The Writing Secrets That Mint Billionaires (from a Christian Perspective)

You think about raising money. Oh, what does writing do? Like, how do you make money from it? I mean, take somebody like Warren Buffett, take somebody like Jeff Bezos. They're great communicators. Interacting with other human beings is the essence of business.

All right. So this next conversation is with David Perell. He's also known as The Writing Guy. He's got lots and lots of followers on Twitter. And I really enjoyed this conversation because it's a little different than the normal conversations. We talk about how to become a great writer. He's also interviewed billionaires, world-class authors, podcasters, entrepreneurs.

Writing is crawling through the labyrinth If you know how to communicate yourself well, it will radically transform your life.

We also talk about the, the power of having faith. I find that when you think about faith from also a business and marketing standpoint, there's a lot that kind of ties in together.

The impact that Jesus has had on Western civilization. He is the most influential figure in the West.

I think Jesus is the best marketer in the world. I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation. Let me know what you think in the comments. And without further ado, let's go. Dave, welcome to the pod.

How you doing?

I'm doing well. Welcome.

Welcome to Austin.

Thank you. Thank you. Here for one day and then I'm out. But, um, Dave, for those that— I mean, I know you as the writer, right? Um, you've got a lot of followers on, on Twitter and you're, you're known for writing, in my opinion, right? And so why is that so important to you? Um, obviously there's so many amazing people you've talked to. Why is it so important to you?

Writing is crawling through the labyrinth of your own mind. That's what it is. And what you're doing is you're basically a cartographer of yourself and the world at large. So when we write, what we're doing is we're putting words to reality and we're structuring reality, and we can do that in a few ways. So sometimes there's unmapped territory. So now you're sort of like the settlers who are like traveling across America, and what you're doing is like— you ever look at those old maps of like North America and they got certain things right but certain things really wrong, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It's like the East Coast is like perfect, right? They have all the inlets and the bays and it's just spot on. But then you look at the West Coast and it's like What? There's no big bump there. Or like, you look at the Southeast, it's like, that's not how it happens at all, right? Louisiana looks very different than that. And this is our model of reality where we have certain things that we've mapped very well. We have other things where there's like some big bulge there, or we're like totally—

Fog of war in these strategy games.

Exactly right. So what writing does is it helps us put shape to what's going on. Then there's obviously writers who write about things that other people have written about. So James Clear, we were talking about him earlier. So now what you have is you have the map of habits and it is fairly occupied with books by Charles Duhigg and all these books throughout history about habits. But now what he's doing is he's saying, this is fairly well mapped, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna build a new road through here and I'm gonna pave that road really well. And I think of writing, good writing is good pavement, so it's nice and smooth and then there's nice signage. And then maybe good style could be like, hey, we're also gonna make this really pretty. And so that's what we're doing when we're writing. We are either making it, making the map more concrete and truthful, or what we're doing is we're giving people new roads to sort of drive down so that there could be a more enjoyable, memorable way to drive through the world.

Got it. And so I, I think, you know, for you, it's very concrete, right? There's, it's, you've thought about this a lot clearly, and there's a level of focus to it versus you see other people on Twitter Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, they're just trying to go viral, right? So, I guess my question would be, what is your creative process? Because, you know, there's— I heard you talk about on a pod how you're just like, you know, you heard of a guy growing quickly on Twitter and they wanted to do a newsletter, right? You're like, don't do a newsletter, right? Just focus on Twitter. So, I'm just curious, like, what other nuances tie in with your creative process?

Yeah. So I think that trying to go viral on Twitter is both very underrated and very overrated. The overrated ideas are fairly obvious. It's like you have empty language and you're just adding all of these little tips and tricks, and that's not very inspiring. But let's defend it. I think that that'll lead us to a really interesting place. So, um, many years ago, 2 years ago now, not many, 2 years ago, I was scrolling Twitter and I came across this guy called The Cultural Tutor, and he was writing about Western culture, talking about 18th century English architecture, talking about Van Gogh's paintings, all those sorts of things. But there was something really distinct about what he was doing. It was actually getting engagement. And I really like those topics. I'm a huge fan of art history.

And this is when he was like sub-100K. Yeah.

And what happened was he had just started and I had found him early on. So I'm reading his stuff and all of a sudden I see 10,000 subscribers, 20,000 subscribers, 40,000 subscribers. He's getting tens of thousands of new followers per week on Twitter.

Right.

I was like, what is going on? This is crazy. So I start following him and it's a Thursday morning and I'm talking to a guy who I work with and I said, have you seen this Cultural Tutor guy? I don't know who he is. Statue account. Who knows what his name is? But his writing is incredible. Like an hour and a half later, he posts, hey Twitter, I've just hit 100,000 followers. And to commemorate my 100,000 follower milestone, I am now going to launch a subscription email newsletter.

Yeah.

And I'm like, that is a terrible idea. And not just that, but I said, I need to get in touch with this guy. I need to get in touch with him. So how do I do it? Well, I scroll to the bottom of that thread and there's a photo from this guy named Harry Dry, who I had had dinner with in London earlier that year. And it says, proud of you, brother. And I go, zing, zing, zing, zing, zing. Harry must know CT. So I instantly WhatsApp Harry and I'm like, I need you to put me in touch with him right now. I have to talk to him. Who is he? I don't care. Just put me in touch. So he reaches out, we get on the phone, and I say, who are you? He's like, well, I'm 25 years old. I'm living with my parents. Sort of a rough situation right now. I was working at McDonald's, he calls it.

McDonald's.

McDonald's. And he was like cleaning out the McFlurry machine. He was like sweeping the windows and all that jazz. And he had no sense of direction in his life. He was just sort of trying to build an audience so that maybe he could make some money being a cultural tutor, tutoring people in culture.

Yeah.

And I said, I got an idea. What if I just pay you and you can write about whatever you want, but send a Twitter or publish a Twitter thread every single day and then work on your email newsletter? And he said, okay. I said, well, how much do you need? He said, well, like £2,000 a month. And I said, that's it? He goes, yeah. That's all I need. I said, well, I'll give you a little bit more than that. And we've been working together now for 2 years. He has 1.6 million followers and has absolutely crushed it.

That story is so good. And I have to ask you too, I think, well, what's in it for you when you put in the seed round? We'll just call it that, the seed money.

I just get to tell the story and I really believed in him.

And you don't get a percentage of profits or anything?

Nothing from it.

Well, you're amazing.

I mean, I just really like seeing people like that succeed.

I yeah.

I mean, I now call him like one of my really good friends.

Yeah, yeah.

And life is long. Good things will come from it.

