EO Thought Leadership Forum - Episode 009

Welcome to the EO Thought Leadership Forum. My name is Joe Apfelbaum from EO Brooklyn.

And I am James Ashcroft from EO South Florida.

And today we're going to talk about episode 9, Why a CEO Should Write, why you should write. So James, what are your thoughts when people tell you, oh, I'm writing and they're reading your blog and they're getting your emails. They're like, why are you doing that? Why are you putting in the effort? Why are you putting in the energy? Like, what is it? Why writing?

Well, for me, Joe, it's, uh, writing is a process where I get to solidify my thinking. Um, it forces me to sit down and to clarify my thoughts. You know, sometimes the best way to learn something is to teach it. So, it forces me to sit down. I try and get on a schedule, and I just find it to be very cathartic, to be honest with you. You know, going back to your initial question, why CEOs write, I think it's such a great tool to share with your staff, with your stakeholders, whether they're customers, vendors, and create that brand. And to stand out amongst all the competition. So it's just a fantastic, fantastic thing to do.

Being in a communications business, I see the value in being able to communicate, and one of the most effective ways to communicate is using writing. And a lot of people say, oh, I'm not such a great communicator, but I believe it has nothing to do with having a natural talent. I think it has mostly to do with building the skill. As humans, we have communication built in.

Right.

We're great communicators from when we're born. We want milk, we say wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, we get milk, we use our body language to communicate, and we're great communicators. The problem is that we have these fears built up because of our perceptions of what other people think of us, and people are afraid that their writing is not perfect, and they don't have the skill, and they don't spend— they didn't invest the time, and they don't read enough. So as a result, they don't necessarily see the value in it. But once you start doing it, I can attest to it myself, and I'm sure you can as well, not only clarifies my thoughts, but it also allows me to communicate my message to other people in ways that no other medium can accomplish. So videos, you know, the way that we're communicating right now is great. You see the body language, you hear my voice, you get content, great content, you have the visual. But writing is very powerful, just like listening, just like a podcast is very powerful. Writing is very powerful, and it's a way to be able to communicate With people that can't be replaced through the other mediums of communication. It's very, very powerful.

It is, and I think there's some psychology to it. If someone's taken the time to sit down and actually write something, it almost seems like it's the truth. It's a very, very powerful tool, and you're absolutely right. I've seen it firsthand. And it's a great conversation starter, and you also engage with other people. And just going back to your comment about people thinking they're not a good writer, I don't consider myself a great writer by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's got more to do with the content than the actual, you know—

Grammar and stuff.

Grammar and all this. I mean, even if you look at the books that are sold, it's really not the best writer is the bestseller, you know? So, uh, I think a lot of people put too much weight on it when they should just be getting out there and giving it a shot, uh, and coming up with some ideas, intersecting 2 ideas and coming up with a new idea and just getting it out there and not, you know, not worrying too much about every spelling error and grammar mistake, you know?

Yeah, no, that's a huge point. And what I tell some CEOs that ask me, how can I get started? What should I do? How should I— what, you know, should I start writing? And I say, Do you have a message that you want to communicate with the world? Is there something that you want to say? If there is something that you want to add, some type of value, whether it's a value about your business, whether it's a value about what you believe in, whether it's a value about your, your culture, your family, some other hobbies that you have, if you have some value that you want to give to the world and you want to communicate to the world, I know that writing is a great way to communicate that value and just start writing about the things that you care about, the things that are important to you. And before you know it, you'll get better and better at it, and you'll have this power. They say that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Yeah.

And if you want to be a leader, you need to have that tool that you can use in your arsenal. So that's why I think CEOs should write. I think it's a powerful tool to have and to utilize and to sharpen So that you could meet your goals. And just talking about goals, you know, they say that you can have all the goals in the world, if you don't write your goals down, then they're like as if they don't exist, like what you said before, right? So writing makes things real. Writing brings things down to reality.

