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    The S.W.I.P.E.S. Email (Friday January 19th, 2024)

    Swipe📁Wisdom🧠Interesting🧐Picture🖼 • Essay📄Splurge✍
    Edition: Friday, January 19th, 2024
    A fun email for Friday. I hope you enjoy!

     

    🎤 Listen to this email here:

    Swipe:

    IKEA: "We want you to design a simple ad."

    Copywriter: "Hold my beer..." 😏

    ikea-bill-board.png

    This Ikea billboard was seen on Oxford Street in London....I love it because it's soooo simple, yet everyone knows what it's for because of IKEA's iconic big blue bags.

    Hilarious side note, a few years ago New York made a policy where you couldn't bring dogs on the subway unless they could fit in a bag.....and people used big IKEA bags to skirt this rule 😂

    ikea-bag-dogs-NY.png

    Wisdom:

    On January 15th I completed 2 months of eating no added sugar (and had a bet with my friend Sam Parr for $1,000 to keep us honest)! 

    F_jybDzWsAAAgbs.jpg

    On that day we pigged out on sugar, then committed to another few months of no added sugar.

    I ate a huge slice of cake, ate 5 cookies, around 3 cups of ice cream, and at least 15 pieces of chocolate....and I felt very sick after it all 😂

    TO BE HONEST.....this was not that hard.

    All through Thanksgiving and Christmas I didn't have a single bite of cookie, cake, pie, or dessert.

    I didn't even try the cookies and cake I decorated (I'm especially proud of my Grover cookie) 😂

    grover-cookies-xmas-treats.png

    Once I stopped eating added sugar for 2-3 days the cravings went away. The HABIT is hard to kick (not eating dessert when everyone else is).

    This may become more of a permanent change for me in the next year.

    Sugar is my uncontrollable vice. It's hard for me to "just eat a little" and stick to that. I always eat wayyyyy more than I intend, and then feel bad about it.

    I'm slowly seeing less-and-less benefit to it.

    I see more benefit in drinking alcohol (because it's fun) than consuming added sugar.

    Interesting:

    Check it out, this guy built 20+ tools over 4 years before finding one that’s starting to work!

    Look at his list of projects:

    guy-builds-post.png

    Lesson #1: Try lots of stuff. Pivot quick. Act fast.

    Lesson #2: The real winner here is GoDaddy for all those domains 😂

    Picture:

    jason-interview.jpg

    "The post-economic nerd" is one of my favorite people...because even with wild success and no need to work, they remain curious and creative and active and often still code or go down rabbit holes of interest.

    One of my favorite ones is a guy named Jason Cohen. He started TWO unicorn companies:

    Smart Bear: Finds bugs in software -and-
    WPengine: Managed Wordpress hosting

    These are both billion dollar companies, super profitable, and still growing. His blog is one my favorites on the web: longform.asmartbear.com

    I recently did an interview with Jason I'll send out on Monday.

    Essay:

    We asked some people where they plan to write more in 2024, and here's what people said:

    where-are-you-going-to-write.webp

    The answers were in this order:

    1. Blog: 36
    2. LinkedIn: 31
    3. Newsletter: 29
    4. Twitter/X: 25
    5. Facebook: 23
    6. Journaling: 21
    7. Instagram: 17
    8. Medium: 17
    9. YouTube: 15
    10. Other: 13
    11. TikTok: 8
    12. None: 6
    13. Reddit: 3

    Blog, LinkedIn, Newsletter, and Twitter/X were the big winners:

    where-are-you-going-to-write-pie.webp

    Super interesting!

    Splurge:

    My favorite category of fiction books is “Hard Science” where the story is obviously fake but the physics are real.

    My current read I'm super into is “House of Suns.” 

    house-of-suns.jpg

    I’m halfway through the book and gripped!

    I'm open to more hard science suggestions if you have them.
     

    I hope you enjoyed these Friday tid-bits!
    Sincerely, 
    Neville Medhora

    nev-head.webp

    14 Comments


    Recommended Comments

    Good stuff as it always is Neville. 

    Some follow-up thoughts…

    - Loved the IKEA billboard - thanks for sharing along with the dog photos

    - No sugar added. I don’t consume alcohol but I do consume sugar via chocolate, ice cream, and candy.  Decades ago the book “Sugar Busters” alerted me to how much sugar is in so many produces we consume on a daily basis such as ketchup, breads, etc… when I began to read labels I saw we’re surrounded by sugar… and alcohol is a different form of sugar. Awareness is the name of the game because sugar is a delightfully, socially acceptable poison we feed each other as a treat.  Here, have a sundae on me!

    Nice Grover by the way. Although my first take was a light bulb and Sponge Bob had intercourse and produced that Cookie Monster.  

    - Where I’m writing.  One trend perhaps that’s missing on your really well done chart: Community.  I’m writing in my communities daily whereas blog, Linkedin, etc. are more weekly.

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    • Administrator

    Thanks for the great response Kevin!

    I love that you're doing more community writing...now that I think about inside our community is probably where MOST of my writing is as well.

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    Good stuff like always - I gave up sugar 6 days a week at the start of the year (Sunday is cheat day) and by the 2nd Sunday I didn't even feel like having sugar

    Thanks for helping out Erika from my team this week!

    Amar

    PS Coming to Austin again next month for a few days and was planning to hit up Cat Lavery for a coffee if you're maybe free to join 🙂

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    • Administrator

    Erika was awesome Amar, glad you got some use out of Copywriting Course...I bet that change alone will pay for it many times over in reviews  🙂 

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    • Administrator

    Oh man....I might be joining you soon, I see very little benefit to added sugar now 😬

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    Congrats Neville on going 2 months without sugar. Did you eat fruit during the challenge?

    A few years ago, I did a no sugar challenge (no fruit, no condiments with sugar, etc. I also didn’t eat any gluten—no pasta, rice, etc. Yeah I was crazy to do it all at once .). It started as a 30 day challenge, then I extended it to 60 days. I got in a good groove that I went 18 months without sugar of any kind!!!

    This was huge for me. I love sweets—cookies, brownies and ice cream. One of my past entrepreneurial ventures was a gourmet dessert catering company. 

    After the challenge, my face and body completely transformed. When I ate my favorite ice cream, it tasted overly sweet. I couldn’t believe how much my taste buds had changed. 

    Your post reminded me about this experiment. I may write about it in my weekly email. Thanks for jogging my memory. 

    Recently, I’d been thinking about giving it a try again. Not sure I could go 18 months. 30 days is a good place to start. Thanks for the nudge.  

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    • Administrator

    That's amazing Erica! 

    I did eat fruit, and cocktails with sugar, but no foods with added sugar. I might want to keep it up for a much longer amount of time.

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    I love your material.

    Re books hard science suggestions - anything by Andy Weir. Of the three I've read, I would recommend Project Hail Mary. I don't believe you could go wrong with any of them.

     

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    • Administrator

    Much appreciated Andrew!

    I already read Project Hail Mary it was my favorite ever!

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