What I'm about to say will win you the respect of your friends a lifetime full of Happiness a villa in the Bahamas and maybe a really good hair day to I don't know if it's gonna do any of those things who's to say but here's what it will do. It will definitely make you a better writer. That's my promise. You will be a better writer in the next 60 Minutes. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to this week. Somebody asked us a question. They said hey, I really love your guys.
I was writing I have trouble with writing and I would love if you guys just did an episode with the the 80/20. So what is the just the stuff? I need to know to help me be a better Rider. So me and Sam sat down and we wrote down all of our secrets about how we've
used writing to grow our careers. But by the way, by the way, I wouldn't even say we're necessarily great writers. I would say that you and I are really good writers, but we've been great at is getting results from it. Would you agree?
Yeah. That's right. I don't think I don't look at my stuff.
Like wow, this is beautiful prose, but I do feel confident that if I needed to I can use my writing to either, you know, grow an audience or sell a product or convince people of something. I feel confident that after you know, trying for 15 years and both of us have done it. Right? So the credibility here, you know, before you ever listen any advice, you should ask yourself. Why should I listen to this person? Well both me and Sam have built and sold newsletter businesses for tens of millions of dollars. We've tweeted our way, you know, just typing a little short sentences to you know, a million-person.
Against between the two of us, you know, I've sold maybe 20 million dollars worth of product online in the e-commerce world just through email. We both have taught writing courses or in some form or fashion. I used to charge a thousand dollars a seat for my class and there was the highest rated class. I may even but here today you get the quick version for free which Arjun do nothing except for there is one thing they got to do. What's the weather they have to do it. If this is free, right
Sam, it's totally free except for one thing. You have to subscribe. So whether you're listening on
Apple on Spotify wherever you listening or if you're already on YouTube. You just have to click that button. We spent all this time doing this and unlike the rest of the YouTube world where everything is completely free. We're mostly free. All we want in exchange is a subscribe on YouTube. That's all we want. We
can check if you do it. We call it the gentleman's agreement. It's just Honor Code amongst two legendary individuals us and you and we just trust that you're going to do it. All right. So let's let's jump in. How does somebody become a better writer? How can we teach them in the next? I don't know.
45 minutes to become yo twice as good or three times as good as the writing. I believe that that is possible if they actually do these things. Where do you want to start to him?
So let's start with before you guys start writing and so someone asks us why right or someone asks us. How do you get better at writing? I actually want to change it to why you should even care about being a better writer. And so there's a few bullet points that we have. So the first being is
This is the most self-serving thing. But I want to say it up front. It's persuasion in the most scalable way. The reason I got into writing was I was selling street meat hot dogs on the side of the road and I was selling one to one and I got pretty good at it. But then I realized this is really hard and so I learned about copywriting and I figured look now. I can write something and it could scale to an infinite amount of people. I never have to change it and I can convince people to do something now, we're not just talking about copyrighting. We're talking about all types of writing so I can convince someone to feel a certain way.
Whether I'm writing a short story or I'm writing a blog post. I can convince someone to join my company. I used copywriting on Tinder when I want to convince the girl to give you a chance to go on a date with me. We're talking about all types of writing but at the end of the day, we're always typically trying to persuade someone to do something. So it's persuasion in the most scalable way. And that's one of the reasons one of the most important self-serving reasons why I think people should care about writing what else?
Yeah, that's that's the first one the second one is more internal and wholesome right? Some people are like, I don't know if I want to do persuasion truth is you do
Anything hear anything you're trying to make happen, you're usually going to persuade either people to come join your company customers Partners, whatever it is.
All right everyone. We have a quick ad for HubSpot, but I want to let you know I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool which is what this ad is for house pot sales platform. It makes it just easier to sell stuff to do it faster to look at your pipeline to see what sales are going to happen just Prospect to cold Outreach and get more customers faster and easier plus it's easy to learn and freeze start so you guys can check it out.
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sales, the second one is to write clearly. You must think clearly and the reverse is true too. If you want to be a great thinker you want to have Clarity of thought writing is essential tool for that. So writing is a forcing function for you to be able to think clearly you can't hide behind bad writing bad run bad writing will show bad thinking whereas if you have great thinking and you right it'll come through and so writing is this it's a
Truth-teller potion it will reveal how clear your thinking is and the the trick is most people think about it as in writing is a way for me to communicate my ideas to you and they think that oh writing is the bottleneck. They're like, ah, I'm just not a good writer. Nobody ever says I'm not a great thinker but the truth is if you actually get down to it people who struggle with writing it's because they don't have the idea clear in their mind. And so writing helps you clear up the fog in your brain and get crystal-clear clarity on what do you actually trying to say what are the ideas but it also works
Not just communicate ideas, but to generate them. I think Paul Graham said this is so true. He goes people think that writing is only about communicating the ideas you already have but actually the truth is when you sit down to write you will generate new ideas writing is an incredible idea generator. And so it's like, you know starting a little fire in your brain and you know, those Sparks can lead to new thoughts and new ideas that are quite powerful and if you're not writing regularly you're missing out on some of those
ideas and I think that when we say writing I'm particularly referring to longer
Form, it could be shorter form a handful of sentences a tweet whatever but oftentimes it's longer form. And the reason why I prefer that when I'm running out my ideas is you can't really hide a bad idea or you can't hide bad thinking in Long writing, you know, where you can hide bad thinking in a PowerPoint. Now that doesn't mean that your idea is along writing our going to be good. But you just can't hide it. You can't hide that it's bad. And so that's why I prefer mapping it all out and then the third point of running creates new ideas, I think like you said,
Graham said it best he has this great blog post. He wrote 2005. He said something like 80% of your writing will be bad and then you'll have to cut it down to the 20 percent. That's good. And when you start writing you'll probably generate 50 percent more new ideas, right? So it's a really great forcing function where it gives you the lanes of the road and you have to stay within those lanes and oftentimes, you can change your opinion as you go and you could evolves your idea and you're thinking
and we've all seen Jeff basis band PowerPoint from Amazon.
He realized that Amazon PowerPoint was this thing that sort of the most charismatic loudest voice in the room or somebody with good slide design skills could kind of like create an illusion of good thinking by using PowerPoint. And actually he forced everybody instead to write long long form memos basically narratives and he's like in the long form written word. There's no place to hide. There's no way to use design or good presentation skills to to make it seem like this is more wealth.
