My First Million: Writing Your Way to Millions with Neville Medhora

Whatever it was, it was like the idea to event was six weeks and I made $40,000 in profit or

something like that. And I didn't spend a cent on marketing. And it was all through these sales

emails that I was sending people. So right now in the podcast, we have Neville Madora. I've known

Neville for 10 years now, maybe eight years now. I was a, I don't know if you know the story, Ben.

I was a fan of Neville. So I read his blog and I was 22 at the time. And he wrote about copywriting.

And I was like, man, copywriting is amazing. I got to meet this guy. And at the time, he was

charging for what he called the, it was called a consult, like a, like an hour long consultation.

And I didn't have any money. I couldn't afford it, but I bought his course and I was like,

I got to get to know this guy more. So I, I go, Hey, I'm hosting an event in San Francisco.

Do you want to speak there? I'll arrange all accommodations and travel. And he goes, yeah,

man. And so I bought him a ticket on Southwest for like 250 bucks and his accommodation was,

I just let him sleep in my bed and I just slept on the couch. And the event, I think the event,

the event, like just like 30 people. All right, quick break to tell you about another podcast

that we're interested in right now. HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called

Another Bite. Every week, the host relived the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank,

from Squatty Potty to the Manchana Bench to Ring Doorbell. And they break down why these pitches

were winners or losers. And each company's go to market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation,

everything, basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale

your company on your own. If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever

podcast app you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now. All right,

back to the show. You originally had like a book club. That was the first thing. So you were also

like, when you got there, you're like, would you also want to speak at a book club? And I was like,

well, okay, fine. And then you also did like Bootstrap Live. Is that what it was called?

Yeah. And I made $3,000 hosting that event. And so it was all good. You made me money and I paid

for your flight. But yeah, you just stayed at my house. That was a little bit of a fast one.

As I remember it, I was sleeping. You're like, accommodations are usually like a hotel suite

or something. And it was like your couch with an 85 pound pit bull. It was my accommodation.

But anyways, I thought you were cool. And we're still friends to this day. So yeah. So Neville

was the best man in my wedding. So we're close. He also, him and I now live two doors away from

each other. And Neville has this thing called copywriting course. It was copywriting course with

two K's copywriting course with each K. Now it's copywriting course to C's normal spelling.

And he's basically had this course. Today is all about copywriting. It's all basically I'm getting

at, but he launched a course like 15 years ago. And basically the same videos that he recorded

for this course like 15 years ago is how he's been making a living for over a decade, which

yeah, I think 2011. So I was working closely with our good buddy, Noah Kagan. He was building

absumo like off my couch. And we were launching courses through absumo. And this is like 2010,

2011 when courses were like a new concept. It was like kind of cool to lose the course.

And one of them that hit really well was about copywriting because we were sending out to all

the absumo email newsletter subscribers, which is hundreds of thousands at the time,

we're sending out all these really funny newsletters that also sold. So people would always

ask the same question. They go, I know you're trying to sell me something. So why do I keep

reading the whole damn email? And I was like, well, it's because of copywriting. And I'd been

like studying it for a while. So it seemed obvious to me, but everyone's like, what is

copywriting? How do I do copyright? How do I implement that on my own? And so I was like,

well, let's make a course so I could replicate myself and sell that. And we released that on

absumo 2011, 12, something like that. And it just like, it was one of those things that just

like struck gold. It just hit. And I was like, Oh, maybe there's something there. And over time,

you're right. That's kind of what I'm known for. And that is probably my primary income to this day.

Yeah. And you live like a pretty fancy life. You own a nice house. You buy nice shit. You don't

work that much. So like, it's been a good business. And now, and then so basically a lot of people

now know me as the copywriting person or a copywriting, not the, but a copywriting person.

You're good. You're good. Oh, I'm okay. And I learned it from you. And then Sean,

a little bit absorbed it for me. Now he's really good. And so anyway, we wanted to do a whole

episode on copywriting. But yeah, do we want to start with copywriting, Ben? Or do we want to

talk about the moving next door thing? Because that's kind of interesting too.

Well, we're already on the copywriting thing. Like, let's keep going. I'm curious, Neville,

like you talked about, like we kind of started to get into Sam's origin story with you.

But where's like your entry point into copywriting? Where, where did you learn all this?

Easy. So, so when I was in college, actually when I was in high school, so this is a while ago,

e-commerce was coming up. And I started an e-commerce business called houseofrave.com.

I don't even know if it still exists. And it was a rave company. I saw light up and glow stuff

online. I was like a middle man. It's like what we nowadays called dropshipping. Back then it was

kind of like a cool new idea. And so I started that. And I realized I had all these people on

the email list. There's like 8,000 people that had subscribed and opted into the email list.

And I never sent them anything. And I used to go to like these marketing meetups. And there's

kind of like some of these scammy marketers were always like, you should just send out emails,

the monies and the email, all that kind of stuff. So I started sending out an email newsletter

that I thought you're supposed to send. It's like, here's my products, big buy buttons,

all that kind of stuff. And I was spending 80 bucks a month on the email service.

However, I was making about 40 bucks per email. So I was going net negative every time I sent

an email. And I spent all this time like photographing products, writing descriptions,

all that kind of stuff. So then one of my friends, Ryan, he was just like, you should study

copywriting. I was like, like, like the law stuff. He's like, no, no, no, no, like copyrighting,

like marketing. And he put me on to who Sam also knows, Gary Halbert. So I read the Gary Halbert

letters. They're called the boron letters chapters one through 26, I printed them out,

and I read them. And the key is actually printing them out because he wrote them from jail. And

they're meant to be actually read out. So he wrote these letters to his son from jail trying to

teach him everything he knows, like in case something happened to him. And from there,

every day until six in the morning, I was up reading these stupid letters. Not stupid,

they're awesome. And I was so happy and sad at the same time, happy that I had found this stuff

and sad that I had not found it earlier. And from there, I went down this whole copyrighting

rabbit hole studying Joseph Sugarman, J Abraham, all these like legendary copywriters, some scammy,

some not. But I started applying that to House of Rave emails. And the first email I did, I had

the highest revenue day I ever had in House of Rave history. And I was like, huh, that could either

be a fluke. So let me try it again. And they did it again and again. And almost overnight,

House of Rave turned into more of an email marketing company than a company making just

random sales off of SEO. And that's how I got started. I was like, Oh, there's something to this.

And then you like created the course and it became a thing. But like, you were kind of the first

person that I'd really read about about copyrighting stuff. What? When did it finally click where

you're like, this is writing is the way to go and words actually matter?

Well, I've always written online. I had a personal blog called nevblog.com that I started in. God

knows when I think I was like writing in an HTML so long ago. And it was on like blogger.com.

