卢露·程·梅瑟维：你未曾意识需要的公关课

如果你试图用统计数据来对抗一个故事，那你注定会输。

If you're fighting a story with a statistic, you're always losing.

哇，这观点真有意思。

Wow. That's really interesting.

执笔起草条约初稿的人掌握着难以置信的权力。我认为每个人的思想深处都有一个基督教故事塑造的空洞。如果作为企业或个人，你能以这种方式构建利害关系，一切就会变得清晰明了，人们也会产生共鸣。

Whoever has the pen to write the first draft of the treaty is an incredibly powerful position. I think that every person's mind has a hole shaped in the story of Christianity. If you were able as a company or as a person to frame the stakes in that way, it becomes so clear and people resonate with it.

详细说说这个过程。

Walk me through that process.

不能使用专业术语。不能假定对方有背景知识。不能假设他们站在你这边。

You can't use jargon. You can't assume prior knowledge. You can't assume that they're on your side.

你为什么要这么做？

And why do you want that?

这个嘛

Well

那么企业术语究竟为何存在？它让我抓狂，这些公司毫无个性可言。人们不会那样说话。企业术语背后到底隐藏着什么？

So why in the world does corporate speak exist? It drives me crazy, and you have all these companies without personality. People don't talk like that. What is going on behind corporate speak?

这是风险最小化策略。如果你不过多展现个性，不说任何尖锐言论，所有内容都圆滑得像白开水，就很难惹上麻烦。我认为很多公司在错误的方向上优化——他们追求尽可能少惹麻烦，代价却是错失机遇。这个我们可以稍后再讨论。

It's risk minimization. If you're not putting too much personality, if you're not saying anything spiky, if everything is just really well rounded and kinda milk toast, it's hard to get in trouble for it. And so I think a lot of companies optimize for the wrong thing. They're optimizing for getting in as little trouble as possible, the trade off of which is that you miss opportunities. We can talk about that later.

这是一方面。另一方面是它存在已久，就像金字塔时代外星人带来的遗产，与我们如影随形。

But that's one thing. I think another thing is it's existed for so long. It's been with us. So aliens could have brought it at the time of the pyramids. It's it's just been with us forever.

我认为初入职场的人进入这个企业世界时，几乎是在扮演他们企业祖先的角色。当你担任某个职位时，这种返祖冲动会让你觉得自己必须那样说话。所以这本质上只是集体习惯的力量。

And I think people who enter new jobs enter the this sort of corporate world where they're almost cosplaying their corporate ancestors. So I think it's this sort of atavistic urge that flows through you when you assume a role that you think you have to talk that way. So I think it's really just collective force of habit.

作为作家，你如何避免这种情况？

So as a writer, how do you avoid it?

我的方法是大声朗读，你能感受到那种尴尬感席卷全身。如果是你永远不会说的话，你根本没法流畅念出来——你的身体会产生排斥反应。或者你可以试着对家人说，用正常语气念，就会发现这些话根本不像人话。

I do it by reading it out loud, and you can feel the cringe, like, surge through your body. If something if it's something that you would never say, then you you won't be able to say it out loud. Like, your body prevents you from doing it. Or you could say it to someone in your family. Just try to say it normally, and you'll feel that it doesn't actually come out of your mouth right.

顺带一提，这对提升写作整体水平也有帮助，因为你能感受到句子的韵律节奏。所以我总是建议把文字大声读出来。

It also helps, by the way, with just writing better in general because you can get a feel for the cadence, for just the the rhythm of the sentences. So I always recommend trying to say something out loud.

我觉得最困难的是，恰恰在你需要撰写声明的那几天，往往也是压力最大的日子。作为一名企业文案人员，当焦虑、紧张和情绪高涨时，你如何确保自己仍能保持理智和勤勉？

One thing that I feel like would be difficult is on the very days when you do need to write a statement, those are also the most stressful days. And so as a writer for a corporation, how do you make sure that you're being smart and diligent when anxiety, tension, emotions are high?

尽可能在尚未陷入混乱时就提前准备。当然，有些情况比如危机或重大公告，可能要到事发当天才能知晓细节。但有些要素你是清楚的——你知道受众是谁，明白优先级所在。

As much as possible, do it in advance when you're not in the fog of war. So, there are some things that you won't know until the day of like, let's say it's a crisis or an announcement. There are some things that you might not know until the moment that thing is happening, but there are some things that you do know. You know who your audience is. You know your priorities.

你清楚自己关注的焦点和他们的关切点。这样声明的主要支撑结构就已搭建好。等到那天来临，基本上就像填字游戏，只需补充细节信息、穿插些动词名词，但整体框架应该远在需要之前就准备妥当。

You know what you care about and what they care about. And so you've got the weight bearing pillars of your statement in place. And then when the day comes, it's basically like Mad Libs. You're filling in details, information, a few verbs and nouns here and there, but the contours of that should be ready well in advance of when you need it.

请详细说说发布声明的完整流程。我很想了解从写作到发布的每个步骤——当时谁在场？如何整合内容？怎样进行审核？

Walk me through what happens when there's a statement. I'd just love to hear the step by step and really focusing on the writing process. Who was in the room? How did it come together? How did you review it?

如何确定发布时间？之后怎样在社交媒体发布并回应公众反馈？请完整描述这个过程。

How did you know when to publish it? Then how did you share it on social and sort of respond to what people said? Just walk me through that process.

我认为需要事先明确各层级的决策权限才能快速行动。就像战场上，如果你纠结是否该开枪，总不能打电话回总部叫醒将军请示吧？

I think you wanna establish in advance who has what authority so that you can move quickly. So it's like in battle. If you are on a battlefield and you're thinking, should I shoot this guy? You don't call back to headquarters and wake up the general and ask. Right?

你要清楚自己在特定范围内的权限。以传播部门为例，如果明确某些事务可自主决断，就能迅速行动。而若事项上升到更高风险等级，也知道该找哪三位关键人物决策。这些流程都应该提前确立。

You know that you have authority within a certain sphere. And in any fast moving organization, so let's take a comms org, if you know that within this sphere, you just have discretion, then you can move quickly. And then if you know that if it rises to this other level of importance or high stakes, then these are the three people you need to talk to. You just know the process. So that's something you can establish in advance.

另一件你能做的事是建立某种原则，这样可以减少某些审批和微观管理的需要，因为人们清楚你的目标。他们大致了解你的方向，知道目标是什么，也明白受众是谁。因此，你选择信任的人，他们就能直接做决定。

And the other thing you can do is have a sort of doctrine where it takes out the need for some approvals in micromanaging because people know what you're trying to do. They know directionally what you're getting at. They know the goals. They know the audiences. And, therefore, you pick people you trust, and then they can just make that call.

所以我尽量精简需要参与决策和审批流程的人数。对于高风险事项，我们会提前明确具体负责人，这样就能迅速找到关键人物，快速推进并交付成果。

So I try to minimize who needs to be in the room and in the approval loop as much as possible. And then for the high stakes things, we try to know exactly who it is in advance so that it's just boom, boom, boom, go to those people and then ship it.

你在传达情感方面有什么方法论吗？我曾在一个设计项目启动时请教朋友，他说要给受众传递三种情绪。

Do you have ways of thinking about emotions that you try to convey? I once talked to a friend as I was embarking on a design project, and he said, give them three emotions.

我认为三种已经是极限了。人类是简单的动物，如果能聚焦于一两种情绪就很不错。所以三种情绪在我看来已是上限。如果读者能从你的文字中感受到一种主导情绪、一个核心信息，并产生你想号召他们行动的强烈冲动，那就是成功。

I think three is the absolute maximum. I think we're simple animals. And if we can focus on one emotion or two, that's pretty good. So three, I would consider really the upper end. If someone reads something that you write and they come away with a dominant emotion, dominant feeling, a dominant message of something you want them to know, and then maybe a dominant urge of something that they would like to do that you have called them to do, that's a win.

当你为你合作的公司构思时，会考虑赋予它们人格特质吗？

When you think of the companies you work for, do you think of giving them a personality?

会的，尽量这么做。

Yeah. Try to.

是吗？具体如何实现呢？

Yeah? How does that work?

试着赋予它们一些个性。你希望公司感觉像是客户的延伸。公司必须由人民组成、为人民服务。因此，你要从所服务的社区中招聘员工，让公司内部有来自客户群体的人，这样会让人感到熟悉。它应该让你感觉正在互动的公司在文化上与你有许多共同点，这让你觉得你们站在同一战线。

Try to give them some personality. You want the company to feel like it's an extension of its customers. The company has to be of the people by the people. And so you wanna hire from the community that it serves, have people inside the company that come from the customer base, and it should feel familiar. It should feel like you're interacting with a company that culturally has a lot in common with you, and that makes you feel like you're on the same side.

