The Startup Ideas Podcast - How to Build a Swipe File and Steal Like an Artist

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

I’m joined by Jordan Mix, Operating Partner at Late Checkout, to discuss how to build swipe files and how to remix successful strategies. Jordan breaks down why these marketing funnels work and the anatomy of a successful funnel. Episode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:27 Why build Swipe Files04:00 Example 1: Tweets08:40 Example 2: DTC Product 12:10 Example 3: Thumbnails14:47 Example 4: Landing Page18:46 The Anatomy of a Funnel22:22 Example 5: Email Followup 26:13 Example 6: Digital Lead Magnet28:57 Example 7: IRL Lead Magnet30:26 Creating a Got Got Swipe File31:14 Innovating on Pricing31:33 Micro SaaS idea: AI Agent Funnel Scraper 1) We see 4,000-10,000 ads daily. Turn that consumption into creation with a swipe file.The best way to learn how to sell? Study how YOU got sold.Create a "got got" file - save anything that makes you take action (click, share, buy).2) Use My Mind to easily save & organize inspiration:• Chrome extension for quick saves• Tag system for easy retrieval• Serendipity feature to surface random inspoBeats bookmarking tweets you'll never see again!3) Look for pattern interrupts & scroll-stoppers.Example: Not Fried chicken ice cream Lessons:• Combine unexpected elements• Use high contrast visuals• Mix hot & cold conceptsApply this thinking to your digital products!4) Anatomy of a killer funnel:• Top: Free value (content, lead magnets)• Middle: Nurture (email sequences, surveys)• Bottom: Convert (calls, buy buttons)Key: Top should be ALL about THEM. Only talk about yourself at the bottom.5) IRL to URL: Don't forget offline lead gen!Tiago Forte's "Building a Second Brain" book:• Bonus chapter accessed via URL in book• Segments readers for targeted offersThink: How can you bridge physical & digital worlds?6) Innovation isn't just about product. Consider:• Marketing innovation• Pricing model innovationExample: Sublime app's "pay what you want" modelCould this work for your biz?7) Micro SaaS idea: AI Agent Funnel Scraper Automatically collect & analyze:• Email sequences• Sales funnels• Marketing tacticsBuild a searchable database of winning strategies to remix!8) Remember: Everyone's seeing "cool stuff" daily. You just need to train yourself to notice & capture it.Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas Work with me and my team: LCA — world’s best product design firm to build apps, websites and brands people love. https://latecheckout.agency/BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.coStop Building Websites That Look Good But Don’t Sell: https://www.designscientist.com/design-store?b=https://www.designscientist.com/FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JORDAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://x.com/jrdnmixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-mix1/

Here's what the pros don't tell you. Apple's best ads stolen from Nike. Nike's best ads stolen from politics. Best political ads stolen from religion. And this is what a swipe file really is. It's your personal vault of proven winners. And today we're going to teach you how to build your very own swipe file. Where to find winning material. The exact system you, you're going to teach you, used to organize it all and how to legally steal without copying. Because in 25, 30 minutes, you're going to have a bigger advantage than most 20-year entrepreneur veterans. I hope you enjoy this episode.

See you in there. All right. Today we got a special episode. We've got Jordan. He's an operating partner at Lay Checkout. He works directly with me. We are constantly sharing. interesting things together on the internet

so that we could steal like an artist. And if you're an entrepreneur, stealing like an artist is going to get you ahead. So I brought Jordan on so he can teach you do a master class, a tutorial on how you could use the internet to spur your creativity, how to save some of the things you see, how to remix those things,

and why that's going to help you build more profit, profitable company, get you more customers, validate your ideas. This is, you know, helps you take entrepreneurship from hard mode to less hard mode. I'm not going to say it's easy, right? Entrepreneurship is hard. You know that. Building ideas is hard. But I think that everyone needs a swipe file. And in this episode, we are going to talk about how we take inspiration, how we turn it into swipe files and how that inspires us to build more profitable products. Without further ado, Jordan, take it away, share your screen, live cook. By the way, people, you got to stick through this whole episode to actually get the juice.

