I love this "Apple Marketing Philosophy" from 1977. It's so simple and clear:

It really emphasizes to employees that the product and quality is the most important thing. 
 

I saw this cool chart (not sure who it's accredited to) of how to build a $100m/yr SaaS business for each price range of product.

$100 range: Must be a viral product.

$1,000 range: They start here and increase in price.

$10,000 range: They are targeting B2B customers. Most popular price range for $100m/yr companies.

$100,000 range: Targeting very large businesses.

$1,000,000 range: Going after Fortune 500 companies or gov contracts.

Here's another similar chart to that one:

 

Here's a fun video I did with AppSumo covering:

• My revenue streams.
• How I create content.
• Where all the customers come from.
• Experiments > Businesses

👇🏼 Watch it here 👇🏼

YouTube Link

I think it's a pretty great video to watch (or at least listen as audio in background)!

 

A fun & cheap joy I weirdly love: Getting a carwash!

Going through one of these carwashes is still super fun, like an adult Disney ride 😂

I go through one near my house and it takes a few minutes to get through, and it's fun to just sit back, relax, and watch all those wipey things rub all over your car!

STILL the best way I've found to organize the day:

This is the format he's talking about looks like this:

While almost everything I do is digital, the daily to-do list is my one physical leftover:
• Notes = Digital 
• Writing = Digital 
• Calendar = Digital 
• Daily To-Do List = Physical

I'm writing this email immediately after our Thursday Office Hours where we hop on a call and live-write and live-review and live-discuss your problems:

We wrote an email for someone today and he said:

"This is my first time joining, and I already feel like I've got my entire subscription paid back already."

We get so many comments like this we have a whole /wins section just to keep track of the 100+ wins per month we get like this, like:

Checkout this super-duper-ultra-simple piece of direct mail from a custom builder I got in the mail (which results in $200k to $1.5m projects):

On my walks around the neighborhood, I see this builders sign up in front of several house construction projects! 

He then sends these quick notes to all of the neighbors. He sends the address of two nearby projects, and I literally walked over to see them. 

To me this is a perfect piece of direct mail: A cheap/simple campaign to ultra-qualified leads that results in huge numbers.
 

I love "Ugly Design" where something is seemingly poorly designed, but it completed its main goal: To make you read it.

I think this original Kopywriting Kourse waitlist I built years ago was one of my best performing pages ever:

Learning can take many forms, and some are better than others:

I can think this seems pretty true!

• Lecture: 5% (Average Retention Rate)
• Reading: 10%
• Audio/Visual: 20%
• Demonstration: 30%
• Group Discussion: 50%
• Practice by Doing: 75%
• Teaching Others: 90%

If I just sit in a classroom listening to a lecture, in 10 days I've likely forgot 95% of it. 

However if I learn something good enough that I have to explain/teach it to someone else, I'll likely remember nearly all of it. 

I grill almost every day, and the standard meal I eat almost every day for either lunch or dinner (or both):

• Skirt steak or NY Strip steak.
• Avocado.
• Sometimes I throw in tomato or the occasional cheese. 

I used to properly plate all my meals, but it's way more fun to eat with the cutting board and big giant knife!

IDGAF if the cutting board touched raw meat, I still eat right off it.
 

One thing I've noticed as myself and friends move through different phases of life is the extreme time crunch on your 24 hours:

When you are single you basically have 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of free time: 

If you get partnered up, what was previously free time gets a bit more taken up:

Then if you throw kids into the mix that free time is further eroded by a significant amount:

This is of course just for demonstration, and I'm sure this time crunch is actually far worse than pictured!

Since it's summer I wear sunglasses everywhere, and one cool thing I did a long time ago was buy these knock-off Amazon Rayban's 10 at a time:

They look like standard sunglasses as you can see:

But I hate having to "babysit" products I own, and sunglasses are WORST! 

You have to take them around in their own special bulky case, and you have to be careful not to scratch the lens....well I hate that!

So I buy a ton of these and keep them allllll over the place:

• In my car glove box.
• Tossed into my backpack.
• Tossed into my laptop bag.
• Random drawers.

I find it easier to buy a bunch of these cheap sunglasses and throw away a few pairs every year than buy nice sunglasses and babysit them!

Look at this insane stat that shows barely 2% of people reading Reddit post:

This backs up the concept of The 90-9-1 Rule that states:

90% of people just lurk:

9% of people casually participate:

1% of people create most content:

Let that sink in next time you consume or make content. It's 1% or 2% of the people you're listening to. 

This interview was so full of awesome nuggets (read my personal notes from it here):

How to scale up a business with Ayman Al-Abdullah (lessons from getting to $100m/yr). Watch it on YouTube here:

Ayman Al-Abdullah was the CEO of AppSumo who got it on track to doing over $80m in a single year, then became a meme lord, then started Agoge Consulting and is doing great getting CEO’s as clients.

This is The Austin skyline only 2 years apart seen from my balcony:

I tried to line up the picture better here:

Pretty crazy that's only 2 years.....and you can't even see a bunch of other buildings and construction being blocked out by all the other buildings 😳

Here's me and my buddy doing handstands on the beach over 4th of July!

That's me on the left!

I thought this was a super cool way to scout for business as a new freelancer:

This guy goes around updating people's YouTube thumbnails for free. This has two big benefits: 
1.) Shows the person your work. 
2.) Shows OTHERS your work.
Check out what he sent:

What a great way to start building a portfolio of work AND grabbing eyeballs of potential customers!
 

 

This is every piece of software we use to run SwipeFile and CopywritingCourse.com:

• Camtasia for video editing.
• Video studio rental in Austin for interviews.
• Home studio for doing podcasts and recording trainings.
• Canva for images.
• Convertkit for email.
• InvisionCommunity for CC Members area.
• WPengine for hosting.
• Awesome Screenshot for screengrabs.
• Google Docs (free) for notes.
• Slack (free) to connect with employees.
• Hypefury for scheduling social media posts.
• Zoom for Office Hours.
• Focus45 to keep focus.
• Calendly for scheduling meetings.
• ChatGPT Pro for brainstorming.
• Edit any website for showing changes to websites.
• Ahrefs for SEO research.
• Figma for landing pages.
• LeadPages for landing pages.
• Framer for our /join page and /agency page.
• CaptivateFM for podcast hosting.
• Quickbooks for accounting.

We made some changes to a sales page, and right after it was showing a ~75% higher interaction, meaning:
⬆Higher on-page time.
⬆Higher interactivity.
⬆Higher sales ratio.

 

We do this all the time in our community and see crazy results. We're starting to do this for medium-to-large companies as well:

Fill this out if you're interested in me and a team of designers split-testing the hell out of your copy/design/layout for maximum conversion rates:

This is a cool re-design of RXBar that happened 6+ years ago, from this to this:

The funny thing is it went from "All Design" to "All Copy" which made it stand out much more in a confusing sea of protein bars:

I like how they used the little "space" they had on the bar to convey a powerful message.

 

Here's an awesome "Can't Skip Ad" billboard from Yesco seen in Ogden, Utah (looks like the YouTube "can't skip ad" button) 😂

They are seller of physical and digital billboards, love this way of promoting them!

More zoomed out view makes it look like a "Skip Ad" button on top of this mountain 😂

The "Skip Ad" billboard reminds me of this classic billboard promotion:

 

This was a fun "Austin Moment" (because I feel like half the people in Austin are content creators of some sort:

I recorded a podcast with Ayman.... 

...then we were driving and randomly on the road Nat Eliason walked by and we had a pull-up-the-car-to-stop-and-chat  😂

Funny story two nights ago: Ayman threw a dinner at a very nice restaurant. 

At the end he needed to spend $800 more to hit the room minimum spend. 

