Transcript 0:00 Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Honey and Hustle. Today is day three of 28 of our Black History Month Book Club. 0:09 Today, I'm reading a few excerpts from Smart Brevity, which was written by the co-creators of Axios and Politico. 0:17 For those unfamiliar or semi-familiar, Axios and Politico are newsrooms that present journalism across a variety of formats, primarily email and some video journalism as well. 0:29 Um, Axios, I think is such an interesting independent news journalism startup. 0:35 Uh, they really got into local newsletters and local journalism in a really interesting way, and I think that local newsletters, especially online newsletters primarily that aren't specifically journalism-focused, are in- starting to rise and becoming more popular day by day. 0:52 So it's interesting that they wrote this book, um, on Smart Brevity about how to be concise in your messaging, but also be effective. 1:01 This book was actually a recommendation from Colin of The Colin and Samir Show, which I love. 1:08 Um, so I had to get it 'cause I felt like it would make me a better newsletter writer, a better communicator, and those things are just two very important parts of running a business. 1:19 So I'm hopeful that the excerpts that I read today will be helpful for you. Yes, one of them will be email related. I am reading chapter 13, which is The Art of the Newsletter. 1:31 I'll also be reading chapters 21 and 22, titled How to Run a Company on Smart Brevity and Communicate Inclusively. Let's- 1:45 If you are a creator or entrepreneur who's been thinking about starting a newsletter or building a community around your work, I've got something for you. 1:53 I created a course called Community OS, and OS stands for operating system. It's my full system for writing consistently, growing your audience, and turning your community into revenue online and in real life. 2:08 And right now, you can preview a free lesson to see if it's right for you. No credit card, no catch, just a real look at what's inside. Head to communityox.xyz and grab your free lesson. 2:23 That's communityos.xyz, and I'll put the link in the show notes. All right, let's get into it. Again, The Art of the Newsletter. 2:35 There is no better way to communicate multiple things of importance and get people to pay attention than a smart, zippy newsletter all in smart brevity. Why it matters. 2:46 Newsletters are rocketing in popularity inside workplaces and journalism because they bring order and efficiency to complex businesses or topics. The New York Times alone offers more than 50 newsletters. 2:58 You can be a hero with your book club, sixth grade class, volunteer group, colleagues, and bosses by busting out your own newsletter if you do it correctly. 3:08 Between the lines, people hate memos, ignore reports, miss emails. We do, you do. A Smart Brevity newsletter, even for a small leadership team or group of friends, demands to be read and can even be a pleasure. 3:23 Sprinkle in a little candy, gifts, cartoons, personal news, photos from the team. It's a great way to get known and to instantly make a difference. 3:33 As someone who's trying to communicate, you suddenly have FOMO on your side. 3:38 Who wants to be the only person on the team who didn't see an announcement about a wedding that you placed at the end of your weekly in-house newsletter? Word problems. 3:47 Elizabeth Lewis, communications director for Austin, Texas Mayor Steve Adler, dreams of a world of short burst of information, but her boss is a word guy. 3:57 "The mayor prefers long form, but that isn't the world we're living in," she says. "We adopted Smart Brevity to help meet people where they are and how they consume information." 4:08 The mayor, at her urging, started using the Axios HQ system and Smart Brevity to connect with his constituents. 4:15 It was such a hit with the public that Lewis is now using it for a city council recap that goes to the media after each meeting. "Reporters want the shortest possible pitch," she said. 4:26 "That's how they consume information. That's how I consume information. I want to know, 'This is only going to take three minutes of my time.'" 4:34 Lewis gets lots of emails that are so dense and obtuse, she compares them to the word problems we used to get in elementary school. 4:41 "As both a writer and a reader," she says, "thank you, Smart Brevity, for helping me whittle this down." Lewis says she has a communications dream, a world that exclusively uses bullet points. 4:52 Funny, that's our fantasy, too. Tips and tricks. Number one, come up with a one or two word name for the newsletter. This should be punchy but clear and capture its purpose and spirit. Number two, don't waste time. 5:05 Be specific about how much time you're asking from the reader. We use a Smart Brevity count, but you can simply say how many words and how long to read. 5:13 The average person reads roughly 265 words per minute, the number we use in this book to calculate read time. Do your own math. Number three, go big. Write your first item as a one big thing. 5:26 Start with that in your headline to signal it's the single most important thing going on. Follow it with a tight, forceful headline. Example, one big thing, we're selling the company. Number four, don't be messy. 