Sam and Shaan discuss the best method for learning to write — copywork, where you literally handwrite other people’s best writing to internalize their voice and rhythm. Sam breaks down his Power Writing Course and how copywork applies to any skill. They then cover the Dan Price / Gravity Payments story, and Shaan introduces David Friedberg’s new company building an at-home beverage machine.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
The Copywork Method for Learning Any Skill [00:00:00]
Shaan: So I was saying — I have a lot to ask you about this document.
Sam: Are you going to ask me about my fresh green smoothie? Maybe my green goddess salad? Or maybe the giant steak the chef made me?
Shaan: You are literally eating a steak right now.
Sam: I took one bite. The countdown to recording was like five, four, three, two, one. I was like, I gotta get it in.
Shaan: Before we really get into stuff — did you see that picture I shared of you when we first started recording?
Sam: Yeah, that was great. I was reflecting on it because The Hustle has a daily podcast coming out and they’ve worked on it for months. When we started, I mean you rented a studio at first, but then it was just you and me — I’m pretty sure we used our iPhone headphones, and we were in that shitty closet. We were basically in a closet with a table. We were so close together that any time I talked, your mic picked it up, and any time you did, mine picked it up too. It was an awful recording. In the photo you can see I’m hunched over, I’ve got my glasses on, wearing my jacket still because I just walked over from my office. We just started recording instantaneously.
I was like, none of this video stuff matters — all that matters is the audio. Let’s just do that. Which wasn’t entirely wrong.
Anyway, the Hustle guys have this podcast coming out. They’re doing it every day.
Shaan: That’s so much work. Daily.
Sam: It’s called the Hustle Daily Show. The story about the news every day. It launches Wednesday, and I think it’s going to work. When your episodes first came out it took off right away, but then it goes down when the novelty wears off — that’s when you’ve got to actually develop the skill. I told them: when you start doing this, it’s a skill. Some people are talented but you still have to hone this. Don’t forget when you’re starting, it’s like — you were pretty good at the start, I would say decent, but then you developed the skill and that’s when it really starts getting good.
Shaan: The best way to get better is just to be a fan of other people’s work. Because if you’re a fan, you’ll pick up on the little things they do. You’re like, man, why do I love this? I love this because blah blah blah. And you’re never gonna recreate that exactly. But if you see five examples, you start to realize what the bar is and where you need to be.
You talk about this with copywriting: how do you become a better copywriter? It’s the opposite of what people think. People think you should go learn secret theories you don’t know, develop your own voice, come up with original content. That’s actually a really slow way to get better.
The way you get better is you do copywork — you literally handwrite, word for word, the writing of somebody you love. I do this still as a warm-up. If I’m gonna write something, I’ll first spend five or ten minutes on copywork.
One of the pieces I copy is yours. You have this post — it’s very hard to find — but basically it starts with, “Let me be perfectly clear: you’re reading this because I want you to.” That’s a good one, right? It’s like you’re casting a spell. And you write it like that — every line is getting you further down the slippery slope, explaining what’s going on. I know it because I’ve copywritten it a bunch of times. “Let me be perfectly clear. You’re reading this because I want you to.” It’s so good.
Sam: I have another one — the Scott Adams one, “The Day You Became a Better Writer.”
Shaan: Ben, pull that up. [Reads] “I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in quote-unquote business writing. I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the matrix here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.” And then he references the first sentence and says, by the way, I wrote and rewrote that first sentence dozens of times. It makes you curious — that’s the key. Then he goes: write short sentences, avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence, readers aren’t as smart as you’d think. It goes on and on. It’s a very short post. Very good.
So this method is applicable to many things. If you want to learn guitar, you can first learn all the scales and music theory and then try to write original songs — but man, that’s a really hard way to do it. The better way is you take a song you like, you figure out how to play those four chords, you play covers. You play a shitty cover initially, then you get better, then you might add your own twist to it.
If you want to learn to cook, first start with recipes, nail those, then do original creations. If you want to learn to play music, first start with covers.
