I'm Professor Stephen Sakura and welcome to Physics 1303. In this course, which is known as Introduction to Mechanics, we'll begin to take a look at force and energy and its effect on material objects. This is what is meant by mechanics. Now this course will provide a foundation in the ideas of physics that are needed to understand the universe around us in whole and in part, but let's begin by asking a simple question, what is physics? Well, physics is the study of energy, matter, space and time. And since everything we can see in the universe around us possesses energy, matter, or moves in space and time, really physics is the science of the foundations of everything, the whole universe. It's a past, it's present, and possibly even understanding its fate. Physics is a science with twin foundations, mathematics and observation and experiment. That makes physics a practical science. So what do I mean by its mathematical foundations? Well, mathematics is the symbolic language that humans have developed to describe the features of the natural world, but mathematics itself is not limited to the natural world. In fact, you can write down completely self-consistent, absolutely correct mathematical statements, but they don't necessarily tell you anything about a manifestation in the physical world of some behavior. Physics comes in and filters the mathematical statements that you can write down based on observations of the natural world to tell you which of those statements are correct and which of those statements are incorrect. And so that's where experiment, observation and measurement comes in. It is observation of the natural world, does the prediction of a mathematical framework that you have developed manifest in the natural world. That is the final arbiter of the kind of truth that physics as a science is invested in trying to understand. And so it is these twin tools, mathematics and the ability to describe and predict, but also experiment, observation and measurement as the arbiter of accurate ideas and inaccurate ideas that you can call from the mathematics. It's these twin tools that are the arsenal at the heart of physics, and that's what makes physics such an effective way of understanding the natural world. Now these self-consistent mathematical statements that you can write down based on observation and experiment and previous experience with the natural world, if they survive long enough, if they hold up, if they make predictions and those predictions hold up in laboratory tests or observations of the universe writ large, then they eventually become accepted as laws of physics. These are self-consistent mathematical statements that reliably predict and describe features of the natural world. Now the laws of physics are really a small set of equations. There's only a few of them, and they seem to describe extremely well nearly everything that in our everyday experience we have access to, and even to many things that as humans we don't notice going on in the universe, but are there anyway. They are by no means a complete and exhaustive list of laws. We don't know everything about the universe, and that's a good thing. That puts physics as a science at a frontier of human knowledge, where the frontier continues to be pushed out by men and women every year working to understand the natural world. Now in order to make progress as a science, we have to have a framework in which we can do things like make measurements and observations, and the framework that we will eventually utilize for this is space and time. Now observation is fairly straightforward, so for instance if I look at the flag pole down the quad, a little bit behind me here, I will observe that the flag is flapping to the left of the pole, that the flag pole has a certain height, and that it's located some distance behind me. Observation is fairly straightforward, with the right tools, a good set of eyes, a good set of ears, good data taking skills, writing with a computer, whatever you like, you can make observations. But observations themselves don't tell you anything about the why of the natural world. In order to get to the why of things, you have to be able to actually make measurements, and then understand patterns that may or may not be present in those measurements. Now to make measurements, for instance what if I wanted to know my distance from my current location to the base of the flag pole, that's much trickier. In order to get an answer to that question, what's my distance from where I am to the base of the flag pole, I'm going to have to define some kind of framework in which I can make numerical statements about things like distance, and then I'm going to have to take that framework and divide it up into little equal sized units, and then share that with other people, so that across cultural boundaries, across national boundaries, across continental boundaries, we can all make the same measurements and see whether or not they agree on the details of the observations themselves. The framework as I said that we're going to use for this are space and time. Let's take a look at space and time separately, and come to a slightly better understanding of these things. As a material object, I know that I can move myself forward, and I can move myself backward from where I was originally standing. I can move myself to the left of where I was standing, and I can move myself to the right of where I was standing. And if I'm careful, I can jump up and come back down. So already as a thinking object, I'm aware of the fact that I can move in three independent directions. I can move forward, backward, left, right, and I can move up, down. Moving forward and backward doesn't mean I have to go left or right or up and down. And so we already have some sense that forward, backward is independent of left, right is independent of up, down. And so what we say is that we live in a three dimensional world where the space has three independent dimensions along which I can move. We'll give them more formal mathematical definitions later, but for now it's sufficient to note that it's forward, backward, left, right, and up, down. Space is great for marking off where a physical object like myself or that camera or that flagpole is located. But space itself would be extremely boring without its companion time. Why? Well, we have to think about what time is. Time is another measure of something, but it's not a measure of spatial location. You can think of time, for instance, as a measure of change in spatial location, going from point one to point two in a three dimensional universe. Time, without a difference between where you were and where you are now, without some measure of that displacement between two events, being in place one and being in place two. The universe would be static and unchanging and extremely boring, and we wouldn't be here to have this conversation in the first place. Change is extremely important. And because the locations of material objects can change in both space and time, we need the ideas at the heart of physics and mechanics in particular, not only to describe that motion, but to make predictions about that motion in the future. It's possible because there are laws of nature to do that. So again, time you can think of as a displacement between two events. So for instance, the flag flapping to the left of the flagpole, and then whipping back and forth. Each ripple in the flag's fabric surface is an event, and we can think of one ripple and then another ripple as two events displaced from each other in time. Now, because of this framework of space and time, we can start to ask questions about the natural world. For instance, we can ask things like are two events in the universe related to one another. Does the first event cause the second event? This is the notion of cause and effect or causality. And physics, because it describes a universe that appears to have regular laws with lots of interesting features about how information travels in this universe, can actually make predictions about whether or not two events could be causally connected to one another. And that's sort of an interesting thing we can get to later in the course. It's also important to note that you might think of space and time as a game board on which the pieces of matter in the universe move. But you would then be sort of missing something very crucially important about space and time. A game board is not per se a player in the activities of the game. It sets out the rules. It sets out the places where matter can be and where it can't be and where it is and where it isn't and so forth. And that would make you think that matter and energy are somehow disconnected from space and time. Matter and energy can move through space and time, but they don't really have anything to do with each other. And that's just not the case. And as we'll glimpse later in the course, space and time are as much active players in the life of the cosmos as our matter and energy. And we'll see that they're all intertwined with one another at one point or another in this course. Now I mentioned units. We have to be able to subdivide the universe into regular pieces like pieces of space or pieces of time and agree on how we define those pieces in order to make measurements reliable and reproducible measurements of the universe and its properties. The standard unit of space that we will use in this course and which is really the globally accepted standard as you'll see in a moment is the meter. And the standard unit of time is the second. And the standard unit of substance of material properties, mass as we call it, is the kilogram. So let's take a slightly deeper dive into the systems of units and what their exact meanings are. To make measurements, humans have agreed on an international standard of a system of units of measurement, centered around the meter for distance, the kilogram for mass, and the second for time. This is known as the System Internationale or SI. And in English we would simply refer to this as the International System of Units. Now let's consider the standard definition for the unit of length, which is the meter. This is probably an instrument that's familiar to most of you, in one form or another. It's a stick that has been graded in various ways in order to mark off units of distance. And the full length of this stick from end to end is supposed to be one meter. Now the definition of the meter is something which has evolved over time. In fact, at one point in the history of this particular unit of measurement, there were competing definitions of the meter. But it was eventually agreed upon that the meter would be considered one 10 millionth of the distance from the north pole of the earth to the south pole of the earth along a line on the surface of the earth that ran through Paris, France. Nowadays, we have a much more reliable way of defining the meter. And for a long time, that had been something which was another object. It was a platinum iridium rod. And it was robust against temperature and pressure. And it was considered the standard unit representing the meter against which all other things that claimed to be a meter had to be set. But that rod did, in fact, have problems. It was only accurate to about 0.0001 meter, or about one 10,000th of a meter. And today, we have a much better way of defining the meter, and that is to use the fastest thing we know of in the universe. That is light. Light, regardless of the motion of its source of emission, or the motion of the detector that you use to find it, moves at a fixed speed in empty space. This is known as the speed of light. And that speed is, in fact, constant no matter what state of motion the emitter or the observer are in. It's an interesting fact that we will eventually get to in physics. The meter today is defined as the distance that light will travel in 1, 299,792,458th of one second. Now, of course, that definition depends on the definition of time. And I mentioned that that in the international system of units is the second. We're used to measuring time very easily. We all have devices like this in our pockets, or most of us do at least. We have some way of keeping record of the passage of time, the moment between one event and the next. But you have to have events in order to keep time. And so what sequence of events are you going to use to define the second? Well, originally, the second was defined as 1,86,400th of a solar day. But the problem with that particular definition is that you all have to agree upon what it means to have one solar day. This is an astronomical definition. And in fact, that definition of the solar day evolved as our knowledge of planetary motion evolved. It's better, of course, to find something that all observers can not only get access to, but then measure the same property of and get the same answer. And so these days, in fact, as of 1997, the standard of time was altered to use the behavior of an atom of cesium 133, one of the atomic elements. And in fact, the second is defined as the duration required for a cesium 133 atom to execute 