Is Your Content Failing? Discover Neville Medhora’s Expert Tips and Techniques | Ep. 068

Episode Transcript

Neville: 0:00

no, it's not a suicide thing. There's no actual plan right now. But the point was that you will die. And, and when you realize that and really internalize that, like, okay, everyone before me has died. Every living thing in the past has died. I'll probably die too.

CODY: 0:30

Welcome to another episode of the mind hack podcast. Today, we have a fantastic guest joining us. His name Neville Madora Neville is a renowned copywriting expert entrepreneur and the brains behind copywriting course.com. He's well-known for his ability to turn words into powerful tools that drive sales and captivate audiences. His unique approach to copywriting blending humor with actionable insights has made him a sought after speaker and consultant. As for myself, I'm Cody McLain, founder of a company with over $30 million in annual revenue and more than 1000 employees worldwide. My journey began launching my first business at 15 while in foster care. I've been turning challenges into opportunities today I'm committed to help others optimize for happiness and living a purposeful life. In this episode, we'll dive deep into Neville's journey, exploring how he honed his craft and built a successful career around his passion. For words. We'll discuss his innovative techniques, the importance of effective communication and business and how anyone can improve their writing skills to achieve better results. So without further ado, let's get started and welcome, the brilliant Neville Madora So Neville you're, you're getting married soon,

Neville: 1:46

Yes. It's taken a lot of time. Yeah.

CODY: 1:50

but she lived in Houston right now and you live in Austin?.

Neville: 1:53

Both live together in Austin, but her family is also from Houston. So now I go back to Houston a lot more than I used to. So I have a family in Houston. I go back all the time. It's a great benefit of living in Austin, two and a half hours each way. And we go a lot more. And then when you're with someone, you have this other set of friends and family that you also have to do things with. And so you're just more busy. It's more fun, but also it's like, wow, I'm a lot busier on weekends. Like there's so much more to do and even during the daytime. And so managing my time has been a little bit more valuable to me lately. Like, like thinking about how to manage time in certain ways.

CODY: 2:28

How do you manage your time? So, so wait as, as like the context is you have this copywriting course you've had for 10 years, you have this incredible swipes email that I absolutely love. You're active on social media. You have a community of people that you built, you make money through this online platform, minimal employees. But, there's, there's a lot that I admire from like a content marketing perspective. And now you're getting married, you have relationships here, you have relationships in Houston. So how does that your breakdown of time currently look like? How do you manage it?

Neville: 3:00

I still goof off a tremendous amount. I mean, the internet is great for scheduling things. For example, I'm on Twitter all the time, and I, I, I try to tweet every single day. Here's the secret. I tweet in batches. I write a bunch of tweets. I have someone upload it to a scheduler, like Hype Theory or one of those things. And so it looks like I'm tweeting every day. also, it looks like I put out a short video every day. Well, I have an agency that I pay that does that and post it on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, like all these platforms I barely even logged on like LinkedIn and. So people are like, wow, you're putting out a prolific amount of content. It's like I recorded one video two months ago that is being clipped up and sent out. So it appears that I am, uh, putting out a lot of content like that. But, uh, in, in reality I don't think it's like as much work as people think if you kind of like outsource it to the right places.

CODY: 3:46

Right, like the Dan Marchell interview that you did, you kept, I, I kept on seeing news stories over a period of like a month and a half or so, just from that single interview.

Neville: 3:56

yeah. So we had a one hour inter, not even one hour, it's like probably like 55 minutes and then have an agency that goes and clips that up. And I've also kind of learned how to structure an interview to where you get a lot more of those types of clips. Before I just have like a long freeform conversation with note thing. But now I take notes and I'm like, I wanna ask about this, I wanna ask about this. And I almost think about it like, this video, like what we're doing now. I think of it like I'm just trying to get short clips out of it. And that helps, uh, formulate the long form interview format a a little bit better.

CODY: 4:27

So the kind of shorts that you do, you hire an agency that's a, that's a set amount of, of money per month. They make how many clips per interview or does it vary?

Neville: 4:36

there's no set number on that 'cause that very much varies. Sometimes there's just like, not a lot of stuff in certain interviews, but they try to put out a clip a day or at least 25 clips a month. the big guys are like someone like Alex Hormozi or something like that. I think they're doing like a thousand to 1500 clips a month. Um, I'm just doing one per day or a little bit less than that.

CODY: 4:55

And that's like the minimum that you think that is required to have some kind of social influence.

Neville: 5:00

I don't know if it's the minimum, but I think it's a nice cadence that people see your stuff all the time. And as you know, like if you put out content on the internet, it's like one or two things outta 10 even ever takes off at all. And then like one outta 10 of those does really well and maybe like one outta 20 does really, really well. And so I think it's kind of just a numbers game at some point. And so I think one a day is enough to where you get that like occasional pop here and there. Then that causes growth for the channel. And so we have seen growth with our channel. And then also the weird thing is you get all these people, like family, friends I grew up with that are like, Neville, I'm seeing your stuff for the first time. This is amazing. When did you start doing this? I'm like, I'm putting out content forever. And for some reason, just like when you post these clips on these social media platforms across all of them, it catches someone's eye. It is very, it makes it very difficult to track where people are coming from nowadays. Back in the days when we started on the internet, you're like, okay, someone clicked that link. They came in from this website. We knew exactly where it was. Now, like someone might see seven of my clips for half a second each across TikTok of the course of three years. And then one time something catches their eye, then they buy something. I have no idea how that happens anymore. So just spamming the social platforms with like content, I guess is the answer.

CODY: 6:07

and what's your view of social media in terms of, is it something that you create content for or is it like a marketing funnel that should be used as a means to get people to your community where you have more control over them? I.

Neville: 6:20

I mean, I've always thought content is both right? I mean, you do have, like, you can't, you can't just put clips on Twitter, right? That doesn't work. Trust me, I've tried it. You've seen people do it and you never watch it. They get two views and it's just, that's not the format of Twitter, so you kinda have to make content for that platform. Fortunately, Instagram Stories is the same as YouTube shorts and YouTube shorts go well on LinkedIn, and uh, those also go well on TikTok. They don't really translate over to Twitter, but for the most part, those short clips, vertical format translate to almost every platform pretty well. And so, yeah, I tried to just put it, put 'em out, and I think it's almost like the new form of SEO. Did you rely heavily on SEO back

CODY: 7:00

I did. That's, that's the only thing that I'm very experienced with and I'm kind of sad that it seems to be dying.

Neville: 7:04

Dude, it's like, I, I always hate to today company dead dude. SEO died. I would doubt. Um, library sites and stuff like are just like gone AI generated answers are quite frankly better. The more useful, useful. And so that whole era that we grew up in, like knowing could get traffic is very much dying. And, and like in the near Future show lives get better, better and better times five. I mean, that's gonna a rough paths falling. And so I think putting these clips out on across media is the new way of getting eyeball, right? It used to be like someone types in this and we intercept that traffic by in put our link. Now it's like let down on there social being and intercept that traffic. I think that's the way that I view it now.

CODY: 7:45

A random question, but I always have an issue just distinguishing. Do I post something as an Instagram post or as a story? Since a story is a limited amount of time,

Neville: 7:55

I have no idea. Fortunately, this is why I hired an agency to do it, and what they do is they post it as a post and as a reel, I think. Or it's the same thing because like if you look at my reels and their posts, they're the same. So every day I have a new post and a reel. Trust me, I'm as confused as you are about that. I've talked to some people at Instagram, I think they are also confused. That's just like a legacy product. I think if they redesigned Instagram from the floor up, it wouldn't have like posts versus reels like that. That doesn't make as much sense to me anymore.

CODY: 8:22

And then as a, so when you hire an agency, I always view the difference between an agency and a contractor is that with an agency, you're outsourcing not only the work itself, but also the actual, like the, the mental, the mental knowledge of how to do a thing. And with a contractor, you have to manage them and you typically have to tell them how to do the thing that you want them to do. And so you hire an agency in this format, I would've thought that you would've gone the contractor route. Since you're, you seem very familiar with how social media works. Why didn't you go with a contractor? Why you, why are

Neville: 8:56

I did. I tried it. It was hard as shit. It was really hard. I mean, to make one of these clips, especially like myself, I thought no one would be better at picking out the good stuff than me. Turns out I'm not that good. And also when it's you on the screen, you have all the other thoughts, you're just like, eh, I don't think this is interesting. I think other people know it. Then someone else behind your shoulders like, yeah, it's good stuff. Put it up, let's go. And so finding an agency that could pick out the interesting stuff is the hardest part. The actual editing and stuff is not all that hard. Anyone could kind of do that. And so you have to do that. Then you have to realize, so you have to caption it, make sure it's edited right. And then a lot of times, like let's say I mentioned Warren Buffett, someone will have to have the foresight. Just like pull a picture of Warren Buffett up and put it on the screen somehow. Make it an attractive way. Then you have to make a title, then you have to make a description, then you have to tag it, and then you have to go and upload it to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, da da, da, login. Sometimes like my login will kick someone out of TikTok. I never log into TikTok, so I'm like, my account's don't even logged in. I have to go reset my password. Tell them, there's like a whole team of people on Slack that do all this. They don't really interact with me every day, but there's probably like three or four people. I handle all my stuff. And so yes, I could go to the contractor, right? But I have to build a whole team and train those people in. Something that like, I'm not really good at like uploading Instagram videos. I'm, I'm not, that's not like my forte. So hiring an agency in this situation I was more comfortable with. even though I love per, and I prefer using contractors for almost everything, but I'm telling you like to find a person that's good at, finding the right thing, editing it, clipping it, organizing it, writing the titles, all that, that's very difficult to find someone who could do all of those things in one. So you kind of need a team or an agency to do it.

CODY: 10:33

Right. That makes total

Neville: 10:34

I tried doing these myself. It's hard. It's really hard. It almost takes as much editing as like a real YouTube video. Like the short video takes as much editing as a long video sometimes.

CODY: 10:44

Right. And, and then even we, we have some clients who are very particular and they ask for things that are not going to improve the actual, um, number of views, like adding custom animations for a full length interview. I.

Neville: 10:56

Mm-hmm.

CODY: 10:57

You know, these little things, and they don't, they're not gonna make people wanna watch the video more, but I think some people have certain concepts about what's gonna work and what's not. But at the end of the day, it seems the most important thing is consistency.

Neville: 11:08

Yeah. It's consistency and volume, I think. And like it's just, at some point it's just a numbers game. One outta 10 is gonna do okay. One outta 20 will do pretty well. One out of a hundred will be like stellar content. And to pick which one I don't think anyone really knows. I think it just, it, it's just, it's the combination of all sorts of things that are too complicated. I think you can kind of like hack the algos in certain ways at certain periods of time, but those hacks only last for a little while. Like, you know, you notice like YouTube videos like. The way they used to do it is like, do people watch a full minute of this? Right? So then the thing was like you stuff as much stuff in the first minutes, like Mr.Beast style, quick editing. Like, hey, here's what you're gonna learn, da da da da. But then what happens is everyone does that and then YouTube's like, all right, we gotta, we gotta fix this. We gotta e equalize this out. And then they figure out a different way to do it. So those things last for a little while, but if you just keep putting out content over the long run, keep trying to improve like a little bit, I think, that helps. You wanna know one random thing that really helped, I think it was this.'cause there was like this inflection point in my stats, I was like, what the hell happened? I started recording on more professional, equipment and most of the time, like just having nice equipment doesn't help, but getting good guests, having good stuff, and then also having the nice equipment, like those things compound on each other. So I have a home studio and I have pretty good cameras and I don't really know how to do lighting too well, but I can record these types of interviews at home. But then I started going to an actual studio and I think we're just better. They were better. I, I dunno what they do. Like everything looks sharper, everything looks cleaner. I don't know why their lighting's better. I don't know why, but it just looks better, the end result. And that's when like the clips started kind of taking off.

CODY: 12:45

Didn't you say in your, your annual, email that you sent out that saying that the, that the videos that you recorded that seemed more like on an iPhone or, or kind of candid did better than the professional interviews that you did?

