🎤 The SWIPES Email (Friday, January 2nd, 2026)

Friday, January 2nd, 2026 ​​​
​​​SwipeFile​​​​​​: What's actually working in marketing.
​​​​​​CopywritingCourse​​​​​​: Sell your stuff better.

This whole email is about various methods of goal setting which can get you to where ya wanna be (or at least define the path to it).

I'm sure people can relate to this guy 🤣

Swipe:

My first "goal" ad is this vintage Honda that shows their engineers start with a goal in mind, and a spec sheet of features....then they set the engineers loose:

This Cadillac ad shows that their goal is to get 20 million people in the USA to own a Cadillac....and the number one way to do that is make a car with high performance and lots of luxury features included.

The thing I love about this ad is that they had a specific goal of selling 20,000,000 cars and then working backwards to that:

Wisdom:

Ever make a giant scary list of goals and then immediately feel overwhelmed?

This is exactly why you DON'T make a huuuuugggeeee list of goals for a month!

Instead make a small list of the goals most important to you....I prefer doing just THREE GOALS per month:

So every month I have a list of goals kinda like this which I can post on my wall, write down digitally, or keep on my computer desktop to always see:

Interesting:

Now I just said DON'T make big goals list....but you actually can do it for your decade-long goals list.

In fact it's good to just word-vomit every goal or thing you wanna do in life, and make that maybe a decade long or life-long goal:

So you can totally start with small daily goals, then make larger and larger goals for larger timeframes:

In a visual format this would look like:

Picture:

I have an under-2-month-old son and he's been such a fun time!

I put a wig on him here for a pic 🤣 🤣

He makes lots of funny faces, but my FAVORITE is his pouty lip sad face he makes when he's really sleepy!

Overall it's been a blast being a dad and learning how to care for him!

My goals now definitely include my son in them, and trying to be a great dad as best I can.

Essay:

I personally think you should create your company goals based on your company size.

For example a small company should be very direct, but then if you're a HUGE company you can be more ephemeral

You should pick a slogan based on your size:
• Small Company: Be very direct.
• Medium Company: Can be slightly vague.
• Big Company: Aspirational.

When you’re a giant brand you have many products and many services, so a “direct” slogan is hard.

That’s when you can go aspirational and vague like:

My personal opinion for best big company slogan is Geico, because their slogan also SELLS!

Splurge:

If you wanna go out and make your own goals or mission statement, I would take advice from this.....and keep it simple.

Look at this original Ogilvy mission statement versus the new (crappier) one:

Ogilvy’s old slogan nailed it in four words. Their new mission statement? A block of buzzwords that feels like it came from a committee (I'm 100% sure it did).

Here's a bunch of other mission statements to get your mind jogging:

Hope you have a great weekend, and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Feel free to respond with what your goals are this year!
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora