Neville Medhora Talks Copywriting

Tim Soulo runs Ahrefs, a $150m/yr search optimization software, and has deep insights into where the SEO industry is going, and how AI is affecting each part of it. IG 🔗:https://www.instagram.com/neville_medhora/TikTok🔗:https://www.tiktok.com/@neville.medhoraLinkedIn 🔗:https://www.linkedin.com/in/neville-medhora-654749/✉️ Signup to the ultra-popular SWIPES Email Newsletter:https://swipefile.com/newsletter0:00: Intro1:14: Have you ever felt a shift in SEO quite so hard as the AI shift? Many changes go like this, “First gradually then suddenly.” SEO has always been gradually shifting, but now we’re in the period of “suddenly.”2:38: Where is SEO going? What’s the motivation of sharing knowledge if it just gets taken and regurgitated by AI?4:19: Neville’s theory of what will happen to writing.6:44: Two kinds of content: Topics that’ve existed for a long time, and completely new topics that’ve just come up. Older topics will be harder to rank for, brand new timely content can do well. 9:25: First hand real-world experience stories will still do well. You do something in the real world then talk about it in your online content. 10:20: In SEO it feels like everything is different, but at its core it’s exactly the same. If you have a crazy experience and document it, that still works well. 11:46: Becoming “discoverable” is the most important. Search tactics and platforms will change, but people still search. 14:09: If you have brand searches, people are specifically searching for you not generic advice. 14:48: Half of all searches on Google are branded searches. 17:29: People would argue online about how to pronounce “Ahrefs” so they got people around the world to say it into a camera and it generated a lot of buzz.18:28: The accidental success of naming my company “Kopywriting Kourse” and how it allowed me to dominate a keyword. The K spelling was fun and weird, and the normal spelling was boring. 20:44: AppSumo and PostHog have fun brands that people like participating in. 21:23: How does social media affect SEO? SEO seems to be more permission marketing (they search then allow you to market to them), and social media is interruption marketing (you have to stand out).25:55: Are social media and SEO merging? I think social media is a blog. 29:45: I’ve just been blanket posting everywhere, it’s very hard to track social media. 32:37: Almost everything they do at Ahrefs now is AI. Revenue has grown because of new AI tracking upgrades. But it has made the importance of “taste” grow. 35:17: Before I made web tools exactly like I wanted, but when I vibe code something AI decides on everything, which is great in some cases, but sometimes leads me astray. This is where taste comes in. 37:00: I always get this funny feeling when I build anything online, that it’ll be invalidated or useless in a short amount of time. 38:12: A lot of people start using AI but are stuck on the basic use cases for it, because they usually don’t even know what else it can do.41:48: Ahrefs made a product called Agent A where the agent does everything for you.43:40: Tim noticed I do all my podcast prep manually, and goes through how he made a system that does it all for him. 46:09: I sometimes need “Mental Ownership” of a something. 50:15: SwipeFile has grown thanks to AI because we can do soooo much more than just save cool swipes. 51:33: Surprisingly Ahrefs has almost never done traditional advertising. 52:50: MyFirstMillion did a competition for clipping their podcast ad it resulted in millions of views.53:56: They did a “Hire Yourself To Ahrefs” competition. Made people answer 3 questions, they got 200 applications, and is now head of partnerships. 55:19: The top way Ahrefs gets customers is still all inbound, they literally don’t have any outbound sales, even past $100m in revenue per year. 58:49: They stopped their affiliate program because the affiliates really didn’t put out that much value that Ahrefs couldn’t just do on their own, and it required so much small back and forth. 1:02:15: Ahrefs initially got traction by making free tools, then freemium model for tools. 8,000 paying customers and 16,000 free customers, but those people talked about Ahrefs a lot. 1:06:10: AI search result tracking is their fastest growing product Brand Radar.1:07:18: For AEO the most important thing is how many times your brand is being mentioned. Follow Along:👨🏼‍💼 Join As Member: https://kopywriting.com/join🖥️ My free marketing collect: https://swipefile.com📘 Book: https://amzn.to/3xUlUJQ

​Ryan Helms is the former CEO of Legacy Podcasting, a content marketing agency specializing in podcast and YouTube production.

