Transcripts
1. Welcome To "Write Yourself Into Public": What's up, everybody, Welcome to this course about
writing and finding your voice in public by working with the
voices in your head. My name is markpollard. I'm from Sweathead. We designed strategy training to help you make the
most of your mind. And in this course, you're gonna get to
play with your mind specifically with a
tool called words. Now, we're going to go
through the four F's. They are frame of mind. We gotta get you into the right
frame of mind so that you can write and be
creative and express. The second F is framework. Then we're going to
give you a framework, which is really just a series of prompts to help you
focus your thinking. Third, F is the word
effort. It's an F word. And in that section
we're going to actually put you to work, put
you back into it. And then the fourth section
is called a frame it, this is where you get to
frame the work that you do. Now what we're going to
focus a lot on this course is trying to solve a problem
that a lot of people have. There's almost a
series of problems. One is people getting
stuck in their own heads. They want to write that have
a yearn to be expressive. Maybe they were
expressive when they were kids and then they learned
a style of writing. They've gotten
through education, high school, maybe
college, university. You got them a job, got them through the first
few years of job, and then they're
like, don't really connect with that voice anymore. So we're going to try to connect you to the voices that are actually inside of use so
that you can get unstuck. The second and
kinda connected to that were very
connected to that is trying to help you
bridge the gap between the way that
you talk and present yourself professionally
in the corporate world and how you express
yourself online. And what that often looks like is if we're talking
together and you're dropping bombs and Jews are really interesting things
in our conversation. And then I see you appear
on LinkedIn and all of a sudden you're like
as CEO of agency X. And so I can always that person Gandhi became a
robot or something. I don't know what the
machine basically doing, what AI will definitely be able to do on your behalf
in the future. That's what we're going
to try to get you out of. Getting you to be more congruent mod together
and Yourself. So that you can put yourself
into public in a way where you feel like
you're really into it. And the third thing that
will hopefully start to push away a little bit is the second
guessing that can happen. People going to judge
me? Yeah, maybe, but people are in
their own heads most of the time anyway. Oh, is what I wrote
any good? Yeah. Maybe, but the point
is to keep writing. So there the three things
that we're going to try to help you work through. I am recording this
in ****'s Kitchen in New York and you're
gonna hear sirens. And every time you hear a siren, here's what I want you
to think to yourself. I am a writer. Hear a siren say to yourself, I, I'm a writer in this course, so I'm going to run you through
a cheeky little framework called the adept
as **** system for self-expression will beep out the effort every time I say
at that particular effort, but not the other four efforts we're gonna put
you to work with. Some writing exercises,
will give you some quizzes, will get your
hands-on with all of this sort of stuff.
And you know what? If you want feedback in public, publish what you write
after this course in public antagonists and will give you some public
feedback as well.
2. The Writer's Trajectory: My name is markpollard. I've been in advertising
for 25 years, but I've been a ride
in my entire life. I just didn't always call
myself a writer or written postcards and journals and birthday cards are written
love letters, lovely. It is on behalf of other people. And then I set up Australia's
first full color hip hop magazine that kinda came
out of the blue, didn't it? With a CD ROM back in the 990s. I've written online
since the 990s of published a book called
Strategy Is Your Words. And I'm constantly writing online and through
this course I'm going to talk about my
personal experience with writing which
feels obnoxious, but I hope it
doesn't come across as obnoxious because this is one of my favorite things
to do at brings me to life. If I'm stuck, I know
that I either need to go for a long
walk, go to the gym. Alright, there's always
three things and then life seems to make a little
bit more sense later, ding, It's Time to turn the page
3. How Writing Changed My Life: So before we put you to work, I want to talk a
little bit about how Writing has changed my life. I've written forever, often
find a home in my Writing. It gives me a break
from the world, told me gather my
thoughts and then go back into the world in a
hopefully better way. Not always, but hopefully from a professional
point of view, I'd say one of the
biggest hits that I dropped was in 2010 on a blog and the
article was called How to do Account Planning,
a simple approach. I was working at McCann
Sydney at the time, I was thinking about moving to New York or at least
overseas and I thought, you know what, let me just get together my way of working. And I did a silly little drawing to show the approach that I went through to
work on a campaign, to help a campaign happen. And I've published
it and it's been read by over 100,000 people. Now, that article has reached a lot of people
in a meaningful way. A lot of people have
said that it's one of the first things that help them really understand how to work. Because strategy is the industry can be pretty convoluted, a lot of ********,
trademark frameworks, etc. and it's introduced me
to a lot of friends. I've been asked to do
talks because of it. And over a decade later, it led really to my book
Strategy Is Your Words. Another article that I want
to highlight or write in 2017's for courts or Q Z, It's called How to make a
presentation, make a point. I just left corporate America
and was trying to work out how I wanted to operate
as an independent person, a foreigner in the USA. And I was kinda tired
of corporate Writing. And so when I was
experimenting with at the time was trying
to find a style for my drawings and then also a way to be a bit absurd
as dead also really direct and I worked
with this editor on what became a
four already called peace or set of pieces called How to make a
presentation, make a point. But I started by talking
about this battle between presentations that are just like inflammation monsters. You've gotta kinda really work hard to get through because there are 100 slides with 1,000 points on
them and you're like, What are we doing here? What's happening
versus story rainbows? And the way it came
together was by me paying attention
to how I thought, which I think called
metacognition, where you think about
how you think I was working with an
agency at the time, I was consulting and
I was trying to help them fix some of their
pictures and presentations. And I said to them,
I'm just going to write down what
I'm saying to you because I think I'm
going to turn it into something I wasn't
sure at the time. And I started to think about the inflammation monster
and the story rainbow. I drew them and then someone
took a photo of them in this meeting room and ended up getting a tattoo of
it on their leg. The point of that is over time, as you work at how
you want to be, what's truly you and how to
be more of it in the world. The world will pay
attention and through writing and putting
yourself out there, you will attract people
who are interested in it. And all kinds of weird
things can happen. Like a leg tattoo from
one of your drawings. With my book Strategy
Is Your Words. I knew that I wanted to write for a very long
time and I've had a few false starts with fiction
and various other things. In fact, when Kickstarter
was a little bit different, I'd given them a proposal 12, 13 years ago to publish
a book about strategy. It wasn't creative enough. Fast-forward to 2018, 2019. I was training,
gather my thoughts. At the time I was
feeling repressed. I knew I needed to express. I knew I needed to take
more responsibility for my writing and how I want
it to be in the world. And what happened is two or three things is
