#19 - The Kopywriting Formula: Neville Medhora on AI, AIDA, and Beyond

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What's going on? Uploading. Welcome to today's episode. Today we're talking with Neville Midora. He is one of the Internet copywriting ogs. Neville has been writing for over 20 years, and he's also been an advisor for companies like Appsumo and the and the hustle when it comes to their content strategies. He's also the owner of copywritingCourse.com, which is essentially a place to learn copy skills, improve your messaging, and get live feedback. So today we're gonna dive into all things copywriting AI, how these worlds meet. And Neville, you have a lot of experience Neville, you have a lot of experience in copywriting.

So I'll let you kick us off and tell us a little bit more about your background, if that covers it.

Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me on. The background of me quickly is in high school, I started a small company called House of Rave. It was an e commerce business. It was drop shipping. Now it's very common. Back then, it was like, I was a genius to think of that. And I started writing emails to all the customers of that company, and they never made any money.

And then I discovered a thing called copywriting. All my marketing friends were like, you gotta learn copywriting. And I was like, that was copywriting? I thought it was like lawyer stuff. And so I learned copywriting. I was like, oh, okay. The way you sell something can have a big output or a big outcome difference whenever you sell something properly versus improperly. And so I stayed up to like six in the morning every day learning copywriting. And the first email I sent out to House of Rave customers, I made a $10,000 day profit, which was like very big for me at the time.

And I was like, holy crap, what just happened? I spent all this time writing these emails and like, they were just like, pictures and buy now buttons. That's essentially what it was with a short description, with the copyright email, I was telling people why they should buy different use cases for the products, how other customers are using it, different reviews, all that kind of stuff. I was using the Ada formula to write these emails, and it had a really big impact. Meanwhile, one of our mutual friends, Noah Kagan, he was building appsumo off of my couch at the time in Austin, and he was sending out emails as well. And I was like, dude, let me rewrite one of your emails, like I'm doing for my own company. And it totally took off, and I became a part of that company as well. And copywriting became a big thing. And people were reading these appsumo emails and my company emails and being like, why do I want to read these emails? Like, you're trying to sell me something.

I know you are. Why do I keep reading these? And I was like, well, it's because this thing called copyrighted. And I was like, okay. After the 50th time trying to repeat this, I was like, perhaps we should, like, record this and sell it as some sort of product. And so we did that, and that's how copywriting course was born and eventually became its own company. And that leaves me here today. So I've been the advisor for a ton of the voices you see on the Internet, such as Appsumo, as the inspiration for the hustle. I've helped Cody Sanchez's team kind of revamp some of their copy.

I'm doing an upcoming project with daily Stoic to train their writers, stuff like that. And so I'm kind of like the back end voice for a lot of these companies to make their writers write much better. Oftentimes, what happened is the founder of a company will write really well, and they hire a bunch of writers, and it's a bit difficult to train people to write like you. It's harder than expected. So I've done that. I've also been involved in a lot of AI stuff. I've invested in a company called Copy AI. Early on, I was just like, I don't know how to build AI myself, so I want to be involved in this.

And so I've been pretty involved in AI for, like, five years. And so that's where we meet right here. Cast magic is intersection of, like, writing and AI. And I like standing there as well.

That's. I mean, copy is so powerful, and especially when you can, like, see it in sales and happen in real time in those emails you mentioned. But I'm curious, how are you able to, okay, you're writing the copy for the rave ecommerce business you have. You take Noah's computer, and you say, let me just do it for you. And you're somehow able to also do it in a way that, like, resonates, even though the audience might be different. So how do you see it for an organization versus, you know, a personal brand? You know, a personal brand that's selling a course they talk like, how they talk. But then how do you find a company's voice into being able to send an email that still feels relatable even though it comes from an organization?

I basically look at the founder, who's kind of the face of the company. So I look at Noah, his goofy ass, and I go, he's goofy. Let's write some goofy copy. So, like, with Appsumo, for example, just because we all know that example, the original appsumo copy was very, like, brute. It was written ten years ago or something like that. So it was crazy back then. But the point was, it was like this big fat sumo guy that would kidnap software founders and make them give them a deal. That was like the joke, right? It was just like, a dumb joke.

And so we would write stuff like that, and people would be like, if you showed most people that in companies, they'd be like, there's no way this would work, or there's no way we could do this. And for a lot larger company, you're right. Like, I probably wouldn't write like that if it was for a bank. I'm not going to, like, make up a sumo character that kidnaps a founder. That's insane. And so what I do is I look at the. I look at the founder, and I look at the customers, right? Are they all wearing suits? And they're all very tidy and wearing monocles. Then I'm going to write like that, right? I'm going to emulate what they do.

I'm not going to, like, say that everyone's in suits and then, come on, wearing a clown suit, being like, yo, homies, what's up? Like, this is not going to work. It's going to backfire, right? And so what you want to do is maybe be, like, 20, 30% edgier than they think, right? You don't want to go a whole 180, because that's just going to backfire on you. And so that's generally how I find the tone of voice. And then the other thing is, what people don't realize in these large companies, they're like, we're doing b two b sales. We have to be kind of boring. We have to be very polite. Plane. I'm like, well, behind that b, two b sales, you're selling to, like, an individual person.

