Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain
If you are reading this on Friday morning, I am probably travelling at the moment, so I pre-wrote this SWIPES Email a few days early.
I couldn’t find any non-personal-event pictures to share, so I am sharing this random picture of my Aprillia Scarabeo 100 scooter that has served me well for the last 10 years (also I had 2 other of the same model before that).
Some angel investing advice Dan Martell said Naval Ravikant gave him (paraphrased):
“Make 12 investments, all of the same size, over the course of a 4 year period.”
He said it roughly follows the old normal curve, where most of the investments will either be a washout or you breakeven, but 1 or 2 of those investments will return all the money:
You can see his advice here at this timestamp: 30:36
Cool quote overheard on a Lex Fridman and Kimbal Musk podcast:
“Food is a gift we give ourselves 3 times a day.”
– Kimbal Musk
I like this quote because I cook almost all my meals, either in the form of meal prep once a week:
I have in the past bought pre-made meals, but there’s something very satisfying about fresh food and you know every ingredient that goes into it.
Also I enjoy the process of taking a few minutes to grill up some steak or chicken on the grill. There’s something very fun about it.
This graphic shows that learning to use a spreadsheet is probably far more helpful than many advanced math subjects 😂
Subjects like calculus were hard to get excited about in high school because they never told you WHY it was helpful.
If you give zero evidence why something is useful, it’s hard to dedicate time to it.
This is the same for your product marketing. Are you telling your customers all the reasons your product/service will help them?
I love local-business marketing, and I saw this in a neighborhood while driving in Houston:
It’s a simple A-Frame (much like my Shoe Hospital Experiment sign) this window cleaner puts out in front of a house they were cleaning.
A great way of drumming up business is letting people in the neighborhood know you’re helping out one of their neighbors.
If you’re a service provider like this, spend the $150 to get a nice A-Frame made and stick it in front of your service sites!
Hey check it out I got one of those 100k subscriber YouTube plaques!!
I put out 2 long-form videos or interviews per month, and one short form video everyday.
If that sounds up your alley then give me a subscribe!
A cool pattern I’ve found with regards to reading:
10 pages of a fiction book at night helps me go to sleep.
10 pages of a business book in morning helps me wake up and have my brain thinking about work.
I’ve noticed I read too much fiction in the morning, it’s exciting but then I don’t really wanna do work. So this hack is pretty neat!
The current business book I’m reading is this: Read Write Own
The current fiction book I’m reading is: The Three Body Problem.
Apparently the Three Body Problem just came out as a movie or TV trailer….AND I’M PURPOSELY NOT WATCHING THE TRAILER SO I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN!
Here’s two quotes I really love:
This is a quote about having a goal you’re working towards:
“When things are hardest, a clear goal is the most important thing. To have a fountain of energy to draw from. Establishing a worthwhile goal is the hardest part. It gives you a place to go and a reason to get up.” – Earl Nightingale
This one is about building confidence, and that it comes from having a bunch of smaller experiences of success:
“Confidence is built upon an experience of success.”
This is the exact letter that made Gary Halbert a millionaire in 1971.
It was one page, sealed in an envelope, selling them a “Coat of Arms” picture and report based on their last name, and it peaked at making 20,000 sales per day (and these were physical mail orders) 😮
This particular letter was sent to every “Macdonald” in the phone book across the United States:
For $2.00 (in 1971) this is what was sent back to you:
1.) A coat of arms picture of your family last name, you could then frame it if you liked. Like this (without the frame, it was just sent to you on paper):
2.) A small report explaining the coat of arms: (h/t to @eston_esau for taking this pic of this in his grandpa’s house)!
