In today’s Extraordinary Business Book Club episode Robbie Kellman Baxter talks about writing The Membership Economy. I’m not going to talk about that today (though I will soon, believe me, because it’s FASCINATING); instead I just wanted to share with you one of her insights into the process of writing the book. In a blog post, she explains how she discovered that ‘the process of writing actually helps you think.’
I asked her about this in our interview…
AJ: How did writing help you think?
RKB: Yes, it’s almost magical… This was actually a tip from one of my writing coaches: write a question that’s vexing you and see what your mind tells you about it. So I would write something like ‘I don’t know the distinction between membership and subscription and people keep asking me’, and then I would write ‘And I think it’s because…’ and then I would sit for a moment, and then I would just free write, and at the end of it I’d have an answer.
AJ: It’s magical isn’t it?
RKB: Yes. Yes, so that’s been really helpful, so I still do that now when I have a problem and I don’t know the answer. I’ll open a clean document (because I type, I don’t hand write), and I’ll say ‘I want to be able to answer this question but I don’t know how, and the reason I don’t know how is because..’, and then I just go from there, and usually I come up with a much better way of framing the problem and sometimes an actual answer.
I think that’s probably one of the simplest yet most powerful tips ever shared on the show. And that’s saying something.