Writing Your Way to Millions with Neville Medhora

Whatever it was, it was like the idea to event. Was six weeks. And I made forty thousand dollars in profit. Or something like that. And

I didn't spend a cent on marketing and it was all through these sales emails that I was sending people. I feel like I can rule the world a no way be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like no day song on the road, let's travel, never looking back. So right now on the podcast we have Neville Midorah I've known Neville for um

Ten years now, maybe eight. Eight years now. I was a f I don't know if you know the story, Ben. I was a fan of Neville, so I read his blog. And I was twenty two at the time.

And He wrote about copywriting and I was like Man, copyright's amazing. I gotta meet this guy. And at the time He was charging

For what he call the it was called a consult, like a Like an hour long. Yeah. And I didn't have any money. I couldn't I couldn't afford it, but I bought his course and I was like, I gotta get to know this guy more

So I I go, Hey, I'm hosting an event. In San Francisco, do you want to speak there? I'll arrange all combinations and travel. And he goes, Yeah, man. And so I bought him a ticket on South West for like two hundred and fifty bucks.

And his accommodation was I just let him sleep in my bed and I just slept on the couch. And the event. I think the event. Wasn't the event like Just like thirty people? N uh you originally had like a book club. That was the first thing. So you were also like when you got there, you're like, Would you also want to speak at a book club? And I was like, Well, okay, fine. And then uh you also did like Bootstrap Live? Is that what it was called?

Yeah, and I made three thousand dollars hosting that event and so it was all good. I I you made me money and I paid for your flight. But yeah, you just stayed at my house. That was a little bit of a fast one. It was as I remember it, I was sleeping you're you're like accommodations are usually like a hotel suite or something. It was like your couch with an eighty five pound pit bull was was my accommodation. But anyways, I thought you were cool and uh we're still friends to this day, so Yeah, so Novel was the best man at my wedding, so we're close. He also Him and I now live two doors away from each other. And

Neville has this thing called copywriting course. It was copyrighting course with two Ks, copyrighting course with Two Cs. Normal spelling. And

He's basically had this course on w today is all about copywriting. That's all basically I'm getting at. But he launched a course. Like fifteen years ago. And basically the same videos that he recorded for this course like fifteen years ago is how He's been making a living.

Or over a decade. Yeah, I think two thousand eleven. So I was working closely with uh our our good buddy Noah Kagan. He was uh building App Summer like off my couch. And we were launching courses through App Sumo. And this is like two thousand ten, two thousand eleven, when courses were like a new concept. It was like kind of cool to release a course. And um one of them that hit really well was about copywriting. Cause we were sending out to all the uh the App Sumo email newsletter subscribers, which is hundreds of thousands at the time. We're sending out all these really funny newsletters that also sold. So people would always ask the same question. They go

I know you're trying to sell me something. So why do I keep reading the whole damn email? And I was like, Well, it's because of copywriting. And and I had been like studying it for a while, so it seemed obvious to me, but everyone's like, What is copywriting? How do I do copywriting? How do I implement that on my own? And so I was like, well, let's make a course so I could replicate myself and sell that. And we released that on App Sumo 2011, 12, something like that. And it just like it was one of those things that just like struck gold. It just hit.

And I was like, Oh Maybe there's something there. And over time you're right. That's kinda what I'm known for, and that is probably my primary income to this day. Yeah. And you live like a Pretty fancy life. You own a nice house. You you buy nice shit. You don't work that much.

So I guess. It's been a good business. And now and then so basically a lot of people now know me as the copywriting person. Or a copyright. You're good. You're good. Well, I'm okay. And I learned it from you and then Sean a little bit absorbed it from me. Now he's really good.

And uh so anyway, I we wanted to do a whole episode on copywriting, but um Yeah, do we wanna start with copyrighting Ben or do we wanna talk about the moving next door thing?'Cause that's kind of interesting too. Well we're already on the copywriting thing, like let's keep going. I I'm curious, Neville, like you talked about Like we kind of started to get into Sam's origin story with you, but where's like your entry point into copywriting? Where where did you learn all this? Easy. So so when I was in college well, actually when I was in high school, so this is a while ago, e commerce was coming up.

And I started an e commerce business called houseofrave.com. I don't even know if it still exists. And it was a rave company. I saw light up and glow stuff online. I was like a middleman. It's like what we could nowadays call drop shipping. Back then it was kind of like a cool new idea. And so I started that. And I realized I had all these uh people on the email list. There's like eight thousand people that had subscribed and opted into the email list. And I never sent them anything.

And I used to go to like these marketing meetups, and there's kind of like some of these scammy marketers were always like, You just send out emails, the money is in the email, all that kind of stuff. So I started sending out an email newsletter. that I thought you're supposed to send. It's like here's my products, uh big buy buttons, all that kinda stuff. And uh I was spending eighty bucks a month. T on the email service, however, I was making about forty bucks per email. So I was going net negative every time I sent an email.

I spent all this time like photographing uh products, writing descriptions, all that kind of stuff. So then One of my friends, Ryan, he was just like, You should study copywriting. I was like Like like the law stuff. He's like No, like copyright, like marketing. And he put me on to who Sam also knows, Gary Halbert.

So I read the Gary Halbert letters, they're called the Boron letters, chapters one through twenty six. I printed them out. And I read them and the the key is actually printing them out'cause you wrote them from jail and they're they're meant to be actually read out. So he wrote these letters to his son from jail trying to teach him everything he knows, like in case something happened to him. And From there, every day until six in the morning, I was up reading these stupid letters.

Uh not stupid. They're awesome. And and I was so Happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I had found this stuff. And sad that I had not found it earlier. And from there, I went down this whole copywriting rabbit hole studying Joseph Sugarman, Jay Abraham, all these like legendary copywriters. Some scammy, some not. But I started applying that.

to House of Rave emails, and the first email I did I had the highest revenue day I ever had, um, in House of Rave history. And I was like, huh, that could either be a fluke, so let me try it again. They did it again and again and almost overnight. House of Rave turn into more of an email marketing company.

than a company making just random sales off of SEO. And that's how I got started. I was like, oh, there's something to this. And Then you like created the course and and it became a thing. But uh Like you were kinda the first person that I'd really read about

W about copyrighting stuff. What uh When did it finally click where you're like this is Writing is the way to go and and words actually matter. Well, I've always written online I had a personal blog called Nevblog.com that I started in. God knows when. I think I was like writing in an HTML so long ago. And it and it was on like blogger.com. And I remember thinking, I like doing this for free. This is before I was ever making money with with a blog. I I just thought it was like a fun thing to do.

And it seemed Almost comical to me, like hilarious that I could write things. And people would end up pay money. For that. Because there's something I did for free al already. So I was just like, I already like doing this. I'm probably gonna keep doing it no matter what.

And I wrings and then people end up buying because I convince them. That was That was like there I was like, Oh, there's something here. And the cool thing is once you write it once You could digitally distribute it forever. There's there's no limit to it. It's free to distribute to a billion people if you want. So that was something interesting. It's a superpower.