Sure that it is it either is or isn't you'll find out so I think it works inside of companies as well as it does out externally to your customers and potential customers. So alright now let's get down to the actual tactics. So that's the that's the theory now. How do you actually do it? So for me all the work begins before I've typed a single word and I say I always say you want to begin with the end in mind what I mean by this is eyes before I write anything. I first decide what is the reaction I want I learned this from a guy.
Named Chris Quigley. I don't know if you know Chris quickly, but he was a this character he came to town in San Francisco from from the UK and he was a he hosts he had an ad agency and his attitude one specific thing. They would make videos go viral and I remember talking to Chris and I was like, wow, it would be awesome to do a viral video. That sounds like kind of like a lottery ticket thing. Like what if my YouTube video just went viral and got millions of views how crazy would that be and I asked Michael. What's your hit rate like, you know out of every 100 videos you do how many go viral 1 2 3
Goes out of 100 and he's like no if we 10 videos eight or nine will go viral really and I was like what he's like well for two reasons, he said number one. We have a large blog audience so we can guarantee the first 100,000 views like it will get seen and will just get lost in the abyss of the internet of content like whatever we have it'll get seen he's like, but that doesn't make you go viral that just make sure it gets a chance because the second thing is we always work backwards from an emotion he goes
People will only share or act if they feel something at the end. So he created this thing that he had like lol WTF OMG all like, you know something so cute heartwarming. And so he's like, these are the only emotions that you can tap into there's like seven or eight emotions so people can can tap into and he would work backwards. He would say we don't write a script until we first pick the emotion. We're going for Wow, or we're going for WTF outrage.
DTF outrage, you know, I'll give you an example of one that I just saw yesterday Elon Musk tweeted out this thing that was some hidden like language in a bill like a bill that's going through Senate right now. That was like if the next president gets elected and they decide to stop spending on the war in Ukraine. They could be up for impeachment because of the way this bill is written and and he was like, oh my God, the Democrats are baking this in to the bill. They're trying to pass this on page 142 trying to slip this right under your nose without telling anybody.
Buddy, and they're going to try to impeach Trump if he got elected and tried to stop the try to you know, if you got peace in the in the in the Ukraine and stop the spending he could be up for impeachment. And of course the post goes Super viral because it's outrage. It's outrage from the Democrats as outrage from the Republicans that is engineered to go viral. And so similarly the Chris he's to have a search engine. He used to be able to he created a tool internally for them where they could just search by emotion and it would show them YouTube videos that are targeting that emotion and they would use it when they
Brainstorm, it's I stole this and I would start with ask myself three questions. What is the reaction? I want that's always an emotion. The next one is what is the action I want. So what I want them to do after they read this like click the buy button click the share button forward this to a friend sign my petition, whatever it is who knows what it is, but what's the reaction? What's the action? And the last thing I say is at the end of this if they could just remember one line or one take away one sentence. What would it be? What would I pick out of the
The thing that I just wrote because people remember sentences not books. And so you have to think about that. So don't I always begin with the end in mind. I decide those before I ever write a word. Do you do something similar?
I do the exact same thing and typically I start with a headline and I start with the sub headline. So if you share on Facebook the headlines the big text, the sub headline is the hundred in Eighty character thing underneath that oftentimes I go back and I reach and I change the headline a ton, but that one sentence so I called the sub headline that
Change and that one sentence is what helps like clarify what I'm going to write so I actually don't do outlines. So there's a lot of things that I think you're taught in fifth grade that I think are really stupid. One of them is an outline. I guess. I guess it's okay to teach that but I don't use outlines anymore in my outline instead. Is that once sub-headline? That's what I use.
In fact you brought up a good point which is to be a great writer in the world like as an adult on the
internet the internet world the internet
world.
You have to unlearn pretty much everything you learned in school. So in school you learned like what do they what do they reward in school? They're like minimum of this word count. So the trying to get you must write at least this length and they're trying to get you to like so people are writing long words a double spacing their thing and trying to like add a bunch of filler and fluff. We gotta do the exact opposite when you're out on the internet you want to be concise you want to be quick you want to eliminate a bunch of fluff shorter is better on the internet in terms of adding just extra cruft, but when you're in school, they almost Force.
And teach you to write these long form things. They also want you to write fit with fancy fancy vocabulary. So you're you get bonus points, if you use, you know ameliorate rather than you know, heal or help or whatever and and so you were rewarded for using fancy words, but the reality is you want to be riding at a very like accessible language if you want reading level if you want to do well on the internet so, you know both you and I we target kind of like 5th to 8th grade reading levels and you can use these tools these Checkers like
Ways an app that you can use where you could put in your text. It'll tell you your writing at a 12th grade level or your writing at a fifth-grade level and the lower the better is better on the yeah,
and in the in the second half of this episode, let's go through all those like tips and tricks in terms of in terms of writing. My process is I do copy work then I draft then I incubate and then I edit so what that means is copy work. It's the same way. It's this old technique that people have learned how to write we don't do it anymore, but I found it to be the most
Effective way I set myself in a room for like two hours a day and did this for like eight months in order to learn how to write and copy work is basically when you take writing that you love it could be a full book. It could be a script for SNL if you want to learn how to write comedy. It could be a blogger that you like when I'm writing an important piece. I'll just write maybe for 10 minutes. I literally take my pen and by hand. I copy someone else's writing that I really like and that helped me get into the flow.