I'm selling to Blaine. I'm selling to Ramon. These are actual people that'll probably sit down, have a beer, uh, like to party every once in a while. Like to laugh. Right? It's still people. There's nothing really different about selling b, two c and b, two b. It's. It's very, very similar.

What makes the end person tick, right? Like, I think you got to know that. So kind of like looking at your rough customer avatar. I personally don't spend too much time doing it. Just kind of, like, roughly look at what's going on over there. And then the other thing is, people buy for a reason. And figuring out what that reason is is extremely important. Can I give you a quick example? Let's say I was brought in to sell Ford f 150 pickup trucks. Right? Now, I don't drive a truck.

I don't drive a Ford. I don't know what makes these things sell. I have no idea. But I know it's a really well selling truck. So what I would do is I would go to the local Ford dealership. I say, who's your top sales guy? Be like, I'm gonna give you $500 to just talk to you for 30 minutes. And I'll pay him $500. And I'll be like, sure, why not? Be like, what is the thing that really makes people's eyes pop whenever they.

You're trying to sell them a Ford truck? And he'll be like, well, sometimes I'll tell them about how much horsepower it has, and they're just kind of like, meh. So I'll write that down. I'll be like, okay, horsepower. No one gives a shit, right? It doesn't matter. It's just not making people, like, really interesting. But he says, if you this can tow seven horses and still do 85 mph on the freeway, and people go, whoa, I don't know if that's the case, but if that's the thing, I'm going to go, okay, okay. People's eyes light up when you say you could tow seven horses and go 85 mph. There's something about that that makes people go like, wow, that's a lot of power.

The other thing is, what if whenever you pull the tailgate down, it automatically folds back up and people go, holy crap. Wow, that's amazing. That's something I write down. So I'll talk to the best salesman out there and say, what are the main benefits of this? If I was trying to write for cast magic, I'd be like, what are the features that when people see it for the first time, they're really impressed by? And Blaine would tell me, oh, when they see that automatically, it writes tweets, LinkedIn posts, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, da da da da. That everyone's really impressed, and their eyes pop out of their head. They're like, holy crap, I want to buy this. And I go, that's the thing. So my job as a copywriter is to find that thing, and then, like, the way to write it is just kind of, like, loosely based on how the customers and the founder are.

And that's the whole. That's the basic simple of it. And from that, I could probably write a pretty good email for almost any company very quickly by just looking at the founder, looking at the customers, and then talking to the top salesman. Just that. That simple.

I absolutely love that. Because you're digging. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated. The information is already there. You just know how to get to the source of it as fast as possible. And it is not relying on, like, the ideal customer profile on market research or anything like that. All these things are assumptions when the information is right in front of you. I think Blaine and I were having a conversation recently where, like, cast magic really helps people save a bunch of time.

And, like, we keep hearing it over and over, but I was trying to, like, find this, like, bigger picture, but really, like, that's what people keep saying. That is the source of everything. And so, um, you know, we've ran surveys that have been way more powerful to us than, like, try and predict where's the market going? And try to dig into all of this research about RICP. And I think people often confuse, like, well, is your. Is your. Do you have a blind spot for who you wish your customer is versus, like, who they actually are?

Well, yeah, I mean, also, you could just take a spreadsheet of all your top customers that have been paying for the longest time and just be like, okay, where's, like, 80% of the revenue coming from? Like, with our copywriting company, people come for, like, freelancer. People want to be, like, a freelance copywriter, but 80% or more of our business comes from small businesses and medium sized businesses. So we're like, okay, that's who we're going to cater to the most. That's also who has the most money to spend on something like that. Also for yours, here's an interesting thought. What do you think of this? I'm just, I'm playing around with the theory, you know, like, as a writer, you're always like, thinking of, like, bits, I guess. People ask me about AI all the time because I run a writing company and they're like, has chat GPT impacted it? I'm like, well, yes and no. And here's the answer.

I think there's actually three levels of copywriting. There is like, let's call them low, medium and high, right? Low is like, let's say someone signs up to Castmagic and you're sending them their username, right? Your username is nevbedmail.com dot. That's it. Now that's just a template. It's pretty low on the spectrum, right? Anyone can do that. That doesn't require AI. That kind of stuff, AI can do really, really well, right? Send someone a confirmation email. 100% accuracy rate.

Medium level, I would say, is like someone's writing a newsletter for, let's say castmagic.com is sending out a newsletter and you want to write something interesting for the newsletter. Now, AI can generate ideas to write, but usually it's not like fully ready, right? Like it'll make stuff, but it's kind of like whatever, you know, so you have to modify it. So I'd say like a human is still involved. It's kind of like the AI comes up with it, the human modifies it, or the AI comes up with it and the human goes, that's not quite right, but what if we did this right? I'd say that's like medium level. It's like co human co AI. And then the high level stuff is like Mark Andreessen tweeting, or balaji Shrovasanan tree or Elon Musk tweeting. These are things like for high level people with high level access to everything that are very high functioning IQ people writing little snippets, taking all of their human experience and combining into this little tiny thing. I say that's really hard for AI to do right now.

