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My First MillionThe 3-Step Writing Framework That Helped Us Build +$10M Newsletters
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EVERY SPOKEN WORD
65 min read · 13,454 words- 0:00 – 2:50
Intro
- SPShaan Puri
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, too. I, I, 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'll definitely make you a better writer. That's my promise. You will be a better writer in the next 60 minutes. [upbeat music] This week somebody asked us a question. They said, "Hey, I really love your guys' writing. [smacks lips] I don't know why I have trouble with writing, and, uh, 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 writer?" So me and Sam sat down, and we wrote down all of our secrets about how we've, we've used writing to grow our careers.
- SPSam Parr
Which by, by, by, 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 what we've been great at is getting results from it. Would you agree?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, that's right. I don't think... I don't look at my stuff, I'm 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, I, I feel confident in that after, you know, trying for 15 years, and both of us have, have done it, right? So the credibility here, you know, before you ever listen to 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 little short sentences to, you know, a million-person audience between the two of us. Um, you know, I've sold maybe $20 million worth of product online in the e-commerce world just through email. Um, we both have taught writing courses or in some form or fashion. You know, I used to charge $1,000 a seat for my class, and it was the highest-rated class on Maven. But here today, you get the quick version for free. We're charging you nothing, except for there is one thing they gotta do. What's the, what do they have to do? It, this is free, right, Sam?
- SPSam Parr
It's totally free except for one thing. You have to subscribe. So whether you're listening on Apple, on Spotify, wherever you're listening, or if you're already on YouTube, you just gotta click that button. We spend 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.
- SPShaan Puri
We can't-
- SPSam Parr
That's all we want
- SPShaan Puri
... we can't 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, uh-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... we, we just trust that you're gonna 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, you know, uh, twice as good or three times as good as their writing? I believe that that is possible if they actually do these things. Where do you wanna start, Sam?
- SPSam Parr
So let's start with before you guys start writing. And so someone asked us, "Why write?" Or someone asked us, "How do you get better at writing?" I actually wanna change it to why you should even care about being a better writer. And so there's a few bullet
- 2:50 – 7:00
Why not how - Persuasion at scale
- SPSam Parr
points that we have. So the first being is this is the most self-serving thing, but I wanna say it upfront. It's persuasion in the most scalable way. The reason I got into writing was I was, uh, selling street meat, hot dogs, on the side of the road.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
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 copywriting. 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-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... a girl to give me 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?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, that's, that's the first one. The second one is, is more internal and wholesome, right? Some people are like, "Ah, I don't know if I wanna do persuasion." Truth is you do. Any- anything you're, anything you're trying to make happen, you're usually gonna need to persuade either, uh, people to come join your company, customers, partners, whatever it is. The second one is to write clearly, you must think clearly, and the reverse is true, too. If you wanna be a great thinker, you wanna have clarity of thought, writing is a essential tool for that. So writing is a forcing function for you to be able to think clearly. Um, you can't hide behind bad writing. [laughs] Bad ri- bad writing will show bad thinking, uh, whereas if you have great thinking and you write, it'll come through. And so writing is this, uh, it's a truth-teller potion. It will reveal how clear your thinking is. And the r- 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 are you actually trying to say, what are the ideas. But it also works to not just communicate ideas but to generate them. I think Paul Graham said this, and I, it was 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, uh, 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.
- SPSam Parr
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 writing 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, where you can hide bad thinking? In a PowerPoint.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Now, that doesn't mean that your ideas in long writing are gonna 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 writing creates new ideas, uh, I think, like you said, Paul Graham said it best. He has this great blog post he wrote in 2005. He said something like, um- 80% of your writing will be bad, and then you'll have to cut, cut it down to the 20% that's good. And when you start writing, you'll probably generate 50% more new ideas.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And 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 i- i- it evolves your idea and your thinking. All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team, I mean I'm the one who actually made it. So I've got this company called Hampton, you can check it out, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these like interesting questions, and then we'll put it in a survey and I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. And the hard
- 7:00 – 8:00
To write clearly, you must think clearly
- SPSam Parr
part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a, a higher end customer, sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates, that's what we use, we just change the colors a little bit to match our brand, very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it, and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that. Do less of that." And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it, but you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right, now back to MFM.
