Ben Putano - Writing is a meta-skill every founder should focus on!

Writing becomes this multipurpose tool for you when you're writing. And then once you start building a company, writing is our most used form of communication today, especially now that so many teams are working remotely. And even if your team's not remote, you have suppliers who are remote or subcontractors who are remote. Your customers are remote. Right. So much of our life is spent writing.

And

it actually makes you think, like, if you're— if you are a founder and your job is to, to build relationships and sell customers and to lead your team and you're writing every single day, why aren't you investing in the skill to write more clearly, build more empathy for your readers, and, you know, work that muscle of saying what needs to be said even when it's hard?

Right.

It's the tool. It's a tool you use every single day.

Hello, hello. How's everyone doing? Thanks for tuning in to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. I'm your host, Sharath. I'm actually excited to bring this guest today. He's Ben Putano, who's like a, like a writer, publisher, and a founder. You know, he's a man of many things. I'm stoked to actually talk to you, Ben. Welcome to the show, by the way. Stoked to talk to you about like a lot of things. I have prepared notes for you. This episode, I'm going to cover a lot of— a lot about like how to become a writer. And, you know, how to publish a book, like for folks who are looking into that. Because, you know, one of my goals is to like publish a book in the next 10 years, I guess. So yeah, let's get into the conversation. Ben, welcome to the show again. How are you feeling today?

Thanks, Sharath. I am feeling great. It's a— had a good weekend. I am excited about the work I'm doing. Excited to finally talk to you. Congrats on selling shoutout.so, by the way.

Oh, thank you.

Appreciate it. I need to give you props for that. That's awesome. That's a huge win. I bet that feels great.

Yeah, it feels— yeah, definitely. I think it's one of those things I wanted to do last year, one of the goals I wanted to achieve. But yeah, it turned out well. it was a struggle. But at the end, it all turned out well for me and my co-founder. So appreciate everybody for supporting and being on the sidelines and like, you know, encouraging us to do what we did. But all right, so this conversation is about you. So right off the bat, I want to like, you know, start off asking you, you are a writer. And you're also like you just said before we went, we hit record, you publish books. Tell me about like, the process of writing. Let's get into the publishing later because I think that's something like, you know, a lot many people have questions about, but you wrote this book called Great Founders Write, which is the title itself is so amazing. And I'm personally fond of founders who write. And I think Naval said this like many times, you have to sell, you have to build, you have to write, right? Like 3 things that are very important for a founder to excel and beat the competition, for example. So Tell me about it. Like, how did the whole book come into the picture?

Yeah. Well, I started my career in content marketing. I worked for a small startup doing sales and then doing— writing a bunch of big, like, how-to blogs that grew that company's SEO. And that evolved into a freelance content marketing business and then a small content marketing agency called WeContent. And in this company, we specialized in executive ghostwriting and blog content for tech companies and startups. And during that experience, I had this realization that was actually best summarized by this amazing quote I came across from a writing professor named William Zinsser. The quote is, Clear thinking is clear writing. One cannot exist without the other.

Right.

And that just summarized the work I was doing with these founders and with their companies. I was really just taking all their incredible ideas and distilling them into a clear message. And when I moved on from the publishing or when I moved on from the content marketing agency and decided to write my own book, I knew that was the core message I wanted to target, helping founders clarify their message, grow their audience, which will ultimately grow their business. And I hope, you know, for founders who are building big things, help change their corner of the world too.

Right. I love what you said. Clear thinking results or, you know, helps create writing. And, you know, it's so true that if you're if your thoughts and if you're— if you're— what you're thinking is not up to the clarity, I feel like, you know, what you write is, it's going to like miscommunicate a lot of, you know, the thoughts you put in. And why writing? Like, you know, before even going into the content marketing, what did you do before? If you want to, like, you know, if you go back, and what made you like writing? Wow. Yeah, this is where I want to like stick.

I wish I could tell you, Sharad. I don't know. I grew up loving books. I grew up writing. I was really lucky in junior high. I grew up in Ohio, and Ohio has this amazing program called Power of the Pen, which is a creative writing competition for middle schoolers. You are literally on like this writing team and you go and compete. It's kind of like Mathletes but for writing nerds instead. Yeah. And so, I had an opportunity to do this. But funny enough, I fell out of love with writing in high school and college. I think that was like the entrepreneur in me coming out, not wanting to follow other people's rules, wanting to question why I was even reading Beowulf in the first place, let alone wanting to write a thesis on it. But after college, I graduated with a degree in communications. It was just like the natural step for me. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Right. Writing was always that thing in my back pocket that I felt comfortable doing. And I didn't even realize I was a writer for like the first 2 years, probably after starting my content marketing business. It was like a cognitive leap I had to make to even describe myself or identify as a writer. So, it's been a journey that's always been a part of my journey, but in some ways, it's also relatively new for me, which I think it's relatively new for a lot of people to identify as a writer and make that part of their work.