Maybe in five years, maybe in ten years, I'm sure it'll be there, but right now it's essentially impossible for it to do right. So not impossible hard. So I think there are three levels and it's just like, which level are you helping people at? So I think cast magic is not saying we're going to completely just write all your stuff for you. I think it's in the mid level range where you're like, okay, we're going to come up with all the ideas. Like we're going to give you ten headlines out of those. Maybe one or two are really good to you. And then you could also, like, edit them in our software real quick. So I think that's, that's like a bit I'm working with.

I don't know where to go with it, but it's like, there's three levels of content. The. The low, the medium, and the high. We're not trying to replace the high. That's where I've come in. That's where, like, people sign up for copywriting. Course, that's where Neville comes in of like, okay, let's look at this in a broader picture. The medium level stuff, though.

Yes, we have seen a big impact that, like, we used to get like a doctor's office or something that will come there and they're like, we're going to send our secretaries and stuff to you so they can write really good emails for scheduling changes for guests. Now that's a GPT all the way. You don't need anyone else. Yeah. So that's a little thing I'm spitballing.

No, I think that's like, right on the money. And that's actually one of the reasons we wanted to talk with you. Right. Because I think one of the very interesting things of copy is that you, like, you can get an idea that might be like a really solid idea, but if it's not phrased the right way, if it's not communicated the right way, and say you tweet the same exact tweet in two different formats, one is going to go completely viral and one is going to go absolutely nowhere. So talking about the high level stuff, what is the characteristics? Is it for framework? Like, how do you build a hook? Like, how do you think about high writing, about copywriting to get to that high level, that high performing stuff?

Um, that's why it is so damn hard that there's not a lot of people that can communicate some of these larger scale ideas. I mean, but even, even people writing for 20 years, it's just like a, it feels like a comedian or something like that. You have to work on a bit for a very long time to figure out what makes sense. And so how do you do it? I think of it like this. The way I think about copywriting is I always think I'm a dumb guy, and the reason is I need everything broken down for me, very, very basic. It's like a pyramid of understanding. There's this base layer of understanding. A little bit higher, a little bit higher.

At the very top is that little tweet. Naval ravikant is a good example of this. He'll tweet some profound thing. That's a third of the text that a tweet takes. And you're just like, wow, so profound. Right? That's like a lot of stoics from back in the day. All this information just condensed in that little bitty spot. And I think that's what we're trying to do.

So, I mean, I'm trying to explain how to, how to do that. I'll come, I'll come back to it. I'll come back to it. I think I have a good analogy. I'm cooking in my head, though.

Yeah, for sure. I think also in the, in the second tier that you mentioned that Catholic falls into, I think we also see it as like, our goal and hopefully is that AI you can use as a sort of companion to go back and forth with for you to be able to get to that better and better version of yourself. Um, rather than it being like, the thing that just does it for you, because only you have the context and that's why, you know, that's why we bias, but we, like, cast magic because it has some sort of context of media that it's not just generating it out of thin air. And so our hope is you can continue working with it back and forth until you can get to that point. So there's definitely is an angle of, like, you just need to work with it.

Well, you know, it's a. I think for me, the angle that cast magic, for example, is, is good at. Is not like the AI stuff. I think that's like, it reminds me of the two thousands when, like, computers were becoming like the obvious answer. And then in 2008, like, the iPhone comes out and then everything, everyone's on the Internet all the time, right? There became no distinction between online and offline. There used to be people would like, sit down, start their computer, takes three minutes to boot up, log on, and then you're online and then someone calls you and knocks you offline. There was this difference between online and offline. And I think right now people are like, there's like human made and AI made.

That's, I mean, in my opinion, that's going to go away, right? We're not going to give a shit. At some point, if I read a news article and it's really good and tells me everything it needs, like, what do I care whether it's a human, like, like, person who's two years old right now when they grow up and they're 13, do you think they're going to care about this, like, AI versus human stuff? No, I think it's, it doesn't matter to them. I think there will be things that are like 100% human made versus 100% artificial, maybe. But, like, I think for the most part, for most content, people are just going to assume some AI was involved and it'll just be like, not a thing. Like, no one's going to care. Um, I would say for cast magic, the saving time thing is big. So I upload videos across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all of them, right? And it's hard as shit. I mean, it's, it's, it's really, really time consuming to, like, log into Facebook, upload a video, make a title, pick out all the tags, do all that kind of stuff.

Um, it's really even just uploading a single YouTube video, making the description telling where people where to go, writing the tap, the timestamps. Holy crap, that's like my most hated thing. It takes me like 2030 minutes watching at two or three x for a podcast interview. For me to make those timestamps, it takes forever. Whereas AI cast magic just does it in like an instant, which is really cool. So instead of not having any of those, it could at least have some time stamps that are pretty accurate. And as the models get better, it gets even more better. So I say the time saving aspect for cast magic is like the real genius of it.

The AI stuff, I think people are kind of like, yeah, it uses AI, but like, what?

Yeah, that's like table stakes. And technology gets commoditized. So, um, I definitely want to talk about, like, the, the TikTok uploading it, because copywriting is probably one of my biggest weaknesses, especially as, like, us English as a second language. But, you know, I started playing with short content, recent short form content recently, and, like, I'll upload the video that perform an angle that I really like into cast magic. And I just reread the transcript over and over to try and understand the DNA of content. A lot of people, you know, short form is so hot and everything, and everyone just thinks of the editor, the video. I'm like, every piece of asset and content at its DNA is text. And so this is something that a lot of people take for granted when creating short form.

