Here’s some clever ways to turn boring data & stats into easier visuals:

1.) This was a clever way to spice up a boring “bar chart” and make it into a “Battery Bar Chart!” 📊

2.) Instead of boring bar charts show boring megaton data, this chart uses nuclear explosion visuals to show the different sizes of nuclear blasts.

3.) Instead of using words and data to describe lethality of different drugs, these viles each show a lethal dose of 3 different drugs, and shows how shockingly little is needed to overdose.

This visual hits home harder than plain numbers and data:

We are visual creatures. Our minds are ~6X likely to remember a message if it's combined with an image:

So if trying to get data across, sometimes it's beneficial to make it an image!

This is a neat quote:

Quote

“The amount of money a person receives will always be in direct proportion to the demand for what he does, his ability to do what he does, and the difficulty of replacing him.” 
- Earl Nightingale

This is a cool way to judge which career path or business to get into:
→ Demand for what you do
→ Your ability to do it
→ The difficulty of replacing you

In fact we could make a measuring scale out of this:
→ Demand for what you do (Rate 1-5)
→ Your ability to do it (Rate 1-5)
→ The difficulty of replacing you (Rate 1-5)

A janitor is a job associated with low pay because MOST people in the world are capable of doing the job.

If an average janitor needs to be replaced, it's very easy:
→ Demand for what you do (3)
→ Your ability to do it (3)
→ The difficulty of replacing you (1)

If an average brain surgeon needs to be replaced, it's very difficult:
→ Demand for what you do (5)
→ Your ability to do it (3)
→ The difficulty of replacing you (5)

I've given other note-taking and organization apps like Notion and Coda many solid tries....but I keep winding up back on Google Docs.

90% of what I love about Notion is being able to navigate to different pages quickly via it's sidebar menu.

If Google Docs had something like this, it would like beat the pants off any other up-and-coming app.
I wish Google Docs would add this functionality, like:

 

Editing a physical paper "back in the day" had a whole markup language of its own, shown in this graph:

If you were an editor or proofreader, you would know most of these!

I only knew two of these symbols: The "insert" mark ^ and the paragraph mark ⁋

How many of these symbols did you know??

Features -vs- Benefits is a common discussion in copywriting. 

Feature: Something your product has (ex "Water Resistant Cloth").
Benefit: Result after using your product (ex: "You stay dry in the rain").

For example you can sell the features of an umbrella: 
Unbreakable stems, wooden handle, water resistant cloth.

-or-

You can sell the benefits of an umbrella:
Keeps you dry in the rain, keeps the sun off when it's hot.

 

Selling the "benefits" of a product is usually the wiser decision. Even David Ogilvy said so:

My advice on the Features -V- Benefits debate is:
 

USE BOTH!

I prefer trying to sell the benefit, and backing it up with the features. So:

Love the use of "rhyme" to help people remember important stuff.....such as which bear to run from 😬

Something I got from people's comments on Twitter were Polar Bears are by farrrr the most dangerous bear!

• If they're Polars, they'll soon be spitting out ya molars
• If it's a Polar, you cannot control her

If you take away one thing from this email....it's don't play with Polar Bears 😂

Checkout this beautiful Western Electric ad that visually shows the history & evolution of the telephone up till 1964 ☎ 

Fun fact: Crude forms of analog video calls existed back in 1964. You had to book a time slot, and it cost $100+ for 15 minutes, but it existed!

Goals. They're important to have. It drives you towards something.

For example here's my November 2022 Goals:

If I'm ever wondering what to do, I can look at this sheet of paper sitting on my desk and start working on getting one of those three things scratched off. 

We do this in our community where we ask people to list out their goals in our Goals Tracker (If you're a member go post now)!

One word of advice: Limit your monthly goals to around 3 major goals. Anymore and the list becomes daunting:

Feel free to respond to this email with your November goals. 

Also respond to this email with "I WANNA CHAT" if you want to chat with me for 10 minutes!

This graphic shows all the hidden work that goes into writing and sending emails to a large number of people, including:

Sending emails seems like such a simple little thing, but there's often a lot behind the scenes!

