Become A Better Writer In 60 Minutes (Masterclass)

Episode 552: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) teach the 3-step writing framework that helped them build +$10M newsletters. Get Shaan’s writing course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing Get Sam’s writing course - https://copythat.com/ Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (2:50) Why not how - Persuasion at scale (6:00) To write clearly, you must think clearly (7:00) Begin with the end in mind (10:30) Headlines not outlines (12:30) Warmup with copywork (15:30) Draft fast, incubate slow (16:30) Great writing is great editing (19:00) Build your swipe file (21:00) Don't bury the lead (23:30) Create a curiosity gap (25:00) Write like you talk (28:00) The voice memo test (30:30) Lower the reading level (32:00) How to tell a great story (34:30) Intention meets obstacle (38:00) High emotional stakes in a low stakes situation (39:00) Short sentences (41:00) Great writing has rhythm (44:00) Our favorite resources — Links: • Hemingway Editor - https://hemingwayapp.com/ • Neville Medhora on Louis C. K. - https://copywritingcourse.com/louis-ck-direct-video-sales/ • The Hustle Writes about Hint Founder - http://tinyurl.com/2d537k7f • Hey.com - https://www.hey.com/ • On Writing - http://tinyurl.com/5f334swt • Theo Von - https://www.theovon.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan 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 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.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

• 0:27Shaan Puri?

  This week, somebody asked us a question. They said, hey, I really love your guys' writing. I have trouble with writing and I would love if you guys just did an episode with 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.

• 0:46Sam Parr?

  Which, but, but, but by the way, by the way, I wouldn't even say we're necessarily great writers. I would say that you and I are really good writers, but what we've been great at is getting results from it. Would you agree?

• 0:58Shaan 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 feel confident in that after, you know, trying for 15 years and both of us have done it, right? So the credibility here, you know, before you ever listen 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. You know, I've sold maybe $20 million worth of product online in the e-commerce world just through email. We both have taught writing courses or in some form or fashion.

• 1:41Shaan Puri?

  I used to charge a thousand dollars 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? This is free, right, Sam?

• 1:54Sam 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. That's all we want.

• 2:14Shaan 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 we just trust that you're gonna do it. Alright, 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, twice as good or three times as good as a writer? I believe that that is possible if they actually do these things. Where do you want to start, Sam?

• 2:39Sam 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 want to change it to why you should even care about being a better writer. And so there's a few bullet points that we have. So the first being is, this is the most self-serving thing, but I want to say it upfront. It's persuasion in the most scalable way. The reason I got into writing was I was selling street meat, hot dogs on the side of the road. And I was selling one to one. And I got pretty good at it. But then I realized, this is really hard. And so I learned about copywriting. And I figured, look, now I can write something and it could scale to an infinite amount of people. I never have to change it. And I can convince people to do something. Now, we're not just talking about copywriting. We're talking about all types of writing. So I can convince someone

• 3:22Sam Parr?

  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 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?

• 3:45Shaan 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 want to do persuasion. Truth is, you do. Anything, anything you're trying to make happen, you're usually going to need to persuade either 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 want to be a great thinker, you want to have 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. And so, writing is this, it's a truth teller potion.

• 4:28Shaan Puri?

  It will reveal how clear your thinking is. And 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 it's 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."

• 5:12Shaan Puri?

  And so, it's like, you know, starting a little fire in your brain. And, you know, those sparks can lead to new thoughts, new ideas that are quite powerful. And if you're not writing regularly, you're missing out on some of those ideas.

• 5:24Sam 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 running out my ideas is, you can't really hide a bad idea, or you can't hide bad thinking in long writing. You know where you can hide bad thinking? In a PowerPoint. Now, that doesn't mean that your ideas in long writing are going to be good, but you just can't hide it. You can't hide that it's bad. And so, that's why I prefer mapping it all out. And then, the third point of 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.

• 6:08Sam Parr?

  And when you start writing, you'll probably generate 50% more new ideas. 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 it evolves your idea and your thinking.

• 6:25Shaan Puri?

