Episode Summary
In this episode of "Emerging Founders," host Manav sits down with copywriting expert Neville Medora, the creative mind behind Copywriting Course, SwipeFile.com, the NEV blog, and early team member at AppSumo. The two dive deep into the evolving world of copywriting, its intersection with technology (especially AI), and practical strategies for persuasive writing in the digital age. Neville shares personal stories, lessons from his entrepreneurial journey, and insights on standing out as a writer, business owner, and content creator. The conversation also touches on the power of building online communities, leveraging new platforms like YouTube and Twitter, and the importance of adaptability as technology shifts the landscape of online business.
Transcript
Manav [00:00:00]:
Welcome to another episode of Emerging Founders with Manav. I'm your host, Manav, and today we have a guest who's incredibly persuasive with his words. He's the brains behind copywriting course, swipefile.com, nEV blog, and the House of Ray. He has advised companies like the Hustle, Appsumo, and he's also helped companies like Appsumo achieve their highest sales day ever. When he's not busy teaching the art of persuasive writing, he's probably playing one of his favorite instruments. Or he's going on another adventure. Please join me in welcoming the man who proves the pen is mightier than the sword.
Neville Medora [00:00:36]:
What's up, man? How's it going? How's it going?
Manav [00:00:38]:
Boom.
Neville Medora [00:00:38]:
Good to see you, man.
Manav [00:00:39]:
I love your energy.
Neville Medora [00:00:40]:
Oh, thanks.
Manav [00:00:41]:
Because I've been.
Neville Medora [00:00:42]:
Caffeine.
Manav [00:00:42]:
No, I've been following you for so long, and I've been watching your videos, your YouTube videos, and I have to tell you, you're a legend.
Neville Medora [00:00:50]:
Oh, thanks, man.
Manav [00:00:51]:
I admire people like you.
Neville Medora [00:00:53]:
Why is that? Why? What about it?
Manav [00:00:54]:
I admire people like you because I relate with you a lot. I find a lot of similarities between us in terms of. I feel like you are a highly curious person who does what he likes and doesn't follow the traditional code of society. And. And you've had an interesting career, and I feel like you. You're very free, and I know a lot of your. I've seen other. Your other podcast episodes, and they. Everyone calls you, like, the freest entrepreneur ever.
Neville Medora [00:01:20]:
I guess so. It seems normal. Yeah. I don't know what seems free about it. I guess it started, like, within college. I remember thinking, I'm taking over the podcast now. But I remember in college, everyone was going to get a job, and I saw a couple of people in my life in my, like, Zorastrian community. It's like my religion, like the Jews of India. And there was a couple people that were really rich. And I remember one guy donated, like, $300,000 to our church. And I remember our house in Houston cost $120,000. And I remember thinking, I was like, how does he give away more than our house costs? And that got me thinking. I was like, what? What's he doing that's different. And turns out all the guys that I knew that are rich had some sort of business. That was the common thread every single time. And so I was like, huh, that's interesting. And I never thought of, like, being an entrepreneur, but then one of these guys Mentored me. And I realized it was, like, very blue collar. I thought it was like being a CEO was, like, very difficult or something. And it was just. He was just at it day after day. He was a smart guy, but not so smart that he could, like, was way above everyone else, and it was just like, a slow build. And so I heard people talk, oh, this guy's lucky in real estate all the time. And then I got to see the inner workings. I was like, he's not lucky. He just looks at, like, 100 deals a day. Almost every single one he says no to. And then every once, every few weeks, he's, oh, interesting. This one's cool. This one's interesting. And he goes and investigates it. Goes visits the property, sees he can fix it up, runs the numbers. And I was like, what's magical or lucky about that? That's really normal work.
Manav [00:02:40]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:02:41]:
And so from there, I got the bug, and I was like, huh, Maybe this is something I could do.
Manav [00:02:45]:
I was watching your video where you explain how you make your money.
Neville Medora [00:02:48]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:02:48]:
And you said, when you take the money out of the equation, most people will not do their jobs well.
Neville Medora [00:02:53]:
Because they say money is, like, the third thing that people decide in their jobs. And I'm like, if most people were like, we're an accountant or something, and they just stop paying you, would you still do it? Most people, no. Yeah. So money is a factor. Yeah. It's certainly a big factor.
Manav [00:03:06]:
So initially, I think you got into E commerce, but then what stumbled you into copywriting?
Neville Medora [00:03:13]:
Because of the E commerce thing, I was just like, how do I increase people coming to the page? I get a thousand people to the page every day. How do I get more people to order? One person is ordering. That's a 0.01 conversion rate. If I get to 1%, I made 10 times more orders. So what can I do? I could add better pictures, better headlines, describe the product better. One thing people always ask. They called the support line, asking about what type of batteries, And I was like, I just write double A batteries. Done.
Manav [00:03:35]:
I'm so excited to ask you. Okay. I really want to hear, how do you think about AI? Because what if I took all your content from the blog and pumped it into ChatGPT and write me something in the tone of Neville Medora. How do you feel about that? Does that worry you or does that excite you?
Neville Medora [00:03:53]:
I don't know if that worries or excites me in terms of that. Like, how can I utilize that? Yeah, that's just the way I Go.
Manav [00:04:00]:
Do you utilize AI, like in Europe?
Neville Medora [00:04:01]:
Yeah, all the time. I was using it for. Actually, Grok3 just dropped last night and I've been using it all morning. Yeah, it's really good. All these models are like, almost the same for what most people want to do. I think if you're doing some advanced programming stuff, these edge cases, I think you start to see the difference in some of them. But I think they're all, like, inching up really fast. Like, one goes ahead and then another one catches up, then another one gets ahead and one gets cheaper, etc. So they're all really good. I use AI all the time for stuff that it's not a replacement for what I used to do. Because, for example, we used to put out blog posts to get, like, SEO traffic. Now that whole world is, I don't know, effectively dead in a way. Like just writing a blog post to say, like, how to. The 10 best tips about copy. AI can do that better and customize it for you. I could say, give me the 10 best tips on copy on this piece of copy for Mana for my podcast. Yeah, my blog post can never do that. So that is gone. The AI is better.
Manav [00:04:51]:
One thing you are a master of, and I really want to learn that from you, is how you make your coffee copy sound so. Not coffee copy sound so relatable. And you're quite entertaining in your copy, which I think most people saw were quite boring. You make it sound like, relate. Like, you make it sound funny. And people want to read even the promotional stuff, like, how do you get. How do you do that?
Neville Medora [00:05:14]:
It's conversational. And I just have a complete disrespect for any, like, the current grammar rules or the ways that things are done. And it's not a disrespect. It's just that I never thought, like, who made these rules? Who says the Oxford Dictionary? Some dude that made this up. What will you talk about? I can do whatever I want. I can communicate however I want. You can't tell me what to do. And so similar to that, I'm just like, to whom it may concern. It used to be like, everyone write like that way because that's what you're taught in English class. I'm like, I don't care about sounding like that. I want to sound like me. And so I write like a talk. It's very conversational. And I also try to crack myself up. It's like, why not make it humorous if I can, if that's not the goal, but if I can. And make it more engaging. Why not? I'm sure you've read books that keep you hooked, right? And some that don't. What's the difference? And it's probably just stuff is like just a little bit easier to read. They're not trying to impress you or anything like that. They're just trying to get the point across.
Manav [00:06:05]:
Talking about books, I know you're in the middle of writing one.