9,192,631,770 transitions between two well-defined energy levels in the cesium atom. That cycling between those energy levels is something that is insensitive to temperature and pressure. And your changing definition of a solar day as planetary motion evolves over the history of the planet in the solar system. This is much more reliable. Now, I mentioned earlier that space and time are the game board upon which the chess pieces or the go pieces of matter are arranged and through which they move. Matter, as we study it on Earth, thinking about material objects like this little chunk of metal here, we study this in laboratories. We can observe matter beyond the Earth, the Moon, our Sun, other planets in our solar system, other stars in the universe, other galaxies containing stars just like our own. And everywhere we look, we see the thumbprint of atoms in the light that we can study from those objects. So it seems that the whole universe of visible information that we have accessible to us is composed of atoms. And we learn about atoms, really, for the first time in a course like chemistry. In chemistry, it seems often a very rote exercise in memorizing the properties of atoms, their masses or atomic weights, the number of electrons a specific atom has, the number of neutrons, a specific isotope of an atom has, the exact energies available to the electrons in a specific atom. These all seem like features of the universe we have to commit to memory. But in fact, physics gives us the toolkit to understand where all of those facts are set. Physics explains those energy levels. It explains the numbers of electrons and why and how they're arranged in different atoms the way they are. It is the laws of physics that help us to understand those tiniest bits of matter we call atoms. Now mass, which is the final unit of the international system of units that I will discuss today, is standard measure is a kilogram. So what is a kilogram? Well, originally a kilogram was defined as a volume of water and the mass associated with that volume of water. And what was the volume of water? Well, you could imagine a cube 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters in dimension. Make that entirely out of water, and that would represent the kilogram. Now water is a fickle thing. It expands and contracts as temperature and pressure changes. A little bit of it splashes out. You've just changed your definition of the kilogram, and you may not even notice that those water molecules have left. They can evaporate. Water is a difficult thing to work with, albeit fundamental to life as we know it. So instead, similar to the definition of the meter, in the 1800s it was decided to use a platinum iridium block. And that block was very carefully isolated and protected to keep material from flaking off, at least as much as possible. And to this day, that platinum iridium block is considered the standard definition of the kilogram. All kilograms that you have available to you, and so for instance, this block of metal that I hold here in my hand, which is supposed to represent one kilogram, will have to be ideally calibrated against that single block of platinum iridium at the International Standards Bureau. Now of course, that's perhaps not the most stable definition of mass. In fact, it's entirely possible that atoms of platinum and iridium are lost from that block over time, and its mass can change. After all, mass really is a measure of the sum total of the masses of the atoms that make up the material. Every block of material is the sum of its parts, and those parts are atoms. And they can flake off this little block of metal without me even noticing. And that makes atoms a very difficult thing to work with. Now this lets me lead finally into the last subject in this introductory lecture, and that is measurement. For me as an experimental scientist, measurement is my bread and butter. It's the foundation of everything that I do. And I have to not only be good at doing it, but also understand that nobody is perfect at measurement. And in fact, some measurements have a limit to how perfect they can ever be. These are features given to us by nature. You will learn more about that in physics later. We can consider a measurement and begin to understand the challenges involved in making reproducible observations of the natural world. As I said, this is supposed to be a kilogram. And in fact, if I take away these smaller weights, this single block of metal here is supposed to be 500 grams or 1 half of a kilogram, a kilogram being 1,000 grams. That's what's stamped on this block. I have here a holder, a little metal hanger, and I can slide the metal block onto it. Very convenient. And I have here a scale, which is supposed to tell me the mass that is placed on this tray on your left. Now, the way that this works is a balancing act. There are weights associated with this arm of the balance. They can slide around. When I place a new weight over here on the tray, the balance will go out of equilibrium. It will start to move. It will experience a force. That force will cause a motion, and eventually that motion should settle down to an equilibrium point. If I've done a good job of making the claim that this is, in fact, half a kilogram of mass, when I place it on this little tray here, the whole device will begin to move. And over here, on your right, there's a little arrow. When the arrow points to zero, it means that the weight in the rest of the scale balances the weight here. And it can, in practice, tell us the mass of this block, which is supposed to be 500 grams. So let's take a close look at some of these numbers. This mass is supposed to be 500 grams. Here, however, I have reached equilibrium, where the arrow on the balance is pointing just about at zero. And you'll notice that I have a 500 gram mass over here. But in order to balance out the mass I put on the tray, I had to add a little extra mass over toward the right of this scale. I had to add a little bit more than 500 grams to get this system to balance. So who is correct? Is it the manufacturer of this mass who stamped 500 grams on it, or is it the manufacturer of this balance who claimed that this should be able to somehow accurately measure the mass that's placed on the tray? Now, I should say that I went through a little bit of an exercise before this. You might say, well, you put some extra mass on here. This is 500 grams, but this hanger adds mass. In fact, it's 50 grams according to the manufacturer. When I place this on the tray and I let this balance out, when the motion settles down, I will see that I do not have 550 grams measured on the balance. I have 500 and a tiny bit. We're far from 550 grams. I already factored in the mass of this when I set up the scale. So again, who's right? The manufacturer who stamped the mass or the manufacturer who made the balance? This is the challenge to the experimental scientist. If we are to understand nature, we must not only agree on a system of measurement, distance and time and mass, the number of atoms and a material, but we must also understand that our methods for assessing the natural world have limitations. They have uncertainties. We must understand where they come from. We must assess them as best we can. We must report them faithfully. And that is measurement. It is not just a number, 500 grams. It is 500 grams plus the limits of my knowledge of that statement. And that is what differentiates science from all other ways of knowing. It's not just about learning something. It's about learning the limitations of learning and quantifying them, and doing better and better as you make more measurements and mature your methods. So welcome to Physics 1303. I'm looking forward to a very exciting semester with you as we explore the cosmos from these most basic foundations of observation, measurement and units.


Hi, everyone. This is what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Peaks weekly webinar, Wednesday's 12 p.m. Eastern, where we spend 20 minutes every Wednesday discussing a hot topic out of Latin America. This week, we are honored to be broadcasting from Havana, Cuba, with a very distinguished guest, Ricardo Agobon, who I've just asked what his most recent title is, and he has told me XXXXX, former, former, former, he's had every role, prestigious role in his country's government over the last 60 years. More? More. More? Yes. Well, since I was a student leader, 60 years. 60 years, starting as a student leader. Can you tell us a little bit about the student movement then? Then, you have a fairly strong tradition, by the way. In a couple of ways, we can answer the creation of the University Student Federation, FAIL, who is an order and the Tribune Movement organization, order than work-present organization, and was one of the first social organizations created in Cuba in 1922. Since that moment, it was a rather odd situation, because those who were at the University, like myself, belonged to a very small minority. The majority of young people couldn't finish their high school, to go to the University and finish a career. This is really wonderful that you're sharing this with us, because last night we saw Catherine Murphy's film Maestra, about the illiteracy problem in educating the population, because so few people were able to attend. I am very proud of that background of mine, because we were probably one of the more strange organizations. We belonged to a privileged segment of society, and we fought strongly to end those barriers. For yourself, because you saw how many others were denied that privilege? That's my job. For example, apart from the illiteracy campaign, the opportunity of millions of people to read and write, apart from that, you can even now see the proof of what I am going to tell you. The system of university scholarship. That began in 1960, when there was a defederation between federations. The buildings are there. Still now, they are launching young people who are studying from the interior part of Cuba, all foreigners, all countries, Malacca and 12, Libya and H, 3rd of April and F. There were four or five buildings that were devoted to launch young people who couldn't continue their university studies. Because they didn't have a family in Havana, they were cosmonia and so on. And the buildings are still there, and they are being used for the same purpose, 60 years. The only difference is that now we have a lot of foreigners, students from the Caribbean, from Latin America, from Africa, that are in Canberra. So I just want to let the audience, our listeners, know that I first met you here in this building, in this complex, February of 2015, on a code-paint delegation. And you were our very first lecturer, our very first morning. You spoke to us, you spent the morning with us, and I learned so much from that two hours, listening to you, everything from your years in New York, in Washington, or in the Kennedy administration. This was fascinating to me. And one of the principal things we talked about that morning was the Cuban embargo, which has since been expanded under the Trump administration. And so I'd like to talk about that a bit, and also how this mechanism has now been used is basically a form of U.S. foreign policy and economic warfare, not only on Cuba, but we're seeing this against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, North Korea. It's a form of warfare. It's a form of warfare against Cuba for 60 years. Definitely. It's more than a discussion about if it is an embargo or a blockade. It's more than that. It's an economic warfare. An economic warfare.  