- SPShaan Puri
And we've all seen Jeff Bezos ban PowerPoint from Amazon. He realized that Amaz- uh, PowerPoint was this thing
- 8:00 – 11:30
Begin with the end in mind
- SPShaan Puri
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, uh, he forced everybody instead to write long, long form memos, basically narratives. And he's like, "I- in the long form written word, there's no place to hide. There's no way to use design or p- good presentation skills to, uh, to make it seem like this is more well thought through than it is. It either is or it isn't, and you'll, you'll find out." So I, I think it works inside of companies as well as it does out externally to your customers and potential customers. So all right, 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 s- I always say you wanna begin with the end in mind. What I mean by this is I s- 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 Quigley, but he was a, um, just this character. He came to town in San Francisco from, from the UK, and he was, uh, he host- he had an ad agency. And his ad agency did 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 kinda 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 him, I go, "What's your hit rate? Like, you know, out of every 100 videos you do, how many go viral? One, two, three videos out of 100?" And he's like, "No, if we do 10 videos, eight or nine will go viral."
- SPSam Parr
Really?
- SPShaan Puri
And I was like, "What?" And he's like, "Well, for two reasons." And he said, "Number one, we have a large blog audience, so we, we can guarantee the first like hundred thousand views, like it will get seen. It won't 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 makes sure it gets a chance." He goes, "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, he created this thing that he had like LOL, WTF, OMG, aw, like, you know something so cute, uh, heartwarming. And so he's like, "These are the only emotions that you can tap into." There's like seven or eight emotions that 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." Oh, WTF outrage, uh, you know, I'll give you an example of one that I just saw yesterday. Elon Musk tweeted out this thing that was, uh, some hidden b- 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 into the bill."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"They're trying to pass this on page 140. They're trying to slip this right under your nose without telling anybody, and they're gonna try to impeach Trump if he got elected and tried to stop, tried to s- you know, if he got peace in the m- in, in the, in the Ukraine and stop the spending, he could be up for impeachment." And of course, the post goes super viral 'cause it's outrage. It's outrage from the Democrats, it's outrage from the Republicans. That is engineered to go viral. And so similarly, Chris used to have a search engine. He, he used to be able... 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 would brainstorm. And so I stole this, and I would start
- 11:30 – 13:30
Headlines not outlines
- SPShaan Puri
with, I 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 do 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 takeaway, one sentence, what would it be? What would I pick out of the whole thing that I just wrote? Because people remember sentences, not books, and so you have to think about that. So tho- I always begin with the end in mind. I decide those before I ever write a word. Do you do something similar?
- SPSam Parr
I do the exact same thing, and typically I start with a headline, and I start with a subheadline. So if you share on Facebook, the headline's the big text, the subheadline is the 180-character thing underneath that. Oftentimes I go back and I recha- and I change the headline a ton, but that one sentence, what I call the subheadline, that doesn't change, and that one sentence is what helps, like, clarify what I'm gonna write.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
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, I guess I, I guess it's okay [laughs] to teach that, but I don't use outlines anymore, and my outline instead is that one subheadline. Um, that's what I use.
- SPShaan Puri
A- in fact, you, you brought up a good point, which is to be a great writer in the world, like, as an adult on the internet-
- SPSam Parr
The internet world, yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... 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, "A minimum of this word count." So they're trying to get you, "You must write at least this length," and they're trying to get you to, like, so people are writing long words and double-spacing their thing and trying to, like, add a bunch of filler and fluff. Well, you gotta do the exact opposite when you write on the internet. You wanna be concise, you wanna be quick, you wanna eliminate a bunch of the fluff. Shorter is better on the internet in terms of adding just extra cruft, but when you're in school they almost force you and teach you to write these long-form things. They also want you to write
- 13:30 – 16:30
Warmup with copywork
- SPShaan Puri
fa- fancy w- fancy vocabulary. So you're, you get bonus points if you use, you know, uh, ameliorate rather than, you know, heal or help or whatever. And, and so y- you're r- rewarded for using fancy words, but the reality is you wanna be writing at a, at a very, like, accessible language if you w- uh, reading level if you want to do well on the internet. So, you know, both you and I, we target kinda like fifth to eighth grade reading levels, and you could use these tools, these checkers. Like Hemingway is an app that you could use where you could put in your text and it'll tell you, "You're writing at a 12th grade level," or, "You're writing at a fifth grade level," and the lower the better [laughs] is better on the internet.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, and in the, in the second half of this episode, let's go through all those, like, tips and tricks.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
Um, in terms of, in terms of writing, my process is I, I do copywork, then I draft, then I incubate, and then I edit. So what that means is copywork is the same way... It's this old technique that people have learned how to write. Um, we don't do it anymore, but I found it to be the most effective way. I, I sat 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 copywork is basically when you take write- writing that you love, it could be a, a full book, it could be a script for SNL if you wanna learn how to write comedy, it could be a blogger that you like. When I'm writing an important piece, I will 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 helps me get into the flow.
