Checkout this interesting style of shownotes we did on this recent pod, it was a huge hit with readers:

(This is the best way I could display it here):

People liked it because:
• It's easy to skim.
• The images make it fun to read.
• It got way more people to find something interesting in the pod, then go listen to that part.

It worked super well in email!

98% of the people who replied to the email blast loved the format and said it was very helpful to skim a podcast episode like this, only 2 people said they didn't like it. See it here 

If you speak English...you can speak with 20% of all people on Earth.

If you speak English and Mandarin...you can speak with 35% of all people on Earth.

If you speak English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish...you can speak with 60% of people on Earth.

Also what's crazy is when looking at the populations of the world, 35% of all humans live in just two countries.

The 3rd most populous country is the United Stats with 335m people, which is 4x smaller than 2nd place....wow 😳

Podcast transcripts are my new long form reading.

I’ve been consuming a lot of podcasts in 1/3rd the time by just reading the Apple Podcast transcript.

It’s great for reading single-host podcasts (not as good for interviews yet bc it doesn’t show which host is talking).

For example I like this show called "The Economics of Everyday Things" and I saw an episode about the economics of Botox.

I didn't have 18 minutes at that moment to listen to it, so I clicked on the transcript and read the episode in under 5 minutes:

I used to rent a place for the summers across the street from the Twitter building in San Francisco. This was the view:

Now it's officially closing and moving to Austin. Cool that X is following me 😛

I used Perplexity as my default search engine for 2 months, and now I've switched back to Google again.

This two months apart from Google, made me appreciate Google a lot more:
- It’s so damn quick compared to anything! Perplexity is fast, but at times it would stall or go slow or not load. Google nevvveer has this problem.

- Maps, directions, images are all native in Google.

- Google is giving more and more AI results which is the main reason to use Perplexity.

One of my best purchases ever was automated blackout blinds for my bedroom!

Blinds of this size are already very expensive to install, so when they ask if you want to motorize them it's tempting to say no.

However with the automated blinds I can either use a remote (or tell Alexa/Siri) to open them and the whole room opens up automatically, and every single time I'm like.....nice 😏 😏 😏

This is an awesome way to display who an agency has worked with in the past. 

Greg Isenberg at Late Checkout told me that listing this info out in this chart results in 10x to 20x the conversions from their previous page!

In my opinion this is the order which a sales page should be grown:

The Copy: The basic starting building block of any sales page. First write out and organize your thoughts. 

The Imagery: Add images, graphs, or use cases of the product in action. It's often easier to show than tell.

The Proof: Got testimonials, past results, or examples of the product working and making life better? Show em!

The Layout: Organize all of the above information into the best flow.

The Design: Make it easy to read, yet match your vibe. If a quirky brand, have quirky design. If a serious bank, have professional design.

Anytime a post or video goes viral, you can count on this happening in the comments 😂

 

I went to lunch with a group of buddies, one friend orders a salad, when it arrives he pulls out a FULL SIZED BOTTLE OF olive oil he brought from home 😂

I've seen people bring small hot sauces and stuff, but a FULL SIZED BOTTLE....that's a new one 🤣

Technically when you sell someone an online course you’ve just given them a massive assignment. 

You’ve added work/time instead of removed work/time:

I know this because I own a company called "Copywriting COURSE."

Over the years we've morphed what was once just a self-paced course into:
• 1/3rd course.
• 1/3rd live weekly help.
• 1/3rd community forum for re-writing copy (average response time ~4 hours).

So it's partially a course, but much of the real value is REMOVING work and REMOVING decisions and REMOVING mistakes from people...which makes it far more valuable.

I think you'll see many other course creators make this move as well.

I don't normally like pre-packaged drinks but these are super good! From what I can tell they are also decently healthy for a packaged drink.

- No added sugar 
- 42g of protein (that’s a lot)! 
- Low calorie: 230 calories (there's also a different version with only 150 calories and 25g of protein):

I drink probably 1 of these a day. 

It's nice because it tastes amazing, doesn't make my stomach funky, and keeps me full because of all the protein. 

 

I like how this "Swee Kombucha" visually lists out the ingredients inside the bottle:

I recently posted how RX Bar did an "all copy" redesign and it's a similar vibe!

Credit: Mark Gallo

It's shocking how much short-form video can come out of one long-form video.

It was the same story before video was so big as well. You'd take one long-form blog post and chop it up into a bunch of smaller pieces of content on social networks:

In the content-maker world I think there's an interesting debate between which is better:

Top of Search -vs- Top of Feed ?

