The $2 Billion Copywriting Secret Behind The Most Successful Ad Ever w/ Sam Parr

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. This is called copywriting. This is Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, a newsletter empire he built from scratch. He's also the co-host 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 want to focus on the importance of copywriting in this episode. There's two tweets that you put out that I'm going to— I'm going to highlight one in 2022, one in 2020. 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 1. Tweet number 2: 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 ay? I need to grab her attention. And I was with my friend Lily, who was just a buddy of mine. And I said, Lily, that girl is really pretty. I got to stop her when she walks by. I don't know what to say. And like, as I was like saying that, she like, oh, hey, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? And she's like, huh? And I was like, I don't pay $500 to have a lentil on my face. And she was like, was stunned. And I was like, classic, you know, garbanzo bean joke.

You hit him a little.

Big hummus fan, huh? Yeah.

And she thought it was hilarious. And I was like, I'm saying it.

Sam, nice to meet you.

Yeah, it's high risk, high reward because if it doesn't land, but it's good because that wouldn't be your, you know, brand of comedy.

You 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 what I tell our salespeople 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, I 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. You know, how's the family? How's everything going? You guys have a great time. Hey, hey, come here, Cheryl. Can you give these guys— 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 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 3-year-old if she likes ice cream. Yeah, smart.

But I wanted to touch on that just because of the importance of headlines, right? Like there's the David Ogilvy quote of, on average, 5 times as many people read the headline as read the body of copy. When you've written your headline, you've spent $0.80 out of your dollar.

You mean the quote from this book?

From that one right there.

And And half the stuff, if you ever see me write about copyright or talk about copywriting, I'm really just stealing.

That one.

Yes.

This is— I mean, I have both of them. This is—

this is the best book that you could read on copywriting. 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? No one will know.

Now, so what I want to do is I have 5 headlines that I essentially want to 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 got to 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 that.

Flakes is awesome. I use their shampoo all the time. 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 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 kind of 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.

Okay, so back before TikTok and a lot of social media stuff, there 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 going to believe number 7.

Yeah.

Okay. Do you remember like that style?

Yeah. You 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 0 to 200 million monthly visitors in a matter of like, holy shit, 6 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, huh, 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 music.

Is it for the music school?

Oh, no way.

U.S. Music School.

Yeah, it was for a music school. Was it a course? Like a written course? Who wrote this? Is this, is this, um, um, if you said the name, I'd be like— Claude 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. Um, kind of like similar how like music needs to be resolved. Like, have you ever seen like on The Office where like someone like ruins the song for Andy 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 scriptwriting for our short-form content is open loops.

Open loops is exactly what I'm just saying.

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.

I 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. I 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 guess maybe retention would be—

No, 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 long, longer form things still almost always converts better. 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. Yeah. 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 kind of like gray area affiliate marketers. I mean, just random guys that were like selling GLP-1 brands. Like, I'm sure you saw the MedVie 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 27-minute video sales letters before a YouTube video. Right? Betting that no one's going to click skip ad.

No, long is always better.

Yeah. And it's insane. They would spin up these 9-figure funnels and you're just like, how is this, how is this working? But it's because, you know, a boomer is kind of—

No, in general. So have you guys seen this website I have called copythat.com? I went through the course. So that makes a full-time salary that pays for a lot of my living expenses. And that is a— In New York or Austin?

In New York.

It, it's just 2,000 words on white and with a white background.

Yeah.

And that page converts out like probably 5%.

Wow.

So 5% of people who go to it buy it. It's pretty good.

If I remember correctly too, it's kind of— 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.

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, exactly.

Now you're reading this second sentence because again, I'm telling you and forcing you to, right? Yeah. This is 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 kind of 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 45 seconds. Now I've been extended it to a minute 15, minute 20. 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 8 seconds within the video. But it's been interesting to see the data.

You know who does that really good is Tony Robbins. So if you read a Tony Robbins book, they're so freaking long, they're like 800 pages. And I'll be like, in this chapter, I'm going to tell you about this, but wait until you get the next chapter. That's when you're going to see something that's going to blow your mind.

It's almost like a YouTube script, like the intro for a YouTube script.

Put it into— it'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 want to put a time constraint on because then they feel like, okay, I know he's going to 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 got to go, I got to get back to my buddies really quick, but I had a question, you know, something like that.