So he orders every dessert on the menu…ok that’s like $120. 

No one wants wine that’s out… 

Only way to blow $700: Two giant tomahawk steaks and caviar 😂

What do you think is a better title for Writing Guide Download meant for companies to train their employees with, or give to clients??

A.) “The Copywriting Course Writing Style Guide”

B.) “Copy This Writing Guide To Train Your Employees Or Give It To Clients”

C.) Give me a suggestion! Just reply to this email with suggestions!

I want this guide to be fun and memorable.

Here's some basic Google Doc mockups (I made in like 2 seconds for this email so don't judge them too hard) 😂:

A.)

B.)

 

Reply and let me know if you have naming suggestions, or positioning suggestions! Feel free to ask questions as well. 

The hotel I’m writing this from has full sized Aesop shampoos and conditioners.

Should I steal them!??!? 😬

It sounds like they encounter this issue a lot of people knabbing the full sized bottles, so they put this card by them implying you'll get charged $50/bottle 😂

The cool thing is this is how much a new bottle would cost, so they're not necessarily gouging you here, it's just retail price!

Kind of weird how certain brands of soaps make you excited to stay at a hotel (for me it's Aesop or LeLabo)!

Constantly testing high traffic pages is very helpful, we recently updated this sales page.....and it's currently showing a 75% higher on-page time and overall page interactions!

Increases like this mean huge revenue bumps for income producing pages.

Want us to do this for a page of yours (that generates $100k+)?
Enter your info here and let's chat →

I like this podcast called Kill Tony which is recorded live in Austin every Monday at The Comedy Mothership (Joe Rogan's comedy club). 

I've been 3 times in the past and tickets are always super hard to get. 

But recently Tony Hinchcliff (the host) was on The Roast of Tom Brady, and also sold out two giant arena shows....

....and now the tickets have gained a whole new level of fame!

Kill Tony tickets went on sale at exactly noon a few days ago, and there was so much demand that all 12+ shows got queue'd with over 100,000 people trying to simultaneously buy 😬

Kind of wild this is just because of a podcast!
 

This has been a thrilling read so far: Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

A good science fiction book before bed helps me sleep, but I’ve been jumping into this one in the daytime as well.

I love having a book to look forward to. It sucks when I don't!

Did you know Google Docs has a super easy "drawing" feature right inside it.  

[Insert] --> [Drawing]

I use it all the time for mockups and quick images and it works great!

So many people don't know about this delightful little feature inside Google Docs 🙂  

Did you know members of the Copywriting Course get private training videos several times a week? 

Just one tip from a video could completely change your workflow or how you do marketing. 

This month alone we added 3 trainings. 

This is a 17 minute private training about how I do SEO research to go from research → finished article (also works for social media topics):

This is video on how I use AI to speed up boring tasks. This video immediately helped some people become far more productive, and automate-away parts of their workflow:

This training video went over my process of how we find and curate content from social media. This then gets turned into SwipeFile which is used by thousands of people a month, then our popular Friday SWIPES Email Newsletter to 61,000 people:

Not to mention we also do 4 Office Hours per week where you can show up and get your questions answered, or copy re-written!

These are just some of the Office Hours questions and reviews we did this June! Here's just 1/4th of what we did this month alone 😬

• Optimizing the heck out of lead magnet copy!
• Improving cold pitch for getting people on board for a National Science Foundation program.
• New book planning for 100k Instagram audience.
• Updating the messaging of a golfing community.
• Website review ($999 offer) for new landing page and going over sales page.
• Positioning a new calculator to rank #1 in search engines for a public company.
• Updating a 7-day free email sequence for a games company.
• New $1,800/mo client added, how to flesh out the service to be even better for customers.
• B2B company pays $1,400 for newsletter mention, we design a new ad to massively upgrade click-throughs on next sponsorship.
• Creating a new UpWork profile for a biochemist, and making a 1-year plan to bring in extra income from it.
• Helping a Rabbi raise $80,000 through emails.
• First few emails broke their original goal of $30,000 now aiming for $80k!
• My surefire method for pitching guest posts for large publications that’ll beat 99% of the other wannabe guest posters.
• Turning a badly written case study into a great SEO article for large university.
• Last Office Hours did an experiment on the spot, got 22 responses in 24 hours! Now going over how to monetize those responses.
• Updating a $1,000/hr coaching listing on a tutor directory for an olympic gold medalist to grab even more clients.

This isn't even mentioning the 130+ things we worked on in our Copy Review Forum 😬

The best way to utilize Copywriting Course is to learn from us, then get your content reviewed.

Take the start of Q3 to do this now, so you WRECK Q4 with sales!

Optimize Your.....
Email, Sales Pages, Promotions, About Pages,
 Home Pages, Signup Forms, Images,
Product Descriptions, Content, 
Cold Emails
SEO

If you join RIGHT NOW we'll give you 50% off the whole year!
Use Coupon Code LEVELUPQ4 to get 50% off
Deal ends really really really soon:

 

 

WOW. Look how rapidly online dating became the primary way couples meet:

I meet people who don't like using dating apps, but by the math of it, it's almost FOOLISH not to!

By only meeting people in real life you're limiting yourself to people who are within 10 feet of you:

Whereas an online dating app can expose you to far more of the entire network of eligible singles:

 

I built a newsletter scraper for all the newsletters I want to read, but don't want the email clutter.

It's so fun to read, kind of like old blog feeds!

Sadly I don't think I can openly publish this without getting in trouble (scraping & publishing other people's content is a big no-no).

However Copywriting Course Members can access it here:
copywritingcourse.com/emails

As there's been this gigantic boom in newsletters, the downside is subscribing to many of them clutters the hell out of your inbox!

That's why I built a tool to follow 100+ newsletters without the clutter.

If you have an active Copywriting Course subscription feel free to use it!

I love the unique layout of this chart about the 10 biggest economies over the last 80 years:

You can easily see the current sizes and pace of change:

I recently bought a sauna which I put in my garage gym:

...and to finalize it I installed some towel hooks and a small shelf for towels and my phone:

My next totally-not-neccessary project will be to make some proper "feet" for the sauna.

It currently overlaps this concrete lip, so to support it when being built I just stacked up some wooden blocks:

I'd like to eventually find a bandsaw to use where I can trim these blocks to look like they were custom made to fit.

In case you're wondering: I've used the sauna every single say since I bought it! It's amazing for warming up before a workout, and really gets everything nice loose and sweaty before starting.

I used to go to A LOT of conferences. Starting around 2015 I noticed just going for the big speeches was….kinda lame. 

You could just look up a fully-edited YouTube version of the founders speech or life story and it was often BETTER than the live version.

Now it seems the main benefit of a conference is the other people attending and networking:

Maybe this is why I watch and listen to sooooo many podcasts. 

20 years ago I had to spend thousands of dollars and a lot of time to hear high level conversations between people like Elon Musk and Lex Fridman, now I can listen to them for free. 
 

 

Here's a quick rundown of some of the larger costs I pay to run a digital business:

• ConvertKit for email $7k/yr
• Wistia for video $4k/yr
• WPengine for hosting $5k/yr
• Community + Dev Work $9k/yr
• People $70K/yr

Here's my breakdown of it:

This is an awesome way to demonstrate what a CRO testing company does, and it even shows the results of their changes.

I like these types of before/after's with results! This one was from ConversionWise.

Wow: Joe Rogan was 42 years old when he started podcasting!

That's kind of wild 🤯

Joe Rogan is currently 56 (dob Aug 11, 1967), and he recorded the first episode of The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast on Dec 24, 2009.

Pretty cool how such a cultural phenomenon was started at 42.