Yeah, I mean, on a purely performance-based metric, I don't know the numbers offhand, but they're very, very strong that That any goal that isn't written has such an uphill battle for success. Those who write down, who measure their progress, who sit and put their goals in writing have a tremendous, tremendous edge on everyone else.

Absolutely. And if you take it another step, they say if it's not written, it doesn't exist. If you have a really great idea, And you haven't taken the time to sit down and write your idea and write the benefits, the background, what it can accomplish, you didn't really think your idea out. You didn't think it through.

Right.

You have to sit down and be able to put it down and write it and, and, and work it out on paper. And if you can do that, then you'll be able to communicate that idea better when you're talking about it as well. So writing allows you to clarify your mind, like you said initially. It's a powerful tool to be able to use, and if you're not using it right now, there's a huge opportunity for you to be able to write on the internet. Like, there's LinkedIn. If anybody uses LinkedIn, they have a publishing platform where you can publish your content and send it out to your connections. That's super powerful.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's tons of tools which we'll get into later. Well, let's just kind of go back a step here. I know our topic here is why CEOs should write, and I think we're kind of jumping into publicly writing. I think the first step is just sitting down and writing for yourself.

Right, like a journal? Are you saying like a morning journal or just writing your thoughts?

Sure, there are tools for that, but I think even internally, whether it's just internally within your business or internally just for you, To sit down and really solidify your goals. I think that's a great starting point. What do you want out of life? What do you want out of your business? What do you want out of your relationship? And just start writing those things down. Because I really do sense that the more you have that written down, the more you spend time managing that, then the whole vision of where you're going becomes clearer and clearer. I really, really honestly believe that.

Yeah. And one of the things that I love to do with my employees is to create a playbook around their responsibility. And I end up having to create the process together with them as to how they should be doing their job. And when I write it down, suddenly it's like, really, you want me to do it that way? Or you want me to do it that way? Or you want me to add this feature, this benefit? Suddenly I'm starting to create a process, a strategy to improve the way that they work. And they become so much more efficient and they're so much happier because They have a routine, they have a procedure, they have a process, a way to become better, a way to do it the right way instead of just winging it, which makes everybody feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, absolutely. It's just intensely powerful. I mean, we're definitely on the same page here. In Stephen King's book on writing—

Great book.

Yeah, I'm gonna be paraphrasing this, but he was saying something along the lines of just writing is such a powerful tool because it literally is. Telepathic abilities, right? You can write something down, someone can take your thoughts, and then read it at a later date when you're not around and fully digest your take on things or your ideas and things like this. So it's such a powerful way to get things down. Like I said before, if someone just reads something that you've taken the time to handwrite or put on a blog or Or, you know, it just seems so real because of the investment upfront that we've taken as writers to put it out there.

A lot of CEOs talk about living a legacy, being able to make a mark as one of the core values of Entrepreneurs Organization. And what better way is there to leave a legacy for your kids and your future generations and the people that you care about or your industry than to be able to document in your own words your experience and your ideas and the value and the contribution that you can give to the world. So there are so many benefits to writing, not only being clearer as to what you want and how you want and your ideas and all that, but also in terms of what you're giving, having a valuable asset that you're actually giving to the world and you're actually contributing something of value, which I know a lot of leaders are super into and they're trying to figure out what's my purpose in life, what's my mission. This will solidify you being able to give that to the world so that after you move on to the next world, you can have something that you gave a contribution and you were here, you mattered.

Absolutely. You know, it's almost like sometimes you can't be so self-aware about your talents. So I found that I've written certain blog posts or shared certain writing with people and people just responded so intensely. It's been amazing. And they're like, oh, that's exactly what I was thinking. We should go out to lunch and talk about that some more. And all of a sudden, I start finding myself in this kind of area of expertise that I wasn't aware of, and it's solely because I just sat down and took the time to write something that engaged other people. And it helps build a community around your ideas, and then you start finding like-minded people Who then support your ideas, and then who help promote you, who help spread your message, and it kind of takes a life of its own. So it's been great.