- SPShaan Puri
So we, we, w- what we said was before you've written a word, y- like most people just sit down and they start trying to write. What we've told you is do two different things instead. Begin with the end in mind, the, you know, the, what is the action, the reaction you want, and what's the h- what would be the headline that would grab somebody? And then the second thing Sam's saying is you don't just jump in. Like, uh, you know, if you're gonna go do a workout, you don't just go start sprinting right away. You warm up.
- SPSam Parr
I do warmup sets, yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
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 wanna almost, like, through osmosis just steal their little writing juju. It's gonna go into your brain. You'll start to talk like them, write like them if you do this. And you literally write word for word-
- SPSam Parr
Yes
- SPShaan Puri
... exactly what they said. It's even more effective if you hand write it, but at worst type it. But you wanna... Don't, don't think, don't add your own stuff, don't improve it. Just literally write 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 to do I don't do. I still do this today. And Sam, you don't know this, I use one of your posts as one of my... I have, like, three go-tos.
- SPSam Parr
Really? [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
One of yours is one that I use for my copywork. It's this one-
- SPSam Parr
Which one?
- SPShaan Puri
... where you... I forgot the name of the blog, but it's, it... I always search for it with the same headline, which is, uh, "Let Me Be Perfectly Clear. You're Reading This Because I Wa- Because I Want You To." Um, and you're like, "I have engineered the start of this to-"
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And you're, and you basically talk-
- SPSam Parr
It's done
- SPShaan Puri
... about how you've mesmerized them. You're like, "Every word of this was chosen, every sentence, to lead you to the next sentence."
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And I love that. It's, uh, the, c- we call it the slippery slope. And so you, uh, I use one of yours whenever I wanna write, like, in a really persuasive copyrighty way. If I wanna write more, like, business serious, then I have a different one. I use
- 16:30 – 17:30
Draft fast, incubate slow
- SPShaan Puri
this one that-
- SPSam Parr
Right
- SPShaan Puri
... the, the CEO of Slack did where he wrote an internal memo that I really like called We Don't Sell Saddles Here. But you literally just write it word for word. So that's your warmup. So again, two things before you ever write your own stuff.
- SPSam Parr
It's exactly like playing music, okay? So if you're, whether... 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, this genre, this genre. I'm gonna combine it to my own thing." Same way where you're writing a new song, you kinda warm up maybe playing The Beatles, and then eventually you're like, "All right. I'm in the mood-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... to write something beautiful."
- SPShaan Puri
Or cooking.
- SPSam Parr
"This is what I'm gonna do."
- SPShaan Puri
You take someone's recipe and you make their recipe-
- SPSam Parr
Exactly
- SPShaan Puri
... before you go make your own thing. You play a cover before you write your own songs. Same way. You do copywork before you write your own stuff.
- SPSam Parr
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 h- and here's why. Because after the drafting step is the incubation
- 17:30 – 20:00
Great writing is great editing
- SPSam Parr
period. You know, like, um, have you ever heard of, like, the phrase, like, 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, what it's called, but it's like when you're out riding a bike and you're out going for a walk where 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 that 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 g- the last part and the most important part is. Uh, Ogilvy, one of my favorite writers. What's his first name?
- SPShaan Puri
David.
- SPSam Parr
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, happens. Stephen King calls it killing your darlings. He says when... The, the editing phase is where all the great stuff happens, and this is actually where the gold happens, and 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?
- SPShaan Puri
100%. You... I learned this from you, uh, the incubate part. So I used to draft and then try to edit in the same session 'cause 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 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, e-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. Oh, 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 'cause like you, like you said, I used to be a over-thinker drafter, where I would overthink how much I need to, how much time to spend on the draft phase. So I'd try to make a good draft. Bad idea. You actually just wanna have a, 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'd get fatigued, and I'd feel bad about it, and I'd be like, "I hate this. This is stupid. Should I even do this?" And all the doubts creep in. And then I would try to edit right away.
- 20:00 – 22:00
Build your swipe file
- SPShaan Puri
Now, short draft and then high energy edit after I have that incubation period. So this is, um, 100% what I do, and it is extremely effective.
- SPSam Parr
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-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- SPSam Parr
... see something else in the world and I'm like, "Oh, that reminds me of this concept I was-
- SPShaan Puri
Babe
- SPSam Parr
... I was thinking about."
- SPShaan Puri
Babe, wake up.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I figured it out. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
I figured out the CTA.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Is it weird if I sign off with, "Sayonara, suckers"?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Wait, what do you think about, "I love you," at the end?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Would that be a thing? [laughs] But I, I actually do. Like, well, I'll have, like, a n- a n- do you have, like, a notes app or a, a notes folder in your phone where it's like-
- SPShaan Puri
Oh
- SPSam Parr
... you just have, like, a sentence and you're like-
- SPShaan Puri
Oh
- SPSam Parr
... that's a beautiful sentence. I'm just... I don't, I don't know where I'm gonna use that, but that was a beautiful sentence. Or a lotta times I get it from podcasters or YouTubers. I'm like, "You h- you hear how he phrased that? That word a sh- that was a sharp phrase. That cut to me."