When I started the hustle It was basic my idea was basically like We should do news, but I'm gonna steal a bunch of tactic So I bought novels course and that's how I got into copywriting. I was like, I'm gonna steal a lot of these ideas. And basically make like

mixed kind of journalism with this like It's not copywriting'cause I'm not selling, but it is copywriting because I'm trying to convince people to read it. And I was like, I'm just gonna make the hustle like a copywriting thing. Uh like it's journalism with copywriting. And

It worked. And I remember when I now it's become more popular, but when I launched the hustle and started working on the conferences that you you also spoke at. I think I got ten thousand people to sign up for my email list, which was basically just me writing about the speakers to uh for the conference. I got ten thousand people to sign up in like six weeks and Everyone was like, Dude, you're writing so good and I'm like Yeah. I'm like, it's okay, but you don't know that I'm just stealing from like

I'm like I I didn't make this up. I'm just stealing ideas from people. Yeah, we we all learn from standing on shoulders of giants stuff like that. I remember the the hustle, you you were throwing hustle con, you were throwing a conference, you're making a conference company, and you quickly realize wait, just setting up the emails is better than the conference. And that's how the hustle started, it seemed. And it's a I remember like the hustle is like a tech bro read the news and then regurgitate regurgitated it to you. That's kinda what it reminded me of, which I I still think it kind of is. And it's not tech bro, most of our early employees actually were women. So the first writers we hired. A lot of people don't know those were all women. So basically it was At one point I was the only man who worked at the hostel when we had like seven employees. A lot of people don't know that. And they would call us bro, and I'd be like I'm like, first of all, that's not really an insult'cause but you're trying to mean it like an insult. I don't think that's an insult, but second of all, it's not exactly true.

It's women writing this thing. Uh I guess I never really looked at it. Yeah, I never looked at it as like a male female thing. I think like we're all just tech bros. It's almost like a term to me. And you sealed your vein a little bit when you named it the hustle. Like people are just gonna think of you a certain way. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. And I knew it was a bad name, but like Neville is actually

makes the worst naming name stuff, so um But and so I kinda stole a little bit of that. One time we used to host these things called content school And we would basically say, like, we're gonna be in San Francisco. Um or one day you can come and hang out with us and we'll teach you about copyrighting.

I think we would charge two thousand dollars or one thousand dollars. Yeah, it's only fifteen hundred or twenty five hundred, I forget. And we would get a lot of people coming and we would split the money. And Uh it was called Content School. And if you go to the website, it's basically just a website with like stick figures.

Writing on a whiteboard. And then just like Two thousand words of copy explaining about the event. So anyway. My point is is like all of both all both of our stuff has always been named really badly.

It's also simply well, you know what's funny, so originally it was called copyrighting course with two K's, and the the reason was um One, I couldn't get the domain. But but two, like I always thought copywriting in the cop with just spelt Copyrighting. Meant text. Meant to only text. And look, if it's like the year seventeen hundred, I get it. Text is like the hot technology of the day.

But now it's just like so easy to make videos and podcasts and audio video and maybe in the future VR experiences. To me, copywriting is kind of in getting information from my brain to your brain or my brain to a million brains. So whatever the most effective way of doing that is, I'm down for it. Whether it's writing, whether it's an image, whether it's a video, whether it's a podcast. Who do you think For most of the people listening are like startup nerds. What

is the most common mistake you think that people make and who Do you think is a good example of someone who's just crushing the game, whether it's a company or a human. Writing formally, I think is the most common mistake you make because in English class they tell you to write dear sirs to whom it may concern. And I think that's fine if you're writing a letter, you know, nine hundred years ago, but nowadays like people want quick, concise

And we don't need all that formality. So I think writing like you speak is the main thing. And a lot of people they sit down at a keyboard and they get paralyzed. They're they go back to English class and they're like okay, I get brownie points for using bigger words. In fact, using smaller, shorter, easier words is probably better. Getting to the point very quick is probably better. I bet all of you Ben and uh Ben and uh uh Sam Although it's a Sarah in your

box for some reason or it actually it's actually I bet you get more responses with cold emails if you send like a one line thing. You're like, hey, you want to be on the pod. It's probably better than like a whole page. Um asking someone to do something. And so I think writing formally is the biggest mistake that everyone makes. In fact, just writing like you talk. If you just write uh a note into your iPhone, Uh what would that if you transcribe that, that'll often do better than sitting down and try to wordsmith something. And who do you think is

Like killing it that I should have. Y you know what's funny? I actually like software companies, and here's the reason. They actually don't need a lot of copy. With software, you could just show your product in action. If you're crunch base, if you just show someone looking up a company, it shows up all their information, you're like, Oh that they didn't even say what that was. I just watched what happened, right? Or I like the company AA Trefs.

They just show demos of how they're like a gif of how their product works. You type in a keyword, it shows the keyword difficulty. You're like, oh, I get it. Like that I think that's actually a very fast way of instilling information. So I think a lot of software companies do a damn good job at explaining their product just because they can show it. They don't even have to explain it sometimes. Why do you think So you've been doing the same copyrighting you've been selling the same product for years and it's been Fruitful.

Similar. It's obviously changed over the years, but yeah, similar concept. Same. Yeah. But Why do you think that like I always Joke. I think I've said this on the pod.

Then that Novels. The most emotionally stable person I've ever met. Oh. Um And You why haven't you ever expanded to like way beyond that? Whereas

Yeah. You're very content doing the same thing over and over again, which is how you actually attain like true mastery. But why have you not Done what most people would do, which is like risk it in order to Like risk what you have for shit you don't need. Is that the phrase?

Um, but you're like kinda going bigger or going wider or something like that and expanding and risking what you have. Uh interesting question. We've talked about this before. I've talked about it with a lot of friends. One, I think I grew up in a very loving household and I had a really good gr up upbringing. I I think I'm like Maybe top five percent, top one percent. of like lucky in that sense. And so the drive generally what happens with people who are like ultra, ultra, ultra successful

is they tend to have a chip on their shoulder. And as much as I like wish I Had that. I'm kinda glad I didn't. And I just have to admit to myself, like, I'm not going to be the richest person on the I'm not gonna work that hard. Um

And so uh I am friends with people like you who are never content. Right. Or one of my other best friends, Noah Kagan, just like there's always like this like element of like just never ever content. And I think that pushes me a little bit more. But also I think I leave a pr le lead a pretty good life. Like over the years, I've been able to buy whatever I want, do whatever I want. I think the only time I've ever actually felt like I couldn't afford something is when I was buying a house. I was like, Oh, money matters over here and I don't have money to buy any house I want on the planet.

I actually have to like consider a budget for the first time. Uh, that was like the only thing like in a long time I felt like I couldn't afford. And so I think I've done pretty well. Yeah. Listen to this. One time

Um So if like for years I've been like Neville, you're so like Stable. And healthy. And one time about a year and a half ago, or a year ago.

Him and Neville and my wife, Sarah, are are obviously good buddies too. And Neville was like, Yeah, I'm like searching for a house and like the things that I want sometimes cost like Many, many, many millions of dollars. And my budget is like let's hypothetically say One point five million dollars. And it's the first time in my whole life where I've wanted to maybe I want to purchase something and I actually have to think about where the money's gonna come from or I have to think about financing. And it's keeping up me up at night and I realized And then he and he goes, Keep me up at night and and Sarah goes, Well that's pretty normal and he goes, Wait

Is this stress? Is that when people say they're stressed out, is this that feeling? I've never had that before. And that was hilarious. He goes, I've never experienced this uh feeling where I'm staying up at night like thinking about something not knowing how the how it's gonna end and it worrying me.

I I mean I I I don't yeah, that's uh that's true. When people explain like depression stuff to me, I have to like look up academic things to like like what is happening'cause I don't I don't get it. I just don't get it. So you guys met in what year? Thirteen. Twenty thirteen. Twelve or thirteen.