And I remember thinking I like doing this for free. This is before I was ever making money with

a blog. I just thought it was like a fun thing to do. And it seemed almost comical to me like

hilarious that I could write things and people would end up paying money for that because

there's something I did for free already. So I was just like, I already like doing this. I'm

probably going to keep doing it no matter what. And I write things and then people end up buying

because I convinced them that was that was like, there was like, oh, there's something here. And the

cool thing is once you write it once, you could digitally distribute it forever. There's there's

no limit to it. It's free to distribute to a billion people if you want. So that was something

interesting. It's a superpower. When I started the hustle, it was basic. My idea was basically like,

we should do news, but I'm going to steal a bunch of tactics. So I bought novels course. And that's

how I got into copyrighting. I was like, I'm going to steal a lot of these ideas and basically make

like mixed kind of journalism with this like, it's not copyrighting because I'm not selling,

but it is copyrighting because I'm trying to convince people to read it. And I was like,

I'm just going to make the hustle like a copywriting thing. Like it's journalism with

copyrighting. And it worked. And I remember when I now it's become more popular. But when I launched

the hustle and started working on the conferences that you also spoke at, I think I got 10,000

people to sign up for my email list, which was basically just me writing about the speakers

for the conference. I got 10,000 people to sign up in like six weeks. And everyone was like, dude,

you're writing so good. And I'm like, I'm like, it's okay, but you don't know that I'm just stealing

from like, I'm like, I didn't make this up. I'm just stealing ideas from people. We all learned

from standing on shoulders of giants stuff like that. I remember the hustle. You were throwing

hustle con. You were throwing a conference. You're making a conference company. And you quickly

realized, wait, just sending up the emails was better than the conference. And that's how the

hustle started. It seemed. And it said, I remember like the hustle was like a tech bro read the news

and then regurgitate, regurgitated it to you. That's kind of what it reminded me of, which I

still think it kind of is. And it's not tech bro. Most of our early employees actually were women.

So the first writers we had a lot of people don't know this. We're all women. So basically it was

one at one point. I was the only man who worked at the hustle when we had like seven

employees. A lot of people don't know that and they would call us bro. And I'm like,

I'm like, first of all, that's not really an insult because but you're trying to

immediate like an insult. I don't think that's an insult. But second of all, it's not exactly true.

It's women writing this thing. A little bit. I guess I never really looked at it. Yeah, I never

looked at it as like a male female thing. I think like we're all just tech bros. It's almost like a

term to me. And you sealed your fate a little bit when you named it the hustle. Like people are

just going to think of you a certain way. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. And I knew it was a bad

name, but like Neville is actually makes the worst naming name stuff. So but and so I kind of stole

a little bit of that. One time we used to host these things called content school. And we would

basically say like we're going to be in San Francisco for one day. You can come and hang out

with us and we'll teach you about copywriting. I think we would charge $2,000 or $1,000. Yeah,

it's only 1500 or 2500. I forget. And we would get a lot of people coming and we would split the money.

And it was called content school. And if you go to the website, it's basically just a website

with like stick figures writing on a whiteboard and then just like 2000 words of copy explaining

about the event. So anyway, my point is is like all of both both of our stuff has always been named

really badly. It's also simply what you know, it's funny. So originally it was called copywriting

course with two K's. And the reason was one, I couldn't get the domain. But but two, like I

always thought copywriting in the cop with just spelled copywriting meant text meant only text.

And look, if it's like the year 1700, I get it. Text is like the hot technology of the day.

But now it's just like so easy to make videos and podcasts and audio video and maybe the future

VR experiences. To me, copywriting is kind of getting information from my brain to your brain

or my brain to a million brains. So whatever the most effective way of doing that is, I'm down for

it, whether it's writing, whether it's an image, whether it's a video or it's podcast.

Who do you think for most of people listening are like startup nerds? What is the most common

mistake you think that people make? And who do you think is a good example of someone who's

just crushing the game, whether it's a company or a human? Writing formally, I think is the most

common mistake you make because in English class, they tell you to write dear sirs to whom it may

concern. And I think that's fine if you're writing a letter, you know, 900 years ago. But nowadays,

like people want quick concise, and we don't need all that formality. So I think writing like you

speak is the main thing. And a lot of people, they sit down at a keyboard and they get paralyzed,

they go back to English class and they're like, okay, I get brownie points for using bigger words.

In fact, using smaller, shorter, easier words is probably better. Getting to the point very

quick is probably better. I bet all of you have been in a Sam, although it's a Sarah in your

box for some reason. I'm using Sarah's computer. It's actually, I bet you get more responses

with cold emails if you sound like a one line thing. You're like, hey, you want to be on the pod.

It's probably better than like a whole page asking someone to do something. So I think

writing formally is the biggest mistake that everyone makes. In fact, just writing like you

talk. If you just write a note into your iPhone, what would that if you transcribe that that'll

often do better than sitting down and try to wordsmith something really carefully.

And who do you think is like killing it that I honestly, you know, what's funny? I actually

like software companies. And here's the reason they actually don't need a lot of copy. With software,

you could just show your product in action. If you're crunch base, if you just show someone

looking up a company that shows up all their information, you're like, oh, that they didn't

even say what that was. I just watched what happened, right? Or I like the company aahrefs.

They just show demos of how they're like a gift of how their product works. You type in a keyword,

shows the keyword difficulty. You're like, Oh, I get it. Like that. I think that's actually a very

fast way of instilling information. So I think a lot of software companies do a damn good job

at explaining their product just because they could show it. They don't have to explain it sometimes.

Why do you think so you've been doing the same copywriting? You've been selling the same product

for years and it's been fruitful. Similar. It's obviously changed over the years, but yeah,

similar concept. Yeah, same. Yeah. But why do you think that like, I always joke, I think I've said

this on the pod then that Neville's the most emotionally stable person I've ever met. And

why haven't you ever expanded to like way beyond that? Whereas you're very content doing the same

thing over and over again, which is how you actually attain like true mastery. But why have you not

done what most people would do, which is like risk it in order to like risk what you have for

shit you don't need. Is that the phrase? But you're like kind of going bigger or going wider or

something like that and expanding and risking what you have. Interesting question. We've talked

about this before. I've talked about it with a lot of friends. One, I think I grew up in a very

loving household and I had a really good upbringing. I think I'm like maybe top 5%, top 1% of like

lucky in that sense. And so the dry generally what happens with people who are like ultra,

ultra, ultra successful is they tend to have a chip on their shoulder. And as much as I like wish

I had that, I'm kind of glad I didn't. And I just have to admit to myself like I'm not going to be

the richest person on the planet. I'm not going to work that hard. And so I am friends with people

like you who are never content, right? Or one of my other best friends, Noah Kagan, just like

there's always like this like element of like just never, ever, ever content. And I think that pushes

me a little bit more. But also I think I leave lead a pretty good life. Like over the years,

I've been able to buy whatever I want, do whatever I want. I think the only time I've ever actually

felt like I couldn't afford something is when I was buying a house. I was like, Oh, money matters

over here. And I don't have money to buy any house I want on the planet. I actually have to like

consider a budget for the first time. That was like the only thing like in a long time I felt

like I couldn't afford. And so I think I've done pretty well. Yeah. Listen to this one time.

So like for years, I've been like, Neville, you're so like stable and healthy. And one time about

a year and a half ago or a year ago, him and Neville and my wife Sarah are obviously good buddies

too. And Neville was like, Yeah, I'm like searching for a house and like the things that I want

sometimes cost like many, many, many millions of dollars. And my budget is like, let's

hypothetically say $1.5 million. And it's the first time in my whole life where I've wanted

to maybe I want to purchase something. And I actually have to think about where the money's

going to come from, or I have to think about financing. And it's keeping up me up at night.

And I realized and then he goes, it's keeping me up at night. And Sarah goes, Well, that's pretty

normal. And he goes, Wait, is this stress? Is that what people say they're stressed out?

Is this that feeling? I've never had that before. And that was hilarious. He goes,

I've never experienced this feeling where I'm staying up at night like thinking about something

not knowing how the how it's going to end. And it's worrying me.

I mean, I don't yeah, that's that's true. When people explain like depression stuff to me,

I have to like look up academic things to like, like what is happening because I don't I don't

get it. I just don't get it. So you guys met in what year? 13 2013 1213.