- SPShaan Puri
One of the things we didn't say in the before phase is having a swipe file. So-
- SPSam Parr
Oh, yes
- SPShaan Puri
... classic thing that all writers have and all marketers have, which is a swipe file. It's basically a stash. Whenever you see something dope, 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, "Ah, I need to make a landing page," and you would go and you'd look at your stash of great landing pages you've seen, and you would have so much inspiration right there ready for you at your fingertips 'cause you did the work beforehand. And so that's another one of the before, is you gotta have a swipe file. We, I have one for phrases, for headlines, for connecting words, for si- for hellos and goodbyes, 'cause for some reason whenever I would write my newsletter, I knew what I wanted to say, but the start always was so awkward. It was like, uh, "Hello," you know, "Hello there, friends." And I was like, "God, this sucks." And then I started keeping a, a, a file of, like, any time I liked an, liked an opener or a closer. So I have one openers file and one closers file, and I have a whole bunch in there-
- SPSam Parr
Me too
- SPShaan Puri
... that I could use to riff off of. 'Cause that, for whatever reason, that was my, my blocker
- 22:00 – 24:30
Don't bury the lead
- SPShaan Puri
when I would write.
- SPSam Parr
I, I'll just hear a beautiful phrase and I'll write it down. So, like, I went to this guy's website and, uh, 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."
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
And I was like, "Oh, in. Beautiful. That's mine."
- SPShaan Puri
Yes.
- SPSam Parr
And, like, I, I just have this whole bank of, like, these things of people saying, like, cute phrases that I'm like, "Oh, that's a beau- " 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, um, some more tips about talking about the actual writing part because I think that what you're taught in school, we're basically gonna say do the opposite-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... of a lot of it.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Right?
- SPShaan Puri
Here's, here's the mistakes. Common mistakes. Mistake number one: they start with a bunch of intro context, background fluff. Uh, you wrote a, 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, the bait, the hook at the top. So a- as an example, you have one here that when you, when you were building The Hustle, one of the things you tried to do was these viral blog posts. You were like, "I'm gonna write these blog posts. If I can get a million views on those blog posts, then, uh, you know, some percentage of them will subscribe, and that's how I'll grow my subscriber base."
- SPSam Parr
Right.
- SPShaan Puri
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 Soylent, here's the gist." A great opener, right? Because rather than saying, you know, um, you know, "The last few days have been, uh, you know, really tough for 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 nothing but Soylent. Why would I do something so stupid? Let me explain." Curiosity has been created, and now I wanna know.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. Typically, when you're thinking about the lead, so I've found it helps with a few things. One, if you're new, what I tell people is let me see your opener- Cut it in h- like cut almost all of it except for like the last couple sentences, and that's typically a good 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, a thesis statement where you have like a opening paragraph with a thesis at the bottom, point one, point two, point three, and then a closer?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
I'm like, just tell me your thesis statement
- 24:30 – 26:00
Create a curiosity gap
- SPSam Parr
right off the, right off... Like, s- just, just say that. Just punch me in the face with that. That should be your s- that should be your opening line. Another thing is I like to think of, um... Have you ever been to England, and have you ever noticed they have signs that say, "Mind the gap?"
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
I guess that's like when you're... I always say, "Mind the curiosity gap." So mind, uh, so what the curiosity gap means, I'm gonna g- I'm gonna punch you in the face to grab your attention, 'cause that gets you to fall down the slippery slope. And the more that you fall down that slope, the further you're gonna continue to read. And so I wanna grab your attention, but I don't wanna tell you exactly everything, but I wanna grab your attention by not burying the lead, and I'm gonna get you to fall down this slope a little further.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, the 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 know me, if I didn't care about me, if I didn't n- if I didn't have to read this, would I wanna read, would I need to read the next sentence?" Not would I need to read the whole thing, would I need to read the next sentence? If it's yes, you've created a curiosity gap. Then you drag your hand down. You reveal that next sentence. You say, "If I read this sentence, would I need to read the next sentence?" Right? "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-
- SPSam Parr
Yes
- SPShaan Puri
... and, and cr- and create a little bit of background, 'cause they're, they're ha- they're invested in getting to the end of the out- of the outcome. But like the reason this sounds so brutal where you're gonna cover up, it's like I'm gonna cover up 85, 90% of the text, yes. Because the reality is that's actually how the reader's eyes work. 80, 90% of people are only ever gonna read the headline. And if the headline's no good,
- 26:00 – 29:00
Write like you talk
- SPShaan Puri
they're never gonna 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. You're sort of doing your own ideas a disservice. And so you wanna find that line between like without completely whoring yourself out or making a false promise, still find a way to make it juicy enough where you've created that curiosity gap where I have to read the next sentence, and that's it.