5:41 The first big mistake many people make is not obsessing about the font, text size, and layout to make sure the package is pleasing to the eye. Don't spray graffiti. 5:50 Number five, then write a few more items in Smart Brevity in order of importance. Part of the smart in Smart Brevity is in selection. 5:59 Make sure each item is truly essential, increasing the chances that readers will pay attention to the few things that really matter. 6:06 On the page adjacent to this, they give a breakdown of where each number aligns on an example of an Axios newsletter, which is really interesting. Number six, number your items and gut check the total length. 6:19 Knowing what's unfolding and bidding for your time eases a reader's mind. Say up top how many items will follow. Five to ten items is ideal. Anything longer is a book, not a newsletter. Trim it. 6:33 Anything longer than twelve hundred words total is too long. Under one thousand is ideal. Trim it. Number seven, grab me. Excite me. Choose a cool picture or image that's relevant. 6:45 Don't slap a panoramic of the Montana frontier on an item about selling the company. Number eight, brevity. Always. Keep each item to two hundred words tops. This shows respect for readers' time. 6:59 Our research shows a big drop-off after two hundred words. If necessary, provide easy links to reports or stories or websites to allow readers to go deeper. Number nine, make me smile. 7:10 End with something funny or personal. We use one fun thing or one smile to go in the headline. Number ten, simple graphs or pictures that make your point alone, pure gold. How to run a company on smart brevity. 7:24 This would be a stupid waste of time book if we didn't practice what we preach. We run our entire company on smart brevity. Why it matters. 7:33 It's central to our management and culture and a big reason we win awards for having an inclusive, happy, kick-ass workplace. Go deeper. 7:42 Axios is currently a more than five hundred person startup with a lively, hyper-ambitious, insanely transparent culture. 7:50 Every employee owns equity at Axios and will answer any question with two exceptions, how much someone makes and why someone left. We stay silent on these two out of respect for individual privacy. 8:03 Fun fact, we allow every employee to ask anything anonymously, absolutely anything, and read the question verbatim in a weekly meeting, no matter how blunt or rude, then answer us. Then answer it. 8:15 Yes, this can be awkward. A magical thing happens when you communicate crisply and transparently. You cut out all the employee gossip and pot stirring that come from being confused or kept in the dark. 8:27 We tell leaders and friends from other companies and in our personal lives that their right-hand person should be a communicator, not an operator or money whiz. 8:35 The public, employees, shareholders, investors, and friends all demand to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. Communications failures can cripple or confuse an entire organization. The big picture. 8:49 We're all communicators now. Never have humans talked, tweeted, or texted more words and found it more difficult to be heard. So you better be good at it or find someone who is. 9:01 Our staff, like all others, demands to know what we stand for and why we do the things we do. Most executives suck at providing these answers. 9:09 Remote and hybrid working make quick, clear communications exponentially more urgent and important. How can a salesperson working in Oshkosh, Wisconsin stay inspired and connected to bosses in New York City without it? 9:23 The Project Management Institute found that 30% of project failures stem from crappy communications. It is usually where things break down for us when we stumble. 9:33 Most people leaving their jobs point to feelings of disconnectedness and fading engagement, according to Edelman Polling. Axios in-house newsletters. Lights on from our revenue team. Cranes from Axios Local. 9:46 Click Clack from our web traffic, Click Clack from our web traffic guru. The funnel from our head of growth. The top line from our sales warriors. 9:55 Those are just a few of the newsletters regularly published by Axios execs using Axios HQ for their bosses, their teams, and their colleagues across the company. Why it matters. 10:06 This gives winners a forum for sharing best practices, encourages healthy competition among business units, and get rids, and gets rid of silos. Everyone has visibility on what everyone's up to. Between the lines. 10:20 For the co-founders, these updates are an early warning system for anyone's activities that might be veering away from company goals. 10:27 In one Sunday evening, we can be sure everyone's on track and spot pockets that need our attention, encouragement, or kudos. And here's our favorite part. 10:36 When we have one-on-one meetings with our leaders, we're already caught up. So we can use that time to talk through innovations, insights, bottlenecks, and disruptions. Zoom in. 10:47 Popular content in these updates includes most read newsletter subject lines, sneak peeks at new products, and revenue milestones. 