this guy almost tried to fight us...

Over the weekend, I almost got in a fight in a back alley in downtown Chicago.

Here's what happened:

I went to Chicago over the weekend with three of my best friends.

On Saturday night, after filling our bellies with Cuban food, we decided to head downtown.

By the time we got there, it was almost midnight. But there were still a lot of people out, including a decent amount of cops.

We looked down one street and saw a bunch of flashing lights -- cops and an ambulance.

Then, when passing one alley, we saw four cops on bikes, hanging out and chatting.

Then my friend Cody saw two people sprinting down an alley.

The air felt electric, but not in a good way.

There was no immediate danger anywhere. But something just felt "off."

Later in the night, we found ourselves walking through an alley.

When we got halfway through, we saw three guys round the corner and start walking toward us.

One of them, the one in the front, had on khakis and a light yellow polo. He had a hand towel with him, and he threw it back to his friends.

These guys didn't look like they were here to make small talk.

As they approached us, the second friend stopped us and asked:

"Did you guys beat our friend up?"

I'd been trying to avoid eye contact with these guys, but at this moment, I looked at his friend -- the guy in the front wearing the khakis.

He looked bad.

There was a lump on his forehead...

His lip was busted open...

And his nose was bleeding.

The middle of his shirt was stretched out, and I could just imagine someone grabbing it with one hand while using the other to rain down punches on this poor guy.

"No man," we told him. "We haven't fought anybody."

"Well they told us it was you guys," he said. "So we had to come down here and talk to you all."

"Dude, it was definitely not us," we all told him in varying ways.

"Because if it was you guys, you know we'd have to fight you," he said.

"Man, it was 100% not us," we said. And then we did something smart:

We all held out our knuckles and had him look at them.

"If we had been in a fight," we said, "You'd be able to tell."

He looked at our knuckles, saw that they were clean, and said "Yeah, you guys don't look like the type."

He seemed satisfied with that, so we got the hell out of there.

There are a ton of lessons you could take from this, but since I'm a copywriter, here are 2 I thought of:

1) Good copy is simple.

We didn't use fancy language with this guy. We kept our communication simple, straightforward, and clear.

2) Proof is powerful.

I think the tipping point in this conversation was when we showed the guy our knuckles.

From that -- and apparently from the way we looked -- he was pretty damn confident we weren't the ones who fought his friend.

We showed him clear, tangible proof that made our point.

This is especially helpful on landing pages and website copy.

Show proof that backs up your claims. Make it clear. Make it raw. Make it genuine.