Another thing, another benefit that I can think of from a writing standpoint is there's an artistic benefit to writing. You have a creative outlet, a way to be able to express yourself. Like some people do painting, some people do woodworking, some people play sports, or they go on hikes and stuff. There's an art to— it's not just about the technicality of it. There's an actual art to writing. There's magic in it that if you discover that, if you work on it and do it and utilize that, and you see that magic come alive within your writing, you taking your ideas and being able to transfuse them into a document that the document is living and breathing and somebody else can experience that. and kind of create their own ideas based on that. That's a powerful piece of art that allows you to have a creative outlet that's kind of like outside your business, outside of your family, or it could be within your family and business, but it's just this outlet that you have access to that is powerful. It's just a powerful outlet.

It is, and for me, it certainly— I definitely first and foremost consider myself a creative type. For me, actually, I was talking about this with a friend yesterday, that I haven't written a blog post in a few weeks. I've been working on some other things and kind of got into a bit of a holding pattern right now. I actually feel like a lump in my chest that needs to be released because I've got so many ideas. I'm going to spend some time this afternoon because I know once I get it out, I'm going to feel much better. It's great. Joe, just to wrap up. Just for our listeners here, let's say we've got a listener who's saying, you know what, this sounds like a great idea. What's my first step? Why don't you walk them through maybe how you got started doing your blog? We can certainly say— I know we've got on the schedule some of the tools that we can talk about, but I'd like to hear from you just what was that first blog post about, what it was like, and how it made you feel in that first— You know, response.

I would say that at first when I started writing, I had this belief that I wasn't a writer.

Right.

You know, one of the things that I remember candidly saying to somebody who says, oh, why don't you write? I said, I'm not a writer. I don't write. I hire writers. That's literally what I said. I said, I have a dozen writers that I hired. If I need something written, they write for me.

Right.

So I had this— I was stuck on this belief that I was not a writer. And as a result, I didn't allow myself to write. Growing up, I didn't have the best grammar. I didn't have the best spelling. I wasn't great at— I wasn't a great reader in general. So as a result, I had this belief in my head that I wasn't a good writer because I thought writing was about having the technical skill and learning it and practicing it and so on. And slowly I started discovering by getting over some of the other fears. It first started with public speaking, and then it started with doing video and photos and social media. I started discovering that by reading other people's books, a lot of it was seeing other people leave their legacy and reading their books and seeing them become authors and being able to have that contribution. I realized that, you know what, I am a writer. I can write. I just need to have that belief. Once I became aware of that, I just started doing it. I started putting stuff out there. The first couple of times that I did it, it was just very judgmental and people sensed it. And it didn't come out well at all. It wasn't authentic. It was just me trying to write, but also having that understanding that I have this judgment and worrying about what people are going to think, and it just came out bad. And that's essentially what happened. And then after a while of me literally doing it on a weekly basis, I have a routine where I publish an email every single week on Sundays, and after doing it over and over, I got much, much better responses. And people are telling me, I look at your emails now and I look at your emails a year ago, And let me tell you, it's a whole different world.

Yeah.

So, and then I started writing for Forbes and Business Insider, and I started writing on my LinkedIn more often. And now I literally consider myself an author, a writer, because I feel like I have great ideas to share. And yes, maybe my, my, my grammar isn't the best and my editing isn't the best, but you know what? I'm going to work on that and I'm going to get better at that. And I think that Utilizing the people around me to help me with that is also powerful, but I do have great ideas. I always knew that I had great ideas, and now I can share them with the world. And as a CEO, that is priceless.

Absolutely, Joe.

So with that, that wraps up our episode 9 of the EO Thought Leadership Forum. Thank you all for joining. If you see this on YouTube or on Facebook, leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. We would love to hear from you.

Absolutely. Thanks, Joe.

Take care, everybody.