3 Basic steps to write anything - and get better at storytelling, marketing, and thinking

80% of business is communication.

You need to talk to your customers, co-founders, employees, investors, affiliates, partners, and everyone in-between.

With voice, images, videos, writing, and combinations of these.

Yet most founders are bad at it.

Time to fix that.

Communication vs storytelling

In business, all communication skills come down to 3 things:

• Coming up with ideas
• Articulating them
• Being persuasive

Storytelling is an effective way to do this through narrative.

I covered the reasons why storytelling matters so much for business in the previous article.

To recap - stories don’t go separately from marketing and the rest of communication.

They turn marketing campaigns from transactional to memorable.

They turn “mission statements” that employees forget into a movement that they LOVE to be a part of.

Story is a ground that lies underneath every part of your messaging.

Just like all great writing, stories often follow very similar rules.

And start with very simple steps.

So you don’t need to get better at just “telling stories”

You need to get better at delivering your ideas

• To the right people
• In the right format

This means getting good at thinking, talking, and writing.

Let’s start with the king of clear communication, writing.

Here’s how I write almost anything (and you should too):

1. Start with BAD ideas

Trash ideas.

Ideas that will get you nowhere.

It gets easier the more you write. It also gets better.

And I don’t just mean on a long time horizon. That’s obvious.

I mean every time you sit and start writing.

Professional writers intentionally start with warmup - typing something less important before they get to high-impact copy and stories.

If experts with decades of experience do it - why shouldn’t you as a beginner do the same?

Especially if you don’t yet know how to write good things.

Write bad things.

And you’ll become the best.

2. Change environments. Ideas will come naturally

Writing stories, creating a vision, making a strategy - it’s all very difficult.

You sit for hours and get nowhere.

But then one day you wake up at 5am with 10 new ideas that you just can’t stop thinking about.

Just because you started thinking about the problem, even if it was days or weeks ago.

You go for a walk in the park and BOOM, you get another idea just like that.

Brain needs moments of rest (not active thinking) to fire up with ideas. It’s called the default mode network.

Brain also needs different environments to be able to think differently.

So try different rooms, different spots outside. Visit a café or a beach. Maybe even go to another city for a while.

Being in just one environment severely limits your imagination and ability to come up with solutions and big ideas.

Ideas can come at night or at the worst possible time, so be ready to write them down.

Never rely on remembering.

You’ll forget.

Write.

Them.

Down.

Pro tip: Read good things for inspiration. Example: This article.

3. Talk to your the team (A LOT)

I hate meetings.

Yet I tell you this:

The amount of times where I was able tobrainstorm something extraordinaryrefine fuzzy things into diamond-clear textsand make crazy huge progress in story development and strategy,
just because I talked to the team,
is UNCOUNTABLE. (it’s really big)

And if for some reason you don’t have a team - talk to your friends and family. Even if they know nothing about the business.

You need outside perspective, not expert mentorship.

If you want me to personally give you that - you’re always welcome to send a message: Substack | LinkedIn | X/Twitter
Choose any, I respond everywhere.

One more note

Most successful founders weren’t talented writers (and this actually helped them).

They learned through practice and process, and scaled themselves with the help of others.

When you look at your output - judge the system behind it (or lack thereof).

To create a clear message you need to be in the right state of mind.

If you’re always trying but failing to write on the first try, in one environment, alone, and under pressure - stop and reconsider. Change these conditions and you’ll get more work done with less stress.

Found this helpful? Share this post with your co-founders and colleagues. Be their guide.