  And we've all seen Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from Amazon. He realized that PowerPoint was this thing that sort of the most charismatic, loudest voice in the room, or somebody with good slide design skills, could kind of like create an illusion of good thinking by using PowerPoint. And actually, he forced everybody instead to write long, long-form memos, basically narratives. And he's like, in the long-form written word, there's no place to hide. There's no way to use design or good presentation skills to, to make it seem like this is more well-thought-through than it is. It either is or it isn't. You'll find out. So I think it works inside of companies as well as it does externally to your customers and potential customers. So, all right, now let's get down to the actual tactics.

• 7:08Shaan Puri?

  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 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 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, this character, he came to town in San Francisco from, from the UK, and he was, 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, kind of like a lottery ticket thing, like, what if my YouTube video just went viral and got millions of views? How crazy would that be? And I asked him, I go, what's your hit rate?

• 7:53Shaan Puri?

  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. Really? 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 can guarantee the first like 100,000 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 it go viral. That just makes sure it gets a chance. Because the second thing is, We always work backwards from an emotion. He goes, people will only share or act if they feel something at the end.

• 8:32Shaan Puri?

  So he, he created this thing that he had like LOL, WTF, OMG, uh, oh, 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 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

• 9:17Shaan Puri?

  is written. And, and he was like, oh my God, the Democrats are baking this in to the bill. They're trying to pass this on page 140. They're trying to slip this right under your nose without telling anybody. And they're going to try to impeach Trump if he got elected and tried to stop, tried to, you know, if he got peace in the, in, in the, in the Ukraine and stopped the spending, he could be up for impeachment. And of course the post goes super viral because it's outrage. It's outrage from the Democrats. It's outrage from the Republicans. That is engineered to go viral. And so similarly, Chris, he 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.

• 9:58Shaan Puri?

  And so I stole this and I would start with, I asked 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 though, I always begin with the end in mind. I decide those before I ever write a word. Do you do something similar?

• 10:38Sam Parr?

  I do the exact same thing and typically I start with a headline and I start with the sub-headline. So if you share on Facebook, the headline's the big text, the sub-headline is the 180-character thing underneath that. Oftentimes, I go back and I change the headline a ton, but that one sentence, what I call the sub-headline, that doesn't change. And that one sentence is what helps clarify what I'm gonna write. So I actually don't do outlines. So there's a lot of things that I think you're taught in fifth grade that I think are really stupid. One of them is an outline. I guess it's okay to teach that, but I don't use outlines anymore. And my outline instead is that one sub-headline. That's what I use.

• 11:20Shaan 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.

• 11:26Sam Parr?

  The internet world, yeah.

• 11:27Shaan Puri?

  The internet world, you have to unlearn pretty much everything you learned in school. So in school, you learned, like, what do they reward in school? They're like, a minimum of this word counts. 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're out 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 cruff. 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 fancy vocabulary. So you get bonus points if you use, you know, ameliorate rather than, you know, heal or

• 12:09Shaan Puri?

  help or whatever. And so you're rewarded for using fancy words, but the reality is, you wanna be writing at a very accessible language, if you want, reading level, if you want to do well on the internet. So, you know, both you and I, we target kinda like fifth to eighth grade reading levels. And you could use these tools, these checkers, like Hemingway's 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. The lower the better is better on the

• 12:37Sam Parr?

  Yeah. And in the, in the second half of this episode, let's go through all those like tips and tricks. In terms of, in terms of writing, my process is I do copy work and then I draft, then I incubate and then I edit. So what that means is copy work, it's the same way. It's this old technique that people have learned how to write. We don't do it anymore, but I found it to be the most effective way. I 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 copy work is basically when you take write, writing that you love. It could be a full book. It could be a script for SNL. If you want to learn how to write comedy, it could be a blogger that you like. When I'm writing an important piece, I'll just write maybe for 10 minutes. I literally take my pen and by hand, I copy someone else's writing that I really like, and that helps me get into the flow.

• 13:23Shaan Puri?

  So we, we, what we said was before you've written a word, like most people just sit down, they start trying to write. What we've told you is do two different things instead. Begin with the end in mind, you know, the, what is the action, the reaction you want, and what's the, 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, you know, if you're going to go do a workout, you don't just go start sprinting right away. You warm up.

• 13:44Sam Parr?