really tens of things, but two or three
big things happen. One, I visited the
Dublin Writers Museum and I was reading letters and postcards and journals by some of islands
most famous writers. And I just really struck me how aggressively committed they were to their identity as a writer. To a red Julia Cameron's,
The Artist's Way. At the same time
as I was reading Victor Frankel's Man's
Search for Meaning, the artist way, it has a lot of really useful exercises
and concepts. And one of the concepts that
really stuck with me is what Julia Cameron refers
to as the shadow artist. A shadow artist is someone
who might have been autistic, might have been expressive
and creative as a kid. And then as they get older, they stopped doing
this and they put themselves in the shadow
of actual artists, which is what someone who
writes about music does. Someone who runs a radio show
does they need artistry, but they turn off
their own artistry. Then the third thing that
happened right around this time is when I
got back from Dublin, I just sat down and decided to grab a piece of
paper and write down why I urgently felt
I needed to write a book. And I channeled a lot of the conversations that
I've been having with Strategists at the time where people were struggling
to get traction at work. And I wrote it all down
on a piece of paper and I use that as my compass so
that anytime I got lost, I could return to it. Writing has definitely
changed my life. You never know what's
going to be successful. The point is to
turn up and write. And over time you
have a body of work. And sometimes that body of work can take you
to all kinds of places in the world and in your imagination that
you didn't expect. But the point is to
sit down and write
4. 7 Ways Writing Can Change Your Life: So my brain thinks and lists, I'm not ashamed of a list. So let's get a list into your
brain quickly and early. There are seven Ways that
Writing Can Change Your Life. One, writing helps you think better to write is to
work out what you think. You get your first words out. You look at them, think
they're a little bit. Then you think harder and write your way to the heart
of a problem or an issue or something
that you'd been ruminating about for awhile to, in doing this, writing can
help you speak better, especially for
introverts who get nervous in meetings or in life. The more you write, the more bits that you'll have. So that if you're
in a meeting and someone asked a question about a topic that you've
been thinking about and more importantly, writing about, you'll be more useful to that meeting
and that interaction. Three, Writing can
help you feel better. You get the thoughts
that could be positive or negative to
you on a piece of paper. And then there's a sense of distance that you can get from them while also thinking
your way through them. Connected to this as
for writing helps you learn yourself and
the world around you. You could take any
particular topic, something random like candles through to something
that's about advertising, like creative briefs and wonder, what do I think about that? And then in thinking
through those things, you might think about how you understand yourself and
the world around you. Five, in Writing and
more importantly, in publishing your writing
in front of other people, you'll make friends,
you'll make contexts. I don't know if they're gonna be real friends or
internet friends, whether that distinction
matters anymore, but in putting
yourself out there, you'll attract more of what you want to
attract into your life. You won't be inert. Like a rock. It'll be active and that
will attract people, sometimes not always the people that you'd want to attract, but it will attract a lot of
great people into your life. Six, writing can help
you fetch opportunity. It's like an investment
that you can draw dividends from for
years to come. You won't have a lot of hits, but the hits that you
have could set you up for a three-year phase
where you milk the thing you wrote into a book, into talks, into courses, into all kinds of situations, maybe into a new country. So having your writing
out in public will generate energy,
electricity for you. Seven. And this matters
to some people, but not all, you get to leave a little bit
of yourself behind. So Writing can help
you be remembered, it can help you create a legacy. Now, that's not for everyone. I don't think about
that much these days when I was younger,
I think I did. Now I'm trying to connect more than the energy of Writing and it's just a thing
I need to do to feel good, friend at home. Really, everything that
goes on in my head. But for some of you, being remembered might be an important value and
Writing can help you, but you remembered there's seven Ways that Writing
Can Change Your Life. Many of these have
already happened to me and I hope they continue
to happen to me, but that will only happen
if I continue to write. You might have a lot of
other things happen to you, and I hope that they're
all good and worthwhile. But again, the main
message of this by now, the main thing is to
sit down and write
5. The Writer's Frame Of Mind: Now we're going to
start with the first F. We'll get to the framework. Relax, relax, relax. Everyone's anxious
about the framework. It starts with frame of mind, and I can tell you the
first thing that is important to do is to
identify as a writer, I've written my entire life. I've been paid to write
for more than half of it, but I didn't call myself a ride. I thought that was
something that people who published
bestselling novels, bestselling books
were allowed to do. I didn't. The clarifying
part about calling yourself a rider is that
if you ever get stuck, you just convert that
noun into a verb. And you do that by asking
yourself this question. I'm a writer. And if I'm stuck,
what do I need to do? Take the of the word rider is some complicated
word maths here, you need to write
a second really important and liberating
thought is this. You want to turn your
writing into a catalog. And that way you're not playing this really stubborn
game of I've gotta get one social post atom
has gotta be perfect. I've gotta get one article
that and has gotta be perfect. Know, you're thinking long term and you might be thinking
tens and tens of things, maybe thousands of things if you're gonna be
in the algorithms all day and not just write books and movies and
things like that. When you think about
building a catalog, what's important is to make the next thing you
want to publish, put yourself under
pressure to publish. Learn from how the world responds to your
writing and go again. A third really important
thing to think about is to play
every time you write. If you approach your writing
with a sense of mischief, of joy, of experimentation, if you start to think of
yourself as a bit of an artist, even if you're writing
about what you do for a day job or writing about
a topic that's really dry. You'll turn up to the
page every single time as if it's a
playground or a sandbox, or just the puzzle that
you're trying to solve. And that energy can be really, really liberating and you
start to detach itself from worrying about whether you're right or wrong or good or bad. And it really puts
you in the moment to explore who you want to be. Not all of the play that you
do will work in the world, but every now and then you'll learn something out of nowhere. You listen to the voices in your head and
they'll pop out. You're like, Oh, I don't
know if I can do that. You'll do it. And you realize that
maybe you've just set yourself up for three
to four years of an amazing new direction
for you want to turn all obstacles into
Creative Constraints. Whether you don't
have enough time, you don't have the right
technology, you're exhausted. Think about what you can do with the tools
and time you have. Let's say you've got 10 min, you've got a pencil, you've got a tree,
and you ask yourself, how can I use these things
to create something? And then more importantly,
you put it into public within those constraints. Because what can come out, again is possibly
an entirely new way of you being expressive. And what you stopped
doing is using constraints as a
reason to not express, as a reason to procrastinate, you turn towards