You know what's funny? So you mentioned Harry Dry. So years ago, I think in 2020, maybe 2019 or so, I saw him coming up, right? So similarly, I was like, dude, this guy's writing so good, and he's marketing examples, right? So I reached out to him, and I was trying to work out a deal. Funny enough, another guy, another guy that lives in Austin, Ryan Deiss from Digital Marketer, had reached out to him prior to me. But we'll talk about this in a second. But this all comes back to talent spotting at the end of the day. How about— so the podcast that you have, you know, again, amazing people that you've had. What's your long-term goal with that pod? I mean, it's like the thumbnails are amazing. The guests are amazing. What's the 5-year vision with it?

I don't really have one. So I want to get this quote. It's from T.S. Eliot, and he says, here or there does not matter. We must be still and still moving. Here or there does not matter. We must be still and still moving. And you ask about my goal for the podcast, and fundamentally I would just begin there. Where one of the things I like to ask is, where can I feel like I'm here and there, neither here or there, kind of both of them at the same time, still and still moving? And the essence of that is your means and your end totally overlap. And I think that this is when you found the right work, that when you're asking, hey, what is the place that I want to get to and that thing is fundamentally different, well, then you are, you are here, but you're not there. And fundamentally, the podcast is the work that I feel like I'm made to be doing. It is a total victory to just be doing that podcast. And I feel, I feel like it's going to take me somewhere. And so just the act of recording every weekend and week out, I That to me is the victory. Now, at the same time, what I would really like that podcast to become is sort of like the Paris Review interview series. So the Paris Review was a— is a literary magazine that was founded probably post-war, probably '50s or '60s. And what they've had is they've done these 2 interviews in every single edition going back 70 years or so. And if you want to read the canonical interview about writing and the creative process about your favorite late 20th century writers, you'll find it in the Paris Review. Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Marshall McLuhan, Robert Caro, David McCullough, they're all there. And it's this beautiful repository of conversations that you won't find anywhere else. And I would really like to do that. And now if we're successful there, the money's gonna show up. If we're successful there, the thing is gonna grow. Right now it's just a little mustard seed and that thing will grow and expand. But the core thing with the podcast to me is less about what is the vision and more about that T.S. Eliot quote. We wanna be neither here or there, still or still moving.

Yeah. Uh, you know, as we continue to talk more, there's a certain vibe I have about you where you're very present. You know, it's, it sounds like you're playing an infinite game. There's no need to rush anything. And I remember listening to Jason Fried recently. He's just like, you know, you just want to make profit every year. That's it. And just keep going, right? Because this is— you're not playing this game for a year or 5 years, not even a decade. It sounds like you're going to play it for the rest of your life.

Yeah, who knows? What I am confident in is I'm very sensitive to the sound of a good fit. And that podcast to me is such a good fit for me in so many different ways. It allows me, you know, it takes in even my vanity of like the vanity of setting up a good set and trying to make it look beautiful. The joy that I have and even the way that I like slightly idolize successful people, getting to meet them, sort of my deep obsession with the creative process, my curiosity to figure out, hey, how do I write? 'Cause I didn't grow up a good writer, so I had to figure it out myself. And the continuation of that quest It's those questions and those things that really drive me much more than some sort of vision or outcome.

Yeah. Well, here, I think I can parse this out a little bit. So you speaking with Howard Marks, you speaking with Chamath Palihapitiya, Marc Andreessen, I mean, these are pretty heavy hitter investors. They're all different in their own way. What are some interesting things that you learned from them? Because I didn't get a chance to see every single one, so.

I think that one thing I learned from Howard Marks is how deep you can take an idea. That when an idea can really marinate in your mind, not just for months or years, but for decades, and you can really see the way that that idea is contoured, and you can watch that idea play out over time, There's a real subtlety to the geography of those ideas. When you first get into an idea, you see it in these peaks and valleys, and then you see them in these little dips and these short hills, and then you can see how the ideas change in context or how culture changes, or in Howard Marks' case, how markets begin to evolve. And I think that that's what an expert is. An expert is somebody who's Made every mistake. An expert is somebody who's seen the same thing happen in different contexts, and then because of that, they can— they have a sense of pattern recognition, and they know when the pattern holds true and when it doesn't hold true. And that is something that you can't buy with money. You can only buy with time and careful reflection.

Yeah, he seems like a really— I mean, Howard Marks, if everyone— if anyone's read his memos, like, go read his memos. I think there's a recent one maybe he wrote a year or two ago about the sea change, but he's seen the sea change happened like 3 or 4 times already, talking about interest rates and the environment. Um, and again, the guy is very calm. He doesn't care about building an audience or anything. He's just like, I'm just gonna write my thoughts. And then it just continued to compound. I think he's been writing these memos since the '80s or so. I could be off, but yeah.

Since 1990.

Since 1990. Um, speaking of being thoughtful, I guess going to you really quick, just observing your demeanor, your slow-paced talking, you're very thoughtful. You'll pause to think, right? Have you always been like that? No, not at all.

Um, it's interesting that you say that because that's not how I would really define myself, at least historically. I think if you told my parents that, they'd say, I don't think you know David. But I think that I've really come to appreciate sobriety, and I don't mean that in the way that When people hear that, they think, oh, don't drink, don't do drugs. Like, that's, that's sort of what I'm talking about, but sobriety is a much deeper concept. Sobriety is the sister of peace, and I think that peace is the North Star that I would like to have. And peace goes back to still and still moving, that what I really admire in people is when there's a constant churn of motion, and you're moving and you're active and you're in— you're making progress. But at the same time, there is sort of the groundedness that comes from that peace. And I think that when you have that, that to me is the mark of a good life. And I spend a lot of time— I actually just got out of lunch with a 78-year-old elder who I have lunch with every Wednesday.

Hmm.

And I spend a lot of time with elders, people who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, and the biggest thing I've taken from them is just the lack of anxiety and that sense of peace that I think cannot be— it's something you have to earn. You can't just snap your fingers and create peace. But I appreciate you saying that. That's been the result of a lot of work.

Yeah. Well, I want to dive a little deeper in a second, but I want to come back to the elderly piece because my mom's around that age right now and she's, you know, a little sick. We'll just leave it that way. But I'm constantly— she's constantly still stressed, trying to control everything, moving like she hasn't attained that peace. Right. So what do you think it's different about these people? Like, have you seen a pattern is what I'm asking?

Yeah, it's hard for— I'm sorry to hear about your mom.

It's all good. It's life. Yeah.

Yeah, it's still hard though. Yeah, still hard. I think that for the people that I know, they they just have a lot of wisdom, and I think wisdom leads to peace. I think that peace is the result of wisdom, and. I try to seek those people out in my life who who have that, and for them, I think a lot of times, you know, I look at all them and they've really been through a lot. The guy who I have lunch with every Wednesday, his wife has terminal cancer right now. And I'm just watching how he's dealing with that like such a mensch, and I've just extreme admiration for him. And he's been, he's been studying scripture every day for like 20 years. And a few of the other guys have dealt with stuff that's just as difficult.

Yeah.