Neville Medora [00:06:08]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:06:09]:
What's the theme?
Neville Medora [00:06:10]:
I'm not going to say, but it's a specific formula. It's all about one thing. Yeah.
Manav [00:06:15]:
About one thing.
Neville Medora [00:06:16]:
Yeah, it's all about one thing. Because I love short books. So my last book that actually I wrote a couple of books, the one that did well was 43 pages long and 6 by 9. It's tiny and you can read it in under 30 minutes, like anyone.
Manav [00:06:28]:
Okay. So I want to give the audience a little bit more context about you. And Neville has made a course called the Copywriting course. And I just want to regurgitate some of the stats behind the course, which is in my opinion is one of the most incredible courses ever made. Thanks. This course has about a billion emails sent, 10,000 students, 750 companies impacted, more than 20 plus years of experience, 51,000 plus product sales, millions in digital sales, 845 consulting sessions plus and it has reached more than 3.4 email inboxes. So if you look at the overall impact of the course, it's been incredible. And I think, have you turned that course into a SaaS product now and it's just infinitely scalable?
Neville Medora [00:07:14]:
No. So it's still service. So our cap on users, like a lot. It's usually between 600 and 1,000 people. And there's certain promotions that happen throughout the year. It's usually like a $97 a month or a thousand a year like structure similar like that. So it's not full SaaS, but what it is, people come in, they can watch videos of Neville explaining stuff, right? That's obviously part of the appeal. And then the other part is if you have, let's say a signup page, it's not working very well. You post it to like our community area and myself and all the other writers and other community members go and say, hey, change this, update that. What if you change this headline to that? And people go, holy crap, I never thought about that. They change it. Bam. Instant update, right? So Instead of getting 10%, they get 20% conversion rate or whatever it is. And so they see these instant wins like that when someone just gives them advice and we all get blinders. When you look at your own podcast page or something a million times, you're like, I don't know what to do to update it. And someone else looks at it and it's like, I don't get what that means. What if you put a number here? What if you say that? You go, oh, cool. So that's a big part of it. And then also every Thursday we have office hours where I get on the call myself and then we record questions and stuff. And that part's really cool. So it's like a three prong thing. It's courses, community, and then like these live office hour sessions.
Manav [00:08:25]:
And I know you've evolved the course a lot over the years. What made, what makes it so successful compared to these other ones, like ship 30 for 30 or like the other ones, what makes.
Neville Medora [00:08:33]:
I think those have done well too. And I'm not saying like this. There can only be one on the planet. I think people have to like my style. So that's one thing. Like, obviously there is part of me that's like kind of at the base of it. So they have to like my style, they have to like my stuff. They are usually in a similar kind of industry, some sort of Internet industry. But we get so many people from like the train industry, like random stuff like that, any sort of sales industry. And I think it's just that we give people a lot of help. I think people, when they launch a course is a little bit on the way out because now it's, you go on YouTube, you get really good stuff. AI is improving every three months. It could just train you. Like, you don't necessarily need Neville to sit there and explain stuff to you anymore. You can have your own custom avatar do that. You can have your own AI do it. So I don't think you really need courses as much. That's why we went to a service model years ago, maybe over five years ago. So I think that's why ours has endured, whereas others have fallen off. The other thing is, I think a lot of places that do copywriting train you to become a copywriter, to sell that service. It's like this like pyramid scheme. It's, it's even like yoga studios. Most of them make their money from training other yoga teachers to be yoga teachers, not by being a yoga teacher. And so at some point it like it gets difficult for some level of people to do it. So I don't think everyone could become a copywriter. That's not What I think, I think if you're a business owner, having some copyrighted injected in, whatever you do will really help. But my goal is not to train you to be a copywriter, to take clients.
Manav [00:09:54]:
Even if you don't become a copywriter, you're still writing emails. You can still use that knowledge.
Neville Medora [00:09:58]:
To me, it actually doesn't really make as much sense. If you want to be a copywriter, okay, you have to learn copy. You don't have a business to apply it to, so then you have to go get clients and convince them. Whereas if you're a business owner and you learn a little bit of copywriting, you're like, oh, I could write a better headline for this. And you can instantly implement that and see results right away. So I think for business owners, it's more important to become copywriters. My buddy Sam Par, one of the best copywriters I know, he's not like a copywriter for hire. He runs his own business. Yeah.
Manav [00:10:24]:
Also, copywriting has changed a lot. Like, I was reading the David Ogle rebook. He used to write so many words. Now with our attention spans of TikTok, like, how can. How has copywriting changed, in your opinion?
Neville Medora [00:10:36]:
I think it. How's the technology change? Back in the day, you have an article like in a newspaper or a magazine, and you have to make people read all in one sitting. So of course you have to have a long piece of copy. You just have one shot at it. Now we have Twitter, we have X Instagram, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you can see stuff over and over over the course of months. So things can be shorter. You could break things down into smaller chunks. And that's a function of technology, not our attention spans. People say it's like our attention spans got shorter. It's. No, they didn't have TikTok in 1870, but if you took TikTok back to 1870, sure as hell everyone be watching it. It's not because their attention spans are shorter. It's just because it's more compact information in a smaller place. Like, why wouldn't you watch.
Manav [00:11:14]:
It's like the meme where you see everyone reading a newspaper on, like in the 80s.
Neville Medora [00:11:17]:
Yeah. And everyone's. Oh, no one's talking to each other. Is every generation has the same thing. That happens. Yeah. But it. It. The technology dictates the function. So how come video has exploded recently? Because we couldn't watch video before. Right now we all have phones over here, and so we can watch video anywhere on the go with free data. Essentially, that didn't exist 10, 20 years ago. So video wasn't as big except for TV. So as we get more and more different types of technologies, we'll see more and more different types of formats get popular.
Manav [00:11:45]:
And I read one of your goals for this year was to revamp the swipe file.com.
Neville Medora [00:11:50]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:11:50]:
Can you explain what that is?
Neville Medora [00:11:51]:
Yeah. So swipe file.com, the Internet swipe file. So basically a swipe file is a folder of like print ads, magazine ads, all that stuff. But guess what? We have all this other stuff now. We have. Everything's digital. So I have a digital swipe file. And I was originally just keeping it for myself so I can reference it with my clients, my consulting clients, and then my community members. And then it started just to become a thing. And so I started collecting stuff and putting it up there. And for a couple of years, maybe five, six years, it's been running and it's just like a WordPress blog that's like a Pinterest clone. And it's just like Neville posting stuff every once in a while. And I was like, damn, I feel like this has so much more potential. And then the new AI features that are going to come out in the next two, three years, I think copywriting course is not poised to take it full advantage of those. But Swipe File is so making templates out of things, making layered templates where you can just edit stuff directly. So if you see an ad, instead of just being like, cool, there's an ad, what do I do with it? It would automatically say, oh, just load this into Canva or load this up in a Google Doc on your own. AI will enable that kind of stuff. So I'm trying to poise ourselves for that. So we've been paying a lot more attention to it, developers involved and stuff like that. And so right now you can actually go in and save all your swipes. That's step one, I think that's like a. Whatever feature. The next feature we're adding actually as a Friday is you'll be able to get a template bank of stuff. So instead of being like, oh, here's a bunch of sales pages, it's like, here's a Google Doc we made that you can just like literally edit and make your sales page out.
Manav [00:13:11]:
Like Pinterest for nerds.