Sam: I’m about to teach my Power Writing Course again. I took five months off and I’m going to do it again at the end of this month. In it I have one section that’s just habits you need to become a better writer, and the first one is copywork. And I make them do copywork right there in the course. I remember asking — I said, I’m going to use ten minutes of our course time for you to write this, because I know if I just tell you to go do this, you’re not going to do it. You’re gonna feel like it’s weird. You’re gonna say, okay, I get the idea, but I’m not actually going to go write this before I need to write something. I’ll give you one rep at doing this right now.
They come back and I was like, what did it feel like? And they’re like, it’s weird. It’s like my hands aren’t my hands — they’re their hands. My tongue isn’t my tongue. It’s their tongue. My voice — I can almost pick up their voice by the time I’ve written the third paragraph. And if I then switched and was writing my own stuff, it’d be in that voice.
And that’s exactly the point. It’s a hack to get your stuff to not be flat and boring, or to not be stuck with writer’s block with an empty page that’s intimidating you.
Sam’s Copywork Course and the Power Writing Course [00:10:00]
Sam: For Trends — they were doing a contest to see who could launch a product, and I was like, I’ll play. I didn’t use my Twitter to promote anything because that would have been a little unfair, but I used Facebook. I was like, I’m going to create a copywork course. I think I called it Copy That or something.
It was on Gumroad, 50 bucks. I gathered my 12 favorite bits of copy, made a PDF, and explained why each part is interesting. The person who receives one every ten days has to write it by hand and gets commentary on why it’s cool. I think it’s going to be good. I’m releasing it in three days and I’ve been spending all my time on it.
Shaan: That’s amazing. That’s a great idea. What’s the URL?
Sam: I don’t want to share it yet — unfair advantage. But if you go to my Facebook, you’ll see it. I tell the story about how Ben Franklin used to use copywork and it was one of the best ways to learn how to write, but for some reason we don’t do it anymore.
Shaan: About the Power Writing Course — you mentioned you’re teaching it again?
Sam: Yeah, so I made the course with one goal: I’m going to make you two times better at writing in ten days. That was the mission. And I think it’s not that hard, because most people feel like they suck at writing and they kind of do. But like most things — when you haven’t tried to get great at something and you don’t know how — you’re actually not that far away. A couple tweaks will get you double as good. To become the best in the world, yeah, that’s a lifetime. But you can double your skill in pretty much anything if the right guide gives you the right couple things to do. And copywork is one of those central things. People aren’t going to believe it, but it works.
So I’m teaching it in February. It’s live on video, recorded if you miss it. I think we have like 200 spots. We opened it up two days ago and 100 people took it already.
Shaan: Wow. How many came the first time?
Sam: 150 the first time, 350 the second time. This time I’m going to shut it off after 200. I like smaller group sizes so I can give more feedback. After the sessions, I’ll go into Slack and give direct feedback to 15 or 20 students. That takes more time than teaching the course itself. But over the course of ten days, you’re gonna get direct feedback from me at some point.
Shaan: Dude, that’s sick.
Sam: Sarah — one of my close friends — took the class and said she loved it. Goggins, the founder of Maven, said it was one of the most loved courses on the platform. Maven really helped me out — they knew I was lazy. I was like, I’m probably never going to teach it again. They’re like, why? It was the highest-rated course. I was like, it’s work to like… send an email. I feel stupid asking. And they were like, you already made all the content, it’s highly rated, all you gotta do is send out two emails. So they sent it out on my behalf. I was like, thank you. All right, I’ll teach it.
The Dan Price / Gravity Payments Story [00:17:00]
Shaan: All right, let’s do some other stuff. Actually, before we do — what’s your crazy Dan Price story?
Sam: Okay. So most people probably don’t know this. I wrote about it in 2015, way ahead of the curve. Let me explain this, then let me explain my piece of how this happened.
So I’m reading this document — you wrote in the document right before we started “crazy Dan Price story.” That’s our little secret: we write the topic to get the other person curious, but we don’t fill in the details so they don’t know what you’re gonna say and the reaction is authentic.
