The 3-Step Writing Framework That Helped Us Build +$10M Newsletters

Shaan 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 don't know if it's going to 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. This week, somebody asked us a question. They said, "Hey, I really love your guys' writing. I don't know why I have trouble with writing, and I would love if you guys just did an episode with the 80/20. So what is just the stuff I need to know to help me be a better writer?" So, Sam and I sat down and we wrote down all of our secrets about how we've used writing to grow our careers.

Sam Parr

Which, 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?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's right. I don't look at my stuff and think, "Wow, this is beautiful prose," but I do feel confident that if I needed to, I could use my writing to either grow an audience, sell a product, or convince people of something. I feel confident in that after, you know, trying for 15 years. Both of us have done it, right? So the credibility here is important. Before you ever listen to any advice, you should ask yourself, "Why should I listen to this person?" Well, both Sam and I 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 a million-person audience between the two of us. I've sold maybe $20 million worth of products online in the e-commerce world just through email. We both have taught writing courses in some form or fashion. 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 you gotta do. What's that? I mean, this is free, right, Sam?

Sam Parr

It's totally free, except for one thing: you have to subscribe. 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. That's all we want.

Shaan Puri

We can't check if you do it. We call it the "gentleman's agreement." It's just an honor code among two legendary individuals: us and you. We trust that you're going to do it. Alright, so 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, twice as good or three times as good at writing? I believe that is possible if they actually do these things. Where do you want to start, Sam?

Sam Parr

So, let's start with this before you guys begin writing. Someone asked us, "Why write?" or "How do you get better at writing?" I actually want to change it to "Why should you even care about being a better writer?" There are a few bullet points that we have. The first being, and this is the most self-serving thing, but I want to say it upfront: **it's persuasion in the most scalable way.** The reason I got into writing was that I was selling street meat hot dogs on the side of the road. I was selling one-to-one, and I got pretty good at it. But then I realized this was really hard. So, I learned about copywriting and 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. I can convince someone to feel a certain way, whether I'm writing a short story or a blog post. I can convince someone to join my company. I even used copywriting on Tinder when I wanted to convince 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 typically trying to persuade someone to do something. So, it's persuasion in the most scalable way, and that's one of the most important self-serving reasons why I think people should care about writing. What else?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's the first one. The second one is more internal and wholesome. Some people are like, "Ah, I don't know if I want to do persuasion." The truth is, anything you're trying to make happen, you're usually going to need to persuade either people to come join your company, customers, partners, or whatever it is. 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 need clarity of thought. Writing is an 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 writing will show bad thinking. Whereas if you have great thinking and you write, it'll come through. Writing is a truth-teller potion; it will reveal how clear your thinking is. The trick is, most people think about it as writing being a way for me to communicate my ideas to you. They think that writing is the bottleneck. They're like, "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 do so because they don't have the idea clear in their mind. Writing helps you clear up the fog in your brain and get crystal clarity on what you're actually trying to say and what the ideas are. But it also works not just to communicate ideas but to generate them. I think Paul Graham said this, and 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. It's like starting a little fire in your brain, and those sparks can lead to new thoughts and new ideas that are quite powerful. If you're not writing regularly, you're missing out on some of those ideas.

Sam 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. The reason why I prefer that when I'm running out my ideas is you can't really hide a bad idea or bad thinking in long writing. You know, where you can hide bad thinking in a PowerPoint. Now, that doesn't mean that your ideas in long writing are going to be good, but you just can't hide it. You can't hide that it's bad. That's why I prefer mapping it all out. The third point is that writing creates new ideas. I think, like you said, Paul Graham said it best. He has this great blog post he wrote in 2005. He said something like, "80% of your writing will be bad, and then you'll have to cut it down to the 20% that's good." When you start writing, you'll probably generate 50% more new ideas. It's a really great forcing function. It gives you the lanes of the road, and you have to stay within those lanes. Oftentimes, you can change your opinion as you go, and it evolves your idea and your thinking. Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's easy because I'm going to 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. I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out at joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders, and one of the ways that we've grown is by creating these surveys. We'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask. So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these interesting questions. Then we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. You can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made. The hard part with Hampton is that we are appealing to a sort of higher-end customer, sort of 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. Once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we have thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. I can then see over the next handful of weeks how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from: it came from Twitter, it came from LinkedIn, whatever. I can actually go and look at it and say, "Oh, well that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." If you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it, but you could check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. Alright, now back to MFM.

Shaan Puri

And we've all seen Jeff Bezos ban PowerPoint from Amazon. He realized that PowerPoint was this tool that allowed the most charismatic or loudest voice in the room, or someone with good slide design skills, to create an illusion of good thinking. Instead, he forced everybody to write long-form memos, basically narratives. He said, "In the long-form written word, there's no place to hide. There's no way to use design or good presentation skills to make it seem like this is more well thought through than it is. It either is or it isn't, and you'll find out." So, I think this approach works inside companies as well as it does externally with your customers and potential customers. Alright, now let's get down to the actual tactics. That's the theory; now how do you actually do it? For me, all the work begins before I've typed a single word. I always say you want to begin with the end in mind. What I mean by this is, before I write anything, I first decide what reaction I want. I learned this from a guy named Chris Quigley. I don't know if you know Chris Quigley, but he was quite a character. He came to San Francisco from the UK and hosted an ad agency. His ad agency did one specific thing: they made videos go viral. I remember talking to Chris and saying, "Wow, it would be awesome to do a viral video. That sounds kind of like a lottery ticket thing. What if my YouTube video just went viral and got millions of views? How crazy would that be?" I asked him, "What's your hit rate? Out of every 100 videos you do, how many go viral?" He said, "No, if we do 10 videos, 8 or 9 will go viral."