  I do warm ups.

• 13:45Shaan 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, 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. But you want to, 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 who 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.

• 14:24Shaan Puri?

  One of yours is one that I use for my copy work. It's this one where you, I forgot the name of the blog, but it's, I always search for it with the same headline, which is. Uh, let me be perfectly clear. You're reading this because I want, because I want you to. Uh, and you're like, I have engineered the start of this to, and you're, 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. And I love that. It's, we call it the slippery slope. And so you, uh, I use one of yours whenever I want to write like in a really persuasive copyrighty way. If I want to write more like business serious, then I have a different one. I use this one that the CEO of Slack did where he wrote an internal memo that I really like called,

• 15:05Shaan Puri?

  we don't sell saddles here, but you literally just write a word for it. So that's your warm up. So again, two things before you ever write your own stuff.

• 15:12Sam 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 going to combine it to my own thing. Same way where you're writing a new song, you kind of warm up, maybe playing the Beatles and then eventually you're like, all right, I'm in the mood to write something beautiful. This is what I'm going to do.

• 15:30Shaan Puri?

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

• 15:38Sam 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, and here's why. Because after the drafting set is the incubation 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 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.

• 16:21Sam Parr?

  And so what I like to do is I 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 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 last part and the most important part is. Ogilvy, one of my favorite writers, what's his first name?

• 16:42Shaan Puri?

  David.

• 16:42Sam 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. Stephen King calls it killing your darlings. He says, "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?

• 17:07Shaan Puri?

  Hundred percent. I learned this from you, the incubate part. So I used to draft and then try to edit in the same session. Because I knew editing is where the value is, right? Great writing is great editing. Let's be perfectly clear. Great writing is great editing. However, the mistake I was making before was I would write and then I would immediately try to edit and power through. And I didn't have that 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.

• 17:46Shaan Puri?

  And then when I come back, I look at it and it's just so obvious to me. Oh, strike this. You 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. Because 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 try to make a good draft. Bad idea. You actually just want to have a, like, quick and dirty draft, like a brain dump draft. And so I used to try to make a good draft. That would take me way too long and I get fatigued and I'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.

• 18:30Shaan Puri?

  And then I'll try to edit right away. Now, short draft and then high energy edit after I have that incubation period. So this is hundred percent what I do and it is extremely effective.

• 18:40Sam 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 see something else in the world and I'm like, oh, that reminds me of this concept I was, I was thinking about.

• 18:55Shaan Puri?

  I figured it out.

• 18:57Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Shaan Puri?

  I figured out the CTA.

• 19:03Shaan Puri?

  Is it weird if I sign off with sayonara suckers?

• 19:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Sam Parr?

  Wait, what do you think about I love you at the end? Would that be a thing?

• 19:13Sam Parr?

  But I actually do like, well, I'll have like a, do you have like a notes app or a notes folder in your phone? Where it's like, you just have like a sentence and you're like, that's a beautiful sentence. I'm just, I don't, I don't know where I'm going to use that, but that was a beautiful sentence. Or a lot of times I get 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.

• 19:34Shaan Puri?

  One of the things we didn't say in the before phase is having a swipe file. So 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 could be like, 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, for hellos and goodbyes. Cause for some reason, whenever I'd write my newsletter, I knew what I wanted to say, but the start always was so awkward. It was like, hello, you know, hello there friends. And I was like, God, this sucks.

• 20:19Shaan Puri?

  And then I started keeping a file of like, anytime I liked, liked an opener or a closer. So I have one opener's file, one closer's file, and I have a whole bunch in there that I can use to riff off of. Cause for whatever reason, that was my, my blocker when I would write.

• 20:32Sam Parr?

  I'll just hear a beautiful phrase and I'll write it down. So like, I went to this guy's website and he was talking about the best like speaker system or something. And he started off the paragraph with, well, folks, it doesn't get any better than this. And I was like, oh, and beautiful, that's mine. And like, I just have this whole bank of like these things of people saying like cute phrases. I'm like, oh, that's a, like, I just felt an emotion when I read that. Basically you have to think every, people are scrolling through thousands of articles every day. And I, if I see a line that grabs my attention, I know that's good. That's mine, that's mine. And I just have this whole bank of these. So let's move on to some more tips about talking about the actual writing part. Because I think that what you're taught in school.