Yeah. So the follow-up question I have is, how do you identify as a writer? I think given in the age of 2023, and right now we are in the peaks of the internet, I guess, right? There's the boom in the creator economy, the boom in startups just in general. Everybody wants to at least become an entrepreneur. So there are like some signs when it comes to certain identities, right? Like if you want to build something, you're a problem solver, for example, or you just love tinkering products or using products, you know, for the sake of conversation. With writing, and many people write these tweets with social media, right? They have like personal blogs. And what is something that in your opinion that people should look into? Like, okay, you know what, I can become a writer, I can publish books, or I can write big-ass articles or blog posts, and I can do this on a consistent basis. And there is like an identity-based thing which James Clear mentioned in his book Atomic Habits, which I believe in. Like, I'm a writer, I'm a writer, and you kind of cast small words towards that identity and you become a writer at the end of the day. But I wanna understand from you, like I said before, what are some qualities people should look in, look within to identify themselves as a writer?

Sure. I think the first most important quality is curiosity. If you're not curious to learn, it's gonna be hard to write anything that's meaningful. Even that even applies for freelance writers. If you're writing for somebody else, I think I made a good content marketer because I just got engrossed in the topic, whether that was writing about proptech, real estate technology, or writing about courtroom stenographers. You have to be able to dig deep and find the curious kernel in anything you write about because that's going to dig you deeper into it. And that leads to the other big I think, I guess, touchpoint in terms of the writer's identity. All writers are doing, going back to that William Zinsser quote I shared, writers are taking big ideas or they're taking a combination of big ideas and then distilling them in a way that is clear, in a way that is empathetic for the reader, and in a way that's courageous. In other words, they're saying something that needs to be said, even if it's hard to say. So if you can do those things, if you can be curious, and then if you can spend the— if you can focus and spend time on distilling big ideas in a way that's clear, empathetic, and courageous, you're a writer. If you're doing that, you are a writer.

Nice. I love that. And you said like, okay, there are like lots of forms of writing. Like how did you test and trial and test, like say, many people read sci-fi, for example, or many people read novels.

I love sci-fi.

Like different set of things and not just like business books. How do you find the genre or the niche? Like, is it based on the folks you hang out with? Like, are you based on interests? Like mostly interests, I know from a high level, but how do you say, yeah, I'm a writer, I have curiosity, I have like this empathy, and I have this emotion I want to like convert into, uh, words and express myself. So all that is good. Like, how one— how should one fix, like, okay, this is where I want to like, you know, focus fully on, whether it's—

Sure.

Whatever it is.

I mean, I'm sure there's a way to quantify like the most, you know, the biggest opportunity in your niche if you really just wanted to be a mercenary. But I would just ask, what do you Read. What are you reading right now? What's piquing your interest? Because that, again, going back to the point on curiosity, you need to be inherently curious about it. I have just happened to always, ever since I took a course on entrepreneurship in college, I was like, this is what I want to do. I always wanted to create things. I want to create businesses. I want people organizations.

Right.

So, that is what drew me to work with tech startups as a content marketer.

And

it's what has drawn me now to publish books for entrepreneurs and founders by founders. And but you asked about other niches. I mentioned I love sci-fi. I love sci-fi. Maybe there's a day that I get into some sci-fi. That is just a completely different beast. It honestly terrifies me. So, I think maybe another part of this answer is you know, find something that feels, you know, realistic, or something that feels like is doable. But I mean, I know, I know plenty of people who've dug, who've jumped right into sci-fi. So really, I think the answer is follow your curiosity and, and find the people that you like writing about and writing for.

Nice. It's kind of like, you know, in a way, I can relate it to, like startup building, right? Like, Exactly. How do you build a startup? The question to that— the answer to that question is you basically solve your own problem.

Right.

And you basically, like, you know, find people like your friends and share the idea with them, build something for them, and, you know, iterate. I feel the same way writing is more of like you write something that, like, really, really, like, you know, ticks your mind and maybe a couple of friends and share it with them. It's kind of like, I think overall, I feel all of these things have a similar process, like it should start within. I love that. Let's talk about, okay, you're a content marketer. You did like a bunch of things. You've helped founders write, I think, you know, and you founded this company called Damn Gravity. Like, talk to me about that. What is it about? It's about, you said about publishes book. Talk to me about how you got into that publishing world. What is it like? What made you go there?

Sure. Damn Gravity as a name is kind of like a personal mantra of mine. To me, it means defying the odds. I heard someone say once that the status quo has a pull as strong as gravity. And status quo has always been something I have tried to change where I see it needs changing. And those are the exact type of books that I want to help founders make status quo-defying books, gravity be damned. So, Damn Gravity is a publishing company. Our first book was Stop Asking Questions by Andrew Warner, who's the founder of Mixergy. And that's a book about high-impact interviewing for anybody, podcasters, but really anybody who wants to learn from other people.

