How to start enjoying writing

Pick a topic. Literally any topic. I’ll give you one: what’s your favorite food?
Start writing about this topic. It’s easy until this point, but soon you’ll likely hit one of the following two scenarios.
1. You will feel like the writing is pointless and has no substance. You will not want to publish it.
2. You will feel like the writing is too short but at the same time not know what more to write about the topic. You will not want to publish it.
Open your heart. Actively observe the resistance you feel, but continue writing. This is a bit of a gnarly way to put it, but think of a child’s bravery when they decide that wiggling the tooth isn’t going to cut it. It’s time to confront the fact that it will hurt, but this is the only way forward.
Writings are just thoughts put on paper (or digital paper). Whether you finished the writing or not, you still have thoughts. Just continue putting those thoughts down. Even if the thought is “I don’t know how to continue from there”. Once you put that down, the next sentence starts forming itself.
You’ll come to the next point where you feel like you’re complete. Go back to step 3 and open your heart 2 more times. Press submit and move on with your day; whatever you needed to retain or learn from the writing is already stored in your heart. Even if there is something to learn from the experience, you’ll have ample opportunity to learn in the future. Move forward.

Now that we got the TL;DR out of the way, let’s get into the fun part: explaining why I wrote this.

I had a chance to meet my friend Teresa in Seattle last year. We talked about our shared interest in writing reading / writing magazines and what it means to embody our business. Since then Teresa’s been sending me some neat references I can look at for magazines or business inspirations, and most recently she sent me this:

We talked about how interesting this is, because it’s simultaneously so attractive AND gross. What contributes to the allure and what contributes to the grossness (sung in the melody of the Hunchback of Notre Dame) ?

When we talk about the sales process, there are two parts that stand out. One is the promise of a solution and the second is delivery. I recently shared my stories around rats in my home. So let’s take a look at the rats again.

When I’m looking at exterminators of course I’m looking for vendors who can deliver results. So the better the website does in painting the picture of how they’re great at what they do, the more credible they are. That’s the point of websites, they convince me they know what they’re doing and what they’re doing differently that sets them apart.

Then I do my research and see that even though their website looks good, they only have 2 reviews. Now this suddenly makes things sus, because now I can’t quite tell if they actually deliver. So when I get the exterminators in for a quote, I examine their general aptitude in doing their job. Of course it’s really hard to tell by one sample and it gets easier the more exterminators I call in for an estimate.

So this website does a fairly good job at trying to tackle both. There’s testimonials! Reviews! It has bullet points! It’s credible! But here’s where I detect a bit of grossness. A quite note: there’s no problem with this website and this offer. I’m saying “gross” as if this website is gross, but what’s gross is the feeling that is evoked by the memory I’m about to explore in the next paragraphs.

When I first moved to NorCal from Korea, I planned on getting an apartment the only way I knew how as a college student: Craigslist. When I was in college I found rooms and sublets through Craigslist no problem, so why wouldn’t it work again? After a few days of looking through I found a really great location, a house that’s recently been bought for renting out.

But you know what they say, when something’s too good to be true, it probably is. My wife had her suspicions but she didn’t know much about American real estate so she let me be in charge. I emailed the supposed dude that I was interested in the apartment and he responded super quick, and told me how to make the deposit payment. No problem, sounds like business as usual.

Then came the weird part I kinda glanced over: the thing is, he was in a business trip to Malaysia (as enterprising real estate investors do) so he could accept the deposit payment in the form of gift cards (this should have been a glaring glaring glaring red flag). I thought it was a bit odd, but again; wtf do I know? I haven’t lived in the states for quite some time and maybe I’m the one that’s out of touch.

So I buy a bunch of gift cards, much to the suspicion of Mr. Clerk working at 7-11 at the time. I painstakingly type in each code of the gift card and expect an email on instructions on how to pick up the keys. Then I get an email that sent chills to my back: His wife suddenly fell ill in Malaysia and they don’t have access to the funds they need for hospital bills, so he wants an advance on the first month’s rent.