Neville Medora [00:13:13]:
It's Pinterest for marketing nerds. Yeah. Specifically, like webpage stuff that can make you money, like web pages, emails, et cetera. Yeah, that's like the main goal. It's not for stuff that's. Oh, look at this funny headline. There is some of that, but for the most part it's like, how can you look at something that, while you're working on your sales page, get an idea and implement it right away? That's what swipe file is. And that's what I get actually get really excited about these days. So getting more resources poured into that is pretty fun. I think by the end of the year this will be.
Manav [00:13:42]:
Yeah, I want to go back to how to sell. I think to escape the 9 to 5 matrix, you need to sell something, right? Yeah, something.
Neville Medora [00:13:50]:
You have to sell something.
Manav [00:13:51]:
Some service, some physical product, something. So let's go back to House of Rave. What was your. Is it still going on?
Neville Medora [00:13:58]:
House of Rave? I have no idea. I sold it a long time ago.
Manav [00:14:00]:
Oh, you sold it long?
Neville Medora [00:14:00]:
Yeah, yeah, Okay. I sold it shortly. I don't know about shortly after college, but after college, yeah. So actually. Oh, no, I know it is around 2012 or 2011, AppSumo started getting very big. I was involved in AppSumo and I was making more profit from Appsumo than revenue from House of Rave at that point. And House of Rave was a drop shipper. Amazon dropshipper. So glow sticks, disco balls, stuff like that. And what happened was Amazon started getting really good and so the drop shipping margin started getting squeezed and squeezed and I was like, damn, in five years I'm going to be working way harder and making the same amount of money or less. So this is like not a good way. So I sold it to a competitor.
Manav [00:14:32]:
And so you didn't have the headache of actually shipping it. It was a good model in terms of drop shipping.
Neville Medora [00:14:37]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:14:37]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:14:38]:
There was still some headache, but not as much. The manufacturer took care of most of those things. Yeah.
Manav [00:14:42]:
Interesting.
Neville Medora [00:14:42]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:14:42]:
So now basically you can be anywhere with your laptop and that's.
Neville Medora [00:14:45]:
It doesn't matter. For years, like I. That scared me away from physical products. Yeah, I don't. I still think there's an opportunity there. If you own or manufacture your own product, I think you have a moat. But just selling physical products that anyone else can get from Alibaba or something like that, I think that's going to get squeezed a lot. You've heard a lot about people doing like Amazon drop shipping, making their own brand. It's just. I think the name of the game is out and people know how to do it and it's just going to be a race to the bottom. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people.
Manav [00:15:12]:
Can we. Okay, imagine I'm like a noob just starting my career in the Internet world. Give me some basics of copywriting. So how can I like three things I can do today to make myself better? Except buying your course.
Neville Medora [00:15:27]:
For copywriting specifically. Yeah. Start building a network either in person or online. In person is always the best. Meeting people face to face is still better than online. However, if you live in a place where that's not possible, you live some bumfuck town where that's not possible. Start interacting with people online. Online. I have found that finding my friends, my audience, my best friends, Noah, Kagan, Sampar, all these people have met them all online. So all you have to do is not be a guru and start posting on Twitter or Instagram, whatever, but interacting with people back and forth. I personally think Twitter is the best place to meet the smartest people. Yeah, that's just where I see like interaction is native to the app versus Instagram's. Hey, look at my picture and don't say anything. So Twitter is like a more of a conversational place and then you end up meeting those people going like, I don't, I don't know how you exactly found me, but it probably through social media to some degree. So you just amplify your sphere of influence in people that you meet. I think that's probably the number one thing I would personally suggest.
Manav [00:16:20]:
One thing, I was shocked when I saw your YouTube channel that you've posted 895 videos.
Neville Medora [00:16:26]:
Oh yeah, even shorts.
Manav [00:16:27]:
Yeah, I posted like 100 videos last year. I was shocked. I was like 895 videos. Like I, I, that's a lot of content.
Neville Medora [00:16:34]:
It is.
Manav [00:16:35]:
It's a lot of content. And I, and some of the videos are so funny and so good. And especially the ones with the stick figure animation. Yeah, they're my favorite. Find myself re watching them sometimes. How do you feel about YouTube? I know you've been on it for so long. Like how do you feel about YouTube as a platform?
Neville Medora [00:16:52]:
Dude, it's evolved. It used to be like for 30 second cat videos and stuff like that. It was a joke. Like it's a joke. There's no virality in it. Obviously that's all changed, right? However, there's pros and cons. Pros. It's huge. It reaches everyone. Everyone uses YouTube. There's no one in the world that doesn't use YouTube anymore. The downside is because there's so much good content that if you're just like, hey, here's how you do copywriting, you're likely not going to go vi or get like a ton of traction for that. So you almost have to start bringing the. Bringing traffic to the platform. However, you can do certain things to make a lot of videos. For example, I can make a long video and split that up into shorts now. And shorts is like a whole different medium because the way they display it, just like with scrolling it. So if you get 10,000 views on a long video, that's pretty good, right? But 10,000 views in a short, that's cool. But does it bring you any more clients or subscribers? It's a lot less. The conversion rate and the attention span on their short videos, very low.
Manav [00:17:45]:
It's a great awareness thing, though.
Neville Medora [00:17:47]:
Very good for awareness. In fact, that's how I find a lot of podcasts and subscribe is like, I see their shorts just pop up randomly recommended to me, and I see 70 of them over the course of a year, and I don't even remember. And then every once in a while, I'm like, oh, yeah, this guy's pretty funny. I like his stuff where I like her stuff. And then I subscribe. So I do think it's like free distribution. So it's like, where do these people come from that are subscribing to. You almost have no clue anymore. It's, like, impossible to track. But I still think it's a really good platform if you're into it, because some people are not into posting videos online. Yeah, some people don't like it. They're not built for it. They don't want to do it, so why try it?
Manav [00:18:22]:
I believe in building a system around it. So for. I just hired a team, like, and their entire job is to post six videos a day, six times a day for 30 days. So that's 180 videos.
Neville Medora [00:18:34]:
A lot of videos. Damn.
Manav [00:18:35]:
Yeah. And they're just taking all my podcasts, cutting them into things. And that's how you grow the podcast. Now it is. I don't see any other hack.
Neville Medora [00:18:43]:
No. Podcasts are hard. And I talked to a guy who runs a podcast agency, and I was just like, for 2025, what should I do with my stuff? Yeah, his audio is dumb. Like, audio doesn't grow. There's no virality yet. I. If. Maybe if Apple starts taking it seriously or something. But video is still the way to go. So I think what you're doing, you take this, you chop it up into a bunch of things, hope people see it. That's the way to grow.
Manav [00:19:02]:
The mindset I'm going with is going to take 500 episodes. Because I've noticed, like, Chris Williamson, all the big podcasters, they've been doing it for like seven years. And people are like, oh, my God, Chris popped up. But they don't see, oh, my God, he's been doing it for seven years. He's posted 3, 000 videos on YouTube.
Neville Medora [00:19:17]:
And if you watch, if you look at people's, like, shorts page, like the ones, you're the ones with like millions of likes and stuff like that, then you look at a lot of others and it's 9K, which for someone with 2 million subscribers is, like, bad. So you don't see all the little, like, failures along the way. You only see those big things.