I don't want to be rude to President Trump, but the way he conducts affairs as president can only be compared with the way a mafia mob leader could act. And Cuba has experience with that. Yeah, completely. No, but we didn't have, we are letting you know in the new dimension of this warfare, because at this particular moment, it is not only a matter of having governments, states, organizations that may abide or not with the American wish to affect Cuba economically. No, these are concrete actions that they can deny to threaten ship owners or ship captains or people involved in any manner in the process of trading with Cuba. Particularly regarding oil and, because I know of this, that's one of our witnesses. So do you have transportation oil that comes in from Venezuela or maybe comes in on different ships now? If your electrical diesel generating oil is from... So you have, you rely, Cuba depends on petroleum for two principle things, transportation oil, correct? Uh-huh. And that, I believe, comes from Venezuela. And electricity. And the electrical, the diesel for electricity. Yeah, and the problem is that, well, they have, every day they announce from Washington that the new ship line had been added to release those designated persons. It's a very straight way to refer to the enemy list. Just the U.S. Department of Territories. The most recent was a Panamanian company that, why? But it was their biggest sin to have transported oil from Venezuela to Cuba. It's a completely normal operation that happens every day. But you are now in Washington, a bunch of people that pretend to impose their will over everybody else and using not very good manners to send in this. That's a very diplomatic way of putting it. No, these are good manners. I think they're very good at your job. So tell us a little bit about what it's been like in Cuba the last year with the expansion of sanctions, and particularly the last several months with the lack of oil. I think the other percent that we described correctly, an intensification of recent actions in the U.S. and in Cuba, particularly in the last few years, it probably will be increased as we approach the electoral day in your country. It's funny, because the so-called experts, the so-called intelligent politicians in America always use as an excuse the importance of Florida as an election and the importance of the Cuban-American vote. That's a complete nonsense, complete inaccuracy, to say it is, again, grammatically. So the majority of the Cuban-Americans are against the environment, are in favor of the restored population, and are the main victims of the last steps taken by the Trump administration. When they forbid traveling between Florida and some humans' airports, that means that the person who lives in Eastern Cuba, for example, would have a lot of difficulties in getting the visit of their parents coming from Miami. Because they got to come to Havana from Havana to go using the oil and the fuel that is denied to see their parents, but imagine the reverse. And only the living in Eastern Cuba who wants to visit their grandchildren in Miami, they have to go from that place to Havana. They cannot use it like a flight that they believe. Enormous thing, it says. What the purpose of that? What did it aim? Simply to affect, to damage individual human beings. When the embargo began of this policy of economic warfare, there is a very important key element that was an internal memo in the State Department and Assistant Secretary of State who referred to that as a very succinct way to do things. The majority of humans support the country. The only way to reduce their support is by imposing economic and material hardships to the population in order to provoke desperation and overthrow of the government. Now for the first time, Mr. Trump doesn't like reading very much according to what they have read. But apparently he read that memo. And he's got to create hardship, create desperation. I think that's really important for our viewers to understand is that despite how the narrative in the U.S. media and from the U.S. government telling the U.S. population that sanctions are directed at certain businesses and government officials, and yet the State Department memo clearly... Clearly they were not the leaders, the governmental officials. The people that have been so far decades, the non-religionation, their parents and their grandparents have been going through that kind of life, clearly conceived to provoke suffering in the population to have the population then report against the regime. That is the logic and the succinctly explained in that memo. And the memo was approved by the way because on the side of the document you can see it was classified. Many years ago it was declassified. You can see the signature of the Secretary of State. And these two letters, okay. Okay. Who was the Secretary of State then? I think it was a... I don't know. I think it was a... ...herter? Or a Christian herter or... I don't know. Were you serving in the United States then? How long? What years were you in the United States? I was in... Well I really was in New York. More than a decade. I spent there for ten and a half years continuously. And then I returned for two more years. And I went back and forth for practically my life. Yeah. Well, I once had the opportunity to go to San Francisco. Oh, my hotel. I went to San Francisco, invited with some friends in the Solidarity Movement. I remember that we attended a celebration of the anniversary of one of progressive papers in your country. That was issued from San Francisco. And it was a beautiful city. It is very beautiful. And beautiful people. Yes. Here as well. Yeah. So I wonder, you know, we're talking about sanctions, the Cuban embargo and how it was very clearly designed by the U.S. to harm the general population of the country. I was in Venezuela twice this year. I spent three months earlier this year and then a couple weeks this summer. And Cuba and Venezuela are fast, hard allies. How would you evaluate what the sanctions are, how the sanctions are affecting your allies in Venezuela? They are affecting them in my opinion. I imagine very much. Not the Venezuelans have been resisting and trying to be creative in how to fight back. Something that is missed in the American strategy is that those who elaborate your policies in your country do not understand history and do not understand how other people think or behave. And I think that in Venezuela, you have also a lot of examples now of people's creativity and people developing initiatives to try to counteract against those policies. And the fact is that they are there. The revolution continues in Venezuela. And we, in our case in Cuba, we learned a lot thanks to the American aggression. A lot. Cubans are probably one of the most advanced people in capability to create, to invent, to resolve things. I remember the contrast between New York and New York. I experienced in Cuba. For a Cuban, if your radio or TV set is broken, you will find a way to make it function again. In the consumer society, you will see that there is a way. By another way. That's important. It's unconceivable, too. Because you can have always a way to get out of those difficulties. And I think I was done nationally, massively, with that policy, which does not mean, of course, that people have to suffer. They succeeded in making people suffer, but they will never succeed in making people to revolt in favor of those who made them suffer. That's crazy, but it will be really stupid to see that way. That's not the way our history shows us. And your people. I mean, this is as we walk, as we visit different institutions and walk the streets and go out in the evening for dinner, music. It's so clear that the Cuban people are united as a culture, as a people. They understand the foreign policy against them. I see this in Venezuela, too. And I agree with you that it's the principal thing that the U.S. strategists get wrong. They don't understand the people and the movements on the ground. Is there anything else that we should talk about that you want to comment on before we let our audience go? What? We take this opportunity to express our gratitude and our thanks to all our friends in your organization, in the Koch Pink movement. And in general, the Americans have been explaining about the U.S. in all these years. We know. We are sure that if things at some moment began to change, to improve, it was not due to the good intentions of the good will of a president. But what is the result of the fight that is consistently for many years, many Americans have sustained in your country to have a relation of respect and friendship between our two countries. And since the very beginning of this story, since the very beginning, to be precise, 1870, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the man who referred to as the padre de la patria, a great initiator of the good revolution, in a message he sent to the Cuban immigrants in New York, where were many at the time. He alerted them of what in his views were the intentions of the U.S. ruling class. In 1870? 1870. The secret of the American policy is to take over human. But he also said to those people, you should never confuse the government with the people. The American people should be our best friend and best ally. The essential of our strategy has to be never to forget that the Americans want to take control of the government, the ruling class. But the people, the American people has nothing to do with that. And we should try to get their solidarity, their friendship to fight the others. 1870. Well, in here in 2019, we have the solidarity and the revolution of the American people. So, thank you so much. Thank you. What an honor. So, thank you everyone for watching and we'll see you next Wednesday, 12 p.m. Eastern.


As millions of families in Britain struggle with rising bills and fuel shortages, the Prime Minister has fled to a luxury villa in Marbella. Boris Johnson left for the trip in the same week the £20 cut to Universal credit kicked into effect. Charities warn that the cut will push 300,000 children into poverty. As well as the timing of the trip, eyebrows have been raised because it appears to have been courtesy of someone to whom Boris Johnson very recently gave a peerage. So that was the headline on the Daily Mail, only here for the peer. It was given to Boris Johnson courtesy of Zach Goldsmith. More on him in one moment. First of all, it does sound like it was a very nice pad according to the mirror. The property has its own helipad to make sure VIP holidaymakers can arrive and leave without being seen, as well as two pools and a tennis court. The main house is set on three levels and sleeps 13, while a smaller luxury villa that sleeps up to 10 people and includes five ensuite bedrooms can be rented separately. As I say, the property is owned by Zach Goldsmith. He's the former Tory MP who ran a racist campaign against Sadiq Khan in 2016. He was made appear by Boris Johnson after losing his seat in the 2019 general election. This morning, Kay Burley challenged Tory Minister Damien Hines on the awkward optics of Boris Johnson's break. Do you accept, though, on any level that the optics are not good when people are turning up the heat and can't really afford it at home and the PM's sunning himself on a lounge here in Spain? So look, I would come back to what I just said. I mean, he remains in charge, right? He's the Prime Minister. I think it's also right and important, actually. It's actually important for him and his family. It's also important for the rest of us, actually, for the whole country that the Prime Minister does get to have some family time, does get to have a break. Ash, I want your take on this. Labour sort of taking different lines. I saw there was one person who I think was in the shadow cabinet saying they don't really mind if Boris Johnson takes a holiday. I know Bridget Phillipson has said this is the government going, saying we're out of office at the moment of national crisis because of the shortages, etc. Do you think any outrage has been committed here? I think that when it comes to the issue of politicians going on holiday, it's always kind of for opposition fodder. If Labour were in government and the Prime Minister went on holiday, really, no matter what time of year, maybe if it was in August and during the silly season and it had been fairly quiet, there wouldn't be so much outrage. There usually is some kind of story about it. So Prime Minister's holidays really up to Boris Johnson had to be quite carefully stage-managed. So Prime Ministers wouldn't want to be seen going on a holiday anywhere that nice, anywhere that fancy, probably not too far afield because that would make you look like you're out of touch with people.   I want my nice holiday, my spa treatments, my five-star meals. That's what I'm interested in. And so I think what that speaks to is the degree to which Boris Johnson is almost more of a Berlusconi kind of figure. So the usual standards of accountability have never really seen to touch him in any way. He's been able to kind of flout the normal rules of reputation management and in a way embrace being kind of rich and obnoxious. So I think in terms of whether or not this is going to be an effective labor attack line, I would say, well, no, because if it wasn't for mystique, then why would it be for this? And it kind of seems like an opposition bleeding like, oh, you've left during a crisis. Well, we've been in the state of perpetual crisis really for the last five years. It does feel like you could have said that at any other point since the referendum. This is a really bad time to go on holiday. Perhaps that speaks more to the state of British politics than it does about actual Prime Minister's decisions. Where I think the outrage is, is the fact that you've had this very shady business of who paid for the mystique trip. And I think there is still some things that you're unclear about, well, who paid for the travel when it came to Boris Johnson going to Marbella. And then the other thing is, did you know that Zach Goldsmith was that rich? Because I knew that he was rich, but I didn't know he was helipad rich. And that just kind of blows my mind that you've got somebody who owns a helipad who has this villa that they don't even live in most of the time. And it is bigger than some blocks of flats that I've lived in. And he was like, yeah, I want to be London mayor. I can speak to the people. No one who is that rich has any business being in politics.  I don't want to hear about you.


Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good evening everybody. Happy Halloween and welcome to another edition of the AccessToTrader.com nightly update show. If you are brand new to the channel, thank you very much for spending a few minutes with us. Like, subscribe, share, ring the bell, whatever it's called. Get notified when we upload so you could be a step of the game, hopefully getting value and continuing to get value down the road. Before we get started, again, guys, yesterday we started running a 48 hour sale for Halloween. Again, if you're ever curious about PIVOTS and seeing if it's a right fit for you, again, like I've been saying for years, I don't think PIVOTS are a right fit for everybody. But if you are curious about PIVOTS and you've been watching this broadcast for a long time, we're running a $47 30-day trial. Kick the tire, see if it's right for you. If it is, you'll completely see the mark in a little bit of a different point of view. If it's not, it's cool as well. But again, I always said this for years and years and years before you commit to any type of trading style. It's your job to kind of go through everything to see something that matches your personality or account size or experience level, your pain threshold, and all that good stuff. So hopefully, if you are interested, you have till tonight. You have till tonight to take advantage. So let's talk about the tape. We are at the end of October. Hopefully, everybody had a good October. The market closed today to the green side. The problem is the market now is down three consecutive months. At the end of the day, as long as you're above ground, as long as you're breathing, as long as you're healthy, it's a good day. Everything else is a cherry on top. But from the market point of view, the bulls have a little bit of work to do. We talked about last night, the two big levels going into today's session. 350 to the upside, 346.45 to the downside. As you can see, we held yesterday's low and took out yesterday's high. And this is now the highest close in the last four days. Does that mean we're going to rally to all-time highs? It doesn't mean anything. All it means is we had a really big move down. We finally reclaimed back the five-day moving average, which we talked about yesterday. We got back the 150-day EMA. And unless Jerome Powell, we'll talk about that in a second. But until Jerome Powell, unless he screws it up tomorrow, we should have a shot. We have a legitimate shot and we'll talk about AMD and the potential curveball for tomorrow. But at least if we do confirm today's channel tomorrow and the bulls can kind of negate this AMD earnings again, we'll talk about AMD in a second. There is a shot if we can confirm today's highs, we could get another leg up into this 53 level of 54, 53-54 level, which will be roughly the 150-day moving average. And that's going to be basically a back test to where we broke down in the first place. So again, before we start talking about rally, Santa Claus rally, this rally, that rally, let us confirm, right? Let the market at least confirm today's channel tomorrow to see if they could stretch to the 353 level. Obviously, the big story for tomorrow is going to be Jerome Powell. Again, tomorrow is a Fed Day. Is it possible that the market does absolutely nothing until two o'clock? Of course, that's absolutely on the table. We've seen Fed Days that were very, very aggressive. We've seen Fed Days that are very, very muted. And until you really see what the day it holds, it's very, very tough to kind of try to will yourself into an opinion because we all know the market is going to be dictated on what he says. Future rate hikes or future rate pauses, whatever the case may be. But I'm assuming the fireworks are going to start tomorrow after two o'clock, after the rate decision, after the 230 Q&A session and we'll see what happens there. But from the surface, right? From the surface, if the bulls can just confirm today's channel, which is 351.25, there is at least on the surface a potential move back into this 353.354 level. Here's the curveball, right? AMD came out with earnings after the close. And the buyers were coming in ahead of the earnings. They were betting the 100 weeklies, the 105 weeklies. No soup for you, right? Soup Nazi. No soup for you. AMD came out with earnings, as you can see, down about 4.5% after the close. Very, very solved guidance. As you can imagine, every single semiconductor is getting affected, right? Everything is down along with AMD and that is the problem. That is the problem because if you look at the Q's after the close, predominantly, the Q's are down about $1.50 after the close because predominantly the NASDAQ 100 is made up of semiconductors, biotechs, and software stocks and everything trades in tandem. So it's going to be very, very interesting to see if the bulls buy the dip, right?  But again, even the worst markets that we've traded, even going back to, let me just show you, even going back to 2022 where 80%, right? 80, 85% was below the 50-day moving average, had three, four, five days worth of rallies. So it's very possible, right? Again, it's always, always possible it's on the table that the bulls can negate, kind of negate these AMD earnings, reclaim back the 150-day moving average and start moving higher. The big number for tomorrow to the downside was the same number as we discussed last night, right? If you guys remember, we talked about 34640s to the downside. That was the low from two days ago. Look at the low from today, 34660s. So if Powell says something that the market does not like, obviously anything below this 34640s, if it starts to lose, then, yeah, we're going to go right back down to last week's lows. So it's super important to know your ranges before the day starts. So when there is some sort of blip radar news that comes out of Jay Powell's mouth, you're not going to be caught off guard. And especially that is very, very important if you're trading any type of ETF, spies, cues, if you're trading any beta memes, you know, the Microsofts of the world, Metas, Netflix, Amazons of the world, you better know your prices because you can't just randomly guess or have an opinion where you think the stocks are to go. You need these price actions to confirm it. It's very, very important to do so. So we'll see, you know, we'll see exactly what happens of Jay Powell. Tomorrow, you know, tomorrow, let's see, I'm just looking at the earnings front. Not a big, you know, not a big, big day for earnings tomorrow. You have some names.   AMD again, like I said, down 4.5%. And by the way, AMD, guys, watch AMD for tomorrow, right? It is trading roughly around 94 bucks right now. Watch the bottom channel here. You see how it held the bottom channel here, the September lows, and it held the September lows again four days ago. Keep an eye on AMD, because if there is selling pressure tomorrow and they don't buy the dip and they start losing the last week's lows, you know, this thing could go lower. But it's only down 4.5% for after earnings. If they continue to lean on it overnight and into tomorrow, you could see a potential move down 10%. We'll see, you know, we'll see. But again, watch the bottom channel here. I'm definitely watching the bottom channel here for tomorrow's session. A bunch of names that we talked about for today, they're still valid for tomorrow. Microsoft put an inside day. That still looks good. Netflix put an inside day. And you can see here now, look how many times Netflix has held this top channel here. You see how many times it's got to reject it off the top of the channel here? You see this Bollinger Band? If Netflix finally gets above this Bollinger Band, boy, oh boy, this thing could wake up. This is out three days in a row that has got rejected off the upper Bollinger Band. All it needs to do is stretch. Again, this is assuming the market can sustain one more day of potential rally. Okay, we'll see about that. The one stock that did not get saved today was the video, right? We talked about this for the last couple of days. You know, and hit was really awesome today right out the gate. It was literally the only pivot. I literally, this is the only trade I took the whole day. And honestly, sometimes, you know, when you have a stalemate market kind of waiting, right? Literally waiting for an event. Sometimes, again, it's not how many you trade. It's how many you trade properly. So, you know, you can see here, you know, Tesla, we were waiting for the 94 area to stop the right at 94. Didn't, you know, didn't price improve there. But this was literally the only pivot of the day. NVIDIA, more China news this morning, 404, if it builds below, can flush and test last week's lows. Yeah, yeah, I would say it did that, right? I was literally done with the trade in seven minutes. I think all of us were pretty much done in five to seven minutes. This was literally the open, right? This was literally the open. It took out this 404, put in 402, rallied back. Once it lost that 402, you know, I covered this thing in the 395s when all we doubt the 392. So congratulations guys. Again, sometimes you don't need 200 stocks. Sometimes you just need the right ones. I've been saying this all along. 90, 95% of all my trades, literally all my trades are the same 10 stocks. Tesla, NVIDIA, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Apple, you know, the mega cap darlings. Because again, when you're trading the same names over and over and over again, you know what the stock is going to, you should know at least have a good idea of what the stock is going to do when it starts losing a major level or confirming a major level. That's one of the greatest things about getting to know your group. And I've been saying this all along, you know, if I had to go back, right, literally go back and do it over again, right, 24 going on 25 years, let's start with the group. Okay, whatever the group is, trading energy, trading, you know, technology, whatever the group is, right? Consumer cyclicals get to know that group, take five or six stocks in that group and just trade them over and over and over them both long and short. Understand their tendencies, understand their liquidity, understand their average true range. Understand everything about the stock because again, when you trade random stocks and that's one of the bigger problems that new traders have, they trade the hot stock of the day, they trade the random stock that everybody's watching. Again, think about this again, if the theory is 90, 95% of all new traders lose money, well, why would you trade exactly the same stock as them? It makes no sense if you think about it, it makes all the sense of the world to avoid, right? Avoid the public, fade the public then going into the same stock as everybody else. So my little piece of advice, if you are brand new and again, it doesn't need to be a trading with me, it doesn't need to be trading with anybody, it doesn't need to be trading technology. Take a group, right? Learn their tendencies, try to figure out every dynamics about that group and keep on trading it over and over and over again. Okay, so going into tomorrow guys, again, I believe, going into tomorrow, I believe the big earnings for tomorrow I think is Qualcomm, right? You got Qualcomm tomorrow, you got Roku tomorrow, Youngblans, nothing really there. Garmin, wow, Garmin's still in business. Most of the last time somebody bought a Garmin product. So some of you guys don't even know what Garmin is. First navigation system. Wavefair, nothing crazy. Thursday is the big one, right? Thursday is the big one. We got Coinbase, we got Shopify, we got Apple, we got Starbucks, Moderna. So Thursday is going to be a very, very big night for earnings and we will see how Apple and the rest of the Musketeers dictate what happens. So again, we know our level is going into tomorrow, guys. We know exactly what the market needs to do to go to the upside. Again, confirm today's channel, 351.25, to the downside, 346.40. Something's going to give here, guys. Something's going to give here ahead of Jerome Powell and we'll see. We'll see exactly how the market reacts to it. Guys, got to go. It is Halloween time. I want to record this video before my dog starts barking, before the door starts ringing. These poodles and no joke, especially when strangers are coming through the door. Guys, have a great night, everybody. God bless, stay safe, hope everybody is doing well again. If you are interested in Pivots guys, you have till tonight for the flash sale and hopefully I'll see a lot of new faces tomorrow. Take care, guys. Have a great night.