A few days ago I woke up and it was rainy and grey skies outside. I decided to stay in bed and work. 

While sipping coffee and working from bed, I had one of those moments where you look around and think, "This is nice 😊"

Get the mug reference?? 😛

You can make your life so much more convenient if you buy multiples of commonly used items:

There've been some purchases in my life where after years of frustration I would think, "Why the hell didn't I do that sooner???"

For example:

When I first moved into a house I would have to bring phone chargers and laptop chargers into different rooms allllll the time. Sometimes I wouldn't have one in the room, so my devices would start to die. 

Instead one day I spent a few bucks and bought chargers galore for every room. 

I put them everywhere. There's on in my closet for when I get ready, one in my bathroom, an iPhone and USB-C in my kitchen: 

I use chargers all the time, so shuffling them back and forth through the house was a huge waste. 

 

ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
I like randomly stretching, and I have one of those foam roller thingies I keep in my garage gym. 

But...

Sometimes I wanna use it in the living room.
Sometimes I wanna use it in the master bedroom. 

But I have to go get it, so I don't use it!

So in a flash of brilliance, I BOUGHT THREE:

A simple cheap purchases like this encourages me to stretch more, and spend less brain power on useless tasks like shuffling foam rollers between rooms!

I mentioned last week the CC Blog has side menu bars that show member content, but only members can access it:

So if a non-member clicks, they see this error message which gets shown between 1,000 and 1,300 times per day:

I asked people if they could give that an update, and two people really stood our: "Cinderella" and "Joe." You both are getting sent t-shirts for your contribution!

Cinderella's version was this clean two-column:

Joe's version was this "sales page" style message:

 

Here's a funny "Swipe File In The Wild" I saw yesterday while walking around my neighborhood....this hilarious van promoting their plumbing service 😂

Here's the side of the van featuring a dude "flying" above an air conditioning condenser unit 😂

Sometimes I'm skeptical of advertisements that are purely just "funny" but don't actually work. Many bar/restaurant signs are like this:

However this Radiant Plumbing van totally caught my eye, made me laugh, and made me take a pic....and now I'm talking about it here to 56,734 people current on this SWIPES email newsletter....so maybe it works!

Something to remember when selling your product:

People generally don't want the product itself, but rather the change it brings:

I question the accuracy of this information, but I found this to be a cool visual layout for showing what age you "peak" at certain life skills or events.

According to this chart, my plan to die at 85 on November 17th, 2067 is justified 😂

Take the information in this chart with a grain of salt...but I do love the way it's laid out.

There's this "Tooth Gem" fad happening where you can get a small fake diamond put on your tooth:

✦ It's NOT permanent.
✦ You can peel it off anytime.
✦ It'll last up to a week.
✦ It costs roughly $50.

It's getting kind of popular:

At an event this weekend they were giving them out for free, so a group of us decided to get them 😂

It required a 2-minute "procedure" where they use dental glue to place the fake diamond, then use a UV light to harden it.

It kind of looks like you're getting a dental cleaning:

It was a fun little thing to do, not permanent, and a fun conversation starter!

 

Since most of us work from home, your office area has become increasingly important. 

Here's an evolution off my own office spaces as technology became more and more a part of our lives:

 

College dorm room setup circa 2002:

 

College dorm room plastic desks:

 

Then for many years after I had the standard desk + computer combo in various apartments:

 

Of course I'd randomly work from other tables or balconies on the laptop just to switch things up:

 

There was even a hot minute where I attempted to go "100% laptop only" in order to not be attached to a desktop. I tried using an up-down rolling desk:

 

That worked decently....but ultimately it wasn't great for long periods of work, and frankly it looked stupid:

 

Then came the era of making a whole room into an office:

 

Each version was a little different as video become more important and I had to make the offices look prettier on camera:

 

Now many offices need teleprompters, good lighting, designed backgrounds, 3 camera setups, microphones etc:

 

My current office serves as a reading room, recording studio, workspace for others, and can also turn into a queen bedroom for spillover guests:

 

The ironic thing is, I'd say 50% of the time I just work from a laptop with friends on the dining table 😂

This crappy error message gets seen over 1,000 times a day on Copywriting Course:

It's a pretty crappy error message, and not very effective. I made it really quick as a placeholder and never updated. 

Do YOU have any ideas on how to make this error message awesome? 

I'd like it to convey why someone should join the Copywriting Course.

People see this error message when they try to view member-only material, but they are not a member. 

For example: We have a "Live Feed" sidebar on the blog with member-only material:

 

If someone clicks one of those links without being logged in, they see that crappy error message:

I thought it'd be a fun experiment to take suggestions from this Friday S.W.I.P.E.S. Email list. 

Reply to this email with your copy suggestions or design suggestions!

If I use your ideas, I'll send you a C❤️PY tshirt!

I want to put this in my "Cool-Vintage-Ads-I-Want-To-Have-Framed" collection!

This is 1958 Fender Amps print ad that promotes Fender's musical superiority over other guitar amps. 

The imagery on this one is lovely!

Good friends bring up hard conversations, even if it's unpleasant.

If you see a bad habit a close friend is doing, it might be worth the difficult conversation to bring it up, because no one else will.

Often times they don’t KNOW they’re doing it, and someone telling them might be first step to solving it.

I've learned a few things when approaching this:

I’ve learned to first “ask” if someone wants feedback first. Only if they accept do I give it.

I also have learned to use the "Compliment Sandwich" where you start the conversation off with saying you love the person, and that's why you're bringing up this issue. Then you tell them the issue. Then you remind them that you are there to help with it.

In the past I've simply told people out of the blue, "YOU TALK TOO MUCH AND IT'S ANNOYING" and it can come off very abrupt and rude or like an attack 😬 

I'm currently doing a “Healthy Week” with some peeps that includes:

🧁 No added sugar
🍔 1,500 calorie limit on no-workout days
🌮 2,000 calorie limit on workout days
☕️ Cut back on caffeine

Everything has been super easy...except the caffeine thing. 

YEESH 😳

I went without caffeine for 2 days and it felt like I never “woke up", I had headaches (which I never get), and wasn’t motivated to work much.

I’m not against caffeine, but wow…didn’t realize cutting back would be so hard, I definitely was zonked 😬

The problem is I used to not drink caffeine on the weekends in order to "reset" my tolerance each week, however this year I've drank caffeine pretty much every single day. 

So I was drinking 300mg to 400mg a day (still safe range, but high). 

I cut back to under 200mg this week. 

Next week 100mg and under. 

Then periodic "tolerance resets" by either drinking no caffeine or weekends or switching to lower caffeine grade tea.

Here's a fun recent purchase: A single speed bike! (Not a fixie, just single speed)

The main cardio exercise I get is riding my bike to my gym that's exactly 1 mile away. 

On the way there it's relatively easy, but on the way back it's ROUGH because it's alllllll hills with steep grades 😳

Since this is my main form of cardio exercise, I decided to buy an extra bike that's just ONE SPEED. 

No downshifting on hills to make it easier. My other bike has 21 gears to switch between:

This new bike has ONE gear, see how simple the gearing system looks in comparison?

Benefits of this single speed bike:
✔️ Forces me to get better cardio.
✔️ The bike is super simple. Very few components.
✔️ Silent. There's no gears that whine, click, or make noise.

Downsides of this single speed bike:
𝗫 Not fun to ride on hills, you will get sweaty.
𝗫 Slow starting from a standstill. Takes extra time to cross the road.

It's incredibly difficult to pedal this thing up hills. I've had to literally stop and push off just to get momentum going if I stop....so it's working!

The whole point of this purchase has been to force me to push harder on these gym rides. There's no other option. 

If I don't push hard, I literally don't get home 😂
 

Here's a cool way I've seen someone make new friends and meet new interesting people: By having a super interesting offer. 