As like an outsider looking in, it feels like there was like this really cool energy around

copywriting around selling things online. Like like the whole world of like Neil Strauss, Tim

Ferris, and it feels like you guys are kind of on the periphery of that same world. And that was

going on from what like 2009 to 2015. Does that sound right? I was starting to butt around then.

Yeah, I would say we are right in the thick of it. Him more so than me.

So like, what do you think has happened to that energy? Because it feels like there's not that

same like crew of people doing the same type of stuff now. But it's different. So you want to

hear something funny. The Tim Ferris thing inspired me and I just took Neville's copywriting course.

And I was like, I'm pretty sure I could sell anything. And so I did research and I started

white labeling and selling poison ivy remedies. Oh, it's juice. I called it it's juice.

And Neville came to my house one time and he was like, I was like, Hey, we got to go to the

post office. I got to drop out today's orders. And we were selling like thousands of a thousand

dollars a day worth of this stuff. And it was way easier at the time to like launch this stuff

because Bing ads were like a dime per for a click. And anyway, but now there's this thing called

the creator economy. And you've got guys like me and Sean, particularly Sean,

he creates a course and he could potentially make seven figures a year selling a course.

And that's actually way more, I can't tell if that's way more common. Or if we're just now

part of like the insider crowd who has big audiences. I don't know. What do you think, Neville?

I think it's, I think it's more common because the tools are better, right? But before creating

a course, like I remember like looking up like how to make a JavaScript to like password protect

a site. It was like, it was like techie kind of stuff. Now you can use like circle.so or any of

these like companies like that to easily make courses. It's very simple. And so I think it's

more common. I think we have way more access to distributing our content than before. I mean,

if you have a phone, you could be like a gigantic star with a million things. Back then you had to

have like a team and you had to like have Photoshop and expensive software servers. You had to have

all sorts of kind of stuff. And so I think it's just like the tools are way, way, way better now.

So I think there's like 10 to 100 times more content. So Ben, back to your question, do I

think it's like gone away that spirit? No, I think what happened was it was concentrated in the hands

of a few before, right? You had the Tim Ferriss, you kind of have like characters like that that

really, really big that somehow made it past that level. And then now you have tons of communities

that are smaller. I follow all sorts of little creator economy communities on Twitter where

like each person has like, you know, a thousand followers, maybe, you know, and they're just

getting started and they have like their own little community. I think it's just fragmented

into a bunch of different micro communities. So I have a question. Ben hosts how to take over

the world. So he's like a mid stage in his creator. Oh, shit. You didn't know that? No.

Oh, yeah, a little starstruck. Damn. Yeah, it's like a badass pod, but it's like still it's getting

big, but it's still like on the up. So like he's still like in the middle of his journey a little

bit. And how many downloads a month you have been like 100, 100k downloads? I don't know. My top

episodes just crossed 40,000 downloads. So like it's like doing really good. And Neville, your

thing has been doing pretty good, very good for years. How do you think it's going to look like

when you're like 65 years old and getting ready to retire? If you're because like your mom worked

at an oil company and she's got probably a very healthy, comfortable pension. A lot of my mom's

a teacher. She probably has a pension close to six figures. But you're not going to have that. Ben's

not going to have that necessarily if he is let's just assume that he is doing this for another 40

years. How do you think that you're going to live when you're 65 or 70? First, like you can make

your own a pension if you have a company can make your own pension. So I have started that process

already and I plan to live off what's not a pension. So kind of like a whole like fire movement,

all those things, there's different ways that you can expect to live comfortably. Also, I did

another thing that I thought was a little unique. I plan to die at 85. And if I'm not dead naturally,

I'll, well, you know, make it happen to put it lightly. And so I always I planned this back when

I was in when high school, like that's why I came up with that date. So November 17, 2067, I'm done.

And so I have to plan my life backwards till then. And I planned out a couple of different

milestones. And I actually said, so not 65, I said the end of my competitive, competitive work life

is going to be 50. Now, I know a lot of people are way more competitive at 50. But I just planned

it that way as a contingency, like let's say the world accelerates technologically very,

very quickly, beyond what I can keep up with or what I care to keep up with. I need to move when

I'm 50 into an industry that's slower, such as something such as real estate, like just owning

a bunch of houses and renting them out, something that's kind of like foolproof like that. But I

say my competitive advantage will go away when I'm 50 is what I had said. Why do you think you're

going to die at 85? There's a world where when we're 85, it's not, it's more like a 65, like a

today 65. All right, a quick message from our sponsor. You know, I was thinking about the

shortest day of the year earlier. And while we technically have the same amount of time as every

other day of the year, the lack of daylight makes it feel so much shorter, which is exactly the same

kind of feeling as working with disconnected tools. Our workday is the same length as always. But

before you know it, we spent three hours just fixing something that was supposed to be automated.

Thankfully, HubSpot's all-in-one CRM platform can serve as a single source of truth for managing

your customer relationships across marketing, sales, service operations with multiple hubs and

over a thousand integrations and an easy-to-use interface. HubSpot lets you spend less time

managing your software and more time connecting with your customers. Learn how HubSpot can help

you grow your business at HubSpot.com. That's true, but you've got to plan for what's going on today,

not tomorrow. I mean, I don't know what the thing is going to be when I'm 85 and it's 40 years away,

right? So, I have no idea. But I did plan based on actuarial documents. So, my likely death date

is going to be when I'm around 78. So, male born when I'm born, all that kind of stuff. I'm going

to probably die when I'm 78 by the stats. So, 85 is actually like seven extra bonus years.

Then also, when I was in high school, I wanted to be a doctor. So, we had this awesome program.

We've got Shadow, 10 different doctors. I shadowed three different geriatric doctors and

several in dementia wards. And that's when I saw just people that were like, I mean,

this is kind of sad. But it's kind of like, they're just like sacks of cells that still existed,

but they weren't actually the same people they were. Their brains were mush. And I remember

thinking like, damn, that's really hard on them. It's also really hard on their families. And like,

we'd watch like, you know, a daughter of one of these people come in and the dad doesn't recognize

her and she's crying and the kids are crying. It was like a whole mess. And I was like,

I would never want to do that to my family or anyone else in my family. Like, if I get to that

point, I'm done. Like Neville, the chapter of Neville is gone. And so, everyone dies and everything

that's lived has died. And even if you live to 200, you will die. And so, I thought, well,

would it be nice to at least plan it? I've also seen a lot of families get torn apart when the

main matriarch, the patriarch of the family dies. And they have to divide assets and the kids start

fighting over stuff. And like, I want this and I want that. I've seen it rip the family apart.

And I was like, you know, what you'd be cool on your deathbed that you're just like, all right,

here's what you all get. Here's what it is. I signed off of it. I'm in good health,

a good sound, and then you take off. That's what I want. But you don't have to die in order to do

that. There's a great book called Die with Zero. And it's the whole premise is actually really

interesting. It's like, basically, let's just say that you have a little bit of money and you're

going to donate it. It's like, well, maybe you should donate it now while you're still alive so

you can actually see the fruits of your labor. Or if you have a if you're if you're going to give

away money to your kids, it's like, hey, have you thought about giving it to the money, giving them

the money while you're alive? So like, you guys can take a vacation together or if they buy a

bigger house, you're able to go spend time there. And so you can die with zero. Are you wet bed?

I think one of the reasons people don't do that, though, is the estate tax versus the gift tax.