Neville: 12:58

Well, with the interviews, not really. I think like the, the ones where I'm just like teaching a quick lesson, something like that can do well. And I think there was an era when that was doing really well. Once again, that was like an algo thing where it's like, like, you know, right now everyone holds like this, like a little tiny mic where they tie it to a spoon and hold. Like there's something about that that like tricks people into being like, well what's going on there? Where there's another one. I noticed a lot of females do this. They'll put makeup on and explains something. I'm

CODY: 13:25

Mm-Hmm.

Neville: 13:26

Is everyone putting makeup on while explaining things? Now what's going on? And it's just like this little hack that tends to work for a little while, but then like everyone does it, then it goes away, and then there's a new thing. But such as the nature of content, right? So you can chase those trends. But ultimately, I think just finding a longer form thing that you can sustain over the long period of time. It works for me. you do these interviews, I'm sure part of it is to put out content, but part of it's, I'm sure to like just have interesting conversations with people, right? So my goal, was to have like 20 interesting conversations per year. 20 just seems like an attainable number. It's not that much. And so 20 interesting conversations per year where I take notes after I record. So I ask a lot of questions that I selfishly want to ask. For example, Dan Martel, he's, he's like, you know, big SaaS guy. I asked him all the questions I personally wanna know for myself about SaaS. And then I re-watched that interview and took all my own notes. that's why I recorded him. And I'm like, I hope it turns into good content. So it has like another purpose, like a selfish purpose to it.

CODY: 14:22

Right. And it's always in some ways trying to balance the questions that I desire, but also what the audience might be interested in.

Neville: 14:28

don't, maybe I, I, I, I'm going full selfish now. I'm just going selfish. And if, people have the same thoughts, that's great. But like, I, I just think if you're gonna do it sustainably, it has to be selfish. Right. To some degree. but I think usually what I'm interested in, there's a crew of people that are gonna be also interested in classic case, like Joe Rogan, right. He just has people on that he thinks are interesting. I don't watch every single Joe Rogan episode, but some of them I do. And I think that's the best he could hope for.

CODY: 14:58

Right. And then there's some, like, say Andrew Huberman or Lex, they're recording two hour long interviews and even the YouTube algorithm sees that, that, you know, people are watching this two hour full length video. So then they're gonna boost their ratings. But in some ways, that's not a hack. but I'm actually curious. And nonetheless, so Huberman,

Neville: 15:17

Yeah.

CODY: 15:18

we've all been hearing a lot of huberman. There's a subreddit called Huberman Labs and it's been going nuts. and It seems like it's basically a complete mob, trying to go after Huberman. Uh, so I'm sure you, you've read the recent story. I don't know if you wanna talk about

Neville: 15:34

He is like a, like scandal, him hooking up with a bunch of ladies or

CODY: 15:37

Yeah. And then, you know, his whole thing about dopamine and not chasing dopamine, but he's chasing dopamine by having multiple relationships at the same time. It's, I guess it, it also, I guess the, the perspective that's so scandalous is that it attacks his character. Because I, I remember for the longest time, I would, be watching almost all of his, all of his interviews and he would say that, you know, he doesn't drink. He, he always gets the sunlight in the morning. he, he's never done any other drugs. It's it, he has this consistent workout routine, you know, he just seems like he's too perfect. It seems now that the internet is indicating that he has a high degree of narcissism and in some ways that would make sense for to be as perfect, as consistent as he has been. In order to gain a large enough audience, I think you have to have a certain degree of narcissism that is going to propel you to be the one of the most successful health and researcher podcasts in the world.

Neville: 16:36

I guess I, I am not the person. I don't know enough about it. Like, I was enthralled the first day that came out.'cause of like, I mean, you know, people are like, I don't want no drama in my life. I'm like, I love drama so long as it's not directly related to me. So, Huberman's drama, that's fun. I had fun with it for about a day and then I just lost interest.'cause I think it's a lot of people who have never met the man. I've, I've never personally met him. I have friends that know him. I think a lot of what he does is good. I think mostly what he does is good. He's, he's researching things and being like, here's what we think could help you. Cold tub can help you. And then maybe something comes outta that. His personal life, honestly, I don't, I don't know. I'm just not as like, enthralled with it. I also think, I've been in the, the media for things before and I will say nine outta 10 things they get about it, they write about are wrong. Just completely, totally false. It's speculation. It's not the real story. And I think there's probably reasons why he can't come out and just be like, here's the real story. I don't know. Maybe he did do something fucked up, but. I don't think we know the full story. I don't think we know the full behind the scenes story. I remember when like 50 cent went bankrupt and people were like, you went bankrupt. And like he's trying to like say it in interviews of like, I didn't go bankrupt. I'm, I'm pretending to go bankrupt to get out of an obligation. Like, like there's, there's actually something behind the scenes he cannot say. And so I have a feeling that might somewhat be something like that that's going on. But otherwise, um, I dunno, did he commit like a crime? Like did he commit like a legal crime?

CODY: 17:59

Not that I'm aware of.

Neville: 18:00

Yeah, that then I'm like, okay, then you know, I dunno, innocent and proven guilty, but it didn't seem he broke a law. Maybe he broke like a moral code or something like that. But I don't know. I mean, I'm not the police of that.

CODY: 18:10

certainly he's, he's done more good for the world. But then simultaneously, when you become as famous, that's a willing thing, you know, be being a famous actor, you're, you're putting yourself out there at Kate, Kate Winslet, uh, and, you know, that's her name, right? Kate Winslet and the, and the stomach cancer. And so that that's something that you're in a position that you accepted, and so now your personal issues may come to light in a public persona,

Neville: 18:37

I think that's the nature of things and that's just going to happen I think. I think when you get really famous, uh, you're gonna get, get attacked. You're gonna get sued. And that's just, that's just how it will go. There may not be any way around it, but I think he's gonna come out of it stronger. I have, I have a feeling. I feel like anytime there's a big scandal. Here's the thing, I think it's really hard to get famous. Remember Paris Hilton? I think she was like the first kind of like, what did she do? Celebrity that like I remember in my generation then it was like, Kim Kardashian after that and people would hate on Paris Hilton so much. And I was like. Dude, if you were out at a club and Paris Hilton was next to you, you would be whipping out that camera so fast to take a picture with her. But everyone would hate on her. But they'd be like, I totally take a picture. It's like, well, there's something fascinating about this woman then. Like she's captivated the imagination in some way. That is unusual. Not everyone can do that. I think it's very hard to get famous. It's very easy to change the way you're looked at over time. I think it's easier to change your image, but to get that famous is hard. So Huberman has done something by, I mean, he's like a top podcaster on the planet. He was just like, some dude that's like with a neuroscience degree or something and he became that famous. He's doing something right. So I have a feeling he'll be fine. I mean, Joe Rogan gets attacked all the time. Lex Fridman gets attacked all the time. All the big people get attacked all the time. And I don't know, I just, that they have some sort of, um, people like them for some reason, or fascinated by them at least. And that's the hard part to attain.

CODY: 20:01

Would you do that if Trump was next to you? Take a picture with him.

Neville: 20:05

Trump was next to me, I would do it. Yeah, that would be a good story. Like when pe people would ask, uh, I keep saying Joe Rogan over here just'cause podcast, but they're like, would you have Trump on your show? He'd be like, I mean, he's the guy that, or at least at one point leads the world or has a huge influence. I would prefer to talk to him. Oh my God. When Lex Fridman did that Kanye thing, remember all the Kanye stuff was coming out. I was like, he's just a misunderstood artist, dah, dah, dah. People are taking his words. And then I saw him on Lex Fridman talk for two hours and I was like, oh, he's fucking insane. He's, he's a, he's a, he's a mentally sick person. Um, I dunno what's going on with him, but like, you're just like, he doesn't make any sense. He's crazy. And that's when the first time that someone let him talk that I was like, oh yeah, he is actually crazy. But every time someone just calls him crazy with no backup, I'm like, that's not a valid claim. And only hearing him talk was the thing that I could be like, oh yeah, he's crazy. So, yeah, I mean, if, if someone were, I mean, I would take a picture with any president. I, I don't think it would matter. Yeah.

CODY: 21:06

Lex's very good at, at going and asking deep questions, obviously. What do you think makes him successful over other podcasters that have had propelled him?

Neville: 21:16

He walks the walk. I think it's a background thing. he was an AI lecturer at like six level classes at at MIT. Whereas a lot of people, like I could talk about ai, but I'm just like some dude who talks about ai. He's a guy who could program it, who talked about it and was at the top university in the world for it. So I think he really walks the walk in that sense. So when you hear him talk about ai, you're like, okay, he actually knows something. He's not just some dude reading tweets. I think that like that is what backs it up for him.

CODY: 21:43

Speaking of ai, you run a copywriting course and I remember seeing AI for the first time and questioning, is Neville still gonna have a business in 10 years? And I'm sure you've had similar fears or concerns, maybe, maybe not, but what are your thoughts

Neville: 21:59

you have to think like that. Of course. Yeah. Someone's always coming to eat your lunch at some point. I. Yeah, I think about that Wayne Gretzky quote all the time of like skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is. And you're just like, in five years, can AI just do what I do as good as I do, or better than I do? I think for a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah. The answer is yes. I thought our community was gonna become like this, like AI writing community, like that was like a, a pivot. I was just like planned to make it. Turns out people don't write with AI as much as you think they do for certain things. What I realized was like a lot of mid-level writing will be completely wiped out. There's, there's like spectrum, there's like low end, medium end, high end stuff. I think the high end stuff will still be humans for the foreseeable five to 10 years. After 10 years, all bets are off. I don't know, I, I, I, I can't see that far ahead. Um, but in the medium, what I've noticed is like, let's say you're a doctor's office and you need to send a request for a prescription to a blah, blah, blah pharmacy. Your person doesn't know how to really write well. Well, that person can just go to chatGPT say, write me an email for a pharmacy prescription for this many milligrams or whatever. And it writes a great email. That kind of thing people used to come to us for, they don't anymore 'cause chatGPT can do it. And so a lot of what we do is more like content strategy. And this has been from the beginning, this is what we do. But we did have people that would come in and be like, I need to write an email to someone, like a cold email. how could I do that? So we still get people doing that, but less and more people come for like high end strategy of like, okay, I have a business. How do we go through and get people from here to here, to here, to here? How do we get from the sales page to this order page? Can we, can we see if we can make this all better? And so it's like, I'd say it's more con CRO where it's like content optimization more than anything. rather than just like how to technically write. And so I think things change. Industries change from the time you were born to now, almost any industry is not really the same. You could even say like waiters, they use computers all the time now. Um, everything's computerized. And so I think of it as like, let's say I was a newspaper writer in the year 2000 and this internet thing was starting to catch fire and I was, and someone, you asked me the same question, you're like, Hey Neville, you're a newspaper writer. Um, do you think your business will still be around? And the people that are like, of course it will. There'll always be a space for it. That's dangerous place to think. But the people that are like, you know what, it might take our lunch. So I think we should get involved with it. And see, and I remember when GPT two came out, it was still pretty useless. I dunno if you used it, but it was not good. It could make headlines. And so there was a company called Copy ai and it was called some, it was called like headlines, AI or something at the time. And they were using it to make very basic Google AdWords. And I was like, it's pretty impressive for like 50 characters beyond that. It just becomes garbage. Then GPT three came out and that's when everyone was like, wait, what? Like this can actually write things. Then 3.5 and four, and when four came out, you're just like, this is very obviously where things are going. Like it's, you have to be blind to not see this. And so I invested in copy ai, um, and I was like, I need to become an advisor and I need to invest in this company because I want, I don't know how to physically make AI myself and I wanna be part of it. And so I was early to try to like be a part of this wave because it's like, if something's going to eat my lunch, I would rather have a part of it. Yeah. So I use AI quite a bit, mainly for brainstorming and things like that. And also actually more for images. I made a lot of content with images. That's what made me stood out in the past. And I, I was very proud that I knew how to use Photoshop. It was just very hard to use and people didn't know how to use it and had this edge as a writer.'cause I could use Photoshop and that AI comes along and you could do like all sorts of crazy stuff with, uh, chatGPT or, uh, actually Midjourney is pretty awesome. And so using that and learning how to use that has been. My big focus right now, more so than just like writing stuff, like long form things. How, lemme ask you a question. How much long form content do you read?