So we we said was before you've written a word like most people just sit down they start trying
Right. Well, we've told you is do two different things instead begin with the end in mind, you know the what is the action the reaction you want and what's that? What would be the headline that would grab somebody and then the second things am saying is you don't just jump in like, you know, if you're gonna go to a workout you don't just go start sprinting right away. You warm. I do warm up sets and you do the same thing before you write a word of your own you start by writing but not your own words. You take some writing that you really like that. Maybe you want to almost like through osmosis. Just steal their little writing Juju. It's going to go
And you'll start to talk like them right like them if you do this and you literally right word for word. Yes, but they said it's even more effective if you hand write it but at worst type it but you want to don't don't think don't add your own stuff. Don't improve it just literally right word for word and do it for like even 10 15 minutes. I still do this today. This is not like advice that I tell other people do I don't do I still do this today and Sam you don't know this. I use one of your post as one of my I have like three coaches one of yours is one that I use for my copy work. It's this which one are you
You I forgot the name of the blog but it's I always search for it with the same headline, which is let me be perfectly clear you're reading this because I want because I want you to and you're like I have engineered the start of this to your and you basically talked about how you've Mesmerize them. You're like every word of this was chosen every sentence to lead you to the next sentence and I love that. It's really the we call it the slippery slope. And so you I use one of yours whenever I want to write like in a really persuasive copy right away if I want to
More like business serious that I have a different one. I use this one that sea of slack did when he wrote an internal memo that I really like called. We don't sell Saddles here, but you literally just write a word for it. So that's your warmup. So again, two things before you ever write your own stuff. It's exactly like playing music. Okay. So if your weather when you're a beginner playing music, you just play other people's songs and then you steal a little bit. You're like, oh I like the I like this genre that Shiner addition. I'm going to come out and do my own thing same way where you're writing a new song. You kind of warm up baby playing The Beatles and then eventually you're like,
All right. I'm in the mood to write something more beautiful. This is what I'm going to do is take someone's recipe and you make their exact. Lure you go. Make your own thing. You play a cover before you write your own songs same way. You do copy work before you write your own stuff. The second step is actually where a lot of people get screwed up. So it's the drafting step and the reason people get screwed up here is because they're afraid to look stupid and the drafting step is actually where you're supposed to look stupid. And so whenever I draft something I just bang it out as fast as I can and it sounds really dumb and I accept that it sounds dumb and I and here's why
Because after the drafting set is the incubation period you know, like have you ever heard of like the phrase like a shower thoughts where you like think of silly things in the shower? I actually I think there's like some science behind this. I think I forget what it's called, but it's like when you're out riding a bike in or out going for a walk when you're just sitting things. I think it's called passive thinking you actually get great breakthroughs. And so what I like to do is I draft my first thing that it doesn't take very long and I know that it's bad, but I don't show anyone then I go for a walk.
Or I'll just sit sometimes that will take 48 Hours. Sometimes I will take one hour sometimes 10 minutes sometimes a week. I just let it sit and then I do nothing now. Here's where the the last part in the most important part is Ogilvy. One of my favorite writers was its first name David David Ogilvy. He's got this great line. He goes. I'm a lousy writer but I'm a good editor and this is where greatness happens and happens Stephen King calls it killing Your Darlings. He says when the the editing phase were all the great stuff happens and this is actually what the gold happens. A lot of people don't do this.
Process what they do is they write their draft thinking that's the final bit and they get afraid and nervous and they never write it and they don't actually incubate and they don't actually edit. Do you do these things
100% you I learned this from you the incubate part, so I used to draft and then try to edit in the same session because I knew editing is where the value is right great writing is great editing. Let's be perfectly clear great writing is great editing. However, the mistake I was making before was I would write and then I would immediately try to edit and power through and I didn't have that.
At break that Gap to actually go back and improve my ideas passively just load the problem in my brain and go do something else. Go for a walk. Go for a run. Go for a workout. Go shower go cook some food chop, some vegetables doesn't matter what it is. But I give myself actually like at least 90 minutes away from it. Sometimes six hours away from it. And then when I come back I look at it and it's just so obvious to me. Oh strike this it delete this move this to the top. That's actually the best part. Oh, you know what I should say here. I should say this though that analogy I was missing here it
Is and so you immediately it starts to come together. When I do that that part right and I also realized I need to shift my time ratio because like you like you said I used to be a over-thinker drafter where I would over think how much I need to have much time to spend on the draft phase. So I try to make a good draft bad idea. You actually just want to have a like quick and dirty draft like a brain dump draft. And so I used to try to make a good draft. That would take me way too long and I get fatigued and I feel bad about it and I'd be like I hate this is a stupid show even
Do this and all the doubts creep in and then I'll try to edit right away now short draft and then high energy edit after I have that incubation period so this is 100% what I do and it is extremely effective
and once you get good and once you find a process, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I think of an idea and I just write that sentence in my phone and then I just forget about it, but then I see something else in the world and I'm like, oh that reminds me of this concept. I was I was thinking about cup.
Yeah CTA if I sign off with sayonara suckers, yeah,
wait, what do you think about I love you at the end. Would that be up? There you go, but I actually do like well, I'll have like a do you have like a notes at or notes folder in your phone where it's like you just have like a sentence and you're like that's a beautiful sentence. I'm just I don't I don't know where I'm going to use that but that was a beautiful sentence or a lot of times I get.
From podcasters or YouTubers? I'm like you hear how you phrase that that word of that was a sharp phrase that cut to me.
One of the things we didn't say in the before phase is having a swipe file. So well, yeah sick thing that all writers have and all marketers have which is a swipe file. It's basically a stash whenever you see something do something. That's well done something that's good. You just stash it away so that when it comes time for you to make one you can be like I need to make a landing page and you would go and you look at your stash of great landing pages you've seen and you would have so much inspiration right there ready for you, too.
Tips because you did the work beforehand and so that's another one of the before is you got to have a swipe file. We I have 14 phrases for headlines for connecting words for site for hellos, and goodbyes, because for some reason whenever I write my newsletter, I knew what I wanted to say, but the start always was so awkward. It was like a hello, you know, hello there friends and I was like God this sucks. And then I started keeping a file of like anytime. I liked it liked an opener or closer to have one openers file one closures filed. I have a whole bunch in there.
And I do used to riff off of because that for whatever reason that was my blocker when I would right.
All right, everyone a quick break because I want to fill you in on a little experiment that I'm doing. I've got a new project. It's called money-wise. It's a personal finance podcast for high net worth people or young people who are on their way to becoming high-net-worth when I made a little bit of money. I didn't even know how much money I should be spending. Each month should be 10,000 30,000 50,000 and I didn't really have a lot of people to ask so I create a clock cast called money-wise because I wanted to figure out what are some of the things that people who
A lot of cash and who have a high net worth? What do they do with it? The first episode is with the friend of mine. He sold his company for 200 million dollars when he was 31 years old. He gets super transparent about his monthly expenses his portfolio how it impacts his happiness everything. So I want you guys to check it out. It's called money-wise. That's one word. You can find it on my Twitter bio. I'm the sampar or you can just type in money-wise on Apple Spotify and YouTube. All right back to the Pod. All right, everyone. This episode is brought to you by the product boss. It's podcast hosted by Jacqueline.