Example 👉🏼

Two years ago me and my buddy Noah rented a house in Malibu, CA. and this guy Jon Senstrom reached out and asked us if we wanted to go spearfishing. 

OF COURSE THAT SOUNDED AWESOME! 

Our house was directly on the beach (brag 😏) so he came over and brought alllll this stuff for us to go spearfishing with:

He brought everything we needed including wetsuits, spear guns, weights, fins etc....

He gave us some training and taught us how not to die while spearfishing:

Here was the loot after going out!

He then spent the rest of the day teaching and helping us prepare the fish into sushi:

Then we made some of the fish scraps into ramen!

Jon said if he wants to meet someone, he'll offer to take them spearfishing, which is a pretty unusual thing. 

He's met so many cool people through this, and it costs him nothing! He already has all the equipment, he already has the know-how, and it's a super memorable experience for everyone. 

What a creative way to meet cool people!

"Crappy Marketing" is a fun way to get attention, and recently the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer got in the action. 

Check out this hilarious graphics designer request they did that went viral and got ~100,000 likes! 😂

They totally got inspiration from other marketing stunts like this and it totally worked!

Every consultant or freelancer has had to justify their cost at times. 

This fun swipe shows a dog groomer who was sick of people snarky remarks like, "WOW it costs less to cut MY hair than my DOGS hair 🙄"

So they made this clever sign as a price justification!

I decided to put this chart in the "Wisdom" section because so many people drink coffee and use it to concentrate.

If you're like me, you have no idea what different coffee's mean, but this little chart explains it all perfectly:

Kind of interesting that almost every coffee drink is just different levels of milk and espresso!

This is a great little chart that outlines what could be "pseudoscience" and how to spot it.

I love mental frameworks like this, and this is a great one:

Have you ever seen something (furniture, item, whatever...) and wondered where it's from? 

For example I have these little woven "stool" thingies in my garage gym area:

Let's find out how to buy more (or one's just like them for cheaper)!

You use "Google Lens" to find them. Just his that camera icon on the Google app on your phone:

...and point your camera at the stool, and it'll find similar items!

Instantly I can see a list of items just like it! A lot of times you can find the same item except way cheaper:

For example I like this lamp....so let's try to find it:

Bam! I instantly found a bunch of similar ones!

 

============================
"Don't Undercharge"
tl;dr: A quick story how not to undercharge when doing client work.
============================
In college I bought a used moped from a Ducati dealership, look at that hog 😏

Me and the owner of the Ducati dealership somehow began talking about ways to change his website to start ranking in Google at the #1 result for "Ducati Dealership."

He asked me to do the changes and send an invoice...

I had NO idea what to charge.

Being 20 at the time, I thought $500 would be incredible.

I told my mentor about this, and he said, "YOU BETTER CHARGE HIM AT LEAST $5,000 OR I WILL SLAP YOU!"

It was hard to fathom someone would pay that much for a simple SEO project..

Best case scenario I thought:
I'd tell him $5,000, he'd laugh in my face, and I'd negotiate down to $1,000. Still great money to me!

But a funny thing happened: I told him the price and he instantly said, "Ok cool, when do we start." 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯 🤯

He didn't question the price and he immediately agreed to it.

That's when I realized to him $5,000 was cheap to be ranked for "Ducati Dealership."

He sells $25,000 sport bikes all day long, so to him $5,000 wasn't much.

Lesson: When working with businesses, try charging high....like 10X more than you think. Charge for the value. You can always negotiate lower.

A company I run called Copywriting Course that has 8 revenue streams: 

 

These revenue streams include:
#1.) Copywriting Course subscriptions
#2.) SwipeFile.com ad revenue
#3.) Book
#4.) 1-on-1 Consulting
#5.) YouTube Channel
#6.) Amazon Affiliate
#7.) Email Sponsorships
#8.) Advising Companies

I made a breakdown of how each one works here in this video:

I think to further optimize these revenue streams for 2023 I would like to make the more "passive" revenue streams higher. 

This would include: 
- YouTube ads
- SwipeFile ads 
- Book revenue 
- Friday SWIPES email ad sponsorships

I never understood the differences between chocolates until seeing this chart!