- SPSam Parr
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, uh, but I say it in a sens- sensational or clicky way, we say clicky, it ain't bait if I actually deliver on the promise.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. Right.
- SPSam Parr
So I, I, I-
- SPShaan Puri
You have to pay it off. If you don't pay it off, then-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... then it's bad. But if you're paying it off and you're paying it off soon, you can't pay it off like, you know, 10 minutes later. You have to, you have to be able to do that. All right. Next one is write like you talk. So, so many times people are like, "I can't really wr- like, I'm not good at wr- I'm not a good writer." And again, n- "I'm not a good writer" is actually code for "I'm not a good thinker." And 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, write down literally what you just said. You don't have to have like this second character, this Shakespeare inside you that writes in a completely different style and communicates completely 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 you, having a conversation with you specifically. And so write 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 write it yet. You gotta first be able to like explain it just in plain language yourself.
- SPSam Parr
What I tell my team, so f- they'll like write this huge thing and ask 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. Um, and that's probably all you, you need to say for this thing." [laughs] Uh, but like there's a few ways to figure out what not to do. One is you go to people's, uh, LinkedIn. If they use the word utilize, that's probably not good.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Have you ever heard someone say they utilize or they did... Like, what are other, like, LinkedIn jargon?
- SPShaan Puri
Oh, yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
LinkedIn's like-
- SPShaan Puri
That's, that's so good. We should make a LinkedIn hit list of just, uh, bullshit words that nobody ever says but people think it's okay to write.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah, it's like, dude, I've never heard y- you use that word utilize.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
The, the second thing to remember is there's informal is c- or 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 gonna actually show examples of, of how that's not true in, in a few minutes. But an- and another good line that I think about is, uh, it was Stephen King. He says, "Any word you have to hunt in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There's no exceptions to this rule." Uh, and so like if you have to, like, look up, like, what a word means, you don't use it. You wanna use words that most everyone uses.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And I'm gonna, again, I'm gonna 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
- 29:00 – 31:30
The voice memo test
- SPSam Parr
specials like on his website. And if you Google Louis C.K. Neville Medhora or something like that, you'll see my friend Neville wrote a blog post about some of his stuff because it's, it's actually not up anymore. But he's got this great, uh, line in one of his bits, he says, or one of his landing pages. He goes, "Please, please don't torrent this special. If you wanna share it, direct people here. It's so easy just to drop $5. We don't make you join anything. We let you download any file you want. It costs a shitload of money to make these specials, and I do it myself. I love off- 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."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Uh, and it, and it, and that makes me feel. I'm like, all right. You're right. This is, I should abide by this. You are exactly right. There was no jargon, simple language.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, 100% agree. I also think that, uh, you know, uh, 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, a, 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, in one year. So that was the, the success outcome. So how did we actually do it? And more importantly, how did I train other people to write it instead of me? 'Cause I didn't wanna wake up every morning and stress about sending this email out at 5:00 AM 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, I was like, "God, I feel like they're writing this both with too much extra fluff and jargon, and secondly, they're writing about stuff that's kinda boring." So like the topic is boring. Like, what's happening? I was like, I ... And I told them, I was like, "I feel like you would never just tell me about this. Like if I was just talking to you, if I was your f- your friend 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 writing about stuff that wouldn't even make that filter. You wouldn't even tell me about it, so why are you doing this?" So what I had them do, I was like, "Forget writing a draft and having me be the editor. Instead, I want you to send me a voice memo, no more than 60 seconds in the morning." Which is basically, "Oh, did you hear what happened today? Uh, 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 gonna be a big deal and the price is gonna 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
- 31:30 – 33:00
Lower the reading level
- SPShaan Puri
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," blah, blah, blah. Or, "You know, I noticed this thing. I found it really interesting because blah, blah, blah, blah." And if you can't, if it's not interesting to your friend, guess what? It's not gonna be interesting to a stranger, right? Like, you, you have to be able to, 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.