And Minna they're friends of mine the part of the HubSpot podcast Network and it's a podcast about taking your physical product sales and strategy to the next level and they deliver the podcast in an hour-long Workshop style strategy. Some of the most popular episodes are debunking the myth of daily social media obligations, which Dives deep on how you can grow your social media presence from an audience perspective and get audiences eager to buy your products without feeling overwhelmed. They give a comprehensive play book that's filled with tips and strategy for building a big audience that align with your
It's objectives. So if this interests you check it out the product boss, wherever you find your podcast. I'll just hear a beautiful phrase and I'll write it down. So like I went to this guy's website and he was talking about the best like speaker system or something and he started off the paragraph with well folks. It doesn't get any better than this and I was like, oh and beautiful. That's mine the and like I just have this whole Bank of like these things of people saying like cute phrases. I'm like, oh that's a beauty like, I just felt an emotion.
When I read that basically you have to think every people are scrolling through thousands of Articles every day and I if I see a line that grabs my attention, I know that's good. That's mine. That's mine. And I just have this whole Bank of these. So let's move on to some more tips about talking about the actual writing part because I think that what you're taught in school.
We're basically going to say do the opposite of a lot that here's right. Here's the mistakes common mistakes mistake. Number one, they start with a bunch of intro context background fluff. You wrote a the tip is actually don't bury the lead. So the first sentence should punch. So try putting the most important sentence at the top try putting the most provocative statement at the top try putting the promise at the top or the bait the hook at the top. So as an example, you have one here that when you when you were building the hustle one,
Things you try to do with these viral blog post. You were like, I'm gonna write this blog post if I can get a million views on the blog post and some percentage of them will subscribe. That's how I grow my subscriber base. Right? And I remember reading this which was first sentence. I spent the last 30 days eating nothing but Soylent a new age powered powdered meal replacement. Why would I do something so stupid I'll explain but first if you're not familiar with sort of like, here's the gist a great opener, right because yeah rather than saying, you know last few days have been really tough for me.
Me because I've been doing this new experiment to give you background who I am. I'm Steve. I'm a programmer here at this company. And you know, I'm blah blah blah boring, right? So instead I spent the last 30 days eating off the with Soylent. Why would I do something so stupid? Let me explain Curiosity has been created and now I want to know
yeah, typically when you're thinking about the lead, so I found it helps with a few things one. If you're new what I tell people is let me see your opener cut it and like cut almost all of it except for like the last couple sentences and that's typically
A trick and the reason why I say that is when you're taught in school how to write. Have you ever heard of like a thesis statement where you have like a opening paragraph with the thesis at the bottom point one point two point three and then a closer. I'm like, just tell me your thesis statement right off the bat right off like just to say that just punch me in the face with that. That should be your that should be your opening line. Another thing is I like to think of have you been to England and have you ever noticed they have signs that say mind the gap right? I guess that's like when you're I always say
mine the Curiosity Gap so mine. So with the Curiosity Gap means I'm going to I'm going to punch you in the face to grab your attention because that gets you to fall down the slippery slope and the more that you fall down that slope the further you're going to continue to read and so I want to grab your attention, but I don't want to tell you exactly everything but I want to grab your attention by not burying the lead. I'm going to get you to fall down this slope a little
further. Yeah, that's simple test is take your hand cover up all of the text except for the first two sentences read those first two sentences and be like what if I didn't
Tell me if I didn't care about me. If I didn't I didn't have to read this what I want to read what I need to read the next sentence not what I need to do the whole thing, but I need to read the next sentence if it's yes, you've created a curiosity up then you drag your hand down you reveal that exponents you say if I read this sentence what I need to read the next sentence, why would I want to know what what's the next sentence and then by the third or fourth time you've done that now they're in now. They're invested. Now, you have a little more leeway to let it breathe and create and create a little bit of background cuz they're they're have they're invested in getting to the end.
The out of the outcome but like the reason the sound so brutal or you're going to cover up a sec. I'm going to cover up 85 90 % of the text. Yes, because the reality is that's actually how the readers eyes work. Eighty. Ninety percent of people are only ever going to read the headline and if the headlines no good, they're never going to get to any of the other stuff. And so some people are resistant to write a juicy headline, but the reality is if it's not juicy enough, they'll never get to that those great ideas that you have inside your sort of doing your own ideas a disservice. So you want to find that line between
Without completely whoring yourself out or making a false promise still find a way to make it juicy enough where you created that Curiosity Gap where I have to read the next sentence and that's it.
What I what I used to say was it ain't clickbait. If it you're actually getting something like it bait means it's fake. So as long as I can say the truth, but I say it is Sensational or clicky way. We say clicky it ain't bait if I actually deliver on the promise you however
if you don't pay it off then it's bad. But if you're paying it off and you're paying it off soon Nick, it paid off like
Like, you know 10 minutes later, you have to have to be able to that. All right. Next one is right like you talk. So so many times people are like I can't really really I'm not going to I'm not a good writer. And again, I'm not a good writer is actually code for I'm not a good thinker in the way you test. This is cool forget about writing it down. Just tell me like explain it to me either. They just say it out loud and I'm like great you wrote it just write that down now like right down the literally what you just said, you don't have to have like this second character the Shakespeare inside you that writes in a completely different style of communicates.
Differently than you actually talk. You don't need that. You actually want them to be very similar. It's actually the most engaging type of writing is when you feel like the author's just talking to having a conversation with you specifically and so right like you talk is a good good method, but it also reveals. If you can't even talk about it. You're not ready to run it yet. You got to First be able to like explain it just in plain language
yourself what I tell my team, so they'll like right this huge thing and asked me to read it and I'm like, I don't really want to read this just tell me what it means and they'll say in one sentence I go. Okay, cool. That's your first sentence.
