✴️ How I'm Making... #3

It occurred to me that personally, I prefer to consume content over audio. Even when I read, I read while listening to the audiobook at 2x speed because it helps me retain information. Here’s an audio version of me reading the newsletter for you, so you don’t have to 🙂 

📈 Failing at... words?

To this day, my published college thesis presentation has a spelling mistake. 

Like many engineers, I used to pride myself on being a bad writer. My misguided sense of pride led me to compound my writing skill in the wrong direction. Whenever I had to write, I put in little to no effort, leading to bad results. This of course confirmed the idea that I was a bad writer, and so the cycle continued.

It Only Gets Worse...

After I left college, I thought my writing days were completely behind me. I couldn't have been more wrong.

As a solo founder, 90% of what you do is communicate your value to customers, investors, and partners. Writing is a pivotal part of this. Everything you do to sell your service, from emails, DMs, and even sales scripts requires you to be a good writer. The better you write, the more you make.

Now I was in a pickle. I had to choose between maintaining my identity as a bad writer, and making my business successful. I chose the latter. Here's how I learnt how to write.

Learn to Earn

Learning is a skill that has paid me everything I am worth today (which, granted, is not all that much. Give me some time!) Learning to sell my education got me my first job. Learning to draw got me my first commission. Learning to convince someone I can help them got me my first $1350 client.

Learning how to learn is a skill that pays endless dividends. Here is the best process I’ve found for acquiring new skills. 

1. Acknowledge your baseline

2. Find the masters

3. Copy, then innovate

This is how I’m learning to write, and how I learnt the skills to build a business.

1. Acknowledge your baseline

Learning, and picking what to learn, is a stepwise process whose first step is “being willing to”. Being open to new information means acknowledging that my current state sucks. Telling the nervous chubby "foreign" kid in me that it’s okay to suck took some deliberate effort. Be prepared to do some self-convincing!

(If it’s any consolation, it has gotten easier with practice. It took 20 years for me to admit to myself that I sucked at writing and I needed to do something about it. After a year of deliberate practice it only takes a few seconds to assume I know nothing, and commit to learning. Calming the nervous ego is a skill that can also be learnt.)

2. Find the masters

Once we know that we want to learn, it’s important to choose our masters. In every subject or activity, there is someone getting the results you want, using the methods you want to use. I will always try to find my top 3. When I was learning about marketing and sales, my 3 were Alex Hormozi, Chris Do, and Seth Godin. With my writing, I picked Seth Godin, Alex Hormozi, and my friend who's a director and professional script writer.

3. Copy, then innovate

Have you ever had a personal training session in the gym? The trainer will often show you what to do, and have you follow along with them. Copying gets a bad rep. It sounds like a bad thing. A non-original take, a non-creative activity.

• Copying is not the same as cheating.

Cheating helps you improve an external result. Copying helps you internalize the lesson.

I have found copying to be a net positive, as long as I follow these rules.

• Be Deliberate In Your Copying

For my first few cold emails, I copied a template I found from Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers.

But the goal was not to sound like Hormozi. The goal was to get a baseline that was higher than my own. If I was trying to imitate Hormozi's tone, I would be walking a completely different path, and doing a worse job at it.

Make sure you know what you're copying. Your goal isn't to be a subset of something else, it's to be the most you.

• Copy for an outcome

If my goal is to write a newsletter that people find engaging, what do I do? Well, I would start by looking at what other popular newsletters are doing, and try to figure out what makes them 'good'.

The best kind of copying shows me the method to get to an outcome. Anything that lets me produce results is something I can learn from. (From my research, a 'good' newsletter is either thoughtful and personal, or short-and-sweet. Given we are 700 words in, I'm sure you can see which model I'm going for.)

• Copy, then innovate

Getting better is an everyday process. Copying is the first step. It sets the standard, points you in a direction, and lets you start moving. Remember to keep learning!

🎁 Small gift for you…

Come join us at our community group! As an early joiner, your membership will be free for life.

WARNING: Come prepared to get things done, we don’t mess around here 💪

🔗 The Best Way To Write

I have been loving the free tier of Hemingway. It's challenging to be concise. Hemingway makes it easier!

Speaking of cold emails, here's a great resource from instantly.ai that I copied because I didn't want them to take it offline.

What’s Next?

Last week, I made a couple of posts on Reddit that went viral - next week I’ll be focusing on delivering on this promise, and making content around the things I try.

Post 1, Post 2

That’s all for now!

I hope you have a great week - remember shame only lives in the shadows!

Cheers,

Ben

Founder: GOM Venture Club

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