So I'm curious, like, there's so, so much noise out there with, like, all you need is like a good hook and then people are in for the whole video. So how do you see copywriting, when it comes to scripting for video, specifically.

Short form, I sort of disagree with the whole you just need a good hook type thing. People always say that, and it reminds me of a certain thing people always just say with copywriting, it's like, the most popular articles used to see about copywriting, especially back in the day, were like, your headline, right? Spend all your time on your headline. It's like, yes, I do get it. Picking the correct way to go is important, but also the content's important, right? Like, mRBeast isn't just making, like, one good headline and then the rest of the video sucks ass, right? They're spend, they're doing a really good job on all of the above. So this, like, importance on, like, just finding the right hook. Spend 99% of your time on the right hook. I don't know that I've ever seen that. That's like 100% correct.

Cause usually you see a good video, um, it performs well, but you're like, it. It's a good video. It's a really good video. I think what people are thinking of when they say, find a good hook is like, what is the core that people care about on this? So for cast magic, like, it has AI integrated. Like, most people, most people that aren't, like, super techy don't care, right? They're just like, you want to make YouTube videos? We do all the bitch work for you really quick, right? We do the tags, we do this, we do this, and then we upload it to Twitter and LinkedIn and stuff all in one. You don't have to do any of that crap. You don't have to hire an assistant. So for most people, I think the core of it is, like, saving time, right? Do you want to spend the next three and a half hours uploading one short video that's going to get three views and waste all your time on it? Or would you rather have this software just do it all for you? Right? I think that's, like, the core of it.

So whenever I look at a video and whenever you do short form video, it's like, what is the core of that thing? Like, why should someone care, right? So if I'm talking about Warren Buffett, my clips guy will be like, you can become wealthy like Warren Buffett. And then, you know, that's like, a better angle than, like, look how Warren Buffett uses article seating, like some technical term. No one cares about that. So I think that's the main thing with short form just getting right to the core of what that is. That's why you see a lot of clickbaity titles and stuff for those.

Totally agree. So if we get to the other part, past the hook, like the body, I feel like a lot of the content that performs really well is content that just has a really good story in it. And that's something AI cannot extract from me, which is my story. If I just go to the coffee shop right now and I have a thought and something happens on the way, or I'm having a deep thought, that's my story. That's. Those are events that are happening in my life that AI just doesn't have the context on. How do you. What advice you have for people to extract those stories from them and write good, compelling stories that are authentic? Because whenever I try to write stories, I talk about I I I and, like, the audience saying, care if you're.

I I. You need to transform that story into a way that it relates to people. And even though it's your story, but it's not. I I. Yeah.

So there's. There's different types of content. There's long form and they're short form. So when you talk about extremely short form, which I think is what we're talking about over here, it's very simple. We can talk about both of those before and after. Before and after is a great framework. Just, you know how you see someone? Like, someone's fat and someone's skinny, and they're like, before and after they lost 50 pounds, you see it, and you're like, that transmitted a lot of information in that one thing. You don't even have to have text.

It's just like, a fat person. The same person that's skinny. Right? Even better if they have a tattoo or something. So you could tell that it's the same person. That is a transformation. So I think what people want to see is just like, I was poor, I did this, now I'm rich. Right, right. So they don't want to say, like, I'm rich.

Look how cool I am. They said, like, I used to be like, you, a broke ass mofo. And then, like, now I did this. Now I got. That's why all these get rich quick. Things are like, it's. It's a. It's a really good story.

It's like, I was broke and lazy. Then I did this one little thing. Now I got rich. That's a great story at its core, actually. Usually a scam, but it's a great story. And so I think, like, a before and after a transition, just like that. I think with a longer form story, you're. You have a protagonist, and then they, like, they go through like this that you see, like, the whole hero's journey and stuff.

You could tell a story like that, but for short form, it's just like, this room used to be really ugly. I put this wallpaper, and now it looks awesome. They want to see that transformation. So whenever you're doing a transformation, story is what you want to show, and it's usually, like, before and after. So for short form, I think it really is that simple. Like, before, I spent three and a half hours uploading each video and writing all the content for each video, and it was bad. Now with after cast magic, it takes me 1 minute, and it's done for me, and it's great, right? That's a before and after.

The reason I asked, neville, is because you. There's no shortage of ghost writers for Twitter nowadays. And, like, I just see it over and over, that first thing they do is they say, tell me your story. They write ten tweets of your life story. And then what? And, like, then where does it go? So I like how. How. The reason I'm asking this is because, is storytelling for everyone? Is storytelling not for everyone. How do you.

How do you hire a copywriter? Does it, like, do you have to know what you're gonna like, what channel you're gonna use them for? Basically just trying to tie into. How do you hire a copywriter for your socials?

The whole telling a story thing. Yes. A good story can really make it good. But a lot of the emails that you read, sometimes it's just like, oh, you bought chubby shorts? Here's 50% off. Use it. That works, right? I'm not talking about, like, long form storytelling over here. I'm saying, like, how do we get someone to buy, right? I'm a copywriter. My ultimate goal is sales.