• 21:16Sam Parr?

  We're basically going to say do the opposite of a lot of it.

• 21:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, here's, here's the mistakes, common mistakes. Mistake number one, they start with a bunch of intro context, background fluff. You wrote a, the tip is actually don't bury the lead. So the first sentence should punch. So try putting the most important sentence at the top. Try putting the most provocative statement at the top. Try putting the promise at the top or the bait, the hook at the top. So as an example, you have one here that when, when you were building the hustle, one of the things you tried to do was these viral blog posts. You were like, I'm going to write these blog posts. If I can get a million views on those blog posts and, you know, some percentage of them will subscribe. That's how I'll grow my subscriber base.

• 21:54Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 21:55Shaan Puri?

  And I remember reading this, which was first sentence. 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, 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 want to know.

• 22:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, typically when you're thinking about the lead. So I found it helps with a few things. One, if you're new, what I tell people is let me see your opener. Cut it and like, cut almost all of it, except for like the last couple of 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 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. I'm like, just tell me your thesis statement right off the, right off, like just, just say that, just punch me in the face with that. That should be your, that should be your opening line. Another thing is I like to think of, um, have you ever been to England? And have you ever noticed they have signs that say mind the gap?

• 23:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:14Sam Parr?

  I guess that's like when you're, I always say mind the curiosity gap. So mine, so with the curiosity gap means I'm going to, I'm going to punch you in the face to grab your attention. Cause that gets you to fall down the slippery slope. And the more that you fall down that slope, the further you're going to continue to read. And so I want to grab your attention, but I don't want to tell you exactly everything, but I want to grab your attention by not burying the lead. And I'm going to get you to fall down this slope a little further.

• 23:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that simple test is take your hand, cover up all of the text, except for the first two sentences.

• 23:43Shaan Puri?

  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, if I didn't have to read this, would I want to read, would I need to read the next sentence? Not what I need to do the whole thing, what 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? What I want to know, what, what's the next sentence? And then by the third or fourth time you've done that, now they're in, now they're invested. Now you have a little more leeway to let it breathe and, and, and create a little bit of background because they're, they're have, they're invested in getting to the end of the, of the outcome. But like, the reason this sounds so brutal, where you're going to cover up, I say, I'm going to cover up 85, 90% of the text? Yes. Because the reality is that's actually how the reader's eyes work.

• 24:27Shaan Puri?

  80, 90% of people are only ever going to read the headline. And if the headline's no good, they're never going to get to any of their 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 idea as a disservice. And so you want to 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 created that curiosity gap where I have to read the next sentence. And that's it.

• 24:55Sam 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, but I say it in a sensational or clicky way. We say clicky, it ain't bait if I actually deliver on the promise.

• 25:10Shaan Puri?

  You have to pay it off. 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, 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, like, I'm not good, I'm not a good writer. And again, 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.

• 25:55Shaan Puri?

  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 got to first be able to like, explain it just in plain language yourself.

• 26:06Sam Parr?

  What I tell my team, so 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. And that's probably all you need to say for this thing. But like, there's a few ways to figure out what not to do. One is you go to people's LinkedIn. If they use the word utilize, that's probably not good. Have you ever heard someone say they utilize or they did? Like, what are other like LinkedIn jargon? LinkedIn is like-

• 26:33Shaan 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.

• 26:40Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like, dude, I've never heard you use that word utilize.

• 26:43Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  The second thing to remember is there's informal is, or rather informal can be professional. A lot of times people think informal is the opposite of professional. And I actually say that's nonsense. And I'm going to actually show examples of how that's not true in a few minutes. But and another good line that I think about is, it was Stephen King. He says, anywhere you have to hunt in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There's no exceptions to this rule. And so like, if you have to like, look up like what a word means, you don't use it. You want to use words that most everyone uses. And I'm going to, again, I'm going to show you examples of really complicated stuff explained in a really simple way. Like, here's a really good example of writing like you talk. So one of my favorite pieces of writing is Louis CK.

• 27:27Sam Parr?

