David speaks with Neville Medhora, an expert copywriter, best-selling author of "This book will teach you how to write better", and founder of Copywriting Course and SwipeFile.com.
Neville never set out to be a copywriter - it just kind of happened. He started out messing around with online businesses with his friends in the 2000s, got hooked on findings ways to optimise sales, and realised that the right words could make people take action. In this episode, Neville shares some of his wildest experiments (including trying out homelessness) and his parents reaction, how he almost got himself and Noah Kagan in trouble with Mark Zuckerberg, and the opportunities that AI can bring you - if you are paying attention now.
We talked about:
🚀 How tackling challenges helps you grow in life and business
🧠 Why having unstructured time is key for big, creative ideas
🔄 Whether a truly stable career path even exists
💰 The power of taking risks and trying new things
🔍 How being transparent in marketing builds trust that lasts
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📄 Show notes:
[00:00] Intro
[02:51] If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.
[04:39] The Power of Consistency
[06:31] Finding Balance Between Structure & Creativity
[09:12] Choosing the Entrepreneurial Path vs. a Job
[18:34] Early Experiments and Blogging
[22:00] Convincing Parents of an Unconventional Career
[24:10] The Homeless Experiment and Early Hustles
[25:54] Dropshipping in the 2000s
[32:37] How Neville Almost Got in Trouble with Facebook
[34:28] Neville’s Copywriting Breakthrough
[38:21] The Birth of Kopywriting Kourse
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
Noah Kagan https://noahkagan.com/
Mark Zuckerberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Gary Halbert https://thegaryhalbertletter.com/home/
Ramit Sethi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramit_Sethi
Sam Parr https://x.com/thesamparr
House of Rave https://thehouseofrave.com
AppSumo appsumo.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/
The Hustle https://thehustle.co/
Google google.com
Ducati https://www.ducati.com/
KPMG kpmg.com
Bain https://www.bain.com/
McKinsey https://www.mckinsey.com/
Mayer Brown https://www.mayerbrown.com
MTV https://www.mtv.co.uk/
ChatGPT https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/
Twitter / X x.com
TikTok tiktok.com
👤 Connect with Neville:
Twitter / X: https://x.com/nevmed
Marketing SwipeFile: SwipeFile.com
Course: CopywritingCourse.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neville_medhora
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kopywriting
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people think deeper and work smarter.
🐣 Twitter: @Delikwu / @itstheknowledge
🌐 Website: https://www.davidelikwu.com
📽️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/davidelikwu
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/delikwu/
🕺 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@delikwu
🎙️ Podcast: http://plnk.to/theknowledge
📖 Free Book: https://pro.theknowledge.io/frames
My Online Course
🖥️ Decision Hacker: http://www.decisionhacker.io/
Decision Hacker will help you hack your default patterns and become an intentional architect of your life. You’ll learn everything you need to transform your decisions, your habits, and your outcomes.
The Knowledge
📩 Newsletter: https://theknowledge.io
The Knowledge is a weekly newsletter for people who want to get more out of life. It's full of insights from psychology, philosophy, productivity, and business, all designed to make you more productive, creative, and decisive.
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📜 Full transcript:
If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.
David Elikwu: I'd wanted to start with some of your, your background, some of the stories you have an incredible swipe file of random experiments that you've run, like [00:03:00] selling, selling water bottles on the side of the road, being homeless for a week, a bunch of things like that. And I'd love to get into that, but I actually wanted to start with something I saw in your email signature, which says, if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.
And I'd really be interested to figure out like, okay, where does that come from? Is this some ethos that you have? What does that connect to in your life?
Neville Medhora: That was like an old quote. I don't know. I think that was like when I first got Gmail and I kind of liked it. I don't know why it was just a random quote that it doesn't challenge. It doesn't change you. Meaning, if you do the same thing, it's not exactly challenging. It has to be a little bit hard. It's supposed to be difficult. Yeah. I don't think I haven't, I haven't updated that quote for a long time, but it's still a good quote and I still see it. And it reminds me, I'm like, Oh yeah, it's supposed to be hard.
For example I don't work that hard. And recently, one of my goals this year was to work harder. A lot of the day, I'm just, I'm not doing anything. I think everything's like pretty scalable that I do. I have people that help me and there's kind of like a system that goes on. So I do a little bit of work, post something, and then it goes out to the internet. It's all on the computer. It's automatic. [00:04:00] And I was just like, man, I'd say like, out of an eight hour day, I worked for two hours, maybe. And then the rest is just goofing off. So I was just like, okay, if I want to change this, it's supposed to be a little bit painful.
So I've been doing like 8am calls and stuff, which I would never do before. Nothing before 11am. So even this calls before 11am, I never used to put anything on my schedule before 11am, if not 1pm, only two days, I would do 11am or before.
So, it is a reminder. I'm just like, okay, I wanted to work harder. This sucks a little bit. That means I'm doing it.
David Elikwu: Fair. Okay. Glad to be part of making your life a little bit more difficult in a, in a desirable way.
The Power of Consistency
David Elikwu: But tell me more about the, the structure element. Cause I know you've spoken before about, I guess, just the power of consistency and that being maybe something that you have struggled with in the past or can be difficult. So I'd love to hear about, you know, is this part of you figuring out how to structure your days in a way that automates some of the consistency that you need to get the results that you want?