Speaking of Joe Rogan starting at 42, coincidentally the next thing I'm showing is also of a guy (Chris Do) starting YouTube at 42:

What caught my attention here was how Chris Do re-formatted this Tweet as an Instagram post.

Normally it's just some crappy screenshot, but I thought this layout looked amazing.

I bought a sauna! Check it out:

It's an indoor traditional sauna that I bought for the purpose of using before/after home workouts.....so far it's been AWESOME. 

I wanted to place it in my home gym / garage, here's a rough idea of the volume with me in it:

It can hold 3 people (maybe 4 if someone stands), and I can lay down in it.

I'm a big user of the sauna at the gym I go to, so I expect I'll be using this all the time at home now!

Speaking of saunas, did you know you can make money renting out saunas to people for birthday parties, AirBnB vacations and more?

The sauna rental business:

I got 3 new books delivered for night time reading!
- Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
- Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang
- The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Reading non-business books before bed helps me wind down and have quality sleep.

I'm 2 days into "Pushing Ice" and already covered 100 pages....so I think I'm into that book already 😂

This is a GREAT high-level overview of how to monetize from social media:

Post on Social --> Newsletter --> Community --> Larger Projects

Credit to @RichardPatey for this graphic.

I like this because it's quite simple. If I adapted this to our Copywriting Course business model, this is how it would looks: 

You can see that the blog post and social media flow into the newsletter, which then some people buy a Copywriting Course Subscription, and then some clients go on to do larger custom projects with us.

Neat!

Many of your core beliefs are forged in the first 21 years of your life. 

For example if you grew up during The Great Depression, you’ll likely have qualities that prioritize survival and frugality.

This graphic visually demonstrates the concept of "Time Compression"

Similarly, a lot of your nostalgia is completely formed by ~15 years old. Look at this chart showing the different ages of different nostalgic opinions:

Wow a buddy of mine Patrick Campbell has been quietly building up a 300,000 subscriber YouTube channel over the last year and has only published Short videos, not a single long video! 

While longform video is better by the metrics in almost every way, it's WAYYYYY harder to make, and recently many social platforms have been pushing short videos even more and more:

 

All last week I had a fun co-worker.....Meet Dobby!

I dogsat Dobby and he was great. He's one of those GoldenDoodles that's genetically bred to be an awesome dog:

• Mild mannered.
• Doesn't shed at all.
• Hypoallergenic.
• Medium sized.
• Athletic but not TOOOOO athletic.
• Long nose snout so no breathing problems.
• Big fluffy muppet face!

 

Newsletters are just blogs...

Newsletters are usually a bunch of short posts and thoughts listed out. This is what most blogs were!

The thing that newsletters solved versus blogs: DISTRIBUTION.

When you publish a blog post it enters the void.

When you publish a newsletter it gets read by 30%+ of your list!

My greatest hack for meeting with current friends and meeting new friends and avoiding all the annoying scheduling texts is:

Setup a scheduling link called /meeting with available times, and make it auto-select a location that's convenient!

It's super easy to schedule casual hangouts this way....tbh I feel like I unlocked a life cheatcode by sending scheduling links for social hangs:

Here's how I use this Hangout Calendar:

This truck was spotted in Long Island with straight-to-the-point compelling copy that's SURE to grab attention!

This copy is great because it:
✔ Says who they're targeting.
✔ The high amount of money one can earn.
✔ Call RICHARD (not a customer service hotline).

Hat tip to Eli Langer for this pic and description!
 

Add "Full Stack" to your title and it looks way cooler!

• Full Stack Writer
• Full Stack Engineer
• Full Stack Designer
• Full Stack Developer
• Full Stack Copywriter
• Full Stack Data Scientist
• Full Stack Product Manager
• Full Stack Mobile Developer

The reality is a "Full Stack" professional delivers far more value than a normal one. Example:

A "Normal Writer" can just type words in a Google Doc.

-vs-

A "Full Stack Writer" would be able to do research, type words, make custom images, make custom graphs, and upload the final product.
 

Wow, this graph shows how a lot of your "nostalgia" is completely formed by around 15 years old.

Presented without comment, some of my friends wearing shirts of me 😂

This Seinfeld quote I saw hit the nail on the head about writing:
 

“When you write comedy, it’s a little like poetry. You don’t do a lot of writing. It’s 90% thinking, 10% actual writing.” 
- Jerry Seinfeld

This is totally true for all types of writing I've done. The actual "typing on a keyboard" is just 10% of the process!

Thinking + ruminating + reading + discovering + talking + planning takes up 90% of the time.

Dang we're already on the last day of May 2024 and headed into June!

June will be the last month of Q2, are you where you wanted to be by this time?

Setting quarterly goals to finish assets is very helpful, like this:

With just 4 quarters in a year you could build something significant. Here's an example of to completely overhauling your marketing:

Q1: Website that converts subscribers.
Q2: Improve all emails and sales pitches.
Q3: Improve pricing, product offering, and sales angle.
Q4: Autoresponder that converts new email subscribers into buyers.

This is pretty much what we do at Copywriting Course, and starting this month would be a great way to make sure you have a great Q3 and Q4:

Watch a video what we can do for you →

See you inside the community!

Look at the "ancestors" of our 26-letter English alphabet.

Cool to see how language is constantly evolving!

Imagine if our alphabet looked like that top line still!

My name would be:

N e v i l l e ⤵

If I was born 200 years ago I'd live in a hot rural Indian village. As a kid I had -6.75 vision, which in the modern age is easily correctable, but back then would limit my work and life options. 

Being born in 1980's USA was a gift. We live in a time where comfort is a given, food & freedom is a right, and working from anywhere is possible.

Pretty neat.
 

I last-minute needed to record short clips for social media, but I forgot to line up an interviewer.....instead I "interviewed myself." 

TBH it worked pretty great!

I sat in the left seat and asked 27 questions in a row, then I sat in the right seat and gave 27 short answers. Then with some basic editing got it sent over for clipping:

In 1 hour I was able to record 27 clips like this:

One of my best time management hack:

Driving by downtown Austin looks super Mad-Maxish because our old basketball stadium is being demolished piece by piece and it looks badass driving by it!

 

It's cool seeing the rectangular structure underneath, because we all knew this building (The Erwin Center) as round:

 

 

One thing I always notice on a page is the price of something. 
Ultimately it determines so many of our decisions, which is why I personally collect a bunch of pricing structures. 

 

Pricing is a weird art because it's not always rational:

• If you price too cheap, you signal poor quality.
• But you can also price things cheaper to sell more.
• If you price too high you make less sales.
• But if you price ultra-high it gets more attention.

Pricing really is an interesting blend of science and art!

We're experimenting with video on our sales page, what do you think of this style of video?

The base foundation for the video was a Google Presentation I made of 107 slides, then turned it into video format:

I'd love to know if you think video is:
A.) Good 🙂
B.) Bad 😞
C.) Could use some work on specific parts (let me know)!

This is a super simplistic framework for thinking about building a new product.

Many people come up with business ideas without enough demand, this framework ensures you're going after an audience with a problem + demand + money:

 

Credit: @sgblank @nivi

I once had dinner with Peter Thiel...

....and whenever someone asked his opinion on something, he’d give a “spectrum of possibilities” for every answer.

Example: If I asked his thoughts on the future of the Dollar, he would respond: 

“Ok, here’s 3 scenarios…”

Then he would give 3 different “scenarios” ranging from: 
- Normal and boring scenario. 
- Good and Bad mixed scenario. 
- Crazy worst case scenario.

Then he’d backup each scenario with data or comparable past events.

He rarely thought something was black and white, but that everything was a spectrum of possibilities.

It was super cool to see his thinking in action!