CODY: 26:00

If I'm looking at like an article, maybe it's really like two, two articles a week max. That's a very long form article. Now, I, I mean, I added a Chrome extension. That's the AI summarizer sometimes when I'm just really not interested in reading the whole thing.

Neville: 26:15

So you want the, you want the, the main things, not the long thing.

CODY: 26:19

Right.

Neville: 26:20

And then how many videos do you watch per week?

CODY: 26:23

Too many to count.

Neville: 26:24

So, okay. So what I'm saying is like, you're a smart person, you're kind of my target audience. You're reading essentially almost no articles.

CODY: 26:32

Well, I, I read pretty much almost every other newsletter from Dan Shipper, read that. Those are really the, that's the only consistent, uh, output of articles that I read on a consistent basis.

Neville: 26:45

So like I don't read any long form blog posts anymore. I don't, very little. Occasionally there's something that runs by me, but not many. And so when people are like, chatGPT can write long form blogs. I'm like, but who's reading long form blogs? Like what do you, what do you mean? Like no one reads those. the SEO stuff has like been shattered, so I'm like, what is the purpose of these really long form blogs? I don't, I don't know that there is. Um, I actually think a video is probably better for most of those.

CODY: 27:15

Do you still write blog posts?

Neville: 27:17

I write blog posts to some degree, but I use the blog post to be like, I publish an interview and I put my notes on the blog post. I'm not writing blog posts to like teach something anymore. Not really. And if I do, the reason I write the blog post is to make it a video. It's a script to make the video.

CODY: 27:35

Do you have to modify if, if you were to write, can you just write a blog post and then read it? Or do you have to make changes or alterations?

Neville: 27:41

it or not, if you, if you, because like when you just make a video and just ramble, that is one way to do it. But then you have to heavily edit it to make it make sense. Whereas whenever you write it out, you can edit it into different sections and all that stuff, and when you just read that out and make like an animated or you know, whatever visualized video that works really well. All my top videos are that all my top videos actually don't have me in them, which is a funny thing.

CODY: 28:06

Are they just like B roll, like footage that you, that

Neville: 28:08

No, not b-roll. It's like custom images that we've made.

CODY: 28:10

to piggyback on what we were previously talking about in terms of the content and the people that you had on your platform, where with ai now a lot of the people on the lower end that were using it for emails or, or other things have kind of dropped off and there's two ends of that I see. Is that now it actually, whereas before with ai, me having a call center thinking that, oh, this is gonna be the end of Filipino workers and actually it adds more value to say a, a Filipino or a third world contractor that you hire significantly less for significantly less money than you would a US person because now they can use ChatGPT to do these things. That before would require a level of critical thinking and English as a first language to really understand the context to write it properly. But the thing that I still find that's, that I'm just surprised that it's still an issue in Claude or cloud, however you say it, and ChatGPT four. is That if you ask it to write an email, it always starts with, I hope you are doing well. And every time I see that, it's just so obvious that I, I don't know why it thinks that I hope you are doing well. Has to be the first sentence.

Neville: 29:19

The answer is hybrid writing, right? Like start, it's very difficult to start with a blank page. It's very easy to start with something and be like, how are you do, hi, how are you doing? Whatever you just said, you'd be like, let's cut that and say, hey, right. That's a hybrid. That's like you working with the computer. And I think that's going to be the thing. Like most of the stuff we do right now is with a computer, whereas previous to like 1990, you literally did everything on like physical paper. Now everyone does hybrid work on a computer. It's just so normal that we don't even think about it. And so now we're gonna be doing hybrid work with ai. They'll just be part of it. They'll absolutely be a part of it.

CODY: 29:52

I know that you previously said that you have an iPad with the keyboard. Do you, do you still say use that as a separate computer for writing? no,

Neville: 30:01

I don't use my iPad as much anymore. I used to use it for drawing. I use Canva quite a bit now and I did like the drawings, but a lot of the lot of the AI stuff in Canva, like I almost don't have to do it. And also what I did for my drawings is uh, my stick figures. I drew out a bunch of heads. I drew out a bunch of eyes, a bunch of noses, a bunch of mouths, a bunch of bodies, and I have them as vector files inside of Google Slides. I also have it in Canva, but for some reason Google Slides makes it easy. I just click and drag to make whatever position I need, so I don't actually have to draw on my iPad all that much anymore. I still bring my iPad for like watching on stuff on planes and stuff, but I don't really use my iPad that much.

CODY: 30:37

Yeah, me neither. But on the higher end of the content, I remember reading something that was in relation to the Hustle Newsletter, which I'm sure you're intimately

Neville: 30:46

Mm-Hmm

CODY: 30:47

They, they released at some point, they the Sunday

Neville: 30:50

mm-Hmm.

CODY: 30:51

which was a deep dive into a certain area or topic. And I remember reading how the editor would actually create these newsletters and he would end up going through, newsletters that, or, or I mean, newspapers that were a decade old. He would look at, say if he's looking at a company, he would message a bunch of people who used to work at the company on LinkedIn and ask them questions. And he inferred that if you want to write a high quality or piece of content, because everybody has access to the same tools, they have access to the internet chatGPT, and so they're all writing the same things and just, you know, it's regurgitated perhaps slightly differently. So if you wanna write something new that nobody else is going to be able to write about, you have to do these old school media formats, whether it's interviewing or looking at, at, at print media from a decade ago. What do you think, how, how would you advise, do you think that's accurate? And how do you advise clients?

Neville: 31:44

That's a great method. I don't think you have to do that, but at the same time, that's a great way to call ideas that worked from the past. So if an article went viral in its own way in the nineties, and you'd be like, okay, what story structure was that? What did they do in there? They interviewed three people from this. That's why it got popular. Like that's a, that's a great way of calling things. I would call that a swipe file. has a bunch of great articles from the past and like, how can I emulate that with a different subject? I think that's a, I think it's a cool idea. The other thing is if you want to ask questions about a company or get kind of like information that others don't have, if you throw money at this problem, it's very easy. If you pay up to 500 bucks to get someone on the phone for 30 minutes or an hour, I've noticed everyone will do it. Like without exception, maybe Mark Cuban might cost $5,000 for five minutes of time, but you can get him on the phone. And I think, um, that's one thing I've done a lot with contractors. Anytime I need help with like design or knowing about a subject a little bit more, I can say, Hey, who's good at this? Let's get on the phone real quick. I'll pay 300 bucks. And they almost always do it. So, back to his thing of researching with old stuff like that. Yeah, that's great. Like looking at old things, that's a swipe file in my opinion. Yeah,

CODY: 32:52

do you use Fiverr or Upwork to find these contractors that you have a quick call with?

Neville: 32:56

both Upwork is cool, but it's a little bit more general where it just has a picture of the person and some of the stuff they've done. Fiverr shows specific projects. For example, if I'm self-publishing a book and want someone to format it for KDP Amazon's system, then I would go on Fiverr and type in like KDP translation, whatever, and find the person that does exactly that skill. Upwork is a little bit more broad, and in fact, I think Fiverr has become such a problem for Upwork. Upwork has actually copied them and they have a thing called projects, which is basically, it's essentially a five clone where you're like, oh yeah, it's just, if someone can like make PSDs into HTML, like that's exactly what I need. It's easier to find them on Fiverr. So I find it from both places. I'm agnostic. Upwork does let you search by region and stuff like that, so I can find people in Austin, which is helpful if I need that. So I use both of them.

CODY: 33:45

And so you mentioned swipe a few times. Can you explain what that is?

Neville: 33:48

A swipe file is a old school term made back in the day that like, let's say you make ads for clothing, well, then you collect all the ads for clothing inside the Seers catalog. The Macy's catalog. Then whenever you're like, okay, I need to sell this shirt. How do I sell it? You look through all these different things and go, Ooh, that would be a great way to do it. That's a cool thing. That's 50% off, whatever it is. And so I have a site called swipe file.com, where I collect my own ads, and anytime I see something cool, I put it on there. So it is curated by me. I've had it in the past to where like I had writers do it, and it just got, it was like too much stuff. And I was like, you know what? I'm going the selfish route. It's just curated by me. Just, it's like stuff Neville found on the internet is what it should be called. But that's what a swipe file is. And I think it's really helpful to have folder on your desktop and you just take screenshots of stuff. Whenever I browse Twitter, whenever I browse Instagram, I get so many swipes per session. I also take a lot of screenshots on my phone, so if I take a screenshot of something, that means it's screenshot able in some way. So if you go to your album's, screenshots and just look at your phone, you'll see all the stuff you take a screenshot of. That's a swipe file right there.

CODY: 34:52

And, and you also have a newsletter called Swipes, right?

Neville: 34:55

Swipe it. It's an acronym that means swipe wisdom picture. Interesting drawing. I probably messed that up. But something along those lines. And it's basically the stuff I talk about all the time. So I like old ads, I like other forms of advertising. So I'll send out a swipe and that something that I found that's interesting, a picture from my everyday life. And then a splurge, something to like buy at the end, which is either going to be my course or some other product that I really like.

CODY: 35:21

How did you decide to have to have like a weekly newsletter that would go on Friday, or what kind of content you would post? Is it, is this just the interest, associated with the swipe that you had for years

Neville: 35:30

It was that like I have the whole week to get content for it. That was the main thing for making it on a Friday.'cause I was just like, shit, if it's Monday, that means I'm gonna be doing stuff on Sunday, which I don't wanna be doing. So I thought Friday was the easiest one to do. And what I do is I actually post on Twitter the most. And so I post things on Twitter and if it flops, I don't include in the swipes email. If it gets over 20 likes, I post it in my swipes email. And like I said, you have to adapt things for the format. So if, if I just say like, Hey, here's a cool Ogilvy ad, well, in the swipes email I'll usually add a little bit more stuff in there 'cause I have more space. There's no, there's no space constraint like there's on Twitter. Um, or if it's a long thread, I can make that into an essay in my swipes email. And so I can, I can take all those things. I have an assistant that goes through, takes all my top tweets, tries to categorize them best you can, and then I go in and kind of punch it up. And so it's, it's relatively easy to make 'cause I've made most of the content throughout the week already.

CODY: 36:24

And some, it sounds like a commonplace book that I know. Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin. A lot of people in history, uh, especially famous writers have used where they have a, a book that any. Quotes, interesting things that they've learned. They, they put it in that book, and then they'll reference that when they're writing their actual book. And so you have this swipe file. In some ways, it's like a commonplace book, but we also have, say, apps like Notion Obsidian and Evernote that we store information. But the, the problem I found is that, say I'm, I'm bookmarking a, a webpage or a topic on something, it's, I still default to Googling an answer for something instead of looking at the repertoire of knowledge that I've accumulated over the years. I'm curious, how do you maintain your knowledge set? What, what apps do you use? Do you use like the para organization, uh, or do you still have the issue where you just default to Google before you consider searching your own archives?

Neville: 37:16

Constant struggle of my life. I've tried everything, like I want to love Notion, I want to, but it's just not easy enough. Like Google Docs. Google Docs is the king of it, but then it's hard to like pull up a Google Doc on your phone and just quickly add something. Apple Notes is really good for that. So I will say that a lot of my organizations kind of are all over the place. another sleeper app that I don't think people realize how goddamn good it is, is Google Keep. I don't think people even know what it is. keep.google.com. It's free. It integrates with every Google app you use. And I don't know about you, but I use Google for everything. My, my Gmail and uh, docs and presentations and all that stuff. There's a little sidebar, there's a little yellow icon, Google Keep. And what it is, if you go to swipe file.com and see the, the masonry grid, it's kinda like a rip off of Pinterest. It makes that, and there's a Chrome extension and you could also take a screenshot and immediately send it to Google Keep. And it is by far the best, like what commonplace book is that? What you call it? The, um, that you can make. And the cool thing is, the other cool thing is now you got this masonry grid of like a bunch of random images, links, random notes that you took. And you can just export the whole thing as a Google doc and it just gives you a giant Google Doc made out of it. I think it's one of the best ways to keep random notes and browse 'em because it's an masonry grid format, or you can make it like a blog format and it integrates with everything. And so I've been using Google Keep a lot more. And then Apple Notes is just, it's just so easy. It's just easy and you can't, you can't fuck it up. Like it's just simple. but the share ability, apple's share abilities is bad. I, I dunno why it's like a one thing they're really bad at. so I still use Google Docs for sharing notes with, um, with employees and stuff like that 'cause it's just the easiest. And then I've really tried Notion, but it's just not as easy to share. The tools aren't as powerful as Google. It does a lot more stuff than I need it to. Whereas I feel like Google Docs is just like almost perfect. Google Docs with a sidebar menu would be the perfect thing. Like if they just added that a little sidebar menu, like notion, it'd be the perfect thing.