- SPSam Parr
Well, and the, the tip that I used to give, so at, when I sold The Hustle, we had close to 2 million subscribers, I believe. And for new writers, 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 million's a lot of people. I get it. But here's the tip. Write to me. Write to Sam. Just literally you're only writing to me, and that's what I tell people when they're writing blog posts, when they're 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.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
But just y- only write to one h- one person. Direct it to that one person, and that's the way to go. Uh, and so it makes it a lot easier.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
Uh, let's go to, let's go to, uh, write simply. What I have found is around, you can go as low as fourth grade, but around sixth, seventh, and eighth grade reading level is the way that you wanna write. Now, to give you guys perspective, I think usanews.com, USA News, the newspaper, I believe that's at a fourth-grade reading level.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
New York Times, which is highly regarded by a lot of people, that's at a seventh-grade re- reading level. And I actually went and put Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett writes about insurance companies, a very complicated
- 33:00 – 35:30
How to tell a great story
- SPSam Parr
topic. I went and put his stuff through 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. But Hemingway App is an awesome way to, um-
- SPShaan Puri
Check
- SPSam Parr
... yeah, to check, to do it for you.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, I think that's a great one. Um, another one that you wrote in here is about storytelling, and so I think storytelling is now like kind of in the more advanced, uh, little more advanced category of how to be a great writer, is being able to use, use the art of storytelling. Uh, do you wanna give an example of that, uh, or how do you wanna talk about storytelling here?
- SPSam Parr
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 w- beverage that you guys see in the stores. It's called, um, and the, the lady named Kara, she had this great story. She went and gave this talk, uh, 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 in a 60-minute talk. I was like, "Oh, that's a, that's a hit," 'cause that just made me feel something. So the headline was, "Getting called sweetie helped this entrepreneur create a multimillion-dollar business." "Sweetie," the executive said, "and I just dropped the phone for a minute." Last week at Pizza & 40's, Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint, told me a story that fired me up. The setup goes like this. And it explains the story about how she was drinking 10 Cokes a day. She was on the phone with an executive of Co- Coca-Cola, and she said, "I'm gonna create a new version of water that just has a, uh, a little bit of fruit in it and no sugar." An executive at Coke goes, "Listen, sweetie, Americans love sweet. This is never gonna work."
- SPShaan Puri
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 outrage. It has a WTF-
- SPSam Parr
It has outrage
- SPShaan Puri
... or OMG-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... type of reaction of like-
- SPSam Parr
And like, you're wrong
- SPShaan Puri
... that asshole.
- SPSam Parr
But let me fill you in on the results. So I wrote the blog post not in order to promote Hint. I wrote the blog post because I thought this was just a cool story of a, this entrepreneur getting like sh- it was a sexist moment, and she was getting hated on, whatever. Hint saw the article. They ended up spending millions of dollars to promote this article. And at the very bottom of the article, and it s- it says something like, "This conversation inspired Goldin, now 17 lighters s- 17 years later, to found Hint," and they do 100 million in sales. Uh, 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 'cause they ended up promoting it. I wasn't selling Hint Water. I was just telling a cool story about the
- 35:30 – 39:00
Intention meets obstacle
- SPSam Parr
founder. And in exchange, it made all these people wanna buy this stuff. And if, in fact, if you google Hint 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 grabbed your attention.
- SPShaan Puri
You wanna say a few words on, on how to, how to write a great story? I have a couple of tips. Um-
- SPSam Parr
You, you do it.
- SPShaan Puri
So a couple of tips on, on writing a great story or telling a great story. So go look at the greatest storytellers ever. Uh, one of them is, uh, Aaron Sorkin. He's known for writing great dialogue. He wrote, you know, the, the Social Network movie. He wrote, uh, what is it? West Wing. He wrote The Newsroom. He w- great writer, famous writ- 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. So somebody wants something, and there's an obstacle in their way.
- SPSam Parr
By the way, that line, I worship at blank altar-
- SPShaan Puri
At the altar of-
- SPSam Parr
Like-
- SPShaan Puri
... blank? Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
So good.
- SPSam Parr
That, that is going into my bank.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] To your bank. Uh, that's funny.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Uh, all right, so, uh, so intention and obstacle. Intention is s- some character wants something, and then there's an obstacle in their 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, uh, all they have to go on is this one five-second call that they were on or whatever, right? Like, obstacle. They, they have no way to find them and they're just a dad. How are they gonna ever, you know, get their daughter back? And so intention and obstacle is the core element of any good story. So somebody wants something. In the, in the case that you just said, not only does Cara want to make her business successful, she wants to be taken seriously as a female entrepreneur. Obstacle, Coke executive, men, men are pigs, nobody believes in her. Right? That's a core, 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 and name that right now, you have failed as a storyteller, 'cause the audien- you, you think they're, you're gonna tell them later what the, they want. No, no, no, you've lost their attention. The, the initial stakes, and if you watch any movie, they establish this, right? I mean, even like silly rom-coms, it'll be, uh, 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 doesn't have a relationship, right? Like, that'll be, it'll be obvious to her. She'll see somebody out the window while she's driving to work in her chauffeured limousine, and it's this girl in love with her boyfriend, and she looks at it kinda longingly, and then she just goes back to her, her, you know, PalmPilot or whatever before, 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 'cause she has to find the right guy, and she's so busy with work. And so 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? Uh, what do you have to lose if this doesn't go well? And stakes doesn't ha- like, stakes initially, the beginner version of stakes is life or death. But the true art, and some o- if you like some of the stories that I've told on this podcast, the true art is when you can establish st- 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, 'cause fuck them,
- 39:00 – 40:00
High emotional stakes in a low stakes situation
- SPShaan Puri
and they can't cut-- They cut in front of me, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna 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. 'Cause otherwise you're limited to just life or death stories.