Nice.

Fantastic book. And now, we have 3 more books. on the docket to come out in 2023, a book about community-led growth, a book about product management. And then our newest book, which we haven't announced yet, is going to be in the tech space. I'll share more when I can.

Yeah,

for sure. But our focus is not just publishing the books, but also helping our authors build their audience and create a platform that grows their personal brand and their company brand.

Right. And I'm just curious about the whole process because again, I have no clue. I'm just asking more of like an amateur, just from an audience standpoint, like a third person. How did the whole process go from like, let's say I want to write a book, for example, I've built an audience, I've built this SaaS product, I've built community. I have like this really, really like, you know, specific knowledge that they acquired by doing like firsthand, you know, experiments. So if I come to you, what was like the first step you do? And how do you go from there?

Yeah, great question. So, you know, in the nonfiction world, there are, there are a few like high-level genres for books. There's like history books, you know, nonfiction. There's also memoirs, a story about your life. There's biographies that are similar to memoirs. But the books that I am most interested in, before I say that, I guess, there's how-to books. Like, if you want to build a website, you could find a book on how to build a website.

Right.

How to build a website on Webflow, how to build a website on WordPress, yada, yada, yada. But the books I'm most interested in writing are big idea books, books with a really compelling thesis that, again, going back to the name Damn Gravity, are in some way challenging and trying to defy that status quo. For example, Atomic Habits. That idea is so— if you think of it, so, like, for us, it's obvious now, but it wasn't before that these little 1% better daily habits could radically change your life. That's a huge idea and it wasn't really that obvious to people. Right. The idea— I'm a big fan of Ryan Holiday's work, too, and he is a master of pulling out these big ideas from ancient ancient philosophy, Stoic philosophy. So, the obstacle isn't something to avoid. The obstacle is the way, the way through. So, every big idea book is built on a thesis, a unique insight into your world. I could use Dan Graff. I'm sorry. I could use my book as the example. I had this insight from my content marketing work that great founders are also prolific writers in a lot of cases, from Tim Ferriss to Oprah Winfrey to Benjamin Franklin.

Right.

It goes on, Jeff Bezos. It goes on and on, these examples of great founders who found clarity and leadership and courage and innovative ideas through the power of writing. So, that's the first step. It's finding that big idea that you want to build upon. And that's called a thesis. It's this idea that is counter to the the norm.

And

then from there, just like any argumentative essay or blog post you're going to write, you're going to find your arguments. You want to make some rational research-based arguments. You want to make some personal anecdotal arguments. And you also want to appeal to the emotions of your audience, sharing stories, sharing what their life could look like if they really embrace this big idea. For example, again, Atomic Habits, your life could be radically transformed. You could be that person you've always want it to be if you just get 1% better every day. That is the type of message that you're going to find throughout a Big Idea book.

I love that. So do you help others to, or founders, for example, like, you know, to help them pick that thesis, to help them like do with the research? Like, what is the process like, you know, if you want to share with the listeners?

Yeah. So, I feel like I kind of lucked out a little bit in who I chose as the type of authors I want to work with because founders are really, really good at having a thesis. Like, that's what we build our businesses on.

Right.

Going back to your points, Jiroft, about writing and startups being similar, every great startup is built on a thesis, a counterintuitive big idea. So, a lot of my authors come to me with a great big idea already. But in some cases, it needs to be refined. So, the book I'm currently— I'm actually going through the positioning process for our latest book right now. And I'll just share generally, they had a good big idea like X is going to be the future. X will make or break your business in 10 years, in the next 10 years.

Right.

The challenge for us was to say, okay, why? It was crafting the argument that led up to that thesis.

Right.

So, looking for the research, looking for the emerging trends, and really making that thesis feel inevitable. So, yeah, you can pull a big idea out of thin air, but if you really want people to buy into it, you need to make the case for it. for it. So, that's where I step in and it's work I love to do. Again, it's taking that big idea and distilling it and trying to communicate it in a really clear and compelling way.

Nice.

So fun. And then, after that, it's just teasing out the argument for 200 pages or whatever, sharing examples, sharing more how-tos. Every big idea book has some how-to elements in it. Otherwise, you're like, okay, cool. Now what? What do I do? with this information. So there's that piece too. So yeah, that's kind of what I help authors do, help them refine that big idea, help them tease it out, help them build the case for it, and then turn that into a full-fledged book.

And I really like the process. I feel like you're so into it, right? Like you are, it's more of like a debate. I think, I don't know why I'm coming back to product building. It's, I think the process is looking like the similar. to product building, which is you come up with a feature, you kind of like brainstorm a little bit, you check with a few friends, you ask for a little feedback, you add some elements to it. You basically, it's kind of like the tinkering process is a similar one, which you explained. You talked about positioning. So I'm 100% sure, just like product, there are some variables that should be part of the formula, right? Like to make a successful book. So positioning is of course one of them, I assume. And what are the things that you can share, like that makes a book going from ideation to the process of writing to like really publishing, like distributing, like what are some variables, successful variables?