这会让你产生亲近感、熟悉感和喜爱感，这些都是传播职能需要构建的。所以，如果你能让公司给人一种熟悉的个性感，在文化上与客户自我认同的特质相匹配，那么你就成功了一半。

It makes you feel affinity, familiarity, liking, all of which are things that comms functions are tasked with building. And so if you can give the company a feeling of a familiar personality that culturally matches what the customer feels that they identify with, then you're halfway there.

不过，'由人民、为人民、属于人民'是非常互联网化的概念，对吧？这不是七十年代或八十年代的公关人员会说的话。

By the people, for the people, of the people is a very Internet notion, though. Right? That's not something that you would hear PR people in the seventies, the eighties say.

是的。这某种程度上是现代时代的产物，我们非常重视社区，思考很多自下而上的方式，事物从社区中自然涌现然后变得重要，而不是像以前那样只有三个电视频道，然后有人在上面发表观点，所有人被动接受这些想法。

Yeah. It is sort of an artifact of the modern modern age that we think a lot about community, and we think a lot of bottom up, where things happen organically from a community that then become important as opposed to before where we had three TV channels, and then someone said them, you know, someone said something on those TV channels, and then everybody received the idea.

我之前问过关于个性的问题。公司有灵魂吗？

I asked about personality earlier. Do companies have a soul?

从某种角度看，有个思想实验是这样的：如果你给十亿人每人一个手电筒，让他们通过开关灯光来交流，就像神经元突触传递信号那样，他们能否集体运作成一个大脑？能否共同拥有灵魂？是否会因此产生某种机器中的幽灵？

In one sense, there's a there's a thought experiment. It goes something like this. If you took a billion people and you gave each of them a flashlight that they could shine on and off to communicate with other people the same way that you would have synapses, Could they collectively function as a brain? Could they collectively have a soul? Would there be a ghost in the machine that sort of arises?

所以在精神层面上，没有。我认为人类的灵魂是神圣的，但公司可以表现得像拥有灵魂一样，因为氛围中会产生某种不可言喻的东西——当你置身其中时，你会明白哪些事公司会做或不会做，这些并没有明文规定，它就弥漫在空气中。

So spiritually, no. I think the human soul is a sacred thing, but I think a company can function like it has a soul because there becomes something ineffable in the atmosphere that once you enter into it, you understand that these are things that the company would do or wouldn't do, and it's not written down anywhere. It's just in in the air.

我认为很多信息是通过写作传达的，这就是为什么那些企业套话让我抓狂。它们毫无灵魂，机械呆板。

And I think a lot of that gets communicated through the writing, which is why the corporate speak just drives me crazy. It's it's this Soulless. Soulless, and it's robotic.

没错。而且从风险和努力的角度来看，复制那些公式比完全创新要容易得多。有些短语我们在企业环境中听过无数遍了。

Yeah. Exactly. And it's easier to copy those formulas than to do something entirely new, both from a risk perspective and from an effort perspective. There are phrases that we've heard in corporate settings a million times.

我很遗憾地通知您。

I regret to inform you that.

对，就是这样。这些人——我们为什么不说'人们'呢？他们就是普通人啊。这就像一种认知捷径，我们可以直接复制粘贴整个短语。

Yeah. Exactly. These individuals, like, why don't we just say people? They're people. And it's a cognitive shortcut where we can cut and paste an entire phrase.

这几乎就像编程一样。你不必从头开始编写所有代码。我们会拼凑其他信息片段，感觉这样就能完成大部分工作。而如果完全从零开始，风险更大，工作量也更多。

It's almost like if you're coding. You don't have to code everything from scratch. There are chunks of other messages that we just piece together, and it'll get us most of the way there is how it feels like. Whereas if we were to start from entirely from scratch, it would be more risky and take more work.

我发现你特别有趣的一点是：既有露露的个人风格，又有企业风格，还有两者的交集。我认为你在职业生涯中采取的这种策略和方式非常独特。

This one I find to be particularly interesting about you is that there is the lulu personality, and then there's the corporate personality, and then there's the intersection of both of those. And I think this is something very unique about the tact that you've taken for your career and your approach.

我试着更多地展现自己的个性，因为有时候你必须抓住听众的衣领，恳求他们信任你。很多时候你只能看着他们说：请相信我。但如果对方是有限责任公司或股份公司，他们不会买账。如果是个活生生的人，也许还有可能——虽然也不总是这样。

I try to expose my personality a little bit more, because there are times when you have to grab the lapels of the people you're talking to and just beg them to trust you. There are so many times when you just have to look at them and say, take my word for it. And they're not gonna do that if it's an LLC or a c corp. They might do it if it's a person. Not always.

要知道，我并非每次都能成功，过程也不总是愉快。但我认为这是唯一的机会。确切地说，建立信任的唯一方式就是尽可能展现脆弱、个性和绝对的诚实，因为人们不信任企业。这方面有数据支持，有调查为证。

You know, it's not that I'm successful every time, and it's not always pleasant. But I think it's the only shot. Literally, the only way to build trust is to have as much vulnerability and personality and honestly honesty as possible because people don't trust corporations. And there's data about this. There's surveys.

人们不信任机构。

People don't trust institutions.

是啊。但你就这么直接说出来了。

Yeah. But, like, you just throw it out.

我会直言不讳。

I'll throw it down.

对，对。这很酷。这是你非常鲜明的特质。你会以某种方式为自己辩护，我觉得很多其他人都不敢这么做。

Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. It's a very distinct thing about you. You'll stand up for yourself in a way that I think a lot of other people are afraid to.

也许这与冒险精神有关。我不清楚背后的原因。

And maybe that's a risk thing. I don't know what's behind that.

用核战略术语来说，我具备二次打击能力。如果有人刁难我、我的团队或公司，有时我会予以回应。原因在于博弈论中有个概念：在重复博弈中，你的行为模式会改变。若是单次博弈，可能会出现囚徒困境——互相揭发后各奔东西或入狱。

In nuclear parlance, I would say I have second strike capability. If someone is giving me or my people or my company a hard time, sometimes I will address that. And the reason is there's a there's a concept in game theory that if you're playing a game repeatedly, your behavior changes. If you're playing it once, you might have prisoner's dilemma. You tell on everybody, and then you go your separate ways or go to jail.

如果你要反复做这件事，那么最优行为被称为'两报还一报'。这不是'一报还一报'，但如果有人一再冒犯你，你就采取行动，这会改变他们未来的动机。我努力做到不让人们可以随意攻击、残忍、不诚实或不公平，并且无限期地逍遥法外。所以我没有时间、耐心或情感资源去处理每一个实例。但偶尔当情况特别恶劣且反复出现时，我觉得解决它有助于更好地塑造那些行为方式的人的动机。

If you're going to be doing it repeatedly, then the optimal behavior is something called tit for two tats. It's not tit for tat, But if someone crosses you and keeps crossing you, then you do something, and it changes their incentives for the future. I try to do that where people shouldn't be allowed to take cheap shots and be cruel or be dishonest or be unfair and get away with it indefinitely. So I don't have the time, patience, or emotional wherewithal to address every single instance. But every once in a while when it's particularly egregious and if it's recurring, then I feel like addressing it helps to better shape the incentives of people behaving that way.

所以通过'两报还一报'。这意味着很多时候你是在转过另一边脸，转过另一边脸，然后你在等待。然后一旦时机成熟，就是，嘿，我要揭露这个，别再惹我们了。

So by two tit for tat. So that means a lot of times you're you're sort of turning the other cheek, turning the other cheek, and then you're sort of waiting. And then once it's time to roll, it's it's, hey. I'm gonna expose this and and kinda don't mess with us.

是的。这也确保你不是出于情绪行事。我是说，'一报还一报'是情绪化的。你打我，我甚至不假思索就回击。'两报还一报'更像是，你知道你可以这样做。

Yeah. And that also ensures that you're not doing it from a place of emotion. I mean, tit for tat is emotion. You punch me, I punch you back before I even think about it. Tit for two tats is more, you know you could be doing this.