I don't care if you read my copy. I don't. I don't. It doesn't matter. If I could just write, like, buy this now, I would do it. Right. So let's say cast magic was 99% off, and you're doing $0.01 for a lifetime deal. How hard do you think it would be to sell all the free customers on that? They'd be pretty.

It'd be pretty easy, right? You're just like, we're insane. We're doing 99% off. You get copyright, $1, and you get lifetime access for the. As long as the company lives. If you just sent that out one sentence, you would make sales. That's all I'm concerned about. I don't give a shit about telling this long story if I don't need to. Right now, if we're just selling cast magic as a normal tool at the normal price, I would probably have to tell them a little bit more information to get them on board to spend all that money every month.

My goal is to get sales. This whole just telling a story every single time, I don't know that I necessarily agree with it because I'm just looking at sales. It's just like I'm going from a to b, customer to sale. This telling a story thing, sometimes people get way too carried away with it. They're like, so back in the day, I was in the Amazon jungle, and they sit down and tell this long, warm story, and I don't know that you need to do that every single time. Sure, you can do it, but I think a lot of things, you just have to. It depends on the nature of the sale. For example, at sumo, we used to write really long emails and everything.

As time went on, the company got a lot bigger. Now there's like one sale going out per day. It's really hard to write a long story, spend all that time researching each software. So now a lot of the emails are like, here's what the software cast magic is for this and buy it at 90% off for lifetime deal. That's it. And it sells, right? There's no long story. There's actually not a lot of copywriting. So long as that deal is good enough, the goal is to get them to buy it, right? Just how much information do we need to show for people to buy this? And I think if you actually tell, like, a super long story, it might almost, like, backfire in a way.

People don't want to read all that sometimes. So it just. It just depends on the nature of the sale. But for something like cast magic, it's a piece of software. And my personal thing is like, show, don't tell. Do we really need to tell a story about the founders or anything like that? Or can I show a gif of cast magic making 70 different social posts in 1 second? Right. Is that what's going to get people to buy? Then I'm going to go with that. I don't.

I don't care if it's a story. So I know this, this is perpetrated online as, like, you probably see ads on it. I bet that's why, like, this becomes in the zeitgeist of, like, you have to tell a story every time. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see that as true as an actual copywriter working. I don't think we have to tell a story, Sean. We just show what the product does.

And if it. If it does what someone wants, then, like, they tend to buy it, right? It's sometimes just that simple.

And, Neville, I think that's super interesting because I think a lot of people might get caught up with, like you're saying with the storytelling side of things. When I think as a content creator, the reason you're telling stories is to build trust with an audience. But that might be a total. That might be, you might be playing a long term game there, right, where they're getting involved in your day to day story. They see what you're doing, and then when it's time to sell, you sell through copy and through being direct and all of that. But, like, sometimes I think it would be easy to think that everything's about storytelling, and then you're trying to tell a story to get conversion, and it's not converting, so they're almost like two different things happening side by side. Right?

Well, I think what's important with storytelling is to remember when storytelling was developed and why it was so powerful in humans back in the day. This is how we kept historical records. Actually, let's say, 1990, the way you told the story was like, you. You wrote something and then sent it out via, like, physical, newspaper, magazine, whatever, right? There was no Internet to just do it. Now storytelling could be, I post on Twitter every day. I'm telling my story over time. I'm following the cast Magic YouTube channel. I'm following the cast magic Instagram channel, whatever.

I'm telling my story over time. You could follow it. It used to be like, Mark Twain would go in the forest, write a book, and then, like, once it's done, it's done forever. You don't just get to update that book. And so you had to tell the story all at once. And so this profoundly changes how advertising works, right? You only got one chance to tell that story, so you have to be very aggressive about selling a product. Now, I get to talk to my customers every single day, right? Maybe multiple times a day on multiple mediums, across every single social platform. They might see me seven times in one day.

That's not the same thing. Like, storytelling takes place at a different pace. Remember movies? Movies used to be like, you introduce the bad guy, the good guy. You do a character of development. Da da da, the good guy wins in the end. And now you have things like Game of Thrones and Sopranos, where it's basically a movie dragged out over the course of 60 hours, right? There's like, 60 episodes, and each one's an hour long. There's so much more you can do with that form. So, similarly, we're thinking of, like, how do you tell a story in a movie? It's just like, well, in the age of social media, where everyone's always online, has access instantly, and spends 7 hours a day on their phone, it's different.

This is a different storytelling format. And so, like, when people say, like, you gotta tell a story, I'm like, do you? Every time, you know, every time in your 22nd clip, you gotta tell a whole entire story. I don't know. Sometimes you just show a piece of software working. People like, holy shit, that's cool. Let's. Let's do it. Right.

Like, when chat. When chat GPT came out, was there a story behind it? I don't know. People were just like, it writes emails for you right away. You can talk to it and people use it. There's no story involved. I don't think it was like, this thought out, like, storytelling thing. It was just like, here's a cool ass piece of software. That's the whole story.

