Become a Dangerously Good Writer in 55 Minutes w/ Sam Parr
The Hustle founder Sam Parr unpacks the psychological mechanics of copy that forces people to keep reading.
Posted
2 months ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
17.7K
890 likes
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Great copy is not about clever words -- it is about engineering a psychological chain where every sentence creates just enough unresolved tension to make the next sentence impossible to skip.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You write newsletters, email sequences, ads, or social scripts and your results feel flat despite a solid product.
You have been told to add a hook but do not understand the mechanics of why hooks work at a psychological level.
You want a daily practice -- copywork -- to absorb sentence rhythm and structure from proven writers over months.
You run Meta ads and wonder why copy does not convert even when the product is good.
You write video scripts and want to understand retention graphs through a copywriting lens.
SKIP IF…
You are looking for AI-assisted prompt shortcuts -- Sam argues craft requires physical, manual practice.
You want a named, templatable system with steps you can hand off -- this is principles-level discussion, not a playbook.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Great copy works because of psychological mechanics, not clever phrasing. Sam Parr teaches three core principles: minding the gap (open curiosity tension the reader must resolve), the slippery slope (the rule of consistency that keeps readers moving once they have started), and copywork (transcribing proven writing by hand for months until the grammar of the craft is internalized). The episode also covers headline targeting by persona, story structure through the hero's journey, sentence rhythm, reading level discipline -- Warren Buffett averages 17 words per sentence -- and the 8 Mile objection method: pre-empt every attack before your reader can raise it.
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Sam Parr introduced as founder of The Hustle and co-host of My First Million. Opening hook demonstration on screen.
00:41 – 03:43
02 · The Importance of Copywriting and Energy
Sam defines copywriting as behavioral influence. AIDA introduced through the story of meeting his wife. Restaurant owner energy.
03:44 – 05:04
03 · Breaking Down Classic Headline Ads
The Rolls Royce '60 miles an hour' headline. Ogilvy quote: 80 cents of your dollar is the headline. Sam and Alex examine vintage ad books.
05:05 – 07:09
04 · Minding the Gap
'They laughed when I sat down at the piano' ad explained. Upworthy went from zero to 200M monthly visitors in six months using curiosity-gap headlines.
07:10 – 09:20
05 · Is People's Attention Cooked?
Sam pushes back on the attention-span narrative. Long is always better. The variable is interesting, not length.
09:21 – 11:49
06 · Sam Parr's Favorite Hook
'You are reading this not because you want to' hook explained. copythat.com: 2000 words on white background, ~5% conversion.
11:50 – 13:59
07 · Does Long-Form Content Perform Better?
27-minute YouTube pre-roll video sales letters. Nine-figure funnels built on long-form. Long and ugly converts; boring does not.
14:00 – 16:49
08 · Targeting Your Audience Through Headlines
BuzzFeed's '50 reasons you know you are from Denver.' Homesick Candles. Niches make riches. Hampton targets $3M+/year earners explicitly in copy.
16:50 – 18:12
09 · Spinning What's Already Well Known
Take a well-known phrase and twist it to attach a brand. VW and Porsche vintage ad examples. Hampton borrowed British Racing Green from these ads.
18:13 – 20:12
10 · Punch Someone With Your Copy
First sentence must punch. The Hustle 'My friends think I am smart' ad: $10M in spend, singularly responsible for the HubSpot exit.
17:13 – 19:01
11 · The Slippery Slope
Joe Sugarman: the purpose of sentence one is to get you to sentence two. The law of consistency (small sticker to yard sign study, 40% lift).
19:52 – 22:14
12 · Good Writing Has Rhythm
Short, medium, long sentences like a rapper. Hemingway app. USA Today at 4th grade; NYT at 7th grade. Start sentences with 'and' or 'but' for rhythm.
20:35 – 22:36
13 · The Rules of Writing
Write at 7th grade reading level. One point per sentence. Warren Buffett averages 17 words per sentence. Started at 25, has been cutting ever since.
21:57 – 23:13
14 · The Secret to Great Copywriting
Constraint forces clarity. Hemingway: 'The man was sad. He wanted to go fish.' Kill your darlings -- cut a third, then cut a third again.
23:14 – 24:29
15 · The Wall Street Journal's 28-Year Ad
'A Tale of Two Men.' Ran 28 years in print, drove $2B+ in revenue. Sam ripped it 3% for The Hustle's Trends newsletter. Hero's journey in copy.
24:30 – 26:59
16 · Everything Has To Be a Story
No such thing as too long, only too boring. The Trojan horse: bury the product deep in desire before the reveal. Hero's journey in Hampton ad.
27:00 – 27:39
17 · Do Ads Lack Depth Today?
Meta incentivizes surface-level ads. The failed solution technique: absolve the viewer of guilt for past failures before presenting the product.
27:40 – 29:04
18 · Copywork for Short-Form Content
Alex went from 150K to 2M views in one video using copywork-derived scripting insights. Retention graph as a diagnostic for where to add curiosity gaps.
29:05 – 33:10
19 · Sam Parr Explains Copywork
Piano analogy: you learn Jingle Bells before you write original music. Sam transcribed the Boron Letters, The Great Gatsby, SNL scripts. Physical writing beats typing.
33:11 – 33:51
20 · Find The Rules of What You Want to Learn
Copywork generalizes across all crafts: beats, design, film, comedy. Steal from what is critically acclaimed in your target genre.
33:52 – 40:29
21 · Repurposing Bad Ads Live
AG1 sleep supplement ad dissected; Sam writes an AIDA replacement live. Caraway food storage: 'Imagine storing your food in the toilet bowl.'
40:30 – 42:29
22 · Handling Objections
The Eminem 8 Mile approach: name every objection about yourself before the opponent can use it. Lenovo headphone TikTok ad as implicit objection handling case study.
42:30 – 43:55
23 · Building Desire Around the Price
Harley Davidson ad critique. Lead with desire and experience before price. Experiences make you happier than things.
43:56 – 45:21
24 · Infusing Personality into Ads
Humor works when it is on-brand. The Hustle's SoFi headline. The New York Post as the benchmark for humorous headline writing.
45:22 – 49:19
25 · Getting Better at Copywriting
Six months of copy hour: find what is critically acclaimed in your genre and transcribe it. For humor: SNL bits. For design: recreate sites on Canva.
49:20 – 51:32
26 · Finding Inspiration for New Ideas
Sam's magazine swipe file: Thrasher, Popeye (Japanese), JFK Jr. first edition. Read fiction for original idea generation.
51:33 – 55:58
27 · 4M Views on a Raw Video
Sam's viral dad-onion-salesman video: 80% three-second stop rate, 50% full watch on a 45-second video. Converted into a top-performing Hampton ad. Outro.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Long copy almost always converts better than short copy -- the only thing that kills conversion is being boring, not being long.
The purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. The purpose of the second sentence is to get you to read the third.
On average five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy -- when you write the headline, you have spent 80 cents of your dollar.
Targeting works in headlines: write a headline only 10% of readers will relate to, and 30% of those people will click every time.
The Trojan horse principle: bury the product so deep in the story that the reader is fully invested in desire before they realize they are being sold to.
Copywork -- hand-transcribing great writing word for word -- is how you internalize the texture and rhythm of craft. It works for writing, music, video editing, and design.
Warren Buffett averages 17 words per sentence in his annual letters. He started at 25 when he was young and has been cutting ever since.
The rule of consistency (slippery slope): once a person does one small thing for you, they are significantly more likely to do the next thing. A sticker in the window leads to a yard sign.
Constraint forces clarity. Hemingway wrote profound books with sentences like: the man was sad. He wanted to go fish.
The 8 Mile objection method: name every objection about yourself before your opponent can use them against you -- it leaves them with nothing to say.
Good writing has rhythm. Short sentence. Medium sentence. A slightly longer sentence that builds toward something and sets up the next beat. Then short again.
Story is the most powerful copy structure because people are afraid of leaving cliffhangers unresolved -- it is the same mechanic as a song that needs to resolve its melody.
The hero of the story in any ad should be the customer. The brand is always the guide, never the hero.
Humor is the easiest mechanism to sell with -- but only if it is already part of your brand. Do not bolt it on.
Sam Parr's $10M ad: 'My friends think I am smart. I am not. I just read The Hustle.' Simple, self-deprecating, and a direct identity mirror for the target reader.
