From $3M to $80M: This Episode Will Teach You How to Write Better With Neville Medhora

Neville Medhora is the Owner of the Copywriting Course, a community that helps businesses improve their copy and conversion rates through blogs, videos, tutorials, and copywriting sessions. As an Advisor for Sumo Group, his copywriting skills helped propel the rapid growth of AppSumo. Neville is also the best-selling author of This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:04] Neville Medhora’s approach to crafting emails that led to AppSumo's first $10,000 daily profit
[7:46] The power of the copywriting medium
[10:28] How to make your copywriting stand out
[16:35] Sending persuasive emails without annoying your audience
[22:27] What distinguishes compelling copy from mediocre copy?
[27:17] Neville shares insights and lessons from his book
[30:26] How brand positioning influences copywriting
[42:59] Selling as an educational and service-focused process
[50:14] The role of product positioning on conversion rates
[54:17] How Neville’s childhood shaped his entrepreneurial journey
[1:01:12] Neville’s process for mentoring professionals at scale
[1:08:12] Playing chess with Jamie Foxx

In this episode…

In a world where consumers are bombarded with content and spammed with emails and other marketing messages, brands must ensure their targeting efforts capture audiences’ attention. Compelling copywriting can make or break your messaging and secure conversions. How can you differentiate your copywriting in the market to influence purchasing decisions?

Copywriting master Neville Medhora says consumers often gloss over complex concepts or long, drawn-out topics, so your messaging should be concise and straightforward. How you leverage words in your storytelling influences each aspect of the customer journey. Neville recommends employing the AIDA formula in your copywriting, which captures consumers’ attention, interest, and desire, influencing them to take action. This involves demonstrating various use cases, educating the consumer on practical benefits, and positioning your brand as an attractive option through precise branding and design.

Tune in to a new episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as William Harris speaks with Neville Medhora, the Owner of Copywriting Course, about driving conversions through compelling copywriting. Neville shares his view on the sales process as educational, how the copywriting medium can sway consumers, and his approach to mentoring emerging copywriters.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"You change the words around on the page and it has a completely different outcome on the sales."
"So long as there's one interesting nugget that someone thinks, like, 'Ooh, that was really helpful,' they'll stay tuned."
"I think whenever you have an audience that wants to buy something, and you can increase their sales... that's probably one of the most powerful things."
"The AIDA formula. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action… most people get caught up on this desire part."
"If I go somewhere, I want it to be better because I was there."

Action Steps

Create a to-do list and focus on crossing off tasks to maintain productivity and momentum: Physical lists can provide a visual sense of accomplishment that motivates continued progress.
Simplify your messages in marketing and communications to ensure clarity and directness: Complex language can confuse customers, whereas straightforward communication efficiently guides them toward making a purchase.
Incorporate storytelling that showcases real-world applications of your products or services: Demonstrating practical use cases can elicit a strong connection and understanding in your audience.
Engage with educational content and tools (e.g., courses, books) to enhance your copywriting skills: Investing time in learning from experts can empower you with techniques to leverage your words for business growth.
Embrace the philosophy of "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" in both personal and professional life: A positive mindset and intentional action can foster a productive environment and stronger business relationships.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:14

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 100 million and beyond as you up burial your business and your personal life, joining me today is Neville Medhora, best selling author of This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better, founder of the Copywriting Course, and genius copywriter behind the massive growth of AppSumo. He just did a project for Cody Sanchez. He's working with the daily Stokes. Like all these things that I love all put together. Neville, I'm so excited to have you here today. Man, thanks. Man, thanks

Neville Medhora 0:46

for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah,

William Harris 0:47

so I got to give a shout out also to my buddy Rob Wormley. So we were talking about this before you. You are in Austin, so you know my buddy Sujan Patel, I was at a company called when I work, VC backed SaaS company, and I was pretty new to marketing at the time, and Rob Wormley was one of the first people that I hired on onto our marketing team and for copywriting. And so he gave me your book. This would have been back in 2014 this book, actually, I have it, you know, right here. It's and I actually have every single person on my team read this, because I think it's just that important. It blew my mind. It was one of the best books that I think I've ever read. It is not that long. In case people are looking and you even call that out, you're like, It's short. It's like, 48 pages, yeah, but it is, it is so succinct, and I don't know it's just, it's perfect. And so I want to talk about that a bit today, but I just, I love this book, and I want to make sure everybody knows

Neville Medhora 1:40

that, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like the shorts version, or like a TikTok reel version. Ooh,

William Harris 1:45

I like that. It's like the TikTok real books. That's good. Why

Neville Medhora 1:48

do you need an hour to explain something? If you could do it in like, a minute, right? So the book, I'm like, Why do I need 400 pages? I could do it in 40 100% and it's, it's only six by nine. So it's not even, like, giant pages. It's

William Harris 2:01

and even though even the font is even like, it's bigger, it's not like, this is like, endpoint font or anything. It's

Neville Medhora 2:07

a skimmable book with average reading speed is about 30 minutes from front to cover. Really, really fast, really fast. That's

William Harris 2:14

good. Yeah, I want to get into this. We're going to be talking about copywriting in just all of the things that you've done from a copywriting perspective. There's a lot that I want to cover a want to cover before we do I want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com, that said, I want to get in the background first, so you got your big break initially, at least from what I understand, by writing emails from Noah Kagan's app Sumo, and generating their highest sales day ever. I think you took them from something what like 3 million to 80 million plus. What made your emails so much more effective for them?

Neville Medhora 3:04

Well, Noah was building AppSumo as, like a side project off of my couch in Austin years ago, and we're both working on a bunch of different like small companies. I ran a rave company at the time, like an e-ommerce rave company. So I was in the DTC world, and I learned about copywriting from a friend, Ryan Levesque. You might know he's got some internet fame. And he was telling me, like, Neville, you gotta, you gotta learn this thing called copywriting. And at that time, I was actually sending out emails for my own company. For it was called House of rave. At the time, sold light up, glow sticks, you know, all that kind of stuff for Burning Man, party planners, etc. And I was sending out emails I never made any sales from them, maybe two sales or something. Meanwhile, it costs you, like, 80 bucks a month to maintain the email. So making negative income from sending out emails I learned about copywriting. He told me to read the Gary Halbert letters, chapters one through 26 and he was like, you gotta print them out. Like, spend a thing of ink and just print them out. And I was like, print them out. What was 1980 and he's like, just, just do it. And, like, watch how he writes. And so I did it. I went online, found him. I was tempted to read him, but I was like, I'm just gonna take Ryan's advice. I read about copywriting till about six in the morning every day for the next like week or so. I was reading these things in bed, and I was like, my mind was like, buzzing with ideas. And I was like, simultaneously pissed and very happy at the same time pissed that I had done every single campaign I've ever sent out pretty much wrong, like the opposite of what he was suggesting. And then I was happy, because I was like, now I can fix these right? So I wrote, like a copy, written like in Gary Halbert style promotion. And it was my first, like 10,000 plus revenue day. Wow, that I had. We'd had a couple from, like, Halloween and stuff like that, but never anything on demand like that, especially not from email. And I was like, Well, crap, that worked. That's that's interesting and and so then I kept doing it, and literally overnight, like 50% of our revenue started coming from these email promotions, rather than just standard SEO, hoping and praying that someone like buys my stuff on my website and finds me randomly. That's literally how we made all our sales. Now is. Like, whoa, I'm a little bit more in control of the revenue, and I can actually promote firepower to specific products, which I really liked. So the same thing happened around that time. I was just like, Noah was building AppSumo, and he had 50,000 or so email subscribers. Noah is really good at building email lists, not very good at writing the emails. He was just pretty much like, here's grasshopper.com Here's 100 bucks off the service. And I was just like, Wait, this is all wrong. What if you said how people made money through grasshopper.com What if you described what grasshopper.com Did I actually use grasshopper.com and it made my like, small little company look a lot bigger, because when people call the customer service line, there's a phone tree. It's like, click one for the shipping department. In reality, it all just went to one cell phone, right? And so I remember thinking, like, lawyers use this, dentists use this, all sorts of, like, independent therapists and tattoo parlors to make it look like they were running a big company. And so I wrote all that stuff in an email, and I was like, Do you got to send this out? And we also made it funny, and had, like, some stories weaved in through it, and at the end, it's like, by the way, you can get a crazy discount on this awesome service. And that was appsumo's first, like, $10,000 profit day. And so, of course, Noah was like, dang, that worked. That's really awesome. I was like, Holy crap. This is actually working on another company instead of just mine. And so, you know, it wasn't hard to think that, like, maybe we should work together on this, right? And so I started writing all the copy. And have to, like, investigate each one of the pieces of software that went out, figure out how to use it, who was doing well with it, what type of companies, etc, and, and that's how AppSumo became AppSumo. And it started like growing and growing growing. We eventually hired like, four copywriters to replace me as there was more and more deals and and then, and then credit where credit is due. When he said 3 million to 80 million. That was Eamon as CEO, who took it there. But I defined the voice of AppSumo, and kind of like trained all the writers to write like that. So that's initially how I got started, in thinking like, oh, there's something about copy. Then a funny thing happened. All these people who were readers of AppSumo emails were like, I know you're trying to sell me something every day, and I still read all your emails. Like, what the heck's going on? You'll just say, same way, yes, yeah. And I was just like, it's this thing called copywriting, and I would respond to all these emails. And of course, over time, I was like, Well, okay, I got to record this and sell it as a course, right? And, and that course was called Copywriting Course, spelled with K's, because I couldn't get the domain with C's, remember that? And, and it killed it. It did super, super well. And we're just like, holy crap. There's something about this concept of copywriting that, like, you change the words around on the page and it has a completely different outcome on the sales. So people love that concept. And so I always call it like copywriting is the lowest effort marketing activity can do for the highest effort results. So just changing a couple things around, not even changing design around, you can have a completely different conversion rate, and so people love that concept, and from there, like the Copywriting Course, grew into a business. So

William Harris 7:46

I love that you just talked about changing the words around on the page without having to change the design. So I am going to reference your book on this. I'm going to give my paraphrase of this. But chapter one talks about this, the envelope exercise, right? This is probably the thing that I have quoted the most on this podcast and in meetings with clients and with my own team, because I love it. But my paraphrase is, you've got two envelopes that are identical, two stamps that are identical, two pieces of paper, they're identical, same pen like everything's the same. The only thing that's different are the words. And you write a letter to your mom, and one of them is, Hey, Mom, I love you. You're the most amazing thing in the world. I cherish every memory of you. Blah, blah blah, love your loving son, Neville, William, whatever. And then the other one is, Mom, I hate your guts. You suck. Dad sucks too. Blah, blah blah, like, I hope you die, right? And you're like, say everything's the same. Both are gonna cause visceral, emotional reactions and but there's nothing different about the medium or anything else. And to your point, it's just the words. And I think sometimes we downplay that, especially in performance marketing. It's really funny to me. In the advertising side, we spend so much time on video versus static versus influencer versus UGC versus this, and we're not actually spending a lot of time on the words that are being used.

