The Power of Copywriting ft. Neville Medhora

My guest today is Neville Medhora from CopywritingCourse.com and I'm very excited to introduce you to his work. So Neville is someone who figured out in the pre Google days that you can get a bunch of very targeted people to come to your content, consume your material and even buy from you. He then applied this to business he was a part of, including a rave company, the first financial blog, online copywriting course, AppSumo, Pink, Java Media, Real, Savvy and The Hustle. He currently advises numerous companies and runs a copywriting company called CopywritingCourse.com. And he also gives away his entire marketing swipe file at SwipeFile.com. Enjoy my interview with Neville Medhora.

Uriah
Neville, welcome to the podcast!

Neville
Thanks for having me!

Uriah
So happy to have you on here and I'm really stoked to introduce you to hopefully a whole bunch of therapists who are business minded and definitely need the advice and expertise that you have. So this is awesome.

Neville
Excellent. I hope I can be of value here, so let me know for sure.

Uriah
So I have a random question for you just to start out with, if that's okay. I know you tinker with a bunch of different musical instruments. Drums, guitar, piano, doombeck, other kinds of things. I'm curious, what do you find yourself picking up most often, if anything?

Neville
I have a piano in my living room. Like a keyboard, like a big full size keyboard. And then I have a little music corner there and I pick up the acoustic guitar and piano the absolute most. I don't play the electric guitar as much, but probably the piano I sit down and play because that's like a more recent instrument I've been playing. And you will often find a piano just kind of laying around somewhere. And I've noticed with instruments, the thing that impresses people the absolute most, I'd say is the piano. Sometimes I don't know. That's true.

Uriah
Yeah, that's true.

Neville
Yeah. Like if you pick up a guitar and play, I think people are like, whoa, you can play a guitar. But when you sit down at a piano, I think there's something that people who can't play have played with the piano. Like they push it and they're like, how do you even know it's a press? And I sit down and I can play and they're like, what? How do you do that?

Uriah
Surprised?

Neville
Yes. The impression in fact, there is a piano for sure.

Uriah
That's so interesting. I was at a friend's house recently and sat down and just played a couple of chords on the piano and they're like, you play the piano? Like it was a big deal. So I think you're right.

Neville
Yeah. But you know what's even more impressive than that? I've noticed because I played guitar since 8th grade, no one cares that you can play guitar. They care that you can sing.

Uriah
Yes, right.

Neville
That's what it is. Because every song is literally like four chords over and over and over. Any major song is like that. But then if you could also sing on top of it, that just takes it to the absolute next level. And that was only in my late twenty s I learned to sing. I could sing before I just was too shy.

Uriah
Well, I watched one of your videos recently where you were playing the guitar and singing a song about copywriting. So I can see the connection there.

Neville
It's a huge hit. Double platinum, you know?

Uriah
Yeah. Totally hitting the charts. So I want to talk to you about a couple of different things that will help my audience, which is therapists in private practice who are starting or building their private practice, whether solo or group. So the interesting thing about you. Amongst other things. Is that you've had this very super interesting nontraditional career path where you've self taught yourself a bunch of different skills and leverage those into a whole bunch of different entrepreneurial ventures. From burning CDs and selling them at school. To drop shipping rave gear through an ecommerce site. Writing. Perhaps sumo. Selling your own courses. And a whole bunch of other things. Right? So I guess the first question I want to ask you is, what was the most important skill that you taught yourself that helped you to be successful?

Neville
It's funny that you mentioned all those things. I think the easy way to say this is trying experiments, right? So instead of starting a business, which I've seen a lot of people get very emotionally attached to it, it becomes part of your identity. You're like, I'm going to start this business selling XYZ, and then you have to do that. Or if you bring on a partner, you both think you don't want to let each other down. I always viewed it as trying an experiment. Let's just see if this works. Honestly, it's almost like a mental frame where it takes off all the pressure, right? So if you say, I'm going to start XYZ, it's very official where you say, I just try this experiment, just have fun with it. It would allow me to have fun with it. It would also allow me something more important, abandoning an idea, right? Sometimes an idea doesn't work. Sometimes you get really excited about it and then you bring it out to the world and the world is like, no, I don't really want that. And it's very important to either abandon or pivot or just change it.