A great ad does not need to show the product -- a before/after transformation with no product in frame often converts better than product-forward creative.
Read fiction to unlock original ideas. Non-fiction readers recycle the same references. Fiction gives you angles no one in your space has seen.
Physical handwriting beats typing for copywork -- science shows you retain and internalize material better when you write it by hand.
Takeaway
Seven principles Sam Parr used to build a newsletter empire.
WHAT TO LEARN
Great copy is not about clever words -- it is about building a chain of unresolved tension that makes each next sentence feel mandatory.
01Intro and AIDA
The headline is where the game is won or lost. Ogilvy estimated 80 cents of every copywriting dollar is spent in the headline -- the body almost does not matter if no one starts reading.
Minding the gap means opening a curiosity loop the reader cannot close without reading further. The tension does not need to be dramatic -- it just needs to remain unresolved long enough to pull the next sentence.
02Slippery slope and length
The slippery slope works because of the rule of consistency: once a person commits to a small action, they are statistically more likely to commit to the next one. Every sentence is a micro-commitment.
Long copy converts better than short copy when it is interesting. The enemy is not length -- it is boredom. The highest-converting direct response ads of all time are thousands of words on plain white backgrounds.
03Targeting and story
Targeting in headlines is more powerful than broad reach. A headline that speaks to 10% of the audience and converts 30% of them outperforms one that speaks to everyone and converts 1%.
Story is the most durable conversion mechanism because readers are wired to resolve narratives. The hero must be the customer. The brand must be the guide -- never the hero.
04Copywork and editing
Copywork -- hand-transcribing proven writing word for word for months -- is the fastest way to internalize sentence rhythm, structure, and the subconscious grammar of effective writing. Physical handwriting beats typing.
Constraint forces clarity. Warren Buffett writes at an average of 17 words per sentence. Write the draft, then cut a third, then cut a third again. The best version of your copy is usually the shortest version that still carries the full argument.
05Objections and personality
Pre-empt objections before the reader can raise them. Name your weaknesses first -- the way Eminem does in 8 Mile -- and you remove the opponent's ammunition before they can use it.
Humor converts when it is brand-native and specific. Generic jokes are forgettable. The Hustle's SoFi headline worked because it was exactly the kind of joke The Hustle readers expected.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Minding the Gap
A copywriting technique that opens a curiosity loop the reader cannot close without reading further. The gap is the space between what the headline promises and what the body delivers.
The Slippery Slope
Joe Sugarman's principle that the purpose of every sentence is solely to get the reader to read the next sentence. Once a reader starts, the rule of consistency pulls them down the page.
AIDA
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A four-stage copywriting structure that moves a reader from first noticing a message to taking the desired action.
Copywork
The practice of transcribing great writing word for word by hand over an extended period -- typically months -- to internalize the rhythm, structure, and rules of effective writing.
The Trojan Horse
A story-first ad structure where the product is buried deep inside a narrative, so the reader builds emotional investment and desire before realizing they are being sold something.
The Hero's Journey in Copy
A narrative ad framework where the customer is positioned as the hero facing a challenge and the brand is the guide that helps them overcome it.
Killing Your Darlings
An editing principle: write the full draft, then cut a third, then cut a third again. Forces you to keep only what the copy actually needs to say.
Restaurant Owner Energy
Sam Parr's term for speaking to strangers as if you already know them -- warm, direct, and without stiffness. Applied both in person and in copy to build immediate rapport.
Rule of Consistency
A psychological principle that once a person commits to a small action, they are significantly more likely to commit to progressively larger ones. The foundation of the slippery slope in copy.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
03:13bookOgilvy on Advertising
03:13bookAdvertising Secrets of the Written Word (Joe Sugarman)
“David Ogilvy famously says: I am a shit writer. I am a great editor.”
Authority endorsement of editing over drafting→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
38:59
“Imagine storing your food in the toilet bowl.”
Live copywriting moment -- visceral and immediately understandable→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 11:40denseCopywriting fundamentals and psychology
05:05 – 18:20denseHeadline mechanics and curiosity gaps
20:13 – 28:20denseStory structure and hero's journey in ads
27:40 – 33:51denseCopywork as a skill-building practice
33:52 – 43:55denseLive ad critique and rewriting
40:30 – 45:21steadyObjection handling and personality in copy
45:22 – 51:32steadyPractice roadmap and inspiration sources
51:33 – 55:58steadyViral video case study (dad onion ad)
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
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You're reading this not because you want to, but because I want you to. Now you're reading this second sentence because again, I'm telling you and forcing you to read This is called copywriting. This is Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, a newsletter empire he built from scratch.
He's also the cohost of one of the leading business podcasts in the world, My First Million. Today, he's breaking down the exact copywriting frameworks that built his businesses. No one will read this or watch this.
This is too long. No. It's not interesting enough.
The goal is not to get 100% of people to buy what you want. It's to get the right person to read all of the ad and a large percentage of them are eventually going to buy.
So I wanna focus on the importance of copywriting in in this episode. There's two tweets that you put out that I'm gonna I'm gonna highlight. One in twenty twenty two, one in twenty twenty.
First one, because copywriting isn't just writing words, it's understanding what people want and how to get them to do what you want them to do. And then sometimes, figure out which words are needed to get the desired outcome. That's tweet number one.
Tweet number two, good copywriting means getting what's in my head into yours and influencing your behavior getting you to do what I want. How did you use copywriting to land a first date with your wife then?
I saw this really pretty lady in a restaurant at like a happy hour and I the one of the basic principles for copywriting is AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action.
And I was like, what's a good a? I need a I need to grab her attention. And I was with my friend Lily who's just a buddy of mine and I said, Lily, that girl is really pretty.
I gotta I gotta stop her when when she walks by. Don't know what to say. And like as I was like saying that, she was like, oh, hey, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil?
And she's like, And I was like, I don't pay $500 to have a lentil on my face. And she was like, it was stunned.
And I was like, classic, you know, garbanzo Yeah. You hit him a little.
Big hummus fan,
And she thought it was hilarious and I was like, I'm Sam. Nice to meet you. Yeah.
It's high risk high reward because if it doesn't land But, like But it's good because that wouldn't be your know, brand of comedy. Know, if she didn't laugh at a good you know, pee on my face joke then We always talk about this like when you meet somebody new and you start like testing the water with jokes to see what you can land, what you can't, what you have to take back and
here and what I've always told our salespeople, and it's the same for flirting, you can say virtually anything as long as you make them laugh. Yes. You know?
As long as you make someone laugh and smile and it's clear that you're supposed to be not harmful.
I mean, the key is to talk to them like you know them already. Yeah. Call that restaurant energy owner.
Yeah. Like, you don't want to make it seem like you're stiff because then they'll be like, what's wrong with this person? I call that restaurant owner energy.
You know, like Yeah. You know, like You walk over like Hey buddy, nice to see you again.
How's the family? How's everything going? You guys have a great time.
Hey, hey, come here, Cheryl. Can you give these fill these guys up with some wine, you know? That's exactly my experience yesterday in Little Italy.
Like, it was the guy just came with so much energy like, oh my god. How's how's your daughter? Let me get her something.
You like ice cream? Okay. I'll get you ice cream.
Like, it was out the gate. Asking the three year old if she likes ice cream. Yeah.
Smart. But I wanted to to touch on that just because of the importance of headlines. Right?
Like there's the David Ogilvie quote of, on average five times as many people read the headline as read the body of copy. When you've written your headline, you've spent 80¢ out of your dollar. You mean the quote from this book?
From that one right there. And
half the stuff, if you've ever seen me write about copyright or talk about copywriting, I'm really just stealing.
That one. Yes. This is I mean, have both of them.
This is This is the best book that you can read on copyrighting. And it's the reason one of the reasons why it's great is it's less popular than this one and so you can just steal a lot of it. Right.
And no one will know. Now, so what I wanna do is I have five headlines that I essentially wanna show you and have you break them down from mostly classic ads because there is no soul in copywriting in today's world. There is.
There is. You just gotta find it. It's hard to find.
I think there was one that you talked about like, what is it, Get Flakes? Or something like a is awesome. I use their shampoo all the time.
I I love their ads. I will say a great place for copywriting is the New York subways these days. Like a lot of these like display ads on the subways are starting to hit as well.
Yeah. You could find it. The first one that I want you to break down is a is a classic.