Sam Parr

Really.

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "What?" And 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. It will get seen; it won't just get lost in the abyss of the internet of content. Whatever we have, it'll get seen." He said, "But that doesn't make it go viral. That just makes sure it gets a chance." 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," you know, something so cute and heartwarming. He said, "These are the only emotions that you can tap into. There are like 7 or 8 emotions that people can tap into." 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! 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 language in a bill that's going through the Senate right now. It 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 he was like, "Oh my God, the Democrats are baking this into the bill! 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 gets elected and tries to stop the spending in Ukraine." Of course, the post goes super viral because it's outrage. It's outrage from the Democrats; it's outrage from the Republicans. That is engineered to go viral. Similarly, Chris used to have a search engine. 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. They would use it when they would brainstorm. So, I stole this, and I would start with three questions: 1. What is the reaction I want? That's always an emotion. 2. What is the action I want? So, what do I want them to do after they read this? 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? 3. 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. So, you have to think about that. I always begin with the end in mind. I decide those before I ever write a word. Do you do something similar?

Sam Parr

I do the exact same thing. Typically, I start with a headline and then a subheadline. If you share on Facebook, the headline is the big text, and the subheadline is the 180-character thing underneath that. Oftentimes, I go back and change the headline a ton, but that one sentence that I call the subheadline doesn't change. That one sentence helps clarify what I'm going to write. So, I actually don't do outlines. There are a lot of things that I think you're taught in 5th grade that are really stupid. One of them is an outline. I guess it's okay to teach that, but I don't use outlines anymore. My outline instead is that one subheadline; that's what I use.

Shaan Puri

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.

Sam Parr

Internet world, yeah.

Shaan Puri

The internet world requires you to unlearn pretty much everything you learned in school. In school, what do they reward? They reward a minimum word count. They try to get you to write at least a certain length, which leads people to write long essays, double-space their work, and add a bunch of filler and fluff. You have to do the exact opposite when you're out on the internet. You want to be concise, quick, and eliminate a lot of the fluff. Shorter is better on the internet in terms of avoiding extra cruft. However, in school, they almost force you to write long-form pieces. They also want you to use fancy vocabulary. You get bonus points for using words like "ameliorate" instead of "heal" or "help." The reality is, you want to write in very accessible language. If you want to do well on the internet, you should aim for a reading level that is easy to understand. Both you and I target a reading level of about 5th to 8th grade. You can use tools like Hemingway, an app that allows you to input your text and tells you the reading level. It might say you're writing at a 12th-grade level or a 5th-grade level. The lower the reading level, the better it is for internet writing.

Sam Parr

And in the second half of this episode, let's go through all those tips and tricks 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 as this old technique that people have learned to write. We don't do it anymore, but I found it to be the most effective way. I sat myself in a room for like 2 hours a day and did this for about 8 months in order to learn how to write. 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, or it could be a blog from someone you admire. When I'm writing an important piece, I'll just write for maybe 10 minutes. I literally take my pen and, by hand, I copy someone else's writing that I really like. That helped me get into the flow.

Shaan Puri

So, what we said was, before you've written a word, most people just sit down and start trying to write. What we've told you to do is two different things. Instead, begin with the end in mind. You know, what is the action and reaction you want? What would be the headline that would grab somebody? The second thing Sam is saying is, you don't just jump in. Like, if you're going to do a workout, you don't just start sprinting right away.

Sam Parr

You warm up? I do warm-up sets.

Shaan 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 want to almost like, through osmosis, just steal their little writing juju. It's going to go into your brain. You'll start to talk like them and write like them. If you do this and you literally write word for word exactly what they said, it's even more effective if you handwrite it. But at worst, type it. You want to... 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 to 15 minutes. I still do this today. This is not like advice that I tell other people who I don't do. I still do this today. And Sam, you don't know this, but I use one of your posts as one of my... I have like three go-tos. One of yours is one that I use for my copy work. It's this one where you forgot the name of the blog, but I always search for it with the same headline, which is "Let me be perfectly clear, you're reading this because I want you to." And you're like, "I have engineered the start of this to..." and you basically talk about how you've mesmerized them. You're like, "Every word of this was chosen, every sentence to lead you to the next sentence." I love that. We call it the slippery slope. So I use one of yours whenever I want to write in a really persuasive copywriting way. If I want to write more like business serious, then I have a different one I use. This one is from the CEO of Slack, where he wrote an internal memo that I really like called "We don't sell saddles here." But you literally just write word for word. So that's your warm-up. So again, do this before you ever write your own stuff.