Neville Medhora: I [00:05:00] like consistency on certain things. I do like kind of waking up whenever. I don't like waking up at the exact same time every day. At least while I don't have kids, I can at least get away with that. And so I like, well, a little bit of randomness. I get a little bit bored if I go to the same office every day and just work out of the same thing at the same hours, it makes me a little bit bored.
So I do like some of the randomness. However, consistency is helpful in certain things. Like if you're trying to lose weight, you know, if you are good for five days and then two days, screw it up, you never actually do anything. So I have always struggled with consistency. I realized with myself I need a negative consequence, for me, I need like negative reinforcement, not positive. Like if someone's like, Oh, you're so good. You did that. I'm like, I don't care. Like that doesn't do anything for me. I need to have a consequence. Like if I'm trying to lose weight or something, I need to be like, let's schedule a beach trip, so we go somewhere. I'm going to have my shirt off in front of everyone. And I don't want to feel fat. So that's for me, that's the type of motivation I need. Are you the the same? What are you thrive on?
David Elikwu: Yeah, I'm a bit like that, probably halfway between. [00:06:00] So I do find it hard to be consistent in some ways just because in my mind, my mind's always bouncing around between things. I'm always doing a bunch of different things, but it's interesting that I think I'm also, there's a part of me that also needs some structure, or I do well with some structure. So when there is some vague structure there, it allows me to, in the free time when I don't have that structure, to like make the most of it. Because I find that sometimes, if I have too much time that is completely uncontrolled, then I might do nothing, or there might just not be anything that comes out of it.
Finding Balance between Structure & Creativity
David Elikwu: But on the flip side, the part I definitely empathize with is that I do think, you know, right now I do a lot of writing, I write this newsletter and I write posts, essays, these things, and it takes a lot of time. It takes time in the sense of not writing, but thinking, and what precedes the thinking is often a bit of pottering about, sometimes you're just, you know, faffing around, like you say. It might seem like goofing off, but actually I think it's part of the creative process in a way where you actually do need some of that unbridled [00:07:00] time where I might just go for a walk and I might just, you know, sit down and think about something and read some stuff and then out of that mess will somehow come this idea of a thing I'm gonna write.
So I think there can be this combination of the messy unstructured nature can then be what allows you to be quite consistent in producing things and actually putting things out and I think for you, I mean, you've been writing your blog for over 20 years now.
Neville Medhora: I was like HTML uploading, yeah, stuff on the internet. Yeah.
David Elikwu: So again, like that's the strange balance where like, you've been remarkably consistent almost every single month for over 20 years, which I can't think of anyone who could say they've done anything like, you know, you're now touching LeBron James and in a way, if you want to put it like that.
Neville Medhora: When you put it that way, it sounds impressive. Yeah. It does sound consistent. Yeah.
David Elikwu: No, for real, like most people's blogs do not last even two months. Most people's anything does not, does not last for very long at all. You've been doing swipe file. You've been doing a lot of the things you've been doing for quite some time. So it's interesting that you have this balance [00:08:00] of also not being super structured and not, it doesn't come from like a machine of, I have to do my days exactly like this so that I can have this output.
Neville Medhora: Well, I think, you know, there's that famous question. Like if you had all the money in the world, like someone gives you 10 billion, what would you do? And mine has been consistently pretty much probably the exact same thing. I'll go on the internet. I would look at stuff. I'd be like, Hey, that's cool. I'd save it. I would want to post about it. I like going on the internet, harassing my friends. Just like fun stuff, right. It'd be mostly the same. So fortunately my interest is kind of like posting online, reading the news online, it's, it's, it's really not that incredible, but it's like that is in line with what my business is.
So like swipe file is just like, stuff neville sees on the internet and posts about, that is my business, but that's also almost like a hobby, right? So I would do it for free. I do do it for free. And then it also has a business tie in, of course, but that is why it's easy to be consistent. Otherwise if I did not like doing this stuff, there'd be no way that I would do it that consistently over the years. [00:09:00] And I would like to do it every day. So when you say like, I post every month, I'm like, to me, I'm like, that's me being lazy. I should be posting every week, every day. I wish there was like 10 posts a day. But I can't, I can't get that out.
Choosing the Entrepreneurial Path vs a Job
David Elikwu: Is there any extent to which you've thought about the constraints that you've put either in your life or in your work to make you focus on doing the thing that you should be doing. Just in the sense that you say, like, okay, there is a part of it that seems fun. I think that's actually the hard part for a lot of people.
For a lot of people, there is a vague idea of, there's this thing that I want to do. But you can end up taking it in a direction that is not the fun because you're chasing some shiny object. And the shiny object could be ambition in the sense of, for example, I think you did or you wanted to do computer science and then did political science. But, you know, there are a lot of people that maybe find some success. And then suddenly they're trying to go off in the startup direction. They're trying to build this thing that seems shiny because you can, like, if you have the marketing chops, like you're, you're doing some of this stuff for other companies, right. You consult, you work on other people's startups. Like you [00:10:00] could have been like, huh, maybe I could just do it myself and go off in that direction. Or maybe you could go off in the other direction, which is like, Oh, you just become like a weird griftery, I'm only gonna do like random, you know, cell protein shakes and something else on the internet kind of thing.