Yeah.

Like, I only have 1 minute because I'm running late, but really quick.

It's a really good way to snap someone into it.

Exactly. 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 going to blow your mind. But really quick, let me tell you this, right? That's like a really good tactic.

Yeah. Good way to insert a detail.

Yeah. Oz Pearlman. You guys know the magician Oz Pearlman?

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 sports teams and he's the hypnotist.

Oh, okay.

And he was like constantly doing like pickup artist stuff where he was like, all right, really quick, we're going to do this and I'm going to 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 kind of 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 want to 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 that's the best one. What was your question? I 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?

Yeah.

The question is 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 going to 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 going to be a sailboat racer. But there's a lot of people who want to 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, like tree, I guess. Tree. Yeah. And so they killed it selling these candles because a huge percentage of, you know, Washington—

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. And we do those ads on for Hampton. We'd be like, look, if you make over $3 million 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, and that's probably like a huge reason you do the MoneyWise thing. And I've been kind of seeing, you know, 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, fresh as that. You're, you're at $1 million, you're at $10 million, you're at $100 million.

And then every time it needs to be a series.

Yeah.

It needs to be $100 million.

I mean, you're doing that in multiple different formats though, right? I feel like it's, I've seen it like several different. No, I haven't. But that's That's a good idea.

That should be a series.

I mean, you could do a whole YouTube video on that.

Yeah, I agree.

Honestly, because when you did it, it got covered on Inc. It got covered on Forbes. I think so.

It's fucking awesome. I didn't know that.

The next headline I want to get into is something you taught me when I was— for context, I worked at 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— 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.

I know what you're talking about. Yeah, there's the Lamborghini one as well. That's like, pick up 9 times more women in this than a Lamborghini. I'm sorry, it was like a van ad.

Yeah, no, these are cool. These old Porsche ads. So actually my brand Hampton, we just stole British Racing Green from a lot of these ads. That's the color they used. This is called— there's this book that Dharmesh, 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, Office Attitude, 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 a style of phrase, and it gives you 10 different types of phrases that you could steal. Or for example, Winston Churchill gave this famous speech after the Battle of Dunkirk, and it changed the course of the war because England was not going to win World War II. Because English, they were like kind of meek and afraid. And he was like, we're going to fight on the beach, we're going to fight in the ocean, we're going to fight in the water, we're going to fight on the ships. And like, it's this way of like using language to 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 things.

Yeah, 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 kind of gives that payoff at the end.

Yeah, there's a lot of these like really cool phrases.

Well, I think it's something that you would always say too, is like this idea of punching somebody in the face with your—

That's what I say, that 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 does that?

Yeah. Like, you're reading this because I want you to. Like, if I was going to sell a copywriting course, that's the first sentence.

Then you had an ad for The Hustle, which was like—

My friends think I'm smart. I'm not. It's really because I just read The Hustle. Right. So we probably spent $10 million on that ad.

Yeah. That ad was singularly responsible for the exit to HouseFi.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, that ad significantly outperformed. It was crazy how much money that one ad made us.

And it had the Ben Franklin dollar bill. I know because it converted me.

Did it really?

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 still doesn't know that I'm that guy. Sorry, Mark.

The next element I want to get into is now storytelling. So punch somebody in the face, get their attention with a 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 to—

Yeah, look, there's this idea called the The rule of consistency, basically, like if you're— if you've done one nice thing for me, you're more likely than not going to 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 going to be like, I'll just be talking like, hey, can you hold that for me? And then, then I'm going to actually ask you for the favor that I really want to 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 want to get you to put this huge sign on your front yard that says you're going to vote for me. The best thing to do is to say, hey, can you put this little sticker in your window? And then 2 weeks later, I'm going to come back and say, you're a huge supporter. I'm only going to do this for a handful of huge supporters. Can we put this big sign there? The odds are that you're going to do it. I think it's like 40% higher because of the law. 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 going to start reading the— Olga or Joe Sugarman 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.

All right. So over the last 2 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 2 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, it was always on the same platform, Motion. Motion is by far the best tool to optimize your creative pipeline. Provides 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 3-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 their new AI agent, Runneth, which functions as a 24/7 creative strategist providing recommendations to your ad account. Y'all make sure to go check them out at motionapp.com. All right, let's get back to the episode.

