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“Create like a child, edit like a scientist.”

This is a saying I’ve shared with founders over the last couple of months.

It’s from Tyler the Creator. An American rapper, singer, record producer, and fashion designer. I heard it one day and it stuck with me.

Founders have told me this saying (well, the context around it) has had an impact on how they write.

I wanted to share a use-case with you that I believe can help if you’re struggling with writing or creating content in general.

Let’s jump in.

“Create like a child, edit like a scientist.”

I will share this saying on calls with people but it normally comes with context, which is the following.

When I speak with founders who want to write more online and make a piece of content for the first time, there’s a high chance of them wondering what in the world are they going to talk about and how are they going to talk about it?

And yes, while it’s important they ask these questions and define those answers, it’s more important they…

Have fun with their writing…especially at first.

For example, I worked with this one founder who is super bright. He thought of a really cool idea which was an AI tool that gets embedded into franchises to help them better manage their leads to create more revenue.

He walked me through the process of it, how he & his co-founder thought of the idea, and what he believes it will do for franchises in the future. I’m very bullish on him and his POV.

We then talked about the importance of founder-led marketing because he needs to build more likeness and trust with his audience for his brand and his company.

His goal is to put out written content (since he doesn’t care for video) to attract more attention to himself and his product to create more inbound opportunities instead of solely relying on outbound marketing (cold calls, email outreach, etc.).

And while he could speak for hours on his product, how he was landing meetings, and could give me his pitch with his eyes closed, he had a tough time figuring out what in the world he was going to write about online.

So I started by interviewing him about his life story and what he wants from content.

I grabbed so much info from the interview. I learned about his entire life story from the minute he was born until the day we started working with one another. I extracted every story, his interests & passions, his goals with content, how he wants to write, what his voice is and so much more.

After the interview was done, I came up with content ideas and a strategy for posting over the next 30 days.

When we talked through it, he loved the direction, and now it was time for him to execute. Meaning, it was time for him to write content to post on LinkedIn.

But before he ever wrote a word for a post, I told him to not put too much pressure on the first go around because I’ve been there and it sucks.

I put way too much thought into my content early on where I tried to perfect the perfect post. Content became exhausting and frustrating for me, which led to an unhealthy relationship with content when I first started. I told him I didn’t want that for him. I wanted him to have a healthy relationship with content from day one.

So I told him he needs to write freely without any care in the world at first, and see where his mind and his writing takes him on a post. Then I said: what’s helped me in my writing process is the quote, “Create like a child, edit like a scientist.”

I perceive this saying as a way to remove the feeling of judgement from you or others with your work where you have fun to start and improve as time goes on.

When I told him this, I stressed the importance of the child-like creativity from the get-go. Like go into your writing and just run! Meaning write whatever comes to mind, don’t overthink it and get the words out of your head. The goal of this is to put less pressure on yourself, have fun with it and go whereever your writing takes you.

I then explained to him that good writing, which I’ve learned from a professor in writing (Prof Mike as some may remember), comes from the editing process.

While the first draft is the starting point to a piece of writing, the edits you make to it afterwards are what make it better and truly progress your writing forward.

Once he went through the process of writing like a child, we then jumped into the posts he drafted and edited them like a scientist. Dissecting how posts could be improved and why. Like we really dug into how to make it sound more interesting or how to make it sound more like the voice he was aiming for from what he said in the interview.

He told me going through this exercise gave him the confidence he needed in his writing. He’s now writing more than ever and posting consistently (3-4x) every week on LinkedIn.

I use this quote as both inspiration and as an exercise as I outlined.

It’s a way to give founders & execs more confidence in their writing right away because writing is not easy. And finding ways to help ease the pain makes all the difference early on, especially if you’re going after something you want to pursue for years to come.

Thank you for reading. I never take it for granted.

See you next Tuesday!

To building together,

Dan

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