those constraints and you put them
to work for you. Fifth is, I'd encourage you
to be provocatively useful. I like to write to be red. Let's just my personal
point of view. A lot of writers care that much they say,
which is nonsense. Most riders are trying
to seek validation and the outside world because maybe they didn't get enough
of a growing up. We all know that, right? But what I would say is try
to be provocatively useful. It's those two things together. If you're just being useful, if you're just teaching people stuff and giving them all
the information you have, chances are one, they won't pay attention and to they
weren't remember. You need to provoke
them a little bit. It doesn't mean you need
to be vulgar necessarily. It doesn't mean
that you need to be absurdist necessarily, but you need to work out how to get inside their
heads so that you can poke around it and leave something for them to remember. Really when you put all
these five things together, what we want to focus on is the idea that writing
is a creative practice. And that a creative practice
means that you turn up to the page whenever
you can to practice, and that that matters more than the idea of
having a personal brand. I find no offense to anybody
that when people are infatuated with having
a personal brand or creating a personal brand. And they're very
shortcut oriented. They don't really want to put the work and they just
want the results. They want to be famous, they want a great reputation. You're not going
to last. If you're infatuated with a
personal brand, what will help you lost is
if you want to be a writer, if you identify as a writer
and then you turn up To Write
6. The A.D.E.P.T. A.F. Framework - 1: I'd like to say that once you've got that frame of mind in place, it's time to move on
to the framework. But here's the truth. That frame of mind could take years for you
to really step into. And so I understand,
and you know, what, you might want to develop
your own frame of mind. But these things that I'm
putting in front of you, they've taken me
years to arrive at where maybe you look at those words on a piece of
paper and you're like, yeah, kind of get it. But for me, they're
really directive. If I get lost, I just need to
look at a set of words like the ones that I just
ran you through and I know what I need to do. Having said that, now let's
look at the framework. I've given it a cheeky name because I want you
to remember it. And yes, it's long, but we have a way to shorten it so that you really remember it. It's called the adept as a system for savage
self-expression. The shortened version,
as I tell you say it, all we're trying to do with
this little framework is to give you a rock to return, to stand on so that you can gather yourself and go
back into the writing world. Again, the adept as **** system for savage
self-expression is pretty simple. Start with a audience for
whom do you want to write. This doesn't have to
be overly complicated. And yes, there are riders
who talk about Writing for themselves and not for
other people. That's cool. Writing for yourself. You can still say
is an audience. You could have
multiple audiences, but hopefully you've
got a sentence or two that represents
the way they behave, the way they see the world that can tie them all together. D is for desperation. Why are you desperate
to write for these people and even
To Write for yourself? I think this is so important to think about because
if you get stuck, if you get lost, if you find yourself
resisting your desire, you're yearning to express. I think it's really
useful to connect to a more urgent need and to think about a sense of desperation. And I get to tell you a lot of people want to start podcast. I get asked about that a lot. A lot of people want to have a personal brand
on the Internet. A lot of people want to write
books, but they weren't, and they won't keep going
unless they can connect to a sense of urgency and identity, meaning identifying as a writer, E is for N goal. What's the end goal
of your audience? You might have a few of these, but I think it helps to focus on one central end goal
that you're going to write towards for
most of the time. And the challenges that
as soon as you start putting yourself
out into the world, you start to get a
little bit typecast. People will turn up
for your content only if you talk about
certain kinds of things. So I write a lot about strategy. If I started to
write about food, all of a sudden, it could
take me three to five, maybe ten years to establish
some kind of authority, but more importantly for
our audience to find me and then think about me as
someone writing about food. The P stands for pain points. And if you've ever done
any strategy work, you'll be familiar with
trying to find pain points, whether you've done
user experience, Social Media, Content, Account Planning,
brand strategy, and only trying to do here is understand the things that cause your audience frustration so that you can help
try to solve them. Where do you find them? Anywhere from depending
on what you're writing about customer reviews
or consumer reviews, talking to people,
Customer Service logs, sometimes looking at
other websites like Cora, where people ask
questions or read it, where people also ask questions, what you need to do is
find the things that are most frustrating people
and then work out how to solve those frustrations through your own personal experience
and personal story. T is photopic, but that's
not really the, in this, the big word is hidden in the question on the
question is this, What's the topic you want to investigate for a
few years to come. Investigate what's
something that you want to become a student of. You might be an expert
in the thing you want to write about right now. But if you want
to have longevity and spend a few years developing your point of view and
practicing you're writing it helps have a topic
that captivates you. So the big word in this
question and in his theme isn't the word topic is
the word investigate. And then I want to stretch at the time horizon to
for a few years so that you're not
just thinking about shortcuts and becoming
famous immediately. Think about building
your life or be part of your life around
thing you want to spend time trying to understand and then sharing that
understanding with the world. A is for authors, really it should
have been voices, but I couldn't make the
acronym work with a V. What I want you to
pay attention to is the different characters
that bring you to life. The different voices
in your head. You might have a serious for it. So sad voice, so happy Voice, crazy alien voice,
whatever it is, stopped paying attention to those voices as you
talk to yourself, talk back to Yourself, criticize yourself,
give them names, and then give them a job to do, which is to appear
in your writing. You could write an article or something on social
in one voice, or you've potentially use multiple voices and develop a style that does
that over time. Just like the idea
of allowing us so some flexibility
with the way that you come to life rather than
thinking you have to operate always in one
monolithic Voice. Have some room to flex formats. You might not know this yet, but have a think about some of the main formats that
you want to turn up in. Is it on LinkedIn and haiku? Is it on Twitter with drawings? Is it on Instagram with
tweets, whatever it is, think about the format
that you want to come to life in the format
that you think about, maybe that you're a
little bit envious about that you daydream about, but also a format
that is true to you, that might bring to
life things you do. Maybe you do a lot of screens,
a lot of highlighting, or a lot of meeting,
I don't know, put them to work for you. So that's the adept as folks system for savage
self-expression. The word savages worth
paying attention to. The opposite of repression. To me is savage self-expression. It's about thinking about
who you are, being, that getting feedback from
the world about that, and then challenging
yourself to be more and more and more of that. So that's what this
little framework attempts to help you with. Anytime you'll also don't forget that you
can return to it. It's like a compass
that'll help you find yourself so they can go