Yeah.

And 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 has this kind of color-coded syntax.

Yeah. Dude, it's like some sentences are short, some sentences they're just a little bit longer, and some sentences will keep on writing because they're going to tell you about what you're going to read next. And it's going to say you need to be prepared for this, that, and this. Understood?

Yeah.

So it's like, yeah, it needs to be like a little bit of a wrapper 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 kind of like speak in the same length of sentence over and over.

Yeah. And if you're new to writing, there's a few rules. Well, the first thing is you should write at a 7th grade reading level. And if you don't know what that means, you should go to HemingwayApp.com and that will— you just put your 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 4th grade. And the New York Times, which is— some people think it's like a smart person's newspaper, that's 7th grade. And so usually what you want to do is one sentence should have one point that it makes. So if you're going to use two— if you're going to use a comma in a sentence, oftentimes you want to 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 the average— so Warren Buffett's famous for writing these annual letters where he breaks down the business and anyone can read them and they could understand a little bit about GEICO, which is a 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 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 if you just look at the classics, Hemingway, His book, The Old Man by the Sea, he'll say, the man was sad. He wanted to go fish. And it's a pretty profound book. And so you can have these 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, your co-host, and it was like, write your first draft, then cut a third.

Cut a third.

And then cut a third, and then cut a third again.

It's called Killing Your Darlings. Yeah.

And I honestly have used that to 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 Cut 30, we always talk about the idea of like writing with your eraser. You're going to write your script and then now you're going to write with your eraser and chop it completely down.

One of my favorite writers would say, they write drunk and edit sober. David Ogilvy famously says, he goes, I'm a shit writer. I'm a great editor. That's so good. And so, yeah, you got to write the crap. You just got to get it out on paper.

Part of that magic is seen 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 remember. So on a beautiful spring afternoon, 25 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 25th 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, 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.

28 years.

I did it for 28 years.

28 years in print.

Yeah.

And drove over $2 billion 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 blatantly ripped it off.

Twisted 3%. Huh? You probably like twisted it like 3%. Yeah.

Yeah. I like modernized it a little bit. 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 there when they're trying to sell stuff with copywriting because they think it's going to 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 is— 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 or there's always like that stage where the hero returns back and that's kind of 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 of people don't like using stories because they think it's going to be too long. But just add, if you're watching this and you have something that can be sold like just copy that. Yeah.

Well, I feel like story is almost something that we're losing now a bit, right? Like, 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. I'm just kidding. Understood.

Yes.

But at the same time, that's one out of 10.

What was that ad? It was the story about how basically there was, 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 7 lawyers and 7 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 the reasons why we started Hampton.

It was very much like founder story, but then putting in the hero's journey a bit where it's 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 some life-changing money, but, and then it goes into like, he's in this scenario where he's got to pay all these lawyers.

Little 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 set up—

I don't want to admit, the comments make fun of me though, because I said in my 20s and I don't look like I'm in my 20s 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 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 2 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. Right.

Like it's like, hey, 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 want to like absolve the viewer of guilt. It's like, hey, you 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 just didn't have this specific mechanism. And I feel like that's another kind of like, hey, maybe you didn't feel super confident in that business meeting. It's not your fault. You just didn't have the right peers.

That's pretty good. Yeah.

The thing that I've done with short form to get exceptionally well is copywork. I tell everybody that I learned that from you where I'll transcribe different scripts or transcribe different videos.

Copywork is game-changing. You know 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, I will in a second. So like, but I'll set context where my first million-view video on Instagram specifically, like I was getting stuck at every video was getting like 100, 150, 200,000 views. And I'm like, okay, this is good. But of course, like everybody wants to kind of get that million-view video. I did a bunch of copywork, shifted my, my script based off of everything that they did in the copywork. That video out the gate got 2 million views, right? And it was, it was literally 2 days of me just like, okay, let me get— I got like 5 good scripts or 5 videos that all had millions and millions of views. And I saw elements like you were just saying, okay, 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 going to create some tension here so that they're going to— 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 was dropping off at the 12-second mark, then I was like, okay, here's where I'm going to introduce some new tension, right? Or a curiosity gap. And those elements that I learned from doing copywork literally shifted the performance 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 on the piano and I said, have at it, go write a hit song. Talk soon. It would be impossible, right? You can't write a song that way. Instead, and we've mastered how to teach people instruments within one year, if you practice 2 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, hey, you like rock and roll? Let's learn some Foo Fighters songs or like a Green Day song. And then you're like, oh, I like that. I'm like, let's play a Lady Gaga song. I kind of like this song. Let's play Nirvana. 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 bit of this. I like a little bit of that and I like a little bit of this. I'm going to combine it because I've noticed that my favorite things, this is the pattern they follow. So I'm going to steal that, steal this, steal this. Copywork 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, I did it with the Boron Letters. I 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 underdeliver. 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 24/7 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 15 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 3 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?