10:54 As one fun thing at the end, people include what they're reading or listening to, pictures of their dogs, stats from a team member's marathons. 11:02 In these work from everywhere times, it's a new chance to get to know a colleague you may never meet in person. The takeaway. The communications crisis isn't confined to businesses or top leaders. 11:13 The more noise and distractions there are, the more precision and efficiency matter in being heard and remembered in all things. Just look at politics. Power no longer flows from position, seniority, or money. 11:26 It flows to those who master or game modern short burst communications on cable news or Twitter. 11:32 Teachers, preachers, small group leaders, everyone who communicates one-to-many face similar challenges in penetrating brains snapped around by quick twitch technology. This is another thing we learned the hard way. 11:46 At Politico in our early days, we scoffed at communications and culture and figured everything would be fine if people just did their jobs. We were dead wrong. 11:56 Our attrition rate was so high, The New Republic, a national magazine, wrote that our company was a punishing place to work. We had to change, starting with more transparent and regular conversations with the staff. 12:09 We are beating the dealer on this one now at Axios by communicating internally the way we communicate with readers. 12:14 It started with what we call Five Big Things, a weekly newsletter, all in smart brevity, that details in order of importance what we're thinking or doing. It is blunt Fun and essential. 12:25 Jim writes it every Sunday with a more than massive assist from our chief of staff, Kayla Brown, the soul of our enterprise. 12:32 She had already been doing a Friday update when she said we should all do our own communications this way, and so Five Big Things was born. 12:40 Roy had the genius idea of having every executive do the same thing for their team and share it with their fellow executives. Now, every week, every executive knows every big thing in order of importance. 12:52 We eliminated canned updates and meetings, and no one says, "I didn't know we were doing that." We just jump in and get to what's next. Stay informed. 13:00 By the time Jim sits down to write on Sunday, he knows everything important going on in the company. We joke that he could run the company from his fishing boat in Maine. 13:09 The reality, Kayla often does from her childhood home in Kerrville, Texas. But the biggest beneficiaries are the employees. We all hate to be out of the loop, baffled about direction, confused about purpose. 13:23 Now, our company leaders send us emails in Smart Brevity, just as the BP staff did after Jeff Morrill introduced it, and start their own newsletters to organize people around their passions. The rundown. 13:34 Matt Burns, who's worked in political and corporate communications for twenty years, said it's one of the great mysteries of our time. People's consumption habits have evolved, but communication hasn't. 13:45 Burns, head of communications at GRAIL, a Silicon Valley biotech company focused on early cancer detection, now with Cipher Medicine in Boston, said the big struggle is how to get and keep people's attention. 13:59 He set out to strangle one of the biggest internal time killers: ad hoc emails. 14:04 Burns started using our Axios HQ software while working at UnitedHealth Group and immediately made it the central part of his strategy when he jumped to GRAIL and then Cipher. 14:14 He needed to quickly and instantly align the scattered, speedy startups as they pounded out new products. Burns found that, especially for reaching the company's younger scientists, efficiency is paramount. 14:25 They open their email and take a quick look. Every minute counts in their work, Burns told us. They don't have time to spare to search for information to remain connected to the company's broader priorities and culture. 14:37 They need information delivered succinctly and predictably. To cut down on all those random emails at GRAIL, Burns started a weekly newsletter, The Rundown. It shows up like cough... Ah. 14:49 It shows up like clockwork in all seven hundred and fifty-plus employees' inboxes, just like the old afternoon or morning paper, according to Burns. The cheery opening, "It's Friday, GRAILers." 15:01 Each issue is about fourteen hundred words, a five-minute read. Now Burns' colleagues lobby him to get their items included. Countless random internal emails were often opened by fewer than one-third of recipients. 15:13 The more dependable, efficient newsletters have open rates of around ninety percent. A similar newsletter Burns established at Cipher already has open rates of over seventy-five percent after only a few months. 15:24 Jim's tips and tricks for CEOs and leaders. Number one, mission matters. Find ways to pull your items back to the soul and purpose of your organization. Why it matters is the perfect device. 15:37 It is impossible to overdose on this. Your mission begins to sink in only when you've annoyed yourself with repetition. Number two, tell a story. 15:46 If someone read all of your newsletters from the previous year, they should tell a clear, powerful story about what you're... They should tell a clear, powerful story about what you are doing, thinking, accomplishing. 