CODY: 39:15

and notion, the thing that it doesn't have going for it is that it can basically do everything, and you can use it for every aspect of your life. But as humans, we're designed to say, use a tool for one specific purpose. And it's, it's why they say like, you shouldn't work in bed. You should just use bed for sleep and sex and that's it.'cause when you associate it for more things, it becomes confusing. So you, you sit in bed and you don't know, should I fall asleep right now? What should I do? And the same thing we tend to have psychologically for various apps is what should, what kind of mode should I be in right now if you use it for everything, for knowledge and task work, et cetera.

Neville: 39:51

Well, I take a lot of pictures and screenshots of stuff just'cause like the nature of my work. And notion's bad with pictures. Like there's no editor on it, like Google Draw. You can make drawings and edit pictures and edit how it looks and change the thing and crop it. Notions is bad at that and so that, that's like a huge thing of what I do, and it's not good at it. So I'm like, well, that kind of throws it out the window. And then Apple. You can put images, but it's like we don't really want you to, it's mainly for text. That's what it kind of like subtly tells you like, we're not really in this for the, the images. And so I use that for a lot of my quick notes. For example, whenever I'm at dinner with some friends and someone brings up a good point or website, I wanna write it down. I hate using my phone at the dinner table, so I'll take it on my pocket. Apple Notes, fastest thing I could just enter it in, put it back in my pocket. there's nothing faster. Like I have the open notion, it's, it's still slower and I have to select a tab or whatever it, apple Notes is just the fastest and it integrates with Siri, so I could tell it to add notes on the road. That's another big thing. So I don't know, I think it just depends on what you're using it for. Some people are like, I swear by obsidian. If you like that, that's cool. Like I, I just, apple notes and Google Docs. I'm simple. And now Google Keep has become my go-to you could also just add a note to Google. Keep really easy. Awesome. And then as for retaining that information, your original question, here's where I take my inspiration for retaining it. Planes back in the day when you have to use the, the composition book, you know, the cow notebook that you had in elementary school. I used to fill those things up. I mean, like every week I would fill one up and you're just like, well, when do I look at these ever again on planes? When you had nothing to do, you just look at 'em. So I'd read 'em and be like, holy shit, there's so much good stuff in here. And that's when, um, that's why sometimes I'll just be like lacking for ideas and I'll scroll through my Google Keep, just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and be like, that's it. And move on.

CODY: 41:39

So, speaking of ideas is that, say ideas for, say, Twitter or blog posts?'cause I see a lot of people always have some great tweets. It could be issues going on in their life, or it could be things that clearly they've taken a lot of time to think about. And I've had this issue where I wonder, well, should this be a Twitter thread? Should this be a blog post? Should this be a YouTube video? And then I, I just, I'm not really quite sure. But also it's, where do you get your ideas from? Are you, say, looking at Reddit and you see something and then you're, you pull that in? Or are you thinking about some existential issue in your life and that you, something that you faced and then you share it and you know that it's, it's better as a Twitter thread or a tweet rather than say a YouTube video.

Neville: 42:20

All of the above. And I think they all start as tweets.'cause Twitter's just the easiest way to get that thought out there. And then a lot of times after you publish something, you're like, oh shit, I should have said it this way. And then I can pull it into the newsletter with a different angle. And so it usually all starts on Twitter. I think that's the easiest one to do. I do post on my personal blog, nev blog all the time now, and it's, I don't allow comments on it. It's a pure dictatorship. It's for me. So it's like. Public, but not public. Kind of like people will see it, but no one can say anything about it. And so I started posting on there too for things that I think are too dumb to be tweets or just like, they're just not good tweets. Um, but most of the time it goes on Twitter. And then I do have an idea file, called my Twitter idea file. It's just a big Google Doc that's like 70 pages long of just a bunch of crap. And I don't really delete anything from there. I just keep it in there and occasionally I browse it and that's how I keep ideas for social media. And then, the clips and stuff or that's taken care of by the long form videos. If I record one or two long form videos a month with like, interviews like this, I have a bunch of clips. So that's taken care of. And then, getting guests and thinking of ideas to ask them, that's also hard. That takes work. That like if you look at Lex Fridman and you see his desk, he has like tons of notes. That's, that's a lot of work to make a lot of notes like that. I've tried getting chatGPT to do it and it's not, not there yet. Not there yet.

CODY: 43:40

Yeah, luckily, I have one Filipino who does all the outreach. I just have a very specific process. It's like, I want you to find authors who are in these, these categories, reach out to them, and then he just uses a very standard email template. And pretty much the interesting thing, and when I've asked, say, David Allen, how did you, why did you decide to be on my podcast? And it was that they go to my website and they're just like, kind of, this looks like this looks legit. I'm surprised that they don't, they don't do any other sort of validation, but, and then he'll create a agenda. But I've worked with him over time to modify and create an input or a better prompt so that he's giving me exactly what I want. And it's gotten a lot better over time, and especially with the GPT bots. Now you can, you know, create the kind of bot that you want, but then you modify that over time to help get the input. One of like the magical question that I think a lot of people like, you'll, you'll use chatGPT, you don't get what you want. But the magical question is, so you gave me this. Here's an example of the kind of format I wanted you to give me. What is the prompt that I can give you so that you know, what prompt should I give you in the future to give me something more like this? And that's kind of the, the way where you're, you're at, you are going the meta, it's like the meta of the thing, and then you're able to deconstruct the actual prompt that you should be using on a regular basis.

Neville: 44:59

I, I would argue, what about this? So it sounds like the thing that made the person come on your podcast was like, they're doing this quick calculation in my head, if I do this, is this person actually gonna show up on time and are they gonna distribute this podcast? Or is it just gonna go into the ether and I'll, I'll waste my hour or two hours? And I think if you just have a lot of followers, it, it solves a lot of that. Sometimes it's like, sometimes I'll get requests for a pod. I get requests for podcasts all the time, and some people are like, I'm going to start a podcast. I'd love you to be my first episode. And I'm like, eh, the chances of you actually launching this are very low. Huh? It just, from my experience, it just seems like people get excited and then don't do it. But if someone has like, I'm episode number 400, I'm like, well, they're gonna put it out. You know? Like even if this doesn't, if it gets five views, at least this person's putting it out. And the other thing is, my Clips team can go rave that interview for clips. So I'm always willing to do it. But you have to make sure that like you just, what are the subtle signals that they're gonna do it? Oh, here, here's a great little tangential example. Amen. Who is the CEO of App Sumo. For a long time, he would reach out to these software companies to try to get a deal. He'd be like, the software companies would pop in, let's see if we can get a deal. He didn't write a long email. He said this, it is literally one line. He says, Hey, our 750,000 Sumo Lings. Would like to see your deal interested. Amen. That's it. No phone number, no nothing. And you'd always get this reply back. Yes. And the reason was 750,000. That was like the magic number. And so I think for a lot of people, they see this magic number. They go on your YouTube and they're like, okay, this person is constantly updating, putting stuff out. It will go out. So I think, I mean, I think a lot of times if you just say like, you know, we've done 14 episodes, they've got total thing of this. Like that's all you need to say. Sometimes

CODY: 46:38

And, and so now you've had this copywriting course for a relatively long amount of time

Neville: 46:42

ten-ish years.

CODY: 46:43

age of, of the internet, and you've interviewed a lot of people and probably a lot of SaaS founders too. Have you ever felt like, have you ever, I mean, surely you've gotten bored at a certain period of time. Certainly you've questioned the direction of this. Is this your magnum opus, you know, this copywriting course have you been interested in starting other things? What has kept you on this path so far of having copywriting course? I mean, have you gotten bored and have you thought about doing other things?

Neville: 47:11

It's kind of evolved quite a bit. Actually. It, it's the same name, kind of, it just started out with Case, actually started with copywriting course with Case. However, the content has changed quite significantly over time. Like the base foundations of copywriting course. Like here's some ideas of how to write to people, right? Like they don't care about you, they care about themselves. Ultimately, like those kinds of foundational things are gonna probably be around for a long time. The actual like things of how to, how to write the tools of updated, um, we teach people how to sell digital products inside. That's like a big part of it. Emails is a big part of it. That is new tools all the time coming out. That kind of stuff has changed. It's also, it turned in from like a static course that you just download a bunch of videos to, then it was like you logged in to see the videos and then it turned into a several courses that we used to solve separately. Then too many people were like, wait, do I buy the autoresponder course or the email course?'cause I wanna learn how to send emails, but sort of, I'm interested in autoresponders. Do I buy both? Is there a package for both? It became too many different courses to sell. So we turned into one bundle. Then that was too expensive for people, so then we made it a, a sub subscription. Then we added a community element. Then we're like, not only would you get the training, but we'll actually like help you write your emails. So if one of your employees uploads an email to us, we could be like, get rid of that, change this. And a lot of my method is just rewriting it. Usually. I think that's helpful for people. So it has changed quite a bit. Have I always thought about doing something else? Yeah. Every year I try to do another thing. I was trying to validate an agency idea, um, at the beginning of this year, which did not work very well. It worked okay. It didn't work well. I'm actually doing a spin on it next month. So I'm always trying to start new things and I've been involved in things on the side, but this has always been like the cash cow. Yeah. And the thing is it just keeps working, right? It's not relatively little work, but it's work that I like to do already. And so I'd probably be doing mostly what I do, all the content for free online. And then if people wanna keep buying this and they get value out of it, I'm like, why kill it if I, if I don't need to?

CODY: 49:08

You know, and that's the problem. A lot of people get stuck doing a thing that they don't like. Or in my case, you know, end up having this huge company, which, I mean, I liked aspects of it, but it comes with a lot of stress when you have a big company with a lot of people and a lot of moving parts. And in some ways if you're able to create something that's creating content, having an online business that's that's mixed with something you like to do, and also minimal people component, then I think that's like the sweet spot that a lot of people want to be in.

Neville: 49:34

I think so. And this, this has been a constant thing like. I've been around a lot of VCs with friends, and when a VC invests, they need a huge exit to see any action, right? Like the fund gets money, the investors get money, then this lowly LP gets money, right? And if you, I've know if you've ever seen the charts of like how much they need to exit for, for them to see any meaningful contribution. And, uh, it's, it's a lot. And I'll see VCs tell friends. They're like, you gotta grow faster. You gotta grow bigger. And the, the, the operator's just like, I don't think this is gonna work if I grow that fast. Like I'm, everything's gonna go off the rails. And, and the people I've seen built really good companies that like, I'm envious of, not envious, but I'm just like, that would be a cool company to own. Those people like grew steadily, like 15% a year, 30% a year, maybe a hundred percent one year, but then like 50% the next year. And but you do that over like time and that compounding thing makes you a very, very large company that grew stably and securely like. You see all sorts of venture backed companies try to grow too quick, and they're, they're firing 80 people. They've raised at a 500 million valuation. Now they're worth 50 million. Like, you see that happen all the time. But with these slow growth company or slow growth companies, I feel like that's the more sustainable way to do it. So, I don't know. I could say like, let's burn the earth and see how fast I could grow this. The biggest, but I don't, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know. But I would like to start working harder. I will say that I would like to start working harder during the typical nine to five hours. I've always been like, uh, like I'll work in the mornings or, or late at night or random times, just like 3:00 AM I wake up for some reason. I'm like, start working, let's write something. I would like to start getting all my work done from like nine to five.