My personal answer: I think doing BOTH is best! And they actually naturally flow into each other:

I discuss it here with Ross : Top of Feed vs Top of Search (38:59)

 

For creating short video content I've been "interviewing myself" lately and it's worked pretty well!

It's helpful for quick Q&A style questions that don't warrant a full video.

An example of how these turn out:

I use ChatGPT everyday for research and making images, but it frequently “can’t do something for me” bc of guardrails.

So I’ve been copy/pasting every query into X's Grok for a month.
It’s got REALLY good, has little-to-no bias or guardrails, I trust it more for many searches.

Things ChatGPT throttles or gives moderated answers: 
- Making images if you mention a name or a brand. 
- Many health-related searches. 
- Searches about intelligence or IQ. 
- “Is (controversial figure) bad?”

Here's a small example:

It’s great at many things, but the second you toe into remotely controversial things it gives you human-intervened answers.

I get the need for controls, but I'm starting to just Grok first to avoid wasting time.
 

I generally buy every-other iPhone that comes out. So I have a 14 Pro and now the 16 Pro was just released: 

A 512GB model costs $1,299 (I'm sure more with tax etc):

If I plug $1,299 into this cost analysis calculator it comes to:

I personally use my phone all day and night for various things, so 12 hours a day is fair to say (even when it's not in my pocket I shout out commands to Siri all the time).

While $1,299 seems expensive for a phone that does SLIGHTLY MORE than your current phone, at 2 years it's $0.18/hour, plus every photo or video you take it slightly better, and it's slightly faster.

I guess it depends on your use case, but for some people splurging on the new phone is advisable!

The basic starting building block of any sales page. First write out and organize your thoughts.

Add images, graphs, or use cases of the product in action. It's often easier to show than tell.

Got testimonials, past results, or examples of the product working and making life better? Show em!

Organize all of the above information into the best flow.

Make it easy to read, yet match your vibe. If a quirky brand, have quirky design. If a serious bank, have professional design.

This is a list of upcoming holidays for Q4 of 2024:

This is near-and-dear to my heart because we help so many retailers with promotions around this time.

I'm just curious...

If you're a business owner, which of these holidays is biggest for you? 

I don't know about you, but I need to have a to-do list or I'll get nothing done throughout the day!

I try my best to scratch off all my to-do list items everyday like this:

....although sometimes when I'm slipping I'll start posting the scratched-off lists on social media at night when I'm done for accountability. 

Remember that movie "Inside Out" where each character is an emotion that drives a person?? 

Well this is a cool graph that shows what emotions combined are:

It's kind of interesting to see!

Anger + Anger = Rage

....but if you channel that anger:

Anger + Joy = Zeal

Indian weddings are on another level. This is a full month before my actual wedding and the ceremonies have already started!

I posted a story on Instagram and people were like "congrats on the wedding!!" 

I had to tell them.....oh no, this is just the warm-up 😂
 

 

Small but powerful concept! Instead of a disconnected story like: 

It should be continuous like:

Here's the guys from South Park explaining it:

This signup form from Productive Therapist includes a "Magic Script" for intake workers that intake the information of clients.

It was revamped with a more descriptive image, and benefits of the script in our Office Hours.

We do this stuff live all the time in our Weekly Office Hours. Join them if you want to get personalized feedback, reviews, and re-writes of your content!

Some of the most "snackable" and helpful content I find is on Instagram or Reddit, and often in the form of slightly-helpful images like these:

....or this cool guide to seeing how much daylight is left:

...or this explainer of tax avoidance:

All these images convey a lot of info in a small amount of space which I think is a highly effective form of content. 

I think Freelancers > Agencies.

In my experience it's a lot easier to engage with a specific freelancer (from social, UpWork, Fiverr etc) rather than a full blown agency. 

One thing I don't love about agencies is the long on-boarding process, then the delegation of work to multiple people. 

This isn't BAD per se, and it might even be a great thing, but for small companies it's always so much easier to hire a freelancer (or multiple to do the same project). 
 

These are “24 Psychological Triggers” are the underlying emotions that cause people to buy. Here’s all 24 with a simple example for each:

1. Curiosity: “Discover the secret behind effortless productivity.”
2. Greed: “Get double the product for half the price.”
3. Vanity: “Make a lasting impression with our luxury accessories.”
4. Guilt: “Don’t let your loved ones go without this essential tool.”
5. Fear: “Protect your data before it’s too late.”
6. Trust: “Recommended by 9 out of 10 financial advisors.”
7. Belonging: “Join the exclusive network of top professionals.”
8. Instant Gratification: “Start enjoying premium content right away.”
9. Simplicity: “Set up in just three easy steps.”
10. Scarcity: “Limited edition – only 50 left!”
11. Authority: “Endorsed by leading industry experts.”
12. Surprise: “Unlock unexpected bonuses with your purchase.”
13. Urgency: “Offer ends at midnight tonight.”
14. Comfort: “Experience unparalleled comfort with our new ergonomic chair.”
15. Exclusivity: “Be among the first to experience our new product.”
16. Nostalgia: “Revisit the charm of yesteryear with our vintage collection.”
17. Reciprocity: “Get a free gift with every purchase.”
18. Social Proof: “Over 1 million satisfied customers.”
19. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): “Don’t be the last to try this trending product.”
20. Loss Aversion: “Avoid costly mistakes with our expert guide.”
21. Hope: “Imagine a brighter future with our innovative solutions.”
22. Love: “Show your loved ones you care with our personalized gifts.”
23. Adventure: “Embark on an unforgettable journey with our travel deals.”
24. Security: “Ensure your peace of mind with our advanced protection services.”
     

These were all defined by the late Joe Sugarman, and are a very helpful tool to find an “angle” for your next sale.

Does anybody else love doing fun house projects? I get so excited to do them 😂

I’m seeing a trend of long-form bloggers that have slowed down because they were posting more short-form stuff....returning to long-form blogging.

There’s a nice middle-space for thoughts that are longer than a Tweet, but shorter than a book.

While it's much harder to post to a blog than many social sites, it's super nice to have a “home” for your content that's 100% controlled by you.

I think the move is this:

Make a long-form blog post that's really deep:
↪ make small social content from it.
↪ make short form videos from it.
↪ make long form videos from it.
↪ use the graphs/images from it.

For example I frequently reference the concept of a "Triple Threat" and can always reference this article for the more in-depth explanation:

I’m guilty of this as well….all my content (besides interviews) have become far smaller and snack-sized.

This isn't a bad thing, but it's nice to at least once a month pump out a pillar content piece that lives on forever.

 

I'm doing a bunch of concurrent split tests on

CopywritingCourse, and one fun result from our sales page has been the length of our sales video. 

8% engagement: 1 hour video
24% engagement: 10 minute video

The video is at the top of our sales page like this:
 

For reference this is the 1 hour long video on YouTube (although on the sales page I serve the video through Wistia):

While the video worked well, and is very comprehensive, the problem is people don't wanna be sold for ONE WHOLE FREAKIN HOUR!

Someone told me, "I was 25 minutes in and still hadn't hit testimonials...."

So we made a 10 minute version, and the average engagement rate (calculated by how much of the video people watch) went from 8% to 24%.

The last test we're trying (still no conclusive results) is if a slideshow like this would be better than a video.
 

What's your take on this car as an advertisement? It certainly got my ATTENTION but it's a little funny looking:

It's a BMW station wagon with two iMac computer "ears" to promote a computer repair shop 😂

I personally wouldn't have realized this place was here unless it were for this car....although I wish they'd give it a wash!

I chatted with the Director of Engineer at X (formerly Twitter) Daniel O'Shea about:
- How Elon Musk reach out and bought his company.
- How smack-talking on Twitter got the attention of Elon Musk. 
- All the AI side-projects he's building to learn about AI. 
- How they are building a 'super-app' that can do everything, not just a social network:

See the video and my full notes on the interview here →

I love this email from PostHog lowering their prices for all their customers, it's so funny and fun!!

I just overall LOVE the branding and voice they've made....plus I bet all customers were stoked to get this email!

Ok it's not a picture, but here's a quick video-tour of the home gym equipment I use the most and least:

✔️ Mood lighting: I use it all the time and it makes gym more fun!
✔️ Adjustable bench: Use it all the time.
✔️ Pull-up Bar: I use everyday, even just for a second to hang from.
✔️ Bands: Very useful for a sparse gym like this with little equipment.
✔️ Vertical weight rack: Use 2-3 times a week.
✔️ TV/Speakers: Use all the time for music (or AirPods).
✔️ Sauna: Bought a few months ago and love having this so much.
🆇 Peloton: Doesn't get used much anymore (great product though).

I'm making a presentation titled "Top of Search -vs- Top of Mind"....

....it's about the transition from trying to be first when people search for something, to trying to be first on a social media feed.

Here's how that looks in decade increments:

Search optimization through the years:
• 1980: Put “AA” in your name to show up in the phone book first.
• 1990: Get on prime TV ads and radio.
• 2000: Stuff webpages with keywords.
• 2010: Add the right tags and keywords Google says.
• 2020: Be at the top of their social newsfeed.

I used to only rely on search engine traffic for any company I've run, but now social media is becoming increasingly more important and effective. 
 