Neville Medhora 9:02

Now I'm a big fan of like, I loved when copywriting, course, was spelled with case, because I was like, copywriting with the seed implies that you're just talking about words. I always thought with K's, it's like you just use the technology of the time to to get your message across. So, you know, 20 years ago, we didn't have TikTok we didn't have Instagram reels, we didn't really have YouTube in its current form. And so of course, like writing was much more powerful. Now with all these video mediums coming along, I'm a big fan of using any of those, however, to get myself in front of people, or my company in front of people I'm down for. So sometimes people like, the pen is the mightiest thing ever. I'm like, Yeah, but a video is pretty dang good too. That's fair, yeah? I mean, yeah, whatever medium. And in the future, there's gonna be some sort of virtual reality thing. Reality thing, whatever, and I'm going to use that just as well. So staying up to date on those things. And how can you communicate to a large amount of people and get information from my brain into your brain, or my brain into like a million brains, whichever the best way I'm down, and usually the answer is all of them.

William Harris 9:57

Yeah. So you talked. Little bit about Copywriting Course here, besides writing the best copy, what else do you think helped achieve this level of success that you've had with Copywriting Course? Because you've you've sold over $2 million I don't even know what the last figure said. The last figure I found you know, on Copywriting Course, you've sold 1000s of copies of your books, but it's like, besides just writing good copy, there are other tactics, things like that that you've done to help grow these things. What are those things that you think help to stand out?

Neville Medhora 10:28

I think you give away a lot of stuff for free, especially for, like, some sort of informational type business, and then some people want to get really into the weeds of it. So if you look at a lot of my YouTube videos, it's like, here's nine copywriting exercises you can follow. It's pretty shallow, and it's kind of like beginner level stuff. But then there's like, this typical marketing funnel that, like, 100,000 people will watch this. 1% of them will be like, I want to apply this to my business. And 1% of them will say, I want Neville to personally write all this stuff. So it's a pretty simple business structure where we have a lot of free stuff. I have, kind of like my mid level offer, which is, like our Copywriting Course community, which offers access to me for office hours. Also we have a we have, like, a customized forum where you could, like, upload sales pages and stuff, and our writers give you feedback. And then the next thing is, like, someone will approach me directly do, like, a larger scale project for them, like train their employees, or something along those lines. So that's the main thing. And it's really not that complex. I think there are multiple revenue streams you have whenever you have an audience and like, if you type in, like, how to make money from a newsletter and get the top 10, you know results from chat, G, P, T, it's pretty much those. It's like, affiliate offers that, that kind of stuff. I don't do a lot of affiliate stuff, other than for software that I use, like ConvertKit or something like that. But for the most part, it's just, if you have an audience that wants to buy something, and you can increase their sales. I think that's probably the one of the most powerful things. And so with copywriting, a lot of people will start learning about it and be like, oh, I need to spend some money on this. And they research, like, different courses and stuff like that. And then they come across mine. And I think the reason a lot of people will join us instead of other courses is we're not really a course. A Course is like, actually probably like, an eighth of what we do. So sitting there watching videos of me is super powerful. And I'd say about 93% of the people that join, we've surveyed this before, get value from just like, watching one video and be like, holy crap. I never thought about that. They throw the course away and go start working on their own thing and see the results. And they're like, I made my money back already. The next thing you do is like, I think writing with people is the best. So back in the day, I think copywriters used to, like, go off on their own research industries for 2040, 50, 100 hours. I'm just like, well, that's stupid. Why don't I just ask you, who's in your industry? Sure, what's good, what's bad? So we never write for people. We always write with people. Writing for you is just like you just paying me a lot of money to go off and research your industry, and I'm going to do a worse job than you who works in your industry, right? So if I wanted to write something about Elumynt and how you guys make great case studies for me to go research, it is pretty stupid. Rather than have you on the phone for 30 minutes and be like, hey, what was your greatest success? What did the customer say? And I try to pull those things out. Can I give you example of this? If I wanted to sell ford f1 50 trucks, I don't drive a truck. I don't know much about trucks, it would be difficult for me to figure out what's really good about trucks. Instead, I would go to the Ford dealership here in Austin, I would say, who's your best salesman? I want to pay them 500 bucks to talk to them for like, 15 minutes, and they'll probably say yes, and I say, what makes people's eyes light up when you show them the Ford f1 50, and they're going to be like, Oh, anytime we show them the automatic tailgate that goes up and down by itself, they always go like, Oh, crap. But and like, Okay, that's a cool thing. What about when you mentioned it has 400 horsepower? People like, yeah, they don't really know what it means, but if you say you could tow seven horses, they're always impressed by that. And I'm like, okay, that's the thing. So I write down those, like, little like IPOP moments that people have, and that's pretty much all the bullet points I go off of. So for me to go research all that would have taken so long, and I probably would have, like, got everything wrong. Instead, I just asked the person who's the best at selling, what do people what do people actually like? What makes their eyes light up? What makes their brain pop? And I copy those things and write based off of that. And so much simpler to do that. Yeah,

William Harris 14:09

I like that. To your point, a lot of times I think we try to get too cute with it, right, trying to do the research, or trying to do whatever we say, the features, 400 horsepower, doesn't mean anything to most people, what? What actually gets their isolated, but I like looking at it from that frame of reference, like, what? What gets their eyes to light up? Um, yeah, I

Neville Medhora 14:28

think if, like, if someone, if someone was in a Tesla, I think like, when you say, like a Tesla has 1100 horsepower, it's like, wow, that sounds cool, but there's nothing like getting in that car and slamming on the thing in the chin goes back up on their neck, like, that's the moment where they're like, holy crap, that's what that means. Like, 1100 horsepower. Like, our brains aren't equipped to understand what that means.

William Harris 14:50

Yeah, no, picturing a 1100 horses line of it doesn't even make any sense.

Neville Medhora 14:54

It doesn't mean make any sense.

William Harris 14:55

Yeah, are there? Are there any DTC brands? That you have seen doing this, and it might not need be DTC, but that's I'm trying to tie it to that. But are there any DTC brands, or other brands that you know that are doing a great job of this? You're like, I get this email. I love it. They are nailing it.

Neville Medhora 15:13

I think there's a lot of newsletters out there. And the thing about a newsletter is they don't always have to be a hit. So long as you make a newsletter where people pull out like one nugget each time and they're like, Oh, that was pretty cool. You know, just skimming it, I don't think people are paying attention to your newsletters and content as much as you think. You know, I always tell people that they're like, what if this one sucks? I'm like, think about three days ago, all the social media posts you saw Name one. Think you remember anything. You remember anything, maybe remember something your friend posted, maybe, but you don't remember anything. So no one's paying that much attention. And so I just think you don't have to be do everything great. I think you have to have just like, a decent hit rate. So every time I send a newsletter out every week on a Friday, it has five sections, and I'm like, I hope someone gets something out of one of these sections, right? The rest they can gloss over, but so long as there's one interesting nugget that someone thinks, like, Ooh, that was really that was really helpful, they'll stay tuned. They'll keep listening, they'll keep watching. And so that's my goal. It's just like, how can we be the most helpful to the customer? And, you know, look, they're not all bangers, right? Sure. And so I think it's like a consistency thing and a numbers thing. I think so long as like, 30% to 70% your content really, really makes an impact on someone. I think you're doing a good job. So

William Harris 16:22

then you talked about you send yours out weekly. I'd have to imagine, with AppSumo, it's much more frequent than that. How do you Yeah, how do you do this in a way that you don't completely annoy your audience?