Mm-hmm. I was like an outsider looking in. It feels like There was Like this really cool energy around copywriting around selling things online.

Uh uh like like the whole world of like Neil Strauss, Tim Ferris, and and it feels like you guys are kind of on the periphery of that same world. And that was going on from what, like two thousand Nine to two thousand fifteen. Does that sound right? Starting to butt around then, yeah. I would say we are right in the thick of it. Him more so than me. S so Um

Like What do you think has happened to that energy?'Cause it feels like There's not that same like crew of people doing the same type of stuff now. But it's different. So you wanna hear something funny?

The Tim Ferris thing inspired me and I had just took Neville's copyright course and I was like I'm I'm pretty sure I could sell anything. And so I did research and I started white labeling and selling Poison Ivy. Uh remedies. Oh, itch juice? I called it itch juice.

Mm. And Neville came to my house one time and he was like I was like, Hey w we gotta go to the post office, I gotta drop out today's orders. And

We were selling like Thousands of a thousand dollars a day worth of this stuff. And it was r way easier at the time to like launch this stuff'cause Bing ads were like A dime.

for for a click. And anyway, but now There's this thing called The creator economy. And you've got guys like me and Sean, particularly Sean. He creates a course and he could potentially make seven figures a year selling a course.

And that's actually way more I can't tell if that's way more common. Or if we're just now part of like the insider crowd who has big audiences. I don't know. What do you think, Nelville? I think it's I think it's more common'cause the tools are better. Right. But before creating a course, like I remember like looking up like how to make a JavaScript to like password protect a site. It it was like it was like techie kind of stuff. Now you can use like circle.so or any of these like companies like that to to easily make courses. It's very simple.

And so I think it's more common. I think we have way more access to uh distributing our content than before. I mean, if you have a phone, you could be like a gigantic star with a million things. Back then You had to have like a team yet to like have Photoshop and expensive software servers. It's of all sorts of kind of stuff. And so I think it's just like the tools are way, way, way, way better now. So I think there's like ten to a hundred times more content. So Ben, back to your question, do I think it's like gone away that spirit? No, I think what happened was it was concentrated in the hands of a few before, right? You had the Tim Ferris, you kinda have like characters like that that were really, really big

that somehow made it past that level. And then now you have uh tons of communities that are smaller. I follow all sorts of little creator economy communities on Twitter where like each person has like, you know, a thousand followers, maybe. You know, and they're just getting started and they have like their own little community. I think it's just fragmented in a bunch of different micro communities. So I have a question. Tom

Um Ben hosts Uh How to take over the world. So he's like a mid stage in his

Oh that's Oh shit. You didn't know that? No. I Oh.

Yeah, a little star strip. Damn. Yeah, it's it's like a badass pod, but it's like still It's getting big, but it's still like on the up. So like he's still like in the middle of his journey a little bit. And uh how many downloads a month do you have, Ben? Like a hundred a hundred K downloads.

I don't know, my my top episodes just crossed forty thousand downloads. So like it's like doing really good. And Neville, your thing has been doing pretty good, very good for years. How do you think It's gonna look like when you're like sixty five years old and getting ready to retire.

If you're uh because like your mom worked at a in a g at a oil company and she's got probably a a very healthy Comfortable pension. A lot of my mom's a teacher. She probably has a pension close to six figures. Um But you're not gonna have that. Ben's not gonna have that necessarily if he

is let's just assume that he is doing this for another forty years. How do you think that you're gonna live when you're sixty five or seventy? Uh, first I you can make your own a pension. If you have a company can make your own pension. So I have started that process already and I plan to live off what's not a pension, so kinda like The whole like fire movement, all those things, there's different ways that you can expect to uh live uh comfortably. Also, um I did another thing that I thought was a little unique.

Um, I plan to die at eighty-five. And if I'm not dead naturally, I'll uh Well, you know. Make it happen to put it lightly. And so I always I plan this back when I was in uh when high school. Like I that's why I came up with that date. So November seventeenth, two thousand sixty seven. I'm done. And so I have to plan my life backwards till then.

And I planted a couple different milestones and I actually said so not sixty five. I said the end of my competitive Uh competitive work life is going to be fifty. Now I I know a lot of people are way more competitive at fifty. But I just planned it that way as like a contingency. Like let's say the world accelerates technologically very, very quickly beyond what I can keep up with or what I care to keep up with.

I need to move when I'm fifty into an industry that's slower, such as something such as real estate, like just owning a bunch of houses and renting them out, something that's kind of like foolproof like that. Um, but I say my competitive advantage will go away when I'm fifty is what I had said. Why did you die at eighty five. Why that that There's a there's a world where when we're eighty five, it's not It's more like a sixty five. Like a like a today sixty five.

That's true, but you gotta c plan for what's going on today, not tomorrow. I mean, I don't know what the thing is going to be when I'm eighty five, and it's forty years away, right? So I have no idea. But I did plan based on uh actuarial documents. So my likely death date is going to be when I'm around seventy eight. So male born when I'm born, all that kind of stuff. I'm gonna probably die when I'm seventy eight by the stats. So eighty five is actually like seven extra bonus years.

Then also when I was in high school I wanted to be a doctor, so we had this awesome program where we've got shadow of ten different doctors. I shadowed three different geriatric doctors and several in dementia wards. And that's when I saw just people that were like I it's kinda sad. But it's kinda like they're just like sacks of cells that still existed, but they weren't actually the same people they were. Their brains were mush. And I remember thinking like, damn, that's really hard on the Them?

It's also really hard on their families. And like we'd watch like, you know, a daughter of one of these people come in and the the dad doesn't recognize her and she's crying and the kids are crying. It was like a whole mess. And I was like I would never want to do that to my family or anyone else in my family. Like if if they if I get to that point, I'm done. Like Neville, the chapter of Neville is gone. And so um Everyone dies and everything that's lived has died and even if you live to two hundred you will die.

And so I thought, well, wouldn't it be nice to at least plan it? Um, I've also seen a lot of families get torn apart when the the main matriarch patriarch of the family dies. And they have to divide assets and the kids start fighting over stuff and like I want this and I want that. I've seen it rip the family apart. And I was like, you know what, wouldn't it be cool on your deathbed? That you're just like, all right.

Here's what you all get. Here's what it is. I signed off of it. I'm in good health and good sound, and then you take off. That's what I want. But you don't have to die in order to do that. There's a great book called Um Die with zero.

And it's the The whole premise is actually really interesting. It's like basically let's just say that you have a little bit of money and you're gonna donate it. It's like Well, maybe you should donate it now while you're still alive so you can actually see the fruits of your labor or If you have a uh if you're if you're gonna give away money to your kids, it's like

Hey, have you thought about giving it to the money giving them the money while you're alive? So like you guys can take a vacation together or if they buy a bigger house, you're able to go spend time there. And so you can die with zero. Are you What bag? I think one of the reasons people don't do that though is the estate tax versus the gift tax. Like I think you get hit super hard if you gift it while you're still walking. Yeah, but who gives a shit? Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Well, I I I know they do, but I think that's nonsense. I was talking to my father in law and he was telling me how he wants to give uh his daughters, my wife, money when he died. He's like or you know, they're just talking about like inheritance. Or wills and things like that. And I was like, Hey, I know this sounds weird because technically like You know, like what I what you give to her is gonna be mine too, so it sounds like I'm asking for it, but I I just want you know, like I I'm not but Have you thought about giving it to giving us whatever you ha wanna give now? So we can all like

I was like I was like we could like Spend it together and enjoy it or Don't give it to us at all and just go and buy yourself some really nice stuff and we can all have fun together with it. Um, but like maybe we should do it we could we can enjoy together as opposed to You know, like when you died, I was like, Do you remember what it was like

Before you were born? And he was like, No, I was like Well, that's probably what it's gonna be like when you die, so like who cares, like you know, what you left. Anyway, that's my opinion. I think that's a good point. Yeah. I so I okay, I I remember I wrote a short book about this that I ever really promoted'cause it's not like a a a philosophy I wanna like actively jam down people's throats. I just thought it was healthy for me. Is that knowing when I'm gonna die makes me live happier.

