How Writing Helped This CEO Build a $300m+ Company
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- Опубликовано: 1 июл 2024
- This is business writing like you’ve never seen it before.
Sam Corcos is the founder of a $300 million company called Levels. He’s built a culture of intellectual rigor by hiring excellent writers and giving them time to think on paper. But don’t get it twisted - a successful “writing-first work culture” is far more than grammatically correct Slack messages and the occasional memo.
“95% of people would not be happy working in the culture that we’ve built. And the 5% who would be have been looking for this their entire lives.” - Sam
In this episode, we go deep (and I mean, deep) into what makes business writing work. Sam reveals how to use writing to:
*Create strategic memos
*Solve specific problems
*Make better decisions
*And work twice as fast.
If you’re interested in learning how to use writing to scale businesses, this one’s for you.
SPEAKER LINKS:
Website: corcos.io/
Company: www.levelshealth.com/
X/Twitter: / samcorcos
Linkedin: / samcorcos
WRITE OF PASSAGE:
Want to learn more about the next class Write of Passage?
writeofpassage.com/
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:24 Clear thinking
00:03:45 Principles for business writing
00:09:23 Information silos
00:12:30 Remote work (sync vs async)
00:17:00 Business mantras
00:20:00 Business leaders Sam admires
00:23:45 Hiring and writing ("Keeper Test")
00:30:40 Feedback via Loom videos
00:36:30 Memos
00:38:20 Scientific methods
00:45:00 Business writing and distractions
00:54:00 "Think Weeks"
01:00:00 Writing blogs and good content
01:09:40 Time allocation
01:14:45 Amazon PR FAQ
01:18:30 Gitlab's business writing culture
01:21:30 Writing within jobs (promoting, delegating)
01:29:30 Writing within projects and retrospectives
01:34:30 News sobriety
PODCAST LINKS:
Website: writeofpassage.com/how-i-write
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSbo...
ABOUT THE HOST:
I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.
What if you built a company to maximize deep work?
That's what Sam Corcos did. He hasn't regularly checked the news since 2013 and his business is worth $300 million.
12 lessons on writing from the founder and CEO of Levels:
1. The average tech worker can't go more than six minutes without checking Slack. No wonder people struggle to write.
2. Evergreen tip for getting people to actually read your work: add value to the internet.
3. Collaboration is overrated. Smart people thinking deeply about something for a long time, and recording the conclusions via writing, is underrated.
4. Sam did an experiment where he stopped reading the news for a month. He took the time he used to spend reading the news and started reading books instead - he finished eight books that month.
5. Writing solves disagreements. If you don’t pin down your thoughts on paper, you can “discuss” forever without ever reaching clarity. But the conversation becomes much more productive once the goals, methods, and main assumptions are written down.
6. Just about everybody could benefit from more intentional, deep, strategic thought. Writing is how you unlock this mode.
7. Remote work fails without a few great writers on the team. Internal company communication will spiral into a game of telephone without good communicators.
8. Specific feedback is better delivered via writing while general comments are best shared over Loom (because the recipient can feel your vibe.) Pick the right medium; the wrong one will botch your message.
9. A writing culture is protection against the tyranny of the loudest voice. It gives space for quieter people with insight to speak up.
10. You’ll never be able to reflect and write, unless you intentionally carve out the time. “Things” will always turn up. Create non-negotiable writing hours and protect them.
11. Sam does one Think Week every quarter where he disconnects from his work to write deep strategy memos.
12. You need to detach from the hive mind before creative ideas turn up (and it is often via writing that the flimsy premises of the hive mind become obvious.)
The insights on creating a writing-first work culture are spot-on. It's about writing with empathy and clarity to drive action.
Bangers, every episode. Can't believe this channel is still so small
Always love the intriguing intros - great way to kickstart each episode!
The keeper test. Wow.
Holy crap 90 seconds in and I am HYPED. That was the best episode intro I've seen by you so far.
I'm going to rewatch this again so many times...
Easily the best podcast episode I've ever heard of any podcast.
incredible!
serious question
how can you remove news from your life when you run a newsletter?
My perspective is that this was mostly a carbon copy of Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Sam - minus the focus on delegation and assistants. I was hoping the host would have opted to explore new areas or topics…
If we had the chance to shape a private community with David, what would you want it to include? Let's share our wishlist below!
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