Neville Medhora 16:35

Yeah. So right now, AppSumo sends out so many that a lot of and the brand is so well established. It's almost like, here's a piece of software, here's a discount for it. So if it's a really piece of software, popular piece of software, like Grammarly, you don't really have to do a lot of explaining. But if it's a brand new product made by some indie guy that, like, just like, modifies your CSS, or something like that, then you have to explain what it does. But in the beginning with AppSumo, the way that I made people not hate us for spamming them every day. And like, you have to think that it's like spam to some people, right? Because they're signing up once and getting an email every day. AppSumo is specifically for that. So when people sign up, they kind of know what they're getting, right? But the way that you make people not unsubscribe is you make each one useful, okay? So not everyone's going to buy a piece of software every single day from you, right? Sure we can establish that that's probably a thing. So how do we make them not hate us? So what we do is, if I'm selling a piece of software, I try to say, here's how this person made money with it, or how it made their life easier, or here's how they were doing it with like an Excel file. And now the software just does it for 20 bucks a month, instantly, and they don't even have to worry about it, and it does it perfectly, and there's no mistakes ever. And so we show different examples of how it's helped people. We show different examples of how it's made them money. And we try to put specific examples if we can, and that's a lot harder. That takes a lot more work to send out an email like that, but then the results could be 10x 100x if you do that. And then if you're going to run that deal multiple times, you can just reuse that copy over and over and over and so I think this sounds really dumb, but just showing the different use cases for the product is a big deal. So like, grasshopper, I just mentioned that one because that was the first one we ever did. I think a lot of people didn't realize, like, if you were a lawyer, you could make this if you're like a one man lawyer shop, you can make yourself look like a big company with this little phone tree system, right? Or it can manage all your texts for you, so people can text you instead of call you, and you can manage it all from there and auto reply, all that kind of stuff, auto schedule. And so if you just show the different use cases for a product, that is probably the best thing you could do for someone. So showing different results from people of different industries. Oh, can I tell you my first, my first ever house of rave email I sent out, please, was for these, was for these little finger lights that go on your fingers. And I thought they were for 16 year olds going to a rave going like, like, that's what I thought they were for. Yeah, turns out, like I am the customer service person for the company at the time, and the calls would go directly to my cell phone. And I remember one time I got a I saw an order for 50 pairs of them, and, like, there's 10 in a pair or in a pack. And I was like, it's clearly a fake order. Why someone ordering so many of these? It was a plumbing company. And I was like, one of their employees must have stole the credit card or something. I called and I was like, Hey, did y'all order 50 or, like, 500 total finger lights? And like, oh, yeah, we give them to all our plumbers. And I was like, come again. Why? And they were like, you know how, like, you go under a sink and it's dark? Well, they put these on their hand. I was like, holy crap. Like, I never in a million years would have thought of that, right? So sometimes they have a little headlamp, but they can't really get all the way in the back. And these things are cheap. They're disposable. Other people bought them for camping. You know, you're going out and camping, giving your kids as a little flashlight. You're done with them. You throw them away. They get a little button battery. They're super cheap. Um, MTV bought a bunch for a show to make like, like Alien costumes and like laser guns, and then during Halloween, Burning Man, all that kind of stuff. People use them for all sorts of crazy things. People use them. They line them up on their. They have a little rubber band for your fingers, and they would put them on their bike handlebars, and that would be like their headlights, because it's so dark. And I was like, geez, there's so many use cases for them. And yet, on the website, on my little DTC website that I was using, I was showing that they're for 16 year olds dancing, that's it. And I was like, I'm missing out on this whole field. And 16 year olds dancing compromised 2% of sales, because, you know what 16 year olds have in their bank account? Zero. They got nothing. They don't have money. But a party planner using these as a creative way to light up their centerpieces for a floral arrangement for, you know, 20 tables, they'll buy a lot of them, and they buy indiscriminately. Don't even ask for a discount. So I started realizing quickly, you got to show all the reasons that people would buy this product. So if you buy these finger lights, you can give them to your kids to check for monsters under the bed. You can use them for a Halloween thing. You can go camping. You can look under it's an emergency light. You can put them in every room, every drawer. And so there's a lot more reasons for people to buy them. So this $5 product, all of a sudden was worth $50 to someone, right? So I think that is a big thing that a lot of DTC places make the mistake of, they think it's just for the specific use case, but I bet you know a lot more use cases people can use it

William Harris 21:08

for. That's brilliant. Yeah, a classic example in the DTC space right now, or even just retail as well as is probably going to be the Stanley mug, and I reference them all the time. But yeah, it was one of those things where it's like, they Okay, maybe not changing the use case, but changing why somebody wants it, or which audience is going to go after, versus just 16 year olds for for these lights. You know, hate plumbers. Same thing where it's like, it's not just construction guys wanting these mugs now all of a sudden it's 13

Neville Medhora 21:33

year old girls, and it's like, okay, are you a coffee drinker? It stays warm for a long time. Are you a 16 year old that wants to show you have 40 bucks school too? I keep it. I keep it by my bed. Because whenever I sip water, and, like, I use the I used to use these things all over the place, and I use them in my office, but in bed at night, sometimes I do this and it's full and it falls all over me. Sure, yeah, yeah. And so Stanley mug, I could just, like, sip out of it. I could tip it over. I can make it fall and it doesn't leak. So there's a lot of reasons that that people would use a Stanley mug, rather than just, like, you know, the original use was for, like, this tough mug for camping, which was, sure, the original use case of it. So

William Harris 22:07

I think I know the answer to this, maybe because of see where you're going with this. But, you know, I've read the book, and even though this is a short book, if we were gonna summarize, like, like, the thing that makes great copy, great copy, instead of just okay, copy. What is that thing that really separates it from just being okay, copy?

Neville Medhora 22:27

I really love using the ADA formula for copy. And I think this, what happens is people try to tell a story, and they'll see like, Hey, my friend, here's what we're going to talk about today. Two years ago, I was in the African jungle, and they'll tell this long story, and in the end, somehow relate it back to their product. And I always tell people, I'm like, no one cares about this. This is just too long of a story. I bet this would work if you're giving a presentation on stage. Very different. Yeah, five minutes. It's a TED Talk. They think that TED talk is the way that you write a piece of, like, an email. I'm like, No, people don't care. There's too many options. There's too much email. You got to get to the point right away. So getting to the point right away, and also writing it like you're talking to a friend, right? So if I asked you to describe Elumynt, like, how would you like, right now, how would you describe your company? Mean, just, like, what do you guys do?

William Harris 23:17

What? Yeah, this is gonna be bad, right? Probably would say we do optimized advertising spend around EBITDA, which does not sound like I'm talking to a friend,

Neville Medhora 23:27

yeah, so, so let's say, let's say you're talking to your friend in the Midwest who has a job, you know, just, you know, delivering coke and trucks or something like that, right? Yeah, he's gonna be like, What? What? What is, what does that mean? Yeah, instead you mentioned you had some testimonials, what's like a one sentence like case study you had that's really good with something, yeah,

William Harris 23:46

we helped Oros go from like 4 million to 16 million in 16 months, or something like that.

Neville Medhora 23:51

Holy crap. That's That's pretty crazy. How did you do that? And so now I'm asking you questions about how to do it. But see, you started with the thing that I care about, like you made someone go from this much to this many million. That's interesting, and then going from there. And so try to structure it like, what's the most, what's what's the craziest thing about it? That is that hook. Remember, I was talking about the Ford f1 50, what makes people's eyes light up? I would start that off with, like, you can tow eight horses with one truck, and then I would go into it, I wouldn't say, like, introducing the brand new Ford f1 fit. Like, that's boring. You're wasting a lot of time. I would go straight to the cool stuff. Why should I care? Like, I don't know if you remember being in geometry class or algebra, and I was and like, I never, I wasn't bad at it, but I never understood. Like, what do you use algebra for? And like, the teachers couldn't answer it, and you're like, well, then what am I doing? Why does this matter to me at all? I took accounting classes in college, and I didn't really have any use for them then and then later. Outside of college, I was. Running a business, and I went back to college classes to learn about accounting, because now I was interested. I knew what PNL meant. I knew why it was important. I knew that, like, I need to know how much cash I have versus data. And so it made a lot more sense to me. So I think getting to the reason of why people care right away is a big deal, and then saying it in plain English. So even your thing of like, we help agencies go with EBITDA, that's probably a great way to put it. If you're at a conference with all the other people in your industry that might know what the heck you're talking about, but to some random person, and you got to remember that's probably who you're talking to on the internet. You got to explain it to them much easier ways, right? Yeah,

William Harris 25:37

I appreciate that you went to the algebra thing, because I am an absolute nerd, and so I didn't need the reason why in math, because I just liked it for the sake of it being math. That's the podcast is named up arrow, which is a mathematical notation for making numbers that are way bigger than exponentiation. So aside from that, I 100% follow where you're going.

Neville Medhora 25:58

Well, you know what? So an interesting note about that is that, like, you were a nerd in math, and so people that are really good at their their craft, let's say, for years, was math. That's great for me. I didn't really love it. If I had no use for it, I needed, like, I needed the thing I was going to use it for. Yeah, and so for that reason, you have to understand most people in the world probably don't just love right? It's probably a very small amount of people that just, like, totally love math after that. So you have to, you have to understand that, like, it's not dumbing it down. People are always like, I have to dumb it down. I'm like, well, just like, not everyone has the same interest as you, right? Like, it's a really selfish way to put it that, like, I'm so good at math, so everyone else must love it. It's like, not everyone knows that. So you have to give people, like, a real reason, like why they should be engaged in something like that first.

William Harris 26:43

I like that. So when this book first came out, I think it was in 2013 right? I read it in 2014 here. Make sure I hold it up there so everybody sees it. I have to say that the the title, the thing that I loved about the title is it reminded me of the Derek Zoolander center for kids who can't read good and who wants other stuff good too. That's what the title reminded me of, awesome. But this book's been out now for a decade. What do you think is missing from this book now that you think about it, from a decade later, and you're like, oh, you know what? This isn't in here. But this is also important to know.

Neville Medhora 27:17

You know, that's interesting. I try to make the book as timeless as possible. So I try not to include too much technology references and stuff, because those things go out of date pretty quick. But I would say that the invention of social media has compressed things very, very small, right? So think about how many blog posts have you read recently? I don't know about you last like, yeah, barely any. Or if anything, I skim them, I would say the closest thing is I read people's newsletters, and that's the closest thing to a blog post I read. I guess I had a couple of just different chunks. And so I would say that technology has, like allowed it to where we can distribute information via text. So that was in the 1400s and you would read a whole book, and to get your hands on a book was a big deal back in the day, and then it became a little bit more normal. And now just getting information, we have too much information. We have to compress it. So now a lot of the education stuff I get is from very short YouTube videos or even shorts, like a minute or under, like 10 seconds to 60 seconds. And I learned quite a bit in that much amount of time. So I would say, instead of writing these long blog posts, which we thought was like the gold standard back day, back in the day. I'm talking Twitter posts and stuff now. Yeah, right. So I think the compression of information has happened very, very rapidly and will probably continue. Like, I don't think there's a need to read very, very long stuff about most subjects anymore. So I think talking about how to compress things is good, but then compress them to, like, ultra short. I'm talking sentences, words, that kind of thing. I think that would probably be a lesson in there. How do you make something very quick? And then the other thing is, I love images, and I wish I could, could have done more with images inside of the book, but it's not. The book is not exactly the most interactive thing, so a video is probably better for that. But how can you take an image and show it? If I show anyone in the world a picture of an elephant, they go, ah, elephant. So some guy in Africa that does not speak English can be like, I know what that is, you know. Or a five year old will know what that is, and he can't read yet. So that's a much better way of communicating a lot of times images. And so I actually talk about that a lot in our course, that I'm just like every copywriter should know how to make images. And now there's AI tools and stuff to help you out. There's no reason not to be using images with your social media posts, with your blog posts, with your sales letters. And so images is probably the thing I would probably go more deeper to if I had another chance at it.