你知道你可以回应，但你没有。然后你找到合适的时机，以正确的方式回应。再次声明，我也会犯错。我并不总是完全按照我希望的方式去做。但我追求的是，当有人确实明显越界或反复这样做时，我可以从冷静和客观分析的角度来处理，而不是你打我，我就打你。

You know you could be responding, and you don't. And then you find the right time, and then you respond in the right way. Again, I'm fallible. I don't always do it exactly the way I'd hoped. But what I aim for is when someone has really clearly egregiously crossed the line or done it repeatedly, then I get to come at it from a place of calm and dispassionate analysis as opposed to you hit me, I'll hit you.

从这次对话中我得到的一点是感觉和情绪之间的区别。我在思考你的工作和写作时，曾将这两者混为一谈，我感觉你想在读者中创造感觉，但同时保持低情绪状态。我认为这是优秀写作艺术的很大一部分，就是你自己保持清醒状态，但仍然在页面上创造感觉，而不是让你当下的清醒显得写作枯燥。

One of the things I'm getting from this conversation so far is the difference between feeling and emotion. And I was sort of conflating both of those as I was thinking about your work and your writing, that I get the sense that you wanna create feelings in the readers, but also be in a low emotional state. And I think that this is a lot of the art of good writing, is being in a sober state yourself, but still creating a feeling on the page, and not having the sobriety of your you know, how you are in the moment come across as dry writing.

或者你把它封存起来，积累起来，退后一步，然后将其融入适合公众消费的东西中，而不是让它直接喷涌而出。

Or you bottle it, store it up, take a step back, and then mix it into something that is appropriate for public consumption as opposed to just letting it gush out.

媒体变得如此恶毒的背后是什么？我是说，这是你在Substack面临的问题，随着Substack越来越成功，有很多出版物说，哦，Substack在毁掉这个，Substack在毁掉那个，而实际上Substack对这些既得利益者构成了巨大威胁。所以，当然，他们有动机攻击Substack。

What's behind the way that the media's become so vicious? I mean, this is something that I know that you faced at Substack, whereas Substack became more successful. There were a lot of publications about, oh, Substack's ruining this, Substack's ruining that, when really Substack was such a threat to these to these incumbents. So, of course, they had an incentive to go after Substack.

我开始注意到这类现象的发生。这也是我加入Substack的部分原因。我感到有强烈的使命感驱使我参与其中。这是一个很棒的团队。在我加入时，这些不公正的攻击已经开始加剧。

I started seeing some of that happening. It's part of the reason that I joined Substack. I felt really compelled to help with that mission. It's a wonderful team. And so at the time that I joined, there were some of these unfair attacks that was starting to accelerate.

在这种情况下，我认为人们感受到某种威胁感。对很多人来说，这就像罗夏墨迹测验——它象征着某种对他们构成威胁的东西。

In that case, I think there was some feeling of being threatened. I think to people, it was like a Rorschach thing. It represented something that threatened them in some way.

请谈谈你对叛乱的研究如何影响了你对这些动态的看法。

Tell me, like, how your study of insurgency influenced the way that you see these dynamics.

是的。这正是我在研究生院研究的课题。在另一个平行人生里，我可能会进入这个领域。我经常在这项工作中思考反叛乱策略，因为如果你想传播某种信息，两者有很多共通之处——特别是当你处于某种劣势时，你不是既得利益者，你的信息不占主导地位，而你正试图赢得人心。

Yeah. This is what I studied in grad school. In an alternate life, I would have gone into this field instead. I think about counterinsurgency a lot in this work because there's a lot in common if you are trying to spread a message. And if you're especially if you're coming from behind in some way, you're not the incumbent or it's not the dominant message, and you're trying to take this and win over hearts and minds.

你需要从基层做起，可能得不到强大机构的支持。因此你的运作方式就是找到社群中的关键节点——类似于反叛乱策略中的村长、部落长老或宗教领袖。你需要让他们信服。从这个角度看，基督教可以说是最早的 insurgent（ insurgent原意为叛乱/革新）运动。

And you do it very grassroots, and you you might not have the support of the powerful institutions. And so the way you would need to operate is finding these centers of gravity in communities. So the equivalent for counterinsurgency might be village leaders, tribal elders, religious leaders. You want them to believe. So Christianity was sort of an original insurgent movement in a way.

他们当时是弱势方。这个微小理念从弹丸之地最终发展为全球性运动。信息传播遵循着同样的物理定律：找到影响力中心，获得他们的认同。

They were the underdogs. It spread from a tiny idea and a tiny place to really global movement. And it's the same sort of the same laws of physics of something spreading. You find the centers of influence. You get them to buy in.

由他们向外扩散。你要建立自己的传播网络，创造直接与受众对话的方式。你不能依赖现有权力中心传递信息——因为你对它们构成直接威胁，与它们的利益相悖，无论是政府还是媒体。所以我认为这其中有很多共通点，对初创企业尤其如此。

They spread it outwards from there. You create your own distribution networks. You create your own ways of speaking directly to your audience. You don't rely on the existing centers of power to carry your message because you are a direct threat to them and an opposition to what they want, whether that's the government, whether that's the media. And so I think there's a lot in common, especially for startups.

哇，这真的很有趣。好的。那真是太棒了。好的。

Wow. That's really interesting. Okay. So that's really good. Okay.

那么我们来谈谈基督教吧。让我们深入探讨一下，然后逐步解析这个答案，就像展开一朵花那样。跟我聊聊基督教及其作为反叛乱力量的角色。

So let's talk about Christianity. Let's go through that, and then we'll work our way through that answer and just sort of fold it open like a flower. So talk to me about Christianity and its role as a counterinsurgency.

是的。我认为基督教有两个方面特别引人入胜。首先，这是人类历史上最成功的信息传播案例之一，如果不是最成功的话。

Yeah. Well, there's two elements of Christianity that I think are really fascinating. First of all, this is one of the most successful message spreading successes in all of human history, if not the most successful

所以每家公司都需要12个门徒。

So every company needs 12 disciples.

你需要门徒。是的。我认为这包含两部分。一个是你要讲述的故事本身，另一个就是那句‘每个人心里都有一个上帝形状的空洞’的说法。

You need disciples. Yeah. So I think there there's two parts of it. One is the actual story that you're telling, and I think that this is the you know, the the saying of every person's heart has a god shaped hole?

是的，当然。

Yeah. Of course.

我认为每个人的思想中都有一个与基督教故事形状契合的空洞。这是我们最能共鸣的故事——事物本该是某种状态，这是理想的模样，但某些地方出了严重问题，导致我们陷入另一种境地。

I think that every person's mind has a hole shaped in the story of the story of Christianity. That that is the story that we resonate the best with, which is things were supposed to be a certain way. This is the ideal. Something went horribly wrong. Now we're in this other state instead.

但解决方案是存在的。要实现这个方案，你必须做这件事。一旦完成，解决方案就出现了，它会带你回到本该在的位置。我认为这种故事弧线——虽然存在不同的原型——但基督教的故事弧线，是无可匹敌的。这是有史以来最强大的故事。

But there's a solution. In order to achieve the solution, you have to do this thing. And once you do it, the solution is here, and the solution brings you back to where you were supposed to have been. And I think that arc of story there's there's different archetypes for this, but that arc of story, the story of Christianity, is one that just cannot be beat. It's the most powerful story of all time.

我认为，无论是公司还是个人，如果能以这种方式设定利害关系，一切就会变得清晰，人们也会产生共鸣。人们天生就对这种特定故事形态有接收机制。其次是故事的传播方式。我之前提到过：寻找影响力中心、不依赖现有权力结构、用人们理解的表达方式、通过他们喜欢的媒介、经由他们信任的人、并给出需要采取的明确行动。

And I think that if you were able as a company or as a person to frame the stakes in that way, it becomes so clear and people resonate with it. People just have receptors in the shape of that specific story. And then the second thing is the way that the story was spread. I touched on it before. Finding centers of influence, not relying on existing power structures, and speaking directly to people in ways that they understand in mediums that they like to use through people that they trust and with very clear actions that they need to take.

关于这些思想传播载体，我一直在思考它们的可识别性。比如当某人出书时，他们会去CNBC或《CBS今晨》节目。但如果你问这些作者，他们会说曝光效果有限，不过确实创造了某种共识认知。

With these distribution carriers for ideas, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is sort of, like, the legibility of those. Mhmm. And, like, when someone comes out with a book, they'll go on CNBC or they'll be on CBS this morning. And if you talk to those writers, they're like, yeah, it wasn't super impactful, but it still did something, and maybe that's creating a common knowledge. Oh, wow.