Now I’m not that smart but even I could tell that this was a scam. I confessed to my wife that I royally fucked up and since then I never do anything without her approval (probably one of the best decisions in our marriage). I’m a naive chump and the lesson I learned at that time was, ask this question when I read an email: “can literally anybody claim this?”.

I reported the post to Craigslist and called the cops who got me in touch with the realtor who recently sold the home. Apparently this is a common scam that targets people like me by going around in neighborhoods or looking in Zillow for recent sales to create a fake Craigslist listing.

Coming back to now, when I read that landing page all I can feel is my internal spider sense tingling. Literally anybody can claim that they can build you a $250k offer in 90m. Here, I just did it right now for you. But there is literally no substance to that claim. The problem with this is, if you’re Billy in 2014 then you have no reason not to believe that this is the magic key you’ve been looking for.

Good sales writing does a great job at creating that sense of urgency, it does a good job at convincing you that this is the magic piece you’ve been looking for. But it’s so important to validate the claim, because again: anybody can claim anything. Now the question is, how do you validate the claim?

This is actually where the writing comes in. I’m sort of guilty of the same thing the website does: I make a bunch of claims. But at the same time I try my best to give you a basis for my claims. I claim that I can help you be free of suffering. And the proof of that lies in my writings.

I am a regular guy with nothing special about him. I used to suffer a great amount. Through the work I do and the practice I do I learned how to stop suffering and now I teach the same to people who want to learn it. What is suffering? I talk about that endlessly in my writings. What is the practice I do? I talk about that endlessly in my writings. How did I stop suffering? I talk about that endlessly in my writings as well.

This is why I encourage anyone and everyone who works with me to write. Writing is the single most important thing you can do as an entrepreneur to give basis for the claims you make in your promotions.

Let’s go back to another piece of this sales page. It sounds like it promises you a $250k offer in 90m. It sounds like after 90m, you’ll be sitting on top of $250k a la Scrooge McDuck. But again, if it sounds too good to be true: it probably is. Just because you HAVE an offer doesn’t mean ANYTHING, because you’ll have to engage in the inconvenient act of OFFERING the offer!

I actually googled some of the people in the testimonials and some of them are just inactive on Instagram, which is the platform they wrote the testimonial in. This goes to tell you that having a $250k offer is nowhere near the end of your business journey. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the simple act of writing about yourself is more likely to get you closer to that goal of business success than having the $250k offer. Why? Because even with the $250k offer you still need to write. And in the reverse case, the more you write about yourself and your work the more organically your $250k will just surface up over time.

So here’s my pitch. Learn how to enjoy writing and build your success inside out by working on the hard thing first. There’s a reason why all of my clients and students say that THIS is the single most transformative practice they picked up in my programs. “But Billy, can’t anybody claim that?” Well, I thought you’d never ask!

(this is just me showing off on the fact that I finally asked people for testimonials)

(after having them write over and over and over again :D)

This ended up becoming a much longer writing than I thought but here’s yet another point (probably the last point I want to make). How do you know when you’re doing the writing right, when you follow the above approach?

One thing I noticed in the sales page is this part:

When I observe other people’s writings I can’t tell if they’re in camp #1 or camp # because it’s mostly an internal experience. What I CAN tell is when people are winging it. I personally can tell because I’m not moved by their writing at all.

Of course interpreting another person’s writing is a subjective experience. But why I’m so certain about winging it is I know how that person talks in real life. They’re magnetic, they’re friendly, they’re absolutely charming in real life but their writings don’t reflect that at all.

Many people list facts and knowledge in their writings. I also do that time to time. But the primary reason why I write is FOR ME. I write FOR ME because I feel differently after I write. I learn more about myself by writing. So when I don’t have that experience myself as I’m writing, how can I expect other people to see what’s in my heart?

Ok, that’s really really it for this writing. Enjoy the writing process, no matter how hard it may be at first! You’ll be super glad you did it.