And I think that anyone who has an incredible amount of wisdom has been through an incredible amount of pain to get there. And that's a heuristic that I see holding more and more true every day.

You know, as you say that, earlier you mentioned that in the beginning when you start writing or you start creating, you're just copying everyone because you just don't know, right? But you're really looking for pattern recognition at the end of the day. And, um, I think that's what's happening in this situation too. There's a lot of books that you've read, you've taken that wisdom, you've taken that perspective, and you're taking it from guys like this too. Um, so interesting Little connection there. How did you— if people are like, oh, like, I want to go meet my— I want to have a 78-year-old, for lack of a better word, mentor. How did you go about meeting this guy, finding this guy?

Yeah, I have a bunch of them. I'm—

Oh, you have multiple dates each week?

I have multiple dates every week. I have multiple dates every week. It is super, super important to me to spend a lot of time around Older people, and I meet a lot of them through the church. And I also just ask people, and asking for things like this is really valuable. Like here's a question that you can ask people who you meet: Is say they want to do well in business? Who is the wisest person? about business that you know who's retired and will you introduce me? Or say that you are curious about design. Who is the best up-and-coming designer that you know and will you introduce me?

That's good.

And there's a few things there. There's really 3 different things. The first is make a very specific ask. So a designer business. The second thing is notice I didn't say the CEO of a company. I didn't say the director of an advertising agency. They don't have time for you.

Yeah.

And that's okay. That's why I focus on retired or up-and-coming. And then the third thing is, will you introduce me? And if you ask that question enough, you have enough first meetings, you end up having good relationships. And then the question is, if you're a young person, what is it that you give them? And the great mix in the world is you have young people with vision and energy, and you have older people with money and wisdom. And when that pairing comes together, it's a tale as old as time, and good stuff happens.

How did you realize— because I think this is really smart. I think anybody watching this, yes, absolutely, dudes. But I feel like any entrepreneur, like, okay, let's use myself as an example. I'm like over-optimized for all these different entrepreneur groups, everything. Like, you know, I just hang around like Entrepreneurs, right? And I think there's there's trade-offs to everything. And how did you learn that? Hey, like this is the avenue to go down because most like me, I talk really fast, right? And like go go go all the time. And I'm sure you are too. But at least you stop for a second and you're like wait. It seems like a path to maybe craziness if that's all you focus on. Go go go.

Well, the thing is, how hard you work is the 3rd most important thing. The 2nd most important thing is who do you work with? And the 1st most important thing is what are you working on? And I'd say even underneath that is what is your philosophy of life? And I think of that as these sort of— it's like sequential, where getting the philosophy of life then leads to the answer of what do you work on?

Yeah.

Which then leads to the answer of who do you work with?

That's number one.

Which, which then leads to the answer of how hard do you work?

Yeah.

And I think that this is why I would almost be in praise of laziness sometimes, is I think that some of the air quotes lazy people I know, and I'm not talking about someone who just like veges out on the couch and watches Netflix all weekend, but I'm talking about somebody who's, you know, the sorts of people who are a little bit slower to get after it. One of the things that they do is they're very clever, they're very strategic, and they're good at looking at the world and thinking through what is the highest and best use of my time, right? This is what Archimedes said. This is the genius of a lever, right? A lever, you can find leverage in the right place, and if you have that, you can put a soft tap on a lever and create so much more force than someone who's going as hard as they can. with their muscles and their legs. And I think that often hard work is the lazy thing because you haven't done the harder work of thinking through what is my philosophy of life, thinking through what is it that I want to work on, and thinking through how do I work with the right people on those things.

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It's everything. Before I came to faith, I used to think that faith was like something on the table, right? You go out to dinner and faith is— maybe it's even the entree, right? Faith is the entree, but you got your appetizers and you got your drinks, you got the dessert, all these sorts of things, and faith is just the entree.

Yeah.

I've come to realize that faith is really just the entire— the table that everything sits on.

Yeah.

It's the foundation. So faith is the underpinning of everything, and there's a lot. I mean, one big one is what do I work on? And it forces me to ask a lot of questions there. The next thing is how do I think about what it means to be a worker? I think God cares a lot more about who we are than what we do. And how do I look at work for a prism, as a prism for my unique gifts and my talents, and then surrender to the person that I've been designed to be and say, how do I, rather than trying to overpower reality, how do I be a steward of how I've been made and how do I basically go out in the world and use my gifts in the best way that they can be used? I see faith tying into my work where I think of What am I— who am I designed to be? And when I'm in the right flow, I find places where there's not a lot of stress in that work. It's uniquely easy, and I can do it at a really high level because it's something I'm naturally gifted at. And I didn't choose that gift. It's not a choice that I made. I'm just being a steward of that gift.

Yeah.

And it all sounds like hoity-toity hoopla until you find that. And this is how I feel with how I write, where it's really low stress. My heart rate rarely goes up because of how I write. Sometimes during the interviews, but I don't really stress out about it too much. I really enjoy it. It's like the most fun thing that I could possibly do.

Yeah.

And I feel like we do it at a really high level. I just have some sort of intuitive sense for what the show should be. I have a vision that is not something of my own creation. It was sort of just revealed to me. And I'm like, I wanna do that. And then I have other places in my life that aren't like that at all. And those are the things that I'm trying to sort of get rid of. One really good exercise for this is to break all your, all the things that you do into 4 categories. The first is things that I love to do and have to do. The second is things that I don't love to do and have to do. The third is things that I don't love to do and have to do. And the fourth is things that I don't love to do and don't have to do. And if you can break everything that you do into those 4 categories, what you want is love to do and have to do as much as possible.

Yeah.

There's certain things that are don't love to do and have to do, and sometimes you're just gonna have to suck that up. And then the key thing there is redefining what love is. Love is not excitement. Love is not this like giddy, woo, we get to go do this. Love is this deep, enduring sense of meaning and satisfaction. And purpose. And when you have that and you get to have your work exist inside of that sandbox, I think you get really good outcomes.

You know, one, that's a really thoughtful definition of love. Two, I heard of one recently that's, that was, that's pretty insane too. The act of loving is the act of being used to the fullest. And so I don't know, um, have you read the book The Giving Tree?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I don't remember reading it in elementary school, but apparently we did. But this guy brought it up and he was like, you know, it's this kid that has this tree. And then, you know, in the beginning he's getting apples from the tree and then he needs to build furniture. Eventually the tree becomes a stump and the tree gave all of its love and it was used till the very end. He's like, that's what being a man is. Like, that's what like loving to the fullest is. So I think it's really interesting how there's like these different definitions that all, they all fit, you know?

Yeah.

Yep. Okay, I do want to go deeper on your faith because it's something I'm deeply curious about. I have to ask you, so the level of the guests that you're getting—it's only a matter of time before I think you're going to have like a million subs or something on YouTube, and lots of views, right? Lots more views. How how are you getting these guests? I'm sure like a bunch of people are wondering.