‘你上过CBS’可能带来光环。但像乔·罗根这样拥有庞大受众却被主流媒体低估的渠道，我认为很多营销传播优势恰恰存在于这些‘难以量化’、被低估的分发渠道中。

You were on CBS. But then there's other people like Joe Rogan, who giant audience, sort of underestimated by a lot of the mainstream media. And I feel like a lot of the marketing distribution advantages are in these illegible, more underestimated distribution channels.

是的。这里存在一个矩阵：触达人数与影响深度的权衡。通常触达面越广，信息就越需要稀释以迎合大众——光谱一端是像‘呼吸空气有益’这种全人类都能接受但毫无共鸣的内容，另一端则是为单一个体量身定制、直击灵魂的深度共鸣。

Yeah. There's a matrix of quantity versus depth of how many people you're reaching versus how deeply you're reaching those people and how deeply you're resonating. I think in general, if you're reaching more and more people and more of a mass audience, you're watering down your message so that you're appealing moderately to a bunch of people versus so on on one end of the spectrum is something that appeals to every person on earth where breathing air is good, but has very, very, very low resonance or meaning. The other is something that appeals to one person, and it's absolutely tailored for them. You're seeing into their soul.

那种‘你就是命中注定’的极致个性化内容，虽然意义深远但只能影响一个人。企业和个人都需要选择在这个光谱中的定位。有时你会主动选择浅层影响更多人，因为需要他们做的事或知道的信息本身就很简单——这就像数学公式。

You're you're you're gonna marry them. And it's incredibly deep and meaningful, but it's only one person. I think people have to choose, and companies need to choose where you're going to be along the spectrum. There are times when you're going to consciously say, I will appeal in a less meaningful way to a lot of people because the thing I need them to do or know is so simple or small that it doesn't take a lot of depth. It's almost like a mathematical formula.

你需要明确：要多少人执行多大规模的行动才能成功。如果要的是大众市场的小行动（比如看《早安美国》就能达到），就采用广泛传播；如果需要某人投资百万美元，就该亲自致电三个人，并为每个关系投入六个月深耕。

You know the thing that you need people to do, and you know how many people need to do it for you to be successful. And then you think about how big is that thing I need them to do, and how do I get to that number? So then you have your matrix and you decide. So if you need to go mass market because the ask isn't very big, you go on a Good Morning America or something. Or if you need them to do something really big, you need them to invest a million dollars in your company, then you call, like, three people personally, and you invest six months in that relationship for each of them.

对吧？所以这是一个尺度问题。

Right? So it's it's a scale.

是的。另一个是驱动口号，甚至包括口号内部的层次深度。我想到的例子是贝佐斯的'以客户为中心'。一遍又一遍地强调这个。

Yeah. The other thing is driving slogans, and then even like the layers of depth within a slogan. So the example that's coming to mind for me is Bezos, focus on the customer. Focus on the customer. Focus on the customer.

不断重复这句话。但在他的股东信和演讲中，这句话有各种不同的解读方式。'第一天'这个口号也是如此。'第一天'只是个口号，'第二天'则是停滞，接着是失去相关性，然后慢慢衰落。

Just saying that over and over again. But then there is there are all the different ways of interpreting that in his shareholder letters and his speeches. See the same thing with day one. Day one is just a slogan. Day two is stasis, followed by relevance, followed by slow decline.

这类内容。他总是用同样的方式说，就像他写的那样。昨天我看他的演讲，他在亚马逊工作的大楼叫什么？'第一天'。而且每封股东信末尾都链接到1997年左右的第一封'第一天'股东信。

All that sort of stuff. He says it in the same way all the time, exactly how he writes it. I was watching him give this talk yesterday, and then the building that he worked in an Amazon, guess what it was called? Day one. And then he has the link to the very first day one shareholder letter from, like, 1997 or something at the bottom of every letter.

那么你如何看待驱动口号？因为我认为口号是两者的有趣结合，它可以始于大众市场，但会随时间扩展。

And so how do you think about driving slogans? Because I think slogans are this really interesting blend of the two, where it can start mass market, but it can sort of expand over time.

是的。这也与基督教有关，十诫，众所周知的圣经经文。这些特定暗语有两个作用：一是被不断重复直到获得近乎宗教意义的超然地位，二是容易记住。记住得越多，含义就越丰富。

Yeah. This relates to Christianity too, the 10 commandments, the bible verses that everybody knows. There are these certain shibboleths that they do two things. One is they get they get repeated over and over and over over until they take on this sort of outsized, almost religious meaning, and they're easy to remember. And the more you remember them, the more meaning they take.

另外，有个有趣的发现：如果押韵，人们会更信服。

And, also, a bonus fun fact is if they rhyme, people are more convinced.

当然。

Of course.

对吧？但他们做的第二件事是，了解这些标记会让你被视为某个群体的一员，这以某种方式将这家公司或理念融入你的身份中，显然这让它更具粘性。

Right? But the the second thing that they do is that they knowing them marks you as a member of a tribe, which takes this company or idea and embeds it into your identity in a way, And that makes it obviously much more sticky.

是的。它们不仅押韵，还有类似a a b b a的结构。比如‘不要问国家能为你做什么，而要问你能为国家做什么’。这样的句子会让人产生一种大脑高潮，你会觉得‘哇’。然后在那种‘天哪’的情绪中，有种说不出的感觉。

Yeah. It's not only do they rhyme, but also like a a b b a structure. So ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you. There's a there's like a brain orgasm that comes from a sentence like that where you're like, wow. And then in that emotion of, oh my goodness, there's I don't know.

不知怎的，真理就编码在其中了。

Somehow truth is encoded in that or something.

是啊，是啊。我好奇实际的机制是什么，但这非常有趣。有个趣闻，他们问过肯尼迪的演讲稿撰写人，在肯尼迪去世后，是否是他写的那句话，而他——

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what the actual mechanism is, but it is very interesting. A fun fact, they asked JFK speech writer after JFK had died if he had written that line, and he

说的是‘不要问’。真的吗？嗯，我不意外。给我讲讲行为心理学吧。

said ask not. Really? Yeah. I'm not surprised. Tell me about behavioral psychology.

比如，我看到有反叛行为心理学，这两者在你写作中结合起来了。

Like, I see there's insurgency, behavioral psychology, and both of those two things coming together in your writing.

是的。我认为存在一种破解沟通的方式，不仅仅是语言本身，而是试图以一种善意的方式与人类心理互动——你知道的，用这种方式行善而非作恶。我曾在一个行为心理学实验室工作过很短时间，我们在那里进行实验和研究。实际上，这与博弈论有很多交叉点。最近我在想，我应该写写这个。

Yeah. I think that there's a way to hack communications where it's not just words, but what you're trying to do is you're trying to interact with human psychology in a benign you know, use this for good, not for evil, but in a in a benign way. So I worked for a pretty short period of time in a behavioral psychology lab where we would do experiments and studies. And it interacts with with game theory quite a bit, actually. So recently, I was thinking about I should write about this.

这就是大卫定律。'我应该写写这个'意味着我必须强迫你写出来，三周后我会跟进。但这就是大卫定律。我通过人们在我面前说这句话的频率，或者我对别人说这句话的次数来衡量我的人生。

This is David's law. I should write about this means I have to force you to write about it, and I'll follow-up with you in three weeks. But this is David's law. I measure my life by how many times people say that around me or by how often I say it to others.

哦，好吧。这是一次。是的，可能还会有更多。但最近我重新审视了这个'最后通牒游戏'——就是你给我一个提议。

Oh, okay. That's one. Yes. There's probably gonna be more. But recently, was revisiting this ultimatum game, which is you make me an offer.

如果我接受，就按提议执行；如果我拒绝，我们双方都得不到任何东西。假设你有100美元，你打算给我70，自己留30。我可以选择接受或拒绝。不同文化背景下，人们的行为方式也不同。

If I accept it, it happens. If I reject it, both of us get nothing. So let's say you have a $100, you're gonna offer me 70 and you 30. I get to say yes or no. In different cultures, people behave differently.

所以如果是在不同文化中，你给我30美元自己留70，我的反应可能截然不同——可能感到被冒犯而非感激。但最关键的影响因素是你如何表述这个提议。如果你说'这是给你的'，和说'这是从总额中拿走的'，效果完全不同。比如有100枚金币，你要给我60枚。

So in different cultures, if you were to give me $30.70, I might respond differently. I might be offended versus grateful. But what has a very, very big impact is how you frame your offer. If you frame it as you're giving me something, that's different from if you frame it as you're taking something from the pot. So let's say you have a 100 gold coins, you're gonna give me 60.