CODY: 51:14

there's kind of a groove and sometimes you have your more creativity at night versus the morning. Why not just let it be and just kind of go with the flow and.

Neville: 51:23

I have a, I ha, I think. With the lack of tools. Back in the day, your human creativity was valued a lot more, and now there are tools that can just kind of jump you over that hurdle. For example, 10 years ago, I couldn't just write a customized email about anything. It didn't work. It was impossible. No one could do it on the planet as of a year and four months ago. We're all able to do that now. That is a step change and like creativity, right? To say that that's not going to impact it at all is, is weird. So yes, sometimes I'll wake up at 9:00 AM and be like, Ugh, the coffee's not kicked in yet. It's hard to write something hard to start from scratch. Now I'm just like, ChatGPT, what would you do in this case? Or go on Twitter and look up a, a similar keyword, or go on YouTube and search a word and like you'll find inspiration really fast. Like you can make inspiration strike. Before it was like, it was like caveman having to wait for lightning to strike a tree to get fire, and now someone just invented Flint and you could do it anytime. I feel like you could spark that creativity anytime. And Like, I don't, I don't feel the need to be like, I'm not inspired enough to, to write something. I, I can find inspiration quicker. Now, I dunno if that's just a muscle or tools, but I have a, I have a strong hunch that it's the tools.

CODY: 52:35

Do you feel at all less motivated or connected to your content with the fact that you're say, using an AI to generate an idea? Whereas I know at least with me, I would get into a flow of writing an idea, but it's because it was, it came from within. It was like my idea and I felt like this fire, this need to wanna share it because I felt excited about it. And when you're using an AI to create or give you content, it feels less exciting.

Neville: 52:58

Most of the ideas are my own. Yeah, most of them. I don't usually sit there with ChatGPT being like, what could I write about? That's, I, I used to do that a little bit more to play around with it, and then it generates some ideas and, and I occasionally do that, but most of the ideas are my own. Yeah. The, how much is AI involved in like, like, for example. You can tell AI to write a curriculum for a writing course, and it makes a very general, bland curriculum. and I'm like, how would I actually teach this to someone if they were next to me? And it's probably a slightly different way than that. So I wouldn't say that most of them are AI generated ideas. And, and even if it was, I don't know that I would care. I, I think people are gonna start seeing a difference between like, AI content and human stuff to some degree. I personally don't care now. Um, for example, whenever I type in like how to stop a Sony a 6,400 from overheating, Google's Gemini, or whatever it is, it's generative assistant gives me the answer right there. And I use that. I don't give a shit who wrote it. I don't care. I, I really don't. So long as it's right, I don't care. That's all I wanna know.

CODY: 54:09

I watched a video where the creator said, no components of this video were made using ai. I just thought that was interesting. the, whoa.

Neville: 54:18

but like, thi this reminds me of like when, when the steam, or like, you know, when trains were starting to get fast, they were at first very slow and like a horse could always beat a train, right? You're like a hor, a horse can go anywhere and you're just like, horses are the way of the future. This is clearly better. You're like, yeah, right now. But like in the future, they won't be like, this is a losing race that you're fighting.

CODY: 54:40

Do you think that's gonna impact creativity to always outsource to AI for ideas?

Neville: 54:45

I think it's it's gonna be symbiotic. It's gonna be, it's gonna be a hybrid. It's gonna be a hybrid. I mean, we don't, we don't care when something's delivered. If someone is watching this or listening to us, they're 100% chance watching it on a computer or some sort of electronic device. 30 years ago. We might be like, are people gonna be attached to their devices all the time? Is this gonna be bad? What about being in nature? now we don't care. Like, it's just, it's just part of life. I don't think that there's gonna be a difference At some point. Maybe people will, will prefer ai. It'll be better in a lot of ways. Do you prefer doing all your math by hand or do you prefer an Excel spreadsheet?

CODY: 55:16

Certainly the, the latter,

Neville: 55:17

Yeah, so there used to be a time in the 18 hundreds where people were like, oh, there's like adding machines now like that are coming out. Like, no, these make mistakes. Every once in a while humans are better. I just think like it's a losing thing and it's just like this way of keeping your head in the sand. But I don't know. I think the future won't matter.

CODY: 55:34

but then we lose out on those foundational skills like how in the Navy, they're having to teach the, the navigation officer to make sure that they can navigate via the celestial chart. And same thing for aircraft. As a pilot, you still have to learn how to navigate via VORs, which are radio towers and beacons in case the GPS fails. So in the case of say the internet goes down or say something happens to the ai, then it seems like we're all kind of, uh, stuck and we're not sure what to do with ourselves.

Neville: 56:00

I think people will adapt really fast. Yeah, I mean, those, those are kind of like edge case emergency type things. But if you imagine like from the time Wilbur Orville Wright were put a radio in their plane, it was all radio, then it was mostly computer. Now it's probably like 99.99% computer. And then every once in a while someone would pro in a small Cessna will have to figure out how to use a radio. Right. So I think it just be erodes eventually. Um, I think cursive, like I remember in my time, like they were taking cursive outta schools and I was, I was like, what the fuck do you need cursive for? Who? Who cursive was for when you had pens like this, that, that, that the ink would spill everywhere if you lifted it. That's why you had cursive. This is a non-existent problem. So we need to get rid of cursive just because like you learned, it doesn't mean like the next generation has to, in Boy Scouts or learn how to use a compass. I've never used a compass before after that, other than to get the badge. I'm sure it's a useful skill and if you get lost in the woods, I'd be glad I know how to use a compass.

CODY: 56:57

So, apart from some, say apart from creativity, you mentioned that you wanna be at like a nine to five, like level of, of where you're working. And so, uh, I think you have a level of freedom that a lot of people don't

Neville: 57:11

mm-Hmm.

CODY: 57:12

And I would, I would think that the, you want to say the opposite. Say, your, future wife is over and she wants to go out for lunch. And you're always gonna be able to have a better most likely have a better experience, have going out for a nice restaurant at say, four 30 or on a, a weekday and when you normally might be working. So why do you feel like you have to have this kind of more confined, work set or work hours?

Neville: 57:38

I would say like, I would like to work harder from nine to five is because that's when most people work. Right. And that's when it, like now I can usually move things around, right? So a lot, a lot of my meetings that I have with employees or something like that are not always super necessary. Sometimes it could be a slack call. Sometimes it could say like, Hey, can you move this to this time? And they're all remote too, so it's usually not that big of a problem. Anytime you need to extend something, move it earlier, or my employees or vice versa are just like, would you mind if we did an hour earlier? I'm usually pretty okay with it too. So I would like to focus my work efforts during that time. And the reason is if I plan to have kids, I would like to spend time with my kids and like be a good dad and all that stuff. And I think like working all night and pulling Allnighters is not as conducive to that. And so I would like to like really optimize my time around that. I have a lot of friends that have kids, but most of my friends have kids by this point. And you'd really have to compartmentalize your time very well. And so if I could get all my work done and be very, very effective during nine to five, I can do that. And here's the other thing, I don't think I do that much work. Like I think I'm pretty good at automating a lot of things. Like we mentioned before, like it looks like I post a lot of content. I don't really do much for it, right? So it's like how do I get those systems in place where it looks like I'm doing a lot of work and the computer does a lot of work or someone else is doing it. but I am physically not there doing much. And I think usually whenever I have to finish something quickly, I can do my whole day's work in like two hours. I almost every time. It's kind of weird. I know there's some sort of term like however long you give yourself to do a project. It'll fill up that much time. I think that's totally true, and I'm just like, well, if I can do all my work on any given day in two hours, what the hell am I doing all day? And before I was just, I was fine with that because I had the whole day to stretch it out. But now that like, you know, I'll have a spouse soon and then potentially kids after some point, and then like all the family obligations involved in that, like something's gotta give. And so I wanna compress all the time that I was doing in 24 hours and put it into this period of time. So is that going to be exact? You know, like, will, will I just be like, I'm off the clock at five every day? Not necessarily, but I would like to, I would like to get somewhere around that area. Yeah.

CODY: 59:44

do you ever have issues like procrastinating? Where are you typically able to just like sit down and start.

Neville: 59:49

Ask Noah Kagan one of my best friends in the world, what I do all day. He's like, I think Neville just watched The Simpsons all day or something, which is true. I watched Simpsons Seinfeld and browse YouTube all day. Now I, I do browse Reddit and stuff quite a bit, but I do also feel it's part of my job. That's where I find a lot of cool stuff. Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, those types of things. but yeah, I procrastinate a lot and I have to trick myself into working. I have a thing called cave day.org, which is like coworking with strangers and it's just like a hundred people will be on a call silently just doing work. So sometimes I'll put that on, um, I go to my local library. I walk like three blocks to my local library, or I go to the Austin Central Library. I used to have a WeWork for this, but I don't have WeWork anymore. And I go and just do like a two hour sprint of work and I put a piece of paper over my to-do list, and I look at the first thing and I go, okay, I gotta do that. I scratch that out, then I go to the next thing and eventually finish everything. And so I have to trick myself with that. I use a Chrome extension called Focus 45. You push it for 45 minutes, it blocks all the websites I don't wanna access. This includes Twitter, Instagram, et cetera. Um, and then on my phone. I, I get sucked in like the, the search function on, uh, you know, Instagram and you just scrolling mindlessly forever. I have a time limit of an hour a day of social media and I can bypass it if I need to look at something. But if I don't put that hour thing on, I just go down that rabbit hole. So every day I have to put it on. I'm constantly saying like, one more minute, one more minute, one more minute. But it's enough of a restraint to where I'm like, okay, I should probably stop now. Yeah. I'm not looking up anything important,

CODY: 1:01:20

have you used social media apps in the intent of researching for something? Like, okay, I'm gonna open up Instagram to, to search for this thing, and then you instantly get distracted and then five minutes later you're scrolling and then you just ask, wait, why did I open up Instagram

Neville: 1:01:34

dude, every day of my life. Yeah. She says that against everyone. Yeah.

CODY: 1:01:37

do you think that's a component, that's something that everybody does and I know it's, it's, these apps are designed to be addicting. But is there something there to the, the human attention span? I think it is. It's becoming shorter and shorter,

Neville: 1:01:50

No, 'cause I consume a lot of four hour long podcasts as well. I, I mean, I think, I think like, so people, like human intention has become shorter. I'm like, no, it hasn't. Our brains are the same. If you took TikTok and showed it to a 10-year-old from the year 1800, they would watch TikTok too. Like, it's not like they wouldn't watch it. It's just super interesting. Like I, I've made content over time and I've made 30 minute copywriting videos, which back in the day, people are like, oh my God, this is amazing information. I'm like, I could probably summarize this all in a one minute video. Why wouldn't you watch the shorter thing? Why would you spend more time to absorb the same information? I think we just have better tools to get better information quicker.

CODY: 1:02:26

but you're getting more dopamine. Highs very quickly. So it makes the, longer form content harder to, listen for an average person. I think say you and I, we can, we can end up being able to look at the, high dopamine short experiencing activities, but we're also still able to have the willpower or the discipline to listen to longer form things because it's like, if you read a book, say everything is, everything re related to addiction. Every, we can be addicted to anything and say reading a book is hard to be addicted to because the, the reward is much longer, longer out. But say the first time I started to read a book, 30 minutes a day, six months later I look back and I'm like, wow, I'm so much smarter. And so I'm, I finally make that connection. But it seems that how quickly you get that dopamine spike is associated with how quickly you get addicted to it, and thus it becomes harder to become addicted to other things. But I think we have the habit of reading. Or listening to long form things. So it's easier for us to keep that going rather than, just getting sucked into short form content, especially for a Gen A who's only ever done or looked at short form content.