So how do you find balancing that golden meme of staying where you need to be?
Neville Medhora: Depends which stage in life you are. If you're just getting started doing a bunch of things and seeing what works, it makes sense. If you found, after doing 10 things, that there's one thing that you're really good at and everyone wants to pay you for it, perhaps you should focus on that, right?
So it reminds me of someone who wants to be a freelancer. A lot of people will come to me being like, I want to be a freelance copywriter. That's not what I like encourage people to do actually. People come to me and I'm just like, why don't you just be a freelancer in general and see what people pay you for? Maybe it's not just writing. Maybe it's web development. Maybe it's accounting. Maybe it's all sorts of different things. And so it just depends on what stage you're at that I think you have to find out what you're good at. And I think it's actually, it's really hard to find out what you're good at. It's really easy to find out what you don't like. [00:11:00] So it's very, you can very quickly find out what you don't like. And that's a very important thing.
So in the beginning, I do think people should be doing a bunch of random crap. I think they should be following all the shiny objects, trying to get a company, try a software coach, try all these different things and then see what they do and don't like. And then some people realize they don't like starting companies. They don't like the startup world. They like being in a corporate career. And I feel like that's got like a bad rap in recent years, but I'm just like, why? If, if you work for a good company, you work with good people, their structure, you thrive in it, you're good at, and you get paid a lot of money, like, what's the problem?
So some people think that they want to do the business route and then they try it. Like my brother, for example, he tried it too. And he's just like, Man, I need a job. Like that's, that's how I work. It's just not everyone. It's not like good or bad. It's just kind of like, you know, you got to know what you're good at.
So in the beginning, trying a lot of stuff. And then when you hone down on what you're good at, then focus.
David Elikwu: I'm interested to know what made you think that this was viable in the first place? I think even from, I know you tried a bunch of things early on, but mostly it's just fun random things. I mean, you [00:12:00] can talk about some of those, like, you know, those early experiments, but then also, obviously, I know that you had the rave website, but even that being in college, I think that's one of those things where, and I think you've even said this, that, how many people while they're in college also have businesses, especially not in the early 2000s, right. These are two separate things. I think it's one thing now for people to be like, everyone wants to have a side hustle, everyone's trying to make money on TikTok shop or do whatever it is. But I think back then it was a lot more rare. And funnily enough, the reverse of what you just said in terms of jobs, I think right now there's like guys might be, Oh, drop out of Harvard and go pursue this random startup type thing. Go build your side hustle. But back then I think it was very much like you should go be a lawyer. Like you should just go have this career because that was the shiny thing. Go and work at KPMG or at Bain or at McKinsey and that is the life that you dream of.
Neville Medhora: Yeah, those things go in phases and I think it depends on when you were born, right?
I graduated college around the time that I have experienced two economic crashes in my lifetime. [00:13:00] And so that definitely shapes you the 2001 economic, like 9 11 happened. And then literally like business around the world stopped, right. That was like a thing that a lot of people weren't prepared for. And I knew people that were going to college around that time and got screwed by it. And then when I graduated college shortly after that. There was another economic recession in 2008. And so I saw a lot of people who went to grad school and had jobs at a big law firms in New York lined up guaranteed bonuses and all that stuff. And then after that, they were like, sorry, we're not hiring or sorry, our company went out of business, right? I've seen it happen twice. So I don't think that there's stability in any world. And so you just kind of have to pick whichever one you want. There's definitely not stability running your own business. There's not stability necessarily getting a job anymore that at least not like it was like 30 years ago or something, our parents generation.
So it just depends on what you want to do. [00:14:00]
What did you do out of college by the way?
David Elikwu: That's a great question. So I ended up being a lawyer. So nothing too glamorous. Although I had a bit of a weird journey getting there where I kind
Neville Medhora: But that, but that is, that is glam. You think it's like, it's like doctors are like oh, you don't have to be smart to be a doctor, but to the outside world, you're like, yeah, but, there's like a basic level of intelligence. You have to pass to be a lawyer, doctor, right?
David Elikwu: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Neville Medhora: Yeah. And because you're a [00:15:00] lawyer, I think that gives you like a little extra clout. I don't care what law school you went to. Just the fact that you are a lawyer makes it very compelling.
David Elikwu: Yeah, that is true. And I worked at my dream law firm. Like that was all great. And funnily enough, maybe I experienced some of what you saw from your friends, but a bit late. So I worked at, you know, what was my dream firm for like five years. And then I think you get to a point where you look ahead of you and you just see people are actually kind of miserable and you're like, huh, that is not what I was dreaming of. And I don't know if I want to be here in another 10 years feeling the exact same thing.
Neville Medhora: Well, you know how I, I avoided that. We have like a tight knit community where I grew up. And so I had a lot of friends that were like, friends of mine that were five, 10 years older. So I got to see them in college. And I always thought I wanted to be an investment banking that like in college, that was like the cool word to throw around. You made a lot of money, but really like, what does that even mean? Investment bank? You have like, what specifically do you do every day as an investment banker? And I actually had no idea.