Just curious, which of these describes you the best? 

A) Copywriting
B) Marketing/Sales
C) General Freelancing
D) A different Job
E) I own a business
F) Other

This graphic showing how a “modern advertising agency” makes it seem extremely complicated!

I saw it in this book:

Checkout my brand new video called:

Making friends, Keeping friends, and Growing your network (from the master Nick Gray)!

When Nick moved to Austin a few years ago, within 2 months he had more friends and a bigger network than ANYONE I knew almost instantly. 

This explains how he did it. 

Also.....Nick doesn't really talk about it but he's also built and exited two very successful companies, and it's weird how few people actually know this about him! Very humble about it 🙂

Watch/listen here (and please leave a comment)! →
 

I estimate I consume 200 to 300 short form videos for every 1 blog post I read:

\

Same for anyone else?

I wonder if this is because people are writing less blog posts in general vs short social posts.....or I'm just not seeing the blog posts? 

I think people are just writing WAY FEW LONG BLOG POSTS in general. 

My prediction is this trend comes back. 

I'm starting a twice-a-month habit of this. I miss writing blog posts (like this or this) which live on forever, and can also be "picked apart " for future social media posts or long videos. 
 

This image hit hard recently:

I love scrolling social media, and it actually ties into my business so it's not always "just a waste of time" for me. 

HOWEVER this election year has made the social media posts more snarky and hard to read, especially Reddit. 

On X and Instagram I aggressively un-follow people who talk too much about stuff I don't want to hear (or put them on Lists), so I don't see this content too much on those places. 

But on Reddit.....man! Every single sub-reddit lately like:
• /r/pics
• /r/interesting
• /r/funny

....they're all bombarded with election stuff, and it's not even thoughtful observations but just slams and snark.

It feels very toxic and something to mindfully keep away from. 

It kind of stinks that all the sub-reddits are being taken over 😞  

Freelancers > Agencies

I don't think agencies are bad, but for most work I've ever needed I think just hiring a freelancer first, seeing if they're good, then hiring them some more is far more effective than going with an agency. 

For big companies I understand why a giant agency makes sense, but in my opinion in the modern world a very very small group of people can far outwork a large group of people. 
 

While Copywriting Course is only 1/3rd a course, and 2/3rd "We help you directly with your writing".....a fun stat is:

For example Dean watched a training video, implementing what he learned, and saw his best sales day ever the next day 🤯

If you're interested in learning to sell better, this might be for you:

BAD NEWS: This bus cut me off in traffic yesterday. 

GOOD NEWS: It had a great ad on the side for Optimizely and I took a picture of it!

I didn't know you could build websites in Optimizely till I saw this.

There's a mental model I call "Get closer to the money."

Explanation: If you’re a bank that loans money, the way you make profit is by taking a cut. Let’s say 2%.

2% of $10,000 = $200
2% of $100,000 = $2,000

As the money amounts go up, the bank gets a bigger cut. This means you are tied to the upside of your customer. That's what "being close to the money" is.

Think about the value proposition of what you’re selling and see how you can directly make people (or businesses) more money. If you’re closely tied to their success, then your hard work making their business grow pays off.

Example:
Meh: "I design ads for $50/hour."
Good: "I manage your ads and charge a packaged rate."
Better: "I manage your ads and charge 10% of the total spend."

When I was 23 I bought my first car for $15,000 in cash…I went to the bank to pull out the money and brought a LARGE SACK to carry this massive amount of cash...

…turns out $15,000 in cash fits in a regular envelope 😂 😂 😂

I was so disappointed because I thought $15,000 was sooooo much money, but turns out it's barely a 0.5 inch stack of money:

In case you were wondering this was the car I bought.

I was working with The Daily Stoic on some of their emails (in Bastrop, TX) and got a fun behind-the-scenes tour of The Daily Stoic podcast studio! 

Me sitting at the interview table.

A wide angle view of the entire room.

A look at the "Book Wall" made out of something like 3,200 inter-stacked books.

A view of the other side of the room.

It's kind of wild that with technology and a small room, 3 cameras, 3 lights, and 2 mics.....you can reach more people than any TV channel on Earth.

I like this clip where Ayman says: 

"Education is getting commoditized...."

Is August a good time to jump into Copywriting Course? Hell yea...

It's become these generally slow summer months are the perfect time to prepare for the busy Q4 holidays: 

The funny thing is we aim to 10X whatever investment you spend on us, and we do this all the time for people in the community:

Checkout the 100+ wins we've got for members in the last 60 days alone:

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:

 

 

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 😂

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 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!

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.

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!

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!

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!
 

 

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!