Manav [00:19:31]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:19:32]:
But also the guy who runs a podcast agency, shout out to Chris. Brian Helms. I forgot what his podcast agency is. Ryan Helms. Twitter, you can find him. But he was telling me, like, basically three ways to grow is get a guest with their own audience, right? So someone who's bigger than you, something that's super novel. Like, maybe someone has never interviewed someone. I interviewed the director of engineering for X. And like that, that one kind of popped off because, like, we never really gave an interview before. So things like that, just ways to grow along those lines. And then also just like talking head videos, I think reaction videos. There's certain ways, like, where you got to play this game to gain subscribers, but, man, we can have a whole conversation about that. Like, my buddy Noah Kaden hit a million subscribers, and he was just playing to the algorithm, but he really hated it. He didn't love playing to the algorithm. Like, he found out, like, those, like, knocking on doors videos and stuff. And like, he was going hard. He was going hard on those. But I think what you don't see is that sometimes it takes two days to film that, like, 12 minute video.
Manav [00:20:24]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:20:25]:
So one of them, he did, for example, it's like everyone started doing knocking on doors now, right? So everyone sees, like, that's popping off. So everyone's doing it and it's just like, it just starts going down then, right? So then they were like, let's knock on yachts now. So that means he's flying Isaac and his team out over to Miami, spending a ton of money on all their flights, all their hotels, all this right. Salary, etc. So already you're like 20 grand in the hole and you haven't even made a stupid video yet. Then you're like, how do we. Where do we go for yachts? There's all these other docks which Ones do we go to? Then you got to find that out. Then you go there and you're like, oh, they're all private. Like you can't go film on them. So then what? So now you're just like sitting there, it's hot as shit, you're all sweating. You're like, what do we do? And so he's like just going, hey, come on your yard. Just like yelling at people. And it's like two days of filming and then it ends up like most people. Like, I don't want, I don't want this. That's 99% of all the footage. You don't see all that stuff. And all he's like, can I talk to you? I made a million dollars in crypto, whatever. So it's just like you play to the algorithm. But then on the other hand, there's another guy, no, Ross Hudgens, who runs Siege media. Big like SEO company. They work with Fortune 500 companies for SE. They don't get a lot of views on their videos. And he purposely was just like, I'm not going to go like the newbie SEO route. I'm only talking about large scale, like l' Oreal or Nike or someone like the director of marketing at those. I want to talk directly to those people. So he does interviews and videos that are so specific and high level, they get very few views. But if he gets a lead and a contract, $10 million. So it just depends which game you want to play. And I used to like the kind of, oh, you get like to a hundred thousand subscribers and that. I'm past it. I'm like, how many of those people are actually customers? It's difficult to tell. It's difficult to tell. It's really good for social credibility though.
Manav [00:22:03]:
So I just met a woman at a party, Casey. Okay. She sells incredible paintings. She sells one to two paintings every month and each painting goes from 100 to $200,000.
Neville Medora [00:22:13]:
Nice.
Manav [00:22:13]:
And she has like millions of followers on TikTok, millions of followers on Instagram. One video is like 40 million views, that kind of thing. And I was talking to her, I was like, how do you sell your. How do you sell your paintings? And she was like, you're not going to believe it. She's like, I haven't had a single sale from Instagram or TikTok. I only get hate comments like people criticizing her art. She has sold all her paintings through LinkedIn.
Neville Medora [00:22:37]:
Oh.
Manav [00:22:37]:
And I was like, what? She's like, yeah, I've sold all my paintings through LinkedIn. Because some executive sees it and they're like, okay, I'll get it.
Neville Medora [00:22:45]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:22:46]:
So I also think there's some value in finding something that no one's thinking about.
Neville Medora [00:22:51]:
Yeah. We have an agency that posts on all of the different social network, including LinkedIn. And I'm actually surprised when I go home to Houston and see what, like, our whole family, friends, like, a lot of the aunties and uncles will be like, neville, I see your stuff online. I'm like, oh, really? Like, we see it on LinkedIn. I was like, LinkedIn. I didn't even go on LinkedIn. And I was like, oh, the agency posts on LinkedIn. And I forget that there's like a bunch of people watching. And then let's say something gets three comments. But you never know how many people see it. You never know who sees it. So it's difficult to tell nowadays, like, where traffic comes from. So it's just almost like the. I guess the name of the game is put it out on all of them.
Manav [00:23:24]:
Also, the ghostwriting services are doing really right now. I have a buddy, he has this ghostwriting company called Thought Leader.
Neville Medora [00:23:30]:
Okay.
Manav [00:23:31]:
And they've signed up so many founders and they charge him like 5,000amonth. And just to write these threads on. I know some people don't want to be a thread boy.
Neville Medora [00:23:39]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:23:40]:
But they write these threads on X. For most people, it's really hard to grow an X. You have to post so much, and then you don't really know the strategy behind it. And you need to get a bigger account to repost you personally, how do you, like, how did you grow your Twitter account? Were you. How. Were you super active or.
Neville Medora [00:23:56]:
Yeah, it's simple. I posed. I had a rule for two years. Post every day and reply to three people. And then when you apply to three people, you're like, oh, there's some more replies I could do. So that was the minimum. So I posted every day for a year or two, and then I would reply to three people a day. And I had different lists. So right now there's a lot of, like, politics stuff and Elon Musk and everything. So my main feed is all that, which is, like, pretty interesting, but at the same time, that's not my world. And so then I have another list called writers, copy thinkers, stuff like that. There's all these marketers, and then I have one called Austin, which is all my Austin friends. So I first go to Austin, comment on all them. And so that's how I interact. And what comes out of those Replies is like people see replies, they see Neville Maduro, they click your profile, they go away. Then one time they see me again and they're like, oh, I see this guy all the time, maybe I'll follow him. So that is really helpful to grow on Twitter, I think. Think. And then posting every day teaches you what hits and what doesn't.
Manav [00:24:46]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:24:47]:
And sometimes it's random, sometimes it's purely luck. Like something you post like this is stupid. And then it like goes mega viral. So it's, it's really difficult to tell. But you start getting a sense of what is interesting to people. You start getting a little bit of.
Manav [00:24:59]:
Able to track like what was driving like the best quality traffic to your course. Were you able to figure?
Neville Medora [00:25:05]:
Really stupid hard, man. And dude, in 2025 alone it's got harder. All these companies like Ahrefs and stuff like that SEM Rust, they're just having a harder, hard time getting solid Data. There was iOS 14 update. That happened a long time ago. Google's been cracking down. Social networks don't share their that stuff. So it's really hard to tell duper.
Manav [00:25:22]:
Hard to tell especially with you because you have content on so many different like channels.
Neville Medora [00:25:27]:
Yeah. I will say one thing you could do is look at the analytics of where referring traffic comes from all the different social networks. So get this. So number one, direct. Number two, Google. So that's fine. Now what keywords and stuff, you have no idea anymore. Number three is going to be YouTube actually. So YouTube sends really high quality traffic.
Manav [00:25:46]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:25:46]:
Number four, I believe is Twitter. And then number five, get this is in the last couple months, chat GPT and chat GPT. And here's the thing, the time on page super long, like a minute 30, which is very long. And then also the conversion rate, super, super, super high. So it's sounding YouTube quality traffic from Chat GPT, which is kind of interesting.
Manav [00:26:06]:
I like about, for people like us who post a lot of stuff is I can go on ChatGPT and be like, tell me everything about Neville. And it does such a good job.
Neville Medora [00:26:14]:
Does a great job.
Manav [00:26:15]:
Such a good job. You'll tell me all your highlights, all the cool things you've done. And I'm like, oh my God, thank you for making my life easier.