  So Louis CK, about 10 or 15 years ago, he used to release his own specials like on his website. And if you Google Louis CK, Neville Medhora, or something like that, you'll see my friend Neville wrote a blog post about some of his stuff because it's actually not up anymore. But he's got this great line in one of his bits, he says, or one of his landing pages. He goes, please, please don't tour the 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, I'm like, all right, you're right. This is, I should abide by this. You are exactly right.

• 28:12Sam Parr?

  There was no jargon, simple language.

• 28:15Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, 100% agree. I also think that, you know, this also works for choosing what to write about. So for example, sometimes people will write about shit that they would never talk to you about. We had this problem early on at the Milk Road. So when we did the Milk Road, I was the initial writer. So I created the initial voice and Milk Road was a newsletter that we built in the crypto space. And we went from zero subscribers and never have written a daily newsletter before to the biggest crypto newsletter in the world and sold it for millions of dollars that 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? Because I didn't want to wake up every morning and stress about sending this email out at 5 a.m. to, you know, a couple hundred thousand people. That that was not the idea of a good life for me. So I was like, let me see if I could train people to do this.

• 29:01Shaan Puri?

  One of the hacks to training people to do this was 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 kind of boring. So like, the topic is boring. Like, what's happening? I was like, and I told him, I was like, I feel like you would never just tell me about this. If I was just talking to you, if I was your your friend and you were like, oh, did you hear what happened today? Which is what I knew, 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?

• 29:45Shaan Puri?

  This guy said this thing and people are freaking out because of blah, blah, blah. And this announcement was made and people think it's going to be a big deal and the price is going to go up because that would mean this. And as soon as they started doing that, I was like, yep, that sounds perfect. Just write that down. And it just was such a good filter. And so one way to think about what to write about and how to write it is do this little kind of voice memo test. So can you just, if you were just to tell your friend about this, you know, hey, I have this idea, blah, blah, blah, or, you know, I noticed this thing. I found it really interesting because blah, blah, blah. And if you can't, if it's not interesting to your friend, guess what? It's not going to be interesting to a stranger, right? Like, you have to be able to 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.

• 30:26Sam Parr?

  Well, and the the tip that I used to give, so 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 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. 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, but just only write to one, one person. Direct it to that one person and that's the way to go. Uh, and so it makes it a lot easier.

• 31:02Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 31:03Sam 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 want to write. Now, there's this app called Hemingway App. I love that app. I don't really have to use it too much anymore. But it's a free thing. It's hemingwayapp.com. You could put your writing in there and I prefer to keep my stuff around sixth to seventh grade. Now, to give you guys perspective, I think USA news.com, USA news, the newspaper. I believe that's at a fourth grade reading level. New York Times, which is highly regarded by a lot of people. That's at a seventh grade reading, reading level. And I actually went and put Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett writes about insurance companies, a very complicated topic. I went and put his stuff through Hemingway App as well.

• 31:46Sam Parr?

  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,

• 31:58Shaan Puri?

  Check.

• 31:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, to check, to do it for you.

• 32:00Shaan 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, a little more advanced category of how to be a great writer, is being able to use, use the art of storytelling. Uh, do you want to give an example of that? Uh, or how do you want to talk about storytelling here?

• 32:20Sam 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 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 and a 60 minute talk. I was like, oh, that's a, that's a hit because that just made me feel something. I'm going to give you. Example of this story. 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. And here's the the opening line. Last week at Pizza Pizza and 40s, Kara Hint, the founder,

• 33:02Sam Parr?

  Kara Golden, 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 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, America's love sweet. This is never gonna work.

• 33:23Shaan 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 W T

• 33:34Sam Parr?

  It has outrage.

• 33:34Shaan Puri?

  OMG type of reaction of like

• 33:36Sam Parr?

  And like, you're wrong. 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, 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 Golden, now 17 later, 17 years later to found Hint, and they do 100 million in sales. Here's the flavors they have. This article made them tens of millions of dollars in sales. We used to get so much traffic to this article because they ended up promoting it. I wasn't selling Hint water. I was just telling a cool story about the founder. And in exchange, it made

• 34:21Sam Parr?

  all these people want to buy this stuff. And 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.