Here's an interesting thought:

"The Internet" still runs on servers and cables, and the companies that run the most bare metal on the internet are: 

- Amazon: 32% 
- Microsoft: 20% 
- Google: 9% 
- Alibaba: 6% 
- IBM: 5% 
- SalesForce: 3% 
- Tencent: 2% 
- Oracle: 2%

That means as you're reading this on your phone/tablet/desktop, some bits and bytes travelled either by air or physical cable to a metal server likely controlled by one (or several) of the companies listed above.

You might be reading my words originating from a cluster of servers just like this!

I watched a demo video of the Oculus Quest, and Mark Zuckerberg was demo'ing it.

One random interesting thing I noticed was that he was demo'ing this off his private jet:

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is a Gulfstream G650-ER.

By pulling up some similar-layout G650's you can see the seat he's sitting in is the forward seat closest to the galley:

I just thought Zuck demo'ing Quest from his private jet is one of those things half the people will think is awesome, and half the people will make fun of 😂

Sometimes text alone isn't the best way to transmit an idea....but often text and video is a strong combo!

I was working with a designer to re-do some images on a sales page, and I thought it was fun to see all the trial-and-error done to come up with the best image:

Here's the original image I made in Google Presentations:
It's not pretty, but it did the job:

Then you can see more versions of the same idea come to life (some better than others).

This one was a simplified version, but wasn't as obvious

This one took me several brain cycles to figure out what was going on:

This version abandoned the scale and just went with benefits:

I thought this looked badass, but was too confusing:

Another version that looked visually interesting, but I think is hard to tell what's going on:

This one was good, but it wasn't clear there was a transformation taking place:

I ended up liking this one the best!

Which version did you like best?? You can respond and lemme know.

Last Friday I sponsored a "Friday Writing Club" here in Austin, where a whole coffee shop of people is doing a dedicated 1 hour silent writing time:

If you want you can sponsor the Writing Club and pay for everyone's coffee, so I volunteered.

There were about 25 people, and my total bill to pay for everyone's coffee was...
...
.........
............
...............
..................
.....................
$75!

I thought it would be $200+ so I happily tipped another $75 bringing it to a total $150.

Not bad!

I saw another “Our Designer Quit” style ad out in the wild!

This variation is “Our Designer Is On Vacation” but it’s still the same hilarious concept 😂

One way to get attention is by going the exact opposite of everyone else, so instead of a nice ad you have a crappy add.

Here’s some more fun examples that make heads turn:

Here's a cool set of charts showing your age versus how much time you spend with:
- Family
- Friends
- Partner
- Children
- Coworkers
- Yourself Alone

⬇

⬇

⬇

⬇

⬇

Here's all of them together. Some of these charts are sobering, and a reminder to enjoy life while it lasts 😬

Charts Sources: American Time Use Survey (2009-2019)
Charts Credit: @tjpower

Here's a super cool informative graphic from Lenny about how company pivots happened:

• What their original idea was.
• Why they pivoted.
• How they found their new idea

Super cool to read through and see how companies pivoted and eventually found the right successful idea!

My buddy Noah Kagan just had a baby shower for upcoming baby, checkout my "Noah Shirt" 😂

There was a fantastic episode with Scott Galloway on the My First Million Podcast about building wealth in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s so you can relax later in life:

Here’s a raw dump of my notes (sorry for poor spelling/grammar all taken on my phone):

————MY NOTES————

The sexier the business the lower return unless you’re top .001%. Find your talent and become good at that in a fields with a 90% employment rate.

Less sexy the business the higher the return. Where can you be great?

Why some people can sell for high multiples: -They own a niche -They have recurring revenue -Tech is at their core -They are international -They have defensive IP

Consulting: “pay me $250,000/yr and I’ll answer all your questions.”

He spent $17m to build scraping tools. Was focused on exit right away.

Started L2. Sold for $160m. Started it at ~44 years old.

Build a small business by high retention of good employees. If a person has a friend at work they’re less likely to leave. I don’t try to be their friend, I try to be their dad.

Sometimes in the world of media the whole world just stops advertising.

Was in his early 40s and flailing and his takeover the New York Times went very poorly and lost a lot of peoples money and people were not advertising anymore and he was just figuring out a way to be able to afford living in New York.

Sold Prohet for $33m 2010 started L2. Sold for $160m.

Be humble when you have wins bc a lot of times it isn’t you.

You can’t control what happens in your life but you can control how you respond to it.

You’re never more prone to making a big mistake than right after big win.

Need to be more aggressive and have your sails up so when the winds kick up you catch it.

Some people get stuck, they can’t forgive themselves and they lose their mojo, and 7 years later their confidence and skills start atrophying. Put a statute of limitations on it and move forward. Might be time to mourn and move on. Be around people who want more.

“I surround myself with smart younger people because they have a different take on life.”

Opportunity is a function of density. Be in something that has a high density of success. Who becomes wealthy: Be in a big city like San Fran or New York.

Find people you want to be like. You rise or fall to the level of your peer group.

“My 40’s I grinded my ass off, but I delegate a lot.”

America is best country in the world to make money, Europe is best place to spend it.

1% is $750,000/yr. You generally won’t have total balance if you get to 1%. Expect to go all in on your career or scale back expectations. You can control how hard you work when you work. Don’t work so hard you sacrifice your health but enough it takes a toll. Then you can have more balance later in life.

1 source of divorce is money. When a man loses status as a provider he’s more likely to get divorce. Sometimes it’s get out of the way and help other partner.

The more money generally the happier in terms of lower income to middle class to upper class.

If you have lots of money you can relax and exhale.

We’ll all be dead soon, it’ll go by very fast, you should try to have fun and a good time. “I’m going to a country music festival and wear boots and take an edible and just have fun.”

Wealth is about how much you spend. If you consume less than you make you are good. Develop a “savings muscle.”

Take advantage of time by saving and investing and let compounding do its thing. Every 21 years your investments go up 8x.

Yes you can maybe sell a company or something but maybe not, so show some discipline and maturity by slowly getting rich.

Book: The Algebra of Wealth

Wealth = Focus + Stoicism x Time x Diversification

Focus: If you have a side hustle you need to have a better main hustle. The way you get wealthy is by getting really great at one thing. Find it in an industry that’s not very sexy. If you’re top 10% of installing HVAC, you can make a really good living.

Your passion is not your hobby. It’s what you’re really great at.

When wealthy spending time time with kids and parents and people you care about.

Make more than you spend is step 1.

Went from vc to consulting, found out consulting was too hard as he got older and moved to teaching. Had to revamp his life and career and skills several times.

Lost everything twice; in 2000 and 2008. Started diversifying to prevent this.

Started saving a lot of money in his 40’s.

“I deployed an army of Capital in my 40s for my family to go kill and grow while I was asleep.”

Viewed his stack of capital like an army: Here’s a tank, I’ll sacrifice the awesome apartment to grow the army

————MY NOTES————

 

If you ever want to sell a company for a very high multiple, here's some qualities of that company:
- It owns a niche.
- It has recurring revenue.
- It has tech at its core.
- It is international.
- It has defensive IP.

You know your Uncle Neville, he loves a good graph. Especially when a graph conveys a large amount of info...but simply!

I liked a blog post about your maximum power through different ages.

1.) It starts with a simple graph showing your maximum strength:

2.) Then it breaks down differences between out-of-shape, average, fit, and athlete:

3.) Then it categorizes only men:

4.) Then it categorizes only women:

Image Credit: Why I Exercise

Looking at these charts conveys so much helpful information!

Here's how to get more Twitter/X followers:

Step 1. Be Nick Gray:

Step 2. Invite a blind date for all-expenses paid trip to Tokyo. 

Step 3. 400+ women from the internet apply to go.

Step 4. He selected one, they arrived in Tokyo and he live-posted the date.