Because I want, you know, if you stick through this whole episode, you will leave with the ability to create your very own swipe file. And the ability to sell, which is the actual goal. Swive files are cool. Dollars are cooler. So let's do it. You know how many ads you see a day? Hundreds.

Thousands. I did some research. It says four, I don't know if this is like legit or not. It's from goatfuel.com. And they say 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day. And you know the famous saying, if it's free, then you're the product. you're the product people 10,000 ads a day you're being the product.

So creating a swipe file is good because you're turning that consumption into future creation and future revenue potential. Because I think the best way to learn how to sell is studying how you got sold. So let's cook a little bit. I'm going to share my process, you know, to each their own. but I recommend this one because it's the best I've seen. To each their own, but do do this. Yeah, to each their own, but link and bio for my affiliate link. Cool.

All right. So I'm surfing the web as we do. And I see this tweet from Greg. This is just on my feet because Greg just lives on my feet, I guess. But, oh my gosh, by now, pay later is not cool. well, I'm not going to price my my tool like this because I want to be cool. And I need to be pricing it in a way that's going to get people to buy now and pay later or not do that. So how I use it.

This is I use this tool called My Mind. And it's a really cool tool. And it has a Chrome extension. So if I'm sifting through this, I'll click in, see it. I like the design of this, or maybe I just like the saying of it, you just have this Chrome tab up here. And I like to tag this with Got Got Got because anytime I take action on something, click, share, stop the scroll, subscribe, buy. Any action is worth studying. And I call that my Got Got Swipe file. You can call it whatever you want, but I got inspired by Marshawn Lynch. He said a hilarious,

funny thing. He's like, I'm going to get got, but I'm going to get mine before I get God, though. And so that's the Got Got Got Swipe file. Do you use my mind or anything like this? I don't. I'm actually one of those people that booksmarks things on X, and then it just gets completely buried. And And I never go back to them. So I know a lot of other people are like me because I was actually looking at my X analytics this morning, and I noticed that in the last 28 days, I've gotten 100,000 bookmarks on my content.

So that means that probably a lot of people listening bookmark my content, and they are probably like me. They probably lose track of it. I mean, yes, there's folders on X. But it's it's not designed really to capture inspiration. That's not why people, it's not why the product managers, product designers at X, you know, they want to create engagement and, you know, it's not about inspiration. So show me, show me my mind.

Yeah. So that just went. Like convince me. Don't tell anyone. But I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions. and I'm giving them away for free. These aren't just random guesses. They're validated concepts from entrepreneurs

who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into one simple database. Compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast. But the main thing is, most of these ideas don't need a single investor. Some cost nothing. to start. I'm pretty much handing you a cheat cheat. The idea bank is your startup shortcut.

Just click below to get access. Your next cash-flowing business is waiting for you. Yeah, for sure. So that just went into just my mind, which is everything. That was a little scary showing everybody my mind. But so that just went here and I got the tag here. So you can just tag and this basically creates a just a mood board of all of the things that you've gotten got with so like anytime i've signed up to a newsletter i usually am pretty religious on which one got me um and like i wanted this lead magnet for example it's like this guy killed it even though he did like jack butcher style visuals uh he he got he got me so i mean he got got from jack butcher And then he created his own visual.

Exactly. The internet is a giant got got circle. People taking inspiration from people, stealing like an artist. I think like what's the saying? Like good artists copy, great artist steal or good artists create great artist steal. I think great marketers, great builders remix. What you could say is a steal, but I like that better. Something that got me yesterday was this.

What am I looking at? What are you looking at? I mean, it looks like it's an ice cream pint with fried chicken in it. It's ice cream fried chicken. Literally, this is ice cream with a chocolate bone. Right. And like corn flake waffle cones on the outside. That's insane.