I love that. Um, Neville, one thing I wanted to talk about with you is, uh, you talk a lot about the aid, a framework, the Ada framework. Could you tell us a little bit about what that is and how it can apply to people who are trying to write better copy?

I talk about this all of the time. It's an existing framework. It means attention, interest, desire, action. Aida. And the cool thing is, it used to be, like, a brainstorming activity before chat GBT, where you just have a blank page and you say, how do I sell cast magic? How do I sell this mug? I don't know. So it's very difficult to start with a blank page, but if you start out with Aida, you just grab their attention, grab their interest, make them desire the product, and then get them to take an action. So if you just fill those out, you'll start off having, like, kind of a psychologically sound way to sell a product. So if I'm trying to sell this mug, I would start with maybe the action.

I would start backwards. I'd be like, uh, go to drippy pots.com and buy this mug. And then I would fill in some stuff like, what's the action here? Uh, the attention for this would be like, there's a famous artist out of San Diego that makes these mugs out of porcelain. Each one takes like 30 minutes to make. It's pretty cool. It's a collector's piece. And there's like about 1000 collectors in the world that collect these types of mugs. That's the attention part.

It might get some people's attention, it might not get other people's attention. Then I tell you interesting facts about it. It's actually made by this artist, Michael. I'm just making up a name. It takes 30 minutes per thing. And like I said, these are made out of non stick ceramic something I'm giving things. So if you want to collect this, like, ultra desirable collectors pot, sometimes these mugs go for $70. Sometimes they go for $1,000.

Then you should buy one right now. So that's the desire part I'm making. You desire it. And so I just filled out this, like, reason to buy this mug, other than, like, buy it, right? And I also made the price go up, like I said, seventy dollars to one thousand dollars. So instead of you thinking that this mug is $10, you're thinking, okay, it's minimum $70. It might be even $1,000. I'll pay $200 for it. So that framework really, really, really helps you at least weave a proper argument for people to do something.

This could also apply to making kids make their bed, right? Instead of being like, make your bed. That's not a great argument, right? If a kid's like, why? It's like, valid question. Why? Well, why indeed? You're going to sleep in it the next day. But if you tell the kid, Aida, it's just like, hey, do you want to grow up to be a really responsible, successful adult? And they'll be like, yes. It's like, well, did you know that if you make your bed in the morning, you're more likely to experience a small win and then do bigger wins each day? You're also really likely to make mom and dad really happy. You're also really likely to learn discipline and become a successful adult later. And people will look up to you. It's like, would you like to become that person? And they'll be like, yes.

You're like, okay, so right in the morning, at least just pull your covers over your pillows. That's all you got to do. That's a way to convince a kid to do the Ada formula, right. Maybe that argument won't work every time, but it's better than just saying, make your bet that that's just not a good argument. And so using the Ada form is just a way to at least get, um, a properly done argument for whatever you're selling, whether it be an idea, whether it be a product, that's, that's what the ADA is. And it's extremely powerful. People try to do all sorts of variations, but it's basically built off of that same framework, same attention, interest, desire, action. Simple.

What I, what I love about the way you position it is that copywriting is about. I mean, so much of this is communication. Like, I. This is such a good skill to have. Like, it helps in every single area of your life. Like, I'm just listening to you and it's just like, even communication skills, I like the way that you frame it, which is that copywriting is about sending information from one brain to another. Can you talk about, like, what that really means at the core?

Yeah. And this is when copywriting course was spelled with ks. Now we have like, copywritingcourse.com, comma, the c domain. But I always loved the little bit I gave when it was like, copywriting course with ks, I'm like, copywriting with the c indicates that it's just text, right? It's just like text on a page. But there's so much more than that. So let's say I show my text to someone in Africa who doesn't speak, speak English, they won't know what I'm talking about. But if I show them a picture of an elephant, they'll go, yeah, an elephant, I get it. There's no words, there's no copy at all.

I just show them an image. What that means is humans can communicate through images. We can communicate through little hand gestures. I'm smiling, you know, I'm happy, I'm sad. You know I'm sad, right? So there's a lot of ways to communicate. So with copywriting, I always told people, with ks, I always said it's about communication from one brain to another brain or one brain to a million brains. That's what it's about. So whether it's text, whether it's image, whether it's video, whether it's some VR experience, I don't care.

So long as we transmit that information, I am happy. That's what copywriting with a k was. That's, that's what I always told everyone, and I sincerely believe that. So I've always told, Long told, and in my course, I always tell people, I'm like, you gotta be able to learn to make images, preferably also video. If you're a copywriter that could just write words, that's. That is powerful. But if you could also generate your own custom images and thanks to AI and stuff, it's a lot easier. And then if you also put all those thoughts into videos and make it compelling, you could probably get in front of a lot more people.

All the top social media platforms right now, mainly they focus on video. And the reason is we learn through video, right? I'm looking at you guys through images and audio. That's video. We're having a video conversation right now in person. When I'm looking around, I'm seeing video. I'm seeing 30 frames per second video come into my eyes and ears. And so that's how we learn. And so whenever people just say, like, the pen is mightier than the sword, I'm like, the cell phone camera is probably mightier than that, right? How do I get information from here to there? And that's all I'm concerned about.