At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock. What makes the Rolls Royce the best car in the world? This is a David Ogilvy ad, right?
It is. Yeah. I love it.
It's so good. He sold a lot of cars from this. This is actually from this book I think actually, isn't it?
It is. It's in there. He spent something on it.
It was like weeks just writing that single headline. Yeah. Basically, like what a lot of people do, they don't realize that they usually what people do is they write an article and then they like at the last minute, write the headline.
And I think that that has changed. Now young people know with YouTube like the hook and like the packaging is like more important than the thing than the actual video.
And so I think they know that better now.
But I actually don't know too much about the background of this ad, do you? Yes and no. What I'm more so curious is like you reading that headline and that headline being known as as to be one of the best headlines, what do you what do you kinda take away from this?
Is it because of like the curiosity gap that's like It's the curiosity gap which is like so you always have to mind the gap.
So like the best example of this would be there's a headline have you guys ever do you guys remember Upworthy? How old are you?
20 30. You're 30? You guys might remember Upworthy.
Do you guys remember Upworthy? No. No.
Okay. So back before TikTok and a lot of social media stuff, was just viral articles on Facebook. Yeah.
And there would be these articles that said like, the top 10 reasons why you shouldn't go camping, you're not gonna believe number seven.
Yeah. Okay. Do you remember like that style?
Yeah. Would see that on Meta a lot. There's this one guy who created that this blog called Upworthy and actually Joe, my partner who's around here, he had an Upworthy competitor and Joe's website went from zero to 200,000,000 monthly visitors in a matter of like Holy shit.
Six months because they would write these articles like that. And it was clickbait so it was junk. But anyway, that was inspired by an old ad that might be in one of these books.
And it was everyone laughed at me when I started playing the piano then they heard me play. And that's sort of the same thing where it's like, What?
Okay. It's called minding the gap. There's something that grabs your attention and I need to figure out and read the rest of this to release the tension.
Yeah. So this is one of the most famous ads of all time. They laughed at they laughed when I sat down at the piano but then I started to play.
What's he selling? A course on how to write was for the music Oh, no way. US music school.
Yeah. It was for a music was it a court? Like a written course?
Who wrote this? Is this you said the name I'd Claud Hopkins?
Yes. Is that who that is? Yes.
Yeah. That's a good ad. This is one of the most famous ads of all time.
Break down what is Minding the Gap. Minding the Gap is basically like when you're telling a story, you need it to be resolved. Kinda like similar how like music needs to be resolved.
Like Yeah. Ever seen like on The Office where like someone like ruined the song for A and B and he's like, oh, I gotta resolve that melody. Yeah.
It's the same way with headlines. So like human beings aren't very good at leaving like a cliffhanger, like you have to know what it is.
And so with good copy, the headline, you need to say something that grabs someone's attention and they have to continue
the rest to know what's happening. Yeah. I mean this is something that you know, we both do a lot in our script writing for our short form content is open loops.
Open loops is exactly what I'm describing. When you create an open loop with the curiosity driving hook, it's especially in short form content because I mean back in the day people's attention spans weren't so cooked. But like now, you basically have to stack open loop on open loop as you're writing that script.
Hear people say that all the time. They always say people's attention now is different than what it used to be. I actually disagree with that.
Think human attention was always it's been always the same. You've always had to do the same thing. You've always had to like, you think, I I guess maybe retention would be No.
I I
have zero data. I'm just trying to say my opinion here. But I think that see, a lot of people think that long means bad.
I would say long still converts longer form things still almost always converts The issue is that people use the word long is bad or like no one will read this or watch this.
This is too long. No. It's not interesting enough.
Correct. And so I always try to tell people that long will almost always convert better. Ugly will almost always convert better.
Yes. But it just has to be interesting. The biggest eye opening experience that I've had in that realm is getting into the telehealth space last year and going up against like these deep kinda like gray area affiliate marketers.
I
mean just random guys that were like selling GLP one brands. Like I'm sure you saw the MedV thing like Yeah. So you know what people would do is, to your point, I built a short form content agency, I thought short form was the way.
These guys are running twenty seven minute video sales letters before a YouTube video, right? Betting that no one's gonna click skip ad.
No. Long is always better. Yeah.
And it's insane. They would spin up these nine, you know, figure funnels and you're just like, how is this how is this working? But it's because, you know, a boomer is in general, so have you guys seen this website I have called copythat.com?
Mhmm. I went through the course. So that makes a full time salary.
That pays for a lot my living expenses. Mhmm. And that is New York or Austin?
In New York. It it it's just 2,000 words on white on with a white background.
Yeah. And that page converts out like probably 5%. One?
So five percent of people who go to it buy it. It's pretty good. If I remember correctly too, it's kinda is it one of those it's almost like Inception, right, where you're like, here's like good copy.
Like you just read this copy like at the end of the sales letter, don't you say that or something? Maybe. Yeah.
You're like I got your ass if you made it this far. Well, there's a famous hook that I always used to use. So I would always use this hook where it says, you're reading this not because you want to but because I want you to.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Now you're reading this second sentence because again, I'm telling you and forcing you to read Right. Yeah. This isn't called copywriting.
I'm getting you to fall down the slippery slope not because you want to but because I am making you. Like, yeah, like I love I love Kinda breaking the fourth wall a little bit. I love that stuff.
Yes. Something that's been interesting for me is all of my quote unquote short form content, usually I played in this realm of like forty five seconds. Now I've been extended it to a minute fifteen minute twenty.
All of that content has been performing better, but I've been using a significant more of like adding in curiosity gaps almost like every eight seconds within the video. But it's been interesting to see the data on know who does that really good is Tony Robbins. So like, if you read a Tony Robbins book, they're so freaking long.
They're like 800 pages and they'll be like, in this chapter I'm gonna tell you about this. But wait until you get to the next chapter, that's when you're gonna see something that's gonna blow your mind. It's just like a YouTube script.
Like, the the intro for a YouTube script, put it in an intro. There's always teasing. When I was a kid, I looked like Napoleon Dynamite, so I couldn't really, like, get girls.
And so I had to read, like, every pickup artist book there was to get someone to, like, have a crush on me. And one of the, like it's like half the shit that I know about marketing I just stole from, like, pickup artist books. But there's this idea of like whenever you talk to a girl, you wanna put a time constraint on because then they feel like, okay, I know he's gonna go in a minute.
Yeah. Therefore, I don't mind letting him finish like his spiel. So like when you talk to someone like, hey, guys, I gotta go back to my buddies really quick but I had a question.
You know, something like that. Yeah. Or like, only have one minute because I'm running late but really quick.
It's a really good way to snap someone into it. Exactly. Yeah.
And so what I've noticed is that if you do that in copy, like, what I'm about to tell you next is really gonna blow your mind, really quick, let me tell you this.
Right. That's like a really good tactic. Yeah.
Good way to insert a detail. Yeah. Otis Perlman.
Guys know the magician Otis Perlman? That's who you just had on? Yeah.
I don't know who Dude, he was doing it to me the whole time. Is he doing like the stuff with pro pro sports teams and he's the hypnotist? Oh, okay.
And he was like constantly doing like pick up artist stuff where he was like, alright, really quick, we're gonna do this and I'm gonna have you do this. Like he would just have me eating out of his hand. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you think it's like getting you in a trance kinda? Yeah.
Like when he's doing it? Yeah. He's just controlling the room.
Yeah. So back to the headlines. With this headline specifically that I wanna show you, I want you to break down almost how you can do targeting with your headline.
How you can talk to the specific individual, get their attention. These are famous Rolex ads.
Oh, I stole all of these. Yeah. So you don't even have my favorite one which is the men who shape destinies wear Rolex.
That's the best one. So good. That's the best one.
What was your question? Didn't even I was paying attention to this Rolex ad. There's also like that Delta one back in the day.
It's like for a guy who has a girl in every city. Yeah. You know?
That was the one? Yeah. The the question's more so centered around how you can
use the headline to target a specific kind of individual
or interest. Yeah. So like a good example of this is BuzzFeed.
They used to do like so articles where it's like 50 reasons you know you are from Denver, Colorado, you know? And like where the goal is like it will only appeal to people from Denver, Colorado but 30% of them are gonna click on that.
I always just say niches make riches. And so it's like the easiest way to get high engagement rate. And so, yeah, this does a good job where like they are targeting people who like, no one's gonna be a sailboat racer but there's a lot of people who wanna be.
Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, these work really well.
Or another example is I knew this company started this thing called Homesick Candles and it was a candle that was the smell of each of the 50 states.
It's like I don't know what Texas would be but like Washington was like evergreen. Uh-huh. Like tree, I guess tree.
Yeah. And so they killed it selling these candles because a huge percentage of,
you know, Washington Yeah. If you're from Washington Bought it. But also if you're like if you moved away from Washington, you can then get that for your mom.
You know, like it's there's like an expansion. Yeah. We do those ads on for Hampton.
We'd be like, look, if you make over $3,000,000 a year, then I know exactly how you feel. You feel this way, and then I explain it and speak like very intimately to them. Well, that's probably like a huge reason you do the Moneywise thing.
And I've been kinda seeing, you you have a piece of content that you've been ripping recently where it's like the difference between the levels of wealth. Yeah. Where it's like How fresh is it?
You're at you're at 1,000,000, you're at 10,000,000, you're at a 100,000,000 and then I've telling it needs to be a series. Yeah. It needs to be 100,000,000.
Mean, you're doing that in multiple different formats though. Right? I feel like it's I've seen it like I haven't but that's a good idea.
That should be a series. I mean, you could do a whole YouTube video on that. Yeah.
Agree.
Because when you did it, it got covered on ink, it got covered on Did it? Forbes.
I think so. It's fucking awesome. I didn't know that.
The the next highlight I wanna get into is is something you taught me when I was, for context, I worked at the the hustle under What age did you work there? How old was I? Yeah.
24, 25. That's awesome. Was you would talk about like taking something that's well known, so taking a phrase that's well known and then spinning it to almost like recreate it so that like you attach a brand.
Maybe it wasn't you. I'm just kidding. I talked so much that I could have forgotten.
But essentially, like, the idea of getting lost in the crowd. Okay. You can take that idea and be like, okay, how do we twist it to make this unique to our brand?
Which example did I do that on? That I don't remember but I like this
copy is a good example of it. You may get lost but not in the crowd. They have another good one.
Did you see the one that they're like it's the one about
no one wants to have sex with you when you're in a Volkswagen? Yeah. Know what you're talking about.
There's the Lamborghini one as well that's like, pick up nine nine times more women in this than the Lamborghini. I'm sorry. It was like a van ad.
No. These are cool. These old Porsche ads.
Actually my brand, Hampton, we just stole
British Racing Green from a lot of these ads. That's the color they used. Of course.
This is called there's this book that Darmesh, the founder of HubSpot, told me to read and I can't remember the exact name. But it basically just gives you tons and tons.
I'll have to send it to you so you can link to it. It gives you tons and tons of ways to use phrasing in your advantage. So for example, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself.
So that's like a that's a style of phrase and it gives you like 10 different types of phrases that you can steal or like, for example, Winston Churchill gave this famous speech after the Battle of Dunkirk and it like changed the course of the war because England was not gonna win World War Two because English were they were like kinda meek and afraid and he was like, we're gonna fight on the beach, we're gonna fight on the ocean, we're gonna fight on the water, we're gonna fight on the ships.
And like, it's this way of like using language make it really more memorable and there's all these really cool like frameworks that you can use. Like using like alliteration and all those because I mean the syntax does matter. Right?
Sure. Because the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. It's like you're being very specific, the only thing you have to fear, curiosity gap, and then kinda gives that payoff at the end.
Yeah. There's a lot of these like really cool phrases. Well, I think that it's something that you would always say too is like this idea of punching somebody in the face with your the
first word needs to punch or the first sentence needs to punch you. Can you give us an example of like copy that you've written that that does that?
Yeah. Like, you're reading this because I want you to. Yeah.
Like, if I was gonna sell a copywriting course, that's the first sentence. And you you had an ad for The Hustle which was like My friends think I'm smart. Right.
I'm not. Then It's really because I just read The Hustle.
Right. So we probably spent $10,000,000 on that ad. Yeah.
That ad was singularly responsible for the exit, that was fine.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean that ad like significantly outperformed.
It was crazy how much money that one ad made us. And it had like the the Ben Franklin dollar bill? Yeah.
I know because it converted me. Did it really? Yeah.
Yeah. For a while it was Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban's face and he sent me a cease and desist and he didn't ever know I've since talked to him once or twice and he I still doesn't know that I'm that guy.
Sorry,
Mark. The next element I wanna get into is now storytelling. So punch somebody in the face, get their attention with the headline, but now it's about writing copy that sucks people in.
Yeah. I call it the slippery slope. That's one of the axioms actually of of Joe Sugarman's books.
Joe Sugarman's book is getting someone to fall down the slippery slope. Break down what is the slippery slope because I do have an example that I want you Yeah. Look, there's this idea called the rule of consistency.
Basically, like, if you're if you've done one nice thing for me, you're more likely than not gonna continue doing something nice for me. So like a little bit of a joke is like, if I want you to do something nice for me, I'm gonna be like, I'll just be talking like, hey, can you hold that for And then I'm gonna actually ask you for the favor that I really wanna ask you because you're already doing something for me.
Yeah. You know what I mean? For sure.
Like that's like the like there's these little tricks that like you could do is like you ask someone to do something for you. Like for example, they did this crazy study where, let's just say that I'm a politician and I wanna get you to put this huge sign on your front yard that says you're gonna vote for me.
The best thing to do is to say, hey, can you put this little sticker in your window? And then two weeks later I'm gonna come back and say, you're a huge supporter.
I'm only gonna do this for a handful of huge supporters. Can we put this big sign there? The odds are that you're gonna do it, I think it's like 40% higher because of the law of consistency.
Yeah. This is like a study that's been done over and over and over again. And so once you get someone to start falling down the slippery slope and start reading, they're gonna start reading the Joe Shugman famously said the purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence and the purpose of the second sentence is to get you to read the third sentence and so on.
And then once,
with good copywriting, the goal is not to get 100% of people to buy what you want, it's to get the right person to read all of the ad and a large percentage of them are eventually going to buy. Alright. So over the last two years of building Nibble, shipping nearly 8,000 UGC ads and getting performance data on every single one of them, it became super clear.
There are two types of brands, those that understand creative volume and those that don't. The core difference was what they focused on. Brands that focused on volume plus hit rate were never complaining that Meta changed the algorithm.
Their stuff just worked. And anytime we did work with one of those savvy brands, was always on the same platform, Motion. Motion is by far the best tool to optimize your creative pipeline.
Provide structure, visibility, and insights that your creative team needs to make better decisions. I like to think of it as like what Meta would actually show you if they cared about your success. All the key metrics like three second stop rate, winning angles, formats, competitor research, it's all built into their platform so you can make quicker and better decisions.
They even just launched our new AI agent, Runneth, which functions as a twenty four seven creative strategist providing recommendations to your ad account. Y'all make sure to go check them out at motionapp.com.
Alright. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah.
And you you've probably I think you've put up that graphic before where it's like, good writing is like music. It starts. It starts.
Oh, rhythm. Yeah. And it like has this kinda like color coded like some sentences are short.
Some sentences, they're just a little bit longer. And some sentences, we'll keep on writing because they're gonna tell you about what you're gonna read next and it's gonna say you need to be prepared for that, and this. Understood?
Yeah. So it's like, yeah, needs to be like like a little bit of a rapper where it's like short, medium, long, short. Yeah.
Yeah. That's I love rhythm when it comes to writing. That's my favorite thing.
It's such a powerful way to like keep someone's attention rather than so many people will just ramble and kinda like speak in the same length of sentence over and over. Yeah. And and if you're new to writing, there's a few rules.
Well, first thing is you should write at a seventh grade reading level level. And if you don't know what that means, you should go to hemmingwayapp.com and that will you just put your copy copy in there and it'll tell you what reading level you're at.
But USA Today, which is like a popular newspaper, that's a fourth grade. And the New York Times, which is some people think it's like a smart person's newspaper, that's seventh grade.
And so usually what you wanna do is one sentence should have one point that it makes. So if you're gonna two if you're gonna use a comma in a sentence, oftentimes you wanna use a period instead.
The second thing is it's really good for rhythm wise to start the second or third sentence, the next sentence with and or but. Yeah. I do that all the time.
It helps like create rhythm. Transition words. But usually when you need to have a comma, use a period.