如果你说'这是我给你的'，而不是'我自己留40枚'，或者说'我们按60:40分配'，这会极大影响我的接受意愿和对你的看法。再比如，你把这个场景描述为'我们偶然发现了这桶金币来分配'，与'这是我们应得的'或'这是你挣来的'——所有这些表述方式虽然都符合事实，却会产生巨大影响，甚至可能完全改变我的决定和对你的感受。所以从商业或实用角度来说，无论是推销课程、书籍、博客文章，还是换取对方十分钟的注意力，你都是在提出一个要约。而这个要约的表述方式和对方的感知，不仅影响他们的决定，更塑造他们对你的认知。

If you say, I'm giving this to you versus I'm keeping 40 versus we're going to split it 50 $60.40, that has a huge impact on whether I accept and how I feel about you. Then if you frame this as we found this pot of gold, it's fortuitous, we're gonna split it, versus we've earned it versus you earned it. You you know, all of that framing, all of which can be factually true, has a huge impact, including flipping my decision on what I choose to do and how I feel about you. And so in in a commercial sense or in a very pragmatic sense, if you're trying to get someone to buy your course, buy your book, buy reading your blog post, by paying with ten minutes of their attention, you're making them an offer. And how you frame that offer and how they perceive it, it influences not only their decision, but how they actually think of you.

我一直很喜欢这句话：一盎司的情感抵得上一磅的性。

I've always liked the line, an ounce of emotion is worth a pound of sex.

是的。我同意这一点。

Yeah. I agree with that.

我认为这正是你所从事的这种布道艺术的精髓所在——如何选择正确的口号？如何设计恰当的表述？我特别喜欢你提到的‘如何打磨信息，使其恰好填补人们脑海中的空缺’，这完美诠释了你的工作目标。

And I think that that's so much of the art of of even this sort of evangelism that I think you're working on, which is, you know, what are the right slogans? What are the right lines? And I love what you said about how do I craft the message so that it just like fits into the hole that people have in their heads? I think that's a beautiful way of articulating what you're trying to do.

我正在倡导这种方法。我称之为‘文化敏感带’。人们天生存在文化敏感带，你无法改变它们的本质。所以你必须将想表达的内容塑造成与之契合的形态。

I'm evangelizing for this approach. So I call it cultural erogenous zones. It's that people have cultural erogenous zones, and you're not gonna change what they are. They just are what they are. And so you're gonna have to take the thing you wanna say and either form it into that shape.

如果无法完全契合，你就需要一个接口（API）。需要在你的立场与他们之间搭建桥梁，因为传播者的职责是主动靠近受众——在信息传播领域，不存在‘守株待兔’这回事。

Or if you can't get into that shape, you're gonna need an API. You're gonna need some sort of bridge between where you are and where they are, because your job is to go to them. It's not building they will come when it comes to messages.

我认为写作的艺术在于懂得何时顺应现实，何时推动变革。这是门精妙的技艺，而这正是你试图实现的——无论是企业层面还是个人层面，如何点燃文化火花。

Well, I think this the art of writing is knowing where to accept the world as it is and where to push on the world in order to change it. And it's a subtle art, but I think that's a lot of what you're trying to do from a company to an individual in terms of how to spark something in the culture.

没错。这一点至关重要。我并非主张只表达人们已有共鸣的内容——那还有什么意义？我坚决支持输出新锐、大胆的观点。只要是你的信念所在，即便引发争议也无妨。

Yeah. And so this is really important. I'm not trying to say that you should only write and say things that people already resonate with because then what's the point? I strongly advocate for putting out new ideas, bold ideas. If it's controversial, then so be it if you believe in it.

如果是前所未闻的全新概念，那更好。但要让其扎根，仍必须找到可依附的受体。这就是为什么我说要构建接口，要提供桥梁——你得先给他们‘入门毒品’（指吸引受众的切入点）。

And if it's something that people have never heard of before, never thought of before, great. But in order to get it to stick, you still have to get it to attach to the to the receptor. And that's where that's where I'm saying build an API. That's where I'm saying give them a bridge. You have to give them the gateway drug.

你必须给他们一个过渡期，让他们能够接收、理解，并为你要传播的新想法腾出时间和空间。举个例子，这是我最喜欢的例子之一，实际上来自卡玛拉·哈里斯。我不在乎人们对她的政治观点或沟通方式有何不同看法，那些都是合理的。

You have to give them the transition so that they can receive and understand and make time and make space for this new idea that you're trying to spread. Here's an example. It's one of my favorite examples, and it actually comes from Kamala Harris. I don't care if people have different political opinions about her or her communication. That's that's all valid.

但这里有一个具体例子：当她竞选参议员时，她说如果你关心国防——很多人确实关心国防——但你不关心中学教育，或许没有足够的人关心K-12教育体系。正确的信息应该是：你知道吗？在这个国家，如果一个人的阅读水平达不到十年级标准，就无法参军。因为理解军事手册需要十年级的阅读能力。所以，如果你想为未来的常备军建立人才输送渠道，就必须确保我们教会十年级学生阅读，而不是让高中毕业生连基本阅读能力都不具备。这就是一个针对‘接收者’的例子——他们原本只考虑国防，不考虑教育，而你正在搭建桥梁或‘入门诱饵’，引导他们思考你希望他们关注的事情。

But here's one specific example of when she was running for senate, she said that if you care about national defense, and a lot of people care about national defense, but you don't care about middle school education and maybe not enough people care about k through 12 education, The right message would be, did you know that people in this country can't join the army unless they can read at a tenth grade level? Because a tenth grade reading level is required to understand the field manual. And so if you want there to be a pipeline for a standing army in the future, you need to make sure that we're educating tenth graders how to read and not graduating people from high school who can't. So that's an example of the receptor where they're thinking about national defense. They're not thinking about education, and you are creating the bridge or the gateway drug for them to think about the thing that you wanna want them to think about.

就像《最后生还者》，我之前用过这个例子——人们对电视剧产生了兴趣，现在又开始购买游戏。游戏重新登上了畅销榜。因为电视剧激发了你的兴趣，既然你感兴趣了，就会对这个衍生领域产生好奇，于是继续深入探索下去。

So like The Last of Us, I've I've used this example before, but people are interested in the TV show, and now they're buying the games. The games are back on on at the top of the charts. And it's because the TV show got you interested. And now that you're interested, you're interested in this adjacent thing. You just continue down the journey.

让我们聊聊你的写作过程。听说你在睡前写作，大脑更放松些？能说说这是怎么回事吗？

Let's transition into your writing process. So I guess you write before bed, brain's a little looser. What's going on there?

我总是在快睡着的时候写作。

I write when I'm about to fall asleep.

你是指像萨尔瓦多·达利那种方式吗？比如躺在沙发上拿着苹果，苹果掉下来时‘哇，我的潜意识在活动，我要把这一切画下来’？还是说‘我累了，坐在床上，正是这种疲惫状态让我文思泉涌’？

By that, do mean like the Salvador Dali thing, where you're like on the couch, you have an apple, the apple falls, it's like, woah, my subconscious is going on, I'm gonna paint all that? Or is it like, I'm getting tired, I'm sitting in bed, and there's something about that state of being tired that I'm really good at writing then.

可能只是无奈之举，因为这是我唯一能静下心来思考的时间。我有三个孩子，白天工作很忙。晚上万籁俱寂时——我总是家里最晚上床的那个——才能真正静下来思考。不过我也发现，对我而言，微微困倦的状态确实有积极作用，能让思绪自由飘荡。

It might be a cope because it's the only time I have time to sit down and be quiet. I have three kids. I have a busy day job. And so at night when it's quiet, I'm the last to go to bed always, then I actually am able to get still and think. But I also think that for me, there's a positive effect of being a little drowsy and kinda letting your thoughts wander.

我确实认为我的大脑如我所说更为松弛。这是个糟糕的习惯，本不该成为你的一部分。

I do think that my brain is looser as I described. So I this is a terrible habit. This is not supposed to be part of your your

你的技能库。

Your repertoire.

睡眠堆栈。对。但我带着手机，开着飞行模式。在黑暗中记录想法，等天亮后再评估它们。

Sleep stack. Yeah. But I I have my phone. It's on airplane mode. And I'm there, like, in the dark putting down my ideas, and then I'll evaluate them in daylight.