And so I actually talked to a lot of friends and they're like investment bank. And they're like, Oh, why would you want to do that? [00:16:00] And I was like, What do you mean? That was a, the opposite reaction of what you get whenever you tell someone in college, they want to be investment banking, which is cool. And they're just like, that's like indentured servitude. They say that you're going to make 300K a year. They actually pay you 60. You're living like you make 300K a year. So you're in debt and they dangle this carrot of a bonus over you. And if you don't wake up at four in the morning and do whatever they want, they don't give us you. And so they've got you by the balls. They're very, very hard on you. They, the churn rate is crazy high. And so I knew early on is like, huh, maybe this is not all that it's cracked up to be, like everyone drops out. No one stays around forever. So maybe that's not the career path.
So I was lucky to avoid some of that. And then I was part of a couple of investment clubs and they would bring in people that work at investment banks and they were like, yeah, that's great. And you can kind of tell the passion in someone's eyes if they're lying or not. And you're kind of like. Wait, this doesn't sound really, it sounds like you're just cold calling people or like making PowerPoints all day. Just didn't seem like a glamorous lifestyle. I just thought of it was, but then when you get down to nuts and bolts, it didn't [00:17:00] seem that glamorous.
Same with being a lawyer. I think a lot of people are like, Ooh, big high power lawyer. And then you're just like reading some crappy B2B document all day and being like, Oh, you should change those words, change those words, stuff that chat GPT can now probably do really damn well.
So yeah, it's probably like what people think is their dream job and then what it really is in reality is probably not the same thing.
David Elikwu: Yeah, exactly. It's one of those things where I very often still to this day get people asking if it's like suits the TV show and I'm like, kind of yes, if you take out all the drama and you realize that most of the show takes place at nighttime, that is exactly what it's like, you know, like you were just, you pretty much live in the office and it's strange actually having left. Like you say, I think it's one of these things where the glass is always greener on the other side. And there's a strange balance where, so now that I'm not in law, I left, you know, maybe five, six years ago. And I still catch up with some of my friends. I still have a ton of close friends in law, but you know, sometimes let's say I'm having a hard month or a hard few months. And I'm like, ah, you know, [00:18:00] the people that I trained with that are still in these firms now are making the equivalent of, you know, in the U.S. would be like three, 400, 000 a year, something like this. I'm here probably about like two to 300, 000 pounds. And you're like, wow, that could have be not bad as guaranteed money that you could just, you know, wake up in your sleep and get, but then they would look at me and say, Oh, wow. You know, it's so brave of you that you were able to leave and go do what you want because they have to work most weekends, you know, suffer through whatever they're working late, they wake up early, all these things. So there is that, that balance to it as well.
Early Experiments and Blogging
David Elikwu: I was going to ask you, yeah, you were telling me about some of the early experiments and trying to figure out, I guess at the beginning, like what path you end up going down and why?
Neville Medhora: The experiments early on were just like, I was, I was a young person and I was just like curious about stuff. And the internet didn't exist in exactly the way it did now. There was still the internet. You were still able to communicate information. It just wasn't like the wealth of information that was around.
So you could find articles, you could [00:19:00] find videos, but it wasn't like the ecosystem that it is now where you go on YouTube and see people trying out all sorts of crazy things.
I also think the environment was like, people didn't talk about money as much. It was very taboo to talk about money 20 years ago. And now on, on Twitter, people are like, Hey, I made 3K this month. My MRR is like, holy sh*t Like this is a very dramatic vibe shift. So now people are talking about money and I didn't have a community.
So I started, I started, I started Neville's financial blog. Nevblog.Com was my first blog. You can go and see like blog posts from years ago where my net worth was $9,000. And I was talking about all the things I was investing in. And there used, there was like this financial community that started building up. So me, Ramit Sethi, there's like these other financial bloggers and there's like this whole community of financial bloggers or people that are like, I want to talk about money, but I don't know where else to do it. And so we started talking about it. And so I was like, how else can you make money?
So, I was fascinated with like homeless people. I was just like, why are they just there? I, and I, I quite honestly, I just didn't like them. And I was just like, can I help them sell stuff? And so I got this homeless guy to like, sell bottled water on the side of the road. I'm [00:20:00] like, if he's out there begging for money, what if he just sells bottle water and people would be like, Hey, I'd, I'd rather buy a bottle of water from this person than just give them money.
So that was like one of the experiments. I tried all sorts of things. You know, we go to the airport and they confiscate knives and glasses and just random objects. There's a place that you can go and buy all that stuff that they take. And so you could buy like a bag of knives, like a hundred knives for $10. And then I would resell them on eBay and see how much profit I can make. So I was just like curious on the different money making methods that there were. And the internet was new at the new ish at the time, right.
So it's just like, okay, there's this new tool. Is there a way that you could perform commerce? So the analog now is, is AI, right? So there's this new technology called AI that's been out for, you know, 2 years? What are we talking about? Chat GPT launched two years ago. That's like the first real AI that people were able to use properly. And so it's only two years old, but it's brand new thing in the world that didn't exist. So it's like, how can you make money with it? So you see all sorts of people right now trying all these AI startups. Some fail, some don't, some are like, [00:21:00] whatever, some are good. Some was bad. Some are not useful. Some are useful. I think there's like this new age of like people just being like, what can I do with this? What's useful over here. And the answer is like, you don't truly know until probably like 10 years after that technology is really taken off.