Sam Parr

It's exactly like playing music. Okay, so if 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 this genre, this genre, this genre. I'm gonna come up with my own thing." Same way when you're writing a new song. You kinda warm up, maybe playing The Beatles, and then eventually you're like, "Alright, I'm in the mood to write something beautiful. This is what I'm gonna do."

Shaan Puri

You take someone's recipe and you make their recipe before you go and make your own thing. You play a cover before you write your own songs. It's the same way you do copy work before you write your own stuff.

Sam Parr

The second step is actually where a lot of people get screwed up. It's the drafting step. The reason people get screwed up here is because they're afraid to look stupid. The drafting step is actually where you're supposed to look stupid. So whenever I draft something, I just bang it out as fast as I can. It sounds really dumb, and I accept that it sounds dumb. Here's why: after the drafting step is the incubation phase. You know, have you ever heard of the phrase "shower thoughts"? It's where you think of silly things in the shower. I actually think there's some science behind this. I forget what it's called, but it's like when you're out riding a bike, going for a walk, or just sitting. I think it's called passive thinking. You actually get great breakthroughs during this time. So what I like to do is draft my first thing. 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 it will take 1 hour, sometimes 10 minutes, and sometimes a week. I just let it sit and then I do nothing. Now, here's where the last part, and the most important part, comes in. Ogilvy, one of my favorite writers—what's his first name?

Shaan Puri

David.

Sam Parr

David Ogilvy has this great line: "I'm a lousy writer, but I'm a good editor." This is where greatness happens. Stephen King calls it "killing your darlings." He says that the editing phase is where all the great stuff happens, and this is actually where the gold is found. A lot of people don't do this process. What they do is write their draft, consider it the final bit, and then they get afraid and nervous. They never write it down, and they don't actually incubate or edit. Do you do these things 100%?

Shaan Puri

I learned this from you: the incubate part. I used to draft and then try to edit in the same session because I knew editing is where the value is. **Great writing is great editing.** Let's be perfectly clear: great writing is great editing. However, the mistake I was making before was that I would write and then immediately try to edit and power through. I didn't have that break, that gap, to actually go back and improve my ideas passively. I would just load the problem in my brain and go do something else. I would go for a walk, go for a run, go for a workout, go shower, or cook some food—chop some vegetables. It doesn't matter what it is, but I give myself at least 90 minutes away from it, sometimes 6 hours. Then, when I come back, I look at it and it's just so obvious to me. I think, "Oh, strike this, delete this, move this to the top. That's actually the best part." I realize, "Oh, you know what? I should say this here." Or, "That analogy I was missing? Here it is." It starts to come together when I do that part. I also realize I need to shift my time ratio because, like you said, I used to be an overthinker drafter. I would overthink how much time to spend on the draft phase. I tried to make a good draft, which was a bad idea. You actually just want to have a quick and dirty draft—a brain dump draft. I used to try to make a good draft, but that would take me way too long. I'd get fatigued and feel bad about it. I'd think, "I hate this, this is stupid. Should I even do this?" All the doubts would creep in. Now, I do a short draft and then have a high-energy edit after I have that incubation.

Shaan Puri

So, this is 100% what I do, and it is extremely effective.

Sam Parr

And once you get good, and once you find a process, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and think of an idea. I just write that sentence in my phone and then I 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 thinking about." Hey!

Shaan Puri

Wake up! I figured it out. Yeah, I figured out the CTA.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it is.

Shaan Puri

It would be weird if I sign off with "sayonara, suckers."

Sam Parr

Yeah, wait, what do you think about "I love you" at the end? Would that be a thing? But I actually do like... well, I'll have like a... do you have a notes app or a notes folder in your phone where you just have like a sentence? And you're like, "That's a beautiful sentence." I'm just... I don't know where I'm gonna use that, but that was a beautiful sentence. A lot of times, I get it from podcasters or YouTubers. I'm like, "You hear how he phrased that? That word, that was a sharp phrase that cut to me."

Shaan Puri

One of the things we didn't mention in the "before" phase is having a **swipe file**. Oh yes, it's a classic tool that all writers and marketers have. A swipe file is basically a stash. Whenever you see something dope, something that's well done, or something that's good, you just stash it away. So when it comes time for you to create something, like a landing page, you can look at your stash of great landing pages you've seen. You'll have so much inspiration right there at your fingertips because you did the work beforehand. So that's another important aspect of the "before" phase: you have to have a swipe file. I have one for phrases, for headlines, for connecting words, and for hellos and goodbyes. For some reason, whenever I wrote my newsletter, I knew what I wanted to say, but the start always felt so awkward. It was like, "Hello, you know, hello there friends," and I thought, "God, this sucks!" Then I started keeping a file of anytime I liked an opener or a closure. So I have one file for openers and one for closers, and I have a whole bunch in there that I can use to draw inspiration from. For whatever reason, that was my blocker when I would write.