Mike Feldstein started off in the Floods, Fire, Mould Removal, Disaster Chasing business, and currently is a huge seller of indoor air purifiers that look like a giant Alexa device. We did a pod about it that people loved. Follow Copywriting Course and Neville:👨🏼‍💼 Join As Member: https://copywritingcourse.com/join🖥 Website: https://copywritingcourse.com🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/nevmed📘 Book: https://amzn.to/3xUlUJQ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kopywriting🎤 Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/neville-medhora-talks-copywriting/id1501246238

Don’t just plan for next year—envision the life you want by 2030. Reflect on key questions: What lifestyle, career, relationships, and home will you have? Align your goals with your current priorities to create a clear path forward.The years will pass anyway—start now to live with purpose and intention. “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” Where are you headed?Read the postFollow Copywriting Course and Neville:👨🏼‍💼 Join As Member: https://copywritingcourse.com/join🖥 Website: https://copywritingcourse.com🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/nevmed📘 Book: https://amzn.to/3xUlUJQ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kopywriting🎤 Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/neville-medhora-talks-copywriting/id1501246238

For $3,000/month, I produce and share more content than a 100-person team 30 years ago—thanks to modern tools and streamlined processes!Follow Copywriting Course and Neville:👨🏼‍💼 Join As Member: https://copywritingcourse.com/join🖥 Website: https://copywritingcourse.com🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/nevmed📘 Book: https://amzn.to/3xUlUJQ▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kopywriting🎤 Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/neville-medhora-talks-copywriting/id1501246238