Like, I think you get hit super hard if you gift it while you're still alive. Yeah, but who gives a

shit? Yeah. People don't sound here. People with a lot of money do. Well, I know they do,

but I think that's nonsense. I was talking to my father-in-law and he was telling me how he wants

to give his daughters, my wife, money when he died. He's like, you know, they're just talking about

like inheritance or wills and things like that. And I was like, hey, I know this sounds weird

because technically, like, you know, like what you give to her is going to be mine too. So it

sounds like I'm asking for it, but I just want you to know, like, I'm not. But have you thought

about giving it to, giving us whatever you want to give now? So I was like, I was like, we could

like spend it together and enjoy it or don't give it to us at all and just go and buy yourself some

really nice stuff. And we can all have fun together with it. But like, maybe we should do it. We

could enjoy it together as opposed to, you know, like when you die. I was like, do you remember

what it was like before you were born? And he was like, no, I was like, well, that's probably

what it's going to be like when you die. So like, who cares? Like, we know what you left.

Anyway, that's my opinion. I think that's a good point.

Yeah. Okay. I remember I wrote a short book about this that I've really promoted because it's not

like a philosophy I want to like actively jam down people's throats. I just thought it was healthy

for me is that knowing when I'm going to die makes me live happier. So if you know you're going to

die and someone's like, Hey, Neville, I want to give you the awesome opportunity, but you have to

live in like a bumfuck wherever. And it's not going to be ideal, but it'll just be for five years.

Well, knowing that I'm going to die, that those, those minutes and times and years are going to

be very precious to me. I'm going to be like, no, I'm not going to do it. Like I just, I'm not,

because that's not how I want to live. And so I know I have this like finite amount of time

and 85 is the date I've chosen. Now people are like, well, what if there's better technology?

Well, I'll reconsider then. It's not like a bomb planted in my head that's going to go off when

I'm 85. It's like, it's just, it's just a thought process of like, okay, this is the end of my days.

What do I want to do before then? And then I don't think people take this into account.

I've had a lot of experience with old people through some of the work experience I've had,

and then also going to India a lot and seeing it. And what happens is after a certain age,

you start declining and your physical health. And at the moment, that still seems going to

be the case for a long time. And so you, if you want to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you know,

after your 70, it's going to be very difficult. So you may as well do it when you're younger and

capable of it. And also, as you get older and older, you have a lot more responsibilities.

So if you want to do some dumb shit and get it out of your system, you better do it when

you're young and healthy and have no responsibilities. And so I was kind of like

planning life backwards like that. It's like, we're inevitably going to die. Like, why wouldn't

you plan for it? Right. And so I feel like in the West, it's a very like taboo, weird subject to

even bring up. And in most Eastern countries, I think like death is a little bit more of a like

an accepted part of life. And so I kind of like thinking like, oh, I'm going to die at 85. It

makes me happier knowing that. And also, it's kind of like Jerry Seinfeld had this great quote,

he was just like, every good comedian knows like this weird moment where the audience wants you

on stage longer, but you know, you have to get off right now. It's time. It's time to walk off stage.

And I just thought like 85, I'm walking off stage. And that's how I think I still haven't

like changed my mind from that date yet. Do you think so something that's interesting about

you is that you do these roasts that I cannot stand. So Ben, they like they like never will like throw

a party called a roast party. And he gets in front of like, sometimes like 50 people and has these

like elaborate roasts. Like, and sometimes they're just like silly funny jokes. Like for example,

like, like, like, well, you know, David found his first gray pub. Unfortunately, it was on his

Big Mac. Yeah. Like, like, they're like great jokes. They're very creative. Do you Jeff Ross?

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Well, you said a bunch of and you have way more that aren't exactly I don't even

want to say on here. But and they're but they're very, very creative. And your writing is incredibly

creative. Even if sometimes it's crude, it's very creative. Do you think that you can make people

more creative or you just got it or you don't? I think people are like curious or not. Also,

it's like what you like doing. I will spend it like so it'll be like Sam's birthday or bachelor

party. I'll spend like a month writing a roast. I'll have like a file and I'll sit. I'll think

of a funny joke or I'll hear a funny joke on a podcast I could adapt with Sam's name in it.

And I'll write it down and I'll sit there just like laughing on my phone to myself like no one's

around. It's just it's just me laughing. I have a legitimately fun time doing it. Because it's

very hard. Like if I didn't like doing this, it would be so much work for like what's ends up

being a two or three minute speech, right? But it's just fun to do it. And I think it's just

like the thing I like to do. And it keeps me creative, keeps me sharp. It keeps me writing.

And I think comedy is a is a pretty high level form of thinking. Like you never meet someone

who's super dumb. That's really funny. Unless it's like they're not they don't mean to be funny,

right? Yeah, but generally what I mean is they're smart people. You've had tens of thousands of

people come to you and and you've taught them how to write better, particularly in the form of

copywriting. But it's rooted in like creativity a little bit. Do you actually think that some of

these people you just couldn't make better because I because I think that some people I can't make

I cannot make them a good I can't even make them good. Maybe I can help them improve. I can't make

them good. I think you cannot improve someone's like physical capacity for thinking like their IQ

level will not ever be raised beyond the age of like 20. However, I think you could technically

make them better. So someone writing a really long email if you tell them what if you just put

things in bullet points? What if each bullet point can only be 10 words long? You can actually make

them better. Yeah, absolutely. But there's like a certain level of technicality you can make them

better. But there's a certain level of like high level thinking that's difficult to instill in

people. But you can give them frameworks to think there's all sorts of little tricks you can make

someone better. Yeah, just like I think that there's all this SAT prep, like you can take the SAT

and get a low score, then take a prep course and become better because they're teaching you tactics

and things like that. So yeah, you can make someone better to a degree. Do you find do you

speak better? Does like copywriting help people? Hell yeah, in like in like verbal like on a podcast

format stuff like that. I think so. I mean, it's kind of like no surprise that Sam is a really

like what I would consider a good copywriter, even though you don't like take contract copywriting

work, but you also have like a super popular podcast, right? Like that's kind of no surprise.

Yeah, I think people who are good copywriters tend to just be good communicators is another way to

put it. So communicates to the medium. The thing about copywriting that I try to get to people's

head, I'm like, it's kind of a bad name because you're thinking that it just means like literally

the written word and it's not actually that a copywriter, every person in business should learn

copywriting because what copywriting really is is figuring out what motivates the person who's

the your ideal customer or your ideal target and how do you use words or ideas? So that could be

images, videos, music, anything. How do you use some type of communication tool to manipulate them?

Which sounds negative, but it's the right word. Manipulate them to do or feel how you want them

to act or feel. So that could be like Martin Luther King who wants to convince people in a

speech that racism is wrong. It could be me selling a course or getting you asking you to sign up or

pay for something. It could be me trying to convince you that one thing is evil and one

thing is good. And I can use words. I can use a picture. I can use anything because when you

when you copyright copywriting, it forces you to figure out what people want, communicate it

effectively and how to structure your ideas. That's where it is. And to which specific audience

you're talking to. If you're talking to high-end programmers that are CTOs and all-know JavaScript,

you could explain it in one way. If you're talking to a CEO who has no idea about tech stuff,

you have to explain it another way and a copywriter will know which way to explain it.

And I've seen pages and let's talk about this novel because you actually know more internet

marketing stuff than I am and you're a few years older than me. So you've seen some more shit.