And I think when people start a business, specifically, they're saying, I'm going to do exactly this and only that, where I say, I'm going to do an experiment and that means I can change it and change it until it hits some traction and then create a business out of that. I think that's what was very helpful to do over the years and also just trying stuff out, just exactly just experiments, being very curious about stuff and not caring too much what other people thought about it. I guess that was an innate thing. I had that looking back on. I did not really care that people thought, like, what's he doing? It just didn't enter my mind. It didn't matter. I also know that when you go out in the crowd, sometimes people feel, oh, man, like self conscious, like people are looking at them, but everyone feels the same way. No one's looking at you. Or when you see yourself in a picture of 20 people and you go, oh my God, everyone's going to notice I have a Pimple. It's like the ego on you to think that people are even looking at you.

It's hilarious. And so I always thought, like, no one cares about this, so I'm going to try whatever and let it go. But yeah, I think trying experiments and just being unabashed about it was nice.

Uriah
I really liked that. And it makes so much sense. I thought you would say like writing code or SEO or copywriting, but your answer was even better.

Neville
We could try experiments and all those. That's the thing. It's like the underlying thing is experimentation. And I have experiments with code and what I realized was I really think that there is like an IQ barrier for some people or just how much effort you're going to put into it. And you realize, I was a computer science student for a year and I weeded out and I was like, wow, there are people that dedicate their lives to this. This is a lifestyle. This is not a skill that you can just pick up. And so I realized I could write code, I could probably do this, but it's better when someone else does it and I just pay them to do it. So it's experimentation of like, I did try that, but I realized, you know what, there's people that are just far better than me. They're going to out beat me in this every time.

Uriah
Right? The interesting thing about the path for a therapist is that it's very prescribed, right? We have to go to school, get a graduate degree, work for 3000 hours to get licensed. And then if we open a private practice, it's a very long protracted thing that doesn't lend itself to experimentation. However, I think a lot of people who have gotten licensed and started a private practice are now wanting to experiment with, like, maybe I want to start a membership site or an online course or write a book. So I think maybe that's an area where we can all, as therapists, experiment and try things without, like you were saying, being too attached to it and not worrying too much about how it reflects on us, I guess, right?

Neville
Yes. And so what happens is the math works against you as a therapist when you're working one on one with someone. So the max someone pays you, let's say 200 an hour, I don't know exactly, but let's say it's 200 an hour. So that's about the max you can make. And you have to fill up your hours in the day. There's only so much you can work before you get burnt out, et cetera. And with the Internet, it's allowed us to amplify our voice. So when someone watches this or hears this, me and you are not actually talking, neville and your eye have moved on to other things, yet they're still watching this moment in history. And so I think with therapy, which is obviously a big thing today, mental health is such a huge issue that there's all sorts of therapists kind of online that have amplified their voice. So they're helping thousands, millions of patients rather than one at a time. And I think it's a very interesting time for therapists, especially since there's licensure. So licensure is interesting because only you with the license can provide this service. So it's like why doctors get paid so much, because only them can provide this service.

And so there is something interesting there, and I think a lot of therapists can potentially use the Internet to a huge leverage multiplier for them.

Uriah
Definitely. There's some therapists blowing up on TikTok, which is pretty amazing, and spreading the word and using even humor and fun to talk about mental health, which I think is amazing.

Neville
I also think, like, there's also the people who are traditionally therapists, but also think about someone like Joe Rogan, someone like that, who's just a podcast, who's not a licensed anything, but at the same time, he talks about this stuff. And I think people get a lot of benefit some people get a lot of benefit from hearing people like that talk. I think there's different forms of therapy rather than just like only therapists.

Uriah
Yeah, for sure. I honestly don't care where the message comes from. We all need to hear certain things about how to be the best versions of ourselves and have good mental well being, for sure. So I have another question about your career, if you don't mind.

Neville
Yeah.

Uriah
One thing that struck me was that and this kind of is a natural segue from what you're talking about with experimentation and not being too self interested, I guess, is that you seem to have used fun as a guide for your decision making and all these experiments. Is that just how you are? Kind of like wired or doesn't want to have fun?

Neville
Right. Would you rather do the thing that's fun? 100%. Yeah. And so I actually made a video a long time called how the F do I Make Money? Because I watched it the other day. Yes, this is a common question, especially family friends back in Houston, uncles and aunties would say, what do you do? Like, you don't have a job. We know you pay for things like what do you do? And I told them about this. And one of the things I made a little formula in college when I was about to graduate, my parents really wanted me to get a job to start off. And I thought, well, I've already got a couple of small businesses making about how much money I can make in the marketplace at the time. And I said, with these businesses, there is a downside. Of course. It could go to zero, but there is upside that could potentially be unlimited. And with the job, it is capped. Right. So there's stability, security, but you are capped at that. And there's still a risk in having a job. They could pull the plug. You don't have a job anymore, right?