• 34:39Shaan Puri?

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

• 34:43Sam Parr?

  You do it.

• 34:44Shaan Puri?

  So a couple of tips on writing a great story or telling a great story. So go look at the greatest storytellers ever. One of them is Aaron Sorkin. He's known for writing great dialogue. He wrote, you know, the the Social Network movie. He wrote, what is it? West Wing? He wrote The Newsroom. Great writer, famous writer, famous Hollywood writer. He says, I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. So what he says is, a story is just two things. Somebody has an intention. Somebody wants something. And there's an obstacle in their way.

• 35:17Sam Parr?

  By the way, that line, I worship at blank altar.

• 35:20Shaan Puri?

  At the altar of blank. Yeah.

• 35:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that that is going into my bank.

• 35:25Shaan Puri?

  To your bank. All right. So, uh, so intention and obstacle. Intention is 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 all they have to go on is this one five second call that they were on or whatever. Right. Like obstacle, they have no way to find them 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 Kara 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.

• 36:10Shaan Puri?

  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 audience, you, you think that you're gonna tell them later what the they want. 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.

• 36:39Shaan Puri?

  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 chauffeur limousine. And it's this girl in love with her boyfriend and she looks at it kind of longingly. And then she just goes back to her, her, you know, Palm Pilot 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 because she hasn't find the right guy and she's still 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? What do you have to lose if this doesn't go well? And stakes doesn't have like stakes initially, the beginner version of stakes is life or death.

• 37:25Shaan Puri?

  But the true art and some, if you like, some of the stories that I've told on this podcast, the true art is when you can establish 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, how I didn't want them to win because fuck them and they can't cut, they cut in front of me, but I'm not 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 because otherwise you're limited to just life or death stories.

• 38:09Sam Parr?

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

• 38:29Shaan Puri?

  I should let this go. Oh, I could fight to the death as a matter of principle here because, you know, what are you trying to say? And what does this mean? Right? And if it means something to me, that I can make it mean something to you. So that sort of thing. So.

• 38:40Sam Parr?

  Larry David's great at this too. Like I've never watched that show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like they're making a story out of something so silly and small. Uh, you know, like.

• 38:48Shaan Puri?

  It's 10 times more likeable when it's something relatable or small, but it still carries the emotional impact. And if you could do that, you have infinite supply of stories.

• 38:57Sam Parr?

  He notices that people don't, people don't talk to someone if they're wearing a MAGA hat. And 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. Uh, that's a really good example of a high stakes, uh, high stakes and a low stakes environment 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 halfway. 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

• 39:42Sam Parr?

  these famous annual shareholder letters every single year. He's a very good writer. And listen to this. From 1974 to 2013, someone analyzed this and the letters, or sorry, the words per sentence dropped from 17 to 13. If you look at like, we actually did an analysis on this. Every year, it gets shorter and shorter and shorter. And the reading level dropped from a 10th grade to a 4th grade reading level. 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 one kind of somewhat the average show to be able to understand this. And so, short, simple sentences are key, even in complicated environments.

• 40:27Sam Parr?

  And here's a really good example. So if you go to hay.com, so hay.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 their email. There's a letter from the CEO, and that's one of my favorite like tactics, by the way, on a sales page. It's a letter from a CEO. And he says, "Hey, everyone, I'm Jason, CEO of 37 Signals. Email gets a bad rap, but it shouldn't. Email's a treasure." And he goes on to explain why email is awesome and why it should be more special than it is. And it's the most simple language to explain email, and I love it. And there's lots of examples of simple language and simple ways to explain complicated things. And if you're able to do that, oftentimes it will have shorter sentences, less words,

• 41:12Sam Parr?

  and it's significantly more effective than longer stuff.

• 41:17Shaan 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, but I'll share it anyways. We'll put it up on YouTube because it's a visual thing. You gotta see this.

• 41:28Sam Parr?

  The rhythm thing?

• 41:29Shaan Puri?

  The rhythm thing, which is, great writing has rhythm. So there's 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 emptiness of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals, and sounds that say, listen to this, this is important.

• 42:14Shaan Puri?

