This is the ‘Win with Stories’ newsletter. It’s focused on helping founders, entrepreneurs and business owners. Every week I send an email with a business or life message wrapped in a short story. I also share one actionable tip to help you enhance your business storytelling skills.
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Also, I am starting two 4-week online group coaching cohorts on next Wednesday, 6th September. They are called ‘Founder’s Pitch’ and ‘Ace Linkedin with Stories’. Interested? Fill this form to get further details. Storyco September Cohorts.
What’s common between Jeff Bezos, Paul Graham and Peter Thiel?
Archit Gupta is the cofounder and CEO of Clear(previously known as ‘Cleartax’).
On being asked about his role models, he said something interesting.
That it’s important to ‘learn from a distance’ from folks you will consider role models. Because successful people like the rest of us come with their cons as much as they possess their pros.
Archit also referred to lyrics by Kanye West about how ‘you get all the crazy’. That you cannot choose which crazy part you like about successful people and which ones you want to leave out.
Thankfully, this email and the words belong to me so I am going to focus only on one quality we can learn from Archit’s role models.
Archit has learnt a lot from prolific entrepreneurs and investors like Jeff Bezos, Paul Graham and Peter Thiel. Though he admits that all of their lessons are not relevant to the Indian context, they are valuable lessons nevertheless.
The common thing that Archit points out about these folks is that all of them are prolific writers and have shared their thinking through writing.
So he learns a lot from successful business leaders with a penchant for writing.
Extending on the idea, I feel that writing is not just a vehicle for successful folks to share their ideas.
In fact, writing is THE vehicle to come up with those ideas and structured thinking for life and business.
It is no coincidence that most successful people in history have been prolific writers.
Writing is the best way to become an articulate thinker.
Sample this.
For the past two weeks, I have been a bit out of sorts. My motivation has dipped, focus has diminished and routine has wavered.
It’s Friday, 25th August as I write this newsletter. Writing the newsletter on Fridays is unusual as I do this task on Wednesday.
But something told me that I needed to write. After two weeks of a break from deliberate writing the first few minutes were difficult. But as I wrote on, I felt a sensation run through my body which I can only describe as ‘bliss.
Now I know what I was missing in the last two weeks, writing deliberately.
To me writing = living with intent.
I encourage you to write at least 15 minutes everyday. Stuff that moves you. Stuff that you care about. Ideas that only you have.
Write deliberately. Write for yourself. Writing is the best way to have some control over this chaos called life.
One communication tip for today:
This deliberate writing I am talking about is not about writing emails, reports or power points at work.
It is about expressing your ideas and beliefs. It’s also about discovering your passions.
I get it, it might be difficult to carve out time and more importantly a reason to do this during your work day(at least on a daily basis).
That’s why I have an aid to help you stick to 20 minutes writing everyday.
Write out:
- Reflection of the day that went by. What made you happy, sad, angry or irritated
- Story-worthy moments. Learnings. Priorities.
- Gratitude: 5 things you were thankful for in the day
- Your schedule for the upcoming day.
I’ve been doing this for four years now. This habit has had the highest positive impact on my life of all other things that I follow.
Do this before you go to bed. Or like me, you can start your day with this. I write my journal anytime between 5.30 to 6.30 am 5-6 days a week.
If you’d like to get my daily journal format as a PDF so you can model yours on it, then just reply to this email. I will email the pdf template to you in no time.
Or enrol for my ‘Founder’s Pitch’ or ‘Ace Linkedin with Stories’ upcoming 4-week live online courses. They start next Wednesday, 6th September. These courses have a rating of 4.9/5 and are extremely useful for folks like you. You can get further details by filling this form: https://bit.ly/story-cohorts-sep-2023
But also feel free to write back to me with questions.
That’s it from me today. Hope you found this newsletter useful 🙂
Tell me one thing that will make you share this newsletter with friends and colleagues 🙂
If it’s already share-worthy, then please forward this to your network right away. Let’s all win with stories.
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