Have you? Well, I mean, it's true. I've been able to make money just by writing copy basically

like in a Google Doc and putting that out there. And if your words are good enough just in a Google

Doc, people will send me money for whatever service I'm promising. What's an example of a

website that you found that is literally just a wall of text that's so good, but it makes

a shockingly large amount of money. I think Basecamp used to be a really good one back in

the day that we would point to where it was just mainly just explaining what it did with a couple

of pictures. And I thought that was pretty awesome. Now, you can use pictures, you can use videos.

I think video has become a lot more prevalent and I think video is extremely powerful because

that's how we understand stuff with our eyes and ears at the same time. But just a wall of text

I don't know if anyone's still wall text. Oh, there are. And I know a few. So there's this

company called years ago. Ben, do you remember a thing called Double Your Dating?

Oh, I heard him. Okay. So if you are above the age of 30, you probably will know what this is.

So Double Your Dating, I'm going all off memory. Double Your Dating was around probably in

year 2001 to 2008, maybe. And I was like 14 at the time. And it was basically this e-book.

I think he sold more stuff, but it was an e-book for $29. And it was just how to talk to girls.

And like every boy who's 14 years old, like you're going to buy it because you're uncomfortable

and you want to meet girls, whatever. And his website was just you'd sign up. And over the

course of a week, he would send you a series of emails that were literally five to 10,000 words.

All it was, was a text-based email. And it made tens of millions of dollars selling this $30 or

$40 e-book. And then the guy who ran it, his name is now, his real name is Eben Pagan. His

pseudonym at the time was called David DeAngelo. And my friend named Craig Clemens worked for him,

helped writing in this. Craig has a company called Golden Hippo, which owns like eight or nine

different brands. And they sell like probiotics or one of them's called like Dr. Steven Gundry.

Have you guys heard of that? It's like a famous doctor and you like partnered with them and they

sell probiotics to like women. Anyway, Craig took the double your dating route, like kind of like

ideas. And now he sells literally a billion dollars a year of products. And it's like a probiotic,

it's vitamins. And I don't know what their other brands are. And it's just one long sales page.

And at the bottom, they're selling a $39 probiotic. And that's something today that still exists.

If you go to- I remember- W dating was good. Yeah. I will, I will say though, I think that is

from a bygone era a little bit. I'm sure there's like pages that are just strictly text. But for

the most part, I don't see it as much because now the places that make a lot of money on dating

are generally they have a YouTube channel or Instagram or whatever. They're not just texts

like they used to be. It used to be a big deal back then. They could just write a long page of

text, but you don't see it quite as much because we know what you see it. Go to Amazon.com and type

in Kindle or like Amazon product or Echo high. You might have a word. If most copywriters do

this, do you have a word counter automatically installed on your Chrome? Yeah, you can just,

I just highlight it and it tells me. Yeah, that's what I do. Go to Kindle, the Kindle listing and

tell me how many words it is. It's like three or 4,000 words. And I cannot stand when people say,

well, no one leads long copy. And I'm like, no, like long copy almost will always outperform

short copy. You just like, you, you, you, you, you, you, for some reason people think that long is

not good. Joseph Sugarman, uh, RAP, uh, had had a great thing. He said, write long copy, not long

winded copy. That's the difference. So this is, this is like very, there's a lot of things you

need to go over with the Kindle that I'm looking at on this page. It's talking about the PPI,

the glare free, you can use water resistant, all that kind of stuff. So it has a lot of features.

So therefore it has a lot of copy. But if you're selling a basic yo-yo for five bucks,

you probably don't need a lot of copy. You'd probably just make it long winded. So yeah,

like this has a lot of cool things to write about so you can make long copy. But I don't think you

should make long copy just for long copy sake. In fact, I would say I've seen a lot of good

selling on Instagram. Like a lot of, I run a website site called swipefile.com where I keep

all the good marketing that I see. And one of the cool things that I've noticed is on Instagram,

people sell through stories now. And I'm like, this is like the evolution of how to sell.

What's an example? Um, I see a lot of these like courses and stuff and some or like business courses.

And so I remember writing articles about how to make like a logo, how to make a good logo and

headline. And then I see like, there's like a guy named Chris Doe, this Asian dude I follow on, uh,

on Instagram. And he has these great stories on how to teach you how to do that kind of stuff.

And I'm like, this is brilliant. This is like taking that long article I made and condensing

it into an Instagram story that's visually appealing. It's fun. And I can go through it in

like 10 seconds. Remember thinking, wow, I learned something in 10 seconds. That is great

copywriting. That is instilling information in my brain very, very quickly and officially.

Why haven't you done that? Uh, good question. Yeah. I don't know. Well, so one of, one of the

things I think about social that I think, you know, that if you build your brand on social media,

like this is a direct quote from Sampar. It's like, if you build your brand on social media,

it's like renting a place where the landlord raises the rent every 18 months, doubles the rent

every 18 months. And so I think what happens is whenever we write long form stuff for SEO,

it every single day, no matter if Neville works or not, I get more, I get more and more people

coming to the site. Whereas if I only focus on social media, you get people on the site

while you're on that treadmill, but it falls off very quickly. And I'm not very consistent with

social media. So it's not something I think I would like win in necessarily. I could build a

system around it. Yeah. So Neville, you talked about that first sales email for your,

for your rave website. I'm curious for both of you, for you, Sam, like, do you have an equivalent

like where the light bulb went on where you were like, Oh, like this works. Like I can get people

to do stuff with my writing and Neville also for you afterwards, like, was that that for you?

Or was there another moment that where that light bulb went on even more? Sorry, go ahead. Neville

was at the time. For me, it was, I hosted the first HustleCon. I had the idea for it. I think

I think on May 1st, and then it happened in June, whatever it was, it was like the idea to event

was six weeks. And I made $40,000 in profit or something like that. And I didn't spend a cent

on marketing. And it was all through these sales emails that I was sending people. And it worked

so well. And my website was ugly. And I was like, this works. And then when the hustle launched,

we created a welcome email and welcome emails typically are like, I call it the forgotten text.

So there's like your thank you page. There's like the confirmation page when you subscribe to a

website. There's the welcome email after you've given someone your website, given someone your

email there. Like there's like these, these forgotten areas of people's websites. And I was

like, let's make all of those areas incredibly funny and surprising. And I bet you people will

share it and it'll get us more traffic. And so we did. And so if you Google the hustle welcome

email, we created this welcome email and it was like funny. And people started writing so many

articles about it. And I'm like, dude, this took us like four minutes to do. And we kind of stole

the idea from someone else. It's not that original. This copywriting thing is awesome. So that was

like when it hit for me. Also, also behind the scenes, I knew you when you were throwing hustle

con, you made really good cold emails to speakers. Because you knew that like, if you get the whales

everyone else will follow. So if you get the big speakers and you made these awesome emails with

gifts, which like, you know, 10 years ago was like kind of cool. And you hailed up like the

volunteers, they would hold up a sign and said, like, Hey, Ben, will you come to speak at hustle

con? It looked like you made like a custom email. In reality, just like Photoshop their name on it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those, there's, there's definitely light bulb moments like that. I said,

I had my house of rave one. And then the next one was when Noah Kagan was building absumo off my

couch, I started, he was sending out to hit 50,000 people on an email newsletter for absumo at the

time. It was kind of like a side project of his, which is like, you know, 50,000 email subscribers

pretty good for a side project. And he would send out like grasshopper.com 25% off coupon buy.

