Writing to customers (marketing copy)

`1:15:19`

loud. Talk it out. Because it it takes the whole like I have to write something down pressure off of it and then it's just communicate it's pure communication at point and humans are very very good at just talking to each other so just talk it out that's what I'd say and like okay now like you can even just record that and like literally write it down word for word if you wanted to or just then I would say then I would say just say that then just write that. I'll often do this for myself like when I'm writing some like marketing copy for um and I want to talk about this actually in a second cuz I don't I don't like the current state of websites which is one of the reasons I write letters and we'll talk about this in a second. I'm going to inject an idea here to talk about but but um writing like a headline or something and and I'll and I'll I'll write this like

`1:16:05`

pithy clever headline or something I'm like and then I'm like would I ever say that out loud to anybody to describe Basecamp? And I'm like no I wouldn't so why would I say it here? And I find that like there's this there's this feeling of like writing clever copy and head and I love writing headlines I it's probably one of my second favorite things to do besides these letters I love it but it really has to be something I would say out loud otherwise it feels disingenuous. Yes. And then it's like this mark then you're in this marketing mode exercise where you're almost trying to impress yourself with your cleverness but you're just like not communicating anything in a in in a real way so I'll often just say like would I ever say this to anybody? Or or if I'm trying to describe Basecamp like how would I describe Basecamp and I would just say I'm like that's better than any I spent an hour trying to write

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out how to describe Basecamp versus I just said it in 12 seconds and like that was better than anything I've ever written basically. But you know this happens all the time it's so easy to fall into this trap but it's telling that you do too after all these years. The challenge is at work and you're kind of talking all your co-workers about about what's going on and then it's really musicians do this all the time where they start making music to impress each other or like think of your classic sort of film festival movie it's like made for other people who are interested in film and not just made for your average person who for you is just buying software. And this is a real trap that when you're writing marketing copy or trying to communicate anything about your product it's so easy to fall into. it's like it's the jargony side of it it's it's the it's the you're forgetting

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who you're writing this for. There's this sort of feeling that you're writing it for your company but you're writing it for customers and these people know basically nothing about you. And so you really have to keep saying would I say this to someone I met on the street If I'm in an Uber and someone like what do you do or what do you like how would I say it? And why is that inadequate like what why can't I just put that on on the page? Because there's there's a sense of like well it's just like it's words like it's not professional that's the other thing it's like not professional to describe your product the way you describe it to an Uber driver but but what why not? Like why not just get to the point? Right. And part of the problem is and this is where I want to get to the website thing website design

`1:18:26`

is part of the problem that websites have a there's many different ways to do them but they have this format where there's like blocks of text and a picture and another block of text and a block of color and there's like it's it's all it's all shattered. You know you can't read you don't read a website usually these days there's not a cohesive story that's being told there's like these little pieces and people are scrolling through them and you browse the web you don't read it in a sense. So I think people don't think about communicating which is why what's nice about writing a letter is if I have a letter format people are familiar with what a letter format looks like and and it's short enough that someone's going to read it or they're not. But if they start they're almost

`1:19:11`

certainly going to finish because it's not that long and hopefully I'm pulling them through and it's you're able to read a letter you're it's hard to read a website how should it be different? I like long-form like more of a long-form old-school like direct mail style letter kind of style. Uh which we've experimented with in the past and and I've tried to do that. Our current site's not quite like that, but there's longer paragraphs. People are used to reading things in a certain way. Human race has been reading in a certain It could be right to left, left to right, but it's top-down usually like in a way where there's a sentence and it makes a paragraph, there's a space, there's another We don't We know how to do that. We know how to consume that. Right? I think the more you write that way, the better off it's going to be. Imagine like reading a

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New York Times article that was just like Sometimes they do really beautiful visual articles, but if it wasn't an article format, it was like a web design page format of an article, you'd be like weird. I can't read this. I don't I can't absorb this. I don't know what's important. I don't know what in what order I'm supposed to really go through this. It'd be weird. So, I think that we do this on our websites because marketing. And then we're just kind of making it harder on ourselves. Yeah, what I'm taking away from you the past few minutes is like marketing professional and it's really just you are communicating to another human being and that human being is somebody like the Uber driver who maybe just started an LLC and they're trying to figure out place where am I going to how is my team going to communicate as we're going to do this? And

`1:20:44`

this comes down to people talking to people and there's all this fluff about business, the ties in the corporate world, all the corporate speak, but fundamentally it's just you're communicating to another human being and do not forget that. That's it. That's it. And I think business like the idea of wrapping it in business is what makes it hard and makes people stumble with it and it's funny like if business what what makes it hard actually is that there's money involved. If there's no money involved in a and this is like a hypothetical. If businesses didn't have money involved, they'd be more fun. People wouldn't take it so seriously. They wouldn't feel like they're so at risk all the time. And I try to think of it that way. I mean there's money of course, you got to like pay your bills and everything, but if this is more just like a fun thing to do and to make

`1:21:29`

stuff, you wouldn't try so hard and over try to have this message that you want to get out and and and and lather it in bad formats and buzzwords and jargon. You would just say the damn thing. Like you're having a conversation with somebody. We could not have written this conversation out. I mean wouldn't It would have been worse. Right? You know, this It's just talking it out is what makes it good. It makes it clear and direct, I hope. Mhm. Yeah. You've written four books. Yep. Getting Real, Rework, Remote, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. Walk me through those four books and why you chose to write those books at those specific moments in time. Okay, that's a big question. Um and I don't I don't know if I have a real answer, but I'll work it out, okay?

`1:22:15`

So, Getting Real was in the early days. I think we published that in 2006 maybe. I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was pretty early on. Um and it was it was like our back in the day this was basically our method for building software and it was written to an audience of software makers. Our future books are written to a more broad business audience. Initially, we didn't have broad business. We had a software maker audience. And so, we wanted to basically put our cookbook out there. This is how I think about it. Right. So, I think about um I'm inspired by chefs basically. Chefs, really good cooks. they have recipes which they follow and you would think if they were business, they would keep them close to their