It's not like there's no risk or downsides to it. And so for that reason, I thought, well, if I'm making this amount of money, the same amount of money I can't with the job, but I'm having more fun and learning more this way, why don't I just do this? And I always thought it was far more fun than a job just because there was less structure. And I don't really like too much structure generally, especially when I was younger. And so that was the guiding principle. Like, how can I have fun doing what I want, feel like I'm playing around all day, yet earn a living? And if that was the case, if I was able to pull that off, have a bunch of fun, play around, like today, I play around on Twitter all day, and somehow this earns me a living. To me, that's the ultimate goal of like, what would I be doing if I had $10 trillion, never had to worry about money. If I went post economic, what would I do? And it would probably be exactly this. And if I get to do exactly this while having fun and making money, that's the best way.

So I think also, if you're having fun, isn't that like a huge competitive advantage to someone who's not having fun? Right. The person having fun at what they're doing, who would do it for free, is going to outlast the person that's just doing it for money. So similar with blogging and creating content in the early two thousand s, and even before that, when it was really HTML typing out posts, there's no blogging software. I was doing that for free, for fun, with no intent on making money. Because no one made money on the internet back then. It was not a thing. And so that's why I've outlasted a lot of other people that just started a blog, to make money. Fun is a huge competitive advantage if you can make your job, fun, doesn't feel like a job.

Uriah
Yeah, I love that. And then in that video you referenced, you talked about, like, if you wouldn't do the thing without the money, take away the money, and if you wouldn't do that thing because you enjoy it, then what are you doing? Right?

Neville
Exactly. There's always studies that like, money is not the most important thing in a job. It's like, I get what you're saying, but I guarantee if you don't pay people, they're not going to show up to work at McDonald's the next day.

Uriah
Right.

Neville
You might get some few people, but for the most part, most people will not do their jobs without getting paid money.

Uriah
Yeah, same here. That's good. That's a good measurement of success. More so than other things, I think.

Neville
Yeah. Earl Nightingale had an interesting way of defining success. It's like the person who's successful is the person who's working towards a worthy goal. What they assume is worthy. So whether it's being a good mother or whether it's being a billionaire, whatever you think is a good goal, if you're working towards that, well, that's success, right?

Uriah
I like that. So let me share with you one of the challenges that we have as therapists and private practice. We start out, it's a solo operation almost entirely. So we're doing our QuickBooks, we're doing our marketing, we're doing our networking, we're doing our website, all the things, I mean, that's common for solopreneurs of any kind, right? And we certainly don't have a marketing background with the exception of some people who are second career. So I think the question I want to ask you, and hopefully this is a good one, is how can we as therapists in private practice, decide what should I go teach myself or learn from someone versus outsourcing to somebody else? That does it better. How would you advise somebody on that?

Neville
Well, at first, work backwards. What goal do you want from this? Right? Give me an example that some therapists would say, what goal would they want from this marketing activity?

Uriah
Well, I really need more referrals and my friends are all doing Google AdWords, so I bought this course to teach me how to do Google AdWords, but it's really hard and I don't like it. I don't know if that's a good example, but that's a great example.

Neville
Google AdWords to get more referrals. Absolutely. So more referrals. So what I would say, I would say, how do I get more referrals? And then I would work backwards to that. So there's a little framework like what works, what doesn't. So in the past, what's worked to get referrals, right? So write those out and what has not worked? Scratch those out, let's not do those anymore. And so one big Indian half my friends are doctors, right?

Uriah
Okay.

Neville
I'm doing well with the whole referral network and how that works. And I've also had a lot of clients in the medical industry that do high end referrals to surgeons and stuff, where the average order value is 5000 plus, right? And so the way that you get referrals is generally from these longer term relationships. And the way you form long term relationships is by being friends with people, hosting events, et cetera. And so this one client I had, he was a chiropractor. And the way that he was getting referrals is knowing MDS, right? And so what he started doing was hosting kind of these medical meetups and naturally meeting these people, over time they started to trust him, started to refer him. It's not something you could really outsource that easy. A personal referral. To give you an example, I want more retweets and people to engage with my Twitter content. So I'm literally tomorrow having a Twitter party where I invited all these people in Austin that are on Twitter to my house. I don't know who I'm going to be there I don't know how it's going to go, but overall, I'm making these connections slowly, slowly, slowly.