据说古希腊人会就每件事辩论两次——醉酒时一次，清醒时一次。若两次都合理，才算好主意。我也这样做：睡前半梦半醒时，随手记下闪现的念头。

So apparently, what I've read is that the ancient Greeks used to debate everything twice. They would do it drunk and they would do it sober. And if it made sense both times, it's a decent idea. So I I I do that. Before I go to sleep in my half awake fugue state, I jot down ideas that come to mind.

我记下可能无意义的词句。这是跳出框架的捷径，因为一半都是胡言乱语。但次日清醒时审视，就能过滤掉不再合理的部分。

I jot down words that might not make sense. It's a very easy way to think outside the box because half of it is gibberish. But then the next day, you look at it in the harsh light of day, and then you filter out what doesn't make sense anymore.

你经常在手机上写东西？这是怎么回事？

And you're writing on your phone a lot. What's going on there?

我曾尝试手写，因为那让你感觉像海明威，像个真正的作家。

I've tried to do it in longhand because it makes you feel like Hemingway. It makes you feel like a real writer.

哦，是的。它

Oh, yeah. It

确实如此。但对我来说效果不佳，原因有二：一是我的字迹太潦草，有时事后连自己都认不出来；二是我经常需要剪切、粘贴和调整内容顺序，结果弄得一团糟。

does. Doesn't work as well for me because, one, my handwriting is so ugly, I sometimes can't read it later on. But, two, I do a lot of cutting and pasting and moving things around, and it just gets messy.

为什么剪切、粘贴、调整顺序这些操作是你特别需要频繁进行的？

Why is cutting, pasting, moving things around, why is that something that you uniquely do?

我非常注重每个内容的叙事弧线。虽然并非总能成功，但无论是每条推文、每封长邮件、每篇博客还是每份声明，我始终追求的是：故事的脉络是什么？从哪里开始？在哪里结束？如果调换某些内容的顺序，整个故事的性质就会彻底改变。

I care very much about the arc of the story with everything. Again, I don't always succeed, but what I'm always going for with every tweet, with every long email, with every blog post that we do, with every statement is what is the arc of the story? Where is it beginning? Where is it ending? And if you flip the order of some things, you completely change the kind of story it is.

能否以你写过的某篇文章为例，具体说明这个过程是怎样的？

Walk me through something you've written and what that actually looks like. Make that concrete for me.

我曾写过一篇关于传播者为何应该承担更多风险的文章。当时这个想法突然浮现，我瞬间产生了强烈共鸣。就像之前说的，我不愿草草记下就发表，而是想连同当时的情绪一起记录下来，等冷静后再重新审视。于是我写下了这篇杂乱但充满激情的短文，鼓励传播者勇于冒险——因为最大的危险恰恰是不敢冒险。

I wrote a piece about why communicators should take more risks. And it's it was one of these things where the thought came to me, and then I felt very strongly about it in the moment. And it's when I said earlier, I didn't wanna just jot it down and hit publish. I wanted to capture it along with the emotion and then look at it again in the sober light of day. And so I wrote this very messy little rant about encouraging communicators to to take more risks because the most dangerous thing is not taking risks.

你开始犯的是不作为的错误，而非作为的错误。特别是在初创企业工作，或试图推动新想法时，前者造成的后果要严重得多。最初稿的文笔很糟，某些部分情绪过载，结构也混乱。之后几天我反复修改，重新调整了部分内容的顺序。

You start making mistakes of omission instead of commission, which, especially if you're working at a startup, especially if you're trying to advance some new idea, is much, much worse. And so I had this all written out in very just ugly form. The prose was bad. There was too much emotion at parts. And then I look at it again over the next few days, reorder some things.

我常陷入的一个误区是对某些措辞或想法过于执着。我可能会特别钟爱某个句子，然后忍不住围绕这个句子构建整篇文章。

And one trap that I fall into is I get very precious with some wording or some ideas. I might get really attached to a sentence, and the temptation is to form an entire essay around that sentence.

噢，我从来不会那样。我绝对没干过这种事。

Oh, I've never done that. I've never done that.

与其舍弃这个绝妙的句子，我宁愿扭曲整篇文章的意义——这实在太难割舍了。

Rather than sacrifice this one beautiful sentence, I'll change the whole It's meaning of so hard.

我的做法是在文档底部设个废料堆，把那些句子丢进去。只要不按删除键，只是移到下面。虽然再也不会看，但这样心里就好受些。

What I do is I have a a scrap scrap heap at the bottom where I keep those senses, and somehow not pressing delete, just moving it to the bottom. I never look at it again, but somehow it saves my heart.

或许它们还能被用于其他作品片段中。你知道吗？也许它们会在别处重获新生。但这确实很难做到。所以我需要几天时间来与那个句子保持足够距离，才能不那么痛苦地删掉它。

And then maybe they can be pressed into service for some other piece. You know? Maybe they'll live again elsewhere. But that that's really hard to do. And so it takes me a few days to get enough removal from that sentence that I'm able to eradicate it less painfully.

我总会夸大那个句子的重要性和独特性，觉得再也写不出这样的句子了。如果不围绕这个绝妙独特的句子构建整篇文章，它就会湮没在历史中。但当你隔几天再看时，就会觉得——嗯，其实也就是个还不错的句子罢了。

I somehow exaggerate the importance of how of the sentence and how unique it is, and I'll I'll never do a sentence like this again. And if I don't craft the whole essay around it, this one beautiful unique sentence will get lost to history. And you give yourself a few days distance and look at it again, you're like, yeah. It's an okay sentence.

说说你是怎么避免这种情况的。

Talk about how you sort of avoid that.

对我来说，我需要花几天时间让事情沉淀，否则我会不惜一切代价保留那句话。有句名言，我记不清是谁说的了，大意是：爱就是一个人与其他人之间被过度夸大的差异。当我爱上一句话时，就是这种感觉。仿佛世上再也不可能出现这样的句子，没有其他句子能与之媲美。

For me, I need to take a few days and let the thing percolate because, otherwise, I'll do anything to save that one sentence. And there's a quote, and I don't remember who now, but, the quote says that love is the gross exaggeration between one person and everybody else. And when I fall in love with a sentence, that's how I feel. Like, another sentence like this could never come into being. No other sentence could be like this.

因此，为了挽救这句话、标题或题目，甚至值得我重构整个论点。对吧？但如果我等上几天，保持距离后再回看，你会发现它不过是句还不错的句子，并不值得为此改写整篇文章。这样我就能更理性地审视，用全新的眼光看问题。

And so it's worth the world for me to even reshape my whole argument to salvage the sentence or or headline or title. Right? So if I wait a few days and get some distance, come back to it, you look at it. It's like a decent sentence, but it's not worth shifting your whole essay over. And then I'm able to look at it more rationally and see through fresh eyes.

还有些东西只有你自己能懂，就像和自己开的内部玩笑。这被称为'透明度错觉'——你误以为别人知道你所知道的事。如果用新视角去审视，几乎让自己暂时遗忘后再回看，你就会发现逻辑断裂处，读者将无法理解，因为这些联系只存在于你的脑海中。

There are some things also that only make sense to you. It's like an inside joke with yourself because you it it's called the illusion of transparency when you assume that people know the thing that you know. And if you look at it with fresh eyes and you almost let yourself forget a little bit and come back, you'll start to see gaps where the logic doesn't make sense anymore, and the reader wouldn't be able to follow along because it was just in your head.

那么直觉上，解决透明度错觉的良方似乎是优秀的编辑。你如何与编辑合作，无论是个人写作还是专业作品？

So it intuitively seems like the cure to the illusion of transparency is a good editor. So how do you work with editors both with your personal writing and with your more professional stuff?

我的编辑是我丈夫，他写政策文件。他的风格非常严谨，会强迫我按部就班地从A到B再到C论证，而不是东拉西扯。有时我太沉迷于故事性，被某些巧妙措辞冲昏头脑，他就会告诉我：直接写出来，把意思说明白。

My editor is my husband, and he writes policy papers. So he's very clinical in a good way where he forces me to make the argument and go from a to b to c as opposed to jumping around. Sometimes I get a little too story, and I get a little too excited by some clever wording. And he'll tell me, just write it. Like, just say the thing.

他经常提醒我：别做无谓铺垫。你会用三段话做铺垫才进入正题，不如直接说出来。这正是我需要的编辑方式，我觉得非常受用。

And, he'll tell me a lot. Stop throat clearing. You're doing, like, three paragraphs of throat clearing that you're going to say something to say it. So that's exactly the kinda editing that I need, so I find that really helpful.