William Harris 29:31

I love that. That makes a lot of sense. Brand positioning is an interesting field, and I've had a couple of people on here talking about this. Al Reeves, Jack trout, wrote this book in 1981 called the battle for your mind. In it, there's this idea that you can really only position your brand as one thing in somebody's mind. Are you a cheap brand, the best customer service, etc. And one example that I've heard that, that I've always appreciated, was. Seven Up where they had they were the uncola, right? So there was Coke, Pepsi them, and they're like, Okay, let's shorten that. Instead of having three options, it's like two, there's Cola or uncola. And I thought it was brilliant. But what do you think about brand positioning and how it informs or detracts from great copywriting? Because sometimes they're at odds with each other within companies great copywriting, but they're like, ah, but this doesn't fit our branding or our positioning, or whatever that might be contract. Yeah, I

Neville Medhora 30:26

think sometimes people think about it too much as well. And like you, I'm sure you've seen inside companies that, just like, they have all these meetings about it, and then, like, the average cops are like, I don't care. Yeah, I don't care. Like, do I get what I paid for it? Like, what do you want? Right? I do think that, like, if you're, like, an investment bank, you should probably be buttoned up and tidy. You're trying to give off the impression of, like, we're going to be around for a long time. We know what we're going to do. I'm sure you could be like the wild investment banker or whatever, like that you can but generally, when it comes to this kind of stuff, you're going to want to be kind of, well, if you're going to have like, a personal brand on the internet as a TikToker, then yeah, you could be the crazy guy that goes and does crazy stunts. I do think there's a lot of that, but I think brands can change over time too. I think it's our people. You could change. I think Facebook is a very different product than it used to be back in the day. YouTube is a very different product than it used to be back in the day, and I think you let public perception shape that. I don't think you say like, we're going to be this, and we're gonna be like, the cool one, or whatever. I think people say that about you, so I don't know. I do think that there are multifaceted ways you can you could be cheap and premium at the same time, like you could offer a cheap book, but then you could also offer a premium service, if you go with your agency or something like that. So I think, do you think you have multiple levels of stuff? I don't think you are pigeonholed into only one. I'm probably not the best person to ask about, like, big company branding. I'm really good at, like, small to medium sized business branding. And then when you get into stuff, like, people always reference these things, like, look what Apple did, look what Nike did. And I'm like, You're not Apple or Nike, right? And so actually, I actually made this chart for a lot of people because we got asked this question so much. They're like, well, Nike's, Nike's logos. Just do it. I was like, was that their logo when they started? No, it was like, we make waffle shoe soles because they're faster to run in, or whatever. Like it was. It was a very direct approach. So what I say is the way that you position your branding is based on how big you are. If you're just getting started, you could do anything you want. You could just be very clear. Be very clear, like, we make SEO websites, so you get traffic from Google, that could be your logo. And then as you become a billion dollar brand, then you could say, like, reach the world, you know that touch the stars, vague crap like that. And it's because people already know your brand. They already come to you. You already have an established thing. So then you can get all Frou, Frou with your with your positioning. But I think when you're smaller, it's best to just be very direct about it. Don't try to be too Abstrakt. And there's always going to be some random edge case you can find. They're like, supreme clothing brand did this, and it's like, yeah, but like these kind of, like, it's like, comparing yourself to Joe Rogan or Oprah or something like that. These are kind of like, not common things. The most common thing is, when you're small, be very direct about your brand. We make websites for $1,000 that could be your slogan, and then as you grow larger, you can make it more fruitful. So the larger you get, the more fruitful you can get.

William Harris 33:11

So I agree with you, and we run into this all the time with brands that we're running ads for where, you know, maybe they're a beauty brand, and they're like, Yeah, but this is what this fashion brand or this beauty brand does, and it's like, Yeah, but you're ten million honestly, nobody even knows who you are still yet. Like, that's you're still a baby in the grand scheme of things, compared to these people you're comparing to, you still have to stand out, cut out through the noise a little bit. Apple can get away with just putting up an ad that says we have it in yellow and have a line out the door for yellow. You just can't do that right now.

Neville Medhora 33:38

The other thing I always I always have these pet peeves of when people describe apple or something like, like, some of these large companies, they're like, Yeah, their branding or their website is so, like, slick, and that's why they get sales. I'm like, What about the 30,000 engineers that make these dope products? I think they also make better technology than everyone on the entire planet. There's probably something of that that has to do, like, if Apple changed their website tomorrow and made it just black and white and, like, crappy font, they would probably still sell a lot, right? It's not just that. There's other factors at play. So I don't really love it when someone's like, oh well, their website looks like this and their copies like this, therefore they sell a lot. I'm like, There's multi things that are going on over here,

William Harris 34:17

right? Totally agree. Um, okay, so that's brand positioning. What about branding in general? David Breyer, best selling author of a book called Brand intervention. He was a previous guest on our show. He talks about, he said, There's a law you must know if your brand's using cliches, you're promoting your category, not your brand. Do you feel that shows up in copy that you write as well, where it's like, get rid of a lot of cliches. Yeah, I

Neville Medhora 34:44

think people try to be too cutesy, especially with headlines, and especially if it's a large company and there's like, six people on a zoom call talking about stuff, they're like, What if we use as instead of is, you're like, This, doesn't it? Just like, I've never seen evidence where that matters, right? I've never seen. Where that like changes the outcome of something really big. And in fact, if you're trying to be too cutesy, I think what happens is people look at your web page or your marketing or your email your newsletter, and go, like, what and like they don't even think about they just skip it. Yeah, that's what happens. And so I think being direct is much better most of the time. I've almost never seen the case where people are more vague, and that's better. With the exception of lawyers who want a contract to be vague so they can squirrel out of it later. That's different. If you're trying to sell something just saying what it does or being very obvious about what it does. There's a company called spy foo, and they have the greatest headline said, spy on what your competitors are paying for ads. And I was like, brilliant, great, great hook. Great hook. And I've seen some other ones that were like, intelligence gathered data gathering service. And you're like, I kind of get it, but I don't really know what that means. Whereas like spot, see what your competitors are spending on ads, that's that's what I want to do. Yep, that's exactly what I want to do. So I've almost seen it every single time. We're just being a little bit more direct and obvious. Is better. But I think most creatives want to try to be, try to use that creative muscle and put it out there and flex. And I don't think that that actually helps sales. In fact, I've never seen where it works. Yeah,

William Harris 36:15

right. Okay. Another previous guest, will leach. He was a former Pepsi exec and the author of marketing to mind states. He talks about not marketing to people, but rather to mind states, or these specific moments in time. Talks about these deeper motivations that are non conscious mind. The non conscious mind process something like 11 million bits per second, versus the conscious mind at like 50 bits per second, and how there are subtle little tricks that increase conversion by careful wording because of how our brain is programmed to work. Do you buy that? Do you study and practice that intentionally? Or do you write more intuitively? No, I

Neville Medhora 36:53

actually tell people about this all the time. I like the processing I like the processing analogy. Think of it like a computer for a computer to do something. How many cycles does it have to go through to like result in the output? And our brain is a pretty slow computer. It's fast enough, but kind of slow. And I think, okay, if I use a bunch of buzzwords in a row, someone has to think like, Okay, what does that buzzword mean? And then you use another buzzword, and it kind of squares how much cycling it has to go through? I barely know what this means. I barely know what this means. I barely know what this means. You're creating this kind of, like, wobbly pyramid of understanding, whereas if you just say, like, Nike is a company that makes waffle sold shoes because it makes you run faster, I'm like, Yeah, I understood that. Like, I get it. I didn't even have to think about it. And so there's very low brain cycles. And so I always tell people in our office hours, like, how many brain cycles Am I using to understand what this says? Can we reduce that? And that means, can we use the language a little bit more plain? Don't use big words. How would you say this to a kid? You know, that kind of stuff. And so I like the idea of your brain is a machine. And if you're using a lot of brain cycles for people, people just don't understand or quit or think it's something else. And so why are you making them do that? Is there, is there a reason, right? Are you trying to confuse them? If not, let's make it simpler. And so it all comes down to just making it simple and obvious to where people could just read it and be like, I understand it right away. That's why I like images. A lot of times for software companies, they'll come to me thinking, copywriting is going to help them, and I'm like, But you sell software, can we just show it, right? Can we just show that? You click this and it inserts stuff in those fields. Is that just like a GIF we can show because that's really easy to understand, right? So it's like, simple API fills out 100 fields in one second, and then it shows like,

William Harris 38:36

Okay, I don't need any more words, right? Yeah, that's what I

Neville Medhora 38:39

want. I don't need to explain it. I don't explain I just show it. Yeah, so I actually really, really love it when we work with software companies, because we can show the product in action. Really, really easy, assuming that it's a simple thing. We just show it in action. And someone's like, yeah, that's the thing I need. Yeah, there's a, there's a when we film long form interviews, we have like, all these different cameras set up and everything. And then what happens is the editor will go in there in Adobe, and they used to like, click, like, Williams talking, Neville's talking, wide view, Williams talking. And that took three, four hours. It's kind of like, you know, some monkey work that you don't really want to do. There's a plugin in Adobe Premiere called autopod. And the way that they show it, If you go to their website, I'm not sure if this is still the case, the case, but the way they show it is, like, someone clicks a button and it just goes, it starts splitting up the thing, and in 20 seconds, it's all edited. And that demo is, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it splits it up into who's talking. That's it. That's all I want. And so I remember thinking like, that is a very powerful way to say that, whereas if you were like, we use recumbent neural networks to determine through artificial intelligence who the speaker is. It's just like, you don't need all that. You just show the dang thing in action, and everyone goes, yep, purchase,

William Harris 39:50

yeah. That's fair, and that's so good, even for the e-commerce side of things as well. Sometimes we get into describing the product or pictures of the product, but just show how it's actually. Being used in the way that it's being used. And I think that that can make a bigger difference, you know, seeing GIFs, seeing videos, things like that, that help explain

Neville Medhora 40:07

real people using it, you know, someone's like, I love those Amazon I love looking at Amazon reviews and videos. And I'm looking at like, you know, Dyson vacuum. And there's just some dude, you don't see him, he has some crappy camera. And he's like, yeah, check this out. My kid dropped a bunch of feathers on the floor, and then I'm like, Yeah, that's what I want. I don't need it to be super professional and all that kind of stuff. I just need to know that this product is really going to do what it

William Harris 40:30

says. Yeah. And you don't even need to know that, like, you said, like, it has double helical vacuum suction thing. You're like, that doesn't mean anything to me.