So I would say, look backwards, work backwards to find what you want. So when people say, I want more clients, it's like, well, okay, let's niche that down a little bit. You want more referrals. How can you do that? Can you host a therapist meetup? Can you host a therapist meet up for your area? Can you be that person that everyone refers to? And so imagine if you did that, and the first time you have ten people show up, and next time you have 20 people. Let's say you tap it around there, and then you start meeting all these people. Other therapists refer other therapists all the time, right? Because they're just like, well, I'm not the exact person for you. I deal more with XYZ area, but you can go to Neville for this. So I would start like that. And I don't think you necessarily have to do Google AdWords and stuff all the time. I think researching in those places would be very important. So, for example, I think Google Local SEO, just having a local listing in your area as a therapist is very powerful. And you know what I'd say more than 50% of therapists don't even have that true.

Uriah
Yeah.

Neville
And if they have it, they just have a phone number on there and a website or something. It's like they don't have pictures of their practice. They don't have examples. They don't have testimonials. They have nothing. They put zero into that listing. But that listing can actually get you to the top of the search results right away versus building a website and doing SEO.

Uriah
Yeah, no, it's true. As we're talking right now, my Google Local listing ranks much higher above my organic SEO because it just does, and it's got keywords in the title and everything, and that's getting me in more business right now. I like your suggestion there to work backwards. And then also, I hear you saying kind of consider taking things offline, or with your Twitter party, you're like doing something that's an online activity, but you're saying, hey, let's do it here, and let's meet each other in my house, which is really cool. And we're focusing a lot more on local networking because I think it is so powerful, and it's been underused well, for me, I can speak for myself. I've been heavy on the digital marketing, but taking it local and in person now is more fun.

Neville
Let me give you a quick story about a real estate agent sure. That I worked with. And she had spent a tremendous amount of money trying to become one of the top real estate agents in her area. I won't say the name of the city, but it's like a medium sized city. Previously, she was the number two real estate agent in the whole city, and then she had dropped down in the rankings the last two years because of what she was trying to do was dominate the online space. This woman didn't know anything about SEO websites, how to build anything to the natural disadvantage of the digital world. I said, well, how are you number two? I swear, this is what she said. She's like, every Tuesday and every Thursday, I would just go knock on a bunch of doors in the neighborhood and say, hey, you want to sell your home? You want me to buy your home? Whatever. And she just had a way with words. She was good in person from that. She became the number two real estate agent. Then she got it in her head and from watching YouTube videos that she has to go online.

And I'm like you're competing against Redfin. You're competing against Zillow. You're competing against people like me who know the Internet. You don't. You're at a total disadvantage. But you were the number two. You accomplished your goals by just knocking on doors. Why don't you do that again? And the other thing she did was the signs that they will buy your house. She had a network of people putting those up at intersections and accepting the calls. Those two things made her a number two real estate agent. And I was like, you should just do that again.

Uriah
Yeah, do more of that.

Neville
Don't ask me to do more Internet stuff. I'm telling you to quit it all and go do the old school stuff. That's how you're making all the money. Everyone thinks you need to leverage it, but in fact, you often need to go back to the basics, which I think is more important. I've seen it happen so many times. People get too many courses, they buy too many digital productive therapist they think is going to be this magic button, when in fact, have you knocked on ten doors today? That's it.

Uriah
That's a good reminder. And I think the issue I was trying to get out with that question too, was I think as therapists were very influenced by we're humans, right? We're influenced by people who say, well, you got to be on social media or you got to do Google AdWords or you got to do SEO. But what you're saying is that you got to find what works, whether it's online or off, and maximize the thing that actually brings the results.

Neville
Because some people are really good at social media, and some people are not. Not everyone is good at social media. Not everyone likes social media. And so if it's going to be a tragedy for you to compete, and you're just going to do a half ass job compared to the people online that are doing, quite frankly, a damn good job, are you really going to win in this arena too much?

Uriah
Yeah.

Neville
So there are some people that are really good at hosting parties that throwing events and stuff like that. Those people that are doing social media, oftentimes they're not good at that because they're at home recording themselves by themselves. Right. It's a different skill set. And so I'd say you have to play to what's good at your skillset.

Uriah
Play to your strength, and also what you truly just enjoy.

Neville
Yes. So look at what your natural rhythm is. So, for example, I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I decided I don't spend a lot of time on TikTok. I don't particularly like Instagram stuff, and so I'm just going to focus on that.

Uriah
Yeah, perfect.

Neville
And just leave the rest. You don't have to cater to every social platform. Do you have a job on all of them?

Uriah
That's good.

Neville
Yeah.