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session, first we will discuss about conditional probability. The conditional probability of an event E given the occurrence of event F is given by probability of E upon F equal to probability of E intersection F upon probability of F given that probability of F is not equal to zero. Consider an example where a fair dice rolled. In this case, the sample space S would be equal to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That is, we have six elements in the sample space S. Let E be the event equal to 1, 3, 5 and F be the event equal to 2, 3. Then E intersection F would be equal to 3. Now probability of E would be equal to number of favorable outcomes in event E that is 3 since we have three elements in event E upon total number of favorable outcomes that is 6 since we have six elements in the sample space S. This is equal to 1 upon 2. Then probability of F is equal to number of favorable outcomes of event F that is 2 upon total number of favorable outcomes that is 6 which is equal to 1 upon 3. Next we have probability of E intersection F is equal to number of favorable outcomes of the event E intersection F that is 1 upon total number of favorable outcomes that is 6. So now conditional probability of the event E given that event F has occurred that is probability of E upon F is equal to probability of E intersection F that is 1 upon 6 upon probability of F that is 1 upon 3 which is equal to 1 upon 2. Next we discuss properties of conditional probability. In the first property we have that if E and F are events of sample space S then we have probability of S upon F that is conditional probability of S given that F has already occurred is equal to probability of F upon F is equal to 1. Then next we have if A and B are any two events of sample space S and FB any event of S and it is given that probability of F is not equal to 0 then we have probability of A union B upon F is equal to probability of A upon F plus probability of B upon F minus probability of A intersection B upon F. Next property is probability of E complement upon F is equal to 1 minus probability of E upon F. Also a very important thing to remember is that probability of E upon F is less than equal to 1 and greater than equal to 0. Next we discuss the multiplication rule of probability according to which we have probability of E intersection F where E and F are two events associated with sample space S is equal to probability of E multiplied by probability of F upon E. Also this is equal to probability of F multiplied by probability of E upon F given that probability of E is not equal to 0 and probability of F is also not equal to 0. We have this multiplication rule of probability for more than two events also like if we have E F and G are three events of sample space S then we have probability of E intersection F intersection G is equal to probability of E multiplied by probability of F upon E multiplied by probability of G upon E intersection F. This can also be written as probability of E multiplied by probability of F upon E multiplied by probability of G upon E F. This rule can be extended for four or more events also. So whenever we have two events E and F associated with any sample space S then if we need to find the probability of E intersection F which denotes the simultaneous occurrence of the events E and F then we can apply this multiplication rule. Next we have independent events. Suppose E and F are two events such that the probability of occurrence of one of them is not affected by occurrence of the other then such events are called independent events. So we have if the events E and F are independent then we have probability of E upon F is equal to probability of E given that probability of F is not equal to 0 then probability of F upon E is equal to probability of F given that probability of E is not equal to 0 and also probability of E intersection F is equal to probability of E multiplied by probability of F. Suppose that we are given probability of A equal to 3 upon 5 and probability of B equal to 1 upon 5 and we have that A and B are independent events then probability of A intersection B would be equal to probability of A multiplied by probability of B that is equal to 3 upon 5 multiplied by 1 upon 5 equal to 3 upon 25. So this completes the session. Hope you have understood conditional probability, properties of conditional probability, multiplication rule of probability and the independent events


Hey, John Christon here. Tech entrepreneur and internet marketer. And I'm excited to talk about somebody I've been following quite a bit. His name is Dan Locke. Now, he's got a monster YouTube channel of over 2 million people. I think he's the biggest marketer on YouTube right now. He's known as the high-ticket closer. And I'm going to go over 5 different lessons I've learned from watching what Dan Locke does and what he talks about on his channel.  He's known as the high-ticket closer. He does talks about sales and mindset and also kung fu. And I will be discussing the biggest lessons I've learned from him right now. Let's get it. John Christon here. I'm going to be talking about the 5 biggest lessons I've learned from Dan Locke. Now, if you follow him, let me know down below in the comments. If you follow him, if you have no idea who he is, let me know in the comments as well. But let's get straight into the first lesson of 5 that I've learned from Dan Locke. So first off, adversity is an advantage. Now, what does saying adversity is an advantage mean? Well, it means if you grew up poor, you have kids running around a house and you can't focus, you have medical conditions, you have family members with medical conditions, you have poor internet access, let that be fuel to create success for yourself.  Most of them are not successful. They're never going to be successful because they never had any reason to persevere. They never had any adversity. They never had obstacles to work through. Working through obstacles is what makes us. Oprah Winfrey grew up poor and got raped as a child and she was able to go through that and fight beyond it. It gave her a reason to go above and beyond. She's now a billionaire, a black billionaire female, okay? That's a huge advantage and she used that adversity to her own advantage, okay? Now, lesson number 2 I've learned from Dan Locke is money is a moral obligation. Why is money a moral obligation? Now, the reason money is a moral obligation is because you have an obligation to take care of your family. You have an obligation to take care of your friends. You have an obligation to provide for those around you and if you can make money, if you know how to make money, you have a moral obligation to yourself, your friends and your family members to make it. This is a moral obligation. Money is what fuels our life. Unless you farm your own food and you're probably not watching this channel. But the point is you need money. So, make it an obligation. Don't make it a I'm going to try. Because if you try, I'm going to try to raise my hand. It doesn't move but I'm trying. But I'm going to raise my hand. And I just did it. So, make it a moral obligation. Don't try to make money. Make it. Lesson number 3 I've learned from Dan Locke is save yourself first, okay? Now, you may have great intentions. You may want to help the world. You may want to change global warming. You may want to help the rain forest. You may want to save the whales. You may want to help all these people. But guess what? If you don't make money, if you don't focus on your own finances, if you don't focus on spreading your message out to the world, then you're not going to have as big of an effect as you could on the rain forests or the whales or the whatever is the climate that you want to have. If you may become a billionaire, become a millionaire, become a trillionaire. And you will be able to have a greater effect on saving those whales or those oceans or those clouds than anything else that you could do. Become a trillionaire and give all your money away. That's what some of these big billionaires are doing. So, save yourself first and that brings us to our fourth point which is promotion over creation, okay? Spending your entire life creating a product. I know so many entrepreneurs that focus so much on product creation, on creating the perfect website, on creating the perfect product, on working with Chinese manufacturers to create the great prototype that they could start selling. But it doesn't matter unless you can promote it and you see this with people like Elon Musk. Yes, he focuses a lot on creation. But when did he start selling the Tesla? Before it was even created. He pre-sold 250,000 Teslas before they were even created. And from that money, that from pre-selling it, from promoting his product, before it was even created, he was able to get even more money to create his dream product which is the Teslas, you know, the Tesla motor stuff. So, promote versus create. And we actually see this a lot among startups, okay? Startups out here in California, they will raise $5 million because they're so focused on promoting their vision. They focus on creating their pitch deck, promoting their vision. Before even creating the product themselves, the companies already have $5 million in the bank. Before they even start creating the product.  And you can do the same. Focus on promoting yourself. You could just have a vision for what can become. You could have an idea. You can be in the creation product. Whatever point you're at, sell, promote. Get stuff out there. And that brings us to point number 6. Sorry, 5. About that I've learned from Dan Lok which is master, don't dabble. Dan Lok is known as the high ticket closer because he's focused on selling. And he's focused on selling big particularly. He's focused on one thing. Selling big. And he's been able to make a lot of money doing so. He's focused on one promotional channel only. YouTube. He's not focused on being big on Facebook. He's not focused on being big on Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Just YouTube and just selling big.  And it's and it earns this company tens of millions of dollars a year. One way to reach people. YouTube. One way to sell. Big. Master. Don't dabble. If you try 5 things, you'll fail at all 5. Whereas if you try one thing, you will become a winner. So, I hope you took something away from this lesson or the 5 lessons I've learned about Dan Lok. Let me know what your favorite point that I made in this video was. Also, if you want to subscribe to Dan Lok's channel, I'll link them somewhere around my head. Also, if you are not already subscribed to my channel, I talk about marketing. In particular, internet marketing and starting your own home-based business every single day, every single month of the year on this channel. So, make sure to subscribe, hit all notifications, smash the like button and ask any questions in the comments. Talk to you soon.


