EDITOR’S NOTE:

A while ago, I picked up a 54-page book by a guy named Neville Medhora. 

The title: This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better. 

“What a promise,” I thought. I read it in an hour. “Damn that was good,” I thought. 

I put the book down and Googled Neville’s name. 

That’s when I found his blog, KopywritingKourse. To this day, it’s one of the best copywriting resources I’ve ever come across. And I’m sure others feel the same way. Over the years, Neville’s work has helped millions of marketers improve their writing. 

Now I’m incredibly honored to have Neville on for a VeryGoodCopy micro-interview — one of our best yet.

In only 337 words, Neville shares:

• A free way to learn literally anything, including copywriting…

• His 2 favorite marketing and advertising books… 

• A better way to create to-do lists...

And more...

Thank you, Neville.

Let’s get started:

1) “What’s your work routine?”

I really only have one main rule, and that's to create my to-do list the night before. The next day I then go through those tasks and scratch them off one by one till I'm done. Once done, I stop working. 

Pro-Tip that's helped me: Don't add more work to the daily to-do list. If something needs to be done, I always add it to TOMORROW'S to-do list!

As for a specific routine, I've tried a million methods and stuck to zero. One thing I do notice is if there's other people around I work really hard, if I'm by myself the chances of me procrastinating is high! 

2) “What do you know about your work now that you wish you’d known when you first started?”

Strict boundaries on work from clients. 

If you let them text/email you random questions all the time without billing them, it encourages the problem and drives you crazy. 

3) “What did your biggest professional failure teach you?”

It's usually easiest to sell something that people already want. 

When I was younger I'd always think "No one else is selling this, I'll be the only one and get rich!" After building out the product/service that "no competition knew about" I would soon find out there's usually a reason why no one else is selling it. 

4) “What’s the #1 thing that has helped you shorten your craft’s learning curve?”

Watching YouTube videos maybe? 

You can literally type in any problem, task, craft, question, and there's a video of some helpful person showing how they've done it. It's quite amazing that it's all free!

5) “What book has helped you the most over your career?”

Yikes, tough question, but pertaining to marketing: Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got by Jay Abraham. 

Hat-tip mention to Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugarman. 

6) “And your parting piece of advice?”

You're gonna die at some point so you should work on stuff you like, with people you like.