Sure. So, any good book is not going to be the only book in its category. There are a lot of books on positioning specifically, like Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Ries, Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. Any category is going to be— any good category that's worth writing about is going to have quite a few books. So, it's not like you're writing in a vacuum. It's not like you have to find a Completely untapped blue ocean, you know,

right?

Whatever. Because chances are, if someone hasn't written about a concept, maybe there's not a lot of interest there. Atomic Habits—there's a lot of books on habit building. So what you are looking for when you're when you're crafting a big idea for a book is I think of it in four parts, and you kind of find the unique. You kind of find like the middle of the Venn diagram of of those four things. First of all, it's like, it's what you do. It's like what your expertise is.

Right.

It's who you do it for. So whether that's, you know, content marketing for startups, whether that's, you know, positioning for startups, whether it's, you know, there's any number of things, whether it's philosophy for tech nerds, you know, you have that Venn diagram there, what you do and for whom.

Right.

Another really big question and an important one is why you? So why are you of all people writing about this topic? What expertise and experience do you bring? If you're— are you an expert in this field or are you the one spending 5 years doing the research to bring all the ideas together? That's really important. Yeah. And then the last part of the Venn diagram, which you could really dig into is why your audience should care. What is going to make them care about this? Which goes back to that big idea, that compelling concept. What is going to change about their life if they really buy into this idea? So, I think of the big idea or I think of the question, why should they care? As generally speaking, humans care about 4 things. I'm really generalizing here. And I'm no And I'm no anthropologist or sociologist, but generally speaking, people care about 4 things. They care about their health, their wealth, their time, and their happiness. And also, generally speaking, people care about losing those things more than gaining them. So, people care about losing money than making money. They care about losing their happiness than making it. True. So, when you're trying to develop why someone should care, I like to think about it in that frame. Your goal ultimately is to take any subject that you're writing about, say, writing, and frame it as how is this going to impact their health, wealth, time, and happiness?

Right.

And I can make the case for all 4. And that's Atomic Habits. James Clear makes the same case as well, big time. So, the closer you can connect why they should care to your big idea, the more strongly it's going to be. Received.

I love that. I love that. And I really like what you said about, you know, why should you care and the thinking about gaining versus losing. You know, I think, like you said, most people are freaked about if they're losing something they already have, right?

Mm-hmm.

So I think there is a tick there. I, you know, and overall, I feel like The thought process is amazing, you know, what you shared about gaining versus losing, and I love that. Let's talk about the book, you know, Great Founders Write. Uh, by the way, thanks for sending this. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

I haven't dug deeper into it, but, uh, one of the things—

You have a long plane ride coming up, so you'll have plenty of time.

Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the things. I'm definitely carrying this book on the plane ride back to India. So one of the concepts you mentioned in the book is called ABC123 framework, right? Talk to me about that in detail. How did you come up with it and how can people use it?

Yeah. So the ABC123 framework is a copywriting framework. Actually, I'm so glad you brought this up because when it comes to care, making people care, It's the copywriters of the world that have just mastered this, making people care with their words. Copywriting is just sales at scale. It's using your words to persuade others to buy something.

I

like that. When I ran WeContent, my content marketing agency for startups, you know, we wrote a lot of blog posts, but we also did like, We did web pages, we did landing pages, and we did white papers. And all these pieces have elements of copy, whether you're writing a headline for a blog post or the header of a website. You need to grab people's attention and draw them in. And I was struggling with what I was finding in the world of copywriting. There's a lot of frameworks out there. There's like the PAIS, like the pain, agitate, Interest solution. There's like variations of that. There's AIDA attention interest. Oh my gosh! I'm totally blanking. There's all these like alphabet soups, right?

Right.

And I know I added to the alphabet soup and numerical soup with ABC123. But the point is, none of these things really felt like they matched a startup's experience. For one, all of these these famous copywriting frameworks were. Created like 50 years ago by ad agencies working for like massive companies. So they had a very different challenge than an unknown startup. For one, their brands typically had— their clients typically had brand recognition. Like writing copy for IBM is a very different job than writing copy for a brand new, you know, AI startup. So, I realized that my clients and startups in general needed their own framework. We needed to hit some really specific points.

Right.

And over a few years, that ultimately distilled into the ABC123 framework. So, A stands for attention.

Right.

It's how do you grab eyeballs in a really noisy world. B is the big change. So, similar to the big idea, the big change is Is what is what is going around? What's going on in the world around your customers? Something that is causing this really urgent action to be taken. The C is why care? So we already talked about that question a little bit. Why should I care about this?