And I was like, man, that's a pretty shitty email. That's not great. And so I was like,

let me apply some of this copywriting stuff to some of these emails. And the first email

we sent out was absumo's first $10,000 profit day. And Noah was happy. I was happy. Was it the one

on a font? Kernest. Yeah. You got to read, read that, that first sentence. Listen to this, Ben,

the first sentence on that email is in the hall of fame. It is. Can you read that? Read that first.

It was like the first three or four sentences were beautiful. Do you remember that? I'm going to

try to say out the top of my head. This was like 10 years ago, but it says like, if I whisper the

word Garamond in your ear and it makes your knees weak or something like that, it was basically

kind of like fantasizing about fonts, which is like a very specific person. You were talking about

having a sexual fantasy with fonts. It was a different time. I forget what the name of the

font is, but he's like, let's just say it was like, does if I whispered the word comic sans into

your ears, does it make you weak at the knees? Yeah. And then he was like, it was basically having

like a sexual fantasy about font and then it like went on for like six sentences with more things

like that. And then it was like, well, I've got good news for you, you dirty dog. Like we're having

a sale on all these fonts that you could purchase today. It was beautiful. That is such a beautiful

concept. I've stole that on a bunch of different. Oh wait, I'm pulling up. Wait, I totally forgot

this. It said the first letter, this first sentence is if the names Lucidia sans Unicode

or Curry or new don't mean anything to you, go ahead and close this message. And then it goes on

to the whole thing. It quotes Steve Jobs in there about him talking about font types.

And we remember thinking like the reason Noah gave me this deal was he didn't think it was,

it was going to be that big because it was so specific for like designers who did typography.

And I was like, you know what, let's just have fun with it. And that ended up being like the

biggest deal so far. And we're like, holy shit, like the only thing that was different was the

copyright. Like this was like, we took some time to write the copy and it took about an hour. Like

it wasn't that long. And so we did it again and again and again. And then for like a long time,

I wrote every single email until we like hired enough copywriters to replace me.

Do you, so you said it took you about an hour. Do you ever feel like you come to a

copywriting problem and you just never crack it? You just started like, man, it like the light bulb

never hit. Or are you just like, can you power your way through any problem? I'd be curious to

think what you think, Sam. Sometimes, sometimes like if you're not in a good mood, like I think

like there's a cool time in the morning, like when I wake up and drink a bunch of caffeine,

that like come up time, like my brain starts getting a little like, start like thinking a

funny joke, start getting a little giddy. And I'm like, Oh, this is a good time. But like,

if it's late at night and you have to just write something for a deadline, sometimes it'll be like,

this is kind of boring. But then every once in a while, just, it just hits you like that.

And how do you think about it, Sam? I think that there's like, usually the way that I'm

almost positive that this is universal, but the way that you get good copywriting is you sit down.

The problem is, is that most people are afraid to start. But you, what you really need to do

is you have to sit down and you just have to write and it's, and you acknowledge that it sucks.

And then what you do is so long as you have enough time, you then let it marinate so you

can like go and do something. And then the next day you come back to it. And then that's where

the really like the good shit actually happens. But every once in a while, you can sit down

and it just works. So I have this thing that it's, it's like that this, I've been working on this

thing called copy that. And I just wrote this, this little TMI, I was just sitting on the toilet

and I just wrote it. And I've not touched it because it's perfect. I'm like, Oh, this is just

perfect. This, this works. And sometimes things like that definitely happen where you, it just is,

it just happens. But I don't think that, I think it's pretty much impossible to come up

against a problem that you can't solve for two reasons. One, that incubation phase always works.

And number two, you can just copy other people. So you go to swipefile.com, which is novel site,

or you just like go and read old, you just search like best ads of all time. And you can just like

read really old stuff. And you're like, Oh, sick. They were selling shirts using this big idea.

I'm going to steal that for selling this other thing. Yeah. And there's a lot of tools available

for like research generation. I think actually Pinterest is kind of what inspired swipefile.com.

You type in like good sales letter product like dog leash sales letter, you'll find a ton of stuff.

So you could copy the other thing that I think is cool. Here's a method I use all the time. And I

don't know if it's just unique to me. If I work with other people where I think they can see my

screen. Okay. So if we're on this call, I would share my screen and do work. So right before this,

I host a thing called writing Wednesdays like for our members and like certain like a certain

amount of people show up and we just share our screens and work. That's it. And whenever I do

that, I tend to get the best work. I get a lot of work done. I invite Sam and Sarah over to my

place to co-work every once in a while. I have my neighbors over at people over to co-work all the

time. And what I make them do is I tell them, I'm like, at least one person has to sit on the same

side of the table as me because otherwise I'll just be on Reddit or Instagram and just goofing off.

But if they're looking at my screen for some reason, I keep pushing forward and write good stuff.

Sam, Ben, tell me this. Have you ever been like in an airplane and you're like in the

seat and there's other people next to you and you know people can see your screen? I bet you get

some good writing, right? Yeah, for sure. Like there's something about other people seeing it

where you're like, I got to keep powering through and I just can't let my brain stop.

And so I think that's kind of a secret weapon. I have people work next to me or share my screen

and work and that's when I get the best writing done for some reason.

What do you think, Ben? Are you going to start doing some copywriting shit?

Yeah, well, like I kind of already am, right? Because I script out all my episodes. So

I'm writing and like, I think it's pretty good. But now I'm actually trying to start selling stuff

because I haven't been making much money on my show and now I'm trying to make money on my show.

And so this is all. Oh, that'll be the true test. That'll be the true test. But you know what? Listen

to what happened, Neville. Listen to what happened to Ben. Ben had this guy. I'm going to kind of

butcher the story because I don't know who the actual guy is, but I also don't want to reveal

any information that he previously told me. Let's just say he's worth nine figures and he's an

investment banker and he came to Ben and he's like, Hey, can I pay you a certain retainer every

month and you just be my guru or you study history and like you just make sure that I tell you what

my strategy is that I'm like not repeating the heirs that Julius Caesar has made or that I am

doing what like a successful Napoleon has done. Can you like kind of like guide that? And he came

to Ben and I was like, that's actually brilliant. You should charge like two or three thousand

dollars an hour and like consult and do this. It's kind of a good idea. Isn't it what Morgan

Housel does with like that firm that he's part of? I don't know. There was a guy who just put

out a really good blog and a large investment thing. Morgan Housel, look it up. He did a podcast

about it recently. He talked about it. I forget where and he he collaborate, collab fun. I think

it's called. There you go. That one. And so they reached out to him and they're just like,

we're going to pay you a bunch of money and you just write stuff and you just be you write about

anything you want. And that's reminiscent of what you're doing. Yeah. So after that, Sam,

I don't know if I told you, I got. Oh, I did tell you because I asked you. I know the guy

listens to this show. So it was a little weird to be hearing about. I was asking you how much

to charge and that's not weird. So he said, he said, will you speak and how much you charge?

And you're like, hey, how much should I charge? No, but it's weird because he listens to the show.

So he's going to be like, so now he knows that when he was like, hey, do you want to come speak

to my company? I went to you and said, how much should I charge? And what did I say? I said,

ask him what's their budget? Yeah. And he didn't help. That was that didn't work.

He was too smart for that. He's like, I want to be respectful of your rates. Just let me know.