Sam Parr

I'll just hear a beautiful phrase and I'll write it down. For example, I went to this guy's website, and he was talking about the best speaker system or something. He started off the paragraph with, "Well folks, it doesn't get any better than this." I was like, "Oh, that's beautiful! That's mine!" I have this whole bank of cute phrases from people saying things that resonate with me. When I read something that evokes an emotion, I know it's good. People are scrolling through thousands of articles every day, and if I see a line that grabs my attention, I claim it. That's mine! So, let's move on to some more tips about the actual writing part. I think that what you're taught in school is basically the opposite of what you should do.

Shaan Puri

A lot. Yeah, here’s the right mistakes—common mistakes. **Mistake number 1:** They start with a bunch of intro context, background fluff. The tip is actually: **don’t bury the lead.** 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. As an example, you have one here that 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 some percentage of them will subscribe, and that’s how it’ll grow my subscriber base.”

Sam Parr

Right.

Shaan Puri

And I remember reading this: "I spent the last 30 days eating nothing but Soylent, a new age 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, the last few days have been really tough for me because I've been doing this new experiment," to give you background on 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 only Soylent. Why would I do something so stupid? Let me explain. Curiosity has been created, and now I want to know.

Sam Parr

Yeah, typically when you're thinking about the lead, I found it helps with a few things. 1. 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 the last couple of sentences. That's typically a good trick. The reason why I say that is when you're taught in school how to write, have you ever heard of a thesis statement? You have an opening paragraph with a thesis at the bottom, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and then a closer. I'm like, "Just tell me your thesis statement right off the bat." Just say that! Just punch me in the face with that. That should be your opening line. Another thing is, have you been to England? Have you ever noticed they have signs that say, "Mind the gap"? I guess that's like when you're... I always say, "Mind the curiosity gap." So, mind the curiosity gap means I'm going to punch you in the face to grab your attention. Because that gets you to fall down the slippery slope. The more that you fall down that slope, the further you're going to continue to read. So, I want to grab your attention, but I don't want to tell you everything. I want to grab your attention by not burying the lead, and I'm going to get you to fall down this slope a little further.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that simple test is to take your hand and cover up all of the text except for the first two sentences. Read those first two sentences and ask yourself, "What if I didn't know me? If I didn't care about me? If I didn't have to read this, would I want to read? Would I need to read the next sentence?" Not, "Would I need to read the whole thing?" but "Would I need to read the next sentence?" If the answer is yes, you've created a curiosity gap. Then you drag your hand down to reveal the next sentence and ask, "If I read this sentence, would I need to read the next sentence?" Right? Would I want to know what the next sentence is? By the third or fourth time you've done that, now they're in. Now they're invested. You have a little more leeway to let it breathe and create a bit of background because they're invested in getting to the outcome. But the reason this sounds so brutal, where you're going to cover up 85-90% of the text, is because the reality is that's actually how the reader's eyes work. Eighty to ninety percent of people are only ever going to read the headline. If the headline's no good, they're never going to get to any of the other stuff. Some people are resistant to writing a juicy headline, but the reality is if it's not juicy enough, they'll never get to those great ideas that you have inside. You're 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 finding a way to make it juicy enough where you've created that curiosity gap. I have to read the next sentence, and that's it.

Sam Parr

What I used to say was, "It ain't clickbait if you're actually getting something." Like, bait means it's fake. So as long as I can say the truth, but I say it in the sensational or "clicky" way (we say "clicky"), it ain't bait if I actually deliver on the promise. So I...

Shaan Puri

Don't know 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, you can't pay it off like, you know, 10 minutes later. You have to be able to do that. Alright, the next one is **write like you talk**. So many times, people say, "I can't really write. I'm not a good writer." And again, "I'm not a good writer" is actually code for "I'm not a good thinker." The way you test this is cool: forget about writing it down. Just tell me, explain it to me. Either they just say it out loud, and I'm like, "Great! You wrote it." Just write down 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 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 when you feel like the author is just talking to you, having a conversation with you specifically. So, **write like you talk** is a 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 explain it just in plain language yourself.

Sam Parr

What I tell my team is this: They'll 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." They'll say it in one sentence, and I go, "Okay, cool. That's your first sentence, and that's probably all you need to say for this. Thanks." But there are a few ways to figure out what not to do: 1. Go to people's LinkedIn profiles. If they use the word "utilize," that's probably not good. Have you ever heard someone say they "utilize" or they "did"? What are other examples of LinkedIn jargon? LinkedIn is like...