So there's a there's a few different ways. One is. that a lot of these people have followed me on Twitter. And I think it's really important when you— so the podcast is about 6 months old and I've gone to interview Sam Altman, gone to interview Marc Andreessen, a bunch of people of that ilk.

Yeah.

And I think it's really misleading, though, to say that it's 6 months old because really the podcast is 10 years old. And what I mean by that is there was almost a decade worth of work where I have been sharing ideas on the internet. I've been building a reputation, building an audience. I've been learning how do I send a good cold email? How do I relate to people in positions of power and authority who are incredibly busy? And I've built up a lot of expertise there. I also work with an exceptional producer named Adam Sokolich. No poaching. He is exceptional. And he is so frickin good at reaching out to people. He has a real knack for for how to do this. And he and I just put our heads together and we say, how are we gonna reach out to these people? And he has taught me a lot of little tricks about how to do it. And we sit down, we talk every single Tuesday, and we basically say we have 2 priorities for the show. The first is that we're gonna get incredible guests, and the second is that we're gonna produce the episodes at an incredibly high level.

Right.

It's really simple, but we're all about that. And then a lot of the early guests I reached out to on, on, on Twitter. They'd been following me for who knows how long, and they said, sure, I'd love to do it. And podcasts are a funny thing where once you get a few, it's a lot easier to get the other people, right? It's the Matthew principle that for the people who have, they will receive more. And a lot of it was just about spinning the flywheel.

Mm-hmm.

And then the final thing is I think that we put a lot of care into the podcasts, and if I need to, I will do crazy things in order to get somebody on. So there's a big name that I'm reaching out to now. Everyone would, would know them. And he's a really hard guest to get on. I've reached out twice. He said no. So what am I going to do? I'm going to send him a list of about 50 questions. I'm going to get a researcher to basically do the research beforehand, and I'm going to write out 50 outstanding questions. And I'm going to say, hey, if you come on, this is what it will be. And then I say, I will fly. to where you are, and I will produce an absolutely beautiful set. And some of the people who we're getting 6 months in are people I never thought I'd be able to meet in my life.

Dude, that's incredible. And what I'll speak to is, is those that haven't seen your, your YouTube channel. One, again, the thumbnails are amazing. Two, the guests are amazing. But also it just speaks to the high— it's— you don't mind if I call you a perfectionist, do you? Like, it feels like, hey, this guy's a perfectionist, right? Which is not a bad thing. I think it's just super high quality work. But then you go back to your Twitter, you're not— I don't think I've ever seen anything from you where you try to go viral. Like, it's just you're just— you might be resharing stuff, but like, if you're going to write something, it's going to be something that you've deeply thought through. And I think that's the reason you have an audience. And to your point, that type of audience is way more valuable.

That's, that's the bet. And thank you for saying that because it's— there's a lot of— I will actually say on both sides, there's been a lot of things that I think I've done that have been out of touch with my own sense of integrity. in order to grow my audience. And I've had to take a hard look in the mirror, and I definitely haven't lived up to my own standards. And at the same time, I think that there's been a lot of things that I haven't done because I've wanted to have a sense of integrity. And I think that that's the process of growth as a creator, right?

Let's talk about that former piece because, you know, as a marketer, test a lot of things, right? And I remember one time, this is recent, maybe like a year, year and a half ago or so. Someone reached out and was like, oh, you know, we do ghostwriting for like Sahil Bloom, all these people. I was like, okay, like show me what you got. And then they're like, okay, we'll work for you for free. I was like, pretty good offer, pretty good reach out. I was like, okay. Like they showed me a couple of their threads and then they started writing. And then yes, the threads went viral. Yeah, like, you know, 1 million, 2 million, 3 million views or whatever. Pretty good for like a smaller account, 35,000 followers. And I'm just like, but it feels icky.

Yeah.

And it's like, who cares if it goes viral or not? Like it doesn't do anything for me either. It doesn't feel good.

And I mean, you ask about my faith and there's a line in the book of Matthew that says, says, what good does it— is it for a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul in the process?

Yeah.

And you take a line like that and you ask, how does it show up in my work? There's a direct connection there. And once again, I think I've done things in the past of trying to go more viral or not being completely sincere in my writing that I regret, and I might fall into those patterns into the future, but Hopefully it's more and more sincerity, more and more integrity, more and more rigor in the writing. And that's where I'm trying to march towards.

I think you'll get there. I think you're, you're like, you're doing it already. Um, you know what I thought you were doing? You can say you weren't doing this. I was like, oh, this is genius. This podcast is going to get so big. It's going to get so many views. And then he's going to drive the views. Maybe he'll have a mid-roll that drives to his program, right? Because you teach people how to write. Is that part of the vision or—

Okay. Yeah, for sure. I mean, what I would really like to do is I want to build sort of the go-to place where you learn about writing and both free and then mid-tier programs, high-tier programs, the way that Dave Ramsey has done it for the finance industry.

Yeah. You know, I mean, there's some of these courses, coaching programs where there's like this one I'm not gonna name, I don't wanna give it away, but there, there's this one mastermind. I think it does like $40 million a year and it has like 5 employees and it's like, it's like lower ticket courses and then higher, higher ticket. And then there's group coaching and there's coaching and there's like a mastermind. And, um, you know, that works for them and it's a really low stress business.

Yep.

So I can see it going that way. Well, whatever you wanna do. Um, going to faith, because you know what's interesting in the last maybe 12 months or so, so I'm agnostic, right? I, I've always felt like there is something, but I haven't committed to anything, right? And I've heard you talk about— I've heard Brent Beshore talk about it too. It's like you guys weren't believers before. And I remember in high school, I had a friend who's like a linebacker, and these kids would go around with these signs like, ask me about Jesus. And this guy was really smart, so he'd just rip on them all day, right? And it's like, it's like, because it's— And this guy, by the way, he would cut my hair. And He'd always have the Bible on the ground right next to his toilet. I'm like, why is the Bible on the ground? He's like, it's a good bathroom book. I'm like, what do you mean? Obviously, it's useful, but you don't respect the religion. You know what I mean? But part of me has always been like, where I'm going with this is when someone said the quote, God is an energy, it's not a person, that resonated with me a lot more. And then I think I heard Um, a famous doctor whose name we won't say this week, um, he was talking about how like there's just some things that you can't explain. So I guess where I'm going with this is, when did you start to believe? Like, what changed? What flipped the switch for you? Because I think you're very like anti-God before, right?

Yeah, I was. I grew up Jewish by heritage and Jewish by culture, but not Jewish by doctrine. And I say that because I I really value Judaism, and I— it had a huge influence on me. But from the beginning, I never really bought into a lot of the— what I'd read in the Torah. And I went to Judaic studies classes every single day. I went to Hebrew class every single day. I was bar mitzvahed. But really, I was a secular atheist, and I worshipped at the Church of American Idolatry.