back into the world again. Ding, It's Time to turn the page
7. The A.D.E.P.T. A.F. Framework - 2: So here's an example
of me putting into practice this
incredible framework, The adept as far system for
savage self-expression. And it goes like this. Audience, very simple
upcoming Strategists, they're the people
that I'm mostly right. Four, if I try to write
for a different audience, I feel that I'm grabbing
it straws a little bit. Or I might write something
that I'm really happy with, but it doesn't find an
audience to desperation. I gotta tell you that the desperation that I
connect with projects, stuff that I felt working in advertising
agencies for years. And that's set a lot of
the people that I cherish, people whose minds are
beautiful and brilliant, but sometimes it gets sidelined. Sometimes they're
in environments that don't know how
to make them most of them and that can
feel really bad. It can feel like you
being gas lit for years, like you've got something
to offer to the world, but the world doesn't
want to take it from you. So that's the desperation that I personally connect to
identify with it myself. But I also know it
exists out there with the people for whom
I write end goal, look for the upcoming
Strategists. Their end goal is
really one of respect. Not the end, end, end goal, but in the relative short-term, medium-term, most
upcoming Strategists, they want to get their
fundamentals in place. They want to feel
that they're being treated with respect at work. They want opportunities. And so what I really
think about is writing to a Strategists who's
yearning to get respect, but it's also willing to
work for that respect. And obviously, the goals
that come from that are an excellent livelihood and hopefully a most excellent life. There are a ton of
pain points that you come across as you ride. And there's this concept in venture capital that I
want to talk to you about. It's called deal flow. So successful investors attract a lot of potential deals
that have good deal flow. A lot of people
want their money. The more you write in public, the more you are in public, the more you teach him public, the more questions you get, the more anecdotes see here. And you kinda get
this flow of ideas. So idea flow, when it comes to pain points,
there tens, hundreds, some of the most common
ones that I hear about the Strategists
feeling sidelined, feeling like they're
not being mentored or trained or put forward
for opportunities. Many Strategists,
we'll talk about impostor syndrome, a
lot of strategies. We'll talk about thinking
too much or overthinking, not knowing when
they've gone through enough confusion and how they can pop out with a
little bit of clarity. A lot of Strategists use too many big words
to sound smart. And under all of
these can be this weird dynamic where
as we're coming up, we often think we
need to separate ourselves who we
feel we truly are, even if we don't have
vocabulary to describe that from who we are in
the professional realm. And so a pain point
that is maybe not explicit in the mind of
an upcoming Strategists, but one that I definitely write, two, is a lack of self-understanding when
it comes to topic, I'm unafraid of having a relatively broad topic
that I investigated. And that's strategy. The way that I would describe the topic that I get around is practical Strategy
Techniques while helping people
understand themselves or study themselves better. And that combination of
things is something that I've been around for well
over ten years, but in recent years and as I've gotten older and
as I've talked in front of more audiences and tested more vulnerable Content. As I've run exercises where
we don't talk about brands. We talk about the way that
they talk to themselves, maybe criticism, feeling
like an impostor. What I've come to
understand about how I can fit into the
world at least now, is taking practical
Strategy Techniques and connecting them
to the psychology of the Strategists as
in teaching them a big part about
how to do strategy by helping them understand
their heads better. So that's my topic
when it comes to the authors or the
voices that I access, there are few that
I find floating around my head that I
tried to put into my work. And it might be that they are, one of them dominates
one piece of writing, or perhaps within one piece of writing I access
a couple of them. I definitely write with
a direct elder guy vibe. As I get older, I feel impatient, compassionate, but I want to say
things directly and quickly because life is short. I do have this Ozzie sarcasm has been in me since I was
really, really young. It'll come out in weird ways
sometimes in appropriately, I think a lot of the
bands are in Australia is very sarcastic, at
least when you're young. And that's in me a little. So I let that out
every now and then. And then there's this mannequin
clown that I'll let out. And I think in the
introduction to my book, it's a couple of
thousands of words long. I talk about Andrea PLO and Inigo Montoya from
the Princess Bride. And I allow myself to unleash
a slightly maniacal Voice. And I think unless you
realize that that block is trying to be a bit
unusual, a bit weird. It might seem that
I'm a bit nuts, but I wanted to tap
into a stream of consciousness and
just let it out. And so that's a voice that'll
access every now and then. Also, I have a little
bit of a sad boy Voice. I'm a friend of Melancholia. I don't want to lead
with that voice too often because it's
a big buzz kill, but it's in me and every now
and then maybe I'll write a sentence or paragraph that
feels a little self-pitying. And I know the voice
that I'm accessing, that therefore voices that I access when it comes to formats, I have a variety of formats, but largely I turn up on the
internet with Sarah words. I love a serif, black
and white type, yellow highlights and in
carousels and long reads there the main formats that I tend to access and yeah, sure. They become part of a
personal brand and I'm aware of branding techniques
and I keep them in mind. But my point is really to focus on the Writing,
not the Branding. The Branding is
just good hygiene. So that's how I would approach filling in my own adept AF, system for savage
self-expression. Maybe you enjoy filling in yours
8. Effort - It's Time To Write: So we've run through
the first two F's. We've discussed the frame
of mind that I believe is useful to actually
become a writer. And it starts with acknowledging that from now on
you are a rider. We've looked at a framework that can help you ground yourself. It can give you direction, connect you to that
sense of urgency and desperation that
can animate you and keeping going when you
feel stuck or get lost. Now we've got the third
F and words effort. In this section,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at
a simple structure. They help you get especially fast writing for
the Internet done. I'll share some examples
of my own writing. I'll take you through them, talk to you about what
I liked about it, what I'm trying to do
in different places, maybe even what I
don't like about it. And then we're going
to make you put some effort into some of the exercises that
will give you. Let's start by talking about
storytelling structure. There are a lot of great books, great YouTube videos
on storytelling. Spend some time
with all of them. When I look to do
it from Writing quickly is quite simple. I look for a hook. I described the problem and
the symptoms of the problem. And at some point I'll land
an idea and organizing idea. Then what I'll try to do is show through that idea,
through that theme. Could be in an analogy, can be a metaphor, could be a bunch
of words together, but some kind of idea, some kind of lateral thought through that lateral thought, I'll organize the solutions to the problems
that have outlined. And at the very end, I'll end, I'll often bring
in the hook from the start that is
called follow-through, where you introduce
something at the start, you bring it in at the end. And sometimes you might reverse the situation to be simple, if we align what I just
said into three acts. Act one is the hook, is the problems
and the symptoms. And then it's the
introduction of the idea, the organizing idea or