Shaan Puri

That's so good! We should make a LinkedIn hit list of just **bullshit words** that nobody ever says, but people think it's okay to write.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's like, dude, I've never heard you use that word "utilized" right. The second thing to remember is that informal can be professional. A lot of times, people think informal is the opposite of professional, and I actually say that's nonsense. I'm going to show examples of how that's not true in a few minutes. Another good line that I think about is from Stephen King. He says, "Any word you have to hunt in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule." So, if you have to look up what a word means, you shouldn't use it. You want to use words that most everyone understands. Again, I'm going to show you examples of really complicated stuff explained in a really simple way. Here's a really good example of writing like you talk. One of my favorite pieces of writing is by Louis C.K. About 10 or 15 years ago, he used to release his own specials on his website. If you Google "Louis C.K. Neville Madora" or something like that, you'll see my friend Neville wrote a blog post about some of his stuff. It's actually not up anymore, but he's got this great line in one of his bits or one of his landing pages. He goes, "Please, please don't tour this special. If you want to 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 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 that makes me feel, "Alright, you're right. I should abide by this." There was no jargon, just simple language.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I 100% agree. I also think that this works for choosing what to write about. For example, sometimes people will write about things that they would never talk to you about. We had this problem early on at The Milk Road. When we started The Milk Road, I was the initial writer, so I created the initial voice. The Milk Road was a newsletter that we built in the crypto space. We went from 0 subscribers and had never written a daily newsletter before to becoming the biggest crypto newsletter in the world. We sold it for $1,000,000 in just one year. That was the success outcome. So, how did we actually do it? More importantly, how did I train other people to write it instead of me? I didn't want to wake up every morning and stress about sending this email out at 5 AM to a couple hundred thousand people. That was not the idea of a good life for me. I thought, let me see if I could train people to do this. One of the hacks to training people was that I felt like they were writing with too much extra fluff and jargon. Secondly, they were writing about stuff that was kind of boring. I was like, what's happening? I told them, "I feel like you would never just tell me about this if I was your friend." If you were like, "Oh, did you hear what happened today?"—which is what news is trying to convey—"This crazy thing happened, this interesting thing happened, this big event happened." I realized they were writing about stuff that wouldn't even make that filter. You wouldn't even tell me about it, so why are you doing this? What I had them do was forget writing a draft and having me be the editor. Instead, I wanted them to send me a voice memo, no more than 60 seconds in the morning. It would be something like, "Oh, did you hear what happened today? This guy said this thing, and people are freaking out because of blah blah blah. An announcement was made, and people think it's going to be a big deal, and the price is going to go up because of this." As soon as they started doing that, I was like, "Yep, that sounds perfect. Just write that down." It was such a good filter. So, one way to think about what to write about and how to write it is to do this little voice memo test. Can you just tell your friend about this? For example, "Hey, I have this idea, blah blah blah," or "I noticed this thing, and I found it really interesting because blah blah blah." If you can't make it interesting to your friend, guess what? It's not going to be interesting to a stranger. 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.

Sam Parr

Well, the tip that I used to give... So, when I sold The Hustle, we had close to 2,000,000 subscribers, I believe. For new writers, they would kick ass in their audition and then get nervous. I'm like, "Yeah, 2,000,000 is 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. That's what I tell people when they're writing blog posts or 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, right? But just only write to one person. Direct it to that one person, and that's the way to go. It makes it a lot easier.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

Let's go to... Let's go to write simply. What I found is you can go as low as a 4th grade reading level, but around 6th, 7th, and 8th grade reading level is the way that you want to write. Now, to give you guys perspective, I think usanews.com, the newspaper, is at a 4th grade reading level. The New York Times, which is highly regarded by a lot of people, is at a 7th grade reading level. I actually went and put Warren Buffett's writing through the Hemingway app as well. The same thing applies: 6th, 7th, and 8th grade reading level. It teaches you how to write at that level, and there are tactics on how to do that, like not using adverbs and keeping sentences short. The Hemingway app is an awesome way to check... to do it for you.

Shaan Puri

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 in the more advanced category of how to be a great writer. It's about being able to use the art of storytelling. Do you want to give an example of that, or how do you want to talk about storytelling here?

Sam Parr

So here's an example of storytelling. About 10 years ago, there was this company called Hint Water. You see it in stores; it's a beverage. The lady named Cara had this great story. She gave a talk at one of my events, and at the very end, there was one question that someone asked her. I heard that story, and of the 60-minute talk, I was like, "Oh, that's a hit," because that just made me feel something. 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 in Forties, Cara Golden, the founder of Hint, told me a story that fired me up. The setup goes like this: she explains how she was drinking 10 Cokes a day. She was on the phone with an executive of Coca-Cola, and she said, "I'm going to create a new version of water that just has 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."

Shaan 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 knew that story would hit because it has outrage. It has a weight.

Sam Parr

It has outrage.

Shaan Puri

OMG! That's the type of reaction of like...

Sam Parr

And like, you're an asshole, but let me fill you in on the results. I wrote the blog post not in order to promote Hint; I wrote it because I thought it was just a cool story about this entrepreneur. It was a sexist moment, and she was getting hated on. Whatever, Hint saw the article and ended up spending $1,000,000 to promote it. At the very bottom of the article, it says something like, "This conversation inspired Goldie, now 17 years later, to found Hint," and they do $100,000,000 in sales. Here are 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 Hint Water; I was just telling a cool story about the founder. In exchange, it made all these people want to buy this stuff. In fact, if you Google "Hint Water Sweetie article," you'll see articles written about how it was a huge success. 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.

Shaan Puri

You want to say a few words on how to write a great story? I have a couple of tips.

Sam Parr

You do it so...

Shaan Puri

A couple of tips on writing a great story or telling a great story: Go look at the greatest storytellers ever. One of them is Aaron Sorkin. He's known for writing great dialogue. He wrote "The Social Network," "The West Wing," and "The Newsroom." He's a great writer, a famous Hollywood writer. He says, "I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle." What he means is that a story is just two things: somebody has an intention, somebody wants something, and there's an obstacle in their way.