So if you know you're gonna die and someone's like, Hey Neville, I wanna give you the awesome opportunity, but you have to live in like uh bum fuck wherever. And uh it's not gonna be ideal, but it'll just be for five years. Well, knowing that I'm gonna die, that those a lot those minutes and times and years are gonna be very precious to me. I'm gonna be like, No, I'm not gonna do it. Like I just I'm not Because that's not how I want to live. And so I know I have this like finite amount of time.

And eighty five is the date I've chosen. Now people are like, Well, what if there's better technology? Well, I'll reconsider then. It's not like a bomb planted in my head that's gonna go off when I'm eighty five. It's like it's just a it's just a a thought process of like, okay, this is the end of my days. What do I want to do before then? And then I don't think people take this into account. I've had a lot of experience with old people through some of the the work experience I've had, and then also going to India a lot and seeing it. And what happens is After a certain age, you start declining in your physical health. And at the moment, that still seems going to be the case for a long time.

And so You if you wanna climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you know, after you're seventy, it's going to be very difficult. So you may as well do it when you're younger and capable of it. And also, as you get older and older, you have a lot more responsibilities. So if you want to do some dumb shit and get it out of your system, you better do it when you're young and healthy and have no responsibilities. And so I I was just kinda like planning life backwards like that. It's like we're inevitably gonna die. Like why wouldn't you plan for it, right?

And so I feel like in the West it's a very like taboo weird subject to even bring up. And in most eastern countries, I think like death is a little bit more of a like a accepted part of life. And so I I kinda like thinking like oh I'm gonna die at eighty five. It makes me happier knowing that. And also, it's kind of like uh Jerry Seinfeld had this great quote. He was just like every good comedian knows like this weird moment where the audience wants you on stage longer, but you know you have to get off right now.

It's time. It's time to walk off stage. Now I thought like eighty five. I'm walking off stage. N that's how I think I still haven't Like changed my mind from that date yet. Do you think so

Something that's interesting about you is that you do these roasts that I They like Neville will like throw a party. Called the roast party and he gets in front of like Sometimes like fifty people.

And has these like elaborate roasts. Like And sometimes they're just like silly funny jokes like for example like uh

Like uh Like well you know, David uh found his uh First grey pube. Unfortunately, it was on his Big Mac. Yeah, like they're like great jokes. They're very creative.

Jeff Ross. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, it well you said a bunch of s and you have way more that are exactly I don't even want to say on here. But uh And they're but they're very, very creative. And your writing is incredibly creative. Even if sometimes it's crude, it's very creative.

Do you think that you can make people more creative or you you just got it or you don't? I think people are like curious or not. Um, also it's it's like what you like doing. I will spend it like so it'll be like Sam's birthday or batcher party. I'll spend like a month writing a roast. I'll have like a file and I'll sit, I'll think of a funny joke, or I'll hear a funny joke on a podcast that I could adapt with Sam's name in it. And I'll write it down and I'll sit there just like laughing on my phone to myself. Like no one's around. It's just it's just me laughing. I have a legitimately fun time doing it.

Because it it's very hard. Like if I didn't like doing this It would be so much work for like what's ends up being a two or three minute speech, right? But it's just fun to do it. And I think it's just like the thing I like to do. And it keeps me creative, keeps me sharp, it keeps me writing. And it key, I think comedy is a. Is a pretty high level form of thinking. Like you never meet someone who's super dumb, that's really funny. Uh unless it's like they're they're not they don't mean to be funny, right?

Yeah, but like generally comedians are smart people. You've had tens of thousands of people come to you and And you've taught them how to write better. Particular in the form of copywriting, but it's rooted in like creativity a little bit. Do you actually think that some of these people you just couldn't make better'cause I'cause I think that some people I can't make I cannot make them a good

I can't even make them Good. Maybe I I can help them improve. I can't make them good. I think you cannot improve someone's like physical capacity for thinking, like their IQ level will not ever be raised. beyond the age of like twenty. However, I think you could technically make them better.

So someone writing a really long email, if you tell them, What if you just put things in bullet points? What if each bullet point can only be ten words long? You can actually make them better. Yeah, absolutely. But there's like a certain level of technicality you can make them better, but then a certain level of like high level thinking that's difficult to instill in people. But you can give them frameworks to think. There's all sorts of little tricks you can make someone better. Yeah. Just like I think uh th there's all this SAT prep.

Like You can take the S A T and get a low score, then take a prep course and become better. Because they're teaching you tactics and uh things like that. So yeah, you can make someone better to a degree. Do you find do you speak better? Uh does like copywriting help people

Hell yeah. In like in like verbal, like on in a podcast format, stuff like that. I think so. I mean it's it's kinda like no surprise that Sam is a real like what I would consider a great copywriter, even though you don't like take contract copywriting work. But you also have like a super popular podcast, right? Like That's kinda no surprise. Yeah, I think people who are good copywriters

Tend to just be good communicators is another way to put it. So communication with a medium. The the thing about copyrighting that I try to get into people's head, I'm like it's kind of a bad name. Because You're thinking that it just means like

Literally the written word. And it's not actually that. A copyrighted Every person in business should learn copyright. Because what copywriting really is, is figuring out what motivates the person

Who's the your ideal customer or your ideal target. And how do you use words or ideas? So that could be images, videos. Music, anything. How do you use some type of communication tool to manipulate them, which sounds negative, but it's the right word, manipulate them to do or feel how you want them to act or feel.

So That could be like Martin Luther King who wants to convince people in a speech. That racism is wrong. It could be Me selling a course or getting you asking you to sign up or pay for something.

It could be me trying to convince you that one thing is evil and one thing is good. And I can use words, I can use um Yeah. A picture I can use anything. Because when you when you copyright copywriting

It forces you to figure out what people want. Communicate it effectively. And how to structure your ideas. That's what it is. And to which specific audience you're talking to. If you're talking to high end programmers that are CTOs and all know JavaScript, you could explain it in one way. If you're talking to a CEO who has no idea about tech stuff, you have to explain it another way. And a copywriter will know which way to explain it.

And I've seen pages and let's talk about this, Neville, because you actually know more internet art marketing stuff than I am, and you're uh a few years older than me, so you've seen some more shit. Have you w I mean it's true. Uh I've Been able like I've been able to make money just by writing copy basically like in a Google Doc and putting that out there. And like

If your words are good enough, just in a Google Doc, I People will send me money for whatever service I'm Promising. Have you What's an example of a website that you found that is literally just a wall of text that's so good.

But it makes A shockingly large amount of money. I think base camp used to be a really good one back in the day that we would point to where it was just mainly just explaining what it did with a couple of pitchers. I thought that was pretty awesome. Um now you do you can use pictures, you can use videos. I think video has become a lot more prevalent and I think video is extremely powerful because that's how we understand stuff with our eyes and ears at the same time.