- SPSam Parr
The best example you have done of that, you're very good at this, is, um, I, I distinctly remember the story of you do- [laughs] you doing a shirtless workout on your driveway, and your HOA being like, "No, we w- we can't have this."
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And you're like, "We're going to petty court."
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
"We're going to HOA..." [laughs] Like, I just, that was a beautiful story.
- SPShaan Puri
Like, I should let this go, or I could fight to the death as a matter of principle here-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... because, you know, what are you trying to say, and what does this mean, right? And if it means something to me, then I can make it mean something to you. So that, that sort of thing, so.
- SPSam Parr
Larry David's great at this, too. Like, whenever I watch that show Curb Your Enthusiasm, like, they're making a story out of something so silly and small. Uh, you know, like-
- SPShaan Puri
And, and it's, it's 10 times
- 40:00 – 42:00
Short sentences
- SPShaan Puri
more likable when it's something relatable or small, but it still carries the emotional impact. And if you could do that, you, you have an infinite supply of stories.
- SPSam Parr
He notices that people don't ta- people don't talk to someone if they're wearing a MAGA hat, and so he [laughs] starts wearing a MAGA hat all the time. He's like, "I don't want anybody to talk to me. I'm just gonna wear this hat."
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Uh, but that's like a, a really good example of a high stakes, uh, high stakes in a low stakes environment.
- SPShaan Puri
Exactly.
- SPSam Parr
Where like it doesn't really matter, but it's very funny. Um, and then let's talk about, uh, really tactical stuff. So short sentences. Um, I'm a firm believer in short sentences. And so the... I'll give you, I'll explain why, but Warren Buffett owns, you know, runs Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire owns dozens and dozens of companies. Arguably 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, uh, 1974 to 2013, someone analyzed this, and the letters per, 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.
- SPShaan Puri
Right. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
So the richer he got and the more complicated his businesses 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 once kind of somewhat the average Joe 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, they, they've raised the stakes there, so you have to pay for just the email. Uh, there's a letter from the CEO, and that's one of my favorite, uh, like, tactics, by the way, on a sales page, is a letter from a CEO. And he says, "Hey everyone, I'm Jason,
- 42:00 – 45:00
Great writing has rhythm
- SPSam Parr
CEO of 37signals. Email gets a bad rap, but it shouldn't. Email's a treasure." And he goes on to explain why G- uh, 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 s- and simple ways to explain complicated things. And if you're able to do that, oftentimes it will have shorter sentences, less words, and it, it's significantly more in, uh, effective than longer stuff.
- SPShaan Puri
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've probably seen it. Great writing has rhythm. So there's a, an example, so I'll just read this out loud. He 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. This writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands 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 him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals, and sounds that say, "Listen to this. This is important." So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create sound that pleases the reader's ears. Don't just write words. Write music. I love that thing. It is amazing.
- SPSam Parr
It's great, right?
- SPShaan Puri
And so you wanna-
- SPSam Parr
It's amazing
- SPShaan Puri
... 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 a advanced move when it comes to writing. Most people's problem is every, every sentence is too long. And so you start with short sentences, but then you figure out how to vary it so that your writing sings.
- SPSam Parr
Whenever I, uh... Sometimes when I write something that I get really into, I am alm- I almost feel like, uh, 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 follow down this.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
And like there's small tactics, like anytime you wanna use a comma, use a period, and then start the next sentence with and or but. Um, or there's other things like put your internal dialogue, like, um, w- or, like, or, or the reader's internal dialogue. Like, "So why would I do this?" you're asking yourself right now.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- SPSam Parr
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 the rhythm and grab people's attention.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, 100%. Uh, th- that's a, that's a great way of putting it. I also think, like, the rhythm thing is, uh, it comes from the copywork. So back to the copywork at the beginning, if you do copywork 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 copywork. It takes, well, whatever, 55 seconds. But now I'm already kinda revved up to write in that style, to have that, that variety, that rhythm when I write the next thing.