Step 5. Thousands of people were reading the live updates and loving it!!

Nick is one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and this story captivated the internet on Twitter and Instagram!

The blind date he picked wasn't revealed at first, and he gave updates with teaser photos like this:

Turns out the woman was a 27 year old engineer who went to Stanford, and eventually was revealed to the tens of thousands of people getting live-updates of this public blind date:

What a fun little internet story!

How I thought I’d use Al:
Asking ChatGPT to do stuff and create content.

How I’m actually using Al:
Using Google’s generative results to do research and answer questions from the web.

For everyday use I’m using 90% Google and 10% ChatGPT at this point.

How about you?

This week I went to a morning Writing Club (hosted by @taskett).

It was hosted at a coffee shop, there was a short amount of socializing followed by 1 hour of silent writing time.

~20 people were there, and everyone writing something!

Fun idea!

"Getting front of the right eyeballs" has always been the main goal of marketing.

It's been a continuously developing thing over the years:

1920: Get into the top radio programs or newspapers.

1980: Put “AA” in biz name to be first in phone book.

1990: Get on TV and radio ads.

2000: Stuff webpages with keywords (SEO).

2010: Add the right tags and keywords Google says.

2024: Be at the top of their social newsfeed + own their email.

Next: ???

Question for people with a home sauna, do you lay down in it?

I’m debating between: 1-2 person sauna I can sit but not lay, versus a 3 person sauna I can easily lay down in….but it requires more space and electrical wiring.

Wondering if laying down is worth the extra effort 🤔

UPDATE TO THIS QUESTION: So I ended up buying a 3-person Finnleo Hallmark 55c:

The laying down + being able to fit more people was worth the extra complexity for me.

I'm adding a 220v outlet, and it BAREEELLYY made the cut size-wise (see white string outline):

I wanted a rectangle shaped one originally, but the size made it hard to park my car in the garage (too tight of a squeeze).

This corner model sauna seems to be the right size to still fit a car there:

I originally wanted a small sauna because 4' x 4' size was perfect for my garage...BUT it's too small for 2 ppl.

I went to a store to test it, and in perfect position I'm still taking more than half the bench 😂

When I spread out comfortable I basically took up that whole bench.

Excited to start sauna'ing more!

On one hand, this seems like a bad billboard....
❌ No description.
❌ Not obvious what the product is.

On the other hand, it got me to Google "Really . com" while pumping gas and looking at this thing....so maybe it worked!

Turns out it's some sort of privacy-based phone service.

However if I was just driving by in my car and couldn't Google this right away I doubt I'd care enough to look it up.

The standard AIDA Formula is still one of the most useful things in copywriting a person can learn, look at this result:

It's probably the lowest effort to learn, yet highest impact concept:

Just remember "A.I.D.A" and you've got it memorized!

Last year I was excited about self publishing another book, but I never put it out because:
❌ The subject matter wasn’t that big.
❌ I doubt this could be an all-time best seller.

...but I still wanna do it!

It'll be only 50 pages and I am setting the pencils-down date for end of June 2024.

I'm just putting it out there so I'm shamed into working on it harder!

My buddy Noah Kagan moved his YouTube studio to a different room, and this is the barebones V1 getting it setup.

I can’t wait to see progress and final result! Seeing behind-the-scenes of video studios is fun.

 

....speaking of watching the progress of video studios, here's a Before/After of my own home office:

BEFORE:
Just a raw 13' x 14' room with concrete floors (extremely echo-y).

 

AFTER:
1. Added wallpaper
2. Put a big ass rug down
3. Positioned desks to face pretty wall
4. Hue lighting to control everything

 

This one room actually multi-functions as a:
- Home office
- YouTube studio
- Co-working space
- Overflow guest bedroom

Here's how it's setup:

I like how the space is multi-functional. For example if I have the whole family over and we need more bedrooms, the couch folds out into a Queen-sized bed and makes another guest room:

I can also adjust the lighting with one touch so the color range can change instantly like this...

...to this:

Fun!

 

 

I found a weird snack I’ve been enjoying a lot (no affiliation to this): It's called Obleas by ConsciousSnack and it's got:

• 6 ingredients.
• 42 calories for entire package.
• It has about 25 ultra-thin wafers.
• You can snack on these for like an HOUR.
• Can crack into small pieces with almost no crumbs.

I love snacking on stuff, but if I were to just sit for 30 minutes popping Pringles, I'd eat 1,000+ calories EASILY.

I can sit there snacking on these, breaking them into pieces, and get only 42 calories. There's also very little sweetness so I don't get sugar cravings after these.

Fun little find I randomly found at a store in Austin!

I propose a toast to the single-image-that-teaches-you-something. 

Here's some examples:

To me, being able to transmit information in a single blink of an eye is a superpower.

The new AI writing assistant Google launched is embedded in Chrome, making AI stuff even easier to use. 

To use it first turn it on: 
Settings → Experimental AI → Help Me Write. 

Use it anytime: 
Right click on a text field → Help Me Write

Here it is in action:

Neat!

Google Keep is low key the most useful note taking app out there:

- Super easy to save notes and pictures.
- Masonry layout is easy to browse.
- It’s free.
- Natively ties into all Google products.
- Can export everything into a Doc.

It's so much easier to use than Notion for me!

I'm surprised more people don't know about it.

I've been pushing it forever....and what makes it WAY MORE USEFUL than all other note taking apps is the native integration into every Google product:

I didn't Xweet for 5 days because I was in Mexico recently for a vacation and it was awesome 😎

Checkout this ridiculous cave spa:

Another part of the spa where you hang out under each different type of water fountain:

Washing off before a massage:

Cool view out my room of this spiral pyramid thingy:

I loved the cave-y architecture all throughout the resort, I wish I was able to see how they built all these structures!

They had so many of these cave-like natural walls which I "think" are artificial but TBH I couldn't tell:

It was a fun trip!

 

 

I started noticing the term "Full Stack Writer" start popping up since about 2019. 

I think it's a great term because it means "a writer who can mix in other skills."

For example if you can write, but ALSO use Wordpress, cook, know photography and video, use Excel really well........this means you can potentially be a better writer because of your breadth of experiences:

A Full Stack Writer would be someone who knows multiple skills related to writing such as:

📝 Writing text in an editor.
🖼 Creating and editing images.
🖥 Knowing how to create/manage/publish websites.
🕵️‍♂️ Understanding very basic SEO.
🌅 Knowing how to write on social media platforms.
📊 Understanding how to promote an article once released.
🎥 Knowing how to create videos.
🎨 Design, UI, UX.

Obviously if a writer knows all these other related skills they will be a much more powerful force!

I'm still surprised how hard it is to write, design and organize a sales page from start to finish.

Yes there are templates and stuff you can start from, but you still need to know A LOT of things to do this well.

I currently use LeadPages, and as a hobby project I'm currently learning to use Framer.

I am re-doing our own Sales Page and it's a big project! I'm breaking it into several steps:

Step 1.) I made these slides in Google Presentation that outlines the flow of the entire sales video and sales page.

This by itself took a long time:

 

Step 2.) Mocking up the design section-by-section.

This is where I'm using more help than other areas because I want to improve my own design sensibilities:

 

Step 3.) Recording a new sales video. 

This is being made out of the slides, then further animated in editing. It was also recorded in 4 separate parts. These are hard 😳

Hopefully it turns out great, and I can report back on conversion findings next month!
 

 

While this chart isn't visually very interesting, but the content is very juicy!

This is USA data from 2023 that shows your age and net worth, and what percentage you fall in compared to others.

Example: You're 32 years old and have a $500,000 net worth, this makes you richer than 90% of people your age. 

 

How did I not know this before? 

Even number interstates: Side to Side 
Odd number interstate roads: Up and Down

I love it when a simple graphic like this teaches you something useful!