But just a wall of text. I don't know if anyone's still Wall Text. Th oh there are and I know a few. So there's this company called Years ago, Ben, do you remember a thing called double your dating? Oh

That guy would have turned him. Okay, so if you are above the age of thirty You probably will know what this is. So double your dating. I'm I'm going all off memory. Double year dating was a long around probably in

Year two thousand one to two thousand and Eight, maybe. And I was like fourteen. At the time. And it was basically the

e book. I think he sold more stuff, but it was an ebook For twenty nine dollars and it was just how to talk to girls. And Like every boy who's fourteen years old, like you're gonna buy it because you're uncomfortable and you wanna meet girls, whatever. And his website

was just you'd sign up and over the course of a week he would send you a series of emails that were literally Five to ten thousand words. All it was. was a text based email And it made tens of millions of dollars selling this thirty or forty dollar ebook, and then the guy

H ran it. His name is now his name the real name's Evan Pagan. His Pseudoname at the time was called David D'Angelo. And my friend named Craig Clemens Work for him, helped writing this.

Craig has a company called Golden Hippo. Which owns like eight or nine different brands and they sell like probiotics or One of them's called like Doctor Stephen Gundry. Have you guys heard of that? It's like a famous doctor and he like partnered with them and they sell probiotics to like women. Anyway.

Craig took the double your dating route like kinda like ideas. And now he sells literally a billion dollars a year. Uh Products.

And it's like a probiotic, it's vitamins, and I don't know what their other brands are. And it's just one long sales page and at the bottom they're selling a thirty nine dollar probiotic and that's something today that still exists. If you go to I remember W dating was good, yeah. I will I will say though, I think that is From a bygone era a little bit. I'm sure there's like pages that are just strictly text, but for the most part, I don't see it as much.

Because now the places that make a lot of money on dating are generally They have a YouTube channel or Instagram or whatever. They're not just text like they used to be. It used to be a big deal back then. They just write a long page of text. But you don't see it quite as much because we have to see education. Go to Amazon dot com.

And type in Kindle. Or like uh Amazon product. Or echo. High y I you might have a word do uh if most copyrighted do this, do you have a word counter automatically installed on your Chrome?

Yeah, you could just I just highlight it and it tells me. Yeah, that's what I do. Go to Kindle. The Kindle listing and tell me how many words it is. It's like Three or four thousand words.

And I cannot stand when people say, Well, no one leads long copy. And I'm like, No, like long copy almost will always outperform short copy. You just Like you you y you you for some reason people think that long is not good. L the J Joseph Sugarman uh RAP uh had a great thing. He said, Write long copy, not long winded copy.

That's right. So this is this is like a very there's a lot of things you need to go over with the Kindle that I'm looking at on this page. Talking about the PPI, the glare free, you can you it's water resistant, all that kind of stuff. So it has a lot of features, so therefore it has a lot of copy. But if you're selling a basic yo yo for five bucks, you probably don't need a lot of copy. You'd probably just make it long winded. So yeah, like this has a lot of cool things to write about so you can make long copy.

But I don't think you should make long copy just for long copy's sake. In fact I would say I've seen a lot of good selling on Instagram. Like a lot of I I run a sweat site site called swipefile.com where I keep all the good marketing that I see. And one of the cool things that I've noticed is on Instagram people sell through stories now. And I'm like This is like the evolution of how to sell. What's an example?

Um, I see a lot of these like courses and stuff and somet or like business courses. And so I remember writing articles about how to make like a logo, how to make a good logo and headline. And then I see like there's like a guy named Chris Doe The this uh Asian dude I I follow on uh On Instagram.

And he has these great stories on how to teach you how to do that kind of stuff. And I'm like This is brilliant. This is like taking that long article I made. and condensing it into an Instagram story that's visually appealing, it's fun, and I can go through it in like ten seconds. Remember thinking, Wow, I learned something in ten seconds. That is great copywriting. That is instilling information in my brain very, very quickly and officially. Why haven't you done that?

Uh Yeah, good question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a

One of the things I think about social that I I think you know that if you build your brand on social media, like this is a direct quote from Sam Parr. It's like if you build your brand on social media, it's like renting a place where the the landlord raises the rent every eighteen months. Doubles the rent. Every eighteen months. And so I think what happens is whenever we write long form um stuff for SEO. It every single day, no matter if Neville works or not.

I get more I get more and more people coming to the site. Whereas if I Only focus on social media. You get people on the site while you're on that treadmill, but it falls off very quickly. And I'm not very uh consistent with social media. So it's not something I think I would like win in necessarily.

I could build a system around it. Yeah. So, Neville, you talked about that first uh sales email for your Um for your Rave website. I'm curious for both of you. Uh for you Sam, like do you have an equivalent

Like where the light bulb went on. Where you were like Oh like This works. Like I can get people to do stuff with my writing. And Neville also for you afterwards, like was that that for you or was there another moment that where that light bulb went on even more? Sorry, go ahead. Neville was at the time it happened. For me, it was um I

hosted the first hustle con I had the idea for it. I think on May first and then it happened in June. Whatever it was, it was like the idea to event. With six weeks. And I made$40,000 in profit.

Or something like that. And I didn't spend a cent on marketing and it was all through these sales emails that I was sending people. And it worked so well and my website was ugly and I was like, This works. And then

When the hustle launched We created a welcome email. And welcome emails typically are like, I call it the forgotten text. So there's like your thank you page. There's like the confirmation page when you subscribe to a website.

There's the welcome email after you've given someone your website. Uh giving someone your email. There like there's like these these forgotten areas of people's websites. And I was like, let's make all of those areas incredibly funny and surprising and I bet you people will share it and it'll get us more traffic. And so we did. And so if you Google the hustle welcome email

W we created this welcome email and it was like funny and people started writing so many articles about it and I'm like Dude, this took us like four minutes to do and we kinda stole the idea from someone else. It's not that original. This copy running thing is awesome. So that was like when A hit for me.

Also, also behind the scenes, I knew you when you were throwing HustleCon, you made really good cold emails to speakers. you'cause you knew that like if you get the whales, everyone else will follow. So if you get the big speakers and you made these awesome uh emails with gifts, which like you know, ten years ago was like kind of cool. And yeah, and you held up like the volunteers, they would hold up a sign that said like Hey, Ben, will you come to speak at HustleCon? It looked like you made like a custom email. In reality, you just like Photoshop their name on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, th those there's there's definitely light bulb moments like that. I said I had my house of rave one, and then the next one was when Noah Kagan was building up Sumo off my couch. I started he was sending out to he had fifty thousand people on an email newsletter for App Sumo at the time. It was kind of like a side project of his. Which is like, you know, fifty thousand. Email subscribers pretty good for a side project. And he would send out like grasshopper.com twenty five percent off coupon.

Bye. And I was like Man, that's a pretty shitty email. That's that's not great. And so I was like, let me apply some of this copywriting stuff.