  So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create music, create sound that pleases the reader's ears. Don't just write words, write music. I love that thing. It is amazing. And so you want to have short by default, but then, like he says, when the reader is rested and ready, use a long sentence to great effect. And so that's like an advanced move when it comes to writing. Most people's problem is 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.

• 42:41Sam Parr?

  Whenever I, sometimes when I write something that I get really into, I almost feel like I channel my inner Eminem or like some rapper or something where I'm like, what type of rhythm could get people flowing? Like I need to have a rhythm that gets people to fall down this. And like there's small tactics, like anytime you want to use a comma, use a period, and then start the next sentence with and or but. Or there's other things like put your internal dialogue, or the reader's internal dialogue. Like, so why would I do this, you're asking yourself right now? 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.

• 43:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. That's a great way of putting it. I also think like the rhythm thing is, it comes from the copy work. So back to the copy work at the beginning, if you do copy work on something that has rhythm, like I will write that same thing that I just read out loud, I'll write that in my copy work. It takes whatever, 55 seconds. But now I'm already kind of revved up to write in that style, to have that variety, that rhythm when I write the next thing.

• 43:51Sam Parr?

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

• 43:57Shaan 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, 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?

• 44:11Sam 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.

• 44:19Shaan Puri?

  And what do you like about that, by the way? I read that book. I didn't love it. What, what was so good about it?

• 44:22Sam 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 toolkit where he explains like how he does stuff. And I just felt in the biography part, he was doing it. And then the, in the toolkit part, he was teaching me. Yeah. And so I really appreciate that. But then I also get a lot of inspiration from funny, original thinkers. You know, who is one of the most original, like people with words right now is Theo Von. So I'll hear Theo Von, like for example, he had an ad for Athletic Greens and he goes, today's sponsors, 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 like silly things.

• 45:05Shaan Puri?

  Unexpected.

• 45:05Sam 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 listened to a ton of comedians because they've perfected this. So like Dave Chappelle is really great with timing. Shane Gillis, really good with timing. And so 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.

• 45:30Sam Parr?

  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?

• 45:46Shaan 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. All 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 CK got canceled. 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, my head. It's like, how is he going to address this? What's he say? People should go listen to it in, in full. But basically first he doesn't address, he's, he's doing his normal act.

• 46:30Shaan Puri?

  And he pauses just in the middle of like doing a thing. And he's just like, so should we talk about it? All right, we can talk about it. And he just brings it up like, he makes it awkward because like, what he did was like weird and pretty gross and bad, whatever. And so 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. He makes fun of himself like, it's like, basically poke fun, like my thing is so weird that I liked and did, and everybody knows about it.

• 47:15Shaan Puri?

  And he kind of wins you on his side, like just the comedian, the idea of even Obama knows my thing. Like everybody's got a thing, but it's secret usually. And so then he goes and he, there's more to it, but he does that. Chappelle does one when, when they took the Chappelle 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 up there. I have a fight with these guys and my fans are watching it and Netflix is winning and the studios, everyone's winning except for Chappelle from the Chappelle 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 because 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 can't even do it just, I'm gonna do a full breakdown of like,

• 48:00Shaan Puri?

  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 kind of baked it in at the end, uh, but he set, the setup was so strong that 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.

• 48:39Sam Parr?

  I, uh, I, I, I want to go watch that. Another person I love, have you ever read Joel on software? Joel on software.com?

• 48:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you're going from Chappelle to Joel, the maker of Trello.

• 48:51Sam Parr?

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

• 49:25Shaan Puri?

  There was a great one yesterday. I don't know if you saw it yesterday. There's a great one, 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 click it and it's this like 10,000-word blog post about Kroger's technology. He's just like,

• 49:42Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I like Kroger. Kroger is the biggest grocer in the world. And he's like, they should be good at technology. They have all the money and they have the customers. They have all the locations. Like, they should not be getting their, you know, their ass handed them by Instacart and these other like startups. He's like, look at this. You open the Kroger app and it doesn't, like, you swipe 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 like, 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. And I loved it. I read every word of it. I was like, this is incredible nerdery right here. I love this thing.

• 50:24Sam 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. And so that's a great way to like, kind of get people down your slippery slope. But this is a really good article. And I love-

• 50:38Shaan Puri?