Hello everybody. Are you having a good time at work? Hand up if you're having a good time at work. Hand up if you're really looking forward to this copywriting presentation. Hand up if you don't like taking your hand up. It's my classic joke every single time, but I still love it. Welcome today. I'm going to be giving you not 10 but 12 ways you can improve your website copy to drive more conversions. I thought of two more and added them in. So who am I? Well you had that beautiful introduction by Amanda Doodle-Doodle. I have three businesses. The recipe for SEO success, where I've helped about 8,000 small business owners, bloggers, solar printers. Build more Google G, strive more traffic and conversions through my membership courses, podcasts, courses, all that kind of stuff. And then the cover copywriting school. Members of the cover copywriting school here today. Where I teach budding and established copywriters how to have a more successful and profitable business. The membership directory and another podcast for that. I also kind of am still an SEO copywriter although I don't really do anything for that anymore. But I spent a good 10 years helping big brands write copy that yes got them to the top of the Google rankings. But also really connected with their customers and drove conversions. So that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So what is conversion copywriting? Well really it's about writing persuasive copy. So most of us can put one word in front of another. You know there's difference between our colon and our full stop hopefully. And you know we can maybe list out the features and benefits of our products. But persuasive copy is a whole different ballgame. It boils down to understanding what emotions you need to evoke in the reader to make them take action. So you really have to understand your customers well so that you can understand how they're feeling and how to use those feelings to your own financial gain. So some people would call it sales copy but I think a lot of people feel very icky about writing sales copy. It feels a bit American a bit sleazy a bit like you know infomercially. But one thing I would say is that you know if you're writing copy about your products and services you're simply trying to explain them to the reader. Someone's coming to your site and looking at your products they want affirmation. They want to feel good about the purchase decision they're going to make. So you're actually writing feel good copy. That's how you should feel about it. And there's a line that says you know if someone had a disease and you had the cure you wouldn't feel bad about explaining the cure. And for the people who are coming to your site they have a problem and you have the solution that can solve it. And you're going to explain that and do that through conversion copywriting. So conversion copywriting is really about being laser focused on the goal. It brings it down to a single goal. That's what we're trying to do. People to take action. We want people to do a thing. So if we think of marketing and blogging as kind of to build trust and authority and engage our readers, conversion copywriting is different to that. It's about persuading people to take action, to buy the thing, to download the whatever, to click the button, whatever it may be. We're trying to make people do stuff. So that's what we're going to talk about. And I'm now going to give you 10 tips. No, not 10, 12. It's actually 13. But we'll get through them, don't we? I speak quite fast, so stay with me. So the first tip is that we really need to define our goal. For everything we're doing. So often we'll be like, it's a sales page. I want to sell my things. But in that sales page there's heaps of different copies. There's different elements. What does each element on the page need to do? What does that button need to do? What action are we trying to make people take? We need to be clear on that. We need to make sure that our goals are specific and actionable. So we don't say, I want people to grow my email list. That's not action. The action is I want people to click on this button, go through and sign up for my email newsletter, and that will then grow my list. So we have to be very specific about what we want people to do. The next tip, and it sounds like an obvious one, is that we need to understand our audience. It's not about you. So I often, when I read websites, I do the wee-wee test. I look at a website and I do the wee-wee test. How many times in the copy do you say, we do this and we are great. We have brilliant word test developers and we do this and wee-wee-wee. I don't care about you. I care about what you can do for me. Have a look at your copy and every time you've used the word wee, see if you can turn it around to the audience and talk to the audience, rather than just banging your drum and blowing your trumpet. So the best insights about our customers, about our product, sorry, come from our customers, yeah? We need to know them inside out. It's the only way we can bridge the gap between them and us. So one way you can do this is for design personas. So it's often something that I do. So I come up with a name, we'll call him Clive, and I think about what would Clive want, what does Clive look like, where does he live, all that demographic information, how old is he, is he married, is he hot, all that kind of stuff. But that kind of doesn't really tell us that much. Knowing that someone's 45, married, hot, how does that help me sell them a product? You know what I mean? That's he for people. So we need to go a bit further inside brain. And we need to think about what Clive's problem is, what's your problem Clive, and how are we going to solve it, yeah? What problem does someone come to the page with and how are you going to solve it? And the way that I do this is I use something called the BDF principle or thing, or acronym. So BDF stands for beliefs, desires, and fears. So what we need to do is dig deeper into our minds and help ourselves understand their preconceived beliefs, their desires, and their fears about buying from us. So is anyone in the room here a WordPress developer? Anyone, put your hand up. Don't be ashamed. It's an okay job. So someone's coming to you for a WordPress website. You'd be like, well, I know what their problem is. They want a website, but that's not their problem, yeah? And also they have preconceived beliefs before they ever hit you.  They bought a site for 50 quid off Sumbud, on Fiverr, and now they need you to fix it, yeah? They were on Whip. And they now need to move over to WordPress. But also they're not even buying the website. They're buying what the website can do for their business. They're buying the fact that that website's going to make them money so they can spend time with their kids. They're buying that, yeah? And also the emotions they have. They're stressed. They're scared you're going to spend too much money. They're scared you're going to start talking about PHP and, oh, I can't think of any other acronyms. HTML and things like that. And they're going to be like, I'm not going to understand, I'm going to get bamboozled, and I'm going to end up paying for something and not being happy with it. So they're fears. And their desire is that you're going to take all that away and make their life easy. So if we think about those things when we start selling on our page, we're no longer saying we are brilliant WordPress developers. We make WordPress websites and they are dead good. We're saying, hey, we understand that you maybe have had a bad experience before, but you can trust us because we built hundreds and hundreds of websites. We know that there's gold in the jar and can be overwhelming. So we speak in plain English. Do you see how suddenly you're reassuring that person that you are the right person for the job? Because you've understood their emotions. It's all about emotions, people. So how can you find out what your customers are thinking or feeling? Well, the first easy, really easy way is to ask them. So you can use surveys, survey monkey, things like that. You can look on your Facebook page. One little tip is to go into any group on Facebook and type WordPress or website into the search box and look at the conversations people are having and saying, oh, God, I really need someone good because I had this website and I was wrong. Can anyone recommend someone? Look at the problems that people are having. Collate those problems because they're going to be super helpful to you. Look at blog comments, look at forum posts. These are places where you're going to dig deep and understand your customer. And you can end up with something like this.  It's like a customer avatar, a Kevin. And it doesn't just talk about his age. It talks about his motivations, his goals, his frustrations. Wonder what he's frustrated about. I didn't read it. I should have put something funny in there for somebody to find it next time I was. But what we've done is we've created a whole well-rounded person, haven't we? If you really want to cut to the chase, an easy way to do it is just think about someone who fits your persona. So I often write a lot of my copy towards Amanda Van Aldrin. So I imagine that she's my ideal customer. She's my ideal human. But she is my ideal customer. The problems that she has are problems that I can solve. I have products and services that you will want. She's the same sort of sense of humour, sort of customer I like working with who laughs at my jokes. It's very important for me. And that enables me to imagine what I'm talking. I can write as if I'm talking to her. Because we're having a conversation with people. And the really important thing is that the copy on your website is true and honest and sounds like you. So I don't read the copy on your website and then I get on the phone with you and you're like, oh hello. You know, you have to have this. It has to be you. It has to have your voice so that it connects seamlessly from the page to the phone call. So the next tip I have is understanding awareness. So this is super important. Feel free to take a snap of this, although you are all going to get these slides later. So people come to our websites at different stages. Most aware, they already know us. Maybe they've already been asked before. Product aware, they've heard about our products or what we sell, and maybe they're in comparison mode. They're comparing your product with somebody else's. Solution aware, these people know they have a problem and they know what the solution is to fix it, but they haven't yet decided that your product is the right one for them. And then problem aware, people who have a problem they don't actually realise there's a solution for it. So in my world, product most aware would be somebody who maybe has done my 10 day course and they're ready to buy my big course. If they already know me, they trust me, it's going to be a relatively easier stuff. Product aware, maybe they've heard about my course and they're comparing it to someone else's to see if it's better. Solution aware, somebody who knows that they need to do better with their Google, they need to do the Google, they need to get better at it, but they didn't realise there was a course or a resource or that I was the thing for them. And then problem aware is people who are just like, why is my website making me any money? And they don't realise that search engine optimisation could be the option. And then we have people who are unaware, people who don't have a problem, but they can bugger off. So how do we convert these different people? So most aware, it's pretty simple. Tell them the product, you're giving them the price. It's not hard sell. Product aware, they're trying to find differentiated. So that's why you maybe push, give them a special offer, maybe give them 10% off, give them a special thing that pushes them over the line and makes them choose you rather than someone else. Solution aware is all about proof. What have you done before? What testimonials do you have? What logos do you have? Problem aware, it's explaining, it's exacerbating that problem. So yeah, you're not ranking Google. It's only going to get worse. You're going to make the money. You're going to lose your house. Your wife's going to leave you. My course is going to change all of that. That kind of stuff. Maybe don't take it that far, but you see how I go. So those are the different steps that we need to think about. And obviously this thing is, you don't know the awareness level when people hit your page, your sales page. I don't have four different sales pages for these different people. I have one. So I need to make sure that in that long sales page I've touched each of these audiences. I've connected with each person who has these concerns. The next thing I think that's really important to do, and it's kind of a bit away from actual sales copy, but it's to craft your USP. So your USP is your unique selling proposition.  