So like even the internet from like 2000 to 2010 was useful, but not like the worldwide phenomenon that we knew it and the thing that brought it there was the launch of the iPhone. And specifically by the time the iPhone 3G came out, everyone in the world had a smartphone and that completely changed the economic structure of the entire world. So it was, it was years after the main thing came out. So we're only two years into AI. It's going to be interesting to watch in five years or so where the real value comes from. And it might be in a way that we don't necessarily expect.
I liked trying out all sorts of things at the time and seeing what I was good at and what I was not good at. And I think now there's this whole new Renaissance of this new technology that just popped out of nowhere, it seemed and what, what we could do with [00:22:00] it.
David Elikwu: Sure.
Convincing Parents of Your Unconventional Career
David Elikwu: I mean, speaking of the vibe shift, I think it's funny you mentioned AI, we're probably at a similar moment where to the very first time when computers were becoming widely available, the internet's first coming out, I think it's a similar moment now in some ways, but it's funny that, you know, you had a lot of freedom to experiment a lot because it was so nascent then, but I'm interested to know what were your parents saying at this point in time when you're running around, you know, like selling water with homeless people and, and doing all this kind of stuff.
How long did it take them to get on board with the fact that you're kind of going off on this different way, especially during university when you're meant to be studying, but also running this business and doing other stuff.
Neville Medhora: I think their focus was on grades. Like my parents were pretty cool about it for the most part. They obviously had some, some holdups. Like I was talking about money online, like saying how much money I had. They were, that was just not a thing you ever talked about back then.
Like I said, it was just a very different, different time. You're telling people how much money you have. Like, what do you mean? Like that's, that's a little bit crazy. And I think over time they got over it a little bit more. And I [00:23:00] think if you go back, like, what do your parents care about? They care about that, you're going to graduate from university and be able to get a good job so you could support yourself and have a good life, right. And I think the thing that changed their mind a little bit was they told me if I don't get a certain GPA in school, I'd have to pay for my own tuition. And I didn't hit that number and they're like, you're gonna have to pay for your own tuition. And I wrote a check and I did it. And I think that's when they were like, Oh, wait, is he making money from this internet thing? Like that was just a new thing at the time. So they weren't sure, like, is this a real possibility? And I always told them my, my hypothesis. I'm like, look, if I graduate from school, I have this, I'm making about as much money as I probably would at a normal job, right, right now, and it could go to zero and then I'll just get a job.
So if this doesn't work out in two years, I have savings for two, three years to live like pretty decently. What if I just do this for a couple of years and try it? And if I don't, I'm pretty confident I could go get a job.
And so I think they were okay with that. And of course people worry about their kid, like not focusing on school, but they did notice that like, I was trying, it wasn't like, I was [00:24:00] just like goofing off all day. I was trying to build things. And I did have a realistic expectation of like, I will go get a job if I don't make any money. So they were pretty on the okay end of it.
Homeless Experiment and Early Hustles
Neville Medhora: The homeless stuff they did not like that was, and to be fair, that was not just my parents, that was everyone in the world was like, this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Like you should not do this, but I want to hear what happens. Like, yeah, when I told them I was going to like pretend to be homeless for like almost a week, I have four nights, five days, they were just like, you're going to get stabbed. What are you talking about? This is a horrible idea. So, Yes, they were worried. And if I had a kid and they did that, I would be very worried about them as well. I played it as safe as possible. But you know, there are risk involved. But at the same time, when you're like younger, that's the kind of stupid stuff you do, which is kind of fun. Like, I don't think I would do that now.
David Elikwu: Yeah. No, no. That, that's the thing. It's funny. Like, okay. I don't think I was selling water bottles with homeless people, but I do think and maybe because it was those early times, like that's the kind of [00:25:00] stuff you get up to, right. I think you also sold like you did like CD burning. I probably did similar things. I used to, I was just telling someone the other day, I used to like write rap lyrics on like, notebook paper and just sell like pages and just sell like, I'll just sell you like a page for two pounds, you know, because you can. And all kinds of random stuff. And then getting onto the internet. I think this is so like, this is just getting past the early days of blogs, but when you're now getting like Dreamweaver and some of these things and you can make websites quite easily. And so, you know, you would just start making websites. And it's funny because I was still young. I remember being like 13. At the time when I first started learning design and these things, I'd be on these random internet forums, making websites for complete strangers and doing all kinds of other like random tech stuff for strangers who don't know how to do it. But I'm 13, so I can figure out how to do it. And these are like, I don't know, grown people, but hey, you can just do that. People can send you money and it's great. You can just learn how to do these things.
Dropshipping in the 2000s
David Elikwu: But this, the business that you are running, the rave one. It's kind of what allowed you to never end up having a [00:26:00] proper job. It did well enough. You could pay for your school tuition, all of these things. So it seemed like at that point, it's already working. I'm interested to know what the earliest days of that were like, cause it was like a dropshipping type business at a time where dropshipping was not like now. It's a keyword, use such that, there's going to be a million YouTube videos about that, but I think back at that time, it was not.