Neville Medhora 40:40

Well, you know, I think that I love that like Dyson is, so I'm personally a nerd like that, and I love stuff like that. But like, you know, maybe my fiance or something is kind of like double helical. I don't care. Is it light? Can I lift it? Yeah, other people care about it. So I do think, like, if you look at Apple or something like that, they do go into really great detail about their technology, but they're also their main page is, like, pretty simple, right? But then you could always click, learn more about our like, m3 processors, and they show like, how it works and how it has 18 billion transistors. A lot of people don't care about that, but for some they do. And I think also, if you're selling a really expensive product, like a $700 vacuum, you, you kind of got to help people justify that purchase a little totally, right? Totally. I think, I think when you buy like, a Mercedes or a nicer car, a lot of people are like, Well, I'm buying it because it's a safe car and it has double opinion steering, and it has this auto breaking thing. It has all this technology in reality, in the back of your mind, you're trying to justify, like, it makes me look a little bit rich, right? Yeah, that's, that's kind of the reason. So I think for some expensive products where there is, like, a technological advantage, I do think it is valuable to show that type of thing, like the double helix design helps it pick up more, because you're justifying your claims, but at the same time, just showing that it picks up more than another vacuum is probably the main thing people are looking at,

William Harris 42:01

yeah, yeah. I can remember when we only had 17 billion transistors, you know, in a chip. And, you know, thank goodness we have 18 billion. Now I feel so much better. Yeah, my computer works so much better

Neville Medhora 42:12

it does. I'm using m3 right now, and it's fantastic. I am actually

William Harris 42:16

as well. I'm right there with you. I could care less how many it is I like. I just want to know that I could have 1000 Chrome tabs open, and then I'm good, okay, good.

Neville Medhora 42:24

Do you actually really know, like, intuitively with 17 billion versus 19 billion? No, it's just like, it's fast as crap, and it's faster than all the other computers you could buy. And I'm like,

William Harris 42:32

Cool, that's the one. Yep. Sounds good. You earlier, we were talking about just life and stuff, and you said something to me that I really appreciated, which was, selling isn't bad. And I think this was in relation to some of the stuff you're doing with daily stoic like, like, obviously, selling is not bad, but sometimes it maybe can feel that way perceptually to some people. What was going on that made you say, yep, selling isn't bad. Yeah, a lot

Neville Medhora 42:59

of people who come from like a journalism background or something, will write blog articles, but then not sell anything from it. And so a lot of people associate selling with, like the old, like, the stereotype of, like a sleazy car guy, right? You know, I'm gonna get you in this car. He knows it's a lemon, but he's still gonna try to get you out the door with no warranty. They think it's like that. They think about this Old School Direct Mail stuff, where it's just like they're trying to sell some sort of, like, crappy supplement that doesn't really work, and just really trying to get you with fear and greed, right? That's kind of like an old school direct marketing tactic. Now the consumer is so much smarter. I could type in the name of this product and it has like, one stars everywhere, and I'm like, yeah, it's a piece of crap. I'm not gonna buy it, right? So you can't really get away with that kind of behavior anymore. And instead, selling is actually informing, selling is educating, right? So if I'm trying to get you to buy a Dyson vacuum cleaner, I'm saying like, Hey, if you're in the market for a vacuum cleaner, let me show you a couple of cool things about this vacuum and why it's so much better and why it costs the absurd amount of $750 let's show you and so you're educating people about it. For example, let's say you're interested in a new car, and you walk into the Carmax, pretty standard place, no negotiating whatever, and the guy comes in, he's like, you're looking at a Toyota Camry. And he's like, Yeah, I got the papers right here. Let's get you in this car right now. Come on. Come on. Come to the back to the office. You'll be like, dude, back off. I'm just looking right instead. Let's say he approached it a little bit different, and he was like, Hey, my name is Neville. I've driven this Toyota, CA, a similar model Toyota Camry, for a couple years now. It's such an awesome car. We sell a lot of them. I'm happy to answer any question. Give you a test drive. I'm just going to be over there if you have any questions. And so you say, yeah, like, what, what's, what's this? Or how does it drive, or what sort of features does it have? You answer all that person's questions for the next 2030, minutes, asking wherever they want, and then at the end, you're just like, hey, I mean, this is a pretty good car. If you're interested, we can get the paperwork drawn up. If not, I could give you my car. We could talk later. You know, was that high pressure sales? No. And so I think what people don't like about. Sales is they think it's high pressure, that you're pressuring someone to do something, when, in fact, you're just educating them and helping them. And then at the end, they make the call to want the car. And so that's why I think the ADA formula, which is attention, interest, desire, action, most people get caught up on this desire part, like, what does that mean? I'm like, if you do a really good job at explaining why this car, why this product, is going to be really good for their life. Then in the end, they're going to be like, I do want this car. I want to be in this car. I want to drive home with this car right now. And so it's almost like their choice. So if you haven't got them to make that choice, it's very difficult to make a sale that's skeezy. You're gonna have to really pressure them into it. Think about like, you know, timeshares at a vacation place, you know, they'll say, Hey, we're going to take you on a free trip, and they show you this thing. They kind of guilt you into buying this thing. It's a lot of high pressure. That's not what we want to do. We just want to inform people so much to where, like, this is such a good product that they go. I want this. Yeah, that's the way I approach it, and that is that, to me, is not hardcore selling. It's very light. If they want to walk out the door anytime they're totally welcome to welcome to and come back whenever

William Harris 46:03

they're ready. It reminds me of something that I believe was in a book by Jeffrey gitamer. And I think it was maybe like his little black book of sales, or something like that, where he said, everybody nobody wants to be sold, but everybody wants to buy. We like buying things. We want to buy. And to your point, it's like making sure that they're aware of what this is. So that way they do have that desire, and they say, I want this. And then it's almost like, you can almost be like, no, no, I'm not gonna sell it to you. They're like, but I want to buy this. It's not sales that at this point in time, you're literally just enabling them to do what they actually want to do. You created the the awareness of that they have the interest that desire is theirs. You're just enabling them to be able to accomplish what they're actually trying to

Neville Medhora 46:45

Yeah, I think some people have sales, like The Wolf of Wall Street Sell me this pen, and you just make up some bullcrap reason, of like, why this pen is so valuable, and try to get like, $1,000 out of them. I think people don't like that concept. And of course, because that's scummy, that's kind of like, I could sell an igloo to an Eskimo. It's like, why would you want to sell an igloo to an Eskimo? Like, they don't need this. This is not something that they need, right? Or, sorry, ice to an Eskimo or something like that. It's, it's like, high pressure sales is what people don't like, information and education. Yeah. Do you think that's bad? I don't think so. I think it's great. People want

William Harris 47:16

that. No, that's good. I agree. Yeah,

Neville Medhora 47:19

I had a so so with AppSumo, going back to that, we were trying to sell something every day, and I actually had to train the writers on this, if you if every day we blast someone saying, buy this, buy this, buy this, they unsubscribe, right? So I came up with a formula, and it was 70% education, 30% selling. And that was what I call my magic formula. And if you cross these thresholds, you start to get into trouble. If you go to more than 30% selling per email every day, they're going to get tired of you and go away if you stay 30% or under, I noticed no one ever got mad. So what we're doing is, like 70% of the time saying, Here's how someone else uses product, here's what they did. Here's some screenshots of it in action. Here's what you could do. Here's the different industries, lawyers, dentists can use this. And at the end, you're like, by the way, we're offering 100 bucks off on this. You should totally grab it now. It's a really good product. See you on the other side. Love that. That's not a big deal. No one ever got mad at us for that. That was so 70% content, 30% selling. And in fact, I'd say most of my emails and content is like 90% education, 10% selling. So I try to stay way clear of those things. But you can go up to about 30% and send that to someone every single day, and they won't really get mad at you. But if you're doing 90% sales, and then like 10% education or no education, yeah, people are like, what is this garbage? I

William Harris 48:35

don't want this. Yeah, yeah, you're not improving their life in any way. What's interesting, the method in me appreciates, then that you're basically at the Pareto Principle, right 8020 which just seems to work in so many other things. Gary Vaynerchuk had Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. So 75% concept very, very much in line with that. You know, three quarters of this should be informational, helpful content, and then the last quarter compete the selling. I like that totally. What about actually making this happen? One of the things that I run into in my line of work, from an advertising perspective, is we reach a threshold. So there's a lot of things we could do, from a technical standpoint, to improve where they're at. Conversion Rate wise, we've maybe tweaked the audience, we've tweaked a lot of the ad settings. We've tweaked the landing page. And so we're in this spot where there there's minimal amount of things we can do to make a massive difference to their overall sales. And the thing that's going to make the next biggest difference is this radical change in the way that they're talking about the product. And this could be on the landing page within the ad, but like the combination of the two of these things, how? How do you get somebody to realize that that is the missing piece? Because sometimes we get pushback on it where it's like, look, we've we've done a lot of things for you here. You need to hire a copywriter. You need to hire somebody a. Branding, positioning, something that's going to help, like, rethink and talk about what your product is to take you to that next level. So you're stalled out at 20 million, or whatever that might be. How do you get them to see that need?

Neville Medhora 50:14

I think you have to see, like, Are there competitors that are doing better, right? Sure they're just selling a product, and there's no one selling more than you. Perhaps just the market doesn't need that product, right? Perhaps just a macro thing that people don't need that I think with like a copywriter, and I think what we're talking about in general is like CRO conversion rate optimization, which is like much of what we do through a copywriting lens, often just because there's the easiest test to run. But beyond that, I think there's a lot of things that we don't understand sometimes about a market, maybe it just isn't that big. Yet, I know there's a guy here in Austin that has, like, they had this huge company selling slime, you know, stuff that kids play with that was not, yeah, that was not a big market. And then, like, something about TikTok Instagram, people started making all these slime videos, and it just blew up into, like this big fad, and every kid all of a sudden wanted slime. So there was kind of, like this macro trend that everyone's talking about slime. You're offering slime, the sales go up. But if that trend goes away, there would be a much smaller market for it. So sometimes, I do agree that there are, there is so much you can do on the web with CRO to get people to buy but then ultimately people have to be deciding to buy this product. And how can you do that? Sometimes, this is a very tough question. I don't know. Is there any specific example that you have of that happening?