It's your point of difference. And it's really good to write this down as a little definitive statement. It's really good when you're at networking as well because you can go, hey, when it was at Bill Harper, I edit copy and make it sound just as like you, but even better. Having a line like that makes it easier at networking classes. So a USP should be specific. So generic claims like equality, or we go above and beyond for our clients. It's like, nah, doesn't really mean anything, does it? It should make a promise. So what are you going to do that's going to make these people's lives better? How are you going to improve their lives? What problem are you solving? It should actually be unique. So you know, saying that you build affordable wordpress websites, well, every bugger does. That's not unique. You need to have something better than that. It needs to be valuable. So it needs to be something that customers are going to value. Something that you offer that actually value to it. And it needs to be believable. So don't make grand claims that you can't back up. We're going to come back to this. So here's a little template that I use. I've got a few different ones, but this one's quite useful. So we provide product or service to target audience. So they can product or service without pain point or friction point. So if you want to take a grab of this, and this is how that could work for me, for example. So we provide SEO courses, product or service, for small businesses so that they can do their own SEO without spending a fortune on expensive consultants. So I could work that harder. It's not too unique. I could have maybe added a few more adjectives, but it's a basic outline. It clearly explains what I do, who I do it for, and why I do it better for anyone else, and what promise I'm making. So that's a little thing that we should all have. We should all have our USP written down. Now the next thing that we can do to make our life really easy when we're writing sales copies is use a formula. All copyright is cheap. We all got formulas and patterns and some places that we use again and again and again because they work. There's basic rules of copywriting that we all follow, and you can follow them too. One of my favourite copywriting formulas is PAS. Problem agitate solution. You present the user with their own problem.   Then you agitate it, but if you don't clean your toilet, you're going to get horrible germs on your bottom, you're going to get ill, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then solution, but we have this new superlue brush that's going to clean your toilet in half the time. Really awful example, but I hope you get it. So problem, present the problem button, make them feel really bad about the problem, and then come in like, ta-da! I am the solution to your problem. So this is something that I do on my sales page for my course. It's really just problem, problem, problem solution. I kind of miss the agitate bit out, but I present the problems back to the customer. So you want to rank higher in the search results. You're confused by the text speak. You've been burned by a DPO company because those are certain reasons people sign up to my course.  You need my course because it's the best bloody one ever. So that helps people because they identify. They might not identify with all three, but they identify with one of the three, and it sucks them in. Because if you ask a question in copywriting, it demands an answer. We all answer a question in our heads, even if we don't say it out loud. We're all answering the question and therefore we're engaged with the copy more than just passively reading. So questions can be powerful. Now another great tip is when we're writing sales copy is to tell stories. There's a big thing about stories in copywriting, but it's simple stuff. I see themselves. If I'm about to spend two grounds on a course, I want to see someone who's like me, who had the same problem as me, who did the course and had success. So you can tell stories in a different way. A great way of getting stories onto your page is testimonials. But not just those really long ones that no one reads and not in a rotating thing. Hate those things. If no one ever clicks on them, don't do it, don't do it. Anyway, but those little stories are really helpful. You can tell stories as well yourself. So this is one of the classic David Ogilvy ads.  And he started this idea of not just going, this is a Rolls-Royce. It's got something horsepower and I don't know anything about cars.  Instead, he's like, imagine stepping into a Rolls-Royce. Imagine what it feels like as you put your key in the lock and click and go along. The only sound you can hear is the birds, because the engine is so quiet. It has a quiet engine. He says you can hear the birds tweeting in the tree. Do you know what I mean? So he's telling a story. He's making us, we're living this experience. We want to be in that car. So that's how he did it. And I do this on my site. I tell my story because that helps me to be more credible, more authoritative. And I'm like, yeah, I was where you were. I started a business 10 years ago. I was the word copywriter. There were 30,000 copywriters or something that came up. People at the top of the rankings like Glenn Murray and some weird dude called Chris. He, that's an in-joke for people. They were unassailable.   So I started there. I learned SEO. I'd done some in my previous job. I did the things. I practiced. I made mistakes. I failed. I got up again and now I ranked over 400 keywords. You can't pretty much put copywriter into Google without something about me popping up. And I did that myself. I didn't spend money on expensive consultants. I didn't do anything dodgy, no black hat SEO. So I tell my story. My story helps persuade people to buy. So the next tip is to write strong headlines. Yeah? So writing strong headlines is super important because we all know that on the internet none of us actually read the copy anyway. It's great for us copywriters. I was writing it and no one reads it. Jacob Nelson or whatever they call did a study that said people forage around the page. They go around, they find little snippets of information. We all know we do that too. Scroll down until we see a little headline that makes us interested and we read that bit. People don't read from top to bottom. So your headlines are kind of the signposts about what your copy is about. Ogilby again, I like to wheel him out every other slide. So on average five times as many people read the headline. Guys, all going on in this room, isn't it? On average five times as many people read it, you can read it yourself. It's there on the screen. So basically what he's saying is that eight out of ten people will read the headline. Two out of ten people will read the copy. So often when I'm writing my copy I try to look at all the headlines I've written, take away all the body copy and just look at the headlines and see if there's a flow and see if you can get the gist of what the whole page is about just from the headline.  You know, testimonial. It should be like love from our customers or amazing customers who've worked with us. You know, make every headline work. Don't be so literal and boring. Try and inject some personality into your headlines. And a good way to think about it is to think about what the goal of the headline is. Again, to go back to that audience and then think about the location of where it's going to be on your page. Where is it on the page? Is it that opening line? Are they deep into the content? Or is it the finishing line? It's going to affect the way that the headline's written. So here are a couple of mon from my page. So the first headline on my page after that thing is SEO is a giant pain in the bum, right? Now that doesn't mean particularly if you're intelligent but what it does straight away is it establishes my tone of voice. If you're looking at someone else's SEO page about their course I guarantee the first word on the page is not bum. So that very quickly tells you what, of course, I am what kind of personality I have, whether you're going to like working with me. Because marketing is as much about repelling people as it is about attracting people. I want people who are going to enjoy working with me. There's over 100 hours of videos of me rabbiting on in my course. If you don't like me at the beginning, you're going to hate me by the end.  So straight away I'm establishing who I am, my tone. But then I go on and I just have really clear statements like you're going to save money on your SEO because you are. You're going to get all the support you need. So again I'm thinking about the different audiences, some people are worried about money, some people are worried that they're not going to be able to get through the content on their own and they're going to need to be able to ask me questions. So I'm reassuring different people with different problems all the way through the page. And another little thing to think about with headlines is often we write really positive headlines like save money on your SEO. We write the positive, we write the advantage. But what can be really helpful is to do negative headlines. Gain isn't as powerful as loss. People hate losing things that they already have. Losing something they already have. We're all loss of us. It's worse to lose something than it is to get something else. So try to spin the headline around and try some negative ones as well. Tip number eight is to be specific. Specific. Specific. So again lots of us when we're writing coffee we're like we've built websites. We've done this. We've worked with these new people. No, no, no, no. Be specific because specificity, I can't say it. So just bear with me. It's more believable. It's more credible. So I used to have, we have lots of worksheets on this course. But I changed it to we have 14 worksheets. Because what does lots mean? It doesn't mean anything. It could be something different to you. You know what I mean? And then on my page I've now got like a little thing that says 30 plus. I probably could be a bit more specific. I think it's because I couldn't be bothered to count them. But we have 30 worksheets. We have 100 videos. Because again, I could say it's a comprehensive course with everything you need. But if I say there's 100 videos, that says wow, that's a lot of stuff. I'm getting some money out of that. So specificity is super powerful in converting people and persuading people. Don't summarise your benefits to be specific. The next thing is to substantiate.  