And whatever tools that come out, I'm willing to use them. So copywriting is not just like putting pen to paper all the time. And yes, there's, like, scripts behind certain things, but also it's like, let's use any tool available to us to transmit information from one brain to another. That's what. That's what I think. Copyright, is that the essence of copywriting?

Yeah, and I think that's such a great insight. And this is something Ramona and I actually talk about a lot. It's like, text is, you know, the pillar, the foundation of all these different mediums. Because, like, you've got to start from somewhere, but, like, how many times will you see something on social media that goes viral? Which is like a screenshot of a tweet, right? Which is, it's like a picture of text or an image with text over it, or a video or like an audiogram with just, like, you know, the audio and being able to read it. So all of these are just different ways to communicate an idea from one brain to another. So I think thinking about copywriting in that lens is super powerful. Neville, I wanted to ask you about, because you've got the course, you work with so many different people who are trying to improve in copyright. What are the number one things that you would say you typically see that people are, like, bad at, or, like, like, what do most people who come to you to, like, learn copywriting? Like, what are they really bad at? And what are the first things that, you know, you help them improve to.

Become a better copywriter too much stuff. They're long winded, right? They're telling that. I think a lot of people, like you said before, remote, were just, like, talking about stories, and they tell these long ass winding stories, which are very difficult to read in text. Maybe saying it in person, you could get away with the long story. But instead of, like, you know, here's Mario. He saves the princess. They go, here's Mario. But also, when he was two, he actually had this weird experience that made him did.

And then Bud, by the way, and then here's something about world economics. And then they get to, like, saving the princess later. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm just lost. And what happens is I'm being paid to read that copy, and I don't know what you're talking about. Most normal people are just like, skip, this is. This is too long. This is dumb. So they just stop reading.

And I think people are long winded and they're not to the point. So they think that they're supposed to tell this long, like. Like, write a novel. I think that's where a lot of the information comes from. It's like they analyze the classics. And here's how Mark Twain did it. I'm like, I get it, and that's cool for a novel, but we're not trying to tell the novel. We're writing a short story.

Selling makeup. You know, this is a little bit different. There's a slight difference over here. So I think being long winded is a big mistake that people make, and they forget that the goal of this copy is not to get you to read a long ass piece of copy. The goal is to make a sale. I would say people don't work backwards. I say this on our office hours, like, every single time. Let's work this problem backwards.

What are you trying to do on this webpage? What are you trying to do on this email? And they'll always be like, uh, I'm trying to do this, this, this. I go, nope, one. You get one. What's one thing you want this email to do? And they'll think, and they'll go, I want them to call me and set up a demo. I'm like, okay, that's the first thing we're going to write at the end of the email. Before we write anything in this email, I don't care what the story is. I don't care what we're selling. What are we getting them to do? So at the end, I say, schedule a demo here then once we have that, it's like, what's the most efficient way to get to that action? And that's the biggest thing.

People, people write all this stuff and kind of forget that at the end, we're just trying to get this one thing. So sometimes I'm like, well, what's the fastest way to get people to do a demo? And they'll just say, like, oh, just showing that the software does this XYz thing. I'm like, can we just show a gif and say, set up a demo? Would that work? Then what do we need to write all this other stuff for? So that's one of the main things. They think that they're supposed to write this, like, clever copy. Um, I'll tell you a quick story with appsumo where there's so many people, so many deals starting to come through, I had to hire a bunch of writers, and the number one thing is they would look at all the old copy and see all these, like, funny jokes and stuff like that. So they thought their job was to be funny, and I'd have to stop every single one of them and be like, what are you doing? What is, what are all these jokes? And they'll spend, like, three paragraphs, like, setting up a joke, making jokes. I'm like, I don't know what's being sold over here? And they're like, well, I was trying to be funny. I'm like, who cares if you're funny? We're trying to make sales, right? Funny is like a little bonus that's a sprinkle on top.

And then also, not all of these are very funny. Sometimes they're just informative. Right? Your job is to get sales and be educational. Being funny is like a sprinkle on top. Like, we could add some funniness in there. But they were like, their whole goal was, like, to, like, make people laugh, and it just fell flat. So it's just like, what is the end goal of this piece of copy, and what's the most efficient way to get there? I'd say that's probably the, the number one thing I could suggest to people. And it's the thing I see happening the most wrong in people's copy.

At first, I think, speaking for myself, it's like a reminder to always ask the dumb question, like, you were asking about, like, the, why? Why are you even trying to do this? And even for me, like, I'm, I'm unraveling what even copywriting means. As we're getting towards the end of this episode. I'm like, reminder. Always ask a dumb question. Like, I. I've learned. I've learned copy the definition of copywriting in a new meaning. Listening to how you talk about it, that should have started there and asked, what even is copywriting?

How do.

How does Neville see copywriting? Because I was not expecting it to see it as an image. Right? Like, even this conversation, we're trying to communicate for the audience to learn something and take something away. If you boil it down to its essence, there's one message that we're trying to deliver here. And so that's been a huge learning for me in this conversation.

Well, I could probably boil it down, I think. I didn't answer this question before I came up with an answer. Reduce brain cycles into three words. If you reduce the amount of brain cycles it takes for people to understand something. For example, let's take a. Your guys are technical guys. Computer analogy. Um, whenever you have a computer processor, it takes a bunch of cycles to.