Neville: 1:03:32

Yeah, I don't know if that's a blanket statement. I think there, I think there are people, I mean like you see it on like the New York City subway. Some assholes lose like watching TikTok at full blast and you're just like, you can't just sit there for two seconds. But there's also a lot of other people sitting in the train quietly just staring at stuff and thinking like, it's fine. Yeah. I mean, I have a lot of family friends that are younger. There are some that are totally addicted to their phones and I would say that in large part it's 'cause their parents allow them to do it. And there's some that are like, you are not going to touch a phone and they don't. So I don't know, maybe that's like nature nurture, I don't know. But like if you give someone this very, you know, fun way of exploring stuff, also, like I don't, people always slam social media for being like addictive and stuff like that. It's like, well if we're using it, there must be some net positive to it. I learned a ton of stuff through social media. Like I said, it's the new SEO, it's a new way to get eyeballs on things. And the way, like back in the day there used to be like stumble upon, you know, you like, you push a button that shows you a random article. That was our version of short form back then, except computers were slow and shitty and so it was like a lot slower whenever you lo loaded it up. Now it's just so fast. But back then, if I could scroll faster, I would at the, it just said the technology is like better and faster and deliver stuff more to the point. So I love scrolling social media every once in a while for some fun, mindless entertainment and I get something out of it. Now it's my fault if I overindulge, it's my fault if I eat too many fries and get fat, right? It is my fault. And so I view it like that, whereas I think a lot of people offload that responsibility to the social media company and you're like, yeah, it's their job to make an awesome product. And they did. And just 'cause you're lazy and can't get over it, like don't blame them. So like the whole like banning TikTok thing and just like, I don't know if that's a good move. Like what are you gonna get outta that? Like it's gonna just stop everyone from consuming short form. Absolutely not. I think you have to teach people that like, look, put a timer on this set. Set some limits on your phone. I think the answer to too much technology is like more technology in a way.

CODY: 1:05:30

Now and over in Europe how the drinking age is significantly younger. if you have your parents with you, you can drink really, I don't know what the, if they have a minimum age, but as long as you're with your parents, then you have that responsibility. And I, I remember fondly is, my cat ninja. One time he got, he, he would, I would open the door when he was younger and he would constantly try to escape. And there was one time he escaped and I didn't know he had escaped until the next morning. And so then I found him out there that later on that day, hiding behind a bush right next to the door, to the apartment complex. He just wanted to get him inside so bad. And ever since that experience, he never runs out the door. So it was only by having this super bad negative experience that it changed his, you know, internal dialogue in terms of that. And so often when we're a parent, right, we have, you have like the term helicopter parenting that you wanna prevent your child from being injured, but you still want them to make that mistake. And right now we have, say, parents who are either you, you go to a restaurant now you, you can't really go to a restaurant without having some family who just has their child staring at a, at a screen. And I, I've seen these young kids, who like will stare, stare at an iPad. They're just so glued to that thing that, you know, you have to question how is it affecting their, their neural development.

Neville: 1:06:47

Well, I remember, I remember I was at like a pumpkin patch with some friends with kids and there's like a fire person like swinging fire. It was pretty impressive. It's nighttime. It's lighting up the whole place. Everyone's oohing and ink. I swear to God there was a, a dad, I. Holding the phone, like with his, like this backwards watching the fire and his kid was in a stroller, the pastier just watching it as the dad was holding it up. And I'm like, there's literally like fire being swung around and the kid is watching whatever blues clues or something like that. And it's just like, that's that dad's fault for being like, yo kid, like, like letting that happen. So I don't know, I, I don't, I can't blame social media companies for this. There's always gonna be vices. This was a common problem back in the day. I remember when I was a kid, there was those like books called Goosebumps and, and there was like a, a one that was like even scarier and people would write articles on that. It's like, this is Daniel Carver or whatever the, the author's name was like, making stuff to influence children. And you look back on that thinking like how hilarious that is. I mean, I think looking back on this era, people are gonna be like, oh, you were worried about your kid watching a ten second video. Big deal. I dunno, I, I think it's just like a personal thing. You have to learn, uh, to get over and, and it's difficult, but like, such as life, so.

CODY: 1:07:53

but simultaneously, you can't, you can't blame every individual for their, their own addictions because now we're in a society where it's easier and easier to become addicted to things. And these apps are obviously designed to become addicting. And so it's harder and harder to make the right decision, and you have to use more and more internal self-discipline. And if you're, growing up as a, as a child and say, you know, it's like what do you do as a parent? Should you, should you not give your child a phone when everybody else in school has a phone? Should you not allow them to use an app at right now? Because then the moment they go to college, you know, they're gonna be binging that thing to like, there's no tomorrow.

Neville: 1:08:30

But do you think that's like a projection of what you grew up with? For example, I would use AoL instant messenger all the time and parents thought kids just sitting at this box, like in a room on like A-C-C-R-T-V monitor where like they're like, what are you doing? Like, why don't you just call your friends? Why don't you talk to 'em? Don't you go hang out with them. In reality, I was learning to use the internet really well. Like I got really good at the internet. Now my whole livelihood is on the internet. And now a lot of people from that era are like, how do I get on the internet? It's like, well, I was spending a lot of time on the internet on this goofy thing, but that was actually training me for something else. And so perhaps that the world of 20 to 30 years from now is going to be a lot more fast-paced is going to be a lot more compressed, is going to be a lot more addictive. And this is the train. We are the old people now being like, look at these young people wasting time on TikTok. That's the new, like, oh, they're wasting time on the internet talking to fake people. Right? So I, I'm always, I agree that there is a lot more distractions, but maybe we are the old people now telling kids like, you can't do that. But then later we'll be like, oh shit, we should put out short form clips. Right? So I, I always, I always think like, there's always this duality in my head of like, am I the old person yelling at the young kid now? Or should I be copying what they're doing?

CODY: 1:09:47

Yeah. Um, and I, I think there's a component of asking or training, say, young minds, this idea of a critical question instead of say banning or trying to dictate or control their lives. We all tend to moderate ourselves, but we only moderate ourselves once we come to an understanding that a certain behavior that we have is bad for us. And perhaps one way to counter that is to train people on how to ask themselves critical questions or to understand a, a certain mindset. But I, I don't know if any of that's relevant. I was kind of going down like a blank rabbit hole with that thought, but it was, uh, say. if they understand how to Google properly, if they understand how to reach out to a community. but there's also a form of imitation. Uh, so we tend to imitate others that we see on social media. So then there's that, uh, another separate component of just you see what you want that others have on social media and then you want it yourself. oddly I don't have that issue personally, I guess because I've already gotten all those things in, in some way, but I've actually tried to, I don't have an issue with addiction to social media. I've actually wished I could be addicted to, to scrolling on social media because then it would allow me to feel like envious in a way. I know a Guy Kawasaki talked to me about that is he used this, uh, friend had a Porsche and then he wanted a Porsche, so he was envious and he used that as a source of motivation. Mm-Hmm. And that's the interesting component,

Neville: 1:11:14

yeah, I, I do think like a lot of people being like depressed about stuff is like, you see. I, I, look, my Instagram is full of like private jets and stuff. And of course the only private jets they show are not these tiny private jets that you see at your local airport that are like you, you, you go and fly your Cessna and there's like these little small private jets. That's not what people think about. They think about the G six 50 er that Elon Musk rides around, and you're like, that's what a private jet is. And that's like so far out of most people's wheelhouses that like, you see that and like, part of you must think like, well, that'd be cool, but you're never gonna get it. I think that could make you a little bit depressed. It could also make you motivated, but it, it also make a lot of people depressed. So I can see that, like, you see everyone having like a fun time. I get it, but I think, but also it's like that's never going to go away. And so training people to see like, okay, let's take a trip and let's make it look really awesome. I'm sure you've been on like trips or been out at a party and you get a really cool Instagram clip to post, but like in reality the party was like kinda lame. Like you're just like, eh, it's whatever. But like, that was a sick photo I took or, or video. Um. So I think getting people those experiences is, is important. I just don't think this stuff is gonna go away. I, I don't think you could regulate it out of existence. It just won't happen. So it's like, okay, this is the reality. How do you prepare kids for this?

CODY: 1:12:29

How do you find a sense of, of contentment in a world and social media in which you constantly see what other people have or, you know, the, very close friends with that, that you have, that are very successful and they, they seemingly have a lot, but in some ways they also moderate themselves. how do you find contentment with what you have and do you still to what degree do you want, like more that, that wanting causes distress or unhappiness?

Neville: 1:12:57

I think taking a really hard look at yourself and saying like, I have some very successful friends that are way ahead of me. And I also saw what they went through to get there. And I'm like, did I take that risk? No. Did I do that? No. Did I do, am I as smart as them? And like, sometimes you could tell people have a little bit more mental horsepower than you. No. And you're like, well then I don't deserve that.

CODY: 1:13:18

He.

Neville: 1:13:18

And I think, I think take like, not posting the blame on anyone but yourself and being like, okay, well if I'm not that smart, what can I do to make that kind of money? Did I research all these things? Have I really, really, really tried? Am I spending all my time going towards those things? And I think, I think that's the way. I also think being content and just having maybe like 20%, not envy, but uh, 20%, like wanting more is not a bad thing. Like always having like, it's pretty cool, but we can do a little more. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's human nature. I think it's totally normal. I think, uh, it also depends on what stage you are. If you're like a young 15-year-old man, yeah, I think it's your job to like, get better, get rich, get jacked, whatever, whatever. Like get better in some way. if you're 80 years old and just enjoying whatever savings you have and writing out the clock, playing with your grandchildren, maybe you don't need that. I think it just depends what phase of life you're in. But if you're a young person. I think you should want more. I, I think so. You could be, you could be content, be like, this is nice, but I would like more, I don't think that's a bad thing to have.

CODY: 1:14:21

there was a short of Mr. Beast who was on one of the very few podcasts. He interviews every, every year that, where he talks how he, he, he got a, a bunch of cars and then he just didn't care. He got a, a big house, uh, just realized, yeah, eh, he got, he got a bunch of designer clothing and then somebody else robbed his place and stole it all. And he was like, great. I mean, I don't really care. And, and so when you achieve a certain level of success, and, and I've achieved that certain level of success is, you know, having a big house, having a nice car or these things that, that fueled my motivation when I was younger is you reach the top of the mountain and then I am like left wondering, well, well what, what else do I want? And now I find myself at this, at this point where I feel myself languishing because I've gotten everything I ever wanted to get. Now, I don't know what else there is to, to motivate myself to, to get to that next platform. And so in some ways, I'm envious of the people who are still trying to build a company, a, a startup because they still have some inner fuel that that's causing them to, to push forward. Even though it's, it's not fun. You may stress out, you may burn out, but there is, there is like an ambition there. And so it's hard when you get to the top of the mountain and you realize, of course, that, phrase, you know, it's about the journey, not the destination.

Neville: 1:15:42

Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, I wrote a book called You're Gonna Die based off, and we've talked about this before. in high school, I came to the conclusion I wanna die on November 17th, 2067, my 85th birthday, and if I'm not dead, I'm doing it. And so, a lot of people are like, is this a suicide thing? I'm like, no, it's not a suicide thing. There's no actual plan right now. But the point was that you will die. And, and when you realize that and really internalize that, like, okay, everyone before me has died. Every living thing in the past has died. I'll probably die too. Maybe technology will keep me up till 200 or something like that. But eventually I'll die. Once you start realizing that, I think it's easier to realize like this is like this is the thing. This is the thing. And to enjoy it. The other thing is going to India every few years as a kid, and I remember seeing kids that looked like me and some of my cousins had my same last name, and just by the location of where I was born in the United States, I was like, shit is so much better here. That might flip in our lifetime, but at the time, like you go to this third world country where you just see like the wildest things you would ever see, you'd see like a three-year-old walking through traffic, taking a dump in the street. You're just like, no one's doing nothing about that. You just, and just everyone's carrying on like this the third time. I've seen that this hour. Right. I just, I just saw that kind of stuff and I've always just been very grateful that like this is my life versus that 'cause because you see the very bottom and I'm like, I would rather be here than that. Whatever problems I have here, I will take those rather than that problems. So I think for you, when you see someone like, you're like, I wish I had that. That struggle to where I still needed things. Well, guess what, buddy? There's a way you could do that. You can give away all your wealth. No one does it. It's because you'd rather have this than that.