The last episode of My First Million Podcast was recorded from my office with the standard 1080p webcam on the iMac M3.

Sam Parr initially thought this was the DSLR camera feed! I still think a DSLR camera looks better, but these webcams are getting good!

I still think a full DSLR setup look best, but the iMac and iPhone aren't too far behind. 
Same lighting, same positioning, different webcams:
• Sony a6400 DSLR
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iMac M3 webcam
• iMac M1 laptop webcam

In Austin, TX. we got a 100% eclipse blackout, but it was super cloudy!

So I couldn't really see the eclipse itself too well, but the whole place went dark which was really neat:

Here I am watching the eclipse from home:

It was fun seeing all the neighbors from every house out as well (also you can see the auto-sensors on the downtown building lights turned on when it got dark)!

One of my goals this year is to treat my business more like a 9-5 job.

This means:
- A little less needless goofing off during the day.
- Finish my entire to-do list during biz hours.
- Just because I don’t have anything to do, doesn’t mean I HAVE to do nothing.

When I was younger and with less obligations it was easy to spread out work across all 16 waking hours. But with more social/family/friend stuff going on, time becomes more precious.

The 9-5 time block makes a lot of sense, as most of the world operates around this schedule.

A few benefits I have are:
- Not having to commute and deal with traffic.
- This 9-5 schedule is *self* imposed, not forced.

I have a quick request for you 👇🏼

All you have to do is reply back to this email with a testimonial for either Copywriting Course, The Swipes Email, or stuff you've learned from me.

Different types of testimonials you can respond with:
Level 1.) Respond with anything nice to say about me or Copywriting Course. 
Level 2.) Respond back with a lesson you learned, applied, and did better with. 
Level 3.) Respond back with something you improved, and send visual proof or numbers of it improving! 
Level 4.) Respond back with a video testimonial. 

I read every single one of these! I appreciate it so much!!

**Let me know if you want me to anonymize your name on the testimonial.

When you go through a car wash with different pricing options, do you think selecting a more expensive option ACTUALLY make a difference?

I'll usually select "The Works" for $17, but I'm not sure it does anything different than Basic or Deluxe 🤔

I have a hunch it's mainly a marketing/pricing trick.

Instead of hiring agencies for work, l've had more success hiring people whose work I like, then offering whatever amount of money to hop on a call for 1 or 2 hours to work together. It almost always pays off 10x each time.

For example if I need some help going over a webpage, I'll reach out to someone whose work I like, and say "Can I get you on a video call for an hour to help? I can pay $300." 

Pretty much works every time!

This is cool, Google Meet now has live captions as you talk!

This is a neat feature, but what I'm most excited about live transcription is it moves us closer to having a universal language translator.

This could unlock untold amounts of productivity in the world-wide economy.

Imagine having a conversation with a freelancer in China who doesn't speak English, but we can communicate just fine because we can real-time communicate.

This would be pretty cool and seems to be coming fast.

Friendly PSA that your local public library is better to work at than a coffee shop!
- Fast WiFi
- Totally Free
- Tables, Desks, Workspaces
- Free Magazines, Books, Newspapers

I use the public library 3 blocks from my house several times a week, it’s like having a free WeWork.

 

 

I love writing out goals.

For example here's my April 2024 goals:

I don't always finish every goal, but these written goals are helpful for days I'm not sure what to work on.

I can just look up from my desk see these goals, which helps get back on track!

I've kept a running log of my monthly goals for years here.

I'm currently working my way through the Three Body Problem book trilogy, I'm currently on book #2, and I just saw there’s a NetFlix series released on it!

Now desperately trying to finish the trilogy before hearing any spoilers about the show!

This 1950's Schweppes Ad is still one of my favorite old-school ads, there's something very captivating about this to me:

I think there's just several elements that draw you into this ad:

Love it!

I loved this cool hover-over “Problem Explainer” on this site Retention.com

In a few hover-overs a reader will likely recognize a problem they have and think "oh I have that issue too." 🧐

Just stating the problems your product solves in Plain English is very powerful.

Holi is an Indian festival where you throw colors at each other and get all dirty, here's me after Holi this weekend!

The best part is when you take a shower after Holi and the water is all weird shades of blue and pink and brown and black 😂

The new "let's all hang out" is "let's do a sauna and cold plunge!"

Here's a fun night this week at my friend @cathrynlavery's place, with @nickgraynews and @thesamparr:

When looking at market size it’s helpful to look at the realistic amount you can capture.

I just learned there's different terms for that.

I am aware of TAM (Total Addressable Market), but there's all these other terms below that:

•TAM: Total demand for a product/service.

•SAM: Portion of TAM you can target and serve.

•SOM: Percentage of the market you can capture or intend to capture.

I saved a couple images from around the web demonstrating this concept:

Just a last minute reminder that we're doing a flash-sale for a year of Copywriting Course for you to ring in Q2 the right way!

We're down to 9 months left in the year:

And if you want help with any of your Sales Pages, Home Pages, Emails, Newsletters, Ad Copy or any marketing, jump into the Copywriting Course to learn how to optimize them this year:

For today, if you join Copywriting Course, you'll get 30% off a whole year.

(Get 30% off right now, use coupon Q2START at checkout)!
Sound fun? Then Start Now 🙂

This deal ends when Q1 ends, so grab it right now for a big savings for something you're already gonna buy!

 

One of my favorite marketing concepts is "The Slippery Slope" where you capture people's attention, give them great content, then get them to take an action:

The absolute best way to get people down the Slippery Slope is by using the AIDA Formula:

It can step-by-step slide people down that Slippery Slope for you!

Checkout our post on the AIDA Formula you can see how to sell stuff, even stuff like a helicopter 😎

Here's a tough lesson I learned on our last email:

It got a 4% email open rate (that's absurdly low), and we investigated what happened and it turns out:

I put a screenshot of our email intake form and linked it to a form, so Gmail viewed this as a fake form and phishing attempt.

Big lesson learned 🙄

In 2023 you'd have to combine the top 5 highest viewed episodes of television shows, just to equal just one mid-sized episode of Seinfeld 😮

This random episode they are comparing is not even in the top 50 most popular episodes of Seinfeld either:

One thing to note is that viewership of a show nowadays is probably spread over TV broadcasts, internet streamers and social media....so it's difficult to calculate FULL viewership.

This is the full infographic this info was pulled from:

This recent personal blog post from Sam Parr is reminiscent of OG blogs where you just shared stuff for the sake of sharing and remembering. They contain pictures and more in-depth thoughts.

See the article → theantimba.com/a-weekend-to-remember

I miss this form of blogging about events!

My first blog was called Neville's Financial Blog, and I miss aspects of the original blogging days like people doing full re-caps of events like this!

The downside of these types of posts is they take a long time to create. I'm hoping in the near future you can just select a few photos and AI will create these posts for you.

Digital advertising is very effective, but good ole outdoor advertising is still fun.

I had a dumb idea: The Hustle's old office sign is still up in Austin. They moved out of that office but it's sitting empty in a very high traffic area, with no sign letters on it.

Should I buy a pack of letters and put my own ad on it? 😂 😂

The new “Sell a course” is “Sell a community.”

Course sales are lumpy based on launches, communities can level that out with recurring revenue.

With a digital community the 3 factors that change income are:
- Price
- Time stayed
- Number of Customers

This chart shows sample revenue of a community size from 100 to 1,200:

This chart shows revenue of a community priced from $10/mo to $200/mo:

This chart shows revenue of a community where customers stay from 1 month to 24 months

...

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......wait for it...

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...you send out 3 different emails!

1.) Short Email: Ultra short, like a notification.
2.) Medium Email: Short, but with some added info.
3.) Long Email: Your full sales pitch.