How would 100% work? If you just copy other people. Right. And so for example, I got into hip-hop one summer and I was like, how does Kanye do this beat? And so I literally would just recreate the beat and I'm like, oh cool, I know how to do it now. That's kind of cool. Little 808. Yes. And you learn exactly how that works. And that works for writing, but it works for anything. Anything that you want to 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 kind of actually— it needs to be printed in your brain.

You feel it.

Yeah, it's different.

Yeah. Yeah. You have to, you have to like feel the texture.

You actually—

there's science that shows you remember things more by being physical than typing.

And even in therapy, like 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? Like, so if you're going through something, you could write down like how you're getting better.

This is my 5-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 day— well, here, let me find a page that I— there's a page I haven't done. So this is 7/30. So what's that? July 30th. So year 1, year 2, year 3, year 4, year 5. So most days, obviously you saw, I don't do it, but most days I'm writing an entry on how I feel that day. Then I could see how I felt that day the year before. Yeah. And so writing things down 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 product.

The aesthetic is really strong. I know.

I wanted to sell that.

Yeah.

The other segment that I want to go into is I now want to give you essentially bad ads and I want you on the spot to—

I'm not that good of a copywriter.

You are. The people, people talk about you.

People talk about it.

I think people—

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 his guitar at like a senior party, like, and then you call me a good musician.

But that guy still commands the room. Let's be clear.

Yeah, he's— I'm a dwarf among midgets.

He's still the coolest guy there, though.

So I'm going to start with AG1. So I'll give you context. They released a supplement called AGZ. I don't know if you've seen it. Sleep supplement. Okay. Nightly rest.

The first new product they launched in like—

Yeah, it's just like a 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 essentially 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.

I mean, that's so basic.

That's a 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 exhausted, looking exhausted in a sleep score.

For supplements, there's proof. The second way you could take it is—

Can you put that into like an actual headline for somebody that doesn't understand like what you mean by proof? Because I'm guessing it's like 93% of people are now sleeping 8 hours.

It's like I almost didn't wake up for my little one or something like that. 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. 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 going to say, I'm making up.

AIDA method is attention, interest, desire, action.

There's a scientific reason why after the age of 35, 75% of men wake up between 2 and 3 a.m. Okay, so that's going to 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 5 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. You say, the truth is, is that the reason you feel this way is because you lack 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. I just think it's a lot less sunny than it was before, or you're spending your days inside.

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 10 years and $100 million sourcing the best stuff. And then anyway, that would be like probably inject some social proof. IAGZ. Yeah, like that would be like the—

Trusted by 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's 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. I don't know if that's true.

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 because you want to fall in love with the person. You 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.

There's a copywriting 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?

Is it frustrating why you like— why suddenly at the age of 35 you can't sleep for more than 3 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. Pique the interest.

And then like the reason it's that way is because you again make it—

You also want to put that like all that at the beginning 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 going to make up all the details. If I had to write this from scratch, I would use Claude and like find— I would like ask it.

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?

Oh, it's 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, it's even worse. It gets even deeper.

It creates a toxic waste of E. coli.

A toxic waste of a crust.

So you think so, 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 bowl because that's exactly what you're doing. There's more E. coli in a 1-year-old Tupperware container, the plastic 1-year-old Tupperware container, than there is your own toilet bowl. And then you like explain like, yeah, luckily for you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like that, my friend, is why glass is better. Yeah, you know, that's what I would do.

That's so good. But that goes back to that idea of like 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 kids clothing company, I would say, is this advice for Sean?

No, free game.