Sam Parr

By the way, that line: "I worship at [blank] altar."

Shaan Puri

At the altar of blank, yeah.

Sam Parr

So, yeah, that is going into my bank.

Shaan Puri

To your bank, that's great. Alright, so, intention and obstacle. Intention is when a character wants something, and then there's an obstacle in their way. The more they want it, like when their daughter is taken hostage, there's a huge intention. The obstacle is that they don't know by whom or where she is, and all they have to go on is this one five-second call that they were on, or whatever, right? The obstacle is that they have no way to find her. They're just a dad. How are they ever going to get their daughter back? So, intention and obstacle is the core element of any good story. In the case you just mentioned, not only does Cara want to make her business successful, but she also wants to be taken seriously as a female entrepreneur. The obstacle? Coke executive men. Men are pigs; nobody believes in her, right? That's a core element of a story. In any story, if you can't pause at any moment and say, "What does that character want, and what's in their way?" then you have failed as a storyteller. You think you're going to tell the audience later what they want? No, you've lost their attention. The initial stakes are crucial. If you watch any movie, they establish this right away. Even in silly romcoms, it will be clear. She wakes up, and her assistant and chauffeur are driving her to work. She's clearly high-powered, but she's alone and doesn't have a relationship. It will be obvious to her. She'll see someone out the window while she's driving in her chauffeur-driven limousine. It's a girl in love with her boyfriend, and she looks at it kind of longingly before going back to her palm pilot or whatever before getting back to work. So, you know what the character wants and what's in her way. She doesn't have someone because she has to find the right guy, and she's still busy with work. Everything is always this intention and obstacle. The second thing is you have to establish how to make a story better or worse: stakes. What is at stake? What do you have to lose if this doesn't go well? Initially, the beginner version of stakes is life or death. But the true art, and some of the stories that I've told on this podcast, is when you can establish high-stakes emotions in a low-stakes environment. If I can tell you how I was feeling and get you to believe that I thought everything was on the line just with a little interaction I was having with someone in the grocery store line—how I didn't want them to win because they cut in front of me, but I'm not going to cut in front of them. I need them to know that it wasn't okay, but I don't know how to do it without being an asshole myself. If I can establish that the stakes matter to me, I can get you to care about the outcome, even in a low-stakes situation. Now you're really cooking with gas if you can do something like that because otherwise, you're limited to just life or death stories.

Sam Parr

The best example you have done of that, you're very good at this, is I distinctly remember the story of you doing a shirtless workout on your driveway. Your HOA was like, "No, we can't have this." And you're like, "We're going to petty court. We're going to HOA." I just... that was a...

Shaan Puri

I should let this go... Oh, 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? If it means something to me, then I can make it mean something to you. So, that sort of thing.

Sam Parr

So, Larry David's great at this too. Whenever I watch that show, *Curb Your Enthusiasm*, they're making a story out of something so silly and small, you know?

Shaan Puri

It's 10 times more likable when it's something relatable or small, but it still carries the emotional impact. If you can do that, you have an infinite supply of stories.

Sam Parr

He notices that people don't talk to someone if they're wearing a MAGA hat. So, he starts wearing a MAGA hat all the time. He's like, "I don't want anyone to talk to me. I'm just gonna wear this hat." That's a really good example of a high-stakes and a low-stakes environment. We're like, it doesn't really matter, but it's very funny. Now, let's talk about some really tactical stuff. I'm a firm believer in short sentences. I'll explain why. Warren Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns dozens and dozens of companies. Arguably, the most complicated one is Geico. Insurance companies are very, very hard to understand. However, I don't remember if The Hustle did an analysis on this or someone else did, but he writes these famous annual shareholder letters every single year. He's a very good writer. Listen to this: from 1974 to 2013, someone analyzed this, and the words per sentence dropped from 17 to 13. If you look at it, we actually did an analysis on this. Every year, it gets shorter and shorter. The reading level dropped from a 10th grade to a 4th grade reading level. So, the richer he got and the more complicated his businesses became, the simpler the writing got. He just got better at explaining it in a really easy-to-understand way. He's probably one of the few who can make it accessible for the average Joe. Short, simple sentences are key, even in complicated environments. Here's a really good example: if you go to hey.com, which is an alternative to Gmail, it's a service that makes you pay. They've raised the stakes there, so you have to pay for this email service. There's a letter from the CEO, and that's one of my favorite tactics on a sales page. It's a letter from a CEO. He says, "Hey everyone, I'm Jason, CEO of 37signals. Email gets a bad rap, but it shouldn't. Email's a treasure." He goes on to explain why email is awesome and why it should be more special than it is. It's the most simple language to explain email, and I love it. There are lots of examples of simple language and simple ways to explain complicated things. If you're able to do that, oftentimes you'll have shorter sentences and fewer words, which is significantly more effective than longer content.

Shaan Puri

Related to that, it doesn't have to be only one length. There's this great graphic that's gone viral many times; you've probably seen it. **Great writing has rhythm.** So, there's an example, and I'll just read this out loud: > "This sentence has 5 words. Here are 5 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. Sometimes, when I am 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 emphasis of 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.