Uriah
Switching gears a little bit to copywriting, if that's okay. So for anybody listening who has heard that term but doesn't really know what it is, you have a very clear definition. Hopefully I get this right. You say the copywriting is rearranging words to sell better or sell more. Is that right?

Neville
I'd say so. There's a ton of ways. There's another definition I use frequently, which is trying to get information from my brain into your brain or my brain into a million brains using whichever medium that is. Text, video, images, it doesn't matter.

Uriah
Good. So I'm sort of obsessed with copywriting. I'm a student in your copywriting course, and I'm fascinated with words, and I love learning about it. Not everybody does. Not everyone is a writer. But I've seen the difference between a therapist website that is unfocused and unclear and ineffective versus one that tells a clear story, has compelling copy, and really gets people to make a decision and take an action. Right. I remember years ago when I was a solo practice and I decided to redesign my website, and I hired a copywriter who used to be a therapist, and she helped me craft a home page that really told my story as the therapist who is now helping the teenagers. And I'm the person that wished I had myself when I was 16. I didn't say that very clearly, but there's a story of things, challenges that I went through as a teenager that led to me being a helping professional, and then now I help other families. So she helped me craft that story. And that one page of copy that I paid her $600 for converted so many people that were excited to work with me because they said, oh, this person, this therapist, gets what we're going through, what my son is going through.

Right. So I know the power of good website copy. What therapists tend to do is they talk too much about themselves and they use too many big words. I'm sure you work with other professions that might have similar traps like that.

Neville
Yeah, all of them.

Uriah
Is that right? I guess we all have lingo.

Neville
They think it makes you look smart. Yeah.

Uriah
Yeah. So I don't want to ask you what are your top tips for copywriting, but I guess how can we craft our home pages so that people will take an action which is usually reach out phone call or fill out a web form. How can we guide people to that action?

Neville
Once again, I like viewing it backwards. What are you trying to get people to do? So a lot of times when people come to me for a website, what they tell me is like neville, I want people to click the buy button, I want them to sign up to our email list. I want them to order this specific product. That's a lot of stuff. You get one. Okay, so what do you want? What are you going to make the most from? So I would say for therapists, it's either filling out some sort of form or maybe calling them, right? Is that correct? Usually. Is that what they want?

Uriah
Yes.

Neville
Okay. So for a lot of medical professionals, dentists, doctors, the phone still works quite well. It's still one of the few professions where people are picking up the phone all the time. And so if you want people to call you well, I would say work backwards. What is important if you want people to call you, perhaps a phone number at the time. It's easy to click. And if they pull it up on their mobile phone, it's a phone number in the right format so that they can click and call. Right now it probably should say maybe your hours when you're going to pick up those types of things. So that's first and foremost. The next thing is, I'd say, not having too much information on the page. Sometimes people make very long pages. Think about the process that someone's ending up at your web page. How is someone going to [email protected]? I know that's not your website, but how are they going to get there? They're probably going to get there from a referral or seeing a link somewhere where they're interested in therapy already. And so what for therapists really gets people through the door.

You mentioned the teenager thing that let's say you had a troubled youth and you want teenagers and their parents specifically to send their teenagers to you because you had a similar upbringing and it's something you can kind of relate to them on. Is that what brings people into therapist office? Like the relation like that?

Uriah
Sometimes it is not always, but often it is a specialty. I have this problem eating disorder, for example. I found a therapist that says they work with eating disorders. Boom. Okay already. There you go.

Neville
It might be interesting to talk about the eating disorder thing, maybe even say I had one. Now I don't those types of things. So you mentioned that people don't care about, people talk about themselves too much. So I say people don't care about you, they care about themselves. Now they. Care about you in the sense that they care about themselves. Let me demonstrate. I don't really care about Warren Buffett as a person all that much, but I know that he's really rich and the richest, so therefore he probably knows something about money. So I do care about him to know about his story to see how he can help me. So I think, well, who do I want to trust with my money advice, which is very important, well, why don't I go to the top guy in the world? And it's him, right. So I care about him in the sense that I care about myself. So you can talk about yourself in your copy, but remember, what they're trying to do is relate to you to see if you're the right person.

Uriah
Right.

Neville
So if you grew up in Zimbabwe and were the son of a dignitary and grew up a really rich life, me growing up in the United States, not in that environment, it's a bit of a stretch to think that we would really get along. Whereas if you had this troubled youth and I'm sending my teenager out of trouble youth, I could see that, like, okay, you're right of the guy, because he's going to relate to this. He has a specialty in this. He has a degree in this, and he had a similar upbringing where he can talk about similar things they can understand without judgment.