Neville Medora [00:26:23]:
It does stuff that you couldn't do before. For example, how much does Elon Musk tweet a day? Like I used to have to go count that or something like that. Now I can just ask Grok or chatgpt. Grok is good at it. You say, how many times is this account? Tweeted it and it gives you a list. That's it. What was the general sentiment of every tweet? What generally, what was most? 70% of his tweets. It tells you, you could not get that stuff a year ago. It didn't exist.
Manav [00:26:44]:
Love Deep Seek. Have you used Deep Seat?
Neville Medora [00:26:46]:
I haven't used it too much. I've seen all the demos.
Manav [00:26:48]:
Yeah, I like Deep Seek because it explains the reasoning, like how he calculates everything. So basically it's like a blurred text where it will explain you how it's coming up with the text that you're asking it to. Which ChatGPT doesn't tell you how it's coming up. He's just using it nl like it's predicting the next word. But the Deep seq is actually like telling you how to do it. It's incredible.
Neville Medora [00:27:11]:
Yeah, I think the thing is, like, use one of these for months at a time. What I've noticed is this is technology in general. You always have these demos where you're like, holy, I got into this in 2013 with 3D printers. You're like, dude, you just build something out of thin air. Like, it just works. This has never been done in history. And you're like, everyone's going to have one of these. And then after using it for about two months, I was like, how much cheap plastic shit can I print out at my apartment? You just get tired of it. And I ended up using it just when people come over, what's that, a 30 printer? I'll print your bracelet or whatever. And so that, that ended up being the whole use case for it. And I was like, oh, this isn't like as revolutionary for consumers as I thought. However, it has taken over every architectural firm, every product design firm, every B2B manufacturing place has one and uses it all the time. So it's good to use these things for months at a time. I use Perplexity, the search engine. Remember, everyone's talking about that, like, this is going to kill Google. After two months, I switched back to Google as my default search engine and I actually never thought about it. We really undervalue Google and how good it is. Oh, everyone shits on Google and I'm just like, yeah, get rid of Google for two months and come back and tell me that you don't think Google is awesome.
Manav [00:28:21]:
The use has gone down, but I.
Neville Medora [00:28:22]:
Wouldn'T say it has not gone. It hasn't gone down. Also, people think like, Google is just search. Google is Your inbox. If you have a university in inbox, guess who managed it behind the scenes. Google. All your logins, APIs, Guess podcast studio. Guess what? It's hosted on Google. You're using Google all the time. People are like, oh, Google YouTube, which.
Manav [00:28:40]:
Is owned by Google.
Neville Medora [00:28:41]:
And then Google's like 10 boo links. But like, they also are. They have Gemini posting their own AI results, which are pretty good. They're not. Okay. They're not like as revolutionary as like Perplexity or something. But I will tell you, you don't need that for every single search. What you'll realize is like 40 to 60% of your search is just like, where's a restaurant? How do I get to there? And it's just maps and stuff like that. Or images, which all these other places don't do.
Manav [00:29:03]:
We know how Google Maps is, how much better it is than Apple Maps.
Neville Medora [00:29:06]:
Apple Maps is caught up. I love Apple Maps. I actually really like Apple Maps now. I think it's pretty good. It's caught up. It used to be shitty and now it's not.
Manav [00:29:13]:
Oh, really?
Neville Medora [00:29:14]:
Yeah, it's. Try it again.
Manav [00:29:15]:
Okay.
Neville Medora [00:29:15]:
You'd be surprised.
Manav [00:29:16]:
So there are some quotes that I kind of want to talk about because in your blog you wrote some of the. You have some like, incredible information. In swipefile.com people go to swipe file, swipe all.
Neville Medora [00:29:27]:
Com, check it out, sign up your email, start saving your own swipes. We got a bunch of new features coming out.
Manav [00:29:32]:
So you said, I don't know if you wrote this or someone else wrote this, but we can uncover this. So sometimes the best copy to sell a horse is horse for sale.
Neville Medora [00:29:41]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:29:45]:
So I think it's just dumb it down.
Neville Medora [00:29:48]:
When people land at your page, what happens is, and I've done this with hundreds and hundreds of companies. They're like, okay, someone's going to land on a page. What emotion do we want to convey? They get really serious, they start thinking about it, and then they ended up putting something like they're trying to. Let's say they're trying to sell a horse, for example. And they're just like, improve your world will be like their headline. Really? Stuff that's vague. And you're like, what in the hell are they selling on? And there's not even a picture of a horse. It says horses for sale, Bass Drop, Texas. And the picture of the horse, and it adds a cart button. That could be the whole thing. Like, you don't need necessarily to make some sort of like, big statement. So when People come to your page, do they instantly know what's for sale? If I'm like, pen for sale. You understand what I'm talking about, right? But if I try to make some clever pun and I'm like, right to your world. And then I don't put a picture of a pen and show a picture of a globe, you'd be like, what the hell are we talking about? So sometimes just clarity is more important than trying to be cluttered.
Manav [00:30:45]:
Yeah, that's a great point. It says, be interesting. Even if you have something interesting to say, your delivery can make people read or run.
Neville Medora [00:30:53]:
But it's boring. If it's boring and they don't want to read it, then what's the point? Yeah, how do you get to the meat quick? And I think actually with the shortification of videos, we've learned that the meat is good. You know how you watch? I watch some of these. My nephew will watch like these videos. It's like throwing darts through giant balloons. It'll be in a stadium and it's like these just like fun experiment things. It's like a 20 minute long video. And if you look on YouTube, like everyone just like fast forwards to the part where they throw the dart and then on the shorts they just show the dart throwing. Or Red Bull is really good at just showing their shorts where it's just like they showed the motorcycle jump. They don't show all the buildup to the motorcycle jump. So it's like gets the meat really quick. And I think copy should be the same way.
Manav [00:31:32]:
One thing I want to ask you, I'll say looking in, it looks like you're like a solopreneur. But how, how much do you delegate out?
Neville Medora [00:31:39]:
I have an assistant that helps me out that I've had for years. And then I have a lot of contractors. So we have writers that help with the copywriting course. I have developers. I have a copyright course in swipe file. I have a guy who does helps with SEO. That's not the main focus that we do anymore. And then I have an agency that I hire for video stuff. Yeah. And then I, I have a three. I have this whole setup at home, but I actually go to a studio. And so I hire out a studio, have a subscription with a studio to help me with video recording the actual videos. So I do delegate out quite a bit.
Manav [00:32:10]:
If you ever set up at home, why do you go to the studio?
Neville Medora [00:32:13]:
I thought that it would be better and faster and save me time to not have to go to a studio. I was incorrect about this. So I got the whole studio set up. I hired someone to do it. I did part of it myself. And it was really cool and it was really nice. But what happens is you got one camera, two cameras, three cameras, SD card running to a board, camera, monitor, light, sound, all that kind of stuff. Is the audio going right now? I don't know. Like, there's a guy, like, monitoring. And when you are the interviewer, also writing the questions, researching your topic, and then that camera's blinking. I'm like, let me check. And so it's really straight. There's still like a lot of crap going on that can go wrong. And so you need someone there to do it. So I would have to hire a producer to come to my house now. He comes an hour early, he sets up, we're chatting, we talk about it. The host gets there, comes to my house, offer them a drink, tour of the house, blah, blah, blah. And then they hang out, the producer hangs out. This is a six hour thing now. It's supposed to be one hour, and it's six hours. And so it actually did not save me time. It was. And it was. It was a lot more work. And I also have a wife, so it's. If there's six guys just milling around the house at all times, she's trying to work too, and sharing that space, and so that gets a little bit more complicated. So just let me just go to a studio. They have everything set up the way I want it. I pay a subscription, they change up the room just for me. They put all my props, I sit down, I plop down, bam. Ready to go. They know all the settings, they know all the editing things, and it's just much easier to do it.