What is that?

What that is, is what we do in America where we say, you're going to get into a good college so that you can get a prestigious job, so that you can have a fancy degree, so that then you can live this very idyllic life with a golden retriever and a BMW and a white picket fence and the whole apparatus of things that comes with that. Then someday you will have kids and they'll be able to go to Harvard or something like that. you can put a nice Harvard sticker on the back of your Mercedes SUV, and then you'll look impressive to all your friends at the country club. And I saw that vision for life and I said, that's what I want.

Yeah.

I'm gonna get after it. And there was a lot of career drive with that and a lot of ambition that went with that. And I found after achieving a lot of the success with that, that it was a lot emptier than than I thought it was going to be. And I spent a lot of time looking at people who did achieve their goals, whether they won Olympic gold medals, whether they won Super Bowls, NBA championships. And one of the recurring motifs that I found was they win, they feel a moment of elation, and then they descend into a valley of despair over and over and over again. And it forced me to think about what is it that I believe and why? What is it that I'm pursuing and why? And then I met Brent Beshore and we got connected because I was really excited about learning from him about business. So I got in touch with him, invited him on my podcast, and he and I ended up flying to— I ended up going to visit him in Columbia, Missouri. And we sat down for an afternoon and I thought we were going to talk about business. We did, but we really spent most of the time talking about faith. And the takeaway that I had at the end was, you can think whatever you want. I'm going to respect whatever it is that you want, but if you're going to dismiss Jesus, you're going to need to have a better answer for that. And I said, yeah, you're right. And so I went home and as I do, I sort of turned on the scheming David brain of thinking through stuff. And I eventually realized that there's a poem called One Solitary Life. If you're listening to this, look it up. It's really beautiful. And it's about the impact that Jesus has had on Western civilization. I realized that he was, he is the most influential figure in the West. And we read books about Isaacson on Steve Jobs and Elon and Einstein, and we're just like, oh my goodness, you need to read this book. And I was flabbergasted at how I hadn't even read the Gospels. I hadn't even read the biography, the book about the most influential figure in Western civilization. So then I said, okay, what's going on here? Either Jesus is some made-up figure that people worship because it's the greatest scam in the history of the West, that 2 billion people around the world now believe in this guy.

Yeah.

Or Jesus is the Son of God. And I thought a lot about this and I was like, it's gotta be one or the other. And I put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and I said, let's do a little detective action. And I did that for like 5 years. And I looked into atheism itself. I looked into— then I read a great book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. And what that taught me was no matter where you were, whether you're a believer, whether you're not a believer, whatever it is that you believe, there's gonna be a leap of faith that you take. And the question is, what leap of faith are you taking in whatever worldview you have? So those sorts of things loosened the screws on my atheism. And then I began to really appreciate the influence of Christianity on the West in art, in architecture, in literature. I went to the Louvre in Paris.

In everything.

And I said, how do you go to the Louvre And see anything here without an appreciation for the Bible. Any book that was written before the beginning of the 20th century assumed familiarity with scripture. And I said, I got to know what this stuff says. But once again, it was a purely intellectual exercise, the same way that you would study Nietzsche or Plato. And then I began to appreciate what the unique tools that Christianity has once I began to really suffer in my life. And once I got to a place where I was really broken and I could only see the world in black and white, and I experienced the deep valley of despair that— to an end that I just didn't know how I was gonna get out of. And when people say that they were saved, I know what that means now, to be rescued. And the only way I can explain it is I've had dreams about this, of imagine you're in the water, the ship has sunk, there's no one nearby, you're treading water, you know you're gonna drown, and you're thinking this is the end. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a boat comes up with a life jacket, and they just toss you the life jacket and they say, get on the boat, you'll be safe to go. And I feel like that's what faith did for me.

Did— just to clarify, your moment of darkness— I'm glad you're here, that we're doing this right now, um, that you were saved. Did you do the, the research prior and then it was that— then, then that moment happened?

Yeah, so I started looking into this 4 to 5 years before that moment happened, and I did not want to become a Christian. I still have my issues with Christian culture.

Yeah.

I thought Jesus was some sky fairy. I thought all the stuff that I'm saying right now was ridiculous, and my heart really changed, and I investigated the heck out of it. And I, I wasn't looking for faith at all, but I was searching for truth. And now I think I found it.

This message is brought to you by Leveling Up Founders, and Leveling Up Founders is an invite-only event for founders. It happens once a year, usually during August. And past attendees include people such as Ali Abdaal, Cody Sanchez, Neil Patel, Vanessa Lau, and the list goes on and on. And ultimately it comes down to the quality of the group of the people. We try to keep the group high caliber. That's why it's invite only. So if you are a founder at the top of your game, you can go to levelingup.com/founders to learn more about it and you can apply and we'll see you on the other side. When you say that you looked into it or did your research for 5 years. I mean, that's— I'm just— to get more concrete here, like, how many— how much were you reading? How many books? Like, how many words did you read, right? Because if I said I was looking into something for 5 years, it could mean I did a shitload of work or like I didn't do much.

I mean, I wasn't getting, you know, a PhD in this. Yeah, by no means. But yeah, I was going to a bunch of talks. I was having conversations with friends at recurring frequency. I was going to Bible studies every Saturday. As a non-believer, just trying to figure out what does scripture actually say.

Did they know you were a non-believer in the room?

Yeah, of course.

It's like that guy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The guy who ended up baptizing me called it my little research project. And I read books. I wrote about it. I wrote a piece called The Book You Need to Read about why you should read the Bible before I became a believer. I wrote a book, wrote a piece called Why You're Christian. Before I became a believer. And even the essence of that piece was, once again, coming back to Western civilization. There's a line that we all learn about as Americans in school, which is about the Declaration of Independence, right? Towards the top, it says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I said, wow, what a beautiful idea. All men are created equal. We hold these truths— truth. All men are created equal. But it's those middle words, self-evident, self-evident.

Yeah.

Well, why is that self-evident? You go to the next line in the Declaration of Independence and you see, we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. And it is because of the Creator that those rights can't be taken away from us. That is why it is self-evident. The self-evidentness of it comes from God. And it was a crazy moment for me as a non-believer because I saw that either I needed to rewire and rebuild my moral framework from scratch, or I needed to surrender and believe in God. And it was one of those two things. And I explored, and I see how you could end up on either side of that division. I have mad respect for people who disagree with me, but fundamentally I got to the place where The Occam's razor, the fewest possible assumptions, the shortest, the shortest leap of faith for me was becoming a believer.