I would say, would you put your kids' 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 want to have all natural organic cotton.

Do you think it's key to put like almost frame something else that is extremely visual like you just did?

Yeah. So for example, if I was just like a clear obvious no, if I was going to tell you movie, movie popcorn has 150 grams of fat, that means nothing. But if I filled this cup up with 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. You want that?

Yeah. It's like the deconstructed Coke bottle. They'll be like, this much of your Coke is sugar and it'll be like 40% of the entire bottle.

Do you, do you think about like objections when you're copywriting? Yeah. You know who, you know who does it the best? Have you ever seen 8 Mile?

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. My mom did have sex with this guy. Yeah, I got beat up by this guy. And then they're like, I do have a friend named Cheddar Bob who shoots himself with his gun.

Yeah.

And then the guys are like, shit, I can't say anything.

You just ruined my entire rap.

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? 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, there was this video on TikTok Shop back in the day. It 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 kind of 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 me, you've 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 is insane. Like, I haven't charged them for 3 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, I 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 going to say. You're like, these things are shitty. Like, if I just get them wet at all, they're probably going to die. He's like, no, I wore them in the shower.

I think that's a really good way to handle it. What do you have, a Harley one? Yeah, 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, it was, it was more so built around desire. Every Harley ad that they're running now is like just about how much they could save by getting prequalified. So I'd want— what I almost want you to do—

that doesn't mean it's a bad ad. Like it could be like 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 more built around the desire. And then like it's almost a bonus that it's, you know, 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. And therefore save a little money. Two for one. Yeah, that's a bar. I would probably go something in that route because that's how 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 got to like show me ads and I got to 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 was a third. That was a third.

That was definitely a third.

How do you think about infusing humor or like personality into the ads?

I don't think it works for every brand, but I think if it's part of your brand, I 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 need to do more of it. But at The Hustle, we had humor. We had a really famous welcome email that was quite popular. I feel like y'all are very lean turned 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, we had 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 we would use. I think the New York Post does really good. Yeah, they do.

They are the best at it. I mean, like the next day after anything happens, you just know the Post is going to fillet somebody.

Yeah, it's pretty good. They're so good. I do think humor is quite good.

For anybody that's trying to become a better copywriter, What would kind of— what roadmap would you copywork?

Without a doubt, for 6 months, just find like— just Google like best ads or like, yeah, I would start with ads, but then like, like most effective or like most top-selling or top-selling like American short stories. And then like it could be like if you want to 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 want to do. But you spend literally 3 to 6 months. I call it copy hour. I would do it every hour for 6 months.

Would you do that based off kind of like the skill sets? Like if you're, if you're looking at a comedian, it's like, okay, delivery, I'm going to learn delivery here.

Yeah, you want it for— yeah, for that you'd want to learn timing. But yeah, just whichever thing I want to be at, I would find like what's considered the handful of classics. And then even if you want to get good at video editing, you then you go and you try to recreate a shot or if you want to do songs, you like recreate the song. Or for example, if you want to 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 of these, 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 going to say, like, this 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 copy. Post-acquisitions, clothes, denim.

Go up one more. It's the Contemporary Japanese Architecture.

Yeah. And skateboarding magazines. Grab those Thrasher magazines. I did.

I was actually looking.

I steal so many. So the reason I have all these magazines is I just steal ideas from them. And I work in the tech world. And so I know that not a lot of people are going to be reading Thrasher or this is like an old JFK Jr. magazine. That's the first edition, I guess.

Oh, that's— yeah, that thing's probably appreciated and valued.

Probably worth $1,000.

Million percent since Love Story.

Joe, my partner, bought this for me 2 years ago because I love the Kennedys. Yeah. And it's the first edition of the— it's worth $1,000 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 Amélie Hondur, we left there and I was like, I need to instantly go to the magazine shop. And I bought like 6, 7 different magazines.

Yeah, I steal so much stuff.

I'm like, you guys don't understand how good the copy, how good the imagery is in all of these.

This one's Popeye. This is the reason why this is cool. It's backwards. And this magazine is all in Japanese, by the way. I can't even read any of this stuff.

The Japanese one I bought yesterday is all in Japanese.

But I have a subscription. I've been a subscriber to 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—

Arena? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a tech thing.

Yeah, they were trying to.