Manav [00:33:33]:
I remember getting so much hate from my ex girlfriend because I had a softbox but in my living room, and she hated the aesthetic of it.
Neville Medora [00:33:41]:
I don't like clutter, and that creates a lot of clutter.
Manav [00:33:45]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:33:46]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:33:46]:
That's so interesting.
Neville Medora [00:33:47]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:33:48]:
Yeah. I think in Fight Club, they say the things you own end up owning you. Like, I think the less stuff you have, overall, that's. I think that's where the world is moving towards. Even this podcast studio is so automated. You just click one button. There's no SD card. Everything goes in the drive.
Neville Medora [00:34:02]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:34:03]:
Everything's going in the cloud, so it's great.
Neville Medora [00:34:06]:
Yeah. But I do outsource a lot of that stuff where it's just like these small things that I like messing with cameras and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not good at it.
Manav [00:34:14]:
Yeah.
Neville Medora [00:34:14]:
So I'm like, let's let someone else do it. And then I have a studio at home, but I set up a lot of this stuff and picked out a lot of the equipment, and it just never looks as good as when I go in the studio. Those guys know what to do. They're just. They're better than me at it. Yeah. So I'm just like, let's just go there. Yeah.
Manav [00:34:29]:
I want to. I want to know what. What keeps you excited right now because you've already done so much. Like, you. You have this incredible business that you've built, and what's the next stage? Like, are you. What's keeping you excited?
Neville Medora [00:34:40]:
Business wise or personal?
Manav [00:34:42]:
Personally, congratulations, by the way. I know you got married.
Neville Medora [00:34:45]:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Manav [00:34:46]:
But, yeah, both. Really?
Neville Medora [00:34:48]:
Yeah. So business wise, Swipe. I've always been excited by Swipe File and copyrighting course. I think we do really fun stuff in there all the time, so that is fun for me to do. I swear to God. I think this is what I always was, like, meant to do. I like to, like, just browse the Internet and collect things and, like, comments on things and roast my friends online. That's what I really like to do. If I had just, like 100 times more money, like, I would just do that. I would still do that, like, even on vacation or something like that. It doesn't feel like work to me to get on my phone and just, like, harass Sam or Noah or something online or collect and be like, ooh, that's pretty cool, and collect and put it in a folder and share it and talk about it. That doesn't seem like work. It just seems like my whole day is, like, dicking around on the Internet and I would probably continue to do that. I do think taking Swipe File more seriously as a business instead of just a site where I collect stuff to use for later has been pretty fun. And working and getting a little bit of a team around, it has been fun as well.
Manav [00:35:41]:
And how would that work? Would it be like a subscription service? It's like a. Like an inspiration board, right?
Neville Medora [00:35:47]:
It is.
Manav [00:35:48]:
But then it could be a great way to meet people, too, who think alike, who are thinking, like, in a similar way, like you.
Neville Medora [00:35:55]:
The current iteration of it is if I'm lacking ideas on a certain thing, go to Swipe File. Like, I'm writing email. Click on the email section. You'll see a bunch of stuff and be like, oh, shit, I never thought of it like that. What if I did like 12 reasons not to buy my product and I show a product and they go, okay, yeah, that's just really cool. And then they leave. Swipe file. That's actually the current goal for swipefile right now.
Manav [00:36:15]:
I actually know a guy who built something similar, but just for ads.
Neville Medora [00:36:19]:
Yeah, there's a couple of them.
Manav [00:36:21]:
Yeah, yeah, he built it just.
Neville Medora [00:36:22]:
What's it called?
Manav [00:36:23]:
It starts with an F. I forgot the name.
Neville Medora [00:36:25]:
There's one called Mobin, I believe that's for Marvin.
Manav [00:36:28]:
I use Marvin. Actually I pay for Marvin.
Neville Medora [00:36:30]:
Oh, really?
Manav [00:36:31]:
So because I'm building a mobile app in health and wellness space and Mobin is like great because it shows you all the paywalls. Like the whole user onboarding flow is great.
Neville Medora [00:36:40]:
Mobbit is good because it's specific. It's for apps. Yeah, it's specifically for apps. Swipe file is currently all over the map right now. So it's a little bit different. But what we are, we added some features. We can track what people really like and say what they save and stuff like that. And we were realizing it's more emails, ads, web pages, stuff like that.
Manav [00:36:59]:
I think emails would do really well.
Neville Medora [00:37:00]:
I think so too.
Manav [00:37:01]:
Maybe like the. The best or David only stuff.
Neville Medora [00:37:04]:
Yeah, really good emails.com was another one that did it and then it got acquired by like an email company and it's. I don't subscribe to it anymore. It's not as good. But I remember it being really good and it was just like about emails. It really should be called really good designed emails.com because it's more about here's like cool designed emails.
Manav [00:37:22]:
Oh, it was more about the design than the copy.
Neville Medora [00:37:25]:
Yeah, it was both. They go together. So it was something like that in the copy. Yeah. So something along those lines. Yeah. But it really is very helpful when we're doing client things. I could pull up different pricing things, different types of pages. So people like, what are some examples of sales pages that do well? And then on the spot it's hard to think of like specific companies. Instead I just go, let's take a look. So currently it's for that, but it's going to be much better. It'll actually start helping you create those things soon. So we've got some features in the works that like our template bank and everything.
Manav [00:37:56]:
So I listened to a lot of my first million and they have this. Sam is always promoting this copy that thing.
Neville Medora [00:38:01]:
Copy that. Yeah, yeah.
Manav [00:38:02]:
So he just says you just copy existing writing.
Neville Medora [00:38:05]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:38:06]:
So I wonder in your Course. What else is there?
Neville Medora [00:38:08]:
Yeah, he learned that from me. Yeah, it's called copyright, and I didn't invent it. It's just like a thing that's been around for a long time. We do have a module for that. I have a theory that after you copy three pieces of copy that you experienced diminishing returns.
Manav [00:38:22]:
Interesting.
Neville Medora [00:38:22]:
So let's say you copy Ogilvy's advertising for the first time and you're like, holy crap, he writes so simple. Or it's like these sentences are like a fifth grader wrote them. It's just so simple. Or the way that he injects humor or something like that. You learn that. Or the way he makes sure to capture attention with a cool image. Like something out of the ordinary, like a guy wearing an eye patch. You're like, I was wearing an eye patch. Like that kind of thing. And then by the second one, you learn some more. And then the third one, you learn more. But after that it starts to go down. So we have about a 10 core, a 10 sequence that we have people do. But by the third one, I think you've learned 90% of what you need to know. 80 or 90%. You physically write it and then post it. Yeah. And so everyone sees your work.
Manav [00:39:01]:
Yeah, that's okay. I'm going to be a customer. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited too, because I feel like I'm great at cold emailing. I've gotten, like, a lot of good people to respond, but. And that will help me become even a better writing even better cold emails.