theme through which the rest of the article
or Writing comes to will typically
be you trying to solve the problem
through the idea that you've introduced
an act three is potentially what life
looks like later. Act one is the routine, the world as it is
now that gets broken. And then e1, e2, we talk
about the broken reality, which if we're trying
to solve a problem, is, are solving that problem
and then enact three, we establish a new reality
with that problem solved, what does the future look
like in Shakespeare plays? All the power from people
who've been killed. But we see that there
are these kids who are going to take
over and possibly, hopefully have a better future. So that's a simple way to
take five elements that I'm thinking about an organized them into a three-act structure. Now I'm gonna take
you through some examples of my own writing
9. Story Structure - Example 1, What Strategists Want: Okay, So I'll take you through
some business writing. This is an introduction that I wrote for a Sweathead report called What Strategists Want or What Strategists
Want from work. We ran a survey. We had about 130 people respond, and then we interviewed a whole
bunch of strategy boss's, boss's whose teams have
won a lot of FE Awards. The team at Sweathead analyzed
everything and then we tried to assemble it all
into one overarching story. And this is what
came out for me. Even if you're young, you know the scene. I'll have what she's having. It features Meg Ryan
food and what seems like the public ******.
So that's my hook. I'm trying to latch people onto something that
they would not expect in an introduction or
an article about strategy, Meg Ryan, eating food and
a very famous movie When Harry Met Sally and
enjoying herself in a very iconic
scene, that's my hook. I'm signaling that this is
a little bit different. You don't know what's
going to come. And as I was writing it, I was wondering whether I should be using words like ******. Is that too vulgar? I have a team who
worked with me. They're gonna be
offended by this, but I'm becoming selfish. And I was like, This is what I want to put out there right now. So then it continues. This is me moving beyond
the hook into explaining the problem and the
symptoms of that problem. But I'm keeping the hook alive. I run it through a running joke. I returned to it several
times in his article. So it continues. Over the past decade, more types of companies
than ever before saying, I'll have what she's having. And so Strategists
and account planners are in looks and crannies
all over the world. Some even get to
come out of them looks and crannies and
meet their clients. But not all. I'm just trying to
add a bit of irony, bit of pain, a bit of tension
to each paragraph there. And to bring some
of the psychology, some of the trues that
I hear from people into each piece of this story. The problem, not enough *******. Act one is describing the
current reality, the routine. It's the same in a novel, same in a movie. So the current problem, the current routine
is not enough ******* and I'm staying
in the metaphor of this. I hope it's not too
vulgar for you. I just want it to be memorable. Companies have been saying, I'll have what she's having, but they're not actually having it. We call this problem the
crucial reality paradox. I'm having FUN with this phrase. It's big, it's a
bit intellectual, but then I explain
it because this is the problem that we
want to solve in life, but also we nudge a
little bit into it in the rest of this article. So here's the
Christianity paradox. Strategists have become crucial to the desires of
many companies, but Strategists
have not yet become crucial to the fabric
of enough companies. So they leave some tron it, use it, twist there the word. But anytime someone says We need more tension in
a Creative Brief, well, we need more
attention in this Writing. See if you can use the web
but, and before the but, you've got something that is relatively
obvious potentially. And then the butt twist it. And a bit of
repetition of the word crucial just drives
home that point. But then because
I know it's a bit intellectual and I might
have lost people here. I tried to state the problem, in short words, crucial to
have but not crucial to use. That's what we're
trying to solve you. In 2020, we heard a lot
of ad agencies using Strategists to help them when new business in difficult times, to explain rapid changes
in culture to class, and to help the
companies they worked in adept bet it's in New Realities, little bit corporate there. I'm using the rule of three, just trying to draw
out the tension. In a way, Strategists
have gone viral. And this has led to even
more companies saying, I'll have what she's having. But a lot of companies
get them Meg Ryan, food delivered to their table
and then they aren't sure how to eat it and maybe
what is this food anyway? So Strategists have gone viral. I think that's pretty true. I think Strategists are all
over the place right now, everywhere right now, but not a lot of people
know how to use them. And rather than disappearing from I'll have
what she's having. I remember sitting there
just for a few seconds, maybe a minute or two thinking, how can I repeat it again? But really meal kit for meaning. And I was like, Well, in
that scene, what happens? She eats the food and
she has a FUN time. Let's call it that. I was like, well, what's
happening from what I'm hearing is people aren't
having the Fun time, they getting the food and
then not eating it, right? So I stayed in the analogy
here in this report. The big message is this, if you're going to order
Strategists to your table, eat them, put them in
your mouth, chew them, digest them, and
then well, whatever, it's your buddy there again, I'm trying to stick stubbornly
close to this analogy. I'm not trying to what they
call kill the metaphor. What I'm trying to stay
deeply in it continues. If you don't, the industry will continue to experience
what is here. Roa, DDB is Jack
Murphy describes as a dearth of
ready-made planners. A big theme in this report
is that there aren't enough capable
Strategists to go around, but also that there aren't enough capable companies to go around this mutual same
technique as earlier. I'm trying to create
a sense of tension. I'm repeating phrases. I'm using the word, but
I mentioned how we're hearing that there aren't enough capable Strategists
to go around. But that's only
part of the truth because I hear the
other side of this, which is there aren't
enough capable companies to go around. There aren't enough
companies who know how to use strategies, how to put them to
work at a really believe in them
going around either. Then we say it's mutual. So if I have a little bit of an overly intellectual
flare, I go a bit long. I'll often add a couple
of short phrases just to mix up the cadence. So then we continue. 42% of Strategists are looking to change jobs in the
next 12 months, Strategists leave when they're not earning or learning or both. They also leave when strategy isn't non negotiable part of how the company works and when the culture is
bureaucratic, not Creative. There's a double
negative in, there, isn't a non-negotiable,
but it's okay. I looked at it and thought,
I'm okay with that. Then I guess this
is the third act, a turn to the Strategists, because I'm really
trying to set up a desire to read the
rest of the report. Strategists, you'll
see yourselves in this report or we don't
know what we're doing. But to those of you who hire Strategists, ask yourself this, if strategy is so
crucial to you, why don't you put it in
your mouth for once? So there is something that
is a little bit vulgar and direct about the way
that I'm writing this. I'm just trying to jar
some sense into people. I'm trying to live that thought or being provocatively useful. It'll be too much
for some people, but other people will remember it and they might
share it because some people will probably find that weird and entertaining. And notice how the
hallway through we've got that Meg Ryan
seen as just being milked, not killed, but milked. And then at the end, there's a direct plea
using the analogy, a direct plea to solve the
problem of people ordering the food or the Strategists to their table and not eating it?