Can I ask you then, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, my observation, because one of my best friends is Jewish, right? I'm just like, to oversimplify, this is a great operating system. It's like, I can see how they raise their kids. You know, there's Shabbat. It's just like, there's a lot of wisdom that's translated down. I think that's why religion's good across the board. It's a good operating system. And so when When people do Bible study or when you're reading a book, and this is where you can correct me, it's, um, are you trying to reinforce these philosophies to just continue to remind yourself, hey, it's these things that are going to keep— they're almost like bumpers when you're like going bowling. It keeps you on track. Guardrails.

Yeah. I mean, what I would say is, what do we say when you memorize something? You say that once you have something memorized, you Know it by heart, and I think that that's really what this is about. It's about letting scripture and the word enter your heart. And Hebrews 4:12 said says the word of God is living and breathing, sharper than any two-edged sword, discerning the divide between soul and spirit. Of joints and of marrow, discerning the intentions and thoughts of the heart. And when you take something like that, of scripture being living and breathing, sharper than any two-edged sword, and you have that thing memorized by heart, it actually becomes a part of you. And that is one definition of wisdom is what would God say in any particular moment? And the best way to know what God would say in any moment is to invite God into your heart.

Yeah, I love that. There's more I want to dive in there, but it's— I'm oversimplifying here. But remember back in the day when you could buy Windows and there's like add-ons, you can buy the screensavers, you can buy Windows Plus and all that? I look at, okay, maybe for you, the Bible is Windows, right? And then the other books that you're reading, because you're effortlessly quoting all these other books, or other quotes, I should say. And these are like the add-ons at the end of the day. Right. And I think what, at least for me, someone that's forgetful, these need to constantly be reinforced. Otherwise you start to go off track and, you know, screw up in your own way.

Yeah. One thing I would say just far beyond religion is that the great things are great for a reason and it's worth trying to figure out why. And things that have stood the test of time, I just think are very underrated. And the way that knowledge wisdom works is that you have mother wisdom, and mother wisdom is filtered through father time. Yeah. So what happens is you get all the things that are created, and history is very, very good at discerning what things are worth keeping and what things are good removing or, or worth removing, but it takes 50 to 100 years. So if something has stood the test of time and is more than 50 years old, it's probably worth reading because it's been filtered by father time. And what you get at the bottom is just the purity of mother wisdom.

The Lindiness of it.

Exactly.

Which is interesting because I know you had that talk with the cultural tutor. And what was his teaching around how he doesn't read anything that's—

Less than 50 years old.

Less than 50 years old.

I think that's really wise.

Yeah.

Which is crazy. We're sitting at dinner and we did a summer trip last year and we were going around for who would say grace at the beginning of dinner. One person did it, then the next person, next person. It was like the 4th night of the trip. And we say, cultural tutor, you do it. And he just whips out some like 18th century poem from like John Ruskin or something.

Yeah.

Just from memory. Takes him like 2 minutes and everyone's just flabbergasted. Like, how do you know this? How do you know this? It was such an iconic moment. And the thing that I love about him is I really like people who are congruent. Their work aligns with their values. Their values aligned with who they are. There's not a lot of posturing. They're just being who they are. And he is one of the most congruent people I've ever met. His writing is who he is. And it's all aligned, and he is that person through and through. And I think that there's a real integrity about that that I really admire about him.

That reminds me of the question that was asked when I used to play this game called EverQuest. Uh, what do you want your tombstone to say?

Yeah, what do I want it to say?

Yeah, because you said like for Culture Tutor, like he's super congruent, like on his tombstone it's gonna say a certain thing. What do you want yours to say?

What I would like to say, one thing that I would like people to say is that I pushed them and I challenged them in an incredibly loving way, and that because they were in my presence, they were made better people. They produced things of higher quality. And when I pushed them, they said that there was never a moment where I didn't feel like David was on my team. I didn't feel like David was rooting for me. I felt like he was all in. I felt like he was there with me, and there was never antagonism. It wasn't condescending, but it wasn't empty words either. He pushed me, he made me better, and he fired me up to really go out and do excellent work.

You've thought through this.

I would love to have somebody say that about me someday.

I think they will. Look, going back to faith again, and I'm just fascinated by this because again, in the last 12 months, I'm like, okay, more and more Besides, you know, you, other people talking about it, just there's these patterns that I'm detecting, right? And I'm like, I feel like a strange pull to it, like where I want to investigate more, right? Did that happen to you? I find that that is the— right?

Yeah. I mean, it's such an important question. It's such an important question. Is there a God? If there is a God, what is the nature of God? What is the— what is this? That we're experiencing. And I believe that the physical plane is one dimension, the spiritual realm is another one. And these spiritual questions are so rich. And whatever it is, wherever it is that you are, whatever it is that you're interested in, I think that it's so fruitful to ask these questions. I don't know if I have the right answer. I mean, I, I'm all in on the answer that I have, and I believe that This is the truth, but I can't be 100% certain of that.

Yeah.

And I think that what you're feeling is a pull towards the big questions of life, which is like a real mark of maturity. And what I would say, the one sort of takeaway piece of homework that I would have, is that every Westerner should know what the Bible says, whether they're religious or not. And this is something I really changed my mind on. I was like, why would I go read Something like that. No, this is like some old book that's in a hotel room. Okay, I get that that worked for my great-great-great-grandma. Oh, it's a super bigoted book.

Yeah.

Like, I, like, I get that. I thought all those things. But the reason I changed my mind is because it is, it is the mortar in the brick of Western civilization. It is the thing that binds so much together, from our politics to our rule of law to our art to our culture to the way that we do business. And if you know what the Bible says, you can almost pierce through Western civilization as if you're seeing through the Matrix or actually have X-ray vision into what's going on.

Yeah, I mean, it's what, thousands of years of wisdom at the end of the, at the end of the day. Here, I'll give you a clippable moment over here. How has Jesus helped you with your business?

By making me care way more about it and by making me care way less about it. I care way more in that the person that I am in my work really matters. And I want to do things that are worthy of the life that I've been called to live. And I see business as a really important part of that. And at the same time, this is just business. You know, it's like, it's just work, whatever. And if things go well, then things go really well. And if things don't go well, then, then, then God had another plan for me. And okay. And now that's really easy to say here. It's really hard not to get anxious when struggle comes into my life, but I definitely care way less about the actual results of how rich I get or how successful I get than I did a year and a half ago. I mean, it's night and day. And at the same time, I think that the best work that I have is totally ahead of me and that if I can continue to grow in knowledge and wisdom and understanding of how the world works and really come to see what are the gifts that I have and define those things and then build a life that's congruent where my gifts are congruent with my work, with how I want to treat people, my values, then I think the work just flows out of that.

Right.

And there's a really nice line from Naval Ravikant where he says that in order to write a great book, you first need to become a great book. And I'm interested in becoming a human being that just by Being me, um, there's goodness that comes from that. And I think business is one way that, that, that, that works.

I think, I still think business is one of the best personal growth engines out there. And then I think just what you're saying just reinforces the fact that it's not a decade, it's decades to compound into something generational.