And the first email we sent out was Apsima's first ten thousand dollar profit day. And Noah was happy. I was happy. Was it the one on uh font? Carnist. Yeah, read re

Th that that first sentence Listen to this, Ben. The first sentence On that email. Is in the hall of fame. It is can you read that? Read that first. It was like the first

Three or four sentences. were beautiful. I'm gonna re I'm gonna try to say out the top of my head, this was like ten years ago, but it says like If I whisper the word Garamond in your ear and it makes your knees weak or something like that, it was basically kind of like fantasizing about fonts. Which is like a very important thing. You were talking about having a sexual fantasy with fonts. It was so funny. Look, it was a different time. I forget what the name of the font is, but he's like let's just say it was like Does if I whispered the word comic sands into your e ears, does it make you weak at the knees? Yeah. And then it was like it was basically having like a sexual fantasy about font. And then it like went on for like

six sentences with more things like that. And then it was like Well, I've got good news for you, you dirty dog. Like you know we're we're having a sale on all these fonts that you could purchase today. It was beautiful. That is such a beautiful concept. I've stole that. Uh on a bunch of different uh Oh wait, I'm pulling up. Wait, I I I've totally forgot this. It said the first letter this first sentence is if the names Lucidia Sans Unicode or Courier New don't mean anything to you, go ahead and close this message. And then it goes on uh to

The whole thing. It quotes Steve Jobs in there about about him talking about uh font types. And we remember thinking like the the reason Noah gave me this uh deal was he didn't think it was it was gonna be that big'cause it's it was so specific for like designers who did typography. Um, and I was like, You know what? Let's just have fun with it. And that ended up being like the biggest deal so far, and we're like Holy shit. Like the only thing that was different was the copyright. Like this was like We took some time to write the copy and it took about an hour, like it wasn't that long.

And so we did it again and again and again. And then for like a a long time, I wrote every single email until we like hired enough copywriters to replace me. Do you so you said it took you about an hour. Do you ever feel like you Come to a copywriting problem. And you just never crack it. You just are like, Man, it like the light bulb never hit.

Or are you just like Can you power your way through any problem? I'd be curious to think what you think, Sam. Sometimes sometimes like if you're not in a good mood, like it I I think like there's a cool time in the morning, like when I wake up and drink a bunch of caffeine, that like come up time, like my brain starts getting a little like start like thinking of funny jokes, start getting a little Giddy. And I'm like Oh, this is a good time. But it like if it's late at night and you have to just write something for a deadline.

Sometimes it'll be like uh this is kinda boring, but then every once in a while it just it just hits you like that. How do you think about it, Sam? I think that there's like usually the way that Yeah. I'm almost positive that this is universal, but the way that you get good copyright is

You sit down. The problem is is that most people are afraid to start. But you what you really need to do is you have to sit down and you just have to write. And it's and you acknowledge that it sucks. And then what you do is

So long as you have enough time, you then let it marinate. So you can like go and do something and then the next day you come back to it. And then that's where the really like the good shit actually happens. But every once in a while you can sit down and it just works. So I have this thing that It's It's like uh that

This I've been working on this thing called copy that. And I just wrote this. Yeah. Little T M I I was just sitting on the toilet and I just wrote it. And

I have not touched it because it's perfect. I'm like no this is just perfect. This is it this works. And sometimes Things like that definitely happen where you it it just is It just happens.

But I don't think that I think it's pretty much impossible to come up against a problem that you can't solve for two reasons. One, that incubation phase always works. And number two You can just copy other people. So you go to swipefile.com, which is novel site. Or you just like go and read old you just search like best ads of all time and you can just like read really old stuff and you're like Oh sick. They they were selling shirts using this.

Big idea. I'm gonna steal that for selling this other thing. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of tools available for like research generation. I think actually Pinterest is kind of what inspired swipefowl.com. You type in like good sales letter, uh product like dog leash sales letter, you'll find a ton of stuff. So you could copy. The other thing that I think is cool. Here here's a method I use all the time and I don't know if it's just unique to me. If I work with other people where I think they can see my screen.

Okay. So if we're on this call, I would share my screen and do work. So right before this, I host a thing called Writing Wednesdays, like for our members. And like certain like a certain amount of people show up and we just share our screens and work. That's it. And whenever I do that, I tend to get the best work. I get a lot of work done.

Um, I invite uh Sam and Sarah over to my place to co work every once in a while. I have my neighbors over, I have pe people over to co work all the time, and what I make them do is I tell them I'm like at least one person has to sit on the same side of the table as me. Because otherwise I'll just be on Reddit or Instagram just goofing off. But if they're looking at my screen for some reason I keep pushing forward and write good stuff.

Sam, Ben, tell me this. Have you ever been like in an airplane and you're like in the seat and there's other people next to you and you know people can see your screen. I bet you get some good writing, right? Yeah, for sure. Like there's something about other people seeing it where you're like, I gotta I gotta keep powering through and I I just can't let my brain stop. And so I think that's kind of a secret weapon. I have people work next to me or share my screen and work. And that's when I get the best writing done for some reason. Mm.

What do you think, Ben? Are you gonna start doing some copywriting shit? Yeah, well like I kind of already am, right?'Cause I script out all my episodes. So I'm writing and like I think it's pretty good, but now I'm actually trying to start selling stuff.

Uh, because I haven't been making much money on my show, and now I'm trying to make money on my show. And so this is all Ooh, that'll be the true test. That'll be the true test. But you know what listen listen to what happened Neville. Listen to what happened to Ben. Ben had this guy I'm gonna kinda butcher the story because I don't I don't know who the actual guy is, but I also don't wanna reveal any information that he previously told me. Let's just say he's worth nine figures and he's an investment banker.

And He came to Ben and he's like, Hey, can I pay you A certain retainer every month. And you just be my guru, or you study history. And like you just make sure that I tell you what my strategy is.

that I'm like not repeating the airs that Julius Caesar has made. Or that I am doing what like a successful Napoleon has done. Can you like kinda like guide that? And he came to Ben and I was like That's actually brilliant. You should charge

Like two or three thousand dollars an hour. And like consult and do this. It's kind of a good idea. Isn't it what Morgan Housel does with like that that firm that he's part of? I don't know. I I there was a guy who just put out a really good blog and a large investment thing. Morgan Housel, look it up. He did a podcast about it recently, talked about it, I forget where. And he uh The collab or collab fund, I think it's called.

There you go. That one. And so they reached out to him and they're just like We're gonna pay you a bunch of money and you just write stuff. And you just be cu you write about anything you want. And and that sound reminiscent of what you're doing.

So Yeah. So after that, s Sam, I don't know if I told you. I got well, I I did tell you'cause I asked you uh I know the guy listens to this show, so it's a little weird to be airing about. I was asking you how much to charge. And uh weird. He said will he said will you speak? And how much do you charge and you're like

Hey, how much should I charge? No, but it's weird because he listens to the show. So he's gonna be like so now he knows that when he was like, Hey, do you wanna come uh speak to my company, I went to you and said how much should I charge? And what did I say? I said, ask them. What's their budget? Yeah, and he didn't help he didn't that wasn't that didn't work. He was too smart for that. He's gonna throw it back to you. He's like, I wanna be respectful of your race, just let me know. You know what I've done in those situations, by the way, that's very helpful. Sometimes you at this debt, you're at this stalemate where it's just like both people want everyone to win. Like I don't think this guy's trying to Screw you over, right? I don't I don't think so.

You're also not trying to screw him over. You both just want to arrive at a nice Uh junction. So I would say something along the lines of this. I'm like look I I I wanna I know you're trying to do good by me, I'm trying to do good by you, but I would also like to be happy with the amount of money. My lowest that I would be happy with is I'm just gonna make up money, a thousand dollars, okay?