William Harris 51:34

Yeah, maybe I don't want to call them out, because obviously I'm saying maybe negative things. But there's a company that has some very, very interesting products that I say they have a lot of good licensing deals, so they have the potential to work on some really good pop culture references, and I think they could do a really good job. We've optimized them very well. They're, I want to say, like, three, four times bigger than what they were when we started. But we think that we're running into this limit of what we can do on our end, and we help with with ads and creative and copy, but like, we're not on like, the Neville med Aurora copy level, right where it's like, this is like, that next leap in what we kind of would like them to do is say, Okay, I want you to take to work with Neville. I want you to work with so and so, to take this to a level beyond what we would do for you. Because we're still really, at the end of the day, we're gonna be ad managers. We're gonna be the best within the ads platform. I'd like to think that I'd beat you if we're looking at, like, if I'm managing a Facebook ad account, you're gonna crush me when it comes to writing copy. And so I'm trying to get them to to take that to the next level. And they basically just don't see the need for it. They're like, Well, why you've already grown us this much? Like, just keep doing what you're doing. What you're doing, and it's like, yeah, but we're reaching the limit of what we're doing. There's only so many other like, we can make a small tweak here, maybe that's going to get you 5% 10% you know, maybe 2% here. Like, all those things are good, they're iterative, but you're still only maybe ten million like, that's, you're still in infancy. Like, there's still a and I would say that in this situation, there are a lot of other people doing what they do, that the TAM is significantly bigger than where they're at right now. They're 1% if that, you know, yeah, that's

Neville Medhora 53:10

going to depend on the company. I mean, if you don't own that company, trying to push them to do that is going to be difficult as like an agency, that's, that's a that's a tough thing, especially if there's a lot of people working at a company, unless you have the attention of the CEO who's like, we got to grow this much bigger. We're going to do whatever it takes. It's hard to get that push coming as like an outsider, where they're paying you like, yeah, you serve them. And if they're just like, yeah, we're happy where we're at that that's going to be a tough position to get them much bigger, unless you go straight to the top, yeah, be like, hey, fair. We're working with your company, and you're just really leaving a lot of money on the table, and you guys are kind of blowing it, you know? So I do think that's, that's, that's a tough, that's a tough situation to be in, yeah,

William Harris 53:53

that's fair. Um, okay, I want to start transitioning into the who is Neville mentor section of the podcast, because I like getting to know the person behind this. You and I were talking a bit before that, there's some moments in your childhood that helped shape you becoming an entrepreneur. Like, what were these moments that helped say, Yep, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur. That's my thing. Yeah. I

Neville Medhora 54:17

think in high school, I was running all these little, small, little side hustles and businesses, and I was always interested in that. I never thought about starting a real business. And then roughly, like, junior, senior year, there's this kid that moved to my school halfway through the semester. So when a new kid comes in, you're like, Oh, who's this new guy? And he moved from California, and I remember he, I was like, Where are your parents live? He's like, I don't live with my parents. And I was like, I just never heard that, I guess. And you know, in the suburbs of Houston, I just everyone lived with their parents, of course, when you're in high school, and he's like, Yeah, I have an apartment. And I was like, how do you I had so many questions, how do you make money? He's like, I have a and he had a company called bodypunks.com I don't know if it still exists, but it was an e-commerce Store. That sold body jewelry. And I was like, Wait, but you don't have any piercings. Like, how can you sell body jewelry? He's like, why do I need to have piercings? Remember being like, oh, yeah, I guess you could sell stuff and not have to, like, have the piercings yourself, right? And so I noticed he just had, like, this e-commerce shop. And at the time, I was building web pages and interested in the internet and stuff. And I was like, I could build a better web page than this. Like, this isn't that fancy, this isn't that hard. And that gave me the idea to sell stuff online. And that was, like, a pivotal moment of just seeing someone my age do that thing. And I just never thought that I could do it too I was too young. I was in high school. Like, how am I going to start a business account, all these things? I just didn't know all that. So then I started going down that rabbit hole, and I realized you don't really need an LLC or business papers to sell stuff online. You really don't need it. People think you do, but you don't. And then it's like, how do I get a bank account? Well, I could co sign with my parents for a bank account. So that was pretty easy. How do I build this? This store? There's all these software's out there that'll help you do it. So I was technical enough to where I made that. And now, how do you get how do you actually get customers? And the funny thing was, people found me from Google and, like, early like search engine stuff, like AltaVista, and found stuff, saw it on the web, and bought it, and I made my first sale, and that put it all together for me. I'm like, oh, like, I'm getting in front of these people in other parts of the country. In the world, they see my stuff. They like it, they buy it. I get that money in my bank account. It was, it was just that simple, but, but I never really thought of starting a business until I saw someone that was like me do it. And that was very, very pivotal to see that happen. Then the other thing is, I had a couple mentors when I was in high school, and one was a family friend, and he was, he was known as, like the rich. He was like the rich guy in our community, and I remember he donated to our church, like, several $100,000 I remember thinking like he donated, aka, gave away more money than our house was worth that I live in. And I was like, how can that be? How can he have that much money to just, like, give away? And so that's when I would ask him. I'm like, What do you like? Do you know? I'd see him at all the family. He's a family friend, um, and my mom set up this conversation where I could just ask him things, right? And I asked him stuff. He's like, you want to come, come follow me, Shadow me. And I was like, Okay. He's like, okay, he's like, how much you want to get paid? And I was like, I don't I don't know what people get paid. Is it $1 is it $100 per hour? I don't know what pay is. He's like, I'll pay 10 bucks per hour. You come work with me. So I drove my car. I just, like, got past my learner's permit, and I would go work with him. He had a real estate company, and he would take me around. And he would literally just kind of drive around all day to different properties. He would talk to people. He'd talk to his property managers. He would pick up trash off the floor. Every once in a while, he would see that a toilets clogged and write it down in a book and tell someone to go fix it. And I was like, This is what you do, like, just, it seemed so blue collar, and it just, it wasn't hard. I thought. Like, he, I don't know what I thought. I had no conception about it. I just saw this. Just like, this isn't as complicated as I thought it was. And the other thing is, there was kind of like, rumors that I would hear in our community, like, Oh, this guy's just always lucky. He sells when the market's high, and he just gets lucky a couple times. And what he had me do was print out deals from like, now what would be called Zillow was called H, A, R, back then, and I would print out all the deals in a certain area for him. And he would just like, look at them on paper, and be like, no, no, no, no, interesting. No, no. Like that. And then, after a month of doing this every day, every once on be like, oh, whoa, what's this? And we drive out there, and he'd be like, Okay, this is a bad neighborhood, you notice? But see, there's like, a million dollar house there, and a million dollar house here. Something's happening here. Why? What's going on? And be like, oh, there's a really nice shopping center that just got built around here. And there's a really nice debited ad, there's these stores. So he's like, Okay, this area is probably going to grow with more expensive homes. And so he'll go buy a crappy apartment complex over there that's like, does looks pretty run down, and they'll go fix it up and raise the rent, because now it's a much better place. I remember thinking like, that's not that crazy of a concept, right? It's like, pretty normal. So when I started hearing people say, like, oh, he gets lucky. I'm like, no, he's just, like, putting in the work they it was so basic and obvious, but he was just doing it every single day for years and years and decades and decades, and that's how he built a big real estate company. And that really got me thinking, I'm like a CEO. Just, this is what they do. This isn't that hard. And so I don't know what I thought that they were just like directing people from a pulpit somewhere or something like that. But then when I saw that and just how, like blue collar it felt and normal, I thought, like, I could do this too. There's nothing crazy to this. There's nothing really, really insane about what he's doing, or anything that takes, like, ultra high intelligence to accomplish. And so that really changed my outlook of like, oh, a business owner can have like, this really, really high upside and make more money than with a job. I just assumed I was always going to get a job. And then when I saw these business owners that could, like, make millions a year, which a job could never do, right? That's when I thought, like, huh, maybe I should try something like this. I'm not going to say I'm going to only do this. I'm not against jobs, but like, there is this other option that I can do, and that was a big influence on my life as well, just seeing it in action. So I was lucky to have someone who took me around and just showed me that kind of thing

William Harris 1:00:22

that's so important. I feel like so many of the things that we unlock in our lives are a result of seeing that it was possible, right? Even records that we've set as human species. Within sports, it's like we think that things are it's impossible. Nobody can run that fast, nobody can run that long, and we can do this until somebody doesn't. You're like, oh, I guess we can. And then a whole bunch of people start breaking those same records that we thought were just impossible, just yeah,

Neville Medhora 1:00:52

the classic four minute mile thing, one guy breaks it, then, like, two years later, like, a million people break it, and you're like, oh, yeah, it's pretty easy. Actually, not easy, but like, you know, it's possible, yeah,

William Harris 1:01:01

yeah, no, that's good. I like that. So do you do you mentor anybody? The way that he did, is there anybody in your life that you're like, Oh, I've helped other people shadow a little bit, yeah,

Neville Medhora 1:01:12

kind of, but it's more at scale, right? Because we have. So he was working in an analog world. I was working in an internet world. So now it's like, on office hours, we talked to at least, we talked to eight people for each office hours, and then a bunch of people see those. And then in our forum, I'm in there all the time as well as other writers, so we're mentoring far more people than than could be imagined. Yeah, I actually we have like, a win section. It's a copywritingcourse.com/wins and so many people respond with like, holy crap. This increased my conversion, or I never even thought about that. Now I got this huge client, and, like, I had no place to, like, put that, and so we made just like, a collection of those, and there's, like, literally 10s of 1000s of them. And so yeah, we mentor people, but just like, at much larger scale, I'm not, like, taking someone by my side, sitting next to me, but we're doing it across the internet, and like, the location doesn't matter at all. So yeah, we mentor held a lot of people. That's our of people. That's our whole business.

William Harris 1:02:03

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. What about works and habits? I like asking people if there's anything that they do that is that others might see as quirky. If we were working in an office together, I'd be like, Oh, that's interesting. Noah, tell me what's going on here.