15:58 Each item on each newsletter should do the same. People bore easily. They want an authentic story to explain why they work so hard and bother reading your words. 16:09 We give new employees a copy of the previous few months of Five Big Things so they can hit the ground running. Number three, don't be a fraud. Write with candor and authenticity. People aren't suckers. 16:21 They can sniff out a lawyered line or constipated corporate nonsense. Quit doing this ASAP. Number four, don't quit. You need to connect with your staff at least once a week. Resist the urge to blow off the newsletter. 16:35 If you don't want others to slack off, lead by example. Number five, be humble. If you're a CEO, leader, or manager, you're successful and hopefully smart, but not that smart. Show gratitude. Admit mistakes. 16:51 Poke fun at yourself. It frees those around you to stop acting like self-important corporate jackasses too. Number six, encourage copycats. 17:00 The magic really unfolds when those around you start communicating in the same style and similar cadence. 17:05 Once we realized Smart Brevity was a game changer within Axios as well as for our outside audience, we saw a spike in alignment among teams. 17:13 Everyone has fun telling their own story and knows what colleagues are up to throughout the company and around the country. Communicate inclusively. 17:22 If you're not communicating inclusively, you're not communicating effectively. Why it matters. 17:27 We're talking about being accessible, relatable, and credible with everyone in your audience, regardless of gender, race, color, religion, gender identity, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, or anything else. 17:42 The principles of Smart Brevity can help bridge differences in background and abilities. It's direct and stripped-down, accessible and non-divisive by design. 17:52 Executed carefully, it's a universal style of communication, naturally cleansing much of the cultural bias and complexity from the author. 18:01 It can make what matters most accessible to people with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, and those for whom English is a second language. 18:09 We live in a diverse country in a globalized time, so these principles are more important than ever. The way to win. Know you have blind spots, be aware of them, and take steps to be sure you're uplifting diverse voices. 18:22 Case in point, Axios was started by three white dudes. There are lots of life experiences we're missing and lots of perspectives we need to be very deliberate about seeking out. 18:33 At Axios, we made diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority from day one, both in hiring and in the people who are around our decision-making table. 18:42 Think about your own blind spots, which can be based on any of the considerations we mentioned here, or on geography, ideology, birthplace, income, or you can't list them all. 18:53 Then if you're writing something sensitive or overly complicated or anything really, run it by someone who's had different experiences than you or who has lived a different life than you have. 19:04 Here from the Axios newsroom are some best practices for inclusive writing. Be specific when writing about someone. Ask them how they identify. Asian American, Chinese American, et cetera. 19:17 When referring to Indigenous Americans, indicate their tribe when possible, and don't forget to confirm their preferred gender pronouns. Cut descriptors that may subtly reinforce stereotypes of people or communities. 19:29 Consult resources like, consult resources like the Conscious Style Guide to learn about language to avoid. 19:35 Dig deeper into photo choices to avoid facilitating tropes like illustrating stop Asian hate by showing Asian takeout places. This tip is gold. 19:43 Swap one identity for another, one race or ethnicity for another, one nationality for another, and see if the language and intention of the sentence remain non-judgmental. 19:55 Here's another area where smart brevity is your friend. We can often avoid pitfalls by simply omitting irrelevant information. 20:02 The Asian American Journalist Association tells us, "Is race, ethnicity, religion, national origin relevant?" 20:09 Using the descriptors when they're not relevant or without explaining their relevance perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Sharp, clear writing can go a long way in preventing offense. 20:19 When we read these guidelines from the National Center on Disability and Journalism, we realize these are just good rules for writing, period. 20:26 Refer to a disability only when it's relevant to the story, and when possible, confirm the diagnosis with a reputable source, such as a medical professional or other licensed professional. 20:37 When possible, ask sources how they would like to be described. 20:40 If the source is not available or unable to communicate, ask a trusted family member, advocate, medical professional, or relevant organization that represents people with disabilities. Go deeper. 20:52 The style guide of the National Association of Black Journalists is organized alphabetically to help with specific terms. 