- SPSam Parr
Should we wrap up by saying some resources that we both use in order to get influenced?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Yeah.
- 45:00 – 56:43
Our favorite resources
- SPShaan Puri
H- how do you learn? How do you get better from here? 'Cause this was the crash course, just hit on a bunch of, bunch of the big topics. There's 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, where should people go?
- SPSam Parr
So what, I'll start with some, some books that I like. I like On Writing by Stephen King. That changed my life. Um, I like that one a lot. Um, but then more-
- SPShaan Puri
And what do you like about that, by the way? I read that book. I didn't love it. What, what, what was so good about it?
- SPSam Parr
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 the, the toolkit, where he explains, like, how he does stuff. And I just felt in the biography part he was doing it, and then in the a- in the toolkit part he was teaching me.
- SPShaan Puri
He shows you what he's doing.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
And so I really appreciate that. But then I also get a lot of inspiration from funny, original thinkers. You know who's one of the most original, like, people with words right now is Theo Von. So I'll hear Theo Von, like for example, he had an ad for Athletic Greens and he goes, "Today's sponsor is Athletic Greens. I know what you're thinking. What is this, just a bunch of aliens playing track and field?" And like, like, he, he does these-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... like silly things.
- SPShaan Puri
Unexpected.
- SPSam Parr
And 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 listen to a ton of comedians because they've perfected this. You know, like Dave Chappelle's really great with timing. Shane Gillis, really good with timing. And so I pay attention to a l- a lot of those guys on how they get people's attention. So I like On Writing, I like Theo Von. Um, I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts. And true crime podcasts, because they're supposed to be thrilling, they are excellent at storytelling and setting up tension. And so I love, uh, there's this company called Parcast. They've got serial killers, unsolved murders, and I really love how they set up tension. What do you like?
- SPShaan Puri
I like a lot of those same things you said. I, I also like to consume them in a different way. So I think everybody likes Dave Chappelle or Louis C.K., 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, there's an amazing, amazing thing. Uh, what I think is the... I have two, two things I've learned from comedians that 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 canceled, and he 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 in my me- my head. It's like, how is he going to address this?
- SPSam Parr
What's he say?
- SPShaan Puri
Y- y- people should go listen to it in, in full, but basically, first he doesn't address it. He's, he's doing his normal act, and he pauses just in the middle of, like, doing a thing and he's just like, "So should we talk about it?"
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
"All right, we can, all right, we can talk about it." And he just brings it up, like, in the f- he makes it awkward 'cause, like, what he did was, like, weird and pretty gross and bad, whatever. [laughs] And, and so he, what he did was instead of backpedaling and apologizing, instead of denying, instead of trying to spin it as good, he was like, "Everybody's got a thing. Some people's things are weirder than others, but everybody's got a thing that they like. Barack Obama knows my thing." [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
He basically, he makes fun of himself, like, it's so-
- SPSam Parr
Everyone knows it
- SPShaan Puri
... basically poking fun, 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 comedi- the i- idea of even Obama knows my thing. Like, everybody's got a thing, but it's secret usually.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And so then he goes and he, uh, he, there's more to it, but he does that. Chappelle does one when, when they took the Chappelle's Show, they put it on Netflix, and he wasn't getting any royalties from it. He's like, "Man, they're using my name. They're putting my show out there. I have a fight with these guys, and my fans are watching it, and Netflix is winning, and the, the studios, everyone's winning except for Chappelle from the Chappelle's Show," right? So he goes on stage. He does this 20-minute thing called, I think it's called Unforgivable or Unforgiven or something like that. I'm gonna do a full YouTube breakdown of this 'cause it is, to me, it is, like, the masterclass in how do you tell a story to win people on your side. It is so well done. I, I c- I can't even do it justice. I'm gonna do 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, 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 kinda baked it in at the end. Uh, but he set... The setup was so strong that y- you... There's only one outcome you could have. It's a maze that led you to one door, which is, "I'm on Dave's 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."
- SPSam Parr
I, uh... I, I, I wanna go watch that. An- another person I love... Have you ever read Joel on Software, joelonsoftware.com?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
He's-
- SPShaan Puri
You're going from Chappelle to, to Joel, the maker of Trello [laughs] . Nice.
- SPSam Parr
Dude, I know that that, like, sounds ridiculous.
- SPShaan Puri
He's good though.
- SPSam Parr
But he's this, like, nerdy guy who has started, uh, 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, on these topics. I love g- what I... One of my favorite things to do is find the top posts on Hacker News because typically, these engineering types of people are particularly quirky, and they kind of, like, think outside the box in a weird way.
Episode duration: 56:43
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Transcript of episode Q0N-z0H8VEU