Neville Medora [00:39:18]:
Yeah. And then also there are all these, like, Ogilvy was like, in the 80s when he died. Right. So he was like, 60s. 80s is prime. And now there's all these different formats like Twitter and stuff. So you're like, okay, David Ogley wouldn't still just be writing magazine ads. He would be on Twitter saying things like, what would he be like in the modern day? And that's what I think about, like, how do we utilize all these far more scalable, more trackable mediums like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. How do we do that kind of stuff? Stuff in the new age. So that's. What's. That's what SWIF File is based around, like, this new era of content, not.
Manav [00:39:50]:
Just the older asking it to write something in the tone of David Ogilvy.
Neville Medora [00:39:55]:
Yeah, I do it actually for myself. Yeah, I've done it with David. It works really well. Gary Halbert. Really well. I do it for myself for short clips. So Sometimes I have a concept I'm like, I want to explain, like being a triple threat. Here's the blog post about it. Can you make me a podcast script written in Neville Madora's voice? And it already ingests all my content and it does a really great job. It's phenomenal. It's so good.
Manav [00:40:14]:
You made a video on YouTube. It was again, the title is how to Scam People.
Neville Medora [00:40:19]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:40:20]:
And it was such a great title to get people's attention. And of course the videos, it was totally not about how to scam people. It was about the art of being persuasive. What was the. Like, how did you come up with that idea?
Neville Medora [00:40:32]:
It was about fake ass Internet gurus that take advantage of especially a lot of people in this spiritual world. Not to shit on that, but like a lot of them exist in that world and they basically like kind of like a, I don't know, this like fake guru and they take advantage of kind of just. I don't, I want to say dumb, but like gullible people. Yeah, they take advantage of gullible people. They say all these vague things. They promise like, you're just going to be so rich. I see it in like people of color things. It's like all people of color should be rich. Blah, blah, blah. You deserve this. I'm like, who the deserves anything? No, you don't. You don't deserve anything. No one deserves anything. You earn it. And so I see that. And it just, I really didn't like it and I didn't want to write an article about like gurus and stuff and necessarily name anyone. And so I took this humorous approach and it was actually a really mega viral blog post at the time that turned into a video. Yeah, it was like all the ways to secretly scam people. Now the point of the article was do the opposite to actually to actually make a good video business. So that was where that came from. But that was a really fun article to write. That was a cool article, right?
Manav [00:41:37]:
Yeah, that just was so outside the box. I was like, Neville is a comedic genius.
Neville Medora [00:41:42]:
Yeah, that was a fun one to write. I feel like a lot of videos like those are difficult to make. Like it takes a long time to make something like that.
Manav [00:41:49]:
Yeah. How did you make those stick figure things?
Neville Medora [00:41:51]:
Drew them. I just drew them on an iPad, take them into Photoshop, edit out the background, put them on. It's this really manual stupid ass process. By the way, I know we're talking about AI and AI makes images and all that kind of stuff. I went on a hardcore kick with AI images and I realized it would take me more time to perfect the AI images to get what I want. And I always. It always, like, never ended up exactly what I wanted when I was trying to do drawings. And I've actually moved back to manual drawings on my iPad. Yeah. And now there's also tools, like, now I don't have to go into Photoshop. Canva Google images, like, are so good that I don't need, like the background editing stuff for Photoshop anymore, so it's easier for me to make. But I've gone back to like manual drawings. And there's something like, a little bit different. When everyone's doing AI drawings, you're manual. Like, it looks a little bit different, it feels different. I could also get exactly what's in my brain out onto the page and I'm like, that's what I want. Exactly what I want. That's specifically what I wanted. Whereas with AI, I've had trouble really narrowing it down. However, whenever you podcast show notes, like after this show, put the show notes, maybe you take notes or AI takes notes. We've been using AI to generate images for every single line of show notes, and we put that out as like a whole story. So we'll make 45 custom images, which I would never be able to have the time to draw for freaking show notes too. It's like, how important are these? Not that important. But with AI now, we could just feed them in and do it all and make custom graphics. And people love it. So I use AI for that stuff. But then for like my own content creation, I've gone back to like, literally, like iPad. Yeah. Like just drawing.
Manav [00:43:20]:
Yeah. I think it's like sometimes if photos are too perfect, in my opinion. And you can tell. You can tell when people post on Instagram and it's their skin is. So you can just tell right away.
Neville Medora [00:43:30]:
It's just like it depends what you want to use it for. For me, if I want to draw a goofy drawing exactly. From my head onto paper, maybe just drawing is better. There's a world for both. It's not like only AI, only drawing. Then if I want to do show notes, I'm not going to draw that shit. I don't have time for that. I can't think of that many things. So AI is great at that. So I just think it's like a divide and conquer type of thing. Use the AI where necessary.
Manav [00:43:49]:
Interesting. And what tool do you use for the AI image?
Neville Medora [00:43:52]:
Generally? ChatGPT. And Grok. That's it. Because I pay for Twitter, so I.
Manav [00:43:55]:
Have not used grog.
Neville Medora [00:43:56]:
So it's very good. It's very good.
Manav [00:43:58]:
So we're at the last segment of the podcast. I do want to ask you some rapid fire on the quick questions. So let's do it.
Neville Medora [00:44:05]:
Let's do it.
Manav [00:44:06]:
One second. Okay. What is the book you've given to most as a gift or why? And what are one to three books that completely reshape the way you think?
Neville Medora [00:44:15]:
Yeah. Copywriting books is the Halbert, the Gary Halbert letters. Boron. So Boron letters, you get down for free out highlights. Just printing them out and re reading them the way he intended. Number two, David Ogilvie's book, Ogilvy on advertising. Amazing. The original direct response copywriter. All about testing. He would sell like how to change the how everyone in the UK buys rice. Yeah, how do you do that kind of stuff? And then number three would be getting everything you can out of all you've got by Jay Abraham. Those are my business books. If you're talking about fiction books, I'd say number one book, every single person I've ever read. Leave fiction book. Read it before you go to bed at night. Project Hail Mary Project by Andy Weir, the guy who wrote the Martian. Also the Martian.
Manav [00:44:52]:
Sci fi book.
Neville Medora [00:44:53]:
It's a sci fi book, but dude, people that don't like sci fi love this book. It is so well written. And Andy Weir like, he writes like a goofy like 13 year old or something. He like writes at a very low level in a way, but talks about complex engineering problems but makes it fun. I remember like learning engineering and chemistry from his books in a fiction book by accident. And I was like, that's genius. That's good writing. So I really love those books, the Martian and Project Hillary.
Manav [00:45:19]:
I'm gonna buy those. What purchase of a hundred dollars or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Neville Medora [00:45:25]:
Shaving mirror. I like line up my beer in the mirror and it's like if you have a mirror, it like fogs up. And so you could buy these ones, type in shaving mirror or whatever, like fogless. It's just like a. It's not a mirror. It's a piece of plastic that's really.
Manav [00:45:37]:
Mirrory but doesn't fog.
Neville Medora [00:45:39]:
It doesn't fog. So if you just put it under hot water for a second, it doesn't fog. So I just like throw some water at it. It's just up on the glass and I shave in that and it Makes my life a lot better. The other thing is, and this is another shower related thing, buy a duplicate set of floss. Floss, a toothpaste and a toothbrush and put it in your shower. Brushing your teeth in the shower, very underrated. Do it.
Manav [00:46:01]:
I do that. It's so much better normally.
Neville Medora [00:46:04]:
But here's the thing, I used to like take the toothbrush from my counter, then taking the shower, then put it back.
Manav [00:46:08]:
Have a separate.
