Steven Sinofsky recently tweeted out this thread where he talks about the virtues of writing in business. His argument: writing is thinking.

Writing is difficult. It takes a lot of time. I’ve been writing posts – albeit short ones – on this blog every day for almost 5 years and I can tell you that somedays it is downright painful. Somedays I ask myself: Would I be better served spending this time elsewhere?

It’s much easier to talk, throw down bullet points on a slide, or send out pithy emails. And because, today, we’re all so focused on “agility” and “execution”, it is easy to dismiss writing as being slow and cumbersome. 

But the act of writing is indeed thinking. To write about something you have to wade into the details and actually understand what you’re talking about. It’s far more nuanced.

One of Sinofsky’s arguments is that “execution is in a constant state of diverging as more expertise deals with more details that fewer people understand.” Business becomes “I just know.” Writing can fill in those missing parts.

He goes on to argue that agility is also not mutually exclusive with writing. In fact, when you write, clarify, and collaborate early on, overall execution speeds up because now people get the details and better understand the context.

I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but my Grade 4 English teacher used to make us write a daily journal. He would tell us that it didn’t matter what we wrote or how long it was, but we had to write something every day.

I did it and I enjoyed keeping those journals, but at the time I didn’t really appreciate was he was trying to get us to do. I do now.

Oscar Wilde once said:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I’m sure that all of you can think of someone right now who subscribes to the philosophy that any press is good press.

But there is something to be said about exposure. Almost every company on the planet wants it. They pay for it. They fight for it. It’s the lifeblood of business. If nobody knows who you are and what you do, you’re dead.

In my view, one of the best ways to gain exposure today is content marketing. Marketing sometimes has negative connotations, but content marketing is probably the least offensive varietal. It’s a soft, rather than hard, approach. It invites you in and tries to earn your trust, instead of hitting you over the head with an ask.

But at the same time, it’s a more difficult form of marketing. You have to be insightful. You have to be useful. And you have to try and create value for people on a regular basis. That’s easier said than done. I try and do that every day, but I don’t always succeed.

I say all this because we live in a content-driven world. In fact, this blog – despite it being a personal one – is a form of content marketing. I like how Fred Wilson responded on his blog to the criticism that too many entrepreneurs treat venture capital blogs as scripture:

I was out with for a bike ride the other night with a good friend of mine and we were talking about all of the creative and social media-based projects that we would like to do. Everything from a daily vlog to a regular podcast. Sadly there are only so many things one can focus on.

If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning of this year, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to write a book on “becoming a real estate developer.” I believe there’s a lot of interest in this topic. It’s the number one question I receive from readers: “How do I become a developer?”

But with everything that’s going on this year, I have decided to turn the research and writing I have done to date into a blog series that I’m calling BARED (Becoming A Real Estate Developer). I’ve interviewed a lot of fantastic people in the business and I want to get that information out there.

The focus of the series – which was the intent of the book – is to uncover the early decisions and first projects that these now successful developers made and took on. In other words, it’s less about their current successes and more about what they did to get there.

So no book. But expect to see the first BARED post very shortly. I think I’ll start with 3 posts and then gauge the response.

Steven Sinofsky recently tweeted out this thread where he talks about the virtues of writing in business. His argument: writing is thinking.

Writing is difficult. It takes a lot of time. I’ve been writing posts – albeit short ones – on this blog every day for almost 5 years and I can tell you that somedays it is downright painful. Somedays I ask myself: Would I be better served spending this time elsewhere?

It’s much easier to talk, throw down bullet points on a slide, or send out pithy emails. And because, today, we’re all so focused on “agility” and “execution”, it is easy to dismiss writing as being slow and cumbersome. 

But the act of writing is indeed thinking. To write about something you have to wade into the details and actually understand what you’re talking about. It’s far more nuanced.

One of Sinofsky’s arguments is that “execution is in a constant state of diverging as more expertise deals with more details that fewer people understand.” Business becomes “I just know.” Writing can fill in those missing parts.

He goes on to argue that agility is also not mutually exclusive with writing. In fact, when you write, clarify, and collaborate early on, overall execution speeds up because now people get the details and better understand the context.

I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but my Grade 4 English teacher used to make us write a daily journal. He would tell us that it didn’t matter what we wrote or how long it was, but we had to write something every day.

I did it and I enjoyed keeping those journals, but at the time I didn’t really appreciate was he was trying to get us to do. I do now.

Oscar Wilde once said:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I’m sure that all of you can think of someone right now who subscribes to the philosophy that any press is good press.

But there is something to be said about exposure. Almost every company on the planet wants it. They pay for it. They fight for it. It’s the lifeblood of business. If nobody knows who you are and what you do, you’re dead.

In my view, one of the best ways to gain exposure today is content marketing. Marketing sometimes has negative connotations, but content marketing is probably the least offensive varietal. It’s a soft, rather than hard, approach. It invites you in and tries to earn your trust, instead of hitting you over the head with an ask.

But at the same time, it’s a more difficult form of marketing. You have to be insightful. You have to be useful. And you have to try and create value for people on a regular basis. That’s easier said than done. I try and do that every day, but I don’t always succeed.

I say all this because we live in a content-driven world. In fact, this blog – despite it being a personal one – is a form of content marketing. I like how Fred Wilson responded on his blog to the criticism that too many entrepreneurs treat venture capital blogs as scripture:

I was out with for a bike ride the other night with a good friend of mine and we were talking about all of the creative and social media-based projects that we would like to do. Everything from a daily vlog to a regular podcast. Sadly there are only so many things one can focus on.

If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning of this year, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to write a book on “becoming a real estate developer.” I believe there’s a lot of interest in this topic. It’s the number one question I receive from readers: “How do I become a developer?”

But with everything that’s going on this year, I have decided to turn the research and writing I have done to date into a blog series that I’m calling BARED (Becoming A Real Estate Developer). I’ve interviewed a lot of fantastic people in the business and I want to get that information out there.

The focus of the series – which was the intent of the book – is to uncover the early decisions and first projects that these now successful developers made and took on. In other words, it’s less about their current successes and more about what they did to get there.

So no book. But expect to see the first BARED post very shortly. I think I’ll start with 3 posts and then gauge the response.