And I just stopped the scroll immediately and I just wanted not fried chicken ice cream. Wasn't even in the shopping for it, but I was. So is this a real product? Yeah, this is a real product. Oh, it's made in Charleston, South Carolina. I signed up for their like little like location like tracker, like when it would find out when it's near you. Because like this, like if this was just a normal. From a waffle cone, it could be the best ice cream in the world, but no one would try it.

So I think this is interesting in 2024, 2025, and beyond is you have to create scroll-stopping unique things that are packaged in different ways to stand out. So when you see something like this, like, we're not working on any ice cream products. We don't really work in CPG that much. So, like, what about this is relevant to creating, you know, SaaS products or paid communities and stuff like that? Like, why is this relevant to you? Yeah. So I look at like, when I'm windows.

When I'm on the internet, I view it as like I'm window shopping. Yeah, this isn't directly applicable to us. I have no desire to make an ice cream. But I think the principle is what stands out. It's a scroll stopping pattern interrupt. And so when we're designing. like software products or landing pages or, you know, ads. I go back to this and say, like, how could I be like not fried ice cream, not fried chicken

ice cream and tether it to the same principle that got me to stop the scroll and not just do what everyone's doing? Yeah. I mean, this could be applied to anything, right? Like it's, it's, what is this? If you break this down, it's, what are two things that don't normally go together? Like you don't think of like a fried chicken and ice cream and then making it one, fried chicken ice cream. Using really nice contrast, the blue, almost like a blue sky with a cold kind of like concrete.

you have the hot and the cold, right? The hot chicken, the cold ice cream. So when you truly break this down, you could apply this to creating an ad for any sort of digital product or software company. And that's why, to your point, it is a remix. It's not a steel. It's like, I'm inspired.

Something about this got me. Therefore, now I have a framework for how to actually come up with a, a visual for whatever it is I'm doing. Okay, I like this. What else do you want to show? I think this was incredible by Colin and Samir. This thumbnail was so good. And I'm a subscriber to their channel, but I think I saw it on X or something. And it stopped me in my tracks. Did you see this? I did see this. I did see this.

I mean, the difference between a good thumbnail and a – actually, I should say this. Let me back up. The difference between an exceptional thumbnail and a great thumbnail is actually a big difference. Like, Colin and Samir could have just put in a great thumbnail. Their click-the-rate might have been like 5, 6%. But having an exceptional – unique

thumbnail could be the difference of a, you know, 8 to 10% click the rate. Now you might be like, why does that matter? That doesn't sound like that much. But that difference of, you know, 20 to 40% lift in your first few thousand views tells the algorithm that this is a video that people need to watch. And that could be the difference ultimately between a video that gets literally 10,000 views and 10 million views.

So this, I saw this and I was like, wow, like I haven't seen anything like this. And you just know that so many people like us got got and this is now going to be like, everyone's going to copy it. And that's kind of like the curve of the of marketing, right? There's an arbitrage opportunity that exists in the beginning. But over time it does get sort of played out. Yeah, I think this is like the greatest thumbnail that I've ever seen. like I'm not joking

because it goes so deep here like Colin is the one holding the screen because it says like hi Colin and the YouTube is about to change with the VR like it is so well done that they

they clearly like this inspiration obviously AI is cool but the level up from the inspo to the final and then seeing the results, it just like really makes you think about what are the little nuances,

the four or five changes I can make to the things that I'm working on that will take me out of my typical range and get me into an atypical outsized result. I like it. What else you got? Got this thing here. A surge.

Surge.com website audit. You land on the page. Horrible name. Horrible name. Just tragic. Yeah, tragic name. Using your framework for a tofu name, this is below tofu.