  It's not even that this is particularly good writing, but what I would say is that this is effective writing, because the best 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 like, become some character in order for their content to hit, to work, to be, to be, to be a popular or whatever. And you could kind of do that. And you might even get some popularity, but it'll never work in the long run, because it's not you being you. And those people are attracted to something that's not your actual brain, your actual thoughts. It's you-

• 51:08Sam Parr?

  You gotta let that free flag fly, baby.

• 51:10Shaan Puri?

  You gotta let it fly.

• 51:11Sam Parr?

  Fly.

• 51:12Shaan Puri?

  That's how this podcast worked. Is like, I started with this interview format, trying to emulate, it's almost like copy work. I was like, emulating the Tim Ferriss Show, or how I built this, or whatever. But then, when it was just, there's me pushed out. It's like, I'm gonna get on here, we're gonna talk some days about writing, and some days about mindset, some days about this niche business that's, you know, tire rims in North Carolina, that's crushing it. It's like, that's the shit I'm into. So that's the shit I talk about. That's the thing I'm most passionate about. That's the thing I can have. 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. And nobody can compete with me at that thing, right? Like, that, that is a personal monopoly. There is nobody else who could do what I'm doing as well as I'm doing it. You could do the same thing with

• 51:54Shaan Puri?

  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.

• 52:06Sam Parr?

  Which is what this episode is. We're talking about a topic that you and I actually care a ton about. And I guess we're going to find out if the rest care about it, but it will find those who do. Next time for the next, what do we call this?

• 52:18Shaan Puri?

  Questionable advice.

• 52:19Sam Parr?

  This next time, are we doing business plans, I think?

• 52:23Shaan Puri?

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

• 52:40Sam Parr?

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

• 52:45Shaan Puri?

  Uh, yeah, but I'm inspired by doing this. I'm like, I want to tell people about this and actually like, cause I have, I have a course that does this, but I have a ton of examples. So the examples are actually what's valuable because you might hear some of the things you talked about, you're like, okay, I gotta look that up. I gotta look that up, look that up. But in the course, I basically put it all there where I'm like, here's the principle. Here's the example. You, 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 well. Try it again. And literally, if you just do that, you'll get better as a writer. That's like a structured form of practice. So my course is not so much me talking about it. It was that. And I'm like, if somebody actually wanted to learn that, you kind of need that. You kind of need to have those gold star examples and you need to have like a place to go practice, like try it, learn it, and then try it again.

• 53:29Sam 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?

• 53:34Shaan Puri?

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

• 53:52Sam Parr?

  And then I have a thing only on copy work. I love copy work. It changed my life. I got this thing. I made it like in a weekend, two years ago, just for shits and giggles. Cause I, it just, 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. And then you copy it by hand and I break down why each point is interesting. So you can. Check it out. Copy that. It's got a ton of good reviews. You could actually, I actually try to post all the negative reviews and the positive reviews. So you can see all the reviews, but it's copy that.com. So Google Sean Perry, power writing, and you'll see his page on Maven.com and then copy that.

• 54:30Shaan Puri?

  And we'll put them both in the description. So it'll be at the top of the description here. We'll put the links to the, to the things we talked about in this episode, because I think if you're listening to this, you're driving or you're walking. It's very hard. And we're usually not that good with show notes. But today, all right, let's try to be good with the show notes where all the resources we talked about, let's make it easy. And put it, put it there for people so that they can just scroll down and get it. Dude, there's 8,000 people on the whitelist for the course. I didn't even, I haven't looked at this in so long. This was like 500 last time I looked.

• 54:59Shaan Puri?

  That's crazy.

• 55:00Sam Parr?

  You should do that again.

• 55:02Shaan Puri?

  That's actually too many. I don't think I could do so many people at once. Cause I'm pretty like, I'm live with them and I'm like doing student feedback. So that would be, I don't think that's even doable. Like I couldn't possibly do even, I've never, the biggest one we ever did was like 400. So 8,000 people is just not gonna work.

• 55:17Sam Parr?

  You'll figure it out. Um, is that the pod?

• 55:19Shaan Puri?

  That's the pod.