But I would be like Ultra, ultra thrilled to work for you if I was getting forty thousand dollars a month. I mean that would be like my dream. I would dedicate all my time. I would tell everyone else I'd be so Thrilled. Is that something that's like in the realm of possibility? And then

what happens is he's gonna be like, Well, it's a lot of money, da da da maybe we can settle on twenty five, thirty thousand dollars, right? Which it So I think those are generally the things and also being just ultra honest, I found um makes it happy and sometimes a lot of times they're like, you know what, if you're gonna be that happy and wanna do really good work for me, I will pay you that money. That's that's the way I would approach it.

Yeah. Uh that no that's uh that's I'm gonna I'm gonna transcribe what you just said. And I'm gonna say basically exactly that. Might change the figures a little bit, but yeah. I I see why you wanted this guy to come on the show, Sam. That was that was good.

Yeah. I want to talk about one more thing that I think is interesting. So Uh Uh basically

I tweet about this a lot and a lot of people say this is my dream. So Neville and I live Um Like two or three doors down. Enough that we pretty much see each other every single day because each of us

We'll take walks. Um And I actually think when people We're like, that's amazing that you guys are best buddies and you live next door each other and I'm like Yeah, I think everyone should do this because it will make you happier.

It's kind of interesting because I'm almost positive that this is what a lot of immigrant families do when they come to America. As they like move to like Some type of housing complex or some type of Cul de sac or something where They're with, you know, you're in a place that's new to you, you're nervous, it's more enjoyable to be around a bunch of more people. And you kinda like raise your kids together.

Um I think more Americans Who aren't immigrants just um Uh Americans who are born and raised here should do that. It it it is.

I'm happier because we live by each other. Oh, totally. I think the key is so a lot of people w there's like this newfangled plan that everyone has. They're like, Let's buy a plot of land and I'll be neighbors. So that actually doesn't work. And the reason is because you're neighbors. That's too close. You gotta have like some separation. So me and Sam live around the corner from each other. We actually share an alley. But there's some semblance of privacy, but also I can walk a hundred feet to his house, you know? Like I saw you this morning, just like you were like Showing your dad your motorcycle over FaceTime or something like that. And I was like, Hey, what's up? We saw each other for ten seconds and I'm like

That was that was a hangout. That was a hangout. And so I think that's the key. And then also I grew up like this. We had a lot of family friends in our neighborhood. And it's kinda cool. Like if you if your kids you can your parents like don't mind if you hang out with other kids they know. And so you can walk over to their houses if you need to borrow a cup of sugar, whatever, you can walk over. I think it makes you immensely happy. Like the whole point of life is to have like a really fun, good community. And also, whenever I go to India all the time, people live in what are called colonies. A lot of times it w so it's essentially like a c apartment complex, imagine it like that.

And you know everyone in that colony. And so you have like a million people over at your house. You pop into other friends' house, you don't even knock on the door. And it's really fun. And when you have that much stimulation and fun activity going on. The last thing you're asking is like, what's the purpose of life?

Am I happy? You're active, you're happy. The old people are happy, the young people are happy. It's really fun. And then when people come over here and live in a A big house but by themselves isolated. Like you get very lonely and even though you have an awesome house, it's like Who cares? Like if you don't have a lot of friends around. What's the point?

H do you guys see each other? Mo more off more days than you do not? Do you see each other majority of days? Yeah, lock is in front of me. It could be as short as a just waving and s and saying three words. Do you have anything that you regular like you guys don't lift together, you don't run together, you don't

We exercise sometimes together. We We Kind of just. Sit on the porch and do nothing. Yeah. I think like the art of the pop in is pretty fun. Just like popping in, hanging out. Uh so one of our friends that we both know, John Arrow.

Uh that we both really like. I used to see him the way me and John Errow would hang out is we both used to live downtown sort of near each other. We'd see each other randomly on the street about once a week. We chat for like fifteen minutes on a street corner. And we're like, all right, gotta go. That's it. That was the hangout.

And it's just like it felt like we hung out, even though it wasn't like a deliberate thing. And in fact, it almost feels more special'cause it's random. So a lot of times uh I'll be uh drinking some coffee and I walk over to Sam's house and just knock on the door. And I come in and say hi for like five minutes and that's it. Or it's like uh Uh hey, we bought

Like this happens it feels like A nice amount is I have a bunch of food that's gonna go bad in a couple of days. I gotta I gotta make a ton of it. Yeah. Or you know what Sam you know what Sam does?

I have like all these alarm sensors all over my house. And so if someone opens my back gate, which no one ever opens my back gate, there's an alarm that goes off my house, it goes, back gate opened. And Sam will open that. And then he'll He'll wait like five second for me to like run out the door and what's going on? And he's like, Hey and I'm like, Sam. That's his way of getting that.

Like I know it's Sam if the back gate's open. Do the Mormons do that, Ben? I thought you guys all like you guys have a pretty good community. Yeah, it's interesting. Um We do, but not in a like living near to each other sort of way. Like we just, you know, have activities that we get together at the church and we see each other at least, you know, a couple of times a week, but Um Yeah, I I this is something, Neville for background, I've been thinking a lot about of like I am one of those people I think a lot of people are rethinking this right now. Oh pandemic. A lot of people have gone remote and they're like, If I could live anywhere near anyone

Why do I not live near my family and friends? Like why do I not live near the people I want to spend time with? And so, you know, all the boys are scheming. All the boys are like, how do we move into a compound together so that we can see each other every day. Everyone says compound. It doesn't matter. You don't want to compound. It's not a combat. Yeah. You don't want shares. I think you want Like

Same block. Yeah, I would find it very awkward if we were actual neighbors. Like if me and Sam were actual neighbors, it would be like I think it'd be too much. I think it'd be a lot. And there would be some conflict. It's like Dude, what the fuck? Why don't you like why are you being messy like this? Or why why is this Thing overgrown.

Yeah, for you wanna have people over and like you that you're like, Oh, they're having people over, but not be like I f I feel like that's too weird. It's too much. Like you got there has to be some separation. So I think that the compound idea never really works. It never gets off the ground because you literally do compound. You don't want to look out the the window in your neighbor's right there. That's that's a lot. Well I think the reason that people go immediately to compound is that like The logistics seem easier, honestly, of just like, okay, blank slate, we'll build houses next to each other, than the like Alright, let's hope the serendipity lines up enough.

That's way not easier. Yeah, and also, by the way, in a lot of other cultures, like in Indian culture, a lot of times very rich families what they'll do is they'll build gigantic houses in each uh They have separate entrances for each floor. And the kids, like one son will live on the second floor, another son will live on the third floor with his family. And the parents love the first one. That's pretty common where they all live together in a big house. And they have like some semblance of privacy, but also not.

So and it it's Kinda fun. But that is the d that is the compound right there, though. That is a comp it's it's like it's not ideal. I wouldn't want to do that'cause It's it's it is your family and it is you they're all kind of up in your stuff.

But I think the o ideal is in the same neighborhood, like around the corner. Like where you're you wouldn't mind your kid just walking to the other person's house by themselves. That that would be ideal. Yeah. I think it's the most fun.

It's getting to know your neighbors, having that strong sense of community. I think also there's like a security aspect that's kind of cool. Oh, Sam Sam wasn't getting back in time for his motorcycle to be delivered. So we just had it delivered to my house. So Like the just convenience factors like that are pretty cool. And then also like whenever I show people my house as a tour, I bring them to Sam's house as part of the tour. Like it's like part of the it's like an extension of the tour. It's fun.

