Day 24 - Student of Writing (n.)⚡️
How to CopyWrite Better from Experts (⚡️BetterFriend Project Day 8 - 38)
Student [stood-nt]
noun.
: a person formally engaged in learning, especially one enrolled in a school or college; pupil.
: any person who studies, investigates, or examines thoughtfully.
Quick Recap:
Stay in touch w/ Friends
We are building a simple v0.1 of BetterFriend app by using WhatsApp Chatbot to remind people their loved one’s birthday with AI.
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears”
- Maybe Lao Tzu. There’s no definitive connection. Western interpretations.
Progress
I’m making solid strides on the coding front, but the writing front I am quite behind.
I’ve mastered the corporate email. The politically correct. The concise yet detailed message. The neutral tone. This is as boring as it gets. Every word screams, “Don’t take risk”. I sound like a robot with no personality. Ohhh how quickly will AI replace me if I don’t learn to have an unique voice. When they say AI will replace writers, they aren’t wrong - AI will replace all the humans that follow the robotic neutral tone. We just have to sound more human.
Corporate Voice
My journey to find my own voice started 8 years ago when I left Facebook & Instagram at the peak of my job. I had the most client case studies in the entire company. Over 15 case studies and one of them even got shout outs during Wall Street Quarterly Earnings call by Sheryl Sandberg who was the COO at the time. I couldn’t take credit of course. God forbid a mere second year Strategic Account Manager gets highlighted for the work he’s done on behalf of Facebook. It would rock the team dynamic and show favoritism. This is where I learned that in corporate, individual voice is suppressed in order to have one united voice - the corporate brand voice.
Facebook in 2015 had lower acceptance rate than Harvard or MIT. They were the #1 rated company, and everyone wanted to be there for as long as they can. But not me. My goals had always been building something on my own.
While everyone was enamored by the free ice cream, unlimited seafood and Disneyland like Menlo Park office, I told my new coworkers at the orientation, “I will be here at most 2-3 years, then I’m doing my own thing”.
The Departure
2 years and 3 months later, I left. Earlier than I expected. A big reason was because Appsumo - a small software marketplace platform in Austin and Ayman, who was the president at the time.
We were introduced through a coworker, a mutual friend at Facebook who knew my plans to leave. I wanted to make a travel gear company that competes against Patagonia. My cofounder, also my beach volleyball friend, from Ventura, CA (where Patagonia was based) worked on one of the first backpacks there. He moved to Austin to be the designer of the soft coolers for Yeti. I knew all the factories that made Patagonia, Yeti and every products in China. I had everything planned. Ready to go - just afraid to leave.
Ayman caught wind of that quickly and asked, “How much do I need to pay you to leave Facebook, to come set up Appsumo’s Social Ads part-time and you can go follow your dreams.” That was all the push that I needed to leave corporate forever.
In 6 months, we generated over $1M revenue profitability through ads. I helped hire the Appsumo’s Facebook Ads team, set it up and I was no longer needed. It was only total 2-3 months of time. But here’s where I first saw what content and personal branding can do for a business. Their 1M+ email list and Noah’s personal brand really pushed the business to new heights with just a small team of less than 10.
The early days of Appsumo, they got very good at writing emails. The witty, casual but professional style came from one of their earliest writers - KopyWriting.com. Even The Hustle, a popular newsletter, drew inspiration from this style of copywriting. I thought it was cool at the time, but since I didn’t see immediate value from it for my work, I mostly ignored it. I wish I started my journey then, but clearly I wasn’t ready.
I checked yesterday, Neville the founder is still selling this course - It’s now called CopyWritingCourse.com.
They invited me to speak at SumoCon and I met many amazing speakers. One of them was Codie Sanchez who was a private equity investor in South America in 2017 and didn’t focus on her personal brand at the time.
8 years later, she’s now a celebrity in the small / medium size business world. With 2.6M followers on Instagram and arguably the #1 business podcast on Youtube. She’s beyond crushing it. It’s incredibly inspiring to watch how people build businesses from scratch. And I have even more respect for those who build with their own pace and profitability in mind.
Very different from the VC path of “let’s raise a lot of money, burn them, and sell”.
Good writing is essential to success
In the 8 years of VC & Crypto world, I’ve seen the most successful founders and investors all have one thing in common - They write incredibly well.
Vitalik Buterin is famous for his research papers and his perspective on decentralization / money / privacy.
Paul Graham, the founder of Y-Combinator writes a great blog. I love his most recent essay about writing essays: https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html
A16z the well known venture capital firm has gone full content mode for the last several years with writing, podcast and many more.
Almost all the successful investors, founders, companies all write well. Not in a corporate way - in their own way. I’ve admired them from a far, but for some reason I never thought that it could be me. Maybe I just thought that English as a 3rd language would make it too difficult for me to master writing. Maybe I am scared to read the comments and feedback. But I’m ready now.
Masters
As I mentioned in the last Writing Post,
I find masterclass.com super helpful with many writers hosting their own series. There are so many that I had to actually ask AI to recommend who to watch first. David Sedaris was on the top of that list.
In one of the lessons, he shared openly about his tumor story. “I had this tumor that I had to take out, and I had asked the surgeon if I can have it back so I can feed it to a snapping turtle that lives near my beach house”, he said it with a straight face and no hint of laughing. I don’t know which part tickled me, but it’s been a while since I’ve laughed so hard. It’s just an absurd statement to say. A lot of his writing draws inspiration from his daily life - I learned a lot from his process and here are some of the highlights:
He writes and rewrites a story / opening / ending 12-18 times before the editors
He writes everyday, rain or shine
He stays off of his phones and screens to allow life to give him inspirations
He asks questions that are not boring: “Have you ever fed kangaroos on a stand-up paddle board?”
Complicated (Not purely good or bad) characters make good stories
“Get into it” - Get to the action quicker
Release Point - When the writing is dense and too much information, insert humor or something to release the tension or it will sound like a lecture
Ending - Audience is getting kicked in the stomach by a baby - some surprise
Sorrow makes funny things memorable
Spend weeks on Endings
Include the ugly - writer’s job is not supposed to be perfect
Feelings are subjective - They are not the truth. Go Deeper.
Dress better than the audience
His recommendations:
Tobias Wolf - Finest Short Stories
Ann Patchett - The Getaway Car
I’ve been surrounded by people who write well. You too. So many great writers started out as readers. It only takes one day to say, “I want to get better at writing.”
I’ve started my journey as a student 24 days ago.
When will you?
See you tomorrow!
(⚡️BetterFriend Project Day 8 - 38)