Let's say we have to write an email for podcast outreach with the Short/Medium/Long Email format.

Here's how we'd do it:

This "Medium Email" adds a little more content to the message, giving out some great reasons why Nicollete should come on my podcast. 

If you don't know someone well, then maybe adding some more benefits to the request can help.

This graphic shows that learning to use a spreadsheet is probably far more helpful than many advanced math subjects 😂

Subjects like calculus were hard to get excited about in high school because they never told you WHY it was helpful.

If you give zero evidence why something is useful, it’s hard to dedicate time to it.

This is the same for your product marketing. Are you telling your customers all the reasons your product/service will help them?

Cool quote overheard on a Lex Fridman and Kimbal Musk podcast:

"Food is a gift we give ourselves 3 times a day.”

- Kimbal Musk

I like this quote because I cook almost all my meals, either in the form of meal prep once a week:

I have in the past bought pre-made meals, but there's something very satisfying about fresh food and you know every ingredient that goes into it.

Also I enjoy the process of taking a few minutes to grill up some steak or chicken on the grill. There's something very fun about it.

Some angel investing advice Dan Martell said Naval Ravikant gave him (paraphrased):

“Make 12 investments, all of the same size, over the course of a 4 year period.”

He said it roughly follows the old normal curve, where most of the investments will either be a washout or you breakeven, but 1 or 2 of those investments will return all the money:

You can see his advice here at this timestamp: 30:36

 

If you are reading this on Friday morning, I am probably travelling at the moment, so I pre-wrote this SWIPES Email a few days early.

I couldn't find any non-personal-event pictures to share, so I am sharing this random picture of my Aprillia Scarabeo 100 scooter that has served me well for the last 10 years (also I had 2 other of the same model before that).

I've always lived around Downtown Austin, so if I ever need to get somewhere in a hurry when there's tons of traffic or parking will be bad, this baby has always been there!

This quote means sometimes JUST DOING THINGS to advance a goal is better than pondering on it:

....it doesn't mean you shouldn’t stop and think, but if you’re feeling inspired you can start writing that article, buying that domain name, or making a mockup…and the motion helps you move forward.

For example this is just PART of my collection of useless domain names:

...but buying a $7 domain name is often the first step in helping me take a project seriously.

So what if I waste $200 in a year buying dumb domains? One success out of those can return 1,000x.

Some "motion" towards an idea will help you work on it faster.

 

 

When I'm alone I goof off, BUT if someone is working with me (and can preferably see my screen) I will get lots of work done.

Sometimes working at home doesn't provide this, and I'll often hop onto CaveDay (this isn't sponsored I just think it's a cool service).

I am currently writing this SWIPES Email from a CaveDay Session, and it currently has 75 people on the call just silently co-working

This is the exact letter that made Gary Halbert a millionaire in 1971. 

It was one page, sealed in an envelope, selling them a “Coat of Arms” picture and report based on their last name, and it peaked at making 20,000 sales per day (and these were physical mail orders) 😮

This particular letter was sent to every "Macdonald" in the phone book across the United States:

 

For $2.00 (in 1971) this is what was sent back to you:

1.) A coat of arms picture of your family last name, you could then frame it if you liked. Like this (without the frame, it was just sent to you on paper):

 

2.) A small report explaining the coat of arms: (h/t to @eston_esau for taking this pic of this in his grandpa's house)!

Here's two quotes I really love:

This is a quote about having a goal you're working towards:

Quote

"When things are hardest, a clear goal is the most important thing. To have a fountain of energy to draw from. Establishing a worthwhile goal is the hardest part. It gives you a place to go and a reason to get up." - Earl Nightingale

This one is about building confidence, and that it comes from having a bunch of smaller experiences of success:

Quote

“Confidence is built upon an experience of success.”

 

A cool pattern I've found with regards to reading:

10 pages of a fiction book at night helps me go to sleep.

10 pages of a business book in morning helps me wake up and have my brain thinking about work.

I've noticed I read too much fiction in the morning, it's exciting but then I don't really wanna do work. So this hack is pretty neat!

The current business book I'm reading is this: Read Write Own

The current fiction book I'm reading is: The Three Body Problem.

Apparently the Three Body Problem just came out as a movie or TV trailer....AND I'M PURPOSELY NOT WATCHING THE TRAILER SO I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT'S ABOUT TO HAPPEN!

Hey check it out I got one of those 100k subscriber YouTube plaques!! 

I put out 2 long-form videos or interviews per month, and one short form video everyday.

If that sounds up your alley then give me a subscribe!

I've been thinking of buying a Tesla Model S, and wanted to try it out for a multi-city, mulit-destination trip, so I rented one with the specs I wanted off Turo (I would’ve preferred a black one but couldn’t find that with my specs).

I'm not a big car guy....the reality is I want one main thing: Full Self Driving so I can get around without paying attention.

Almost all my friends have variations of Teslas, and the only one I really love the look of is the Model S:

Like I said I just want FULL AUTO DRIVING.

That’s it.

That’s the killer feature to me.

The experience with FSD after 3 days of a lot of driving is: It's definitely kick ass, but not fully there (yet). It's still kinda jerky at times (I notice this a lot more when a passenger is in the car), and 2% of the time it freaks out and scares the hell out of passengers.

My Pro’s of the Tesla Model S:

• Stupid fast. Like….so fast you don’t really need all that speed. It’s unreal.
• Everything is controlled by phone, it’s kinda neat to cool the car or heat it up remotely, or just not have to have a key (just your phone) to operate everything.
• You can see all the cameras from the phone app..it’s like having an 8-camera security system wherever you’re parked!
• FSD (Full Self Driving) is amazing….I have some gripes with it, but it’s an awesome safety feature to have, and is really relaxing to drive on.
• FSD is so good at directions, if I was ever in doubt of which freeway or exit to take, FSD nailed it every time.
• I love + don’t love that everything needs to be controlled from the screen. Like changing directions of the air vents requires a few clicks to do.
• The FSD feels good having it as a backup driver for safety, and is nice to sit in slow traffic with it on and not pay much attention.

My Con’s of the Tesla Model S:

• For passengers the Full Self Driving is kinda jerky when slowing down….even with “Chill Mode” on the way it breaks sometimes is like a bad Uber driver.
• You kind of have to babysit the FSD….it definitely does the job, but you’re not totally doing nothing, you still have to pay some attention.
• It’s a total lane hog. On the highway the Tesla will very frequently try to move into the left lane then just stay there, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.
• The yoke steering wheel looks cool, and is nice for visibility (you can see right over it which is neat), and for the most part feels good….but the buttons stink. The turn signals are not intuitive, and you have to reach your thumb to touch them each time. Same with the horn or lights, definitely not in an intuitive spot.

Hope for the future of driving:
I frequently go back and forth between Austin and Houston for family stuff, and I think of the countless hours of driving I’ve done that could’ve been used for something more productive or fun.

I wish I could do work, or read, or listen to podcasts AND take notes while driving….currently you can just passively consume information in a car and not much more.

My goal is that I can drowsily hop in the car, fall asleep, and safely wake up in a different city. This seems roughly ~5 years away.

 

I love local-business marketing, and I saw this in a neighborhood while driving in Houston:

It's a simple A-Frame (much like my Shoe Hospital Experiment sign) this window cleaner puts out in front of a house they were cleaning.

A great way of drumming up business is letting people in the neighborhood know you're helping out one of their neighbors.

If you're a service provider like this, spend the $150 to get a nice A-Frame made and stick it in front of your service sites!
 

I really liked this Michael Cera + CeraVe advertising campaign 😂

This was developed by WPP and Ogilvy after seeing random rumors on Reddit that Michael Cera the actor created CeraVe Lotion.