Neville Medora [00:46:09]:
Yeah, have a separate one in a little basket on the side or something. Just. It saves so much time and it's so much better.
Manav [00:46:14]:
Yeah, I follow that.
Neville Medora [00:46:15]:
Yeah.
Manav [00:46:16]:
Have things changed after your marriage or you've been the same?
Neville Medora [00:46:19]:
We lived together before, so it hasn't changed all that much. But yeah, always have a buddy. That's cool. Yeah. So I do think one thing I've noticed with marriage is like you always have like your best friend with you at all times. So it's easy to just stay in and do less stuff. Whereas when you're single, you're like, I got to go out, I got to go out. I don't want to just stay at home alone. I got, I have friends over. So you actually end up planning more social engagements. So we've made a habit of regularly planning things out. Also, as people have kids, time gets so compressed, it's very difficult to hang out. So I'll do things like my friends with kids, instead of making them pack up the car and stuff and come to me, I'll go to them, be like, I'm bringing a Chipotle to eat. I'm gonna come over for an hour and a half. We'll eat while you're eating and I'll leave. Don't host, don't open a bottle of wine, don't do any of this. Just come over, hang out, leave. Also a lot of pop ins, a lot of casual hanging out. You have to schedule that stuff in. Whereas when you're younger, it happens a little bit more organically. So you have to be aware of that.
Manav [00:47:10]:
Interesting. What is a failure? Apparent failure set you off, a later success. It felt like a failure in the moment. But looking back, you were like, I'm glad I went through that.
Neville Medora [00:47:19]:
I think like House of Rave, being impacted by Amazon and you just, it's just like, damn, it's getting harder and harder to do. This is. And there's times when you're like, what am I going to do? Right. This is my main source of income as some other small ones. But like, if this is going to go away like what happens? That's scary because you don't know, you're like, this is what I'm good at. But then like this thing I'm not good at, it is like going to go away. And so I also think the similar thing is happening with a lot of writers, people who are writing blog posts and like short emails for companies. Now a company could just say, hey chatgpt, write me 50 different versions of this in one second. You get really good stuff and it gets better all the time. So I think a lot of people are saying wait, if this is just going to go away, what do I do? And so you have to start thinking, huh, how can I utilize this to do what I'm doing? But even better. And so I think a lot of the AI stuff, while it's taken away some of the lower end consulting that I used to do, which is like just free money, like really easy, it's also enabled like I'm able to rapidly generate images, I'm able to take stuff and make it into templates rapidly. I'm able to count things and analyze data a way I never was and make content out of it. So it's like how do I take the cons and make them make these things into the goods? So AI taketh away if, but also giveth in a way. And so you have to be on top of that and every generation experiences this. You'd be like, oh, I'm making horses. And now this new Fangle car is coming out. What am I going to do? It's turns out all the biggest companies were like horse saddle makers and then they started making car seats for cars out of luck other. So it's like how do you take your skills and use the technology to amplify them in a way that's bigger than before? So you think that something's actually destroying your career and then you're like, wait, if I zoom out. I think it's just getting started because of this new technology.
Manav [00:48:57]:
That's incredible. What is the one of the best, most worthwhile investments you've ever made. It could be investment of money, time, energy, hiring.
Neville Medora [00:49:07]:
So your year that is is pretty cool if you have things for them to do. Because I've had a personal assistant. I had two personal assistants in Austin where they were like in person and I don't know what the hell they do. I don't know what they did all the time. I it almost like more stressful trying to find random for them to do than like and I was just like, I Just I don't pick up that much dry cleaning or have that much stuff to do in person. I don't need that. So I hired an EA that wasn't just just doing, like, small tasks, but rather could actually put up blog posts and was like, relatively technically proficient. I think that's very helpful. And then also just buying certain pieces of software and buy. Buying books. Spending unlimited amount of money on my learning. Like a book 18 it. Just buy it. Don't. Like, I didn't even pay attention. I know I could get it from the library for free, but I want it now. Like that kind of thing. Yeah, all the time. I don't listen to as many audio books to do podcasts take. Listening to podcasts and taking notes is a really big life hack too.
Manav [00:50:00]:
I found this new app. You can turn a book into a podcast. And basically it. So it feels like a conversation.
Neville Medora [00:50:06]:
Google Notebook LLM will do that with your content. Content.
Manav [00:50:08]:
Really?
Neville Medora [00:50:09]:
Yeah. I've demoed it and then. And never end up, like, using it. I don't do that, but I do chat with chat GPT on my AirPods. That's pretty cool. So you could. If you're coming over here, you're just taking a walk. You'll be like, research and Elmer, what are some questions I can ask him? It'll read it. Then you say, no. Find some more interesting questions. No one's ever asked him about xyz. So you can do stuff like that. But yeah, constantly being like, man. Also another weird one is like, just be on X and like, keeping up to date with news. It's addictive. And then you also see, like, a totally different perspective than what you like this whole narrative, mainstream media, whatever. But it's like, you're also like, how is this so different than that? What's the base source of truth? I don't care which way it leans. I'm just like, what is like, the truth? Like, what is actually happening? And then we start to see that. You start going, huh, that's very different from what this says. And then, like, it starts to make you think about different things differently.
Manav [00:50:59]:
Interesting.
Neville Medora [00:51:00]:
I think you could also get like a fire hose directly from the horse's mouth. Mouth. Instead of reading the news about what some guy says, you see it directly what he said. And you go, that's not so bad.
Manav [00:51:09]:
Yeah, I think Elon changed that. Going direct to public. And now so many people are doing that.
Neville Medora [00:51:15]:
Yeah. Why don't you listen to news about what someone said to write a press release.
Manav [00:51:18]:
They can just Tweet.
Neville Medora [00:51:19]:
Yeah. I also think like exposing like I thought I never knew like people like Kanye west is crazy or anything like that. And Lex Friedman had him on his podcast and I listened to that and I was just like, like, oh man, this guy's a little bit unwell. Like, like he's a great artist, but he's like a crazy person. And I never thought about that cuz no one would let him speak. And he spoke and people like you platformed a crazy guy. And I'm like, but I found out he was crazy by listening to him because I could make up my own mind about that. So I think like just being on the Internet, being curious and connecting with people, following some big people in the world and what they're doing. And so when people say billionaires are evil or war, blah, blah, what if you just follow them and see what they say, then you like, maybe my mind has changed. Yeah.
Manav [00:51:59]:
Last question. In the last five years, what belief, behavior, habit has most improved your life? It could be like you're in good shape. It could be a physical habit.
Neville Medora [00:52:08]:
Yeah. Consistency, Consistency of doing anything. So if you eat well but like then it up on the weekends, then you just stay in the same place. But consistency. And I constantly struggle with it. It's hard. I'm actually about to post on Twitter that I'm like, I want to get down to my goal weight, 165 before the summer. And I post online. So I've been good about posting my goals online and I don't know if anyone pays attention, but the thing is I think they do and therefore I feel shamed into doing it. I think shame and fear is a really strong motivating factor to do something. So I know I'm going to a wedding in May in Huntington beach and I have to take my shirt off. We're going to be at the beach all the time. And I'm like, I want to be in shape for that. And that fear of looking like a big doughy fat ass makes me take my workouts and eating more skin seriously. Yeah. So I, I think consistency and having a consequence for it. If there's no consequence, then what's the point of doing the goal? So the consequence can be shame or you have to donate money to something you don't like or what.
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