And

then one, two, three are really sharing your solution. So one is stand is stands for solution. So you're talking about your features and your benefits and your. And your prototypical customer. 2 stands for why you, so it rhymes. And again, that's that's about you know this is a really important part for any startup to to hit on because you need to convince your customers to take a chance on your little company, your unknown brand.

Right.

So why you is a really important piece that most copywriting frameworks don't hit on. And then three is urgency. So cool. I care, but I'm really busy, Sharath. Like, why am I going to do this now?

Right.

And urgency is all about evoking or provoking action right now.

And any successful examples that you can let people know about? Okay, these are all— this is one example that really hits the nail in the coffin about like ABC123 right off the bat, or any startup that comes to your mind who's like, Damn, they're really good.

Yeah. So not a startup, but a creator who just nails this framework is Justin Moore. He is a sponsorship coach for influencers,

right?

And I recommend everybody go look at his Twitter profile and you will, you'll want to become an influencer just to work with him. He uses this great line talking about why you should care. So in his title, In his name, right off the bat, he says sponsorship coach. So, he's already grabbing attention. His profile is really colorful. So, he draws people in. His banner image says, I go from this, which is a sad face guy, like, hmm, to this, which is Scrooge McDuck diving in a pile of money. So, he's evoking this why care really, really well. Right. And then he goes on in his bio to say, I will— I help you land your dream sponsorship so you can stop leaving money on the table. Not so you can make more money, but you're literally losing money by not working with me.

Mm-hmm. Right.

So it's brilliant. He grabs your attention, right? You know, he talks a lot in his, in his content about the way Brands want to work with influencers today, so he evokes that like big change. He's all about making you care deeply about making more money or stopping losing money, finding happiness, or stop being sad. His solutions are really clear. His calls to action are are just crystal clear. Why you? He's you know he has he he built his own brand. He shares that in his profile. He has he's sponsorship coach. He shares all the time about these big brands. brand deals that he brokers. And the urgency is, you know, every week he's sending out brand deals. So, the next email in 3 days or today could be the one that like breaks your career wide open. So, he just nails it. I think that's a great example. I draw a lot of inspiration from all of his content. Really awesome, awesome human being. Yeah.

We'll link his profile in the show notes here. I love that. Yeah, I feel like there are like so many people that are very smart at like signaling these things, like grabbing attention, like via through a banner or whatever you said, like, you know, with a good profile photo and whatnot. So you also mentioned about— I'm just curious about one thing. So copywriting, I assume, is different from book writing, right? Is it like, is it the same or is it like Is it different?

Honestly, it's— there's elements of copywriting in building a book, writing a great title. More importantly, writing a great subtitle is copywriting. You need to grab attention. Everything on the book cover is copywriting, grabbing attention. You need to at least like hint that there's some like big thing that your readers don't know about that's changing in their world. You need to tell them why they're gonna care, how this is gonna change their life. That's why even when you're writing a how-to book, which is, again, how to build a website, it's not enough to just say how to build a website and assume that your reader is going to care. Why should I build a website?

Right.

There was actually someone in my writing course a couple of months back who was building a branding consulting firm and was so busy. She literally didn't have time to build a website. She didn't have a website, but she was so busy she didn't need one. So like someone like her, like why, why would she build a website?

Right?

So like, don't take it. I say that to say like, don't, don't assume that your reader is going to care about this subject. You really, and that's where copywriting comes in, making them care, making it urgent. Pick this up now.

Right.

But the rest of the book, It's more, you know, it's narrative-based. So, it's telling great stories and then it's expository. So, it's creating strong arguments.

Right.

It's building a case for this big idea, this thesis in your book, which is not really copywriting. That's, I think that I try to keep copywriting in its own frame, in its own box where it's It's using words to sell. Because I've heard people say like everything is copywriting. And if you say that, like, then nothing means anything. And honestly, I think it's hindering your ability to communicate clearly because you and I talking right now is not copywriting.

Right.

You know, we're having a conversation. I'm not even persuading really. I'm more storytelling than anything.

Right.

So, you need to have like these different tools, these different communication tools in your bag to pull them out at the right time.

I think copywriting is kind of like punching, in my opinion. It's like 1-2 punches. You have like this limited set of words, but you make the most impact on a reader.

Right.

On the other end, storytelling is, or book writing, it's kind of like narrating, you're expressing, you know? And I feel that's how I differentiate in a way. And I feel many people on Twitter right now with writing tweets under 250 characters, 280 characters, they are very— they're becoming great copywriters in a way, like not knowingly, right? Like, but on the other spectrum, you have these, you know, like take, I don't know who's an amazing writer. Man, I'm blanking, but there are like so many other hundreds of writers who just narrate their stories. Like take Packy McCormick, for example, like he kind of narrates a startup story in his own way, right? Like in his own flavor. So I love that.

Yeah. Matt, Matt Conwell's another really good writer. He's not even, he probably wouldn't even call himself a writer. He's a VC by his day job, but amazing storyteller worth following as well.