I don't want to read business anymore. I just like to read other stuff. I got to find places to steal 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 read a lot of fiction.

She's like, read this headline out the gate. First page I turn to, he looked like Dale Earnhardt and smelled like B.O. by a bonfire.

Like, 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 30 years, probably.

The one thing you don't know about Sam is he's a great copywriter. He'll do a kickflip right over this.

Yeah, boy shreds the gnar, even at the age of 36.

Have you seen this guy Jimmy Sundays? No, you got to—

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 got to give me your number.

And I don't have those skills.

He just hits it on rip 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 schedule this week.

I had one this morning with HubSpot and they, they pay me every month to host MFM.

And sometimes when they call, I got to say, you do have to say yes, sir.

Yeah.

I think what got it over the line was I posted something on my story. I was like, hey, what content do you want to see from me? And somebody literally said, you and Sam Pod. And I was— he had just texted me like 15 minutes ago.

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—

You were 24.

Yeah, I came out on social.

Where did you work before? I had my own agency and he was a kid and then he did the gym. What was it called?

Collective.

Collective. And he, like, started filming some stuff and I'm like, you did that? That's really good. I didn't know 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. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you jumping on, making time and giving all the game that you, that you typically do. It's not that much, but hopefully someone will enjoy it.

I think 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 get word out. We have this new thing called MFM. We— Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I started doing— I started doing Instagram in December.

Yeah.

And I've been going hard. 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 102,000 followers, so I've grown 50,000 since December. I think I started with 50. I 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— it's like competing against a Jamaican 100-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.

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 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 do it.

What's your most amount of views on a video?

2 point something mil.

I just got a 4 million the other day.

What about your dad's onion?

My dad's onions.

4 million is Big time.

Out of 4 million. Yeah. That was pretty huge. And I knew it was going to take off right when I published it.

How many followers did that drive? Probably 20,000.

Maybe 15 or 12.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it 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 got to get on TikTok, bro.

I hate China. So look, 4 million. The China government. I hate the Chinese government.

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 million followers or how many? 4 million views. How many followers did I get from it?

Roughly 10,000. Those are people that straight clicked follow on the reel. Like, that's just count for the people that—

Yeah.

So it's a little different.

It was just a story about my dad who's an onion salesman and he like just sells $10 million a year worth of onions with a—

You wrote it. You wrote the copy behind the video and everything.

Oh, there was no writing, bro. I 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 stand. Yeah. And it became a brokerage, which basically means he calls a farmer and he buys $1 million worth of onions and then he sells it to Walmart for a little bit more money and then gets a trucker.

$0.002 or like—

Yeah, like nothing. Like he sells like $15 million a year's worth of onions. But like, it's like arbitrage. It's like a very tiny— Yeah. So he doesn't make that like $15 million 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'm— I go, here's how my dad sells $10 million a year worth of onions. And it's just that 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? All right, cool. Like, adds it up. Like, hey, you 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 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. And it went viral.

Skip rate only 20%, which is—

so yeah, 80% of people watch the—

yeah.

How much does that mean? What does that mean?

It's like an 80% 3-second stop rate. So 80% of people saw your hook and said, I mean, yeah, at the 3-second mark, 85% of people continued watching, which is insane.

It's actually an insane number.

Yeah.

You don't drop below 50% until 33 seconds in, which I think the video is only 45 seconds long. Which is wild. Yeah, it's 50%.

So like 50% of those 4 million people watch the whole thing.

Like I always know if like my, if I'm looking at my skip rate, if it's above 50% at the 3-second mark, I'm like, okay, this is going to—

I do 50% after 5.

Yeah. And I mean, looking at these numbers, it's—

What's the average watch time?

35 seconds. Yeah, that's fucking crazy.

And then what I did was I made an ad out of that video. So this is one of our better performing ads.

It's probably crushing.

I mean, you could also just like whitelist 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 million of onions a year. You have to see how he does it. This video got 3 million views. And if you're a business owner, you're going to understand why. Watch this. My post went viral in the entrepreneur community because it was frame-breaking. Basically, people think that a $10 million or $50 million 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 want to 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.

Awesome. 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.

eBay.

Yeah.

Well, dude, thank you.

All right. God bless you guys. Thank you so much.

You as well, brother.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

Peace.