Uriah
Yeah. The potential clients care about us as the guide for them to reach their goals, not correct, just us as an interesting person who has whatever power. Yeah.

Neville
And then there's other little copywriting tricks and tips and stuff you can use, such as social proof. For example, did you ever win an award? Do you have a diploma from a prestigious university? Do you have all those types of things? Have you helped 1500 patients in the last three years? Have you been featured on Forbes for an article? As a therapist, all of those things are social proof that you should put in your web page, at least logos or little blurbs bullets, etc. Or to show that, hey, I'm the real deal. I didn't just start yesterday and don't know what I'm doing. I do have some experience with this. Have you worked with celebrities? Have you worked in a prestigious company? Did you work for Google? Those types of things are important pieces of social proof to put there, and oftentimes that stuff alone can really just get people in the door.

Uriah
Definitely credibility matters. There are so many choices for any service that people are looking for, certainly for therapists. So that makes sense.

Neville
Well, if you think about for your personal trainer, let's say you're trying to get really big muscles, what are you going to look for in a personal trainer? Probably someone with really big muscles, not.

Uriah
Someone looks like me.

Neville
Exactly. No offense. I'm sure you probably know what to do, but you haven't done it. So therefore, are you really the best? Whereas the guy who's got big old muscles, I'm like, well, he has big muscles, so that's what I'm going for. Similarly, for a therapist, you can't exactly peer inside someone's brain without saying it out loud. Right. So whether your therapist is skinny or full of muscles doesn't particularly matter.

Uriah
Right.

Neville
So we have to tell people what we've done in the past.

Uriah
Yes. For us, social proof is a little bit harder because we can't at least in the United States, we can't do testimonials. Like in Canada, they have different laws, but we can't solicit testimonials.

Neville
Yeah, my friend, there are a lot of different ways that you can show social proof without revealing more information. So, for example, let's say you can't say Google. You could say, I've worked with Fortune 500 companies. Did I violate any law? You can't use my testimonial, but you can say, I've worked with people that are prominent in the tech industry. Okay? You can't give actual names, but you can say, I've worked with 400 people in Austin.

Uriah
Right. You can make reference to exactly.

Neville
I've been doing this for X amount of years. I went to this university and trained with three different top Nobel laureate professors. I'm making things up over here. But you can see that there are many ways to get around this, right? People always say, Well, I can't get testimonials and common in the medical industry, but there are many different ways to show what you've done and how you can help.

Uriah
No, that's helpful. That's good. With any limitation, there's always some sort of work around, right?

Neville
There's always a workaround in it. There's always a way to just, like, tweak the language just a bit to where you could say the same thing without saying it.

Uriah
Yeah. I have one or two more questions for you before we wrap up, but just curious if people are listening to this and they're super interested to learn more from you, because there are so many things that I would love to talk to you about, but we don't have the time. Where could people go? Do you think going and checking out your YouTube videos is a good place to start? Or copywritingcourse.com, what do you recommend?

Neville
Copywriting course.com, I would suggest signing up for email. We send out this great Friday email that has a lot of copywriting tips, and then we send out all our best copywriting content. So even if you don't buy anything ever, I think that alone would be worth it. Also Youtube.com Copywriting spelt with a K. And then also Twitter at Nevmed if you want to follow me there. But for the most part, if you go to our copywriting blog, we have tons of free resources. So a lot of articles, a lot of our videos, I have a podcast, all that kind of stuff. It's all good stuff. So even if you never buy anything, it's there. Also, you can join our copywriting course and just show us your web page and we'll give you feedback. In fact, every Thursday on office hours, that's all I do. People say, what about my web page? And we literally live, update, screen share right there.

Uriah
I'm going to show up on office hours, too.

Neville
That's probably the best way.

Uriah
Yeah, I'm going to do that soon because that's super valuable. I do have a selfish question for you, if you wouldn't mind just looking at the headline on my new website, we just actually rebranded to a new name.

Neville
Therapist.

Uriah
No, for my counseling group, actually, it's Intunefamily.com. So our new name is intunefamily Counseling. And I'm just curious, what do you think about this headline?

Neville
Their Rhythm?

Uriah
Yeah. We help families have a picture of.

Neville
A guy playing guitar in the background. Okay.

Uriah
Rhythm.

Neville
Got it.

Uriah
Is it too clever or not?

Neville
My first impression is too clever. And so I'll explain to the audience that there's a difference between clever and clear.

Uriah
Right.

Neville
So when you say, find their rhythm, I think it's fine. I don't think it's, like, going to kill the conversion or anything because it really depends on where the traffic is coming from.