And that's probably all you need to say for this thing. But like there's a few ways to figure out what not to do one is you go to people's LinkedIn if they use the word utilize that's probably not good. Have you ever heard? Someone say they utilize or they did like, what are other like LinkedIn? Jargon Lincoln's
like that's a so good. We should make a LinkedIn hit list of just bullshit words that nobody ever says what people think it's okay to
right? Yeah. It's like dude. I've never heard you use that word utilize, right? The second thing to remember is
Is informal is rather informal can be professional a lot of times people think informal is the opposite of professional and I actually say that's that's nonsense and I'm going to actually show examples of how that's not true in in a few minutes. But another good line that I think about is it was Stephen King. He says it anywhere you have to hunt in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There's no exceptions to this Rule and so like if you have to like look up like what a word means you don't use it. You want to use the words that most
Everyone uses and I'm going to again I'm going to show you examples of really complicated stuff explained in a really simple way. Like here's a really good example of writing like you talk. So one of my favorite pieces of writing is Louis c.k. So Louis c.k. About 10 or 15 years ago. He used to release his own specials like on his website. And if you Google Louis c.k. Neville Medora or something like that, you'll see my friend Neville wrote a blog post about some of his stuff because it's actually not up anymore. But he's got this great line in one of his b he says or one of his landing pages. She goes, please.
Please don't tour it the Special if you want to share direct people here. It's so easy just to drop five dollars. We don't make you join anything. We let you download any file you want it cost a shitload of money to make these specials and I do it myself. I love offering it to you directly for so cheap and so easily and I would like for that to continue being a good idea. That's a great simple way just to say don't steal and it makes me feel I'm like, all right, you're right. This is I should go bye-bye. This you are exactly right. There was no jargon simple
language. Yeah 100%
Agree, I also think that you know, this also works for choosing what to write about. So for example, sometimes people will write about shit that they would never talk to you about. We had this problem early on at the milk road. So when we did the milk road I was the initial writer. So I created the initial voice and milk Road was a newsletter that we built in the crypto space and we went from zero subscribers and never have written a daily newsletter before to the biggest crypto newsletter in the world and sold it for millions of dollars that and one year. So that was the the success out.
So how do we actually do it and more importantly? How did I train other people to write it instead of me? Because I didn't want to wake up every morning and stress about sending this email out at 5 a.m. To you know, a couple hundred thousand people that that was not the idea of a good life for me. So I was like, let me see if I can train people to do this one of the hacks to training people to do this was I was like God, I feel like the writing this both with too much extra fluff and jargon and secondly, they're writing about stuff that's kind of boring. So like the topic is boring like what's happening. I was like and I told you I was like, I feel like
you would never just tell me about this if I was just talking to you if I was your boyfriend and you were like, oh did you hear what happened today? Which is what a news what a new what the news is trying to tell you, right? Hey, did you hear what happened today? This crazy thing happened this interesting thing happened. This big event happened. I was like you're running my stuff that wouldn't even make that filter. You won't even tell me about it. So why are you doing this? So what I have them do is like forget writing a draft and having me be the editor and said I want you to send me a voice memo no more than 60 seconds in the morning, which is basically
did you hear what happened today? This guy said this thing and people are freaking out because of blah blah blah and this announcement was made and people think it's going to be a big deal in the price is going to go up because that would mean this and as soon as they started doing that I was like, yep, that sounds perfect just write that down and it just was such a good filter and so one way to think about what to write about and how to write it is do this little kind of voice memo test. So, can you just if you were just to tell your friend about this, you know, hey, I have this idea bubble blah or you know, I noticed this thing.
Found a really interesting because blah blah blah and if you can't if it's not interesting to your friend guess what it's not going to be interesting to a stranger right? Like you have to be able to explain it in a way that's simple and use that as a filter if you would never talk about it don't write about it.
Well and the the tip that I used to give so when I saw the hustle because of 2 million subscribers, I believe and for New Riders they would they like would kick ass in their audition and then they would get nervous like when they're I'm like, yeah two minds a lot of people I get it but here's the tip, right
To me right to Sam just literally you're only writing to me and that's what I tell people when they're writing blog posts when the writing anything else just write to one person. You're only writing to one human being it's just coincidence that many others might read it but just the only right to one one person direct it to that one person and that's the way to go. And so it makes it a lot easier right? Let's go to let's go to write simply what I've found is around you can go as low as fourth grade, but around 6th 7th and 8th grade reading level.
Is the way that you want to right now, there's this app called Hemingway app. I love that app. I don't really have to use it too much anymore. But it's a free thing. It's Hemingway app.com you could put your writing in there and I prefer to keep my stuff around 62 seventh grade now to give you guys perspective. I think USA news.com USA news the newspaper. I believe that's enough fourth grade reading level New York Times, which is highly regarded by a lot of people. That's at a 7th grade reading level and I actually went and put Warren Buffett Warren Buffett writes about insurance companies.
A very complicated topic I went and put his stuff to Hemingway app as well. Same thing sixth seventh eighth grade reading level and it teaches you how to write at that level and there's tactics on how to do that. Like don't use adverbs keep sentences short a Hemingway app is an awesome way to check data check to do it for you.
Yeah, I think that's a great one. Another one that you wrote in here is about storytelling and so I think storytelling is now like kind of in the more advanced a little more advanced category of how to be a great writer is being
To use use The Art of Storytelling. Do you want to give an example of that or how do you want to talk about storytelling here?
So here's an example of Storytelling. So about 10 years ago. There was this company called hint hint water. It's you see it's like a beverage that you guys see in the stores. It's called and the lady named Cara she had this great source. She went and gave this talk at one of my events and there was at the very end. There was one question that someone asked her and I heard that story and of the 60 Minute talk.
Talk I was like, oh that's a that's a hit is that just made me feel something. I'm going to give you an example of this story. So the headline was getting called sweetie help this entrepreneur create a multimillion-dollar business sweetie, the executive said and I just dropped the phone for a minute and let and here's the the opening line last we get piece of pizza and 40s Kara hit the founder Kara golden to find a pint told me a story that fired me up the set of goes like this and it explains the story about how she was drinking 10 coax a day. She was on the phone with an executive of Coca-Cola, and she said I'm going
Create a new version of water that just has a little bit of fruit in it and no sugar an executive at Coco's listed sweetie. America's love sweet. This is never going to work.