To go through something. How can we reduce the amount of cycles before comprehension happens? Right? And I think copywriting is trying to reduce the amount of things. So whenever someone sees a webpage, what I do is I first, like, look at that webpage. Like, I call it my caveman voice. I just, like, blur. I don't give a shit. I'm, like, doing something else. I'm on my phone, and I just look through it, and I'm like, dumb.

I don't get it. I don't get it. But if I look at it and instantly understand, I'm like, okay, yeah, I got it. It passed, right? So how can we at just one quick, like, I close my eyes, open them for second, close them again. How can I understand what's going on there? Right? So sometimes, just, like, we. We write all your social tweets for you. Sign up. If I just see that, I'm like, yeah, I got it.

Like, I. I mean, I understand it. A lot of web pages, I have to really decipher what. What to do. You get, like, clients that do web three stuff, and it's like blockchain interference, deregulation. Da da da da. And you're just like, but what does this mean together? Like, I have to, like, think of, okay, what does decentralization mean? Now you're adding another buzzword on. It's like, decentralized, freedom based.

You're just like. It's like, buzzword times buzzword times buzzword. It just makes it very hard for my brain. I have to, like, understand all these different concepts. Instead, you're just like, you know, send money with zero fee. Okay, like, I pretty much get that. So I think a lot of times it's just like, how can you act really dumb and still understand something? And I think of myself as a really dumb guy. Like, I need the basics.

And if I just, like, look at it really quick and I don't get it, you failed. So how can we just, I don't even want to say dumb it down because actually, like, explaining something simply is very hard. It's the opposite of what people think. It's not dumbing it down, it's actually smart people explain things very easily. You listen to anyone really, really genuinely smart that can talk to the public. And it takes a lot of intelligence to make something simple. And so I use my caveman voice to do that and reduce the amount of brain cycles I see for everything. Reduce the amount of brain cycles for an email, reduce the amount of brain cycles for a tweet, for sales page, insert whatever piece of copywriting you do.

That's, that's what I do every single time.

Yeah, and you can show and don't tell. Like, you can go on Appsumo, you see the discount you're getting on the software, you instantly get it. Like, here, I can get all of these discounts. You don't need to read a whole thing on, like, why they're doing deals and what it is all about and this, you know, community thing, so.

And they also show the TLDR over there, which is kind of cool. It's like, who is this for? People who upload YouTube videos, people who upgrade Instagram videos. You're like, that's me. Big, big deal off. It saves me a bunch of time. Done. Like, I'm going to buy it, right? If that, if that price is cheap enough for me to easily afford and it's lifetime deal, it's a pretty simple proposition, right? So a bad writer would like, write a whole story about it, about their personal experience, which it could be fine, but do you need that much? So good thing to think about each time.

100%. Um, Neville, this has been an awesome conversation. I feel like it's really made us distill down how we think about copywriting. And I know everyone who's listening, um, you know, spends a lot of time on their business, communicating. And so this is going to be a super valuable resource for all of them, for anyone who's listening and wants to follow along. Learn more, learn more about copywriting from you. Where do we connect with you? Where do we find you? Why don't you just shout out, um, you know, your, your business, your socials. Where do we find you?

Probably best place, copywritingcourse.com. it shows just like a simple email sign up. And in true copywriting form, there's nothing else to do on the page but sign up your email. That alone, by the way, quick lesson. You take off everything off of a homepage and only make an email sign up doubles the conversion rate. It went from 12% to 28%, more than double. And 12% is a very high converting page already. We just did a split test, so we're getting 28% consistent signups on that go to copywritingcourse.com blog.

That's where I push out a lot of stuff. I'd say my swipes email that I send out every Friday is probably what you want. So if you sign up@copywritingcourse.com dot, you'll get that automatically inbox every Friday, and then you can join there and actually, like, I'd say buy a year of copywriting course. And that has all the videos that you want to see of all this learning generally. Like, I'd say like, 92% of people we surveyed, they watch, like, one video, get an idea, and they're like, holy shit, I was doing this wrong. They instantly go back and start updating their emails. See a return. That's my favorite type of person that gets a return right away and never comes back.

I'm like, damn, we helped them really quick. And then the other type of person is like, you want to get live help? So we actually have this, like, customized forum that we have. You post your copy myself at. Other professional copywriters and people in the community give you feedback and rewrites and stuff like that. And that helps your copy. And then if you really need some one on one love, every Thursday, you talk to me. So every Thursday, 02:00 p.m. people get on live office hours calls, and instead of paying $1,000 an hour for private consulting, you get it for free with your copywriting membership.

And that is probably the most awesome part of all of this and very, very helpful. And then, yeah, you can also find me on Twitter. Neville Midora Instagram. I post a lot of videos. YouTube, we have a channel, so if you want to see a bunch of my recordings of podcasts, and we also do a lot of short videos. So follow along on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, we put them everywhere. And, and that's where we used cast magic in the past for, for help, like making those titles and stuff.

Sweet.

Well, Neville, thanks so much. It's been a blast. And thanks for coming on the show today.

Thanks, Blaine. Thanks for moan. Appreciate it.

Thanks. Yeah.