Yeah, this is not a good name. And you hate to see it because on their website it's to stop losing sales to website Roadblocks, when it's like they should stop losing sales to not a great name. They should. But it goes to show you that you can get got with a bad name. That's true.

but that's true wouldn't advise it for for longevity if I hadn't saved it to the got got swipe file I would not be sharing it today so I just thought this was interesting their landing page immediately one call to action follows the tweet size landing page framework that we're always that we're always talking about

and it immediately got me I didn't I didn't even have a Shopify store at the time and So you enter this thing in They hit you with this You know where do you want to send your your free website audit And then this is a really cool thing An immediate upsell that they do

So this audit is good They're about to send it to you via email But if you want to upgrade They give you this one-time offer here To upgrade to one of their like paid audits So I think that funnel and that user journey, I'd be curious how well it performs, maybe not even on this splash screen, but in the back end when they're sending the email. Because they have these automated reports and the scraper that automatically judges your site. And the output was pretty cool.

Yeah, this is exceptionally well done. Wow. Really well done. So they hit me with this, like immediately. page load speed you can like download this report you can be a little like a little status thing good stuff and you love like this is exceptional um and it's not beautiful really like this design is like fine but i still yeah i would tighten this up if i if i was them um like so i was actually like readable a little bit. But anyway, I think this is like a really cool way to do free tools

and get people in the funnel, show, don't tell without like hitting people over the head with like a long website. Yeah, and obviously this is automated with AI. And so there's so many ways that you can, I'm sure people listening to this are like, wow, I can do this in MySpace or or, you know, There's just so many opportunities here. They do it really, really clean. Yeah, they've got that tweet-sized landing page, which for people who don't know, that's it's basically how we build most of our websites

are pretty much all of ours, right, Jordan? It's like basically max amount of 280 characters on your website, like just keeping it very, very tight. and it's a great place to start when you have an idea and you just want to put something clear. We'll actually include, we can include in the YouTube description three templates to the tweet size landing page. I think it used to be 100 bucks. I think we're selling it for $29 now. But we'll include that if people want to check it out.

But yeah, this is great. This looks dope. What else you got? Oh, here we go. Walk me through what I'm looking at right now. Yeah, just the anatomy of a good funnel. And it doesn't even need to be super tight. But what you just walked through is how you need to think about the different stages when you're like going out and window shopping, the internet.

So it's exactly what you just said with like, it starts with media and content at the top. It's free value. Create lead magnets that allow you to capture information and get them closer to you. It's more free value. This could be like workshops, free tools like surge, free gifts. Shout out Jice Cream with the, what was he saying? What was the word he was saying? A book when he gives away a free book?

Yeah, he goes away a free book, but he kept saying this one word in the episode. It was like waggles or something. It was like some acronym about giving free gifts away. And he was like, like it was like common knowledge. Anyway, free gifts work. And then sending email. Sending email with welcome sequences,

newsletters, surveys, repurposing your media and content via email, I think is a place that people really don't squeeze the juice. Like they have all of this content. It could be repackaged, especially in a world of AI, where, hey, break down the top three points of an hour-long YouTube video,

and then link the YouTube video. You already have that content. So like squeeze the juice in the middle of the funnel. And then nurture and convert. Nurture educational email courses, newsletters, surveys, another repurposing content via email. And then convert is like book calls and put buy buttons on the internet. Yeah.

So I mean, this is like a got got got by this image that you just posted. I know it's yours. but let's go through more of more things that got got you. Cool. Yeah, one thing I want to say real quick about this is the top of the funnel and top of your like got got funnel needs to be about them. Like it should be all about them. In the nurture, you can do about them and start to add you into their lives.

And then the conversion is all about how you're going to help how you're going to help them. And that's where you have the liberty to talk about yourself. I think a lot of people get this wrong where they start putting themselves in this top category too quickly. Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google.

And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI, I could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO. And that's why I use Boringmarketing.com.

