Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q So you're working your dream job on Wall Street, making good money. What was your turning point that got you into writing online?
A I witnessed someone I worked with ask for permission to go to their son's Little League game, and he was probably 3738 years old, and his boss said no. So if I do everything right for 14 more years, I might be sitting here having to ask for permission to go to my kid's little league game. Uh oh. I gotta get out of here. I didn't quit right away, which I think is a big mistake a lot of people do, because then I would have been operating from a place of scarcity the entire time. Instead, I said, how can I look for ways to passively pursue new opportunities? I started a newsletter inside BlackRock as a way to Get my name out there more. After three or four months of doing that, I said, why am I capping myself with people working in this company when I could use social media and the internet, do the same thing and unlock millions of new eyeballs?
AI assessment note: “I witnessed someone I worked with ask for permission to go to their son's Little League game”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q What's the day in life like for you?
A So what I realized is either be in a full build mode, which is my monk mode, five AM wake up. I have everything scheduled down to the minute, working out twice a day, every single meal is taken care of in advance, going to bed at nine PM. I know exactly when that's going to start, when it's going to end so I can sprint very hard during it. And there's a single outcome we're trying to accomplish. That only happens like three or four times a year now. So if I'm not in a monk mode, I call it maintenance mode. I take it down a notch. I try to sleep for like nine hours. I spend more time on the beach and take my foot off the gas because that's where those ideas actually start to percolate for the next sprint.
AI assessment note: “either be in a full build mode, which is my monk mode, five AM wake up”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q I think when a lot of people think of writers, they think of, uh, not necessarily making a lot of money. You've been able to make a lot of money with writing. What's your recommendation for writers who want to make a lot of money?
A The fastest way to monetize is actually build the skill yourself and then Borrow someone else's audience and ghostwrite for them. That was how I earned my first 5000 dollars. I didn't have 20,000, a 100,000 Twitter followers at the time. I had a thousand, and I had one person reach out to me that I could charge 5000 dollars for. That's by far the most sustainable way too, because you can build an income stream that's five to 10 K a month. That doesn't take 40 hours to do. So you have enough to support yourself, and then you can go work on building your own audience on the side. So that's our advice to anyone who's looking to write as a career. It's figuring out first how to become a ghostwriter, And then you're operating from abundance of, I have enough money, I can then pursue my passion project or write about this topic that I know will take longer to monetize than, uh, starting right away trying to sell your own thing.
AI assessment note: “The fastest way to monetize is actually build the skill yourself and then Borrow someone”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q Tell me a little bit about your backstory and how do you get into entrepreneurship?
A So my backstory, you could trace back to when I was pretty young. I had a handful of obsessions, luckily hit an athletic streak, which allowed me to play football in college at Princeton, studied math and computer science there. And then, as a sophomore, I got an internship at BlackRock. I was like, wow, this is the coolest thing ever. This is a dream job. I'm gonna go work for a hedge fund. That led to taking that full-time job when I graduated. I was checking every single box. I got good grades. On track to be 22 years old, making a 180 grand in New York City. I'm like, I did everything right. Amazing. 18 months later, I was doing well at the job, but if I showed up at five a.m. and worked till eight p.m., I might make 10% more money, but if I worked as little as Possible. I would make the same amount, and that kind of messed with me because I couldn't apply the level of effort that I wanted to because my incentives weren't there. If I wanted to work harder, if I wanted to bring more intensity, nothing would happen, and that was a freak out moment where I said, time to go find something I could do that with.
AI assessment note: “that was a freak out moment where I said, time to go find something”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q What's your advice for becoming a good writer and a great writer?
A So I can help with becoming a good writer because that's all I consider myself, but the best writer I know is Nicholas Cole, who's my business partner. He wrote a book called The Art and Business of Online Writing, which is the first book I read on writing on the internet. I think it's the number one book Any person should read who's interested in writing on any kind of social platform. It's going to give you a full crash course of everything you need to know. So that'd be my first piece of advice is after this video, go on Amazon, check that book out. And then my second piece of advice would be always zoom out from the lens of it doesn't matter who you are, how much time you spend on it. The reader does not care about any of that. They care about what the writing can do for them. And if you write with that, what we call an empathetic lens, putting yourself in the reader's shoes and say, how can I create something that they're going to Stumble into with a problem. I'm going to solve their problem and I'm going to solve it as quickly as two minutes by the end of this Twitter thread or tweet or long form. It's really just solving people's problems and figuring out how you can do that in the most concise, clear, compelling way.
AI assessment note: “my first piece of advice is... And then my second piece of advice would be”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q So, now you got a little bit of popularity on Twitter. How do you actually turn this into something that makes money?
A The viral post was a breakdown of Balogy. The result of that was people who wanted me to write a thread on them were now reaching out to me saying, hey, I really like these worldview creation threads that you've been putting together. Would you be willing to do one for me? And I had someone reach out to me. He approached me, said, would you do this for me? I said, sure. He goes, okay, how much should I pay you? And here I am. I have no clue. I don't want to say something because I've been doing this for free. I don't want to say something that would get him to say no. So I'm like, look, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to charge. How about this? I'll go do this for you. You just let me know how valuable it is at the end of this, and you pay me that much. He's like, sure, great. Go for it. I was going to ask for 250 dollars, but again, I didn't ever say that. So I spent the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, just immersing myself, 15 hours, all the way down the rabbit hole, and I put together a really great product form. Emails me back, like, two days later, he's like, dude, this is amazing. Thank you so much. I can't wait to use all this. Can't wait to tell my friends, like, hey, you could go do this for them. Putting you in touch with my assistant, who will help coordinate payment. So his assistant emails me and says, hey, where can I pay you? I spun up a PayPal, sent her t…
AI assessment note: “people who wanted me to write a thread on them were now reaching out”