Yeah. I think the ABC, the framework you just mentioned, really applies for website writing, like, you know, writing copy on the website, writing copy on the internet, like just in general. And I think I really like the way you put things up. So it's so structural. I love that. So let's talk about your cohort. Like you wrote the book, you know, I'm sure like a lot many, a lot many founders found it really benefit, benefit of it, good benefit out of it. Why cohort? Like, how did that transition happened? Like, okay, book to cohort.

Great question. I mean, I actually— the cohort Great Founders Write came out, started before I even published the book. I had written the book already. Yeah. The Great Founders Write cohort started in June 2022 and the book finally came out in December.

Oh, okay.

One of the reasons why I wanted to build the cohort was I have this thesis and Damn Gravity, our publishing company, that the best route for an author is actually to expand your IP to other products and services, whether that's courses or coaching or premium content and things like that. So, I wanted to test that out. I'm just like my own guinea pig. So, I wanted to test that out. But then what I found was, and this is why I would recommend A lot of authors to consider a course or a cohort. I learned so much about my own material when it went from book material to teaching material. And honestly, like I rewrote most of the book after I started that cohort based on things I learned about teaching the material. Right. So, I cut a lot. I made the step-by-step how-to elements of the book a lot more clear and logical. And it forced me to find better and better examples of the concepts I was sharing. So, the cohort brought the material to life for me. And I think, and this goes both ways, like— Right. I think it also brought the material alive for anyone who has read the book. But as an author, it was invaluable, especially for an author of a big idea book who's trying to teach something. To actually teach it face-to-face, it takes a lot of focus and it takes a lot of clarity. Not to mention, I had to distill these lessons into like 15 or 20 minutes because that's all we had every week. So like it really forced me to cut down. And one piece of feedback I've gotten on the book so far is that it's like dense. Like it's not very long, it's 200-some pages, but it is just like, there's not a single— yeah, there's not a lot of fluff in there because I spent a lot of time cutting that fluff out.

Interesting. I really like this.

And the cohort helped with that.

No, I think it's— you kind of put an idea in my head. I feel like It's like standup comedians go to these small bars or small stages in New York, right? Like just to test their material. And if they hear a good laugh, okay, this is going in my main set. If they're like, okay, people are mumbling, we're killing this. I really like that approach. But I feel like you kind of install this idea of authors or writers about writers. Who can test their material with cohorts, with establishing this tight feedback loop, like how many people are reacting. And the beauty about cohort is everybody is paid, so they have skin in the game, so they demand your excellence, right? They'd say, hey man, this is like shit, like why are you teaching this? We need more content, more material, more examples. So in a way, you're crafting the book in public, you know. And the about to come out book. I love that. I think it's clever. It's a clever way of looking at it. And will the cohort help you to design the contents of the index or the chapters? How did that happen? And I see your index page, it's so damn clear. It's like table of contents, so damn clear. It's like, Write with purpose, write with empathy, write with clarity, courage, and that's it. So it's like so precise and crisp. Was this always the case or even the cohort helped in making that super, super specific and clear?

Yeah. So I think if you were someone just starting your, the book journey, the author journey, and you had a cohort or you like wanted to start with a cohort, I think it absolutely would help you craft the table of contents. And to your point, yeah, we got feedback on certain lessons that it didn't hold up. So we fixed it and then I ended up fixing it in the book as well. For my weird experience, I started writing Great Founders Write in January of— 2 years ago now, January of 2021. So I had I had over a year of working on the book before the cohort started. In that time, I was actually writing in public as well. So I had a lot of— I probably had 100 beta readers read. I gave out my first chapter, I think, you know, a few months after I started, started getting information on. I hired multiple editors to read through it to give me feedback. I cut an entire chapter out of the book because of That feedback that just didn't fit. So, those experiences, that feedback absolutely crafted it. And so, if I had taken a slightly different path with the cohort starting earlier, I think of like Tiago Forte who ran a cohort for like 4 or 5 years before actually writing his book, Building a Second Brain. I guarantee that the cohort influenced the table of contents.

Right.

For me, I had slightly different sources, my own experience. with writing and helping founders write. And then all that feedback I was getting from writing in public, writing a Substack, writing on Twitter, asking for beta readers on my chapters to distill the table of contents and to make sure that there was no fluff.

Yeah. I love that.

As little fluff as possible.

I think keeping the readers in the loop is really important. And that's why I'm a big proponent of doing anything in public because you know, you can definitely do things in silo or in stealth, but you get more impact when you expose or, I mean, you know, being transparent with the folks, right? I love that. So I want to ask this question. I know I have like my own reasons for this question, for this idea behind that question, but I want to hear your view on it. Why do you think founders should write?