And that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend Boringmarketing.com. I thought this was really well done. So when you're creating the media, you get a newsletter, subscriber, cool, you got them. They opened the first one, but they didn't take action on submitting a survey. Tyler, the CEO of Beehive, is doing a really well a really good job with this and um i saved it so you forgot something we didn't fill it didn't fill out the the subscribe survey it's a nudge to get that subscriber data it's valuable to know who you're sending to

and this is the like the very simple form um so don't be afraid to reengage the people who have already opted into your stuff yeah that's a lesson learned and i i mean again It's like you got got, you saw that, and then you had the realization, you know, the insight of that, right? So I think that the mistake a lot of people are going to make is they're going to download my mind. They're going to start throwing things in there, but they're going to forget the insights. So I almost think it's worth creating like a separate doc or just like maybe you can do this within my mind. could you put notes within my mind? Yeah.

You can have notes in my mind. So like if I wanted to add the chicken, like pattern, interrupting, nice contrast frame breaker, you know, whatever I wanted to put in there. So that's what I think people need to do.

And especially as you write it down, it will solidify it in your brain around like, oh, okay. Then the next time, you create an ad, it just, you might, you know, you might just think, oh, yeah, fried chicken, ice cream, pattern recognition, you know, frame breaker. It's just going to hit. So you, you're just going to refer less back to these things and it's just going to be, you're going to be a stronger entrepreneur from it. You're going to be a stronger maker and your stuff's going to hit. So, um, I think that the notes feature

really, really important here. Totally. And you can add other tags too. Like if I wanted to say like, add ads to this. Like you can add multiple tags too. Yeah, I think doing this over six months a year, like really being religious as you window shop the internet, turning your consumption into like curation and then ultimately creation, you develop this taste and like subconscious skill that you didn't even know you would have and you start to see things differently and see how behaviors work. and if you're building a product that you would use or be the user of,

which is probably a large majority of people that are building businesses, like they have the problem themselves. It makes you so much. It makes, if you study how you got sold and you're the potential user of your product, you're selling yourself, basically. So it's easier to sell other customers. There's also going to be people listening this that are going to be like,

okay, good, you know, well, good for you. got all these amazing sources of you're seeing all this really cool stuff. I don't see cool stuff. And the reality is everyone who's listening to this is seeing cool stuff. Like you're seeing cool stuff. You might not be seeing cool stuff. Meaning it might not be like it might be subconscious basically. But you are seeing cool stuff. Everyone is. It's just about mapping it because you are getting sold. We are all getting sold one, you know, many, many, many. many, many, many, many dozens, hundreds, thousands of times per day. Yeah.

What else you got that you want to show? This one, I'm going to talk about, we've been talking about digital a little bit. And I think this IRL to URL lead magnet is so good. And this got me probably in 2020. And it's still living rent free in the brain. So this is Forte Labs, building a second brain. There's a bonus chapter at the end on how to build a second brain creating a tagging system. He gives you the URL in the book.

So if I bought this in the airport, he's going to end up with my email, even though that he didn't sell it to me. So I get the chapter. And then this is another thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and builders need to be thinking about is segmenting their audience so they can give them offers that people want. Instead of sending an email to 10,000 people, you can send five emails to 2,000 each exactly what they want. And so Tiago, friend of the pod, is using this thing called right message. You can see it's a segmenting tool, but he basically breaks, breaks people out into like, hey, cool, got the bonus chapter. Now you see looking to sell you on note-taking, you know, services or products.

So it's like, yes, I take notes on paper or no, I'm digital. If he has 800, 8,000 people do paper, maybe he builds a paper product. If he has mostly on digital, maybe he builds a digital. So I think this is a really well-done capture, pulling people out of your, your normal, like, media cadence and people who buy your book and get the bonus chapter. So what do you think about this? I mean, I love it. I think it's smart. It's basically like adding lead magnets in a book. So lead magnets we think of as digital because they are digital. But just because they're digital doesn't mean that the way you find them

need to be digitally. So I think the insight, like the note that I would write in the way you find them need to be digitally. So I think the insight, like the note that I would write in my mind would be like, where else in the world, you know, is there an opportunity to get someone from IRL to URL based on what I'm building? So I like this. I think it's big. And it gets your creative juice is flowing.