20:58 Just browsing the entries reminded us of how different people can hear words and phrases in very different ways. 21:04 The bottom line, offend me or confuse me and you've lost me, not just for this newsletter or presentation, but for good. 21:12 Case in point, one in five children report learning disabilities according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities. 21:19 If this holds true into adulthood, you are talking about sixty-five million Americans, so this could be twenty percent of your audience. Roy's tips and tricks. Number one, write in plain, clear language. 21:33 This allows people to better understand the message you are trying to share. It's about making sure words are crisp and clear and anyone can understand them. 21:41 Using this rule not only helps people with learning disabilities, but also helps people who speak and read English as a second language. Number two, use bullet points. 21:50 Business people love bullet points, and Roy has been using them to communicate clearly since business school. They force you to figure out the most important points and separate them into their components. 22:01 Too often, people mix several points together and lose their audience. Number three, keep it simple and short. Complexity confuses. Abstraction alienates. Length loses. 22:14 You can unite people around a common understanding of an important idea or update by writing in short, direct sentences and by losing the clever insiderisms or fancy clauses. 22:24 Roy recalls that in college and at work, I started to see I was very different from other people. Dyslexia caused great pain in my life, but it gave me a gift. 22:34 I had to problem solve, work harder, create systems to thrive. 22:38 Bottom line, we did not create Smart Brevity for people with learning or language challenges or to promote inclusivity per se, but watching it in action, it helps with all three. Roy's story. 22:50 The teachers in the town of Ilford in Essex... The teachers in the town of Ilford in Essex, England thought Roy was a problem child. They made him feel dumb and difficult. His spelling was often atrocious. 23:01 His grades sagged. His seventh grade English class at Ilford County High School for Boys was a real gut punch, one he would remember and recount in a speech for kids with learning disabilities three decades later. 23:15 He got back a paper with yet another lackluster grade filled with red lines and comments. "Short and not very sweet," the teacher scribbled. "Do you not own a dictionary?" He was not dumb. Roy was dyslexic. 23:29 Yes, you should feel like an ass if you're Roy's tea- [upbeat music] One quick thing before we continue. 23:37 If you're enjoying this conversation and you want more stories like this, more insights from creators and entrepreneurs who are building something real, then you need to check out my newsletter, Please Hustle Responsibly. 23:50 It goes out two to three times a week, and it's where I share creator profiles, business strategies from a bootstrap perspective, and practical advice for building community without burning out. 24:01 We've got over sixteen hundred subscribers, creators, entrepreneurs, and marketers who care about sustainable growth. You can sign up at pleasehustleresponsibly.com, and I'll drop the link in the show notes. 24:15 If this episode resonated with you, the newsletter will too. All right, let's get back to it. [upbeat music] You're reading this. 24:27 So those three chapters took a little longer than I thought, but I wanted to highlight them for a couple of reasons. 24:33 This is almost clearly aimed at people who are doing internal communications within their business, not necessarily, um, audience-facing writing. 24:44 Could be applied to audience-facing writing, obviously, as Axios is journalism read by people around the United States. 24:51 But in this one, they're specifically talking about people who are doing business communications and corporate communications. There are some interesting thoughts in what I read that I wanna kind of... 25:03 Some of it I wanna validate, some of it I want to push back on. Um, I think some of it comes across as like, write a first draft, then make it devoid of personality, then make it 30% shorter, and that's one way to do it. 25:16 [laughs] I think that there is a really interesting comment from, um, the host of Mixed Signals by Semafor, which is another journalism outlet, that said that Substacks are great to read, but every Substack he reads could be about 30% shorter, but that takes more time, that takes more work, that takes more experience. 25:36 And I want to emphasize that that is something that I agree with. I think that in writing a newsletter, the first couple, maybe in the first year, are not gonna be your best writing. 25:47 They're not gonna be Pulitzer Prize-worthy. 25:49 But they are a chance for you to get your thoughts idea, learn how to organize your thoughts, and then learn how to pare down those thoughts in a way that is more clear, that's easier to read, and that is more concise. 26:02 And the more concise something is, the more likely it is to get read in its entirety, which is also a really important aspect of communicating anything in an email newsletter. 