By the way. That's a great example of working backwards from an emotion. Even if you didn't consciously do it in this case you you knew that story would hit because it has outraged it has a WTF has outraged OMG. Yeah type of reaction of
light and like your wrongful, but let me fill you in on the results. So I wrote the blog post not in order to promote hit.
I wrote the blog post because I thought this was just a cool story of a this entrepreneur getting like is a sexist moment and she was getting hated on whatever hints all the article they ended up spending millions of dollars to promote this article and at the very bottom of the article and it says something like this conversation inspired golden now 17 liters 17 years later to found hint and they do 100 million in sales. Here's the flavors. They have this article made them tens of millions of dollars in sales. We used to get so much.
Traffic to this article because they ended up promoting it I wasn't selling hit water. I was just telling a cool story about the founder and in exchange it made all these people want to buy this stuff. And if in fact if you Google it water sweetie article, you'll see articles written about this article about how it was a huge success and this was sort of an accident. I just wrote something cool and they actually were like, oh, let's promote this but it worked wonderfully because it was a story that grab your
attention. You want to say a few words on how to how to write a great story. I have a couple of tips.
Yes, you do it so a couple of tips on writing a great story or telling a great story. So go look at the greatest storytellers ever. One of them is Aaron Sorkin. He's known for writing great dialogue. He wrote You Know The Social Network movie. He wrote. What is it West Wing, he wrote The Newsroom great writer famous famous Hollywood writer. He says I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. So what he says is a story is just two things. Somebody has an intention.
Somebody wants something and there's an obstacle in
their way. By the way that line I worship at blank
altar at the altar of like
blank. Yeah. So yeah that is going into my
bank your bank. All right, so so intention and obstacle intention is some character wants something and then there's an obstacle in the way the more they want it like their daughter was just taken hostage huge huge intention obstacle They Don't Know by who or where
they are and all they have to go on is this one five-second call that they were on or whatever right? Like obstacle. They have no way to find them in there. Just a Dad. How are they going to ever, you know, get their daughter back and so intention an obstacle is the core element of any good story. So somebody wants something in the case that you just said not only does Cara want to make her a business successful. She wants to be taken seriously as a female entrepreneur obstacle.
Coke executive men are pigs nobody believes in her right? That's a core and that's a core of a story and so any story if you can't they always say like in a movie you should be able to pause at any moment of any story and say what does that character want and what's in their way and if you can't pause a name that right now you have failed as a Storyteller because their audience you think they're you're going to tell them later. What the hell they want. No, no, you've lost their attention that the initial States and if you watch any movie, they establish this right? I don't even like silly rom-coms. It'll be
She wakes up. She's got her assistant and chauffeur driving her to work. She's clearly high-powered but her but she's alone and she's doesn't have a relationship right like that. It'll be it'll be obvious to her. She'll see somebody out the window while she's driving to work and her chauffeured limousine and it's this girl in love with her boyfriend and she looks at it kind of longingly and then she just goes back to her her Palm Pilot or whatever before it back to work. And so, you know what the character wants and you know, what's in her way. She's she doesn't have somebody because she has to find the right guy and she's so busy with work.
It's everything is always this intention obstacle. The second thing is you have to establish. Like how do you make a story Better or Worse Stakes is the next thing so what is at stake? What do you have to lose? If this doesn't go well and steaks doesn't like steaks initially. The beginner version Stakes is life or death, but the true art and some if you like some of the stories I've told on this podcast. The true art is when you can establish this high-stakes emotions in a low stakes environment. So if I can tell you
How I was feeling and if I can get you to believe that I thought everything was on the line just with some little interaction. I was having with the like this person in the grocery store line and how I didn't want them to win because fuck them and they can't cut they cut in front of me, but I'm not going to I'm not going to cut in front of them, but I need them to know that it wasn't okay, but I don't know how to do it without being an asshole myself. And if I can establish the stakes that this matters to me I can get you to care about the outcome of it, but it can be in a low-stakes situation. Now, you're really cooking with gas if you can do something like that because otherwise
Why's your limited to just life-or-death Stories
the best example you have done of that? You're very good at this is I distinctly remember the story of you do it you doing a shirtless workout on your driveway and your HOA be like no, we can't have a senior like we're going to Petty Court you're going to hoi. Like I just that was
a glorious go or I can fight to the death as a matter of principle here because you know, what, are you trying to say? And what does this mean right and
Means something to me that I can make it mean something to use that sort of thing.
So Larry David's great at this to like whenever I watch that show Curb Your Enthusiasm like they're making a story out of something so silly and small, you know, like
it's 10 times more likable when it's something relatable or small but it still carries the emotional impact and if you could do that, if you have an infinite supply of
stories, he notices that people don't talk people. Don't talk to someone if they're wearing a Maga hat. It's always starts with a mega hat all the time. He's like, I know what I want to talk to me. I'm just gonna wear this hat. Yeah, but that's
A really good example of a high stakes high stakes and a low stakes environment where like then really matter, but it's very funny and then let's talk about really tactical stuff. So short sentences. I'm a firm believer in short sentences. And so the I'll give you explain why but Warren Buffett owns, you know runs Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire owns dozens and dozens of companies. Are you believe the most complicated one is Geico insurance companies are very very very hard to understand. However,
I don't remember if the hustle did analysis on this or someone else did but he writes these famous annual shareholder letters every single year. He's a very good writer and listen to this.
From 1974 to 2013 someone analyze this and the letters or sorry the words per sentence dropped from 17 to 13. If you look at like we actually did an analysis on this every year it gets shorter and shorter and shorter and the reading level dropped from a 10th grade to a fourth grade reading level. So the Richer he got and the more complicated his business has got the simpler the writing got because he just got better at explaining it in a really easy to understand way and he's probably one.
It's kind of somewhat the average show to be able to understand this.
And so short simple sentences are key even in complicated environments and here's a really good example. So if you go to hey.com, so hey.com is an alternative to Gmail. It's a it's a service that makes you pay though. So it's even the they've raised the stakes there. So you have to pay for their see mail. There's a letter from the CEO and that's one of my favorite like tactics by the way in a sales page is letter from the CEO and he says, hey everyone, I'm Jason CEO of 37signals email gets a bad rap.