So I don’t know what you’re gonna say. But in 2015 I wrote this article. Dan Price is the guy who kind of looks like Jesus, based out of Portland. He’s the guy who famously said, from now on, everyone at my company has a minimum salary of $70,000 a year, and I’m reducing my own salary to match. The headline I wrote in 2015 said: “Dan Price, the Gravity Payments CEO paying everyone $70,000, is full of shit. Turns out 90 percent of the Dan Price story is completely made up — but he’s making fools of all of us.”
Shaan: What’s his story?
Sam: A few things. One: prior to him raising everyone’s salary to $70,000, he was paying himself $1.1 million dollars — for a company only doing $16 million in revenue. Why is that weird? He was being sued by his brother, who was a co-founder. The brother had a profit share but wasn’t active full-time, so he took no salary — he was there for the profits. The funny thing was there were no profits because Dan was taking a humongous salary, reducing profits to zero. That’s why the brother sued.
So Dan goes, well, I’ll reduce my salary and raise everyone else’s. It makes him look virtuous, but he’s actually getting rid of the lawsuit.
Second: and worse — he was accused of repeatedly beating and waterboarding his wife. On October 28th, his ex-wife gave a TED Talk where she talked about how Dan was punching her in the stomach and slapping her in the face. She had to lock herself in the car because she was afraid he was going to kill her.
Third: there’s this video that goes viral of his employees gifting him a Tesla. They’re like, Dan, you’ve sacrificed so much, we’re gonna give you this Tesla. They all pitched in and bought him a Tesla and he’s crying, he’s overwhelmed. But he’s fooled them, because he was still taking the profits — it’s not a W-2 salary, it’s just not listed as salary. He still gets the profits as the owner of the company. He cuts his salary but takes it as profit, which is actually even more tax-advantageous. And he does $50,000 speaking gigs, doesn’t share that with anybody. He has a $500,000 book deal.
Shaan: That’s crazy. So what’s the lesson?
Sam: Anytime somebody really goes out of their way to tell you how virtuous they are, you can pretty much take it to the bank that they’re overcompensating for something. It’s like Fox News saying “fair and balanced.” It’s like the statement is worse than the crime. The cover-up is worse than the crime.
It’s like Lance Armstrong. A lot of people weren’t even that mad that Lance took the drugs. They were mad that he was so cocky about it — he did a commercial saying “What am I on? I’m on my bike eight hours a day busting my ass. What are you on?” And then he sued a guy who was accusing him. When you went overboard like that — that was the part that broke people.
David Friedberg’s At-Home Beverage Machine [00:27:00]
Shaan: Okay, I want to talk about this business I heard about that I think is kind of amazing. It’s called Canna. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Sam: Tell me more.
Shaan: So David Friedberg — he’s gotten really popular recently because he’s on the All-In podcast. He’s one of the four people on it — Chamath, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and then Friedberg. Pretty much everybody in the tech world had heard of the other three. Nobody knew about Friedberg. And he’s actually my favorite on the pod. Why? He’s got a science background — he’s an engineer-scientist who goes into business.
His first business was Climate Corporation — basically telling farmers about weather data, giving them information about what they should be doing with their crops. A data company for farmers. They raised a relatively small sum and sold it — to Monsanto, the big evil agriculture company — for like a billion dollars.
Then he starts Metromile — a pay-per-mile insurance company. Instead of paying the same amount whether you drive a lot or a little, it’s dynamic insurance. They installed a thing in your car that could basically see if you speed — if you don’t, you pay less. Pretty innovative. Ended up going public in a SPAC. The SPAC has crashed since then. Got bought by Lemonade for like a third of what it went public for.
So anyway. Now he’s got a new company through something called The Production Board — basically an incubator for himself. Google backed it for like a billion dollars, BlackRock and a couple others. All it does is build companies in-house. One of the companies he just announced is really cool.