So, you know, it's awesome. one more RRL for us one one more RRL and then what and then what else do you want to cover yeah just like I've got a little microsass idea

that could help people build their swipe files quicker so you don't have to screen grab and do all this stuff so this was Pop Tarts they they sponsored one of the bowl games

and they made a giant pop tart and it went viral obviously became a meme and i was just captivated by this because usually these big sponsorships are a waste of a waste of money um i would say or like it's hard to track the attribution like a super bowl ad etc but look at the results of this they sold 22 million more pop tarts the next week after they did this bowl game. And I bought Pop-Tarts. That's funny.

Crazy. Yeah, there you go. Thinking outside the box and you can apply this to however you want. Like, maybe there was- Thinking outside the Pop-Tart box. Thinking outside the Pop-Tart box. I like it. That's the insight. Sure.

All right. So now, tell us, how we could build our own swipe file in the most efficient, efficient way. Yeah. Spill the beans. Spill the beans. I would download my mind and I would start saving things, start tagging notes and really just like follow your curiosity and just start saving stuff is what I would say.

There's other tools that you can use too. This one's pretty cool. the sublime app that I've been tempted by. It's basically like, my mind meets Pinterest, so you can have, like, public, public things. But this stood out to me

because of their pricing section, which is just really beautifully done. I sent you this as a got got. You did. I was like, this is dope. Yeah. Any, you know, I think a lot about, well, how do I say this?

People think a lot about innovation on product. Like, how do I innovate the product? And I think now we're getting to the point where people are saying, okay, products are basically commoditized. Now people are thinking, how do I innovate on marketing? Great. But there's also the ability to innovate on pricing model. And I think that's going to be a more and more interesting thing.

You're starting to see that already with, you know, this movement from, subscriptions to pay per task. A lot of AI companies are charging paper tasks or credit system. What Sublime is doing there, like pay what you want. So that insight is huge. I said that to you because I was like, pay what you want. I've tweeted about it. I think that's a really interesting model.

And yeah, I like it. Cool. Anything else you want to, you want to say? This is what, I mean, just studying how you got sold is incredible. Like, use the tools that we talked about, but I wish there was a tool that existed and maybe maybe we'll build it. Like an AI agent that could go and basically scrape these funnels instead of me stumbling

upon it, clicking in, subscribing, screen grabbing emails, putting it in Figma. like you can save, you know, of all the stuff in the world, but if you don't have the like digital footprint or the digital roadmap, it's really hard to reverse engineer. So I would love an AI agent funnel scraper that you could basically send agents out into the world, then study email sequences,

bring them all back into a database that was even searchable and see how people are sequencing things, selling things. doing direct response marketing, and just like tapping into a database of history that you can remix for yourself without having to put a bunch of the legwork in and the research time and really just like focus on building building the work. So that's why I'm pumped about AI agents is just like that capability. Like more people can put more stuff out into the world if they have like a back catalog of this of this stuff. Great. Yeah, I think that's a great

free startup idea. And if I know this audience, they take these ideas and go run with it. So I wouldn't be surprised if someone built it. This got me thinking a lot about I've been doing

a form of what you're doing, but just like I said, on Twitter X bookmarks. And I haven't I haven't invested, so to speak, in my swipe file because I'm always, you know, it's always like, I'll do it later, I'll do it later. But now I'm kind of like, this is really important to do. I think this is really important to do.

So you inspire me to do it. It's a thank you. And I'll see you next time on the show. Jordan, where could people follow you on the internet? You can find me on X. JRDN. Mix. MIX. Cool.

We'll include that in the YouTube bio. And folks, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. And like, comment, subscribe. Do it. You know, that's you getting, you know, got got, right? If this provided a sense of value to you, the way to get this to spread on the internet is to like and comment. It also just makes us feel good, honestly, that we should continue.

doing these videos and that it's valuable to you. So please let us know. And, um, all right, I'm going to go and, uh, get got. I'll see you later. Get it. All right. Peace. Peace.