Uriah
Sure.

Neville
If this was someone personal referral and they see this, they're still going to sign up. However, when you say find their rhythm, what do you mean?

Uriah
Yeah, I know it's risky to ask this question on this podcast, but learning the idea with Intune Family Counseling is that it's obviously a music metaphor that's throughout the website, but to find sort of attunement or sync with relationships. So that's really what it's about. But I think it's a little obscure. I mean, people could understand it sort of intuitively, but it's not clear. Like, okay, well, how are you going to help my family? Are we going to do music lessons together? Are we going to do a drum circle or are we going to do therapy? What is this?

Neville
Right, exactly. I think if you roll with it here's the thing. I like clever stuff and have done it a million times. The problem is the problem is people come to the website just totally fresh, and they're like, what is this about guitars?

Uriah
What are we talking past the grunt test? Right, exactly.

Neville
And they view it on different devices. Like, whenever I view it on mobile, I see a guitar and it's a rhythm. And I'm like, this is a counseling website.

Uriah
Like, what are we talking about?

Neville
Right, yeah. And so I think what you might want to say is, like, for example, we help him find harmony, and then, like, a picture of a family all holding hands, something like that, it's just like, okay, they're all holding hands. Harmony or civility, one of those words that means a little bit. Just like, Togetherness we help bring families, together, we end fighting in families, those types of things. How would you say it to your friend of what you do? Like, we repair family trauma?

Uriah
That's a good question. And one of your frameworks is CBI believe it's like competitive or benefit driven or inspirational. And I think this one should be either benefit or inspirational because it's not like we're the number one family therapy group in this area.

Neville
By the way, that's a pretty good headline there.

Uriah
That's not terrible.

Neville
Number one family group and XYZ. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Uriah
I don't have it in front of me, but I wrote a one liner recently that I thought was really good, and it paints a picture of your kid's going to smile more. You're going to have laughter at the family dinner table, and everybody's going to want to be together. So those kind of things, family togetherness, we help families get along well.

Neville
You know what? You know what our job here is? I've referred to this many times through this podcast, let's Work Backwards. The goal is not to impress people with our cleverness. The goal is not to impress people with our headline. The goal is to get them to click Get Help Today.

Uriah
Right. 100%.

Neville
And when I click Get Help Today, there's a contact form with a scheduling app right. To schedule a thing. And so what I would say is almost more important is you could maybe even put this scheduling form right on the front page. People are coming to a family counseling website. I think they know what family counseling is. I think they know that they have a problem. They're looking for family counseling. I never am not coming to this website for fun and browsing. I'm going here to repair my family.

Uriah
Sure.

Neville
And so the number one thing is that Get Help Today, and you're making them click through, which is fine, but at the same time, I would rather have copy focused around. Schedule an appointment right in the main.

Uriah
Headline on the top.

Neville
It could be it could be the number one family counseling thing in Tampa, Florida. Exactly. If that's true. But it's so the number one family counseling in our area. Schedule an appointment today to see if we can help. And then the scheduling app right there, would that get more people through the door? I think so. What I'm trying to get you to do is finish that ultimate goal that you want, which is to get them to book an appointment. Everything around is just like a funnel. It's all sliding into that one action. That's what I care about. So when people start getting like, what about this headline? What about that headline? I'm like, Is that what we're optimizing here for?

Uriah
Right?

Neville
Because I don't think so. I think, actually, if I just got rid of your website, I said, you're not allowed to have a website, but I could get you a bunch of people signing up for that form. You'd say okay? Yeah, sure. That's all I want. I don't really care about the website. The website is just a conduit to get people.

Uriah
So the headline needs to help them get to the next step, which is scheduling a call. Okay.

Neville
And we help families find their rhythm. I think it's clever. It's cute and Scottish guy playing the guitar in the background. But I just don't think that my brain is thinking, I need to schedule an appointment right now.

Uriah
Yeah, I knew that you were going to say that, and that's what I needed to hear. Thank you.

Neville
Well, here's why you don't need to feel bad about this. I frequently have people help me with my own website.

Uriah
Oh, my God.

Neville
And the reason is what? I call you're in the box.

Uriah
Right?

Neville
You have probably thought about this web page. You got it all done, and you rewrote stuff and you had a design or whoever, and you're thinking about it so much that you, my friend, are in the box. You're just trapped in the box. You can't see from the outside. I come in looking at this for the first time, and I'm like, Are we talking about music here? It says music. It says rhythm. And there's a guy playing guitar. I think we're talking about music. So I personally confused. And so I can imagine that my brain is similar to other people's brains and that they're confused, too. And I didn't even know that you can schedule an appointment until I clicked Get Help today, which I was not compelled to click.

