075 What I learned from David Perell about writing online
I asked David Perell aka “The Writing Guy” what he would do if he were a 15 year old in high school again.
He immediately said, he’d write on the Internet. And then described a specific route he’d take to do so successfully.
Here are a couple of key points I got from our conversation:
Summarize ideas of other people
I think it’s easy to say, “Hey, I’m just going to try to find original ideas,” but you don’t need to start there. You can actually build an audience and really start learning just by summarizing the ideas of other people.
With writing, you are taking individual ideas, putting them into building blocks, fragmenting them, and then you’re beginning to rearrange them.
You’re beginning to add stories, you’re starting to say, “You know what? This part of the idea is less important and this part of the idea is more important.”
By weighting different parts of the idea, that idea is moving through you. Now, you’re retelling that idea through your own lens and you’re adding a new spin, a new interpretation, and that is one of the best ways to learn.
Each idea you publish is a “serendipity vehicle”
David considers each idea that you put out into the world a “serendipity vehicle” that creates serendipitous events.
If something you write is interesting to someone you know, they might share it and it’ll reach someone else who finds it interesting, and so they connect with your wavelength and reach out to you.
Who reaches out to you and what they reach out to you about is something that cannot be said. There is something about this unpredictability that perhaps makes serendipity vehicles so great.
Nevertheless, people will reach out to you if you write well, write consistently and publish your ideas.
I chatted to David on my podcast and he dropped some key insights into writing and the problem with writing education (plus, how he’s trying to fix it!) Watch our full conversation here:
The Amazing Things & Ideas Newsletter
1. Something I’ve been thinking about:
It’s the internal obstacles (like guilt, shame, fear, and embarrassment) that do most of the work of keeping one in line. There’s a kind of freedom that lies in contempt towards educational institutions.
2. A book on how to sell better through writing:
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Claude Hopkins was a pioneer in the field of advertising, the OG copywriter, if you like.
At one time, traditional advertising was a gamble. It was not based off of any data. Advertisers and copywriters only followed their whims and wrote stuff that felt best for them (which wasn't necessarily the case with people you actually wanted to attract with your ads—potential customers!)
A big idea from this one was that bad advertising is done to please the advertiser. Good advertising is done to please the customer. Acknowledging the need to go against pleasing only ourselves is crucial to making sales.
3. Why Recessions Happen by Johnny Harris:
If there’s this kind of content on the Internet, does one really need a class in economics?
4. Seth Godin on innovation:
It’s all a mistake
…until it works.
That's what innovation is. Mistakes, experiments, mis-steps.
Until it works.
The process isn't to avoid the things that don't work. Because that means avoiding the things that might not work…
Instead, our job is to eagerly embrace the mistakes on the road to the impact that we seek.
Thank you for reading.
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Onward,
Arjun