你认为这背后的原因是什么？

What do you think is behind that?

这可能是怯场。每当你写下一些东西，必须真正提出论点并将其投入这片充满其他想法和众多才华横溢者的海洋时。一旦公开，感觉就像饥饿的河马游戏——各种观点与噪音交织，确实令人望而生畏。至少对我而言，有时踏入这个竞技场会感到压力。

It might be stage fright. Whenever you write something and you have to actually make the argument and you put it out into this sea of other ideas and so many brilliant people. And when it's in public, it feels like hungry, hungry hippos. It's like ideas and noise, and, it can be really intimidating. At least for me, I find it sometimes intimidating to get into the ring.

因此绕着话题打转或描述它，比真正把观点抛出来要容易得多。这可能就像在文章本身中拖延一样。

And so it's easy to talk around the thing and describe the thing than to actually have to put the thing out there. And so it might be like procrastination in the essay itself.

谈谈推特这个媒介吧。你非常擅长使用它。你的文字就像能穿透推特的浪潮。

Talk about Twitter as a medium. You're so good at using it. Like, you just your writing just, like, can pierce through the waves of Twitter.

回到博弈论，我开始使用推特是因为意识到它能改变记者的动机和行为。如果你有更多存在感和粉丝，他们会更认真对待你。他们明白你愿意公开陈述观点并反驳可能的错误。一旦确立这点，虽不意味着再没人会说公司坏话，但你确实处于更有利的辩护位置。事实上，有位我尊重的《纽约时报》记者曾在电话里半开玩笑地说：

Going back to game theory, I started using it because I realized it can change the incentives and behavior of reporters. They take you more seriously if you have more of a presence and more of a following. They understand that you're willing to make your case publicly and rebut something that might be wrong. And once you establish that, it's not that no one will ever say anything negative about your company ever again, but you do have a better position for being able to make the case. And in fact, there's a New York Times reporter that is well respected and that I respect that told me once on the phone, alright.

'我会删掉这部分，只要你别发推@我'。虽是玩笑，但确实反映了人们意识到你也有发声渠道。

I'll take this thing out. Just don't tweet at me. And it was sort of in jest. We were joking about it. But I think there's something to that where people understand that you have a microphone too.

在加入Substack前，我的推特账号只有几百粉丝，偶尔发言多数时间潜水。后来我意识到，如果要参与论战就必须站出来。很多原因使得创始人不宜亲自上阵——他们要运营公司。而由我来辩护会更容易，毕竟为他人辩护比为自己容易。

And so before I went to Substack, I had a sleepy Twitter account of a couple 100 followers occasionally saying something and mostly just lurking. And then I realized that if I'm gonna be in the ring and then I have to be out there fighting the fight, there were there are a lot of reasons that it wouldn't have made sense for our founders to be out there doing that. They had a company to run. I wanted to defend them. It's easier to defend someone else than then doing it themselves.

为他人辩护比为自己容易，这观点真有意思。

Easier to defend others than defend yourself. That's really interesting.

我认为这是一个基本事实：当你为自己辩护时，所有人都会默认你处于防御姿态。你有自己的利益考量。但如果别人为你辩护，效果总会更好。而且你能更理直气壮地为他人辩护，因为你不必因防御姿态而感到难为情。比如在这家酒馆里，如果有人侮辱你，说'我不喜欢你的播客'。

I think it's just basic a truth that if you are defending yourself, you you're everyone assumes you're gonna be defensive. You have your self interest. But if somebody else defends you, it's always more effective. And you're able to defend somebody else more with your chest because you don't feel sheepish about being defensive. So if you were to be insulted by somebody at this pub that we're at, and they were to say, I don't like your podcast.

你自己说'不，这是个很棒的播客'效果就没那么好。你会觉得这么说有点假，所以很可能不会说出口。但如果我站出来说'你在胡说什么？'

For you to say, no. It's a great podcast. It wouldn't be as effective. You would feel a little cheesy saying it, so you you probably wouldn't say it. But for me to come in and say, what are you talking about?

'那是个超棒的播客'——我能说得更有力，更斩钉截铁，对酒馆里围观我们争论的人来说也更有说服力。

That's a great podcast. I could say it more strongly. I could say it more assertively, and it would be more convincing to the bystanders at our pub fight.

想和你聊聊如何为五岁孩子写作。

Talk to you about writing for your five year old.

好的。我为五岁孩子写作的方式，和我尝试大声朗读的初衷是一样的。五岁孩子是个很好的标准——四到十四岁也行。本质上是要面对一个对你谈论的话题充满好奇、聪明伶俐但毫无背景知识的人。

Okay. I write for my five year old the same way the same reason that I try to read things out loud. A five year old is good. If you have a four to 14 year old, that'll do. But it's basically someone who is curious, clever, but doesn't have any background on what you're talking about.

所以你必须真正为他们填补认知空白。你不能享受'透明度错觉'的便利——以为你我都知道80%的内容，于是满口术语和简写，最后变成行话。面对五岁孩子时，你不能用行话，不能假定他们已有知识储备，不能假设他们站在你这边。

So you have to actually fill in the blanks for them. You can't you don't have the luxury of the illusion of transparency where you and I both know 80%, and I'm just gonna use a bunch of lingo and shorthand, which turns into jargon. So if you're talking to a five year old, you can't use jargon. You can't assume prior knowledge. You can't assume that they're on your side.

你必须真正从零开始，用简单句和短词来构建论述。

You have to really start from nothing and make the case using simple sentences and short words.

当你从品牌角度写作时，那些简短句子和小词是否适用？还是你觉得品牌需要与众不同？比如，你如何看待个人与公司写作之间的界限？因为我认为这正是你目前游走的微妙分界线。

When you're writing from a brand standpoint, does that simple sentences short word, is that similar? Or do you feel like with a brand you wanna be different? Like, how do you think about the division between personal and corporate? Because I think that that's one of the really interesting lines that you're straddling here.

是的。我认为品牌也应该尽可能使用简单措辞、清晰表达和短词。如果要使用长词，应该为了强调效果。这个词应该掷地有声——就像我要甩出这个词给你看。

Yeah. I think brands also should use simple phrasing, clear writing, short words wherever possible. If you're gonna use a long word, it should be for impact. It should be to make a statement. I'm gonna drop this word on you.

我要你特别注意这个词。所有箭头都指向这个词。

I want you to pay attention to this word. Arrows pointing to the word.

铺垫好了。

Set up.

没错。但如果写作目的是被注意、被记住并传递信息，你就不该让文字本身成为干扰。你需要让事实和信息自然呈现并占据主导。

Yeah. But if you're just writing to be noticed and remembered and to get the message across, you don't want the writing itself to be a distraction. You want the facts and the message to come out and carry the day.

你觉得自己目前在写作中需要改进什么？

What do you feel like you're working on in your writing?

我的写作容易啰嗦。我会过度解释，还总忍不住卖弄文采。比如试图模仿亨特·汤普森或马特·泰比那样的文风——可我并没有那种天赋。

In my writing, I get wordy. I I can overexplain, and the temptation is to try to get clever. Like, I try to write like I'm Hunter S. Thompson or Matt Taibi or something. I don't have that talent.

我希望我能做到，并试图展现出来。但这时就会显得生硬，文字也变得分散注意力。这就是我陷入的陷阱——我试图追求风格。而真正应该追求的是，我很喜欢另一句话：除非你是天才，否则只需力求清晰易懂。我需要更多地这样做，因为我在写作上并非天才，只需力求让人理解。

I wish that I did, and I try to project it. And that's when it comes out as labored, and the writing is distracting. So that's the that's the trap that I fall into is, like, I try to have style. And what I should really aim for is here's another quote that I like a lot is unless you're a genius, just aim for being intelligible. And I need to do that more because I'm not a genius at writing, and I just need to aim for being understood.

说得很好。

That's good.

推特实际上是个很好的约束机制，因为没人有耐心。人们会故意曲解你的话，还有字符限制。我拒绝付费获取更长篇幅，所以限制在280字符内。你会如何利用这280个字符？绝不能浪费在冗长的废话上。

Twitter is actually a good forcing mechanism because nobody has patience. People will willfully misunderstand what you're saying, and there's the character limit. I I have refused to pay to get the longer limit, so I'm limited to the 280. What will you do with your 280 characters? And you can't waste it on bloviating.