Weeks before their Super Bowl ad they got influencers to fuel the speculation that Michael Cera was the founder...

Then they hired influencers to release photos and TikTok's saying, "Guys run to this pharmacy in BK, I just saw MICHAEL CERA signing bottles!! 😳😳"

They also hired influencers to release shots of Michael Cera holding 20+ bottles of CeraVe:

Then after all this buzz on the internet stirred up....they released a funny ad disproving it 😂

 

This is a cool graphic by @KateBour with 12 different pricing psychology tips I really liked:

I'm not sure 100% of this is totally correct, but I loved the way this way laid out for easy reading.

On the YouTube tracking site ViewStats, you can now see a "Change Gallery" for any specific video, and see every split-test for headline and thumbnail 👀

It'll also show you when that video was updated if the performance went up/down:

It's pretty cool to see some of your favorite creators split testing titles and thumbnails!

I’ve been moving designs from Figma into actual live web pages, and this meme captures it perfectly 😂

Design mockups look so awesome in Figma, but when actually translating them into your page builder they get all funky and lose some of the prettiness.

Here's a real live example:

It might be hard to tell at this resolution, but it always looks a lot crummier in production!

One fun thing to do with whatever new business idea you come up with is apply it to a different type of business model.

Subscription Model: You charge $X/mo to get access to something. It could be software, or courses, or services. I personally sell a subscription for people to access my community.

E-commerce Model: You sell a product online, and get it delivered to the customer (either you ship it yourself or send it through a drop-shipper). This was how I made my first company HouseOfRave.

Affiliate Marketing Model: You talk about products, and put an affiliate link and you get a cut of sales each time someone buys. For example this is an affiliate link to ConvertKit, if you click that link then buy a subscription, every month I'll get a small kickback.

Ad-based Model: This is where you get traffic to a website, and you put ads all over it. For example if you go to SwipeFile.com it's littered with ads, and when people click those I get a couple cents or a couple bucks.

Consulting Services Model: This is where someone pays you for consulting. I do this by offering hourly calls that (sometimes) lead into bigger projects.

Franchising Model: You might not have a great business mind, but you can run a template someone else has, so you can "franchise" their business. You can buy your way into running a McDonald's or SubWay.

Digital Products Model: You can sell a small (or big) digital product like a how-to video. I once sold a $10 PDF of a "Problem Solving Checklist" that 1,000's of people bought.

Marketplace Model: These are hard because you have to find people willing to sell a product/service, and people to buy it. Like eBay or Uber or Craigslist. But if you can get one going it can be a strong brand.

Direct Sales Model: You send people a piece of mail, and they send you money for the product. This 1-page letter was how Gary Halbert originally became a millionaire.

In the Essay above I mentioned the "Subscription Model" I sell for people to access my trainings and community.

The reason I do this followed this logic:
1.) I originally made one course called Copywriting Course which taught some basic copywriting principles.

2.) Then I made another course about sending fun & engaging emails called The Email Writing Course.

3.) Then I made a course on how to use autoresponders to automate a lot of your email marketing.

4.) Then I made ANOTHER course.......and this goes on times 12!

5.) Eventually people got confused on which course to buy, so we made a bundle of courses to sell.

6.) But I realized the real successes came from when people took my courses, but also got feedback on their copy and different projects. This covered the copywriting and business strategy and all the digital marketing in between.

7.) To best serve students we went to a monthly subscription model so myself and professional writers could give them feedback, improvements, and much of the time just re-write their stuff.

8.) We also realized people who spent a whole year in the course did the absolute best, so we broke up the plans into Monthly and Yearly.

Monthly: So it's affordable for people and they could "test drive" us.

Yearly: So people could get help throughout the entire year, plus all the courses, and we could really spend some time helping them.

The pricing plan for subscription eventually ended up like this:

From this model we've been able to generate thousands of Wins for members every year, and on so much more than just copywriting training, we're a community of builders making things:

 

If someone hits a vape during a call I don’t think I’d mind that much 😂

Music in the background? Well that’s just rude.

Here's an interesting "Zoom Etiquette" chart of behaviors that people don't think are acceptable:

When self publishing a book a few years ago I decided to A/B split test two different covers and titles.

Version A: "The Ten Commandments of Copywriting"
Version B: "The Book Will Teach You How To Write Better"

The result from 842 votes was:
Version A: 21% votes (loser)
Version B: 79% votes (winner!)

This version of the book cover was just quickly drummed up as the placeholder for the book cover until I could find a better one.

But of all the book covers and titles we tried this one just dominated every time!

Exactly two weeks ago I decided to cold turkey stop drinking caffeine. I made sure I had a free-ish weekend to lay in bed and do nothing to cope with the caffeine withdrawals.

The first few days I had minor headaches and felt lethargic, this lasted about 3-4 days, then I started feeling a bit better.

Basically it took ~5 days to feel normal.

I've been finding it super easy to wake up in the morning and just start my day without caffeine.

One morning I woke up around 4:30am (HIGHLY HIGHLY UNUSUAL FOR ME!) and was able to just start working, and had steady energy throughout the whole day.

My energy each day just seems "stable." It doesn't have the wild spokes up and down as when on caffeine.

 

Conclusion: My goal was to just break my morning dependency on caffeine by stopping for two weeks....well TODAY I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE COFFEE!

But it's weird.....I really enjoy not having to rely on it: I like being able to just get up and start the day. I like not having to worry about acquiring 2-3 cups of coffee per day. I like the steady amount of energy I have from morning till night.

Not sure if this will be a permanent stop, but I could get used to this!

I'm writing this on a plane headed to Costa Rica right now, and I was able to wake up at 6:15am and workout before my flight without any caffeine (that is unusual for me).

My friend Noah did a fun b-day party where he did "Birthday Olympics"

• We all met up in a park and did games like:
• Who can hold the longest plank challenge (I got 3rd)
• Who can throw a kettlebell the furthest (I got 3rd)
• Which team could throw a frisbee furthest (I won this one)!
• A team "hold a kettlebell and run a lap"
• A 2-lap sprint and you have to chug a beer or sparkling water before 2 the 2nd lap (I lost this one bad bc couldn't chug the bubble water that fast)....the guy who won had to leave early because he felt sick 😂

It was fun!

Last week I posted this homepage a/b/c/d split test, and asked which you thought would win??

Most people guessed A or D....

Here's the results →

It was C!

And it boosted my homepage conversion rate from about 14% to 23%. 

This means if 100 people come to the homepage, instead of 14 of them signing up to my email list, 23 of them signup. A ~60% increase.

This was designed in Figma by @benpixel and it looked awesome.

Here's the final numbers....and to be fair "D" came in reallllyyy close....almost the same.

A) 14.51% conversion
B) 20.52% conversion
C) 23.69% conversion
D) 23.20% conversion

This simple split test resulted in a 60% improvement for relatively little effort.

It comes back to the old principle that if you give people less options on a page, they'll take the one you give them.

Less options and text meant more people just plunked in their email:

I'm currently reading Read Write Own by @cdixon:

I like how it breaks down complex topics into simple elements, like this chart of different networks:

• Protocol is like SMPT email.
• Corporate is like creators on YouTube.
• Blockchain is like BTC or ETH.

He says there's been 2 eras of the internet and we're moving into the 3rd era called "Read Write Own."

“Read” Era: You could put up a static website. Little to no interaction on websites.

“Read-Write” Era (current): Posting and publishing for anyone to a large audience. You can use and interact on networks like X, Amazon, or YouTube....but not own them.

“Read-Write-Own” Era: You can own pieces of the network you participate in. This is like the Ethereum network where you can interact with it, use it, but also own pieces of it as tokens.

Good book so far!