Short sentences are the best. Warren Buffett does something amazing.
He explains incredibly complicated things like the insurance business, which is a very complicated thing. He explains it in very simple sentences. So Warren Buffett's famous for writing these annual letters where he breaks down the business.
Anyone can read them and they can understand a little bit about Geico, which is very complicated company. And the average length per sentence, I went and analyzed it, is 17 words. Not a lot.
And actually he started at 25 when he was younger and over the years it's consistently gone down to 17 words. It might be as short as 14 but the last time I looked it was 17.
Isn't that kind of the secret to copywriting though is constraint forcing clarity?
Yes. 100%. And if you look at some of the best authors that you like, like I love like just look at the classics.
Hemingway, like his book, The Old Man by the Sea, it'll say like, the man was sad. He wanted to go fish.
Like those and it's like a pretty like a profound book. And so you can like have these like pretty profound feelings and emotions and everything but said simply. Yeah.
I think it was Sean's.
Sean had a thing back in the day. Sean, you're And a it was like write your first draft then cut a third Cut a third.
And then cut a third again. It's called Killing Your Darlings.
Yeah. And I honestly have used that to like that has been such a guiding principle for all the best copy I've ever written because it just makes you get the damn word out there that you're actually trying to say rather than like all these different clauses and different ways of writing a sentence. In in Cut 30 we always talk about the idea of like writing with your eraser.
You're gonna write your script and then now you're gonna write with your eraser and chop it completely down. One of my favorite writers would say
they write drunk and edit sober. Yeah.
David Olginby famously says, he goes, I'm a shit writer. I'm a great editor. That's Oh, good.
And so, yeah, you Okay. You gotta write the crap. You just gotta get it out on paper.
Part of that magic is seen in the in the Wall Street Journal ad that they ran for 28 years. Love that ad. It was this tale of two boys, right?
Yeah. What was the headline? I don't even remember.
So on a beautiful spring afternoon twenty five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men.
But both both had been your better than average student, both were personable, and both as young graduates were filled with ambitious dreams. But recently the men returned to college in their twenty fifth reunion.
And it goes on to say that they were different. And the reason they were different was one kid, one of the kids when he was young got a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and the other one didn't.
And the one who did was significantly more successful. This ad ran for decades.
Twenty eight years. For twenty eight years? Twenty eight years in Print?
Yeah. And drove over $2,000,000,000
in revenue. Yeah. And I actually stole this.
So at the hustle, we had this publication that was $300 a year called Trends and I just just blatantly ripped it off. Twisted 3%.
You
probably like twisted it like three percent.
Like Monetize it a But I was pretty like mercilessly copying
it and it crushed it for us. We made a lot of money. What are some of the things that you read this that people could walk away from?
Story.
Story, story, story. A lot of people are afraid to add stories in their when they're trying to sell stuff with copywriting because they think it's gonna make it too long. There's no such thing as too long.
Just too boring. And the best thing to make something interesting is to make it a story. Everything has to be a story.
And a story has a beginning and a middle and an end with a little bit of tension in there. Yeah. What are some things that you add into those stories to create tension?
Well, like the hero's journey a little bit. Like, for example, in this case, this story is the hero's journey.
The hero is the boy who ended up being successful and the guide, the one who saves him, is the Wall Street Journal. And so a good brand positions themselves as the guide and the hero of the story is your customer.
And so, you know, this boy was in college. He was lost. But then something happened and he overcame and became the hero.
And it was reading The Wall Street Journal that guided him to see where the light is. And even even I think in The Hero's Journey there's always like the return to the origin. There's always like that stage where the hero returns back and that's kinda like he sees his buddy at the original place where,
you know, they had met before. Yeah. So that's a pretty effective one.
A lot people don't like using stories because they think it's gonna be too long. But just to add, if you're watching this and you have something that can be sold,
like just copy that. Well, I feel like story's almost something that we're we're losing now a a bit. Right?
Like in this, I feel like in two ways it's more important than ever because of AI. And then on the other end, because of platforms like Meta, the stories don't really exist on in an ad library. Yeah.
But you made an ad for me that fucking crushed it and it was a story. Understood. Understood.
Yes. But at the same time, that's that's one out of 10. What was that ad?
It was the story about how basically
there was a when I was selling my company The Hustle, there was a distinct moment where there was like a meeting with me and like 14 people and it was like seven lawyers and seven accountants on HubSpot's end. And they were like asking me questions and I was like, what the fuck am I doing here?
Like I should feel successful right now but I feel like way overwhelmed.
And that's when I like needed a group of peers that I wish I had to like help me sell my business and that's one of reasons why we started Hampton. It was very much like founder story but then putting in the hero's journey a bit. Whereas like if Sam had Hampton, then he would have been in a completely different position.
So like it started off with like, this is Sam. Sam's about to make life changing money. But and then it goes into like,
he's in this scenario where he's Little talking to all of his but therefore. Right? Because I mean there's the Trey Parker, like South Park stuff where that's also a really good storytelling mechanism.
And then there's The
comments make fun of me though because I was like, in my twenties and I don't look like I'm in my twenties now. And they think that I'm like describing it now.
My biggest thing is like, I struggle reading a lot of the ads that are on meta now because it it does it lacks the depth that you are going into and I feel like it's almost created that kind of habit where everything needs to be two sentences
as an example. Everything needs to be like like very short short. A lot of the incentives are just to like shove the benefits in your face.
Yes. It's like, Right? You person who experiences this problem, like we have this solution.
Something that we do a ton is like the concept of a failed solution as well. So you wanna like absolve the viewer of guilt. Like It's hey, tried to solve this problem with your stress but it didn't work.
That's not your fault. You just didn't have the right ingredient, you know. Like you just didn't have this specific mechanism and I feel like that's another kinda like hey, you know, maybe you didn't feel super confident in that business meeting.
It's not your fault. Just You didn't have the right peers.
That's pretty good. Yeah. The thing that I've done with with short form to get exceptionally well is copy work.
I tell everybody that I learned that from you where I'll transcribe different scripts or or transcribe different videos. Copywork is game changing.
Do you what copywork is? Yeah. You just write it down.
Oh my god. It's like the greatest thing ever. I use it for everything.
I guess we should probably explain what it is. Yeah. Will in a second.
So like but I'll set context where my first million view video on on Instagram specifically, like I was getting stuck at every video was getting like a hundred hundred fifty two hundred thousand views. I'm like, okay, is good. Of course, everybody wants to kinda get that million view video.
I did a bunch of copy work, shifted my my script based off of everything that I did in the copy work. That video out the gate got 2,000,000 views.
Right? And it was it was literally two days of me just like, okay, let me get I got like five good scripts or five videos that all had millions and millions of views and I and I saw elements like you were just saying, okay, they they added a transition word, you know, right here. So it was like, but then this happened.
And then therefore this happened. And then I'm a create some tension here so that they're gonna and what I was looking at as well is like I was looking at the retention graph, seeing where people dropped off. So if everyone's dropping off at the twelve second mark, then I was like, okay.
Here's where I'm gonna introduce some new tension, Right? Or a curiosity gap. And like, those elements that I learned from doing copywork literally shifted the the performance of of my videos.
What is copywork? How do you do it? And what are the benefits?
So copywork,
the best way to explain it would be if do you know how to play any instrument? No. Okay.
So if I said, Alex, here's a piano. I played the drums a long time ago. Okay.
But let's say you didn't know how to play the piano and I sat you down the piano and I said, have at it. Go write a hit song.
Talk soon. It would be impossible, right? Like you can't like write a song that way.
Instead and we've mastered how to teach people instruments. Within one year if you practice two hours a day, you can be a phenomenal musician.
And the way that we teach people to play instruments is you learn Jingle Bells by copying it, and then you learn maybe Happy Birthday and then a little bit more complicated, a little bit more complicated. And then eventually your teacher will be like, you like rock and roll? Let's learn some Foo Fighter songs or like a Green Day song.
And then you're like, oh, like that. I'm like, let's play a Lady Gaga song. Kinda like this song.
Let's play Nirvana's. I don't know. And you start like playing all this stuff and you see the rules of how other and the texture of how other people do it.
Then you're like, you know what? I like a little of this. I like a little bit of that and I like a little bit of this.
I'm gonna combine because I've noticed that my favorite things, this is the pattern they follow so I'm gonna steal that, steal this, steal this. Copy work is you could use it for anything. But in regards to just writing, it's when you find writing that you love.