Nick Gray is the master of developing a great friend network, we go over some of his success in this area, his book The Two Hour Cocktail party, and his past business successes. See the full blog post and long notes here: https://copywritingcourse.com/courses/interviews/making-friends-nick-gray/0:00: Start0:05: Making T-shirts with friends faces for $20 is an amazing investment.  2:00: The t-shirts started with Noah Kagan and I made custom shirt with an iron-on paper, but then started using Canva. 3:20: Nick Gray is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, it’s difficult to describe him and all the fun he brings. 3:40: He started a company called MuseumHack which he sold in 2019, and also helped build his family's aviation company from the ground up before selling it to a big private equity company.”4:20: “I’ve been on more private jets than anybody but they’re all broken.”4:50: His engineer dad built a product in their basement that shows an in-air flight display (like you see in airlines) but for private jets. Nick joined as employee #1 and helped grow it to 80+ employees before selling in 2014, then got an earnout from the company. 6:30: Working with a family business was very informal, and while there was a small amount of butting heads overall it was a great and fun and easy experience and in fact BROUGHT HIM CLOSER TO HIS PARENTS than ever.8:16: Nick’s involvement for Flight Display Systems (FDS) he took over marketing and international sales. He learned everything on the fly (no pub intended).9:00: Middle East clients had INSANE private jets and essentially unlimited budgets. People would request showers, glowing floors, and all sorts of things and they would engineer it and build it. Their bread and butter was in-flight entertainment. Nick’s dad figured out how to make the standard $70,000 “Flight Map” for around $10,000.10:53: Sales all came from a small network of aviation professionals and tradeshows, specifically one called NBAA which his whole family would all go to every year. 11:34: Nick did something innovating with pricing in the aviation industry. Talking about prices was considered uncouth, so he zagged and made Best Buy style giant price tags at their tradeshow booth. Other booths were making fun of them, but their booth was completely full of end customers! 12:53: Nick learned to be very upfront by asking: “What do you need, what do you want, what can we do for you?”14:17: Do you still think tradeshows are still the best way to get leads? Yes…but “conferences” are hard, but “tradeshows” are super profitable. 15:13: If Nick ever started a business it might be a tradeshow (not conference) because you can monetize them so well. 15:40: For Nick’s 42nd birthday he threw a “Birthday Conference” where people paid ~$1,000 to come to a three day event, and it was really cool high up people and felt like an expensive conference. Price anchoring for conferences is very hard. He sent out a survey how much people would pay and it always ends up at $1,000. Unless you get very big sponsors it’s hard to make big money with conferences. 17:04: There’s nothing like meeting in person to connect with a person. Something still very different from online. We went to a HubSpot conference and met a lot of people we knew online in real life. Even brief moments of meeting IRL are impactful.18:48: In early 2000’s the only way to hear amazing people speak was at a live conference. But with the rise of TED, YouTube, and podcasts all of a sudden you could hear BETTER versions of these in person speeches. The benefit of conferences quickly shifted from hearing a speaker to meeting other conference attendees. 19:51: We went to a conference where we saw some famous names, and honestly it’s better to listen to a podcast than the live talk. BUT you still need the big conference speaker names to sell tickets. 21:12: I went to Summit At Sea and the conference speakers were essentially stuck on a boat with you, so you actually got a lot of time with Eric Schmidt, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kimbal Musk, Quintin Tarantino etc because of this. They changed the venue the next year to be in Los Angeles, and it was a totally different vibe since the speakers could just leave. 23:27: One person that totally stood out was Gary Vaynerchuk. He was up early in the morning till 3am at night talking to people, giving advice, holding court. It was very impressive to see him giving-giving-giving-giving constantly. 25:15: Nick tells a story about a Gary Vaynerchuk employee (Nick Dio) whose job it is to just spend millions a year just taking people out. He does this just so rising talent thinks highly of Gary. 26:16: Figuring out social media ROI is like trying to figure out the ROI of your mother raising you. It’s very hard. 26:44: MuseumHack sold for millions of dollars, and Nick started this from his hobby of going to museums and giving friends tours. A popular blog called Daily Candy wrote about Nick Gray’s friend tours being one of the coolest things you can do in New York, and from there it blew up with 1,300+ people sending emails to get a tour and he had to hire employees and start charging for tours to meet demand.29:40: It was difficult for Nick to charge for something he just loved doing for free, so he originally just charged for people to skip the waiting list. 30:57: Nick used theater people and stand up comedians to give the tours not boring art history people which made it WAY more fun! They would just try to deliver the craziest experiences possible like illegal concerts that would get shut down by security. 32:30: They opened up tickets to the public and it started taking off, Nick had to shut down a big New York Times article because he wasn’t ready to grow the business so fast. 33:18: An average ticket cost $80/each, but the real money from MuseumHack came from corporate gigs and team building exercises. Instead of 2 people at $80/each, he could charge $10,000+ for a team building experience. They grew to 45 employees this way. 34:19: Nick sold the company to his own CEO in a seller-financed purchase which ended up benefiting both sides. 34:45: Nick does so much free stuff that many people think there’s a catch. But in reality Nick has been financially set from his two past company sales. 35:44: Start your business on nights and weekends, don’t quit your job. It puts too much pressure and doesn’t give you enough time to figure your product out. 36:16: The Two Hour Cocktail Party book is what Nick is most known for now. party.pro/bookAmazon link36:40: His book The Two Hour Cocktail Party teaches people to host their first event so they can meet/make more friends and deepen friendships. Gives a step-by-step guide for doing it. 37:48: The NICK Method: N = Nametags. I = Icebreakers. C = Cocktails or mocktails only, no dinner. K = Kick em out. 38:16: Total over 1,000+ events thrown like this (over 500+ actually verified). 38:46: Using these methods in two months Nick Gray had more friends than our entire friend group. 38:57: Noah Kagan did this by throwing a “No-Networking Networking Event” and giving out free drinks (which cost $1/each). He’d spend a total of $90 to $150 for the event and became well-known. 39:52: It’s weird for most people to show up to a party solo and network, so introductions and icebreakers are important. In a small party environment this is SUPER DUPER HELPFUL so people meet each other. 41:37: When people complain they didn’t meet friends at a party, they miss the point that going to events must be a consistent thing. You won’t meet a group of BFF’s right away. “Make hosting a habit.”42:30: There’s a shopping list of basic snacks in his book, and Nick notices everywhere he goes in the world they have all his favorite snacks there!45:13: Icebreakers are so important. Before you can send a guest list with people’s social media or bio, during the event do an in-person intro/icebreaker. 46:18: I kinda want Nick to do an icebreaker at my wedding!48:26: Which platforms do you most post on? X and Instagram is where most time is spent, including a private X account which he originally started because in his previous company he couldn’t be very public since aviation was a very conservative industry.49:43: “The Japan Blind Date” post went ultra-mega-viral for Nick and had people glued to the updates, including producers from NetFlix and other major outlets who wanted to make a show out of it. 52:36: Been working with writing more, since a lot of short form videos have been bombing compared to the text posts. Text posts are optimized for time-spent-in-post. Longer text posts have been crushing for Nick compared to video 10-to-1.54:12: An interesting social media hack is where you share a picture of a lot of writing, and since people click and zoom in to read the algorithms think it’s a hot post and promote it more. 54:49: Another mega-viral post 40,000,000+ (if not 100,000,000+ in total) was when got a waterpark all to himself one day and the comments and shares went absolutely bananas. The problem with these short form hits is “you’re just a busker” and they don’t really follow you, so he goes only by how many comments a post guest. 55:47: LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU’RE WATCHING ON YOUTUBE!56:12: The waterpark stunt that got 100,000,000+ views. He didn’t even want to do the video and walked out of the waterpark but he was doing a “1 video a day challenge” so he went back to the waterpark and...

Mike Feldstein is the founder and CEO of Jaspr that makes cool looking giant air purifiers. 10+ years ago he got into the “Disaster Business” by restoring homes after big floods, then started a generator business to combat ice storms, then started restoring homes after wildfires, then saw air quality sucked so he made giant industrial level air purifiers for the home, then Covid hit and all of sudden it was mandated in Canada doctors offices had to have large purifiers and Jaspr became a hit.

Talking with Dan Martell, an entrepreneur, angel investor, thought leader, and highly sought-after coach in the SaaS, or software as a service industry.