You know what I've done in those situations, by the way, that's very helpful. Sometimes you at

this debt, you're at this stalemate where it's just like both people want everyone to win. Like,

I don't think this guy's trying to screw you over, right? I don't think so. You're also not

trying to screw him over. You both just want to arrive at a nice junction. So I would say something

along the lines of this. I'm like, look, I want it. I know you're trying to do good by me. I'm

trying to do good by you, but I would also like to be happy with the amount of money. My lowest

that I would be happy with is I'm just going to make up a thousand dollars, okay? But I would be

like ultra, ultra thrilled to work for you if I was getting $40,000 a month. I mean, that would be

like my dream. I would dedicate all my time. I tell everyone I'd be so thrilled. Is that something

that's like in the realm of possibility? And then what happens is he's going to be like, well,

it's a lot of money. Maybe we can settle on $25,000, $30,000, right? Which you'd probably be happy

with. So I think those are generally the things and also being just ultra honest, I found makes

it happy. And sometimes a lot of times are like, you know what, if you're going to be that happy

and want to do really good work for me, I will pay you that money. That's the way I would approach it.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's, I'm going to, I'm going to transcribe what you just said. And I'm

going to say basically exactly that might change the figures a little bit, but yeah. I see why you

wanted this guy to come on the show, Sam. That was, that was good. I want to talk about one more

thing that I think is interesting. So basically I tweet about this a lot and a lot of people say

this is my dream. So Neville and I live like two or three doors down enough that we pretty much

see each other every single day because each of us will take walks. And I actually think when people

were like, that's amazing that you guys are best buddies and you live next to each other. I'm like,

yeah, I think everyone should do this because it will make you happier. It's kind of interesting

because I'm almost positive that this is what a lot of immigrant families do when they come to

America is they like move to like some type of housing complex or some type of cul-de-sac or

something where they're with, you know, you're in a place that's new to you, you're nervous, it's more

enjoyable to be around a bunch more people. And you kind of like raise your kids together.

I think more Americans who aren't immigrants, just Americans who are born and raised here should

do that. It is, I'm happier because we live by each other. Oh, totally. I think the key is,

so a lot of people, there's like this new fangle plan that everyone has. They're like, let's buy

a plot of land and all be neighbors. So that actually doesn't work. And the reason is because

you're neighbors, that's too close. You got to have like some separation. So me and Sam live

around the corner from each other. We actually share an alley, but there's some semblance of

privacy, but also I can walk 100 feet to his house, you know, like I saw you this morning,

just like you were like showing your dad your motorcycle over FaceTime or something like that.

And I was like, hey, what's up? We saw each other for 10 seconds and I'm like,

that was a hangout. That was a hangout. And so I think that's the key. And then also I grew up

like this. We had a lot of family friends in our neighborhood and it's kind of cool. Like if you're

kids, your parents like don't mind if you hang out with other kids, they know. And so you can

walk over to their houses. If you need to borrow a cup of sugar, whatever you can walk over,

I think it makes you immensely happy. Like the whole point of life is to have like a really fun,

good community. And also whenever I go to India all the time, people live in what are called

colonies a lot of times. So it's essentially like an apartment complex, imagine it like that.

And you know everyone in that colony. And so you have like a million people over at your house,

you pop into other friends house, you didn't even knock on the door. And it's really fun.

And when you have that much stimulation, fun activity going on, the last thing you're asking

is like, what's the purpose of life? Am I happy? It's because you're just,

you're active, you're happy. The old people are happy. The young people are happy. It's really

fun. And then when people come over here and live in a big house, but by themselves isolated,

like you get very lonely. And even though you have an awesome house, it's like who cares? Like

if you don't have a lot of friends around with the point. Do you guys see each other more off,

more days than you do not? Do you see each other majority of days?

Yeah. It could be as short as just waving and saying three words.

And do you have anything that you regularly like you guys don't lift together, you don't run together,

you don't. We exercise sometimes together. We kind of just sit on the porch and do nothing.

Yeah. I think like the art of the pop in is pretty fun. Just like popping in hanging out.

So one of our friends that we both know, John Arrow, that we both really like,

I used to see him the way me and John Arrow would hang out is we both used to live downtown,

sort of near each other. We'd see each other randomly on the street about once a week.

We chat for like 15 minutes on a street corner and we're like, all right, gotta go.

That's it. That was the hangout. And it's just like it felt like we hung out,

even though it wasn't like a deliberate thing. And in fact, it almost feels more special because

it's random. So a lot of times I'll be drinking some coffee and I walk over to Sam's house and

it's not on the door and I come in and say hi for like five minutes. And that's it. Or it's like,

hey, we bought like this happens. It feels like a nice amount is I have a bunch of food that's

going to go bad in a couple of days. I got to I got to make a ton of it. You just want to come over.

Yeah. Or you know, you know what Sam, you know what Sam does? I have like all these alarm

sensors all over my house. And so someone opens my back gate, which no one ever opens my back gate

there's an alarm that goes off my house. It goes back gate opened and Sam will open that.

And then he'll he'll wait like five seconds for me to like run out the door. And he's like,

hey, I'm like, Sam, that's his way of being me. Like I know it's Sam if the back gates opened.

Do the Mormons do that, Ben? I thought you guys all like you guys have a pretty good community.

Yeah, it's interesting. We do, but not in a like living near to each other sort of way. Like we

just, you know, have activities that we get together at the church and we see each other at

least, you know, a couple of times a week. But yeah, this is something Neville for background.

I've been thinking a lot about of like, I am one of those people, I think a lot of people are

rethinking this right now, pandemic, a lot of people have gone remote and they're like,

if I could live anywhere near anyone, why do I not live near my family and friends? Like,

why do I not live near the people I want to spend time with? And so, you know, all the boys are

scheming. All the boys are like, how do we move into a compound together so that we can see each

other? Everyone says compound. It doesn't, you don't want a compound. It's not a compound. Yeah,

you don't want shared resources. I think you want like same block. Yeah, I would find it very

awkward if we were actual neighbors. Like if me and Sam were actual neighbors, it would be like,

I think it'd be too much. I think it'd be a lot. And there would be some conflict. It's like,

dude, what the fuck? Why don't you like, why are you being messy like this? Or why is this thing

overgrown? Yeah, for you want to have people over and like, you're like, oh, they're having people

over, but not like, I feel like that's too weird. It's too much. Like you get, there has to be some

separation. So I think that the compound idea never really works and never gets off the ground

because you don't want to look out the window in your neighbors right there. That's, that's a lot.

Well, I think the reason that people go immediately to compound is that like,

the logistics seem easier, honestly, of just like, okay, blank slate, we'll build houses next to each

other than the like, all right, let's hope the serendipity lines of that's way not easier.

Yeah. And also, by the way, in a lot of other cultures, like in Indian culture, a lot of times

very rich families, what they'll do is they'll build gigantic houses and each, they have separate

entrances for each floor. And the kids, like one son will live on the second floor, another son

will live on the third floor with his family. And the parents love the first one. That's pretty

common where they all live together in a big house and they have like some semblance of privacy,

but also not. So it's kind of fun. But that is the, that is the compound right there though.

That is a compound. It's like, it's not ideal. I wouldn't want to do that because it's, it's,

it is your family and it is you, there are kind of up in your stuff. But I think the ideal is in

the same neighborhood, like around the corner, like where you're, you wouldn't mind your kid

just walking to the other person's house by themselves. That would be ideal. Yeah. I think

it's the most fun. It's getting to know your neighbors, having that strong sense of community.

I think also there's like a security aspect that's kind of cool. Oh, Sam, Sam wasn't getting back

in time for his motorcycle to be delivered. So he just had it delivered to my house.

So like just convenience factors like that are pretty cool. And then also,

like whenever I show people my house as a tour, I bring them to Sam's house as part of the tour.