10. Story Structure - Example 2, Burnout: I was circling the
theme Burnout at something that I've
written about before. And because I've
written about it a lot and published
about it a lot. I can see what sticks
and what resonates, but I also wanted
to bring to life the principles that
we've discussed so far. The title is this, why always on agency Life is causing
Strategists two Burnout, I'll usually use a weird title, but jam in a keyword as well so that the article
is discoverable. And I remember writing this
because the bulk of it are wrote on a plane on
the way to Tampa, Florida. And I was thinking
about the word Burnout and burn and flames. And I knew that I wanted to start with a hook and I wanted that hook to be
something that had nothing to do with the industry. Man. After awhile, I realized that I'd read
something that week, which turns out to be
in April Fool's prank. So April 1, 2023, somewhere unreleased,
spoof news, fake news that the
mayor of New York City, eric Adams, was going to
ban Tesla's from New York. I didn't know that at
the time, but I used it. I used it. So here's the hook. New York City Mayor
eric Adams is banning Tesla's from the city because
Tesla's catch on fire, then they Burnout
little bit jolting, a little bit provocative. But what's the point of that? Come on. Can you
land the connection? You're introducing something we eat and disconnected
from what you're going, you're right about
force the connection. I remember having this
thought on the plane and I smiled and I was
full of joy and I got my laptop out on our thing. So here's the point. What makes Teslas smart
also makes them catch fire. The same can be said for
Strategists and the era we're in is making it hard of a
Strategists not to burn out. Okay, so the key idea here, really describing the problem
more than the solution, or that hints at a solution, Is that what makes Teslas
smart and what makes them catch on fire is very similar
to a Strategists life. A Strategists wants to be smart. They think all the time. They often don't know who
they are without thinking. And they raise catching them. Strategists can
pay a heavy price for the brands that feed them. Each client brief is
a test to ace a shot at an intellectual high
and a swipe at validation, that client briefs are endless. And so in an industry which rewards good work
with more work, Strategists struggled to
stop like a Tesla or in flames trying to
land the point here. And I'm bringing through the
metaphor or the analogy. And I do it again here
and really milking it. If time sheets were rearview
mirrors in a Tesla, would most Strategists
like what they see behind them with each
job code in a minute, look back at them in
a way they like just trying to get people to
imagine what's going on, assuming they're
going to slow down and even read this thing, I want them to picture
themselves in a Tesla. I'm trying to put them
in the car so that they can feel what I'm writing
in a more visceral way. If you're Strategists
driving a Tesla down the highway of agency life, you might be close
to catching on fire, at risk of burning out is critical to dig into
the reasons why, to try to understand
what's driving it. And so I won't go
through the rest of this article in details. But the way that
it's sections out is I described the problem
a little bit more. So my act one way is quite long, although the start of Act Two and a lot of movies is
what they call Phantom games. I don't know if T2 is really kicking off as I described
the problem here, but then we try to solve it. So what's driving this? There's no longer an off button. There's not enough
time to think. There's too much running. Two little play, which
is the theme I used to start my book and I use it in
a lot of my talks as well. I also talking about
like you don't know what game you need to play. This is a really big issue
that often Strategists, they could be young or old. They're not sure how to succeed in the environment
that they end. Sometimes they struggled to
work out the world that they interface with every single
day the world pays them. And then five marketers are judged on outputs,
service strategy. So these are all very
straightforward. I didn't run the Tesla
metaphor through all of this. It's a little bit dry. I actually wrote something
like 16 to 1,700 words. And so what you're seeing here, it's half of that. Now, what to do about it? This is where we get from just being provocative
to being useful. Hopefully, this advice is
really straightforward. Asked for more time, understand your team's needs, work in ways that
give you energy. Talk to yourself differently. And then if things are
really bad, get out. The ending is pretty
quick, It's pretty abrupt. It doesn't use the
Tesla metaphor here, which is something
that I would fix it if I went back and wrote it, this has been edited.