I love when something so simple (like the chart above) finally makes a concept *click* into place!

I've always liked this acronym H.A.L.T. which means....

If you're not in a good mood, you're either:
• Hungry
• Angry
• Lonely
• Tired

This is a tactic developed for AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), but it's used for many different fields.
It's used to prevent medical errors:

It's used to prevent medical errors:

 

It's used for people in grief:

 

It's used to prevent over-eating:

It's a neat framework to identify when you're about to make bad decisions.

This might be the best title of any book on money. 

✔️ Everyone wants to make money. 
     +
✔️ Everyone wants to make it in the fastest way.
========================
How To Make Maximum Money In Minimum Time 😂

The title of something can be important, because it conveys to the user what they're about to see....and how it can help them.

For example, here's the same video, just re-named which would you more likely click?

 

-OR-

I bet you'd pick the "Books To Read To Make You Rich" version.

It does sound a bit more cheesy, but it's currently what would captivate a large audience more, and it tells you if you read these books it could have some financial benefit to you. 

I was on NetFlix!!!!!!! 

.....for about 0.75 seconds 😂

I don't want the fame to go to my head....but for a brief second you can see me and some friends (Codie Sanchez, Nick Gray, Chris Petkas) on the recent Andrew Schultz  NetFlix special.  

Look at my high-quality cameo on NetFlix. Should I update my IMDB?? 😂

 

On another TV note:

It's kinda fun to find to find an old show you’ve never seen, and are able to watch all the seasons however often you want, so you never run out of stuff to watch!

Current find: The Sopranos 

Such a cool show (although I'm 23 years late to the game) 😬

It's cool to have a show I can watch during lunch or dinner and have 6 seasons to run through. 

Another benefit is The Sopranos was made before streaming, so the episodes all end nicely. They don't have that intensely grabbing ending like modern streaming shows where you HAVE to watch the next episode.

Writing a book has been the MOST "passive income" thing I've ever done. 

I wrote it once in 2013, and Amazon continually pimps it out. ZERO involvement since it's inception.

If I were smarter I would've put out a book every two years since then!

I still make between $500 and $1,200 per month from the book (occasionally more if it gets shared).

Considering I wrote it ONCE in 2013 that’s not bad.

I self-published the book from Amazon KDP, it sells at a 3-to-1 ratio of eBook format vs physical format.

I self published using this method:
copywritingcourse.com/how-to-self-publish-a-book

The book was written 100% in a Google Doc:
copywritingcourse.com/writing-a-book-in-google-docs

If you want launch promotion ideas I suggest Chandlers interview:
copywritingcourse.com/self-publishing-a-book

 

Potential 2023 plan for book:  Give it a refresh and charge more!

Right now I charge $5.00 and make $1.71/book.

I would probably bump up price to $20 and make ~$14/book.

Try this today: “The Amish Hour”

This is simply an hour where you “shun” technology for 1 hour before bed:

Benefits you’ll see: 
- Better sleep 
- Reading more 
- More productivity 
- Increased concentration 
- Drum up great new ideas

Instead of scrolling social media or watching TV...spend some time with a book or notepad. 
Physical reading before bed increases quality of sleep and calms the mind.

I find myself taking an immense amount of notes and getting quality ideas when in this distraction-free environment.

Pictured: Amish Brother Nevilleton

I've personally had so "schedule in" screen downtime, because it's just so damn tempting to scroll on my phone before bed. 

The nights I fall asleep reading I have a noticeably better sleep, and hope you find the same too 🙂

I love seeing lots of data in a crunched in a small space. Look at this awesome "$100 Trillion World Economy" chart. 

In this layout, within seconds you are delivered tons of information:

Right away you can spot:
➡ The largest economies.
➡ The largest combined economies.
➡ Economic size differences between countries.

It's so much better than a boring chart like this!