And there's a, um, There's a really haunting quote that I read in the New York Times. It's a piece in 2014, 2015, and it's about a writer, and she was stuck. And one of the challenges for her was that she had based her whole worth, value, and identity on the quality of her writing. And the problem was, she said that because I had so much placed on that, So much of who I was was dependent on how successful I was in my work. I couldn't actually see my work clearly. So take somebody who needs the thing that they write to be incredible, otherwise they will just collapse and they will lose everything. They cannot hear somebody critiquing them to say, hey, you're doing these things in your paragraphs that's really hurting your work. The way that you're constructing your sentences It could be way better if you did it otherwise, because she has such tight fingers on the perfection of what she's doing. Now say that you have somebody and their work is part of a broader story and they get their identity from another place and they get those same comments. Hey, this about the paragraphs. Hey, that about the sentences. Now, you can much more earnestly say, yeah, I just want to produce great work. And now you can hear people without the balloon of pride that's being stabbed, and you can hear people much more clearly. So I think that that's a place where paradoxically, the less that you tie your identity into work, the more you can open up in certain places.

Well, let's talk about talent evaluation, because this is something I get really excited about when we're recruiting. So, you know, for you, you know, Cultural Tutor as an example, it's like you spotted that, right? So for you, what does it take? Like, how do you know when you see someone that's exceptional?

Yeah. So that one was really easy because I think that you have to spot, sort of put people in 2 camps. One is, do they have a portfolio or do they not? Anyone who has a portfolio like he did, it's not hard. I can just look at a bunch of his writing. I can say, I think it's really good, and I trust my own intuitive judgment a lot.

Yeah.

And also other people think it's really good. So actually, that was like hanging curveball, center the plate, you know, take a big old swing and swing for the fences. That one was easy, and I think that's why I just went right after it. And when I can see somebody's writing, it's really easy. I can read in one paragraph, I can figure out if somebody's really switched on.

Yeah.

Same thing with Sherry Ning, Josh Delany, Grace Smith. There are 3 writers who— they all work with me, and I found them through, through their work. They're super talented in completely different ways, and That's when it's easy, when I can see the portfolio. And also, I've gotten good at just hearing the way that people speak, the way that they construct sentences, the way that they understand the world, the way that they respond to follow-up questions, the way that they reason through problems. It's not like it's something very imperceptible that you're looking for, but it's just like a sense of awareness and being on. That I can hear very fast. And if I can see somebody's work, it's a heck of a lot easier.

You know what's funny? People make fun of gut feeling because it's hard to measure, but gut feeling does come from experience. And so, any form of talent spotting, whether like you're looking for patterns at the end of the day, but I feel like in general, if you're experienced, you can probably spot someone that's a superstar within the first 10 to 15 minutes no matter what. Totally. Yeah.

YC, they figured out how to do it in less than 10 minutes. And I think that you just need to distinguish gut feelings from— there's a kind of gut feeling where you don't have domain expertise, and there's a kind of gut feeling where you have a ton of domain expertise. And those are completely different gut feelings. And when you have a lot of domain expertise, you develop heuristics. One of my favorite examples of heuristics is, remember the Soleil plane that crashed in the Hudson River?

Yep.

What happened was they were trying to make one of the other airports to try to see if they could do it. And when you're flying and you're out of— your engines have failed, basically if you can glide and the airport is going lower on the horizon, you're gonna make it. If it's going higher up, you're not gonna— you're done. Yeah. So what you can do is you can look for 4 seconds and you can instantly know if you're gonna make it or not. And that's a good example of heuristic that has been developed through experience that then you can have an intuitive feeling of what's going on. And a lot of what you're looking for is with that. And then with talent evaluation is you then develop a kind of domain expertise for the kinds of people who you do want to work with and don't want to work with.

Right.

So for example, I'm very indexed towards novelty. I'm very indexed towards ideas. I'm good when I have a vision. I'm good when I can drive the energy to something. And I love the genesis moment in something, and I'll take as long as I need to work on that genesis moment.

Right.

With how I write, it was 2 years. I started thinking through that podcast in September of '21. We launched in August of '23. So it was 23 months. I was thinking through the logo, through the shape of the show, through the design of the sets, through how we were going to think about the interviews, studying interviewers. What is it that I'm going to do? And I'm really good then. But the cost of that is I need a lot of help with implementation. I'll give you the frame of the painting. I'll tell you where we're going, but I'm gonna need somebody else to color in between the lines. So I need people in terms of the 5 voices who are guardians and nurturers, 'cause I'm not that person.

Mm-hmm.

I am a creative and I'm a connector. I need people who are very patient and They are really good at— I need people who are not conflict-averse because I have a lot of bad ideas and I need people in my life who say, David, that's not a good idea. Or, hey David, I understand what you're saying, but let me help you out with that. And there's a very specific personality profile for the people that I need around me. And a lot of hiring has a lot of the what I've gleaned about it has come from making bad decisions and asking, what are the personality traits of the people who didn't work out? How do those relate or not relate to mine? And how do I think about the way that puzzle pieces fit? So I think it's a mistake to say, how do you evaluate talent in the macro? I think that that's part of the question.

Yeah.

But I think that fundamentally, if we're talking about hiring, it's also about who is it that you're trying to hire? Are they working with you? Or are they working with Samantha on your team? And then what does Samantha need around her? And there's different tools like the Enneagram, the 5 Voices that you can use to really understand the shape of somebody's personality to then find what is or isn't going to be a good fit. And over time, with a little bit of experience, it becomes very predictive. One more thing on that is the reason that this is so important is just the way that I see the world is that everything comes back to people. Companies are people. You are selling to people. A podcast, we are not producing little WAV files. We are making something for people. It is you and I, 2 people coming together. And fundamentally, I see people as the center of everything. And so much of the work that I'm trying to do is just understand people.

Yeah. No, that— I mean, everything. I heard this, Brad Jacobs, the guy that wrote How to Make a Few Billion Bucks. He said everything's about 2 things. It's about people and technology. But I was like, dude, who makes the technology? It all comes back to people. So I'm with you on that.

Who makes it and who is the tech for? It's for people. And this has been one of my most recurring pieces of frustration is the way that the liberal arts have been undervalued. There is a difference between the way the liberal arts is taught and what the liberal arts is. The way the liberal arts is taught is in these fake disciplines that people call science, but they're not really science, or these made-up studies that have been created in the last 50 years. And that's not what the liberal arts is. Now they've been infused with politics and dogma and cultural trends. That's not what I'm talking about. But when people think of the liberal arts, that's what they think about. And they say, oh, it's worthless. And they just immediately dismiss it.

Yeah.

What I'm talking about is this classical education, reading the great books, reading great literature, studying art history. I mean, if I could go back into college now, I would be an art history major. And looking at how do people operate, what are these timeless and eternal truths, these kernels of wisdom that have persisted through time? And I think that is an incredibly valuable thing to be studying.