Oh man, loaded question. Well, I have 200 pages to try to convince you why they should write. But if I had to sum it up, great founders write because the act of starting a business is first and foremost an act of of a clear idea well-executed. And writing is a meta-tool for that process. There's several layers to this, but I think the first one is that writing is a meta-skill. When you learn to write, you learn to think more clearly, which impacts every part of your life, and especially if you're building a company.

Right.

So, I have a whole chapter on writing for yourself.

Right.

It's towards the end of the book, but I think it's going to be— I think it's one of the favorites of the book. And it's just a bunch of writing exercises for you to gain, to spark your creativity, to build gratitude, to deal with anxiety, and to work with your team, to strategize. So, writing becomes this multipurpose tool for you. Right. When you're writing. And then, once you start building a company, writing is our most used form of communication today, especially now that so many teams are working remotely. And even if your team's not remote, you have suppliers who are remote or subcontractors who are remote. Your customers are remote. So much of our life is spent

And

it actually makes you think, like, if you are a founder and your job is to build relationships and sell customers and to lead your team and you're writing every single day, why aren't you investing in the skill to write more clearly, build more empathy for your readers, and work that muscle of saying what needs to be said even when it's hard?

Right.

It's the tool. It's a tool you use every single day.

Right. No, I completely agree. I feel if you— and I interviewed David Perell on this podcast, and he's one of those few people who actually inspired me to write, even though I have like no idea how to write. Like, you know, because of him, his fundamental belief is if you are part of the internet, You have to contribute. And one of the ways to contribute is through writing, right? Like through writing, you don't have to necessarily write like big-ass things, right? To your passion. Like, you know, I don't write— I write— I love writing tweets, like one-liners or like, you know, these little small paragraphs in 280 characters. Any form of expression counts. And After I started doing that, oh my God, the whole, like, you know, my mind shift changed towards myself and people treating me as well. So there are like so many intangible benefits of expressing yourself on the internet and through writing, I think is among, I think one of the greatest forms, I believe. Question to you and the follow-up question there is, I know I'm convinced, you know, I'm 100%. That's why I wanted like this year, write more, you know, hopefully, right, start a newsletter or like, have this habit of writing little lengthier posts than just Twitter threads. So we are in a very fast-paced world, right? Like everybody's pretty occupied. Founders especially are doing tons of things. They just don't do one thing at a time. Any tips you can give for founders to prioritize writing and make it more of like part of their routine instead of like, it's not like a thing they have time and they just like, you know, focus on. It's really like part of their lifestyle.

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's something we really address in the cohort because everybody who's joining wants to write more. But the question of our time is how, to your point, like how do you even find time to write? And, you know, I don't have, Kids, I have a rather needy dog. I know that's not the same at all. So, like for for a lot of folks, it's their time is even more strapped. So there's you know there's no one size fits all strategy. But here's a couple that I really like. First, I'm a big believer in setting like embarrassingly small goals for yourself daily. So for example, last year. When I was trying to get back in shape, I set the goal to do like 50 push-ups a day, which takes me like 4 minutes. And for someone else, it might be like 50 crunches or, or, you know, 20 air squats, just something so small.

Right.

You can do literally no matter what, whether you are, whether you are half asleep or you are in the shower or wherever, just something that you can do embarrassingly small. Like, I'm, I'm, I was literally embarrassed to even tell people, like, yeah, I'm working out every day. Oh, what are you doing? 50 push-ups. But what that does is it builds the habit,

right?

And it builds momentum for yourself. And most days you'll find once you get into that habit, you'll actually really start to exceed it.

Mm-hmm.

So what you could do with writing, if you really, if you really want to commit to writing more, I would set an embarrassingly small goal for yourself, like a sentence. I don't know, like the smaller the better, right? A sentence or write 100 words if you're typing it out. And 100 words might take you 4 minutes and you could, it could just be a complete stream of consciousness, uh, what you're writing. So set an embarrassingly small goal for yourself. I think that's a great place to start.

I love that. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, if you're like a lot of people who finds that writing takes them forever, that's a challenge for a lot of people. Like, they want to write a blog post and they write occasionally, but it took them 4 hours. So, they just simply can't make enough time for that. One tool that I love, I learned this from my cohort partner, Grant Nisly, who actually runs a company that builds writing cohorts. So, check his stuff out because he's done a lot of great work. But we use a tool called the Bullet Draft in our cohort where the idea is to not get stuck in the formatting of your writing. Instead, the first step, once you have that idea, say I want to write about wine, my favorite wines from 2022. Instead of worrying about like what the paragraphs are going to look like, is this going to be a blog post, a Twitter thread, what's my story that I'm going to lead with? Instead of worrying about all that stuff that makes up like a finished piece, just create a bulleted list of any idea that comes to mind for you. Set a timer for like 10 minutes.

Hmm.

Pull out a document. You could use a piece of paper if you want, but Pull out a Notion document, a Google document, whatever you want, set a timer, and just write bullet points, every idea that comes to mind. And what this does is help you collect raw material for the piece itself.

Hmm.