Like it's like part of, it's like an extension of the tour. It's fun.

And I actually think it's helped you meet more girls because you have, if there's like a girl

who you're trying to see and you're trying to impress her and she sees that there's just like

action happening in the neighborhood, it's like, oh, this is exciting. This is fun to be around.

Well, thanks for pulling up my secrets. But yeah, it is fun when people come by. Like even

when like Noah comes by, or I remember the other day, you and Sarah stopped by in your car and

you're just stopping and chatting in front of me. And then Noah came by in a different car,

just totally random. And we were all three like talking to each other. I was just like,

that's a pretty cool moment. That was a fun moment. Yeah. Have you guys had any moments of

conflict? Sorry, I'm not meaning to be your therapist right now, but like, has there been

anything? Not really. So we both, we knock last night. He was on a date and I, and I didn't want

to ruin it. And so I had to make sure that he answered the call before, before I came over.

And so, because, because Neville's single. And so I'd be like, Hey, are you with anyone?

Are you alone? Like, are you dating anyone? Like, you know, are you seeing someone? Can I,

can I come over? So sometimes I do that. I'm married. So we don't, I don't have that issue.

No, I mean, I think we also knew each other pretty well. And we're, I think we're, but if

there's ever any issue, we bring it up right away. And so I don't think we have like lingering

issues with each other. So no, I don't think we have any conflicts about it yet.

It's been about a year, right? No, it's been a year and a half. Yeah, you're right. A year.

And I think if Sarah and Sarah eventually have kids, they'll probably end up moving

to New York or something probably. And I even actually, like, it makes me sad to even think

about that. Well, I told her, I was like, dude, I don't, I'm like, this is kind of perfect because

I don't love Austin. I like Austin. But the reason, the only reason I would stay is because,

uh, like, because of the convenience with you and also a couple of other friends. And now that we're

all in the mode where we're all, we're all having kids at the same time too. I'm like, man, this

is sick. We should all, it's all, Ben, did you raise your kids with anyone else? Like, did you,

like, did like a close friends, how have kids within one year? Yes. Is that awesome? Yes. So for

us, it was two doors down the other Mormon family called the Coons. And it was like literally just

like, it's not racist. That's just that. That's a horrible name. And anyway, it was just like all,

you know, the kids were all at the same ages and we just ran back and forth and who knew

where dinner was going to be for everyone that night. And it was great. By the way,

you know, my working backwards from 85 plan and Sam, you can bat me up on this. I've been

standing for years. I wanted to, I wanted to have kids around 2023. That's when I'm 40.

That's when I want to have kids. So I started telling all my friends, like five years ago,

on like 2023, let's all have kids because I grew up with like a pack of kids, like a pack of friends

almost my exact age within one or two years. And it was awesome. Like it was really fun. We're all

still best friends to this day. Like that'll never change. And I think it was great. And I would love

for my kids to have that. And also, I think as a parent, it's much better. Ben, you could probably

attest, if your kids want to go play, you could be like, yeah, go play at the Coons, right? Like,

you can go play over there. You don't have to worry about it. It's kind of better for the parents

and the kids and the kids get to have like a whole pack of friends, which is awesome.

So I've been telling everyone 2023. That's the date. Everyone had popped out some kids around then.

All right. This episode went all over the place. What do you think, Ben? Are people going to like

this? I hope so. They're definitely going to like copywriting that all stuff is just like our bread

and butter. But I hope people like the, the living next to your neighbor stuff too. So Sean's not

here. So he would inevitably should would promote his thing. So I'm actually going to promote it.

It's called power writing. So Sean has a writing thing. It's not the same as copywriting, but it's

like kind of like for Twitter writing and cold emailing and then Neville. So Google power writing.

It's on maven.com. And then Neville has copywriting courses spelled C's exactly how it's I'm saying

it. CopywritingCourse.com. Where do they go to buy the thing though? Because you used to have

copywritingcourse.com slash steel. What is the join slash join. So copywritingcourse.com slash join. And it's a monthly subscription now. And you get the course, but also the community, right?

Yeah. Monthly yearly. The community is like the real thing that you actually have a thing called copy reviewer tool. You post your copy,

whether it's a sales page, cold email, Twitter, post anything. And like professional writers,

including myself, go in there and like redo it for you. And so it's easier to pull. Yeah. And you also tell

people what I didn't, I've never seen this. March, 2022 had 1200 posts, 2000 likes,

212,000 words written in the community. That's a whole other story, but we moved away fully from

WordPress, which I love, but we move fully to like forum software because I'm convinced that like this is

where all the sites are going to go in like two years. They're all going to try to make their own

little social network for their own community, but not on anyone else's platform. So that's

what we did. We just switched over this week and it's pretty awesome. What's the conversion rate of

copyrightingcourse.com slash join? Because it's just like, it's like 4000 words. It's pretty,

it super depends on whenever we do email promotions. So on a normal time, I don't know,

maybe one to 2% on just like normal days, but then whenever we do promotions, it's much higher.

Yeah. So what, just on a normal, just from traffic coming to the website and people clicking on the

slash join, do you know what the conversion rate is? I don't know the exact conversion rate.

Right. There are certain times like beginnings of quarters, it's good. End of the year, beginning

of the year is really good. Almost like gyms, like seasonal. And then through the summer is

more like slog months where you have to like actively promote. And then at the end of the year,

we just crush like Q4. It's just easy. Yeah, this page. Oh, hey, I'm on the, I'm on the page.

You're on the page. Sick. Well, copyrightingcourse.com slash join. Do we all have copyrighting

courses? Copy that power writing. So our, no, copy that, which is my thing, copy that.com.

That's not a copyrighting course. That's just a set of drills to keep sharp. Your thing actually

teaches you how to write persuasive copy. Sean's thing is like, uh, it's called, he calls it power

writing. And it's, you can use it for Twitter and cold emailing. So I actually think that your

thing is like covers all of it. And then me and Sean's thing are very specific subsets of that.

Right? Yeah. I think so. I think, I mean, people always ask me like, is it competitive if someone

else has another copywriting course? And I was like, I don't know. It kind of expands the pie,

in my opinion. Like I've noticed like, you remember Dan Locke, did y'all ever talk about that guy?

It's kind of real like that guy, that boy. He's kind of a little bit in the scammy range, like

a tie loop. That guy's totally a fucking scammy. Well, here's the, here's the funny thing. Here's

why I love and hate him. One, he would talk, he would have these YouTube videos that are very

popular, very well done, but they would say, you should become a copywriter. You'll be a millionaire

overnight. It was just like kind of lies in my opinion. But the point is it kind of drummed up

interesting copywriting in a way. And I remember a lot of people coming from his stuff to ours.

It was, it was 50-50. Some people were realistic about it. And some people were like, well,

I'm ready to start earning six figures tomorrow. How do I start doing it? And we're like,

oh God, you came from Dan Locke, right? So in a way, it kind of expands the pie whenever

other people talk about it. It becomes a more popular thing.

And I promote your, yours in mine. Oh, yeah. All right, cool. Ben, hopefully this turns out well.

Neville, thank you. Oh, and Ben's copywriting course is coming out next month called

How to Take Over Copywriting. There we go. Yeah, write copy like Napoleon and Julius Caesar.

That'd be pretty good. How to write strong memos like, like your Napoleon Bonaparte. Neville,

what's your Twitter? Nev Med, N-E-V-M-E-D, Nev Med. Awesome. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Ben.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.