CODY: 1:17:23

Right. Yeah, I, I had a, a business partner that suggested, you know, no, like humans, were not, were not meant, were not designed to have access to infinite resources and almost infinite wealth. And it it when you have the certain degree where you never have to worry about working again, you never have to, to, to wake up and force yourself to really do something you don't want to do it. It really screws with your head. And his suggestion was that I calculate how much do I need to survive for the next year and then I lock everything else away in something that I can't access and that will give me a new source of motivation.

Neville: 1:18:01

I guess. I think the thing is, in reality, no one does that, and I think there's a better way. I think there's, there's a such thing as over optimization. For example, you can get someone to cook for you. You get someone to clean for you, you get someone to build every piece of IKEA furniture that you buy. But I argue that what if you did most of it yourself? Not all of it. Then you get it made to come by every week or something like that. For the most part, you clean up after yourself. You cook a couple of your meals, you do some of your meal prep, you build a couple of pieces of furniture. Okay? Like, you know, painting a wall, maybe you need to get some specialist, but like building this, building this studio, you, you did a lot of that. Right?

CODY: 1:18:38

I did some of the painting.

Neville: 1:18:39

Okay. So wasn't that fun? Yeah. Like those are small projects that I think like are fun and helpful for you to do. Like whenever, I don't know why, but whenever a grill, which is almost every day, it, it like makes me feel like a man. I don't, I don't know what it, I don't know how to explain it, but there's something about it of like, I'm just taking this break. I don't need to grill right now. I could go to Uber Eats or whatever, but there's just something fun about it. It's kind of nice to do some work on your own and I think it's necessary, and I think people I know that have over-optimized have this kind of like, well, what do I do with life? I'm like, maybe laundry is the answer. Like it doesn't have to be this big thing. It could just be like doing some shit yourself. I.

CODY: 1:19:16

I often went to the Philippines and, you know, to have this outsourcing center and there was this one guy that I ended up meeting who was the, probably the most successful outsourcing company in the area that, that we were looking at. And he was, he was a slightly overweight, or more or less overweight Australian. And he had built this company that I was like, kind of in awe of. And I, he had a very great office and a lot of people working for him. And then he invited us over to his house for dinner one night. He had the largest mansion in the entire area. And then that's where at dinner I learned he has all of these workers. So he actually had his development team create an app for him where he could request a massage, he could, request his car to come up. He even would have them in the morning turn on a shower for them and then get his razor and the shaving cream out. So he more or less tried to design his life in a way where he had everybody doing everything else for him. And in some ways I was just in shock because this was actually kind of like the, uh, if say seven, maybe 10 years, if I was younger, this would be the ideal life I would want. I would want to create all these systems and have all the, everything that kind of optimized so I never have to do anything. I have the perfect comfortable life. But in that moment, when I saw all of these automations, it made me think I. He's compensating for, uh, something and I can only guess what that is, but perhaps like a, like a lack of human connection. And so he's drowning himself and, and these people that are doing all these things for him. And there was a point in my life at which I wanted to acquire resources with the intent of making my life as comfortable as possible because I, I came from a very poor family. We had a, you know, a very small house. It was always messy. It'd be poop on the floor dishes, you know, nobody would clean up after themselves. So my intent was to make my environment as comfortable as possible, but in, in some ways, listen to David Goggins, who, you know, that's, that's a whole different thing about mentally torturing yourself to succeed. but Is that, he runs every day. And it's not because he likes to run, it's because it gives him this, this, this mental willpower of knowing that he did this hard thing. And when you do, when you do hard things, it gives you the, the source of energy to do other hard things. And life is not about trying to make yourself as comfortable as possible. And that was really a flip in my own mindset is that it's, you can acquire wealth, but you shouldn't negate this concept of still doing hard things.

Neville: 1:21:48

So, so I grew up in a small community called Zoroastrian. That's my religion. That's where we are. We're like half Iranian, half Indian, and in Houston there's 400 families of them. And I remember. Whenever I would go to school as an elementary student that, and on Monday they'd be like, what did you do over the weekend? And every kid in the Houston suburbs was like, we ran a blockbuster and got a pizza on Friday and Saturday. And I was like, I went to six parties. And they're like, no you didn't six parties. Whatcha talking about? I was like, I did on Friday, I went to this, this. And then on Saturday I went to this, this, then went to my Sunday school and after I had a friend's party, I did six things and they, and they and they, it's just like people couldn't believe it. That was the first time I realized I was like, huh. My family does a lot more stuff.'cause we have like a lot more friends. And then whenever we'd have parties, there'd be like so many people there. And my friends would be like, how could there be 200 people at a party? Like, how do you know 200 people? I'm like, you just, you just do. And when you grow up and I, I noticed there's times when you think about like, oh, woe is me, like existential stuff. And it's usually when you're alone, right? And just like by yourself and maybe like when you're just like scrolling social media or something. But when you're around and engaged with like a bunch of people and there's kids running around, there's a dog. Chasing your cat and like there's just a lot of stuff and activity going on, you tend not to think those thoughts. And I almost think like a lot of life is like being in those situations where like you don't have to think about that stuff. So like, are you, like, if someone's like depressed, it's like, lemme guess, are you alone a lot of the times? Are you in an environment you do not like? Like what is, what is causing that? And I think figuring out how to be in environments where that do make you happy, that do that, that are enjoyable for you and being in more of those is a very important thing. And identifying that kind of stuff. So like every time I'm at a party with a bunch of friends that I really like, yeah, I'm not sad. I'm not thinking like, oh man, my life sucks. It just just doesn't happen like that. So putting yourself in more of those things in less, you know, by yourself, doing nothing kind of ways.

CODY: 1:23:41

there's that Blaise Pascal quote that, our worst fear is to be trapped alone in a room by, uh, by ourselves or with our thoughts. And so. Do you think that we, we can't do that. We can't have a certain level of alone. I mean, what isn't that? A lot of authors indicate that that's healthy, and I think we're in an age now where we have less and less time for ourselves, and often it's only when I was by myself that I learned the most of who I am rather than being bombarded by say what society says I should be or what others think of me,

Neville: 1:24:13

I think it depends on the person, right? I think it totally depends on the person. It also depends on your upbringing. I was around a lot of people growing up, and so I do value my alone time, but I really like that kind of time

CODY: 1:24:26

he too,

Neville: 1:24:27

and I, I see value in both. I don't think it has to be one or the other. I think it could be periods of like this and periods of that. Periods of saws. I mean, a lot of my best work was done alone at three in the morning in a dark WeWork where the lights already went out. Yeah. And there's just something about that time where you, like you could think there's no, nothing else going on. That's kind of cool. But then also some of the most fun times and when you're hanging out with a bunch of your friends just fucking around. So, I don't know, I think it just depends. It various, I think there's one answer,

CODY: 1:24:52

How many close friends do you have, would you say?

Neville: 1:24:54

uh, that's a good question.'cause I had to pick like groomsmen and stuff like that. And it just depends.'cause I have like family friends who are like forever friends. I have, and then a lot of friends like, like Sam and Noah who I met like through the blog, through internet basically. Um, and a lot of them are close friends. I have probably 10 very close friends at least, I'd say. And then if he, and it's like the friends I talk to all the time, it's probably like four or five and then probably like 10 expanding outwards. And then it goes out in these rings of like friends I have, but like don't talk to all the time. I think I've been blessed with a lot of good friends. Yeah,

CODY: 1:25:33

Have you ever had people who try to be your friend?

Neville: 1:25:36

sure. Yeah. They kind of want to get in that, or like, especially like the last few years, a lot of people like moved to Austin and they're like, Hey, I'm brand new to Austin. Oh yeah. Invite me out to all that stuff you do. And I'm like, no, you're not there yet. Yeah, you get some of that. No one like so aggressively or anything like that, but people will mention it occasionally. Why? Why do you ask?

CODY: 1:25:56

Well say, I'd say like eight years ago, that was me in some ways. I actually moved to Austin and I, I saw Noah Kagan and I'm like, my goal is I want to be Noah Kagan's friend. And, and that was actually a source of motivation for me. It was to, to build my own brand and to do all these things that in order for me to be friends with the people that I considered in the upper echelon. And then I end up having an experience where Noah just thinks I'm weird. And then at some point I realized, yeah, you know, I, I'd probably never be really friends with Noah anyway. And then it just kind of just went away.

Neville: 1:26:27

Huh. Well, that's, I guess, a good ambition. I mean, it's a totally normal thing for someone to be like, yeah, let's hang out. But also, like if enough people ask that there has to be some sort of like restraint. I can't imagine what it's like for someone like Ultra, ultra successful. I know some like popular people, but like someone like Elon Musk or, or the President or something like that, where everyone wants to get in their ear for something, right? That must be like a whole other level of like having to say no to everything and like picking who you hang out with. I've had some friends that I've known for a long time that have become very high level, maybe not who you're thinking, but um, they become vastly wealthier than they were before and they're, they're just like, they're, they're weird things start to happen when people know that you have that very weird things start to happen. Like, for example, you, you go to people's house and they're like, oh, you should charge your phone. I. And they wanna get access to the, the phone you get hack things like that. There's been like incidences, like that thing, things along those lines that start to happen as people get like more famous, more well known, which actually makes them more insular that I've, that I've seen. Or they, they, they lean back on their like old friends more'cause they're like, I had these friends when there was nothing. Like, these are my friends. I think you see that a lot of times with famous people and they have like an entourage. and it's like their brother or, and like their friends from high school. Kinda like that show entourage where it's just like the same dudes you hung around with high school are the ones like you want now.'cause they, there's nothing that they want from you necessarily. Or they hung around you even before you had anything

CODY: 1:27:55

Yeah. And so in some ways the, the more famous or successful you become, even potentially more isolated, you become as well.

Neville: 1:28:01

I don't think every time. I think if you were a well-balanced person and had a good family life and a lot of friends before you were wealthy, I think you have a good chance of being pretty normal as a wealthy person. But if you had a bad life. We were very isolated and then became famous and wealthy and everyone wants to hang out with you all of a sudden. I think that could be where there's a lot of problems.'cause you're like, well, where were all of you before and now you're like, now that I'm here and like, what if this all goes away? Then what? I'm sure that ruminates in, in people's minds, but I think people who are well balanced before don't have as much of a problem with it, I would assume.

CODY: 1:28:37

Then, so you have like 10 friends or so, and now we're in an age where we have people who it's, you'd be even lucky to have like two close friends who are even like one close friend now, especially with the younger generation. I'm curious how you maintain the level of relationships or friends, I guess. So for example, I had, I had a friend who would always, he, he was his own entrepreneur. He would always ask me questions that in my mind you could just Google. And I would just, I would always feel like, why are you asking me this question? And it took me a long time to realize that it was his strategy for staying close to me by asking me questions. Because you ask somebody apparently that they probably know something, you feel good because you're giving them information. And so how do you maintain, many friendships