And even not writing you love, but writing that's regarded generally speaking as good, and you copy it word for word. You sit down for an hour and you and I did this for months.
You did this with the Boron letters, didn't you? Yeah. Is that the Boron letters?
Yeah. Did it with the Boron letters. Did it with The Great Gatsby.
I did it with SNL scripts. I did it with
all types of shit. Now y'all already know we are super skeptical on this show about most AI tools promising the world. They have flashy demos, huge promises, and ultimately under deliver.
But I do have to tell you about one that has blown me away and saved my team countless hours of time and that's RichPanel. Imagine a twenty four seven customer support engine that handles all of your tickets seamlessly, escalates anything requiring human intervention, and here's the best part, upsells your customers in the process.
Their onboarding process is frankly one of the craziest things I've ever seen. You input your brand and within fifteen minutes, it has full context on the latest drops, product information, and plugs into all of your apps.
That's not even to mention the cost savings. They're like three times more affordable than their competitors. I couldn't recommend this enough.
So if you're a brand looking to turn support into an asset, go check out richpanel.com and tell them we sent you. Do you think the SNL scripts helped you get funnier?
Well, I'm not funny, so no. But it helped me get funnier. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And so like but you could.
Because that's I feel like people are always like, how do I learn humor? It would 100% work if you just copy to other people. Right.
And so like for example, I like got into like hip hop one summer and I like I was like, how does Kanye do this beat? And so I literally would just like recreate the beat and I'm like, oh cool. Know how to do it now.
That's kinda cool. Little eight zero eight? Yes.
And you like you like learn exactly how that works. And that works for writing but it works for anything.
Anything that you wanna develop good taste in, that's the number one thing to do is just to blindly copy until you find the rules of the language that you're trying to speak. And it's super important to write it down. Right?
Because like that kinda actually It needs to be Prints it in your brain. Yeah. Yeah.
It's different. Yeah. Yeah.
You you have to you have to like feel the texture. Actually, there's science that shows you remember things more by being physical
than typing. And even in therapy like that, that's why they have you write things down because it's almost like you can transform based off the things that you write. Right?
So if you're going through something, you could write down like how you're you're getting better. This is my five year journal.
I love this thing. You know what this is? I can't open it because I have writing in it and people will see it.
But every single well, here let me find a page that I there's a page I haven't done. So this is seven thirty.
So what's that? July 30. So year one, year two, year three, year four, year five.
So most days, obviously you saw I don't do it, but like most days I'm writing like an entry on how I feel that day. Then I could see like how I felt that day the year before. Yeah.
And so like writing things down like has changed my life. It's been a very this is a cool tool. Definitely do that.
I like how it's structured. It's awesome. It's a great product too.
It's a great It's like the aesthetic is really strong. I know. I wanted to like sell that.
Yeah.
The other segment that I want to go into is I now wanna give you essentially bad ads.
And I want you on the spot too. I'm not that good of a copywriter. People
people talk about you. People talk about you. I'm
not that good. It's just that most people are bad. You know what I mean?
I'm like I'm like a guy who knows how to play a handful of songs on the guitar at like a senior party. Like and then you call me a good But
that guy still commands the room. Let's be clear. Yeah.
He's a dwarf
among midgets. He's
still the coolest guy there though. So I'm gonna start with AG one. So I'll give you context.
They they released a supplement called AGZ. Don't know if you've seen it. Sleep supplement.
Okay? Nightly Rest The first new product they launched in like sleep supplement. Nightly rest is within arm's reach.
AGZ combines magnesium, l theanine, and saffron to support every phase of rest without the grogginess of melatonin. Okay? The copy then on the actual visual is the nightly drink for restorative sleep.
So I'll give this to you and I basically want you to
change what you would how you would especially write this headline. For an ad like this, the best ad would be proof. So it would just be a quote like or it would be like a picture of someone's whoop that says before taking this, after taking this.
Yeah. Transformation. Yeah.
I would think that the nightly drink for restorative sleep. Yeah.
Mean that's a So basic. That's pretty bad ad. For this one, I would probably do a before and after and I wouldn't even show the product.
So just a transformation of somebody being Yeah. Looking exhausted in a For sleep supplements, there's proof. The second way you could take it is Can you put that into like an actual headline for for somebody that doesn't understand like what you mean by proof.
Because I'm guessing it's like 93 of people are now But I think it's story.
It's it's like
I almost didn't wake up for my little one or something like that. Yeah. You know, it's like speak to who the person is.
It depends who they're targeting but I can give you an example of an ad that I would do for this person. I'm following the AIDA method that would be educational. So I would say, so I don't know anything about sleep.
So all the facts that I'm gonna say I'm making up. AIDA method is attention, interest, desire, action.
There's a scientific reason why after the age of 35, seventy five percent of men wake up between two and 3AM. Okay.
So that's gonna be my Attention. Attention. Yeah.
Then the interest and desire, the interest is going to be you know the feeling when you're sleeping perfectly fine and you wake up and you're not sure if you have to go pee or what's going on.
And for some reason for the past five years, you just thought this is age. You just thought that this was normal and I should accept this. And then you get them to desire and you say, the truth is is that the reason you feel this way is because you lacked vitamin d.
Haven't you noticed that you almost always get this way during wintertime? Yeah. Because the world that we live in, it's a lot less I don't know if it's true.
I don't know. Don't think about it. It's a lot less sunny than it was before or you're spending your days inside.
Yeah. And so the reason why you wake up Like blue light or something. It's not your fault.
It's because you simply just don't have enough vitamin d. The good news is that that the good news is that this is easy to fix.
Right. Which is taking more vitamin d. Now, a lot of vitamin d out there doesn't get absorbed because it's just made in bad ways.
Not our vitamin d. We've spent ten years and a $100,000,000 sourcing the best stuff.
And then anyway, that would be like Probably inject some Easy. Yeah. Like that would be like the Trusted by a 100,000 dads just like you.
Yeah. Like some social proof. So that's like an educational story I would tell.
That's very good. That was very good. But even doing that, like you did go through a hero's journey like that entire time.
Yeah. That was just telling
a story but like that would be a really that would probably be a pretty good ad. Now everything I just said was fake. Don't know if it I think what was like something that I've talked about a lot when like training creators is that was a Trojan horse.
Right? Like you basically bury the product so far deep into the story Yeah. Because you wanna fall down with the Bruce You know like build that desire for a long time and then most people I mean that ad just throws the product at you immediately.
It's this restorative drink for you. Yeah. Daily daily restorative drink.
It's like they haven't built any desire, you know. There's no real reason to actually believe that. Well, there's a rule
as well where it's like you're trying to get people to say yes like very very early. Right? So I say a specific line like, don't you always notice that you wake up Isn't it frustrating why
you like, why suddenly at the age of 35 you can't sleep for more than three hours straight in the night and you have to wake up to go pee? Like, you'd like kind of head nod, right?
You're like, yes. And then you'd say like, well, did you know that's a recent phenomenon? It's not always been that way.
Yeah. Peek the interest. And then like, reason it's that way is because you again, make a lot And you also wanna put that like all that at the beginning Mhmm.
As like as early as possible into into the copy.
The other one that I want you to do is there's one from Caraway. Designed with clean materials like ceramic coated glass, Caraway food storage helps you store more and stress less. Your storage can do better.
Another terrible.
So they're like a nontoxic cookware.
Great. Okay. Again, I'm gonna make up all the details.
If I had to write this from scratch, would use Claude and like find I would like ask him. Yeah. Get like stats.
Yeah. Did you know that there's more e coli in your in your Tupperware container than there is your toilet bowl?
I mean, this is so good. You see, a lot of people don't realize this, but e coli comes from rotten chicken. And rotten chicken sticks inside of what's Tupperware usually made out of?
I don't know. Plastic. Plastic.
And so the and plus when you microwave it, oh my god. Yeah. Gets even It creates a toxic waste of Toxic waste of crust.
So you think so or or the headline could actually be imagine imagine storing your food in the toilet bowl. That is such a good headline.
Yeah. Imagine storing your food in the toilet Yeah. Because that's exactly what you're doing.
There's more e coli in in one year old Tupperware container, the plastic one year old Tupperware container than there is your own toilet bowl. And then you like explain like Yeah.
Luckily for you. Yeah. Yeah.