This is almost like your first draft, and you'll find the ideas come so much easier when all you're worried about is collecting ideas, not formatting, not sentence structures, not completing full sentences. It doesn't matter if you repeat yourself. So, when you do this, don't delete things. Don't like rephrase things. Try not to even pause. This should be like a creative sprint. You should be almost like exhausted after you create this bullet draft. And what you'll find is like at the end of it, you'll have like 15 to 20 or more bullets. And from there, it's so much easier to go and create your piece. There we

go.

Because where we often get stuck is this, like this ideation and writing and editing, like vicious cycle. We try to do everything at once. We're coming up with our ideas and we're writing them down. But then we're editing ourselves at the same time, and that's really hard. That wastes time.

So,

like, you delete things and you rewrite, you delete, you rewrite. I mean, when I first started writing professionally, it would take me weeks to write a blog post sometimes because I'd get caught in this vicious cycle. And I finally learned I needed to break up that process by creating a bullet draft, writing without editing, and then editing in a completely separate state. So, I guess it's sort of like 2. 2 tips there at once. Write a bullet draft, then also break up the writing process into ideation, into writing, and into editing separately.

I like it. I like it so much. I think I'm going to take up your advice on putting embarrassing goals. I feel that's one problem I face. I feel like if you work on something you're not really good at, but you have a desire to work on it, you are lost by putting these insane goals because you don't know where to start, right? Like, in a way, uh, if you ask me about like, how do you do product building, I would literally give the same advice because I've built 15+ products before. And the way I start is like, really, really, really, really, like, you know, buy a domain. That's it. That's the win for that day. Secure the domain and that's it. You know, right?

Tiniest little step.

Tiniest little step. I feel that's a great point. It applies for pretty much everything. if you want to start something new and make it a habit, that's how Atomic Habits, the book, it talks about a lot in securing these small wins, which really, really, really moves the needle. It's about the inches, not the entire thing, right? Like, you know, so moving one inch at a time. Love that. What one tip you want to give to founders like who are listening? whether they're already writing or they're on the verge of like, okay, I want to become a writer. Any particular tip, specific tip that you've encountered that you want to share?

Wow. There's a lot I could say. And I also do writing coaching occasionally. I work with founders who want to write more and Believe it or not, like what most people need to hear is that like they're just, they're doing well enough. They need, so many of us, myself included, I told you, you know, I ran a content marketing agency for 2 years before I mustered up the courage to just call myself a writer. I was writing like 6 blog posts a week and like work in like, and editing like 10 more.

Right.

And I just never felt like I could call myself a writer. I think we have this unrealistic expectation of what a writer is. You have to be Ernest Hemingway or Doris Kearns Goodwin or Walt Whitman to be considered a writer. And if you are putting words on a page and sharing them, Right. Again, if you go back to what we talked about in the beginning, if you are following your curiosity, finding big ideas, doing your best to share them in a way that's clear and empathetic and courageous, if you're doing that work, you're a writer and that's enough. That's all you need to be doing. So, just keep doing it. That's really all you need. And so much of my work with writers is It's just reminding them of that.

I like that. I really like it a lot. I feel, uh, it's just those— that positive reinforcement, like, hey, you can do it, you know, and we are with you. I feel that's why community plays a lot of role. And I, I feel like cohorts is somewhere like people can keep each other accountable and support each other and like kind of like, you know, grow and progress. Ben, this has been a blast. I love, love learning a lot from you, especially like, you know, those tiny goals. I think you kind of hit on the right spot. To me as a listener, I love this conversation. I'm going to dig deeper into the book as well. Thanks again for sending it. Last thing, where can people find you? Any closing thoughts you want to share?

Yeah, this has been awesome, Sharath. I'm so glad we got to meet. I feel like I've been Twitter stalking you for like 2 years now, so I'm so glad I had a chance to meet you. I'm on Twitter @BenjaminPutano, P-U-T-A-N-O. That's the main place. You can also email me if you want at ben@damngravity.com. If you're interested, if you're an entrepreneur who's interested in writing a book for your personal brand or to build your company's brand, you can go to damngravity.com and learn more about that. And then, you can find Great Founders Write, my book, on Amazon, Apple iBooks, anywhere you buy books, you'll be able to grab it.

Yeah, we'll put everything in the, in the show notes. And yeah, this has been a blast. Like I said, there are like so many nuggets. And I think those are all very obvious for many people. But that's, I think the realization is really important, not the, the fact that those are, those are there. It's about like really digesting inside your mind and like really implementing it. So for me, I'm actually publicly keeping myself accountable. Once I come back from India, I will start writing 100 words a day, very simple, very, very, very small, tiny articles about my experience. And yeah, thanks, Ben. Thanks for sharing all the knowledge and wisdom with us. And for folks who are listening, thanks for tuning in. Stay tuned for another episode.

All right. Thanks, Sharath. See everybody.