But it shouldn't emails a treasure and he goes on to explain why email is awesome and why it should be more special than it is and it's the most simple language to explain email and I love it and there's lots of examples of simple language and simple ways to explain complicated things. And if you're able to do that often times, they will have shorter sentences less words and it's significantly more effective than longer stuff.
Related to that. It doesn't have to be only one length. So there's this great graphic that's gone. Viral many times. You probably seen it but I'll share it. Anyways, we'll put it up on YouTube because it's a visual thing. You gotta see
this the the Rhythm thing
the Rhythm thing which is great writing has Rhythm. So there's a example so I'll just read this out loud. It goes this sentence has five words. Here are five more words five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous listen to what is happening just writing is getting boring the sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record.
Your demand some variety now. Listen, I vary the sentence length and I create music music the writing sings. It has a pleasant Rhythm a lilt a Harmony. I use short sentences and I use sentences of medium length and sometimes when I'm certain that the reader is rested. I will engage in with a sentence of considerable length as sentence that burns with energy and builds with the impetus of Crescendo the role of the drums of Crash of the symbols and sounds that's a listen to this. This is important. So right with a combination of short medium and long sentences.
Create music great sound that pleases the readers ears. Don't just write words write music.
That I love that thing that is amazing. Right and so you want to have short by default but then like he says when the reader is rested and ready use a long sentence to great effect. And so that's like Advanced move when it comes to writing most people's problem is everything every sentence is too long and so start with short sentences, but then you figure out how to vary it so that you're writing sings
whatever. I sometimes want to write something that I get really into. I am humble. I almost feel like I'm like I Channel like my inner Eminem or like some rapper or something where I'm like what type of Rhythm could get people flowing
like I need to have a rhythm that gets people to fall down in the sand like they're small tactics like any time you want to use a comma use a period and then start the next sentence with and or but or there's other things like put your internal dialogue like or like or or the readers internal dialogue like so why would I do this? You're asking yourself right now, right or who the hell is this person talking to me through my computer screen telling me what to do and why on Earth should I trust them like you can do these little things to change?
To the Rhythm and grab people's attention.
Yeah 100% that's a great way of putting it. I also think like the Rhythm thing is it comes from the copy work. So back to the copy work at the beginning. If you do copy work on something that has Rhythm like I will write that that same thing that I just read out loud. I'll write that in my copy work takes whatever 55 seconds. But now I'm already kind of revved up to write that style to have that variety that Rhythm when I write the next thing
so we wrap up I
I'm saying some resources that we both used in order to get
influenced. Yeah. Yeah, how do you learn how to get better from here? Because this was the crash course just hit on a bunch of bunch of the big topics is obviously a lot of nuance and subtlety and like doing it takes both practice as well as like a little bit of deeper understanding but where should people go.
So what I'll start with some some books that I like I like on writing by Stephen King that changed my life. I like that one a lot and what they like about more by the way, I read that book. I didn't love it. Well, what was so good about it. I just
Felt that he was teaching me how to write better and but he was living it as he was going. And so the first half of the book I believe is his biography and the second half is tool he calls it to the toolkit where he explains like how he does stuff and I just felt in the biography part he was doing it and then the aunt in the toolkit part shows you what did you mean? Yeah. And so I really appreciate that but then I also get a lot of inspiration from funny original thinkers, you know, who is one of the most original like people with words right now is Theo Von so I'll here Theo Von like for example
ample he had an ad for athletic greens and he goes today's sponsors athletic greens. I know what you think and what is this just a bunch of aliens playing track and field and like like he does he like silly things back to it unexpected silly things and he's like a treasure Trove of like interesting phrases. So I'm a big fan of like listening to what he's saying and why I also listened to a ton of comedians because they've perfected this so like Dave Chappelle's really great with timing Shane Gillis really good with timing and so I pay attention.
Gentle of those guys on how they get people's attention. So I like on writing. I like CEO of on I listen to a lot of True Crime podcasts and True Crime podcast because they're supposed to be thrilling. They are excellent at storytelling and setting up tension. And so I love there's this company called Park asked they've got serial killers unsolved murders and I really love how they set up tension. What do you like?
I like a lot of those same things. You said. I also like to consume them in a different way. So I think everybody likes Dave Chappelle or let me see.
Okay, but you know when I wanted to get good at this I started to study what they do not just laugh and move on right so I would there's an amazing amazing thing on what I think is the I have two two things. I've learned from comedians. I think are the best examples of both storytelling to win people on your side and of apologizing. So the apologizing one is after Louis c.k. Got cancelled basically disappeared for like a year and a half and he came back and he did his first show on stage and there's a big question. I met my head. It's like how is he going to
To address this what's he say? You people should not listen to it in full, but basically first he doesn't address he's doing his normal Act.
Any pauses just in the middle of like doing a thing and he's just like so should we talk about it? We got it. We can talk about it and he just brings up like in the makes it awkward because like what he did was like weird and pretty gross and bad whatever. It hits me. What he did was instead of back pedaling in apologizing instead of denying instead of trying to spin it as good. He was like
Everybody's got a thing. Some people's feelings are weirder than others, but ever he's got a thing that they like
Barack Obama knows my thing. It's like my thing is so weird that I liked and did and everybody knows about it. And he kind of wins you on his side like just the committee that idea of even Obama knows my thing like everybody's got a thing but it's secret usually and so then he goes and he he there's more to it. But he does that Chappelle does one win when they took the Chappelle show. They put it on Netflix, and he wasn't getting any royalties from Easy.
Man, they're using my name. They're putting my show up there. I have a fight with these guys and my fans are watching it. And Netflix is winning in the Studio's. Everyone's winning except for Chappelle from the Chappelle show, right? So he goes on stage. He does his 20-minute thing called. I think it's called unforgivable or Unforgiven or something like that.
I'm going to do a full you should break down of this because it is to me it is like the master class in how do you tell a story to when people on your side it is so well done II I can't even do it just jump into a full breakdown of like what I think he did that was so smart and I have studied this thing and I've been like I can't believe like I would have never come up with this as a way to make that point to get people at the end to be totally on his side and willing to like boycott the show. How did he get people to do that? And the way he told the story
Where he's not giving you a lecture, he's not just coming out and saying it outright. He kind of baked it in at the end, but he set the setup was so strong that he there's only one outcome you could have it's amazed that led you to one door, which is I'm on Dave side. I'm gonna do exactly what this guy just said and to me when I saw that I was like that was the best example I've ever seen of using storytelling for Mass persuasion.