We've got to make it believable. We can't say anything that we can't back up. So we want to avoid raising red flags. We want to avoid going to people going, hang on, that sounds a bit too good to be true. Don't mention things that you can't back up. Or haven't got much copy space if you've only got a few lines. Don't mention stuff that you can't fully explain. Don't drop something obscuring without being able to back it up. Keep your claims real and believable and avoid big claims. Often as SEO copywriters, we could easily say our copy is going to get you to the top of the ranking. But it might not. If you can't back that up and you've made that claim, you're going to feel icky. That's when sales copy starts to feel icky. That's the American way. They're like, it's the most amazing vacuum in the world. So don't make big claims and then you won't feel bad. Focus on saying what people want rather than what you want to say. If you want to, you can cushion the claim. So this is a neat little trick. So you cushion the claim by making it a question. Could this be the SEO course that's going to transform your business? Well, yes it could. But you don't say that yes it could. You just ask the question. You just leave that floating in the air. Could I be the best word pressed about that? So cushioning the claim is a great way of saying something that you can't really say by turning it into a question. Another thing to think about is when we're making claims or offering, we need to really offer value. So a lot of people on e-commerce stores say free delivery. But free doesn't mean anything. It's got no value, has it? So if you actually make it have some value, if you put costs behind things, people then feel that they get their money. So free delivery or we pay for your delivery Australia-wide. We are giving you money. That sounds much more beneficial to me. It's a classic sales tactic to kind of do the this is everything you get in my course and this is what it would cost if you bought it all separately. This would cost this. The whole thing would cost you $5,500 but it's not that much. It's only this much. It's a bit cheesy but I'm listing out the value. I'm showing you the things that you're going to get. That can be really compelling and it's very specific. Obviously I've just made up the numbers but hey, it works. The next thing we need to do is to build trust. People are in. They've read the headlines, they're halfway down the sales page and this is why people are like, I hate long sales pages, I never read them. Believe me they work. Every time I add a paragraph on to my long sales page my call sells out like an hour quicker. It's just ridiculous, it's some weird thing because again no one's reading the whole thing. They're scrolling down and looking at the bits they want to look at and lots of people have already looked at it so many times that they've jumped to the bottom and pressed the buy button. But in our long sales page we need to allow enough room to really show some trust factors and one of the biggest things that builds trust is testimonials. Other people talking about your product saying things that you can't say like someone else can say this is the best course that I've ever done, it changed my business.  So if someone else says it they put the word onto my page for me. But look at my testimonials. They are not big long paragraphs. No one reads that. Take one line from the testimonial and make sure that each testimony backs up a different thing that you're trying to do. One of those talks about ROI. One of them talks about trust. One of them talks about support. One of them talks about money. One of the points that I need to back up and they all have a face because there's no point in having a testimonial unless it has someone's face. Because again, some people will literally go down I struggle to get blokes on my course for some reason, I don't know why. Blokes like learning from blokes maybe. About 25% of people on my course are men. I wish it was more, I like men. So I found that putting more men's faces on the page was more reassuring. If it's all women, they're like it's not really for men. So men's faces having the name of their business having a link through to their business website so you can see it's a real legitimate customer but keeping those testimonials short. The next thing is to have logos. Everyone you've ever worked with be a Nans cat website. Make a logo for it, put it on there. It doesn't matter. People like seeing big brands, of course they do. I like big brands and I cannot lie but they're just like seeing lots of logos because everyone of those is another satisfied customer. So just logo, logo, logo. OK, we've got bonus tips. We've got two bonus tips. By the way, some of you did say you would heckle and none of you have and I'm a bit disappointed so I'm waiting to be heckled. OK, so the next bonus tip is to provide results. So you can do that in different ways. You can obviously have a portfolio of websites and whatever. Again, I'm talking to the Word Festival so I know that lots of people are doing different things. There are examples of what you've done and that's not really results, is it? Results is like when you say this person came to me with this problem. This is how I solved it and this is what changed in their business for them. They've got 20 more leads a week. Their website is sped up by 15 seconds or whatever it may be. What you've done for them, real tangible results. Someone can go I want that. I want that result for me. So on my site I have a list of the first page when you type into Google and everybody on the first page pretty much by one is somebody who's done my course. That's pretty compelling. People are now outranking me for my own terms. My own students are becoming better than me which is very annoying. Brilliant. That's real results. You can't deny that. It's a screen grab from Google. I could have photoshopped it but I didn't. I invite people to go on Google now and have a look and see and I'll see the same thing. The next tip and the final tip is to write strong calls to action. Call to action CTA buttons basically. The buttons on your site that say do this, go there, do the thing. Most people when they're writing calls to action they make them so boring. If I see another button that says subscribe I don't want to subscribe. Subscribing sounds really miserable and boring. I don't want to do that. We've got to make it more compelling. Instead of saying things like complete our servo by now submit you can say get. Get is really powerful. Instead of download our worksheet get our amazing tip sheet. It just sounds stronger. When people are signing up to my course I could have joined now but instead get started it's a lot more compelling. I'm doing this thing.  Another neat trick with call to action is to always finish the sentence I want to. I want to join the waitlist. I want to save my spot. We don't actually have the word I want to on the button. We have saved my spot. Join the waitlist. Get started. Win more leads. If any of you on your website have the words click here I will come and find you. We do not need to be telling people how to use the internet. Click here. Click on the navigation and click on the drop. If your site has such bad usability and I know that someone is talking about usability today at some point I think you are UX. If your website has such bad usability that people have to be told what to do on it you need to redesign your website. No amount of copy is going to save you. Unfortunately. Another powerful way is to turn it on to the user. Yes. Do you want to something something? Yes. Let me in. We have all seen those horrendous pop-ups that come up and say do you want a checklist?  Yes I will sign it up. Click the no button. My final tip and I think I am ahead of schedule. How long have I got? We can just chat amongst ourselves afterwards. My final tip is the A-B test. You have got to experiment people. You have got to try these things out. You can't just write one page and just hope that it's going to work. Ideally you can use things like lead pages and there are other tools and tricks I won't go into them today. We will help you serve two versions of the page. One thing you can do is run a little Google AdWords campaign driving to two different landing pages. See the same ad copy two different landing pages see which one performs better. Or get some heat mapping software and really look at how people are using the page. What headlines are people really focused on? What headlines are people skin past? Which bits of copy do people really look at? I did that and as I said I did that on my page and I really noticed the eyeballs on those testimonials hovering on the faces reading the copy. It was really strong. The logos as well. Anything where I said the word money. Saving money. That's why you know as well you mix up images versus copy versus images. Lots of white space. It gives the eye space to move around the page and be drawn to what it wants to be drawn to. Some people are very image driven. Some people like to read copy. Click buttons but some people like contextual links in the copy. You know you've got a cater to all these different people. So AB testing is essential. So in summary I think conversion copywriting, persuasive copywriting is really about being human. It's quite almost trite to say and I say it a lot but you know especially with SEO we always should write for humans first and Google second. But when we're writing our copy for our website we really need to remember that it's not about us it's about our customers. We're trying to connect we're trying to have a conversation. You should be reading your copy out and seeing if it's actually something you would say because I have people come on my they try and do the USP or whatever and they're like I can't do it. I can't do it and I'm like okay just stop. Tell me what you do in your business and they tell me and I type it because I'm quite fast typing. 95 words a minute.  You just said it but when you come down to writing it you're like is that not that. So just talk to yourself. Read your copy out. Talk about your business. Don't exaggerate don't make big claims and don't feel icky about selling. It's what we're here to do it's what it's all about. So conversion copywriting is just about explaining your product to your audience in a way that's relatable in a way that makes them feel emotional and in a way that makes them realise that you are going to solve their problem and make them feel very happy. So if you need more help from me or you want to learn more about what I do I have a big group on Facebook. You can all join it get your phones out. Just typing I love SEO and in there I share regular tips and advice about SEO copywriting digital marketing share pictures of my dog and all stuff. It's a fun place to be. And that's it. That's me down. Thank you very much.