Neville Medhora 1:02:20

Yeah, I think my to do list like like this. It's got the it's got the title at the top. It's got my appointments that I got to go to. Here, I fill out what I do for each hour of the day, not all the time, but sometimes. And then these are all the little the things that I have to do. And I've been keeping a a to do list like that forever, for maybe 1215, years. And there's something about the act of scratching it out, like, whenever it's done to me, that, like, psychological, there's some sort of psychological reward in it for me. I don't know about it everyone, but for me, the scratching out part is, like, very satisfying. It's like I did that I can move to the next thing, the other thing I do. And I mean, this sounds so stupid, I still do this all the time. I goof off all day, basically. And then it comes down, like, I gotta go somewhere at 5pm and then I'm like, crap. I only have an hour to do it. So what I do is I take said to do list. I take a sheet of paper, I fold it in half, and I tape it over the to do list. So I'm trying to do this like, backwards in the mirror, sure. But then what I do is I take the piece of tape. I move it down, and I'm like, send rent reminder. Okay, so I'm going to do just that thing, scratch it out, and then move it down one and then, like, go to that next thing, and then down, down, down, down, down. And before I know it, I'm like, oh, there's no things left on it. And like, sometimes people want some crazy hack and, like, I can't emphasize how much this dumbass hack has helped me over the years to, like, accomplish stuff, because I'm just like, I'm such a goof off at home. The other thing I can tell you, for myself, is having someone work next to me. So, you know, like, people always say, I get a lot of work done in planes. I think I know the reason, it's not because the elevation or whatever, it's like one, you know, everyone's looking at your stuff, right? There's someone to the left of you, maybe to the right of you, whatever, that can see your screen. And for me, when someone sees my screen, I will not goof off. I won't go on Reddit, I won't watch YouTube. I'm gonna work. And if someone's watching me, I just, I wanna, like, show them that I'm, like, not goofing off. And you know what, no one's looking at my screen. No one cares what I'm doing. No one is paying attention. But I think they are. And so for me, it's very important that I go to a coffee shop or co working space. I love WeWork, by the way, because people are walking by, they could see your screen, and that's how I get work done. I have to, like, fool myself into not goofing off constantly every hour of the day. It really is like that. I don't know about you, but some people are, like, disciplined. I am not. I have to, like, direct my attention, and for me, that means external sources. So if I'm at home alone, I usually get very little work done. If I am in a place where there's a lot of people that can see my screen, I get a lot of work done. That's another one. Random quirks, and I think it works well for a lot of people. That's why they say they get work done in coffee shops and stuff. They never realized that the other people are part of the equation.

William Harris 1:05:08

Yeah, no, I'm right there with you when I really need to focus. A lot of times I will I go to a coffee shop. Elumynt was built in, like Starbucks, caribou, Dunn brothers for that same reason. Even to this day, my kids all are just like, Yeah, my dad used to work at Starbucks. It's like, Yeah, that's true. I did, like, running this business from my laptop. But I'm with you on the the handwritten thing where it's like, I still have all of my stuff that I need in Asana. Like, that's got, like, the 10,000 things, but I can't focus on the 10,000 things, so I gotta write down, like, these are the five things that I have to do today. If I don't get these done, I cannot stop until these five things are done. And to your point where it is just one of the other. I love crossing it off. I love it. Yeah,

Neville Medhora 1:05:50

that is a big thing. Because whenever you look at all these tasks, you just kind of get, you know, muddled with that. And then also, man, I don't know about you, but like, technology is like the thing that provides, it provides productivity, but also taketh away, right? So if I open up a new Chrome tab and hit the word like, my fingers will just hit Y or I, and the reason is, it auto fills in YouTube or Instagram or x or t, Twitter, X, whatever. And so instantly, now I'm like, in that land, right? And I love those things. I don't agree that, like, social media is this big negative thing. I actually love it, however, like anything, like, if you want to have a few drinks at home, that's great, but if you drink a whole bottle of vodka every night, probably bad, right? So it's just like, it has like limits, and so I have to fool myself. I use a Chrome extension called Focus 45 there's like a billion of these. Use whatever you want. I like this one because for 45 minutes it blocks your computer. But if you still need to get to a website, like, I still need to log into YouTube, to my YouTube studio to upload something, or whatever, it lets me do it, but I have to type in a sequence of words so it has, it has, like a little obstacle to think, like, okay, am I going to Instagram because I hit I in auto filled or I really have to actually go check a message on there, right? So it makes me think twice before doing something. So I really like tools like that that keep me, keep me in check on my on your iPhone, there's a thing called downtime that they don't really promote all that much, but you can make it eliminate pretty much every app except the ones that you use, like my home security app, my, you know, thermostat control, that kind of thing. Those are allowed, but it makes me click, like, one more minute, 15 more minutes to access any other app that I shouldn't. So just like keeping your mind clear is is a real, real tough job now, because there's so many cool options to distract you.

William Harris 1:07:39

100% I understand that you have a pretty cool group of friends you hang out with. And one of those friends, Noah Kagan absumo, you guys were over hanging out with Jamie Foxx, and Jamie Foxx whooped his butt in a game of chess. What's it like hanging out at Jamie Foxx's house playing chess, singing with Yeah, what

Neville Medhora 1:08:02

one of my closest friends in the world, Noah Kagan, me and him for the during 2020 instead of going to Austin, like everyone was doing, we did the opposite. We went to California and rented a house in Malibu. La had all these problems, but Malibu is like a different thing. It's it's not the same. It's a whole different municipality. So it's clean and nice and nice and awesome, and everything was open. And so we went there, and I got a message from a Copywriting Course student who I'd seen in office hours a bunch of times. And he was like, working on his own businesses, and every week he would come and talk to me and get help. And then he was like, Hey, I noticed that you're in Malibu. I'm 45 minutes away. You want to come hang out together. And I was like, thinking, I'm like, Oh, he gets to meet me, you know, all that kind of stuff. I was like, why don't you come here? You could also meet Noah Kagan. How cool would that be for him? You know, that kind of thing. He's like, Well, if you come here, I'm staying at Jamie foxx's house. And I was like, What do you mean? I didn't, I didn't think he meant, like, That guy, Jamie Foxx, yeah. And I was like, What do you mean? He's like, my buddy is Jamie Foxx, and I stay with him when I'm in LA, do you want to come over? And I was like, yes. So I told Noah, and he asked the same thing. He's like, What do you mean, Jamie Foxx house? I was like, I think it's Jamie foxx's house. And so, so we drive all the way up over there. It was, like, 45 minutes away from where we were, and we get there, and sure enough, it's like this giant house that has two big entrances, long, winding thing, like, what you think? And you're like, Okay, this is something the code opened the door. And we're like, all right, you know something, this guy comes out, who my contact? And sure enough, it was like this giant house. And I remember seeing an interview or something about Jamie Foxx, and he had this big Rolls Royce, like phantom or under some fancy car, and it had this, like two tone, like gray and black, interesting color scheme on it. And that was in the front. And I was like, oh crap. I think this is really Jamie Foxx house. And sure enough, we go inside and there's like a wall of like, all the awards that Jamie Foxx has won. So we're like, okay, confirm this is pretty. Probably Jamie foxx's house and, and this is just from, like, a guy who's inside the Copywriting Course. And we go and we play basketball and all that kind of stuff, and then we come back on Saturday, and there's like, a full on party at this house, and me and Noah were by far the two uncoolest guys there. And the funny and we're like, we're not going to know anyone. But since we had gone there that previous Thursday and hung out. We met all of Jamie Foxx is, like, I don't know his friends, or, like, crew, or whatever you would call it. And so we're like, oh, what's up, man, what's up, man. And so people like, Who are these two guys? We look like producers or something. Like, we're like, the money guys for the movies. That's what kind of we look like. And and we're partying with Jamie Foxx. And everyone was there. It was like, crazy. And like, I know Kanye West had had, like, a album. He recorded his first thing in Jamie foxx's Studio. We're all in that studio jamming out. There's all these, like, like, famous people, I'm not sure who they are, and then there's a jam session. And Jamie foxx's kids are really good at music, so one of his daughters was playing, and I asked him, was like, Can I Can I film this? He's like, heck yeah. Post it. Post it. And so I posted some stuff on Instagram. He was Instagramming live everything. And there's like this big jam session, and everyone, it seems in that house knew how to play music. It was really good. And you played too. We played a little bit too, yeah, yeah. But he is on another level. I for sure. He's like, a legit, actual recording artist, in addition to an actor and whatever, and and he was singing. And like, I think somewhere on my Instagram you could find this. It's somewhere I should post it more prominently, but I remember thinking, like, this is the coolest moment. I'm just like, taking a video of this thing. And he told me, he's like, Hey, can you take a video of this? So I was like, I didn't feel bad about doing it. Sure Cameron his face. And he was so dang good. And then at the end, we're hanging out in my our contact to this was like, Yeah, let's all hang out and wait till like this, like, I guess secret, like dining room. He had in his house to escape all the other people in the party and to play chess. And he was playing No and Noah was on a chess like spree. And so Noah had been training with a chess coach, and he got really good. He was really into chess, always playing chess, and Jamie Foxx, they play speed chess, and Jamie Foxx just beat him game after game after game. And Noah was really good, and Jamie Foxx was way higher than him. And so like, okay, not only is he a world class musician, world class actor, super famous, super rich, but he's also super smart and can play chess really well. And apparently he was said that he goes and plays on chess.com under some alias, like, of course, his name, and he's just playing all day too. And I was just like, Man, this guy can really do everything. It was. It was really impressive to, like, meet someone of that caliber that just had, like, what seems like everything figured out. It was crazy.

William Harris 1:12:37

That's wild. Yeah, I've heard that, of course.

Neville Medhora 1:12:40

But that that that happened? Yeah,

William Harris 1:12:42

I've heard that about him that you know, incredible trumpet player. I mean, just can do it all and everything. Yeah, yeah, you do play music, though. What did you play when you were there? I thought you played the guitar.

Neville Medhora 1:12:56

I play guitar, but I also played piano, right? Were you scared to play in front of him? You're

William Harris 1:13:01

like, I don't know. Everyone

Neville Medhora 1:13:03

was messing around. Yeah, recording. I'm not gonna say any names. I don't think it's like a big secret or anything. But, like, there was someone who's a recording artist with them that was playing, and then I was also playing for her while she was singing and stuff like that. It was really cool. I mean, it was just such a cool experience that, like, whenever we told her friends, like, what did you do last week? I was at Jamie Fox's house twice. They're like, what? It's just like, such a, like, a memorable experience. And he was, like, very gracious about it, to have us over and all that kind of stuff. It was, it was like, like, kick butt. It was, it was amazing.

William Harris 1:13:34

Yeah, random transition. There's not, like, a good, good transition. But no, I like asking this one. No, there isn't. But I like asking also, what? What quotes do you live by? Is there a quote that you you know have on your phone or in your office that you're like, This is a quote that I just try to live by.

Neville Medhora 1:13:53

I collect quotes all the time. There's too many, but I will say there's one that stands out. I am of the Zoroastrian faith, like this, the religion I was born into. We're kind of like the Jewish people of India. It's kind of like that. And the motto of the religion is good thoughts, good words, good deeds, the whole thing. And I've always thought like that was, I was just like, what a beautiful summation of life. It's like, good thoughts, good words, good deeds. And so I always really liked that one. I always try to do a thing. And I think I don't know this from my religion, but from Boy Scouts. More than anything, I was an Eagle Scout, and they always, like, taught, like, whenever you have a camping site, you would all line up together, like, hand to hand, and walk to the whole site and pick up any trash that you left behind. And so from that, I always thought they always try to say, like, make leave it better than you left it, or whatever that is. And so I still do this all the time, that whenever I go to, like a restroom, you know, sometimes you go to, like a men's restroom or whatever, there's like a, you know, a towel or something that's like right next to the garbage can, but not in the garbage can. I'll take that and throw it away. It's just kind of like a little personal thing. I try to do that. Like, I think that if I go somewhere, I may. Get better. And I don't know what that is or where that exactly came from. I'm pretty sure from Boy Scouts. But I think, like, that's my contribution to a place, and it's really small. I know it's not big. I'm not really doing any big favors, but sometimes it's like, you know, I'll pick up that piece of trash or or on the road, like everyone's walking by a piece of trash, I'll pick it up. I like, another big germaphobe. I don't care. I'll throw it in the trash. And so I always think, like, that's my contribution to that. So I don't know if that's a quote, but that's more like a mentality, but that everywhere I go, I want it to be better because I was there. The other thing is, if I was a guest in the house, I will make that bed so nice that they don't even have to replace it, right? Unless they're gonna wash the sheets. I'll make the bed so nice that like, like, it's gonna be exactly the way it was before, or even better, and, and I just, like, want to be that person where, like, I contributed somehow, like, I feel useful that way. And so I don't know if that's necessarily a quote other than good thoughts, good words, good deeds, but for my good deed, I always think of, let me clean up the place a little. It helps, right? But if we're staying in a big house with a bunch of family and friends, and, you know, you rent a big Airbnb and there's like, kids running around, it's just, it's just chaos, and it descends into messiness right away. I don't mind cleaning up. And I always think, like, you know, most people hate cleaning up, and so I get some sort of kick out of it. And so I'll take five or 10 minutes to just be like, let me just throw away all the empty cans. Let me pull the cups away. I won't, I won't, I won't even clean all the stuff. I'll just put it in the dishwasher, right? So just like making the environment tidy for others gives me, like a big pleasure spike or something like that.

William Harris 1:16:32

I love it. I'm going to take it a step further than from your bathroom paper towel. I'm going to start folding all of the toilet paper in a nice little,

Neville Medhora 1:16:42

little swan or something like

William Harris 1:16:45

that. No, but I do actually really like that. And similarly, I would say, you know, the Bible says that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, and your thought, it's like, well, in order to if you start with good thoughts, good thoughts are going to lead to good words, and those good words that are going to lead to good deeds. It's going to be very hard to have good deeds if you're not studying at the beginning of this with good thoughts. Yeah, and

Neville Medhora 1:17:08

I'm not above crap talking and drama and all that kind of stuff. I love it. I love when drama is once removed from me. So like Kim Kardashian, if there's drama with Kim Kardashian, I don't, I don't know her, so I don't like, I don't care, however, if there's like, a friend of mine that has a friend that I've met that is like, doing some drama stuff, I'm like, Oh yeah, tell me, because I'm close enough to get the feel of it, but also far enough to where I don't have to deal with it. So I'm not above any of that or having bad thoughts here and there. But I do think that good thoughts, good words, good deeds, is important. And also it's like, if you think a lot of bad thoughts, then like, that obviously pollutes your mind, right? And so like trying to purposely be positive in certain situations, not needlessly positive, by the way, not like, not like, one of those fake people with, like, I'm so happy in life. And Dada, Dad, I think that's kind of fake. But like trying to fill your mind with positivity. Me and Noah talk about this all the time. He's like, Well, what do you do to do that? I'm like, I think you just watch a lot of Seinfeld or the Simpsons or something that you don't have to think about that much. I think some people try to, like, do these, like, affirmations with, like, I love myself and I'm like, I think that's fake, though. It's not real. Like, if you really don't love yourself and you just keep saying it. I don't know that that makes it true necessarily. But rather, like, what if you just fill yourself with instead of like shows that are all negative all the time? What if you watch a bunch of like, Family Guy or just dumb stuff, right? That actually helps you think in those terms, like, more like that. So I try to keep most of what I consume to be mostly positive, not that I'm not going to watch a sad TV show or something like that, but I try to keep it mostly positive. I watch a lot of comedy, and there's bullcrapping and talking. I listen to my AirPods all day, and that keeps you just thinking of funny things you're walking around like, funny like, so you end up smiling and being funny and happy a lot more often than you are sad and brewing.

William Harris 1:19:00

Alex or Mozi talks about those positive affirmations of the idea where it's like, you know, you can only say those things all you want, but if they're not backed up by actions, you're just going to think that you're lying to yourself to a point. And so one of the best ways for that to be true about it is for you to actually just do the things that make you proud of yourself as well. The other thing that I really appreciate is we're talking about the daily stoic, and I think it was maybe two days ago. The lesson that Ryan had in there is something, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna butcher, but it's something along the lines of, you know, being grateful for each different situation. And so, like you said, maybe you are lying to yourself, but you can lie to yourself in a way that you can kind of reprogram your brain, if you would, a little bit where it's like, okay, you're stuck in traffic, you can be thankful for the extra couple of minutes of like, peace and quiet. Well, your car broke down because it was idling too long. You can be thankful now that you get to walk for a little bit today, and now somebody just splashed you as you're walking down along the road. And it's like, well, you can be thankful that you're not in as big of a hurry as this guy. So it's like, there is. Some element of, like, reframing the situation that I think is beneficial as well. Yeah,

Neville Medhora 1:20:06

I mean the way I also another, another extension to that thought. I like that way of doing it is, I don't always try to bet, make it a positive, right? It, because some people are like, Oh, I'm thankful my car broke down, or whatever. It's like, you can't I do. I do think that is a way to reframe it. I think one that I do is just like, like, there has been 100 million people this year that have had their car breakdown. Yeah, right. It is a normal thing that happens to a lot of humans. It's a piece of life that just kind of stinks, and I just got to deal with it, and I know that I'm capable enough to figure it out. I know I have the resources to get this fixed. And like, I mean, this sucks, but okay, like, what do we do right now? One foot in front of the other kind of thing. So I'm down with things being like, Okay, this is kind of crappy, but at the same time, like, I didn't die, you know? Yeah, yeah. The other thing that I think I have an inherent advantage was we went to India all the time as kids, my parents grew up there, and when I saw India way back in the day like and now there's been a lot of progress, but it was rough. It was really, really rough. It was, in fact, anytime we'd have, like a guest or someone come over, there's just like this mental overload of these things that they would see on the daily scene, on a street in India that they just couldn't believe were happening. You see, like, a naked, three year old kid running through traffic. You're like, Where's his parents? Probably don't have no parents. Like, what do you mean, parents? And like, they're probably dead. And so just like, things like that that I was so desensitized to seeing that, that when you come to the United States or some like, nicer first world country, you go, like, Yeah, this is all awesome. Like, nothing sucks here. Like, I mean, maybe you could have some little gripe with something here or there, but people are like, Oh, our country's so divided up. I'm like, You have no idea how bad it is in other countries, though, way worse. So like, I think that gave me a lot of perspective of seeing, like, what the average life of like a worldwide citizen is sometimes compared to what I had. And so it's like, my car broke down. Okay, I got it. I call a number. Some guy picks me up. It's like, it's really not that big of a deal, sure. And so I think that is a helpful thing to compare your plight to others. I don't think it's a useful thing every time, because, like, okay, yeah, you live in a nice country, you still have problems, right? Totally. But I do think filling yourself. And there's certain things in the world that, like, no one gets sat around puppies, having some friends, kids around your own, kids, that kind of thing, hanging out with your buddies, taking a nice walk when it's nice outside, jumping in a pool. There's all these kind of, like, obvious things that make people happy, that if you do a lot more of those things, generally, like, you're not, like, thinking about existential crisis in life when you're on a jet ski, right?

William Harris 1:22:46

That's a Daniel Tosh call out. Do you remember that?

Neville Medhora 1:22:48

That's probably, that's where I got he's like, have you money? Can't solve every problem. Have you ever seen someone sat on a jet ski? Yeah, exactly. Wow. Good, good, good. Call back. But, but, like, there are things like that. Like, if you do a lot of those things, and not just mindlessly, but it's like you look forward to those things. They probably have a happier life than someone who's not doing

William Harris 1:23:05

those things. Yeah, that's great. So where at the end, if people wanted to follow you, if they want to work with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch? Stay in touch? Yeah, number one way,

Neville Medhora 1:23:17

copywritingcourse.com, you sign up to that email list. I'll send you an email every Friday with my thoughts and stuff like that. Everyone's I mean, people tell me it's the best email they ever read. That could be biased. I think it's really good. It's called the swipes email. I mean, swipe wisdom, interesting picture essay and a splurge, and so that's a really cool way. You could also find me across all the social medias. So Neville Medhora. There's only one other guy in the world named Neville Medhora, so if it looks somewhat like me, that's probably me. I'm very active on x and other social platforms and YouTube. So you can go to youtube.com/kopywriting, but spelled with a K, and you'll see all my videos and interviews and stuff over there. But email is probably the absolute best way. So copywritingcourse.com, and sign up over

William Harris 1:23:57

there. Awesome. Neville, I can't thank you enough for jumping on here, sharing your knowledge, your time, your wisdom, your heart, with us. It's been

Neville Medhora 1:24:03

a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Thanks, man, yeah, everybody else, thank

William Harris 1:24:08

you very much. Have a great

Outro 1:24:09

day. Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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