Sam Parr

Right.

Shaan Puri

And so, you want to have short sentences by default. But then, like he says, when the reader is rested and ready, use a long sentence to great effect. That's like an advanced move when it comes to writing. Most people's problem is that every sentence is too long. So, you start with short sentences, but then you figure out how to vary it so that your writing...

Sam Parr

Whenever I write something that I get really into, I almost feel like I channel my inner Eminem or some rapper. I think about what type of rhythm could get people flowing. I need to have a rhythm that gets people to fall down this path. There are small tactics to consider. For example, anytime you want to use "a," use "a" and then start the next sentence with "and" or "but." You can also incorporate the reader's internal dialogue. For instance, you might think, "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?" You can use these little techniques to change the rhythm and grab people's attention.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, 100%. That's a great way of putting it. I also think the rhythm thing 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 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 kind of revved up to write in that style, to have that variety and rhythm when I write the next thing.

Sam Parr

Should we wrap up by mentioning some resources that we both use in order to get influenced?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. How do you learn? How do you get better from here? Because this was the crash course, just hit on a bunch of the big topics. There's obviously a lot of nuance and subtlety in doing it. It takes both practice as well as a little bit of deeper understanding. But where should people go?

Sam Parr

So, what I'll start with are some books that I like. I really enjoyed *On Writing* by Stephen King; that book changed my life. I like that one a lot. What did you...?

Shaan Puri

I read that book, but I didn't love it. What was so good about it?

Sam Parr

I just felt that he was teaching me how to write better, and he was living it as he was going. The first half of the book, I believe, is his biography, and the second half is a tool he calls the "toolkit," where he explains how he does stuff. In the biography part, he was doing it, and then in the toolkit part, he showed you what he's doing. I really appreciate that. I also get a lot of inspiration from funny, original thinkers. One of the most original people with words right now is Theo Von. For example, he had an ad for Athletic Greens where he said, "Today's sponsor is Athletic Greens. I know what you're thinking: what is this, just a bunch of aliens playing track and field?" He does these silly, unexpected things and is like a treasure trove of interesting phrases. I'm a big fan of listening to what he's saying and why. I also listen to a ton of comedians because they've perfected this. Dave Chappelle is really great with timing, and Shane Gillis is really good with timing as well. I pay attention to a lot of those guys on how they get people's attention. So, I like "On Writing," I like Theo Von, and I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts. True crime podcasts are supposed to be thrilling, and they are excellent at storytelling and setting up tension. There's this company called Parcast that has shows on serial killers and unsolved murders, and I really love how they set up tension. What do you like?

Shaan Puri

I like a lot of those same things you said. I also like to consume them in a different way. I think everybody likes Dave Chappelle or Louis CK, but you know, when I wanted to get good at this, I started to study what they do—not just laugh and move on. There’s an amazing thing that I think is the best example of both storytelling to win people on your side and of apologizing. So, the apologizing one is after Louis CK got canceled. He basically disappeared for like a year and a half, and when he came back, he did his first show on stage. There was a big question in my head: how is he going to address this? What’s he going to say? People should go listen to it in full, but basically, first he doesn’t address it. He’s doing his normal act and then pauses in the middle of a bit and says, “So should we talk about it? We could talk about it.” He just brings it up, making it awkward because what he did was weird and pretty gross. Instead of backpedaling and apologizing, denying, or 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.” He even says, “Barack Obama knows my thing.” He basically makes fun of himself, saying that his thing is so weird that everyone knows about it. He kind of wins you over to his side with the comedic idea that even Obama knows his thing. Then he goes on, and there’s more to it, but he does that. Chappelle does something similar when they took the Chappelle Show and put it on Netflix. He wasn’t getting any royalties from it. He’s like, “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. Netflix is winning, and the studio’s winning. Everyone’s winning except for Chappelle from the Chappelle Show.” So he goes on stage and does this 20-minute bit called “Unforgivable” or “Unforgiven” or something like that. I’m going to do a full breakdown of this because, to me, it is like a master class in how to tell a story to win people on your side. It is so well done. I can’t even do it justice. I’m going to do a full breakdown of what I think he did that was so smart, and I have studied this thing. I can’t believe I would have never come up with this as a way to make that.

Shaan Puri

To get people at the end to be totally on his side and willing to boycott the show, how did he do that? The way he told the story, 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 the setup was so strong that 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 going to do exactly what this guy just said." To me, when I saw that, I was like, "That was the best example I've ever seen of using storytelling for mass persuasion."

Sam Parr

I want to go watch that. Another person I love... Have you ever read "Joel on Software"? Joel on Software dot...

Shaan Puri

Com, yeah, you go from Chappelle to Joel, the maker of Trello. Nice dude.

Sam Parr

I know that sounds ridiculous, but he's this nerdy guy who has started, I think, Stack Overflow and Trello, all these companies. Dude, his blogs are very funny on the dorkiest topics. I don't even understand a lot of the topics because it's heavy engineering, but he does such a good job of writing on these subjects. 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 think outside the box.