And actually one of my first businesses, my first actual registered company when I was 14 was importing consumer electronics from China. And that was also dropshipping adjacent. So, you know, I just found this random Chinese factory and I was getting them to send me whiteboard clickers and stuff and I would sell them to teachers at my school and things like this. But again, this is at a time where that's not a word that is in the Zeitgeist or something that is very well understood. It's something you just figure out messing around on the internet.
So I'm interested to know from your side, first of all, like, how did you get that working in the first place? And was that the first thing that you got to work where you were like, Oh, I can make money on the internet.
Neville Medhora: No, it was like a bunch of schemes. It was like, they weren't businesses. It was schemes, is all I'd say. We [00:27:00] had, we had like a group of friends like in high school juniors, 11th or 12th grade or so. And we would all just like think like, how can you make money online? And there was like these, there's like these programs where if you browse the web and have like a banner under the browser and you watch this banner all the time and click it every once in a while, you would get like a few cents per hour of browsing the web. So at the end of the month, you get a check for like $16 or something. And you know, when you have $0, $16 is pretty cool. And so I would do that. And then I was, and then we had a computer science class. There's like a classroom, like 30, 40 computers. We wrote a program that just makes the mouse go like, is like in a circle or whatever. So it tricks it. And we put it on 30 different computers and like linked all the accounts. So it would be like, Whoa, you're making $200 a day. And of course like they banned us. So there's like schemes like that, whereas it's like, how do we make money?
I was doing a lot of like Yahoo fake stock trading. So, they give you fake million dollars and you, you trade. And so you just say, Oh man, I'm good at this. And it turns out when it's not actually real money, like it's very different than when it's your own money. And so we're, we're trying out a bunch of [00:28:00] little schemes like that.
And then I wanted to start an e commerce company. And the early days of that were literally, there was like, there's a kid that moved from California to Texas and he was an Indian kid. And I got to know him and he was, like a normal guy. But the interesting thing, he didn't live with his parents, which like in high school, everyone lives with their parents, I thought. And I'd never met anyone that didn't live with their parents. And I was just like, wait, what do you mean? What do you do? And he ran a site called a bodypunks.Com. I have no idea if it still exists. And he sold like earrings and spanners and body jewelry, like belly button piercings. And I was like, but you don't have any piercings. And he was just like, so, and I remember him saying that. And I was like, Holy crap. Like, I don't, I don't know why I thought that like, if you sell body piercing, you had to have piercings. Like you had to like have them. I don't know why I thought that I just, you're just young and dumb. And that's when I was like, Oh my God, you could just sell things online. Like it doesn't matter. Like no one knows who's, who's behind it.
And so that's when I got the idea of a store like e commerce, I was like, I [00:29:00] know how to design websites. That guy's website looks like crap. I can make a better looking one. That's what I thought was important. Like how good it looks. And so I was using, I was also using dreamweaver by my preference was front page 2000. That was like the brand new thing at the time.
And so at school, I built an e commerce website with like a piece of e commerce software that would like generate the site on your own computer and then you upload it in HTML. I was so like clunky compared to nowadays. But I did that. I got a merchant account, which I co signed with my dad. Cause I would think I was like 17. So I couldn't open one myself. So my parents were supportive in a way they were just like, if you want to try this thing, so long as you're making good grades, like we'll help you out. And then I would get like free server traffic bike, just keep signing up for different plans to get like the free server traffic. And within a week of putting up a house of rave, I made my first sale. And before that, I was actually trying to figure out like, what can I sell? And I wrote down a list of 300 different things in like my tiny handwriting [00:30:00] of like, sofas. And I was like I think sofas are too big. The shipping would be too expensive. I can't afford to even buy wholesale sofas. So like that was out. And it was my brother, I believe that was just like, what about like rave stuff? And that was just like one of the things on the list. And I looked it up and there was only like three other places selling it. One called club things. com. And I approached them and I was like, I want to sell the same stuff. But I'll go with you. So that way, if someone finds me in the search results or you, you still, you dominate the search results now, right. So that was like my proposition. They never asked how old I was. We signed a contract. I don't even know if it was legally binding. Cause I was under age. They never asked, never told. And that's how I started House of Rave. And I made my first sale and I couldn't believe it. Like whenever I got my first sale, I was just like, what do we, what do you even do with it? Like, how does this, I actually called the supplier guy and I was just like, I made a sale and he's like, send it to me and I was like, how he's like, I guess just email me what you want. And I'll bill you. And I was like, okay. And so we did. And that's how it started. And then, and then it kept getting [00:31:00] more and more search engine traffic and therefore more orders. And it started making money in high school. And by college, it was making like 500 bucks a month. Keep in mind is the year 2001 or something like that as a college student. So that was pretty good money. And then it kept going up and up from there. And that also gave me the confidence and technical skills to like start a bunch of other small little businesses, but house of rave was the big one. That was the one that consistently made money for me.
David Elikwu: Fair. Were there any other interesting ones that you started at that time that you learned something useful from?
Neville Medhora: Yeah. I had a lot of, I learned SEO really well. That was like my main way of getting traffic. Like instead of like, there was no, it was hard to get an audience. So people were just, the web was like, people searched things and found it, right. So Google was the parser of all the information and I knew SEO very well.