I II want to go watch that another person. I love have you ever read Joel on software Jolan software.com
Yeah, you're going to use your pal to Joel the Vigor of Trello.
Nice. Dude. I know that that like sounds ridiculous, but I think he's this like nerdy guy who has started. I think stack Overflow and Trello all these like companies dude. His blogs are very funny on the dorkiest topics. Like I don't even understand a lot of the topics because it's like heavy engineering. He does such a good job of writing on these topics. I loved what I one of my favorite things to do is find the top post on
Good news, because typically these engineering types of people are particularly quirky and they kind of like think outside the
box a weird way sure day. I don't know if you saw yesterday. There's a great one of every example this some guy wrote the Kroger app sucks or something like that and it was like the number 15 thing on Hacker News, I click it and it's this like 10,000 word blog post about Kroger's technology exists. Like he's like, I like Kroger crores the biggest grosser in the world and he's like they
Should be good at technology. They've all the money and they have the customers. They have all the locations like they should not be getting their their you know, their ass handed to them by instacart and these other like startups. He's like look at this you open the Kroger app, and it doesn't like you swipe. It doesn't he's like the whole internet is if you swipe it'll load more stuff for Kroger. If you want to swipe to see more products, it stops you and there's this tiny button that says like next page if your page after page doesn't just load. He's like that's terrible a sigh. Here's this other thing any roads like 10,000.
Things like nerding out about the Kroger app and I loved it. I read every word of it. I was like this is it is incredible nerdery right here. I love this thing.
He's got a great opening line. He says I'll start by saying I know nothing about the grocery industry, but what I do know about is tech and ux and so that's a great way to like kind of get people down. You're slippery slope, but this is a really good article
and I love leaving that this is particularly good writing, but what I would say is that this is effective writing because the best riding the biggest lesson of it. All is that you
You want your content to just be you pushed out? I think everybody thinks they have to like become some character in order for their content to hit to work to be to be a man to be a popular whatever and you could kind of do that and you might even get some popularity, but it'll never work in the long run because it's not you being you and those people are attracted to something. That's not your actual brain your actual thoughts. It's you
to go with that very clack by baby. You gotta let it fly and
why that's how this podcast worked is like that started with this interview format.
Emulates almost a copyright because I emulating the Tim Ferriss show or how I built this or whatever but then when it was just this me push Downs like I'm gonna get on here. We're going to talk about some days about writing and some days about mindset some days about this Niche business that's you know, tire rims in North Carolina. That's crushing it. It's like that's the shit. I'm into so that's the shit I talked about. That's the thing. I'm most passionate about that's the thing. I can I have the most interesting things to say about and because of that it's just me pushed out and then it's going to attract people who really like that and nobody can compete with me at that.
Thing right like that. That is a personal Monopoly. There is nobody else who could do what I'm doing as well as I'm doing it you can do the same thing with your writing. So just take the stuff you're most interested in or nerd out about the most and post that even if it seems like it does anyone else really care about this, you'll find the people that care about it. If you just consistently do that,
which is what this episode is. We're talking about a topic that you and I actually care a ton about and I guess we're going to find out if the rest care about it, but it will find those who do next time for the next.
What are we calling this questionable advice this next time are we doing business plans? I think
yeah, we're doing a one on the next question advice which is we've kind of laugh at like, oh, you don't need write a business plan that's archaic. But like we do do some version of planning before we just start a business. So we're going to share what do we actually do in our planning before we start a business that we found is effective for us. So that will be the next one.
So we and we each got the plug our thing, although I think your thing is no longer a thing.
Yeah, but I've been
Fired by doing this I'm like, I want to tell people about this. It actually looks I have I have a course that does this but I have a ton of examples the examples are actually what's valuable because you might hear some of the things we talked about you like. I'm going to look that up. I got to look that up look at it. But in the course that we put it all there around like here's the principle. Here's the example. You don't actually it's principal you try it then it's here's the example of it done. Well another example of it done. Well another example of done. Well try it again. And literally if you just do that, you'll get better as a writer that's like a structured form of
So my course it does so much me talking about it was that and I'm like if somebody actually wanted to learn that you kind of need that you kind of need to have those gold star examples and you need to have like a place to go practice like try it learn it then try it again.
So I just Googled Chomper E power writing it takes me to Maven and you can join the waitlist. Is that where people should go?
Yeah, but I'm going to put it back up. So I have this waitlist. It's Kyle. I don't know. It's got a lot of people on I think but I should I haven't done it in like a year and a half. I kind of like retired from it, but this episode made me fired up about it. So maybe that'll fade in.
In an hour, I'll be like no fuck that. I'm not doing it. But if not, I'll do one more one more of these is here
and then I have a thing only on copy work. I love copy work. It changed my life. I got this think I made it like in a weekend two years ago just for shits and giggles because I just I like it. It's fun for me. It's called copy that.com and it's my best versions of what I think people should write and copy and then you copy it by hand and I break down why each point is interesting so you can check it out copy that it's
Ton of good reviews. You can actually I actually try to post all the negative reviews and the positive reviews so you can see all the reviews. Let's copy that.com. So Google Sean / E power writing and you'll see his page hunt Maven.com and then copy that document put
them both in my description. So it'll be at the top of the description here will put the links to the to the things we talked about in this episode because I think if you're listening to this you're driving or walking it's very hard and we're usually not that good with show notes. But today. Alright, let's try to be a good with the show notes where all the resources we talked about.
Let's make it easy and put it put it there for people so they can just scroll down and get it. Do you like about the thousand people on the wait list for the course? I didn't even I haven't looked at this in so long. This was like 500 last time I looked
That's crazy.
You should do that again, right?
It's actually too many. I don't think I could do something people at once some pretty like I'm live with them and I'm like doing student feedback. So that would be I don't think that's even doable like I couldn't possibly do even I've never the biggest one of every was like 400. So 8,000 people is just not gonna work.
You'll figure it out. Is that the
Pod it's fun. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all into it.
The Road Less Traveled never looking back