It’s basically a printer for beverages at home. You buy this machine and it sits in your kitchen. When you want a drink — sparkling water with lemon, a hot tea, a White Claw with alcohol, a white wine, whatever — you push a button and it’ll dispense that beverage.
He tells this story at a dinner with a scientist. The scientist says: you know, almost every drink is basically water. Juice is like 94 percent water. Coca-Cola is like 95 percent water. Wine is like 95 percent water. Everything’s 90-plus percent water. And then it’s some percent sugar, some alcohol, and then like one percent is the flavoring that makes it taste like iced tea. One percent.
So isn’t it crazy that we have factories that produce these bottles, put them on a truck, ship to a store, you drive there, take it off the shelf, drive it home, put it on your shelf, and it’s in a plastic bottle that then goes to recycling or the trash? All for something that’s basically water — and we all have water already piped into our homes.
So why not just add the flavoring at the end point, at your home, using the water you already have? After years of R&D, here’s what they do: the machine takes your water and can make it cold, hot, or carbonated. It has three cartridges — a sugar cartridge, an alcohol cartridge, and a flavor cartridge. You select what drink you want, and it puts out like one microliter of whatever gives it the soda taste, some sugar, and if it’s a White Claw, the right amount of alcohol. With those three cartridges, you can make basically an infinite combination of drinks. The flavor cartridge itself has different flavors inside it that can be mixed and matched.
Sam: It’s like a better Coke Freestyle machine.
Shaan: Exactly! It’s the at-home mini Freestyle that can do ten times more. I used to go to the movie theater near my place in San Francisco — I would never see a movie, but I would walk into the lobby just to get a Coke from the Freestyle machine. You could make Coke Zero Cherry Vanilla or Coke Zero Orange Vanilla. I loved it. I tried to get one for my office but the terms were ridiculous — a hundred dollars a month for life or something. So cool, so hard to get.
This is just a home Freestyle machine for every drink ever.
Sam: First of all, diet root beer is one of the best sodas of all time. No caffeine, so you can drink it any hour of the day. Creamy and hearty — not like Sprite, which is weak. I used to drink a diet root beer a day but in San Francisco I could only find it in the Asian neighborhood near our office. Always wondered if Asian people love it — the Asian grocery store always had four different types.
Shaan: The analogy I love is: it’s like TV. Back when we had three channels, they could only program for the most general audience. If you’re a fishing enthusiast and there are only three channels, it’s not going to work for you. Then you get cable — hundreds of channels, a dedicated fishing channel. Then YouTube comes along and literally anybody can create from their own home. Now there’s a channel for bass fishing in Spanish.
That’s the same thing that’s going to happen with beverages. And even better — you get the economic savings, the environmental savings, and the flavor personalization. One of the reasons Starbucks is so successful is because my wife can go in there and order a venti skinny half-decaf latte with oat milk, light ice, one pack of stevia — and it’s her drink. That’s going to be at home.
And it also creates a business model: me and you could create My First Million Root Beer. We don’t need a manufacturer or a bottler. We just create a recipe — it’s basically software, three variables. We send it to your device and you print it for 55 cents, and we get our share of the royalty. All of a sudden you’re going to see, just like the Rock made his own tequila, but you won’t need 100 million followers. You could have 10,000 Instagram followers, create your own beverage, and people print it at home.
Sam: Second, I would put this company on the list of companies you should work at to get rich. The Production Board — what’s the theory there? They have to produce real things for the world to work, and what if we could rethink the way production happens in different systems? How does quinoa get made? How do beverages get made? How does fertilizer get made? If they can use new technologies to improve the means of production, those are all big industries.
He’s a vegan, and he said something pretty controversial. He said he thinks the way people will look back on what we do with animals is worse than slavery. People got really mad at him. He was like, no — I’m not saying it’s worse than human slavery. I’m saying that the scale of mass murder that happens on an everyday basis is incomparable to anything else.
Shaan: I’m on board with that. The other day I ordered 15 hot wings and I was like, I just ate seven and a half chickens.