It ends like this. Advertising is a volatile
industry. Short sentence. If you bounce through
three agencies and a year, people will be suspicious. If you do this, perhaps the
industry isn't built for you. However, some spades are
really just spades and will only dequeue a whole to
fall into some really, I should have brought
the Tesla back there somehow and talked about flames, the batteries being Band. Eric Adams, New York City. So that's something
that I would fix if I went back and rewrote this. But this is another example of bringing the story Structure
that I went through to Life
11. Story Structure - Example 3, I'm Creative But Am I Strategic?: I was doing carousels
for refusal, took a while to really
find my flow with them. I make them in Keynote, I just find it simple
and fast to use. And then I export the carousel
as a PDF which I might post on LinkedIn back in the day when I was
more active on Twitter, I'd often write a lot
of stuff on Twitter, the things that were quote
unquote more successful. I would then turn into
a post somewhere else. I would graduate
the content that performed the best through
different channels, potentially even into a book, I actually used 50 plus
tweets in my book. But all of this is interesting because you just don't know what's gonna happen. So this particular post, and I'm gonna take you
through it's reached, according to Instagram,
362,159 people. It's a simple topic and I wrote
about it in a simple way. And I did it because
someone who had responded to another post
brought this topic up. So it starts with the problem, which is essentially the routine
Act won the routine that a lot of people out there and going through and
it's this question, I'm Creative, But
Am I Strategic to? While I often write for a
lot of upcoming Strategists, This person is the
person who might do, We'll call it creative
work for a living. Ideas that design,
graphic design. So I start with the
problem I'm Creative, But Am I Strategic two. Then I defined some of the
words that we're using. This is why they useful
technique in writing. If you find yourself with a
question you're trying to answer is stopped by pulling
apart the words were, what are these words mean to me? And that can set you
up with a couple of useful paragraphs that can then milk for
paragraphs to come. So my personal definition
of the widths strategy is this strategy isn't an informed
opinion about how to win. It demands the grasp
of the situation, a goal in a way to
achieve the goal, then I situate it
in advertising. Advertising strategy
is a Creative. This language is big bit of
jargon, little bit businessy, but I'm trying to get to this
frustration that a lot of Strategists feel
even though I'm not really writing for
the Strategist here, which is like, I
think I do ideas, but there's a
creative department over there and
their job is ideas. So therefore, Am I Creative? Do I deal with ideas? And my answer is yes,
but I have to define a lot of words to be
out to make that point. Advertising strategy
is a creative act. Creativity melds
topics that don't usually belong together
in novel ways. The output is ideas. This is kinda technical, okay? It's different style
of writing and I'm paraphrasing by now here who read a lot about
lateral thinking decades ago. But advertising strategy is closer to the ideas of
good non-fiction writer. So trying to land a
few solid points here, my perspective in
a way that will hopefully give people
words to use later, which is a really good
challenge when you're Writing. Can you explain things
in a way where people will take your
words and use them to explain ideas that
they've been struggling with if you identify
as a Creative. But once a up is strategy
game focus here, I tend not to use a lot of words in rabbit ears or with the
quotation marks around them. But I know that I'm dealing with some jargon here
and I know that I need to make simple to
understand one people. Creatives often need to
learn how to get out of their own heads and into
the heads of their audiences. These are all trues that I think a pretty true, generally true. The word Creative as
a noun like this, I don't really like
doing it because to me, Creative is an adjective, but I'm using a cliche or a trope of the industry just
so I can relate to people. I basically got over
myself To Write that I don't like it to
problems in advertising. Creativity helps
to solve problems. Creativity isn't just
about making cool stuff. So these are all
trues or confessions about thing that
people are thinking. Three strategies,
ideas, a strategy, needs and organizing idea. Creatives can struggle with
this because they want the campaign idea to exclusively be that
what I'm trying to say, he didn't a very short way as when I've trained people in the creative department
in strategy, how to write creative briefs. Often they struggle with being as creative as
they could be with strategy because they used to their response to
a Creative Brief being the heroic thing. What can happen is when they
write a Creative Brief, It's a bit bland because they
want to be a hero later. For evidence, creditors
need to spend time in numbers and
research to be Strategic, even if they interpret
everything in different ways. Five rationale, Yes. But why you're recommending
this with evidence on hand, you can support your arguments and then there's
a call to action. Share this with you.
Strategy, curious, creative friends, and
obviously a caption. When I look at this
piece of writing, it's quite plain and it's
full of jargon that I felt I needed to use so that
people could connect to it. And it's really surprising
that this is probably been my biggest Instagram post
and reached 362,000 people. It's not my best writing, but as mentioned earlier, when you write, you can learn about what the
world wants from you. And so I'm thinking about, is there a way for me
to write a book or something bigger
that deals with this coming together of strategy
minds and Creative Minds and essentially the psychology of Creativity to help
people in a big away. So there you go.
That's an example of an Instagram post that I did
not expect to do so well, that could end up changing
a few years of my life
12. Effort - Finding Your Workflow: So as you settle into and explore who you
want to be as a writer, it's really important in the early days to work at how
to get out of your own way. How do you minimize the
friction so that there's potentially as few barriers in-between you having a thought, thinking through the thought, Writing the thought and
getting it out into public. Now, that doesn't have to be
the way that you operate. Maybe you want to write a book every single year and
you slow things down. That challenge with
that though is people won't buy your book
unless they already know. That's one of the trues about publishing that you kinda need a following before
you can actually publish in any meaningful way, unless you just ridiculously lucky to the point that it's
like winning the lottery. So how do you remove
the friction from this? First of all, you've got to
work at your tech setup. It could be pen and paper, but make sure you know where
that pen and paper are at all times that their knee use so that when you have a thought, you can jot it down. Maybe you use notes
on your phone. You could collect titles
and themes in your phone. One thing that I
do because I tend to get overwhelmed
by the ideas that I have and I'll write them down somewhere and
then they'll get lost. Which is okay. The more I do this,
unlike if I wrote it down and it disappears,
it disappears. If I really want to write it in, my subconscious will remember
and it will haunt me. It, We'll bring it
up and I'll have a surge of energy and
I'll find myself writing. But what I'll often do is I'll get the start of a
thought together. It could be a cheeky title or
a key point or an analogy, and I'll just write
it in my phone. And then under the
point or the title, I'll start to describe
some of the problems or symptoms and then simple
ways to solve them. And at some point,
if that thing, that set of thinking
haunts me enough, I'll sit down to write. Sometimes I have a flow where
I know that I want to ride at a certain time of
day, on certain days. That's what I did with my
book and it's also what I sometimes do with my
social posts as well. But the main thing is to
work at your tech stack. You're not thinking
about where things are. I don't overthink my tech stack. The result is I've got
files all over the place, but also that doesn't
matter right now. I'm happy to pay
that price because I'm just trying to
increase my output. And that brings me
onto the second point that as you get out of your way, I would encourage you to
think about quantity, to get to quality. It's not that
quantity matters more than quality is that