26:13 When I go back and read some of my first articles on Substack, uh, the first year that I was writing Please Tell Us Responsibly, [laughs] some of them I don't even wanna share. 26:22 I think, you know, they're just not anywhere n- near as good as what I'm writing now, and maybe that's as it should be. You should want to get better with every iteration of a newsletter or something that you write. 26:34 But I also think it goes to show that a lot of what they're talking about, like starting with bullet points and just starting with one main idea, is very, very important. 26:44 Um, and when people come to me for writing advice on how to stay consistent with a newsletter, that's something that I also recommend is start as simple as you possibly can. Listicles are very popular for a reason. 26:58 They're easy to skim, they're easy to read, they're easy to digest. Ali Abdaal, the YouTuber, has famously said that all of his YouTube videos are listicles. It's just about the packaging of each listicle. 27:10 So it seems to follow that newsletters and a lot of other communications can follow that same premise. There are a lot of newsletters that also are just the principle of a weekly listicle. 27:24 James Clear, for example, has the 3-2-1 newsletter, which is three ideas, two quotes, and one question for the week. Uh, the CEO and founder of Ugmonk, uh, writes, I think it's maybe once a month. 27:38 I know it's not every week, but at least once a month he writes a newsletter of just five things that he's watching, reading, or listening to that he thinks we should check out. 27:46 And I'm sure you can think of other examples like that. Um, not every newsletter has to be like mine where I'm writing 27:54 750 to 2,000 words every couple of days that are heavily storytelling focused, sometimes listicles, sometimes more in-depth pieces. Um, that is just a style of writing that I've come up with and that fits my voice. 28:08 Um, and I think there is room for your voice, which doesn't really sound like they believe in this book. 28:14 Um, they sound like your personality should come from something personal, and while that is an aspect of personality, I do think there is something to having a private life and not feeling as though you need to share photos of your family or accomplishments to make people feel closer to you. 28:31 I think there's elements of your personality that just lean to who you are and what you're interested in that can be injected into writing that is concise but is also fun to read. If I'm just reading bullet points 28:45 that are not valuable, that are not fun, they're not entertaining, that don't stretch me in ways that make me want to come back each week and read the next thing, then that easily is gonna get, uh, axed from my weekly reading rotation. 29:00 Um, and so that's something to think about is in being concise and getting better as a writer and communicator, how can we also continue to inject our personality in a way that's meaningful but that doesn't detract from the main headline that we're writing about? 29:17 One line in here that I thought was really interesting was also the idea that you should encourage copycats. 29:24 I think they're saying it in a way that you should encourage people to write like you and to think like you and to tell stories the way you do. I look at encouraging copycats as if people aren't copying my ideas, 29:38 then I don't have good ideas, and that probably is the most scary thing to me as an entrepreneur is not having good ideas, not having, um, a space to be innovative, and not creating things that people want to iterate on and try to copy in their own way and in their own voice and own style. 29:58 Later in this series, I'll be reading a snippet from Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon that I think will maybe more accurately speak to this on how to steal from other people in a way that's ethical and hopefully in your own way. 30:14 Their last bullet point for tips and tricks for writing a newsletter was simple graphs or pictures that make your point alone are pure gold. I am a firm believer that emails are a visual medium. 30:27 I have long said that I'm a visual storyteller, and I think that emails are a part of that for me. 30:34 I think that emails should feel dynamic, they should feel bright, they should feel skimmable, but they should feel like an experience as you're going through the email and reading it. 30:44 Sometimes words aren't enough, and that's okay. 30:47 I want people to feel as though I'm bringing them along the journey with me throughout this story as I've researched it, as I've experienced it, and as I'm recounting it to them. 30:57 So in the spirit of smart brevity, that is all I have for you today. Thank you guys so much for listening, and I'll catch you guys in the next episode. 31:05 [outro music] If you've been getting value from Honey & Hustle, I need a quick favor. Would you take 30 seconds right now to leave a review? 31:15 Reviews help other people discover the show, and honestly, they help me know what's landing with you. Whether it's this episode or one from a few months ago that stuck with you, just share what made it worth your time. 31:27 You can leave a review wherever you're listening right now, and I appreciate it in advance. See you in the next episode. [outro music]