By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io/agency. agency to learn more. And now back to the show. I think so. If people can take a classical education or really educate themselves and learn to think for themselves, the one thing I observed over this conversation is like, okay, David really articulates himself really well. Who else articulates themselves really well? Naval Ravikant, Warren Buffett, right? Late Charlie Munger, Howard Marks. But how do they get there? It's a lot of reading. It's a lot of writing. And it's a lot of thinking for themselves at the end of the day. And that takes a lot of work. Like, how— by the way, just curious, like, how many hours do you think you're reading per week? 15. That's a shitload of reading. That's amazing. And it's probably a combination of, um, nonfiction, fiction, faith.

I read a lot of stuff around faith and nonfiction. Yeah. Yeah, I don't read as much fiction as I would like.

Got it. And well, why do you want to read more fiction?

I really admire the writing quality, but my brain isn't as good at synthesizing and understanding stories. It's like my brain is really underdeveloped there. It's part of the reason I struggled in school, and I don't know what it is, but my brain made some sort of trade-off in the narrative area, and it gave me a sense of understanding In some area that's probably higher correlated to nonfiction. And I wish it was the other way around, but not, not necessarily the other way around, but I wish I could understand stories better than I do.

I'm mostly like you, so I, I struggle with, um, fiction, but used to read a lot of fantasy and like sci-fi, right? And so maybe your brain's like that. I don't know. Like, just a thought. Um, and how would— and I'm gonna ask you this question to move over to rite of passage, and this will be the last part, but, um, 15 hours a week reading How many hours a week do you think you spend writing?

More than that. Probably 20 hours a week, 25 hours a week. But it's not— unfortunately, I'm working on a book now about writing that I'm really excited about, but I don't spend as much time writing Google Docs where I'm really working on something. A lot of my writing is a little bit more casual.

Yeah.

And I don't spend as much time writing things that I think are gonna— at least we're making an attempt to write something that'll stand the test of time. That's really my best work. And I think that that's like the heavyweights. That's like the deadlifts and the squats. I think I'm doing a lot of like bicep curls in the writing area.

Yeah.

And I wanna, I wanna pick it up because I think that But fundamentally, the 3 ways that I learn are reading, writing, and conversations with a very select group of people. And the more time that I can spend doing those things, the better. I love doing those things, and I get a lot out of it.

And your writing's mostly going to Twitter or your newsletter?

Yeah, Twitter and newsletter, sharing stuff through essays. I really like writing essays, and now I'm working on a book about the writing process. So a lot of stuff there too.

Have you read Working Backwards?

Yeah. The Amazon book?

Yeah, it's like after— because you hear about their memo culture and then like, you know, over the years we've tried doing that, but it wasn't until like the last 12 months or so where we started doing that a lot more. But every time I write a memo, it feels like I'm casting a spell because you're making things happen, right? Yeah. So just a thought.

Well, that's really interesting that you just called writing casting a spell. That is very perceptive because that's what writing is. What writing is, is it's taking ideas from your brain and clarifying them, sharpening them, polishing them, and giving them a shape that they can be understood, shared, and remembered. And understood means clear writing. Shared means things— actually, sharing comes from memory. So if it's memorable, And it's something that people are compelled to spread, then you end up with writing that gets word of mouth. And the way to do that is have a really memorable story. And what's nice, basically, if you want people to remember something, say, a decade later, you have 3 tools at your disposal. You have a story, you have one-liner, and you have music. Music's not in my arsenal. As much as I'd love to just rip a guitar, a guitar, like, you know, crush it with my fingertips on the piano, I got no shot. So I have one-liners and I have stories. And what I said is I'm gonna get really good at both of those so that then I can seed ideas. And now you have a spell, so be careful how you use it.

Yeah, well, I mean, as you said that, I, I was just thinking earlier this week, I was like, you know what makes religion even more powerful? Especially the— I mean, I think Jesus is the best marketer in the world. Like, 28, 30% of people that you know, of the world, right? They're Christians. But the— if you think about the past, like what happened, like, you know, people weren't allowed to read, right? Um, you know, a lot of people weren't allowed to write either. But then, you know, the Bible continued to stand the test of time. Like, I don't know my timelines, but if you think about it, it's just like, that is a— like, people do look at all the people that were in power before, they saw writing as spellcasting. And so they outlawed it. And then eventually, still, like, it all came out later. But the fact that the Bible made it through all that, that's even more of a reason, I think, for me at least, to go read it.

Sure.

Yeah. Um, can you, before we wrap, can you talk about Write of Passage a little bit? Um, because I'd like people to know. Go ahead.

Yeah, so what I'm really interested in doing is helping people learn how to write and learn how to communicate.

Right.

If you know how to communicate yourself well, it will radically transform your life. Learning to write is the base layer of learning to communicate, and writing and communication is one of the ultimate meta skills. When you learn to write, you learn to clarify your ideas, you learn to really structure them. And a lot of us, we were talking about this earlier, they don't have a sense for how to do that. And you think about raising money, oh, what does writing do? Like, how do you make money from it? I mean, take somebody like Take Warren Buffett. Take somebody like Jeff Bezos. Their memos— Bezos, through his memos, has basically said to his shareholders, we're going to invest for the long term. And if you're going to give us your money, these are going to be your expectations. We're not going to make a big profit. We're going to invest in the long term. And year in and year out, he's training people on how he thinks. Buffett did something similar. But it can also just be much more minute. Say that you're part of a community. There's 300 people in the community and you were one of the early members and now you're You're a little unhappy with how things are going. Well, what do you do? You take a weekend, you write it down, you turn it into a memo, and you share it with the head person in the community. It's now there. You've cast the spell, just like what you're saying. People can see it, they can debate it, they can understand it. And then when you think about communications, who are our favorite people? Our favorite people are the people who can inspire us. They can motivate us. They can make us laugh. They can give us an epiphany here, a great story there. They can capture us. They can bring us in. They're great communicators. They're great communicators. And we're talking about people. Without communication, we are atomic creatures. The whole way that atomic creatures become social creatures, creatures, is through communication. And learning how to communicate is learning how to interact with other human beings. And interacting with other human beings is the essence of business. It's the essence of friendship. It's the essence of life. And that is fundamentally what I do. And I see writing I think that's a beautiful place to end.

So what's the best way for people to find you online and also learn more about Write of Passage?

Go listen to How I Write. Go listen to How I Write. Just type in How I Write by David Perell in your podcast player. I recommend the episodes with Sean Puri and Amor Towles. They're really good. And then Marc Andreessen is good if you want a third one. Start with How I Write and then go to my website, perell.com, and then I'm on Twitter @David_Pearl.

Amazing. Thanks so much for doing this.

Thank you.