through writing, through having a lot of thoughts and getting those
thoughts and down, your quality can improve, especially if you read books on writing and develop
your technical skills. So quantity, quality, personal belief connected
to both of those things. You might want to timebox
your days or your calendars, put 30 min aside, 10 min aside, an hour aside. When I first started blogging at often write in the
evenings and I'd give myself an hour because we had baby and then two
babies in the house. I might sit down at
10:00 P.M. and think, Oh God, I write something now
let me get something out. I want to write every week, maybe twice a week, and I would write
and then publish it possibly not
full with errors, but possibly with a few errors. I can go back and fix them. Usually some platforms you can, but focusing on quantity
to get to quality will keep you in the mindset of
practice, practice, practice. And eventually good things might happen when it comes
to ideas and writing, I use numbers a lot. I use numbers to
trick my brain into coming up with more
ideas and not stopping. But I also use numbers to organize the ideas and how they'll come to
life in my head. Sometimes I writing listicles,
which is totally fine. I know some people looked
down on listicles. A way to do this is to start
circling around the topic. You might have a hunch, a thought imine
epiphany that comes to mind and think I want
to write that, well, Write it down somewhere
and then give yourself the challenge to rewrite it
five times or ten times. And then what you
might do is settle on a draft title or a draft idea for what
you want to write about, then challenge yourself
to come up with 35 or seven supporting points. And as you do this,
the idea will start to take shape in interesting ways. You will allow your
brain to get through the obvious and initial
thoughts that come to mind. And hopefully you'll
push Yourself Into surprising yourself
with where you end up. The main point with
effort is trying to work out how to keep
yourself flowing. How to have systems and potentially technology
or software that don't get in your way so that you can do the main thing that
you have decided to do, which is To Write,
connected to also thinking about writing
and then publishing
13. The Content Pyramid: I wanted to run you through
this little framework. We've got frameworks
and our frameworks have frameworks,
framework extravaganza. But this is a framework
that I keep in mind because on the one hand, when I'm writing, I want
to try to be pretty prolific on have
a lot of output. And I hope in having that
output over time, I get better. I improve my skills,
practice the writing. It's not just drivel of output, that's hopefully
reasonable quality output. And then the way that I
think about what I'm writing and call it Content
and feels like such a weird and lazy
word these days. But Content is to
graduate what works. And so let's imagine you've
got this Pyramid and you've got a whole bunch of activity
happening at the bottom, just little pieces of content. It could be tweets, things you're
putting on LinkedIn, little things, things that
might take a minute to 10 min. You're putting a lot
of this stuff out there trying to
waste people's time, we their output, but you're trying a lot of
different things. And then every week you might
see a few things sticking. And he decided, You know what, I'm going to those
three things from the ten things I did last week into something more
meaningful and new, graduate the Content, let's call this next kind of content,
just regular content. Think about that
being something you could do in an hour or two, can be a blog post, it could be a detailed
LinkedIn post. And then above those two
rungs of the pyramid, the pyramids have
runs, they do now. You have what I would
call feats and features. Features are things that at least back in the day when
I was blogging a lot. It's like, you know what,
I probably need to put a half-day or a day
aside for this. If you're really serious
rider getting paid well, it would be more than that, but for me it was like
a half-day, two a day. A feature is something
you're really going to put you back into it. And so the articles that I
mentioned earlier to you, I would say there features several thousand words
long and they've reached tens and
tens of thousands of people and above
feature, you get feet. Fea at a feed is doing
something super heroic. So you might take one thing
that you've written out of the thousands of
things that you've tried in months before
and ask yourself, how can I turn that
into something really big and maybe turn
it into a flywheel. For example, you
turn it into a book. But then because you have
a flywheel mentality, you turn the book into a course. You turn the characters
in the book into pieces. You turn quotes into
t-shirts and cetera. So this little Pyramid
is a good way to think about your content because
you want to keep flowing, you want to keep testing stuff. And then every now and then can be every
week or every month, we want to look at what's
working and then do more of it and take the ideas that are working for you on two or possibly for a long time. So for example, the Content in my book that took a good
decade to come together, half builds from one of the
main courses that I teach. But the book and those courses
have reached thousands of people and I've
been touring them now for well over five years. And this is what you can
potentially do as well.
14. Frame It - Go Publish: Now we've arrived at
the final F, frame. It, the reason that
I like frame it as the final F is because it puts an emphasis on
you're doing the work. You do the work he tried
to make it better. You're trying to learn, you
read books about writing, your watch course
is about right, and you get your vibe together over weeks,
probably over years. And as you're doing it,
you publish things. Publishing teaches you things. And what I want you
to think about is how if you were
to do a painting, you don't frame it
until you've done the painting and
you weren't frame every single painting
that you've done. But the things that you
do put into public, think about the act
of putting them into public as putting a
frame around them. You frame your work, you put it up on the wall, and then you get back to work. There's a classic Australian
movie called The Castle. And in this movie, this family buys a lot
of second-hand stuff, a lot of pre-owned stuff, crazy things, cheap things, things that nobody means. But if one other family members buys a thing that their lives, he says this, put it
in the pool room, and that means that you're
entering the Hall of Fame. So you can potentially
have your Hall of Fame, heavier Hall of
Fame for that book, you wrote that rap album
that went gold or whatever, put them all up on the wall. But don't stop there. You've got to keep going. Get back to the
creative process. Because otherwise you risk
falling off that rock, losing yourself a
little bit and ending up in a sea of self repression. So that's the course.
Hopefully it's helped you get in
touch with itself. Hopefully it's giving you
some practical techniques, especially around a workflow, while also connecting you
to your own psychology. We went through the four
F's are frame of mind, framework, effort, and frame it, it works as four F's. It's alliterative. You'll hopefully remember it. And we went through the
adept as system for savage self-expression,
explored over time. Don't feel freaked out
if you don't have it all the answers now
it's in the action, in the Writing and
most importantly in the publishing
that you start to understand how you're going
to come to life in the world. Constantly try to narrow the gap between
how you think and speak when people aren't
watching and what you say in public and how
you turn up in public. But also there can be
different versions of your different
voices that you can unleash to make your points. And as you do so, I hope that as you turn up
for this creative practice, you push the concept of personal brand to the
back of your mind. You focus on becoming a writer. You talk to yourself
about being a writer. And because we'd love to follow
along with your journey, at least we, the first few
articles, feel free to tag us. We'd love to see how you're experimenting and if anything, will challenge you to
experiment even harder. My name is mark Pollard. Thank you for spending
so much time with us and allowing me to spend some
time poking around your head. May you have a
prolific writing life? It's super fulfilling. It can lead you to
all kinds of places. Places you didn't
even know existed, places you didn't even know
that you wanted to visit. But I hope that
you can sit down, be compassionate
towards yourself, and find space in your life to become the person that
you want to become pace
Mark Pollard, Sweathead
