The Top 5 Revelations from My 10-Day Adventure in a Writing Course
Writing is a super-power. Email. Slack. Web copy. Ad copy. If you can master writing, you can convince, persuade, sell, and build deep connections.
I have to hand it to the My First Million Podcast hosts, Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. They walk the walk. They built and audience, and then use the reach to hawk all their ideas. The podcast is like a think tank with a sales channel. And I took the bait.
Sam offers a very simple email-based copywriting course. The premise goes like this: new musicians get good at music by learning other artists’ pieces. At some point, they start stitching together what they’ve learned from others to compose their own original music.
But that’s not how we’re taught to write. Instead, we’re expected to craft our own prose just a couple years after we learn how to scribe the letters. Ben Franklin had a system that was based on literal copy-writing. He’d copy great writing to make it stick in his brain. Just like an amateur guitarist masters Stairway to Heaven before venturing onto his own composing.
1. Making Your Writing Sing, Even If It's Tone-Deaf
They say the best writing should have rhythm, like a catchy song that you can’t get out of your head. In the bootcamp, I learned that even my writing could 'sing', although my shower-time renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody might disagree. Take it from Louis CK’s sales page and Gary Halbert's letters - simplicity and flow aren’t just for poets. They’re for us mere mortals trying to sell something as unsexy as ED pills. Rhythm. Cadence. Sentence Length. The little levers that words can pull in the readers’ brain to keep them on the page.
2. AIDA: Not The Opera, But Just As Dramatic
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. No, it’s not the plot of a new Netflix production, but the backbone of compelling sales copy. We learned to treat each piece of writing like a mini-drama, where the hero (the reader) must be wooed and won over. It turns out, getting someone to read the second sentence is like asking for a second date - you better have smiled a lot and not farted in the car.
3. The Warren Buffet Approach: Keeping It Simple
Warren Buffet writes about billion-dollar businesses with the simplicity of a bedtime story. This bootcamp taught me that if I can’t explain my product to a 10-year-old, I might as well be speaking Klingon. Remember, the goal is to make your reader nod, not nap. Or rather have them stay awake instead of succumb to the sweet embrace of an opulent, profound repose, ensconced within the velvety shadows of the nocturnal tapestry.
4. Storytelling: Because We All Love a Good Tale
Stories sell. It’s why we all remember the entire plot line of Breaking Bad, but can’t recall the most pressing thing from that meeting recap email. The Wall Street Journal’s legendary sales letter from decades ago proved that a good story could sell a newspaper. I mean, it’s so good it could probably even sell that paper today even though the ad is decades old.
5. Write Like You Speak: Unless You Grunt and Cough a Lot
Finally, ‘write like you speak’ was the mantra. If your writing sounds like you're having a beer with a friend (and not boring a classroom about misplaced modifiers), you’re on the right track. This means dropping the jargon and embracing your inner conversationalist. Unlearning half the things your English teacher warned against is easier said than done. Are you right handed? Brush your teeth with your left hand for a preview of the struggle.
Ten days, countless coffees, and a few existential crises later, I emerged from the bootcamp with these pearls of wisdom. Writing, it turns out, isn't just about fancy words; it’s about connecting, engaging, and sometimes, just being straight-up silly. Who knew learning could be this much fun (and easy)?
The next time you write something, make it sing, keep it simple, tell a story, and maybe, just maybe, write like you're having a candid chat with a close friend.
