly without deciding to knows exactly what he means.

Our guest is Tom Yevsikov, digital marketer and copywriter from Israel. Tom, lovely to meet you.

Tom Yevsikov: Thank you very much for bringing me here.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Take us to the start, because there were some very lean years.

Tom Yevsikov: I got into this 12 years ago when I was 18. But I lost money for two and a half years: the classic marketing story, tried everything, every business model, nothing really worked. It was information overload, and I had to refocus myself. I got into this purely for money. I grew up in a fairly rough environment, especially financially, so my standards were low. If all I needed was to earn $1,500 a month, that would've been good enough to quit my job. But it took me two and a half years to make that in profit.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: Two and a half years of losing money before the first profit. That's the part of the story that gets edited out of every highlight reel, and it's the part that actually matters. Most people quit somewhere in month four of that stretch, convinced it doesn't work, when really they were just still inside the long, dark tunnel that comes before the light. You came from a hard place with low standards for what "enough" looked like, and you outlasted the tunnel. Persistence through the unrewarded years isn't glamorous, but it's the whole game.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: What set your direction, and I understand there was a cautionary figure early on?

Tom Yevsikov: A friend got me into the online world. He used to tell me he was making a lot of money online, and it turned out later he was a scammer, doing MLM stuff. Once I saw what he did, I didn't like it. That's not the direction I wanted to follow. I decided I wanted something more legit: digital marketing, email marketing. And copywriting I just slid into, because online marketing always involves some copy. My products have mostly been software: Rank Snap, which builds backlinks to rank businesses higher on Google, was my most successful, roughly a million dollars over three launches, still selling five, six years later. And I'd attribute 70% of that success to the copy, easily. The design was fairly basic. Copy was 70%, at minimum 60%.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You saw a friend making money the shady way and you deliberately walked the other direction, toward the legit road. That's a quiet act of character that shaped everything after. Plenty of people, broke and hungry, would've followed the money into the scam. You chose the harder, honest path, and it built something that's still standing years later. Shortcuts through dishonesty don't compound; integrity does.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: You credit a partnership too, and, memorably, a "cockroach" approach. Tell our operators.

Tom Yevsikov: Copywriting is the most major skill to my success, but the reason I really went big is that I partnered with someone who completed my skillset. He was very good at hyping people up, getting people excited (more of a people person), and I was more of a sit-behind-the-desk-and-do-my-thing person. We completed each other, and my skill at the table was copywriting. And here's the thing: this was early 2014, and I was not an expert copywriter. I'd never written copy for a client, never called myself a copywriter. I wasn't confident. And yet when I came to my partner and pitched the deal, and he asked what I could bring, I told him I'd create the copy. We started, and it worked out fine. To this day I've never had any formal training. It's all been trial and error.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Two things there are pure gold. First, the cockroach, the survivor who outlasts everything, who took two and a half years of losses and simply refused to die. That's a compliment in my book. And second: you offered to bring the copy before you felt qualified to. You weren't confident, you'd never done it for a client, and you committed anyway, and rose to it. That's how capability actually gets built: you take the responsibility first, and then you become the person who can carry it. And the partnership (him strong where you're weak) is the same lesson we keep finding. Two complete skillsets, no gap between them.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: You're candid that you can't fully explain how you write. That it's instinct you only decode afterward. I find that beautiful. Talk about it.

Tom Yevsikov: My results speak for themselves, but I still don't feel as confident as I should. I could sit down and write copy with no template, rely on nothing, and it will most likely sell, but I would not be able to tell you why I did what I did over those hours. It's only in hindsight that I look at my work and start breaking it down into a template. That's why I have the template, to refocus me. But the writing itself comes without it. And that's also why I've never taken on copywriting coaching clients. It's difficult for me to convey how I do it.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: That's not a weakness, Tom. That's the signature of deep mastery, and I want every warrior to understand it. When a skill is new, you think your way through every step. When it's truly mastered, it drops below thought entirely, the hand moves, the technique lands, and only afterward can you look back and explain what happened. You can't narrate it in the moment because it's no longer in your mind; it's in your body. The fact that you have to reverse-engineer your own genius means it's become instinct. That's the goal of ten thousand reps: to make the extraordinary automatic.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: And your biggest lesson is one you learned the slow, hard way, about the trap of trying to be original.

Tom Yevsikov: If I were starting now, I'd use what I call the law of commonalities, reverse-engineering patterns on other sales pages in the same industry. You open three, four, five sales pages of the top-selling products right now, scroll through, and see what patterns repeat, what words they all use to speak to the marketplace. Not one seller's unique thing, but the commonalities across all the successful ones. You write those into a swipe file (a gold mine of words and angles for your target market), and use them. It's faster, it's not stealing (no one owns the word "traffic"), and you learn on the job what makes the market tick. My problem for the longest time was that I was scared to use anyone else's words. I had this mindset of reinventing the wheel, thinking I needed to bring something unique. I didn't realise there's a market of millions already buying from other people in the same industry. The market really doesn't care about unique. They already know what they want, and you just get in the mix. If it's legal, ethical, saves you time, and it's proven right now, do it.

Sifu Julliana Armstrong: "I thought I needed to be unique, the market doesn't care." That is the ego trap that costs beginners years, in marketing and on the mat both. The white belt wants to invent a dazzling new technique before they've mastered the proven ones that already work. But mastery starts with humbly studying what the great ones do and doing that, precisely, first. Originality is what emerges after you've absorbed the fundamentals, never before. Don't reinvent the wheel. Learn the wheel so completely it becomes yours, and your own voice arrives on its own.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Tom, you're generous to share this at all. Where can people find your template?

Tom Yevsikov: I have a downloadable link and a training on YouTube. It's a PDF mind map of my basic template, free and public. This formula, this template, made roughly nine to ten million dollars in sales overall. It's very beneficial, and it'll make a lot of sense alongside everything I said here.

Sifu Edward Armstrong: Tom, thank you, and to your continued success.

Tom Yevsikov: Thank you. I hope people appreciate it.

Sifu Julliana's closing word: Tom is so good he can't explain how he does it, and that's the highest compliment there is. When mastery goes deep enough, it stops being something you do and becomes something you are. You can't narrate it because it now lives in the body, not the mind. And his hardest-won lesson is the ego trap that costs everyone years: you don't need to be unique. Study what the masters do, absorb it completely, and your own voice arrives on its own.

Sifu Edward's closing word: Tom is a cockroach in the best sense. He took two and a half years of losses and refused to die, chose the honest road when the shady one was right there, and offered to carry a skill before he felt qualified, then became the person who could. Outlast the lean years, partner with someone strong where you're weak, and don't reinvent the wheel. Learn it so completely it becomes yours. We don't entertain warriors. We create them.

Tom Yevsikov, digital marketer and copywriter based in Israel; creator of Rank Snap and other software, generating roughly a million dollars a year, primarily through copywriting.

ILLUSTRATIVE RESULTS. Any revenue, enrollment, margin or retention figure in this conversation is either a documented result from one of our own operations, a figure the guest reports about their own business, or an illustrative example, never a projection of your results.

Nothing here is financial, legal or tax advice.

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This conversation is part of the Sifu Armstrong Warrior Intelligence Series: interviews with world-class performers, builders, and thinkers, filtered through the lens of the warrior's path.

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