Every once in a while, take an honest stock of your life. 
Look in the mirror:

How you physically look RIGHT NOW is a direct reflection of what you’ve been doing for the last 6 months:

• What you’ve been eating.
• What you’ve been doing for exercise.
• How you’ve been taking care of your body.

Look at your environment around you RIGHT NOW.

• What do you like about it?
• What do you hate about it?
• What would you change about it?

Maybe you want nothing changed, but maybe there's stuff you DO want changes.

Write those thing out:

....now “Word Backwards” to find a plan to make your environment and life how you want it.

Taking an honest inventory of where you're at, so you can make your future self even better.

I bet 99% of you don't know about Google Keep. 

It's a free "Pinterest-style" board where you can keep notes, pics, screenshots etc in categorized tabs. 

You can make your own marketing "Swipe File" with it for free, and it natively runs through all of Google Suite:

It's awesome to keep quotes and pictures in.....then conveniently drop them into a Google Doc when needed.

This is one of those odd pieces of Google that's pretty helpful but few people know about.....but now you do 🙂

Try it out at keep.google.com

So I've been doing these "customer calls" twice a week where I talk on the phone to previous, current, and (potentially) future customers:

Does this pic make it look like I'm hard at work?? 😛

I've been trying to do ~5 calls in a row each session:

Some of the questions I ask (depending on who I'm speaking to) are:

• What made you join? What did you hope to get out of it?
• What would've made you stay on longer? 
• What could I have done better?
• How did you originally find me or Copywriting Course?
• What did you most like about Copywriting Course when you were a member? 
• What feature did you use the most?

I have about 12 questions written down, but for the most part each call goes a little different, and it's super interesting to hear everyone's stories.

I've been learning a ton from consistently doing these. Might be interesting for you to try these on your own business too!

The reason I do these calls is because I'm too "in the box" on Copywriting Course:

....so it's helpful to hear outside opinions of what people want and use.

Reply to this email "I WANNA CHAT!" if you're down to talk for 10 minutes!

Since I run a copywriting company people frequently come to me asking if they know any good writers. 

Well....here's my easy methods on finding and hiring a good writer:

OPTION 1 ($): Find a cheap copywriter from a cheap freelancer platform like Fiverr.

OPTION 2 ($$): Find someone just starting out, and train them yourself.

OPTION 3 ($$$): Find a freelancer through a higher quality freelancer platform like UpWork.

OPTION 4 ($$$$): Find someone who writes the way you like, and pay them.

This is my personal favorite way to hire a writer. It's just best to find someone ALREADY WRITING THE WAY YOU LIKE then hiring them.

I'll generally do this:
1.) Find someone already writing the type of stuff you want. 
2.) Ask them to do a single project for money. 
3.) If like their work, hire multiple times. 

Did you know tomorrow (October 1st) is the start of Q4 of 2022 😮

All that's left in the year are three major months:
October, November, December.

Don't get caught off guard and be unprepared for this!

Q4 is typically the most profitable time of the year for many businesses (especially retail businesses):

The best sales of the year happen in Q4, and each promotion might include making:
✔️ Emails
✔️ Images
✔️ FB Ads copy
✔️ Google ads copy
✔️ Autoresponder copy
✔️ Email campaign copy
✔️ Social media post copy
✔️ Website campaign copy
✔️ Funnel flow planning.......

....there's a lot of work to do BEFORE these holiday's roll around.

BUT WHAT IF.....

You had a subscription to Copywriting Course and could get help with all your sales materials, and optimize them to make them stronger?? 💪🏼

The most popular way to learn using Copywriting Course is our self-paced courses. Copywriting Course is actually a COLLECTION of courses:

The next most popular way to use Copywriting Course is to come to Office Hours where I'll personally help you with any question or problem:

We share screens and work on your problem together. This isn't "conceptual" advice, but rather real-world re-writing and creating on the spot!

Q4 (starting tomorrow) is an extremely important time to join Copywriting Course so you can take advantage of the super busy holiday season!
⬇ ⬇ ⬇

Join this instant and use code LEVELUPYEAR for 30% off Copywriting Course, and start learning today! (Promo ends today)