And I actually think it's helped you meet more girls. Because you have if there's like a girl who you're trying to see and you're trying to impress her and She sees that there's just like action happening in the neighborhood. It's like oh this is exciting. This is fun to be around. Well, thanks for blowing up my uh my secrets, but uh yeah. It is fun when people come by. Like even when like Noah comes by. I remember the other day, um, you and Sarah stopped by in your car and you're just stopping and chatting in front of me. And then Noah came by in a different car, just totally random, and we're all three like talking to each other. I was just like That's a pretty cool moment. That was a fun moment.

Yeah. Have you guys had any moments of Conflict? Uh sorry, I d I'm not meaning to be your therapist right now, but like ha has there been anything? Not really. So we both we we knock.

Last night Uh he was on a date and I and I didn't want to ruin it. And so I had to make sure that he answered the call before before I came over. And so I go'cause'cause Neville's single and so I'll be like, Hey, are you with anyone? Are you alone? Like are you dating anyone? Like you know are you seeing someone? Can I can I come over? So sometimes I do that.

I'm married, so we don't I don't have that issue. No, I mean I I think we also knew each other pretty well and we're I think we're but if there's ever any issue, we bring it up right away. And so I don't think we have like lingering issues with each other. So No, I don't think we've had any conflicts about it yet. Been about a year, right? No, it's been a year and a half. Uh yeah, you're right, a year.

And eventually. And I think if Sam and Sarah eventually have kids, they'll probably end up moving. to New York or something probably. And I even actually like it makes me sad to even think about that. Well I told her I was like, dude, I don't I'm like this is kind of perfect because I don't love Austin. I like Austin.

But the re the only reason is because Uh like'cause of the convenience with you and also a couple of other friends. And Now that we're all in the mode where we're all we're all having kids at the same time too, I'm like Man, this is sick. We should all it's all Ben, did you raise your kids with anyone else?

Like did you like w did like a close friends? How I have Kids within one year. Yes. Is that awesome?

Yes. So for us it was two doors down, this other Mormon family called the Coons. And uh it was like literally just like Uh it's not racist. It's just that's a horrible name. Anyway. Uh and anyway, it was just like um all you know, the kids were all the same ages and we just ran back and forth and who knew where dinner was gonna be for everyone that night and it was great. By the way, you know my working backwards from eighty five plan. And Sam, you can bat me up on this. I've been saying it for years. I wanted to I wanted to have kids around twenty twenty three. That's when I'm forty.

That's when I wanna have kids. So I started telling all my friends like five years ago, I'm like 2023, let's all have kids. Because I grew up with like a pack. of kids like a pack of friends Almost my exact age within one or two years. And it was

Awesome. Like it was really fun. We're all still best friends to this day. Like that'll never change. And I think it was great. And I was I would love for my kids to have it. And also, I think as a parent, it's much better. Ben, you could probably attest. If your kids want to go play, you can be like, Yeah, go play at the Coons, right? Like you can go play over there. You don't have to worry about it. It's kind of better for the parents and the kids. And the kids get to have like a whole pack of friend friends, which is awesome.

So I've been telling everyone, twenty twenty three, that's the date. Everyone had pop out some kids around then. Alright, this episode went all over the place. What do you think, Ben? Are people gonna like this? Uh I hope so. Uh they're definitely gonna like copyrighting that all stuff is just like our bread and butter. Uh, but I hope people like the the living next to your neighbor stuff too.

So Sean's not here, so he inevitably Sho would promote his thing. So I'm actually gonna promote it. It's called power writing. So Sean has a writing thing. It's not the same as copywriting, but it's like uh Kind of like for Twitter writing and cold emailing. And then Neville. So Google power writing, it's on Maven dot com. And then Neville has copywriting course. Well,

C is exactly how it's I'm saying it. Copywriting course dot com. Where do they go to buy the thing though?'Cause you used to have copywriting course dot com slash steel. What is it? Slash join. So copyrighting chorus dot com slash join and It's

A monthly subscription now and you get the course, but also the community, right? Yeah, monthly, yearly. The community is like the real thing. You actually have a thing called copy reviewer tool. You post your copy, whether it's a sales page, called email, Twitter, post, anything. And like professional writers, including myself, go in there and like redo it for you. And so it's easier. Yeah. And you also tell people what how I didn't s I've never seen this.

March two thousand twenty two. Had twelve hundred posts. Two thousand likes. Two hundred and twelve thousand words written in the community. That's a whole other story, but we moved away fully from WordPress, which I love, but we moved fully to like forum software because I'm convinced that like this is where all the sites are gonna go in like two years. They're all gonna try to make their own little social network for their own community, but not on anyone else's platform. So that's what we did. We just switched over this week and it's pretty awesome.

What's the conversion rate of copywriting course dot com slash join? Because it's just like it's like Four thousand words. It's pretty. It super depends on whenever we do email promotions. So on a normal type I don't know, maybe one to two percent on just like normal days, but then whenever we do promotions, it's much higher. Yeah.

So what just on a nor uh just uh from traffic coming to the website? And people clicking onto slash join. Do you know what the conversion rate is? I don't know the exact conversion rate. Um There's certain times like beginnings of quarters, it's good. End of the year, beginning of the year is really good. Almost like gyms, like seasonal. And then uh through the summer is more like slog months where you have to like actively promote.

And then at the end of the year we're just crushed like Q four is just it's just easy. Yeah, this page Oh, hey, I'm on the I'm on the page. Yeah, stage. Yeah. Sick.

Well copyrighted course.com slash join. Do we all have top writing courses? Copyright course, copy that, power writing. So Or no. Copy that, which is my thing, copy that dot com. That's not a copywriting course. That's just a set of drills.

To keep sharp. Your thing actually teaches you how to write persuasive copy. Sean's thing. Is like uh

He calls it power routing. And it's you can use it for Twitter and cold emailing. So I actually think that your thing is like Covers. All of it?

And then me and Sean's thing are very specific subsets. Uh. Right. Yeah. I think so. I think I mean it the People always ask me, they're like, Is it competitive if someone else has another copywriting course? And I was like

I don't know, it kind of expands the pie, in my opinion. Like I've noticed like uh you remember Dan Locke? Did you all ever talk about that guy? He's kinda screen like that that boy he's kind of a little bit in a scammy range, like a Tyler fucking scammy. Well, here's the here's the funny thing. Here's why I love and hate him. One, he would talk he would talk have these YouTube videos that are very popular, very well done, but they would say you should become a copywriter, you'll be a millionaire overnight. It was just like kind of lies in my opinion. But the point is it kind of drummed up interest in copywriting in a way. And I remember a lot of people coming from his stuff to ours. Um It was it was fifty fifty. Some people were realistic about it. And some people were like, Well, I'm ready to start earning six figures tomorrow. How do I start doing it? And we're like, Oh God, you came from Dan Locke, right?

Um So in a way it kind of expands the pie whenever other people talk about it. It becomes a more popular thing. And I promote your Yours and mine. Oh.

Yeah. All right, cool. Ben Hopefully this turns out well. Novel. Thank you. Oh and uh Ben's copywriting course is coming out next month, uh called uh How to Take Over Copywriting. There we go. Yeah, right copy like Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Uh that'd be pretty good. How to write strong memos like no like your Napoleon Bonaparte.

Uh Neville, what's your um Later. Nev Med, N E V, M E D. Never met it. Awesome. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Ben. I feel like I can rule the world and no way

It be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel, never looking back

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.