And so I also would get consulting gigs randomly. Cause I would tell people about this and they go, I want that. I was buying a scooter, like a moped. Like a motorized scooter at the Ducati dealership. And Ducati is like a, a racing motorcycle company. And the guy was like, wait, how did you [00:32:00] find us? And I even told him, I was like, I couldn't find you on Google. If you did this, this, this, this, this, you could make more money. And he was just like, will you do it for me? And so I started getting SEO contracts for that. So most of the stuff I was doing was kind of like what you were saying when you were 13, like to you, it was easy, but to other people, they were like, this is cool. I understand it, but I don't want to learn it. You just do it for me. And that was the first time I made like many, many, many thousands of dollars from just like a very simple project. And so consulting was also a thing that would keep popping up and I wouldn't like try to get consulting necessarily. Just like people approach me, seeing the stuff I'm doing, be like, can you do that for me?
How Neville Almost Got in Trouble with Facebook
David Elikwu: You're friends with Noah Kagan. I know some of his founding story around AppSumo and also around him leaving Facebook. What I didn't realize until I was preparing to speak with you is that there's a strange sense in which you may have cost him his job. So I'd love to
Neville Medhora: might've been one of the straws. Yeah.
David Elikwu: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Neville Medhora: Yeah. One of the sites I made was facebookprofile.com. So back [00:33:00] in the day, Facebook was, there was no like images and everything. So on people's walls, you couldn't post an image. So if you want to say happy birthday to someone, which is like the main use case of Facebook you could post an ASCII image, which is just like, periods and letters and numbers in the shape of like a balloon.
And so I made a site and paid a developer to make it look just like Facebook. I call it facebookprofile. com. And the thing is people start, it kind of took off. Like it got a lot of traffic. I had troubles keeping the server up because it's so popular. People would email me being like, Hey, I don't know how to like activate my account and I'm like, this isn't Facebook. Like it's a different site. So to me, it was just like very clear, but Facebook didn't see it that way. And they sent me a cease and desist. And at the time I was too young to know that like, Oh, this you probably get, get away with this, like for a long time. It's not a big deal. You're not being sued or anything, but I asked Noah, I was like, can you look at this? And he told me Zuckerberg looked at the site. He saw the site back in the day, so that was kind of interesting. And it was basically a clone of Facebook, right? It looks very similar. And I think Noah talked to them. And then a few days later, they just [00:34:00] dropped it. They're like, whatever, it's fine because I told him, I was like, this is a fan site. Like, I'm a fan of Facebook. I'm trying to encourage usage. I've never meant to like, make it look like people can log in and stuff. I said like at the top of Facebook, log in screen with their user and password. I'm not adding that. I'm not trying to get people to log in and steal their passwords or anything.
And so once they understood that, and then Noah said something, he was just like, it's just, it's fine. and then they dropped it. And then two days later, he got fired.
Neville's Copywriting Breakthrough
David Elikwu: But somehow this also then leads to you being able to work on AppSumo then, right? Because you were doing House of Rave, you've learned some of the copywriting stuff. In fact, actually, first of all, the copywriting things that you learned, where exactly did that come from? What were the very first things you remember seeing that made you realize that this was something different.
I think I've seen you present and you show like some of the emails you used to have and then the emails you had afterwards, but I'm interested to figure out like, what was the point where something clicked that, Oh, this is actually a very different thing [00:35:00] that could be useful, not just for you, but then for other people as well.
Neville Medhora: I didn't even learn what copywriting was till like 2010 or 11 or something like that. So I'd been running house array for a while. And what I, what I knew about was like optimization. It's not like I learned about it. It's just like, okay, if people buy from this page more, I make more money. It was pretty simple in my head.
And so it's like, what would make them buy more? It's just like, okay, just having the buy button visible, right. So I would just make, make a bigger button than a smaller button. I put those like seals, like credit card. There's a lot of credit card fraud back in the day. So it's like those seals that you pay for and you get to put a little badge over there, that kind of stuff. It's like optimization in general. I also would pick up the phone for customer service a lot. And one of the top, the 80 percent of the people called be like, what kind of batteries does this thing take? So I was like, okay, if I put like what type of battery every product takes on the website, people stop calling. And literally like 80 percent of the calls go away overnight. Which is great. So I learned about optimizing things. And then only in 2010 or later, someone told me to read the Gary Halbert letters, and that's where I learned [00:36:00] about copywriting and just like, Oh, these old school copywriters, like they would send out physical like stuff, right? And if they were sending out a thousand letters, that means they had to like, put them in the envelopes, get the stamps, pay someone to help them with it. Like it costs them money. So if they're sending out a thousand things, they better damn well know it works. And that's where like the concept of like AB split testing and seeing like how much conversion rate, because if we send out 10, 000 of these and spend all our money and no one buys, we go broke.
Whereas for me with SEO, it was just like, I just put out a webpage. And I'm like, I hope someone comes. And if a thousand people come and only one buys like, I'm happy with that. I'm fine. It doesn't cost me any money. So people who grew up with the internet didn't have to optimize as much because there was no consequence. These old school marketers had to do that. And that's when I started learning about copywriting.