Uriah
Right.

Neville
And so I can tell you right away what's wrong versus you who are in the box? It's always helpful to have someone outside the box.

Uriah
No, that's perfect. And of course, all my therapist friends, the new name for my practice is Intune Family Counseling. And we help families find their rhythm, and they're like, oh, that's so good. But I'm not talking to potential clients. I'm talking to people who I don't know. That's the feedback I've gotten. But it makes sense that the person reading this website needs to see something different that lines up more.

Neville
One of the things I'm throwing ideas out your way of what could be a better hook, because you're doing it to your counselor friends, and they're also thinking, like, what's a clever name, right?

Uriah
Yeah.

Neville
Instead, what if you're talking to a normal person who's your potential clients? Because other therapists are not your potential clients. They don't pay you money. Other families do. Stop asking your therapist friends what they think. To be frank, it's irrelevant.

Uriah
There's some good advice right there.

Neville
Exactly. So instead, go to actual families and tell them, we help families find the rhythm. They'll be like, My son is acting out. What does this have to do with anything? Right? So instead, if you say, we're the number one family therapist practice, we've helped 1300 families find harmony in their lives, and we hope to help 2000 more by the end of the year. Something like that. Imagine saying something like that and they go, oh. And then they ask you more questions. That's what I want to hear. Right?

Uriah
Yeah.

Neville
We help families find their rhythm and they're like, that's cool. It ended. It didn't compel them to do anything else.

Uriah
Yeah, it's got to stoke some curiosity about how could that help me or how does that apply to me?

Neville
Okay, well, it has to be like a little bit of a it's nice when it's like a punch in the gut statement. Not saying it has to make people sad, but it's a slight woe. It kind of makes people stand back and be like, help 1300 families. How do you do that? Right? What's the process? So now I'm curious. Now you've got them talking, and once you've got them talking like that, it's likely you can end the sale.

Uriah
Just a side note, I think it's hard for a lot of therapists to use those competitive, focused sort of headlines because we tend to not think of ourselves as competitive. But I suppose if you're establishing credibility and it's actually true, it could be very powerful. And especially if not bragging if it's true. It's not bragging if it's true. And if they go to people go to ten websites and they're all kind of meh, and then yours is like, this is the place you need to come if this is what you need.

Neville
Also, competition is where I say, neville's therapy practice is better than Uriah's. Don't go to Uriah. Go to Neville's. That is solely and competitive. I'm just saying we've helped 1300 families, we hope to help yours.

Uriah
Sure.

Neville
This has nothing to do with you or anyone else. It's just like, this is what we've.

Uriah
Done, knowing that we're really good at this.

Neville
Yeah. In my mind, that's not competitive at all. At all. It's just telling people what you've done.

Uriah
I like it. This is good. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I mean, seriously, I have, like 47 more questions for you, but I'm just going to tell people who listen, who are intrigued by this conversation, to go and check out copywritingcourse.com. And Neville, your videos on YouTube are hilarious and educational, so I think everybody should go check that out today.

Neville
Great, thank you.

Uriah
And I'm going to show up on Office Hours soon and bring you my whole web page.

Neville
Yeah. So literally, this kind of is like an office hours. What we just did here, someone says we're talking about the headlines, it turns out maybe this doesn't matter as much. Are we just trying to get people to click that yellow button? What if we just take the form and put it on the page? Right?

Uriah
Yeah.

Neville
And a couple of things, like, for example, sorry I geek you out on this stuff. I noticed you have a get in touch phone number, but it's not at the top, it's at the bottom. It looks like to me you're not optimizing for people to call or text you right. Another interesting thing, a lot of people text nowadays rather than call. In fact, I always was against I was like, I'd rather call. But then sometimes at three in the morning for some reason looking at a website, I'd rather just text them. And so one interesting thing we found recently, instead of saying call seven one three, et cetera, you could say call/text number.

Uriah
Yeah, I think that's a great tip.

Neville
Small little changes like that oftentimes will get three times more inquiries just by adding that one little thing.

Uriah
All right, I got my homework now.

Neville
That's exactly what we do in Office Hours. I'm happy to do it for yours if you want to join Copywriting course, we have super cheap plans and you can come to office hours as many times as you want.

Uriah
I highly recommend. Thank you Neville, for everything you do and for being on the podcast and I really appreciate it. Alright, take care.

Neville
Thank you. Bye.