And like, that my friend is why glass is better. Yeah. You know, that's what I would do.
That's so good. That But goes back to the idea of punching somebody in the face with that first sentence. Yeah.
And I bet you I could find out the truth about like like here would be another one. If I had like a kid's clothing company, I would say
Is this advice for Sean?
No. Free game. I would say, would you put your kid's milk in a plastic cup and microwave it until the cup started melting?
Of course not. But that's exactly what you're doing when you're buying them polyester pajamas and putting it in the dryer.
That's why you wanna have all natural organic cotton. Do you think it's key to put something like almost frame something else that is extremely visual like you just did? Yeah.
So for example, if I was This is like a clear obvious no. If I was gonna tell you, movie movie popcorn has a 150 grams of fat.
That means nothing. But if I filled this cup up with a 150 grams of fat or showed you like a brick of fat and be like, you see this? That's how much fat is in one large popcorn.
Do you want that? Yeah. It's like the deconstructed Coke bottle.
It'll be like this much of your Coke is sugar and Yeah. It'll be like 40% of the entire bottle. Do you do you think about like objections
when you're copyrighted? Yeah. You know who know who does it the best?
Have you ever seen the eight Mile? Yes. Like the Eminem movie?
Yeah. Yeah. The best scene is when they're like freestyle rapping and he's like about to get annihilated by these guys and he's like, yeah, I am white.
My mom is trashy. I am white trash. Yeah.
My mom did have sex with this guy. Yeah, I got beat up by this guy. And then they're like do I have a friend named Chetababa shoots in his subways.
Yeah. And then the guys are like, shit.
I can't say anything. You just ruined my entire Yeah. So I do think that whenever we write copy, I do think of objections.
So I'll often say like, I know what you're thinking. Who's this person and why can I even trust them? Or I know what you're thinking.
I don't need this now. Like I always I'll ask those questions like in the writing. Yeah.
All the time. And then are you more direct when you're tackling objections with like No. You can have it in like FAQs.
Okay. Because there was a there was this video on TikTok shot back in the day. Was about like these Lenovo headphones basically.
Lenovo? Okay. And so he used he was like, there's a rumor going around that Apple is stealing this new design for these headphones and then he proceeds to go into like, you know, he kinda hits like a, you know the feeling like those headphones are so uncomfortable and then he's like, these are the most comfortable ones, I never take them off.
And then the way I viewed the video and why I think it converted so well is because, okay, you've got hooked me in, I'm intrigued by your new design but it's Lenovo headphones, they're $40, I think they're probably pretty shitty. And so he proceeds to be like, the battery life on these things insane, like I haven't charged them for three weeks.
And then he explains why, so but why are they only $40? Exactly. And then he's like, not only that but you know, accidentally wore these in the shower one time and they're totally good.
He doesn't say they're waterproof. He says, I wore them in the shower. Right?
And like that personal anecdote is a way of handling the objection without necessarily like, I know what you're gonna say.
You're like, these things are shitty. Like, if I just get them wet at all, they're probably gonna die. He's like, no, wore them in the shower.
I think that's a really good way to handle it. What do have? A Harley one?
Yeah yeah yeah. What's that one? Okay.
The reason I'm bringing this one up is because when you look at old vintage Harley ads or and or how they were positioned, was it was more so built around his Every Harley ad that they're running now is like just about how much they could save by getting pre qualified.
So I'd want what I almost want you to But that doesn't mean it's a bad ad. Like, it could be someone's super high intent. Yeah.
But I think there's there's
a way of structuring it where like you can put pricing into the sentence and almost make it like still very desirable, but it's it's more built around the desire and then like it's almost a bonus that it's
x amount of dollars a month. Yeah. I mean, it's the bottom of funnel.
Yeah. Yeah. I would probably do something I'm like I mean, I love like facts and like research.
So I would probably do like people who have experiences are x more likely to be happy than people who just buy things. Thankfully, this is both.
Both. Like, and therefore save a little money.
Two for one. Yeah. That's the bar.
Would probably go something in that route because that's how I I've always justified there's my motorcycle right there. I always justify them of saying, I'm purchasing an experience and experiences make you happier.
I feel like I'm a dancing monkey here. You gotta like show me ads and I gotta come up with something clever. I've come up with two clever ones.
I don't know how many more I have in me. I mean, was that not a third? That a third.
That was a third. That That was definitely a third. How do you think about infusing humor or like personality into into the ads?
Don't think it works for every brand. But I think if it's part of your brand, think that humor is probably one of the easiest ones to use to sell.
Would you use it in Hampton? Yeah. Like, if you look at our about us page, we have humor.
You read our about us page? Yeah. It's supposed to be funny.
Yeah. I like doing humor. I actually think we could do more of it, but at the hustle we had humor.
We had a really famous welcome email that was quite popular. Feel like y'all are very leaned into humor. Yeah.
And I wasn't the funny one. We hired really funny people.
Yeah. We had a lot of really funny people like one of the yeah, it was a ton. We had ones who you don't even know.
And we had headlines like one time SoFi. You know SoFi? Yeah.
The bank. They the storyline was like the CEO like touched a woman or did something.
It was a bad sex thing. And the headline and it wasn't bad enough where we couldn't make fun of it.
Like I think he like said something inappropriate. I don't think he touched. I think he said something.
And we said, so fi, more like so fucked. And we had like we had really good headlines that I we would think the New York Post does really good They they
are the best at it. I mean like the next day after anything happens, you just know the post is gonna fillet somebody. Yeah.
Pretty good. Oh, no. Do think humor's quite good.
For anybody that's trying to become a better copywriter,
what would kinda what road map would you Copy work without a doubt for six months. Just find like just Google like best ads or like yeah. Would start with ads but then like most effective or like most top selling or top selling like American short stories.
And then like it could be like if you wanna be funny, you'd find like best stand up comedy jokes or best SNL bits or most famous TV scenes, things like that.
Whatever is like critically acclaimed or popular for whatever reason in the genre that you wanna do.
Then you spend literally three to six months.
I call it copy hour. I would do that every hour for six months. Would you do that based off kind of like the skill sets?
Like if you're looking at a comedian, like, okay, delivery. I'm gonna learn delivery here. Yeah.
For
that, you'd want to learn timing. But yeah, just whichever thing I wanna be at, I would find like what's considered the handful of classics.
And then even if you wanna get good at video editing, then you go and you try to recreate a shot. Or you wanna do songs, you like recreate the song.
Or for example, if you wanna get good at design, you find websites that you like and you literally make them on Canva. Yeah. Have you ever had like a like a swipe file of copywriting books like all the like all these ones that we're looking at?
Yeah. You've used that as like a lead magnet before? As a lead magnet?
Yeah. Just like something because I mean, I feel like you could be like, these are my top 15 copywriting books. No.
I've never done that but that's a really good idea. I should do that.
Because I've read a ton. Yeah. I was gonna say, like, is just like it's very these are the most popular ones.
I mean, these are the ones I talk about all the time but there's a bunch. These are these are the pre acquisition books. It's all copied.
Post acquisitions Close. Denim. Go up one more.
It's their contemporary Japanese architecture.
Yeah. And skateboarding magazines.
Grab those Thrasher magazines. I did. I was actually looking so many so the reason I have all these magazines is I just steal ideas from them.
And I'm I work in the tech world and so I know that not a lot of people are gonna be reading Thrasher or this is like an old JFK junior magazine, that's the first edition I guess yeah. That thing's probably appreciated and valued.
It's probably worth a thousand dollars. A million percent since Love Story. Joe, my partner bought this for me two years ago because I love the Kennedy's.
Yeah. And it's the first edition of the it's worth a thousand dollars now. He got it for $30.
But I steal so many funny things from Thrasher.
They were making fun of me yesterday because we popped out of we went to Amelion duo. We left there and I was like, I need to instantly go to the magazine shop. And I bought like six, seven different magazines.
Yeah. Steal so much stuff. I'm like, you you guys don't understand how good the copy, how good the imagery is in all of these.
This one's Popeye. The reason why this is cool, it's backwards.
And this magazine is all in Japanese by the way. I can't even read anything. The Japanese one I bought yesterday is all.
But I I have subscription. I've been a subscriber of these for years. Isn't there another there's like a new magazine company
trying to do it. Right? Haven't you talked about it before?
There was a Cool. Arena?
Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. It's like a tech thing. Yeah.
They were trying to. I don't wanna read business anymore. I just like to read other stuff.
I gotta find places to scale from. A lot of people are saying like the best way to unlock your ability to write
good original ideas is to read more fiction.
I I read a lot of fiction. Which is like read this headline out the out the gate. First page I turn to, he looked like Dale Earnhardt and smelled like b o by a bonfire.
Like what? You immediately know. I steal so much stuff from these things.
Yeah.
Thrasher has really good writing. How long have they been in publication, like? For thirty
years probably. The one thing you don't know about Sam is he
great copywriter. He'll do a kickflip right over this this The boy shreds the Gnar, you know, at the age of 36. Have you seen this guy Jimmy Sundays?
No. You gotta Is is he a 36 year old who can shred? No.
No. Certainly not. He's like a 23 year old like surfer bro who walks up to like random girls and he'll be like, what's up fine shit?
And then he'll be like, if I land this kickflip you gotta give me your number. And I don't have those skills. He just hits it on rep immediately.
I think you would geek out if you like looked up his page. Well Sam, I appreciate you making time for us. I know you you have a crazy podcast scheduled this week.
I had one this morning with HubSpot and they pay me every
month to host MFM and sometimes when they call I gotta say You do have to say yes. Yes, sir. Yeah.
I think what got got it over the line was I posted something on my story and was like, hey, what content do you wanna see from me? And somebody later said, you and Sam Pond. And he had just texted me like 15 For the record, Alex worked at the Hustle.
I think he started as an intern, I don't remember exactly. No. Don't try me.
That's not What? You were 24? Yeah.
I came out on social.
Where did you work before? At my own agency. And he was a kid and then he did the gym.
What was it called? Collective. Collective.
And and he like started filming some stuff and I'm like, you did that? That's really good.
Thought you could do that. And then he started doing his own social and I was like, you did that? That was really good.
So yeah, you've built some cool stuff. Thank
you. Thank you. I appreciate you jumping on, making time, and giving all the game that you typically do.
It's not that much, but hopefully someone will enjoy it. Super young people will find that super valuable. Where where can they support you?
They can't. Okay.
We have some people that are qualified for Hampton.
Well, you have a podcast that's on the come up. We'll put you on. Please do.
I would like to to get word out. Have this new thing called MFM. We Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I started doing That's a little thing.
I started doing Instagram in December. Yeah. And I've been going hard.
Yeah. It's been really embarrassing to be a 36 year old guy talking to a camera but
find me there. Are you enjoying it?
Some days. I do like it. I think I have a 102,000 followers.
I've grown 50,000 since December. Think I started with 50. Don't remember how many I started with.
But it's pretty fun. Yeah.
The young guys who've grown up with, they are just They're different. It's like competing against a Jamaican hundred meter runner.
Like, they're just born different. Like, the young guys who are good at it, you know, they just like It's very like ingrained in them. Oh my god.
It's in their DNA. Yeah. It's been so uncomfortable to have to talk to a camera.
They like vlogging too. Right? Like they they grew up making those videos on Snapchat on everything on their iPhone.
Every single time I try to hit like this, the walk and talk, I can't What's do your most amount of views on a video?
Two point something mil. I just got a 4,000,000 the other day. What about your dad's onion?
My dad's onions. Oh, 4,000,000. Big time.
I got a 4,000,000. Yeah. That was pretty huge.
And I knew it was gonna take off right when I published it. How many followers did that drive? Probably 20,000?
Maybe 15 or 12. 15? Okay.
Was Back in the day maybe 30 but Yeah. It was it drove a lot. Let's see Let's check out the analytics on it.
You gotta get on TikTok, bro. I hate China.
So look, 4,000,000 the China government. I hate the Chinese government.
The CCP. The CCP. Keep that in there.
Keep that in there. The Chinese people are cool with me.
Yeah. China, I don't like. So 4,000,000 followers or how many 4,000,000 views?
How many followers did they get from it? Roughly 10,000.
Those are people that straight click follow on The Real. Like, that's just count for the people that Yeah. So it's it's a little different.
It was just a story about my dad who's an onion salesman.
And he like just sells $10,000,000 a year with the bunions with the You wrote it? You wrote the the copy behind the video and everything? There's Oh, was no writing, bruh.
You just was at my dad's house or my dad's office. It's like a very raw video. I was at my dad's office.
My dad's an onion salesman. So basically my father started a produce stand on the side of the road, like a fruit Yeah. And it became a brokerage which basically means he calls a farmer and he buys $1,000,000 worth of onions and then he sells it to Walmart for a little bit more money and Yeah.
Gets stronger 1.002 or like Yeah. Like nothing.
Like, he sells like $15,000,000 a year's worth of onions but like it's like a Arbitrage. Yeah. Yeah.
So he doesn't make that like $15,000,000 a year. Right. Which the comments were like, oh, your dad's like rich.
I'm like, no, the margins are small. Yeah. But anyway, I was at his office and it's just him and this woman who works for him, he met at a bar.
She was the bartender of his favorite bar. And I go I go, here's how my dad sells $10,000,000 a year's worth of onions.
And he's just sitting there with his desk and he's got two, like, phones and he's got a computer that strictly is used for watching YouTube videos and then he has a calculator here and he just makes calls. Yeah. Can I buy this thing?
Alright. Cool. Like, adds it up like, hey, do want to buy this thing?
Cool. And then his coworker who is in the other office, he let her have like a big pack and play in her office so she could bring her kid to the office. And then we're like we're like, here's his accounting department and that's the calculator.
Here's like the call center. It's like his two phones. And then like, here's the daycare with just a pack and play.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And it went viral.
Skip rate, only 20% which is So yeah. 80% of people watch the Yeah. Yeah.
Which is insane. How much does that mean? What does that mean?
It's like a eighty percent three second stop rate. So 80% of people saw your hook and said, I'm in. Yeah.
At the three second mark, 85% of people continued watching which is
insane. It's actually an insane number. Yeah.
You don't drop below 50% until thirty three seconds in.
I think the video is only forty five seconds long. Which is wild. Yeah.
It's fifty fifty So like 50 of those 4,000,000 people watch the whole thing. Like I always know if like my if I'm looking at my script rate, if it's above 50% at the three three second mark, I'm like, okay, this is gonna I do 50% after five.
Yeah.
And I mean, looking at these numbers, it's What's the average watch time? Thirty five seconds. Yeah.
That's crazy. And then, what I did was I made an ad out of that video. So this is one one of our better performing crushing.
I mean, you could also just like white list that one from your account. Well, what I did was watch this.
We're at my father's business. This is that's him. He sells over $10,000,000 of onions a year.
You have to see how he does it. This video got 3,000,000 views. And if you're a business owner, you're gonna understand why.
Watch this. My post went viral in the entrepreneur community because it was frame breaking. Basically, people think that a $10,000,000 or $50,000,000 a year business should look a certain way, and they see this, and they are encouraged because there's really hundreds of different ways that you can get to where you wanna go and build a huge company.
And this is one of the reasons why thousands of founders get a lot of value in Hampton because they're able to see these frame breaking conversations and meet these frame breaking people every single day. Those are some quick CTA too. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's one of our best ads. Pretty funny, right?
God bless America.
God bless America. America. Yeah.
Is that Ralph? Yeah. It is.
Or eBay? No.
Dude, thank you. Alright. God bless you guys.
Yeah. Thank you so much. As well.
Alright. Thank you. Thank you.
Peace.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A sentence appears on screen before anyone speaks: You are reading this not because you want to, but because I want you to. Sam Parr uses it as a live demonstration -- and then spends the next 55 minutes explaining exactly how that trick works, where it came from, and how to engineer it in every piece of copy you write.
Devon Levesque and Albert Matheny on building a nine-figure supplement empire without running a single paid ad for years -- and the philosophy that makes it last.
A solo-founder monologue compresses eleven years and $50M in sales into seven numbered lessons, running from a Bali affirmation story to a $600,000 ad-spend audit.
A two-hour SIP Live AMA and timeline breakdown covering getting your first 100 customers, a Cloudflare protocol for charging AI agents to browse the web, and the viral chart showing AI spend rising while headcount rises with it.
Bloom Nutrition's CEO and president spend thirty minutes on a yacht in Greece arguing that the real risk isn't missing your moment — it's showing up before the market is ready to understand you.
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