Shaan Puri

In a weird way, I don't know if you saw it yesterday, but there's a great example of this. Some guy wrote, "The Kroger app sucks" or something like that, and it was like the number 15 thing on Hacker News. I clicked it, and it's this like 10,000-word blog post about Kroger's technology. He's just like, "I like Kroger. Kroger's the biggest grocer in the world, and they should be good at technology. They have all the money, they have the customers, they have all the locations. They should not be getting their... you know, their ass handed to them by Instacart and these other startups." He's like, "Look at this. You open the Kroger app, and it doesn't... like you swipe, and 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 'next page.' You have to go page after page; it doesn't just load." He's like, "That's terrible." And he's like, "Here's this other thing," and he wrote this like 10,000-word thing, like nerding out about the Kroger app. I loved it! I read every word of it. I was like, "This is incredible nerdery right here. I love this thing."

Sam Parr

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." That's a great way to kind of get people down your slippery slope. This is a really good article, and I...

Shaan Puri

Love, it's not even that this is particularly good writing, but what I would say is that this is effective writing. The biggest lesson of it all is that you want your content to just be you pushed out. I think everybody thinks they have to become some character in order for their content to hit, to work, to be popular or whatever. 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. Those people are attracted to something that's not your actual brain, your actual thoughts.

Sam Parr

You gotta let that **freak flag fly**, baby!

Shaan Puri

You gotta let that freak.

Sam Parr

Flag fly.

Shaan Puri

And you know, that's how this podcast worked. I started with this interview format, trying to emulate... it's almost like copy work. I was emulating "The Tim Ferriss Show" or "How I Built This" or whatever. But then, when it was just me pushed out, I thought, "I'm gonna get on here, we're gonna talk some days about writing, some days about mindset, and some days about this niche business that's, you know, tire rims in North Carolina that's crushing it." That's the stuff I'm into, so that's the stuff I talk about. That's the thing I'm most passionate about. That's the thing I have the most interesting things to say about. And because of that, it's just me pushed out, and then it's gonna attract people who really like that. Nobody can compete with me at that thing, right? That is a personal monopoly. There is nobody else who could do what I'm doing as well as I'm doing it. You could 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, "Does anyone else really care about this?" you'll find the people that care about it if you just consistently do that.

Sam Parr

Which is what this episode is about. We're talking about a topic that you and I actually care a ton about. 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 so.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we're doing a one on the next questionable advice, which is we've kind of laughed at, like, "Oh, you don't need to write a business plan. That's archaic." But we do some version of planning before we just start a business. So we're going to share what we actually do in our planning before we start a business that we found is effective for us. So that'll be the next one.

Sam Parr

So, we each got to plug our thing, although I think your thing is no longer a thing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I'm inspired by doing this. I'm like, "I want to tell people about this." It actually... like, because I have a course that does this, I have a ton of examples. The examples are actually what's valuable. You might hear some of the things you talked about and think, "Okay, I gotta look that up." In the course, I basically put it all there. I'm like, "Here's the principle, here's the example." You... oh no, actually, it's "principle, you try it." Then it's "here's the example of it done well, another example of it done well, another example of it done well, try it again." Literally, if you just do that, you'll get better as a writer. That's like a structured form of practice. So my course is not so much me talking about it. It was that I'm like, if somebody actually wanted to learn that, you kinda need that. You kinda need to have those gold star examples, and you need to have a place to go practice. Like, try it, learn it, then try it again.

Sam Parr

So, I just Googled "Sean Perry Power Writing." It takes me to Maven, and you can join the waitlist. Is that where people should go?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but I'm going to boot it back up. I have this waitlist; it's got, I don't know, a lot of people on it, I think. I haven't done it in like a year and a half. I kind of retired from it, but this episode made me fired up about it. So maybe that'll fade, and in an hour I'll be like, "No, forget that, I'm not doing it." But if not, I'll do one more of these this year.

Sam Parr

And then I have a thing only on copy work. I love copy work; it changed my life. I created this thing in a weekend, two years ago, just for shits and giggles because I like it. It's fun for me. It's called **CopyThat.com**, and it's my best versions of what I think people should write and copy. You then copy it by hand, and I break down why each piece is interesting. You can check it out at **CopyThat.com**. It has a ton of good reviews. I actually try to post all the negative reviews along with the positive ones so you can see all the feedback. So, Google "Sean Purry Power Writing," and you'll see his page on **Maven.com** and then **CopyThat.com**. Put them both in.

Shaan Puri

The description will be at the top. We'll put the links to the things we talked about in this episode. I think if you're listening to this while driving or walking, it's very hard to take notes. We're usually not that good with show notes, but today, let's try to be good. We'll include all the resources we talked about and make it easy for people to just scroll down and get them. Dude, there are about 1,000 people on the waitlist for the course! I didn't even look at this in so long; it was like 500 the last time I checked. That's crazy!

Sam Parr

You should do that again, right?

Shaan Puri

That's actually too many. I don't think I can handle so many people at once because I'm pretty much live with them, and I'm doing student feedback. That would be... I don't think that's even doable. I couldn't possibly do it. The biggest group I've ever worked with was like 400, so 8,000 people is just not going to work.

Sam Parr

You'll figure it out. Is that the pod?

Shaan Puri

That's the pod.