And so I thought selling products, just like big product pictures and being like product buy button. That's all I thought, but that's it. Instead, what it is, is like telling people [00:37:00] why this product would make their life better?
So instead of a newsletter, just showcasing like 30 thumbnails of products. I would talk about one product and why they can use this in many different situations. For example, there was like finger lights and these finger lights. I thought people were just using to like dance on the dance floor. And then what I realized was plumbing companies would buy them and they would put them on their fingers. So they could like go under. Like the sink and like have light because their headlight didn't reach and they were cheap and disposable and bright enough that it did the job. People use mtv bought a bunch for like a tv show to put on like laser guns and stuff like that. People use them as for camping all the time, they just keep them all, all over the place, keep them in their car for emergencies.
So I was like, Oh, this product is not just for like, 16 year olds dancing at a rave. You can use it for all sorts of things. And I'm just like, and Gary Halbert's like, tell people that. Let them know. Interest them with all those facts when they buy this $10 product, they're not just getting a $10 product that they use in one situation. They can use it all over the place in their lives, meaning [00:38:00] more people will buy the same product.
And that's when I started learning about copywriting and getting interested in it. And of course we started to apply that to AppSumo as well. So we started writing these really crazy emails. They would probably be like canceled nowadays. I was just slightly, they were, they were pretty dicey even for that time. And now they would be like, it's just insane that a company would send that kind of stuff out.
The Birth of Kopywriting Kourse
Neville Medhora: We started writing that and people were like, Why do I read all your emails? I know you're every absolute email is trying to sell me something, but I keep like, I look forward to yours and I share them as like, Oh, it's this thing called copywriting. And I kept answering that same email over and over. And I was like, okay, maybe we should like make some trainings about this or something. And that's when copywriting course was born. And that kind of just took off. So, that's how copywriting course became a separate company.
It was actually just sold within AppSumo at first copywriting course, it was born out of that.
David Elikwu: Oh, nice. I didn't realize that it was sold specifically in AppSumo.
Neville Medhora: Only through that. Yeah. That's the only thing it was just like, so many people were asking about that like, how do we send out emails like yours that people like doing? And there was like, you know, [00:39:00] 10 little rules I had for myself. And so I put those recorded videos about them. We said, we're going to launch on a certain date. And I was up till like six in the morning, making all the videos, like, you know, very much deadline based. And it just really took off. It just really resonated at that time, big time, like the copywriting thing. And so that's how that became a full time business.
David Elikwu: Was there anyone else doing something similar in terms of copywriting at that time? Because even when I think about it, it's interesting that, because what you were doing there is also what influenced like The Hustle, and I know you were friends with Sam as well. And that's another platform that I, I personally remember just being great at like writing email stuff, but that also came from from you in a way as well.
So it's,
Neville Medhora: Yeah. I think the difference was, there was a lot of these direct response copywriters. So there was a lot of copywriting stuff, but it was like teaching you how to become a copywriter. So it was like copywriters teaching other people how to become copywriters like this. Like, yoga teachers teaching other yoga teachers how to be yoga teachers.
And there's not as many people being yoga teachers, but the money's in selling how to be a yoga teacher. [00:40:00] So it reminded me of that. And so what I was doing, I was just like, okay, if you already have a business and an email list, I can help you make better copy. I'm not teaching you to become a copywriter. That was never like our, our angle. It's just like, you have a business already. Like if you are a software company and you have a big email list of people, how can we get them to buy more stuff or see your product? Cause a lot of the emails going out at the time were really, really bad. It was just useless. Useless emails.
And so those are the people that we helped a lot. And so, AppSumo had a lot of people buying software, a lot of people that ran agencies, a lot of people that worked at companies and they're like, holy crap. If I could apply copywriting to all the emails we send out, that would be good. Or we send out a lot of cold emails. What if Neville can like, take a look at our email and make it better. And so that's why copywriting was so helpful at the time. And of course you didn't have ChatGPT or anything to help you out. So you're kind of like, what do I do with this email? Like, do I make a long email, a short email? Do I have pictures? No pictures. People have so many different questions regarding this. So it was a nice little time to be selling [00:41:00] optimization copywriting at the time.
And there, there were a few other people doing it, but it was very like direct marketing and kind of like these weird supplements and you know, to be honest, it's like shady stuff, or they would like have a sales page was 20, 30, 40 pages long and you read it and they're, they're like, this opportunity is so amazing. And they keep talking about how you're going to become rich and stuff like that. And you're just like, what are you talking about? What is this product? It was all just shady crap like that. So a lot of the stuff was shady. And I think people liked ours because we were like, be upfront with people. If something about your product sucks, tell people, they'll trust you more in the long run.
And I think in the long run, having good copy, being honest, that kind of stuff keeps people sticking around kind of like the hustle. Where it's like, it, it was like the tech news, but also fun, right. It was funny. Like, you look forward to it. It was lighthearted it was analyzed well, right. So that's why people liked reading it for the long run, which is more valuable than just like scamming someone into buying something once.
David Elikwu: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please do stay tuned for more. Don't forget to rate, [00:42:00] review and subscribe. It really helps the podcast and follow me on Twitter feel free to shoot me any thoughts. See you next time.
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