Neville: 1:29:20

That is how men communicate. He, uh, me and my brother. So, I mean, now me and my brother are, are obviously we're five years apart. So when I was in high school, he was always like in, like in middle school. And then when I was in college, he was in high school. And then as we got closer, we would like, I would be like, Hey, how do you play this on the guitar? I could probably figure that out on my own, but I would ask him. And it was like a way of being close to someone, right. That that's, I think that's how a lot of men communicate in general. Um, I heard a good quote. Men communicate shoulder to shoulder. Women communicate like face to face. Like they'll sit down at a drink, have a glass of wine and be like, how are you, like, what's going on? And men are like, let's go watch the UFC and talk about it. And we'll both like watch the tv, like shoulder to shoulder. I think that's just how people communicate. That's a great way to stay in touch. The other thing is, um, I, I've had to systemify hanging out with friends. So for example, I recently made a Calendly specific, like a hidden Calendly specifically for hanging out with new people. And I pick a place, I try to eliminate all the times, all the things that hang people up. If I say, Hey, let's hang out, nothing ever happens, but I say, Hey, let's hang

out at Lazarus at 1: 1:30:26

00 PM on March 26th. It'll happen, right? So I have a Calendly and the biggest thing that I did that for is scheduling is the hardest part. When are you free? What about this time? What about that time? It's like 15 text messages later. You can't figure it out. So I'm have a calendly pick a time and I have a place that's really close to my house that I prefer to meet at, and it's like casual enough. There's beer, there's liquor, there's also like just water if you wanna hang out. There's wifi and there's food and, and there's parking. And so I have a place where I meet new people up all the time. I go on like, I dunno, what's to call it a Twitter date. It's always men, by the way. Um, but it's like cool. People I meet on Twitter that are also in Austin, I'm like, yo, you wanna hang out? Like you have cool things to say, like, it might be cool to meet up, but when else can you do this? So it's usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and I constantly will meet people that way. So probably like one to two a month depending on what I can handle. and then with my friends, we are on a lot of group chats together, various ones. there's a lot of events that happen. I try to mix and match some of my friends together so that like whenever I go to a party, you know, they're all there. For example, when Sam and Sarah moved to Austin, I wanted to introduce them to certain of my friends that I thought like they would get along with, right? And so then whenever they had a party, they're inviting all my friends that they're now friends with and like, I'm just like, this is great. I get to hang out with my friends all the time. Like they all know each other. And so that's important to me. And there's a lot of deliberate purpose to it, that like, there's thinking behind it. It's not just like, oh, hang out with random friends and invite. Different friends to different friend groups. And so there is planning behind it. The other thing is now as a couple, I noticed you, you, if you're a couple, sometimes you wanna do couple things, right? And so I also have a private Calendly for all of our friends with kids. It's very hard once kids are involved to get the freaking schedules right. That's where every single hangout dies on the vine. So I made a Calendly saying, here's 120 days in the future, my, my calendar that I'm available. Pick one of these times and I'll meet you there. And, and I have like a pre-designated place to meet, like a dinner or whatever. Um, and, and that's, so I've systemized a lot of that and well, so that's been very helpful just using tools like Calendly to get over the, Hey, let's, let's hang out thing. The other mega hack that not most people can pull off, it's not so easy, is living next to each other. And so like when I bought a house basically living next to Sam, like me and him live four houses down. And that was awesome. And there's gonna be a move in the very near future, but. That was awesome to have.'cause you just pop in. So living in like the same neighborhood or like close enough to where you could just say like, pop in, say what's up. And sometimes they're just busy and they can't hang out. That's fine. They do the same thing. He'll walk over with the baby, we'll talk for five minutes, he leaves. And I'm like, that was a hangout. Like that was great. And so I think that's really fun. I think like living in an apartment complex and having friends there is really fun. In my formative years, like 20 to 25, I lived, in this apartment complex and a lot of my close friends are still from those days of like, we all go out, get drunk, have fun, that kind of thing. proximity is a big deal. whenever I would go to San Francisco for like a summer, I would try my best to live close to friends. Like I would pay a lot more money, hundreds of dollars extra to live a block closer to a friend that I liked. Um, New York, same thing. It's just proximity is a big deal. Like if you think about who's your college friends, it's just the ones that live near your dorm. And so that makes it, uh, a lot easier to hang out with people, but that's not realistic for everyone. So then scheduling time to hang out with people. Is very important. And using some sort of schedule or software or something to just like eliminate a lot of the hurdles is a big deal.

CODY: 1:33:57

But have you ever felt weird using, say, Calendly to ask a friend to hang out with you? Because it feels, well, because it, it feels informal like that. They're not at a level where you can just figure out

Neville: 1:34:09

I always say, pick a time, let me know a time, or here's my available times. And I think the days of Calendly being weird, at least in my head, are, are over. I'd prefer it when someone gives me a scheduling software because if you say, let's hang out, what time do you wanna hang? You gave me, now I have work. Whereas instead I'm just like, uh, Wednesday 2:00 PM Yeah. I'm not doing anything. Let's do that. Like, to me it's saving time. I, I, I can't understand why it would feel, um, bad. I, I think it, I think it helps people.

CODY: 1:34:38

No, I, I agree. I've had some negative reactions from that though, since I

Neville: 1:34:42

Oh, really? Get rid of those people.

CODY: 1:34:43

Okay, good point. Good point.

Neville: 1:34:45

Yeah. But yeah, you have, I think you have to make time. You have to have a, like a new feed of people as well. I will say a major life hack. Shout out to our buddy Nick Gray. he uses my place every once in a while for parties. I know he uses your place for parties and that, I mean, how many friends have you met through Nick Gray having like this like mega influencer? I don't know what you'd call him. He like our friend Nick Gray. Shout out, two hour cocktail party book. He basically throws these quick parties, not a lot of drinking involved name tags and then, um, and some introductions so you can know everyone. And I'm staring out at your little courtyard over there. I remember there being like 50 people in that thing and doing like a, a round like introduction. And it's cool 'cause you, you come into a place you don't know many people and it's a little weird to talk to people. I'm okay at doing it, but I think people like you, like I don't think you are, I don't think you historically have not been good at just like going up and talking to people. Maybe you're better now. Like you do quick introductions and you'd be like, oh, that person works in a similar industry. I wanna ask 'em a question about this. Or there was like a lady who built this home, like this pod thing and I was like, oh, I wanna ask about that.'cause I have a backyard. I was thinking about doing one and that fosters all these new communications. You don't become best friends with everyone, but over time you start meeting these people again and again and again and like out of 100 one might become a really good friend. So I think having a source of new people is very good. And honestly, my source of new people has been almost solely the internet. I meet most of my friends through uh, Twitter for the most part, Twitter and their blogs back in the, so Noah is one of my best friends. Sam one of my best friends. We both met through blogs back in the day before social media was big. And now most of the friends I meet, like I, I follow on Twitter and then we meet up in person and I'm like, oh, this person's pretty cool. And then like a couple hangouts into it. Maybe you become better friends. So yeah.

CODY: 1:36:32

I can't really say. I've met a lot of people that I would consider friends at the parties, but it's also partially because I, I don't follow up on the communication. I think following up, especially when you're at kind of like the new component of what might be a friendship is one of the hardest things because you don't have the relationship with them yet. is perhaps the reason that you became more friends with people on social media because you read their content, you've been following them for a while, you feel more of a connection to them. Yeah, and it seems like most people, I, I think there was some study that the most people, they, the friends that they have for, for the majority of their lives. It's from college. Or high school because it's forcing you to be with a group of people every single day for, for a long period of time. And outside of that, it's just work. And so when you don't have a workplace that you have to go to, it does seem like it's either online or at parties that you have to get these, these new friends.

Neville: 1:37:23

Yeah, like the, the, the networking party type thing is where it's like, think of it as the top of funnel where you're just meeting a bunch of people, right? Bunch of shallow conversations about something and you're like, this person's cool. This person's weird. There's certain per people, I'm sure you've, you're like, I'm just gonna stay away from that person. Don't really wanna interact with them. Again, there's some people you're like, wow, that was, that was pretty great conversation. That was good. I'd love to hang out with them. And then you think about it, like, okay, who can I invite later? So then you get that person's number and say, two weeks from now, let's do something. And I, I'm a big fan of putting it in Google Calendar. I. If it goes in Google calendar, it happens. And if it doesn't, it just dies on the vine. So put a hangout on Google calendar for just like quick coffee, quick lunch, something like that. And I think that's how you formulate, like, say like, okay, we've taken this to the next level. It's like friend dating, right? It's totally like a funnel. And then, um, and then later if you have a party at your place or something like that, you can invite them. That's an extra sign of like, oh, this person's reaching out. and so I think that's how it happens. And not everyone becomes a good friend, but you do have to follow up. I think throwing parties is a great way to make friends. Like Nick says, having an event where people come and you're the host, there's something magical about it, especially if it's at your place. And then also casual hangs like, I'm trying to think of a vibe. Oh, I know trivia night. Like you go to a trivia night, there's four of you, six of you, you do some trivia, you drink a beer, you eat a salad at the place. That's, that's real. Hanging out, not just like we're getting together to discuss business or something like that. I think that's real hanging out. So, um, and also like with our family friends, it's a totally different vibe. Whenever we have all our internet friends around, a lot of people are talking about like, oh, what's the valuation of this company? Da da da. And then family friends. I feel like it's like a whole different conversation. It's, it's a different thing. it's kind of funny, like I always say, I have two different lives. I have one life here in Houston, one life in Austin, and it's like two separate circles and they're both equally awesome. And so it's, it's nice to have that. The other thing is, and may I be frank over here, you are weird. You, you're a weird person. I don't mean that in a bad way. I get along with a lot of weird people, but like, you have like some degree of autism or something, right? I think you would say. Yeah. Like that's going to be a hindrance to that kind of thing. And I think for you, having this like methodology of like being like, this is how a friendship works, could probably be helpful to someone as analytical as you. I remember the first time we, you were a lot better. I remember the first time we met. I think you were very awkward. You were very awkward. Um. I think you've got better through like studying psychology. Um, so I think, I think studying these ways of becoming better friends with people is, uh, helpful. I think some people are natural at it. I think in college it's natural because everyone's just around each other and you pass by someone's dorm room, their door's open. You're like, Hey, let's watch football, or let's hang out, watch friends or whatever. And, and that happens. But when you're like isolated and don't have anyone around you, you have to, you have to make that happen. It takes effort.

CODY: 1:40:16

right.

Neville: 1:40:17

Who are your friends? How many friends do you have?

CODY: 1:40:20

I can't really say that I have any, like true friends. I have a partner, uh, and that's, that's it. Uh, texting Nick Gray here and there, but I haven't really been able to follow up with anybody who actually came to the party. And that makes, even hosting parties, like I feel conflicted because on one hand I have this big house, which in part I wanted to have a big house so I could host parties. But, you know, hosting a party comes with a lot of anxiety of setting it up and all these things, and. It's, I've never really followed up consistently with people who have attended the parties. So then that further amplifies, why am I hosting parties if I don't have like this motivation to follow up with people that even I was able to, to find interesting with. I know Nick suggested that if I meet, meet a few people, I have like a, a follow up and I just have, you know, invite five or so people to a, a dinner and then, you know, it's kind of like a funnel. And I, I agree. Yeah, I guess it's just, uh, being able to prioritize. It's kind of like something where I think mentally I don't prioritize relationships as much.'cause I grew up prioritizing work. and so relationships ultimately, you know, it's like, what's the point of being successful and whatnot if you have nobody to share that with. And so it's trying to reprioritize what relationships mean to me, because that is where you can derive a sense of happiness. And yet it's, uh, it's, it's a work in progress to try and, uh, do that.

Neville: 1:41:43

Hmm. I would, I would say you're probably better at one-on-one than in a group of five people. Ier. One of my close friends, he shorts out in groups of like four or more. He can't like, keep, he's the, the smartest, highest horsepower IQ person I've ever met in my entire life. But he can't like, hold a conversation with two people at the same time. My dumb ass can do it for some reason. I'm fine with it. Um. I think there's just like different personality traits for me instead of, so Nick Gray can hold his court in a group of a hundred people. So for him to say five people, I would say shorten that number down to one. Why don't you do more? One-on-one Hangouts people. So whenever you meet someone at a party, think towards the end like, Hmm, who would I most like to hang out with one more time and have just a quick coffee with one time? I would say schedule it on the spot. But yeah. Do you ever wanna get together and let, let's put something in the calendar right now and you just, you just do it right there

CODY: 1:42:38

Yeah. That's a good idea. Thank you for that. Uh, have an intermediary, to help us bond without the peer analytical conversation. I.

Neville: 1:42:48

Yeah. I mean whenever, whenever I do these like meetups on Twitter, almost all the conversation is about like, what are you doing? Da, da da. This. It's kind of like transactional at first more than anything. I think also whenever people. Like, for example, I have a wedding and people who are married will have stuff to say about their wedding. Everyone has something to say about it or some tips or advice. That's another way to kind of bond with someone on a different dimension than just business. Right. And then I think when you're a couple, that's another way, like because you're a couple and they're a couple and like how that dynamic plays out, that's another thing to bond about. So there's, there's other things like that that are out there. But yeah, I think you do have to work at having friends. Like it just doesn't come free unless you're in college and everyone just lives around you and all the work is kind of done because you're having these collisions all the time. But you have to create it. Yeah. Cool man. Well fun.

CODY: 1:43:41

Yeah. Thank you.

Neville: 1:43:42

Good job.