所以这是个很好的约束机制。有时我直接在推特上起草，根本没打算发布。只是用推特来迫使自己尽可能精简，然后粘贴到邮件里。

So it's a it is a good forcing mechanism. Sometimes I actually draft it in Twitter. You I have no intention of tweeting it. I just draft it in Twitter so that my mind gets focused on shortening as much as possible, and then I paste it into the email.

我经常这么做。如果写的东西感觉啰嗦，就打开那个蓝色小鸟应用，调整到合适为止，总能改得更好。

I do that all the time. So if I'm writing something and it just feels wordy, fire up the little blue bird, and I'll just play around with it and get it right, And then it'll always get better.

是的，让你表达更精炼。

Yeah. Makes you more crisp.

从推特运营中，哪些增长策略特别有效？之后我们再讨论Substack平台以及你在那里学到的经验。

From tweeting, what are some of the growth tactics that have been really good? And then we'll get in the substack and some of the lessons that you learned there.

经过验证的有效方法就是大量发推文，因为这样你就有更多机会射门得分，变得更活跃。如果你能建立起势头，一条热门推文后，下一条也更可能成为热门。但最佳实践是每天定期发几次。

The tried and true is just to tweet a lot because you get a lot of shots on goal, you become more active. And if you can build momentum where if you have one hit tweet, it's more likely that your next tweet will be a hit. But the best practice is to do it several times a day and be regular.

是的。我认为这是个非常深刻的话题，作为网络创作者很容易忘记的一点是——你总在关注有多少粉丝？多少人打开了我的邮件？但你实际上看不到屏幕对面的人。这就是为什么与读者见面也很重要。

Yeah. I think this is a very deep topic, and I think one of the things that's really easy to forget as an online creator, because you see how many followers do you have? How many people are opening up my email? And you don't actually see the other person there. And I think that this is why it's important to even meet your readers.

多年前我刚起步时，总想着获取大量受众这类无意义的事。我组织了一次见面会，在现场我突然意识到：这些人不是我的目标群体。我不想和他们相处，这不是我想要吸引的观众。

Many years ago, I had just gotten started, and I was trying to get a big audience, all this sort of nonsense. And I hosted a meetup. And I was at the meetup, and I was like, these aren't my people. I don't wanna hang out with these people. This is not the audience I'm going for.

于是我冷静地直面镜子自问：我在做什么？我把电脑上的数字看得比真正关注我内容的人品质量更重要。回顾我的写作生涯转折点，真正能移山填海的其实是那小部分人，奇迹往往来自他们。关键从来不是规模，而是你能触达的人群质量。

And I took a good, cold, hard look in the mirror, and I said, what am I doing? I am taking some number on the computer, and I'm valuing that higher than the actual quality of people who are following my stuff. And then I've looked back at the arc of my writing career, and it's actually been the smaller percentage of people who've really been able to move mountains, and I've had amazing things happen. And it hasn't been from scale. It's been from the quality of people that that you can reach.

没错。耶稣本可以有12000门徒，如果他愿意，1200个也行。但有时你需要确定核心受众——我希望他们是充满激情、坚定不移的真信徒，无论发生什么都会支持我，愿意花费100美元，愿意投入数十小时为我辩护。我宁愿选择前者而非后者。

Yeah. Jesus coulda had 12,000 disciples. If he wanted to, he coulda had 12,000, 1,200. But sometimes you decide this is your core audience, and I want them to be deeply passionate, true believers that will stick by me no matter what and that will spend the $100, that will spend the dozens of hours that will go to bat for me. And I would prefer that over the latter.

并非每次都如此。有些人可能更适合追求数字。但关键是要有意识地做出这种权衡，明白自己在做什么，而不是盲目追逐数据。

Not every time. You know, there are people for whom maybe the numbers just make more sense. But I think that's a trade off that you should make consciously and know that you're doing it as opposed to just automatically chasing the numbers.

谈谈Substack吧，你观察到的增长策略有哪些？以及在平台上发展需要掌握哪些诀窍？

Tell me about Substack, some of the growth tactics that you saw there and and and what you learned about how to grow on the platform.

我在那里学到了很多。那是一次非凡的经历。我有幸见到了一些我心目中的作家英雄，并尝试帮助他们。这感觉就像如果你是红袜队的球迷，然后你得以在红袜队工作一样。你懂吗？

I learned so much when I was there. It was an amazing experience. I got to meet some of these writers that were just heroes to me, and I got to try to help them. It was really it's like if you're a Red Sox fan and you get to work for the Red Sox. You know?

就是那种感觉。对于增长邮件列表真正有效的方法，其实是一个作家基本的职业素养。保持一致性，经常写作，让人们觉得他们的时间和金钱投入物有所值，对你所做的事情有一个非常清晰的定位。所以有时候会有一个问题：你是选择一个细分领域深入，还是广泛涉猎？这个问题我们反复讨论过——你是想吸引大量人群的轻度关注，还是相反？

It felt like that. Some of the things that worked really well for growing an email list are the basic hygiene of being a writer. Consistency, just doing it often so that people feel like they're getting value for their time and for their money, having a very clear proposition about what you're doing. So I there's sometimes a a question over, do you choose a niche and go narrow, or do you go wide? And it's that question that we come back to many times now is do you wanna appeal a little bit to a ton of people or or the opposite?

我认为在电子邮件通讯领域，试图吸引大量人群的轻度关注并不有效，因为这实际上是在要求他们付出并非微不足道的东西。你是在要求他们在已经拥挤不堪的收件箱中为你留出空间，是在索取他们的时间。如果你的邮件列表里有人从不打开邮件，这比他们不在列表上更糟糕。有些作家甚至会主动缩减列表规模，剔除那些从不阅读邮件的订阅者。

I think appealing a little bit to a ton of people is not effective for email newsletters because it actually takes you're asking them for something that's not nothing. You're asking them to make space in their inbox, which is always super crowded. You're asking them for time. If you have people on your list that are never opening your emails, that's worse than them not being on your list. There are writers that actively call their list to make them smaller, to get rid of people who are never reading the emails.

因此我强烈建议选择你的细分领域——那些特别需要你提供的特定内容的人群，然后为他们持续提供价值。如果这意味着一个规模较小但对你充满热情的列表，那很好，因为这些用户会转发邮件，会向他人推荐你。相比一个庞大但无人阅读的列表，关键在于真正被阅读。

And so I strongly recommend choosing your niche of the people who specifically want the specific thing that you are offering, and then you deliver it for them. And if that's a smaller list that feels strongly about you, then good because those people will forward the emails. They'll tell others about you as opposed to it's a bigger list, but nobody actually reads the stuff. The point is to be read.

你注意到写作风格方面有什么特点吗？那些表现出色的人有什么共同特质？

What did you notice about writing style? Did you notice anything about the kinds of people who did well?

是的。你可以有独特的报道领域或主题，可以有独特的视角，或者独特的文风。如果你能兼具多项独特性那就更好了。但即使是在很多人都在写的题材上，只要你的风格更出色、更有趣或更讨喜，同样可以成功。比如我喜欢的Ryan Broderick写的《垃圾日》。

Yeah. You can have a unique beat or topic, or you can have a unique perspective, or you can have a unique style. So if you have more than one of those uniques, then wonderful. But it is possible to write on something that a lot of people are writing on, but your style is better and more entertaining or more lovable or whatever it is. Like Ryan Broderick who writes garbage day, which I love.

那是我作为员工最早订阅的Substack之一。我们甚至要求员工付费订阅——因为这样仍然是在支持创作者获得收入，而且是我们CEO亲自推荐给我的。Ryan写的是网络文化，现在这栋楼里就有14个人在写网络文化，但他用难以复制的精彩文风脱颖而出，因此拥有自己的忠实粉丝群。

That was one of the first Substacks that I subscribed to as an employee. We paid for even employees pay to subscribe because we're, you know, that's still contributing to writers making money, and it was recommended to me personally by our CEO. Ryan writes about Internet culture. There's 14 people in this building right now writing about Internet culture, but he just does it with a wonderful style that is hard to replicate. And so he's got his his fandom.

最让我感到不可思议的是，你完成了所有这些成就，而英语甚至不是你的母语。你是如何学会说英语的，更不用说专业写作了？

One thing that is just wild to me is that you've done all this, and English isn't even your first language. How did you learn to speak English, let alone write professionally?

我有点优势，因为我从小四处迁徙。但从8岁到12岁，我住在挪威，并在那里的公立学校就读。挪威人的英语说得非常好。电视节目都是英语原声，没有字幕。

I had a bit of an advantage because I grew up I grew up moving around. But from eight to 12, I lived in Norway, and I was in the public school system there. And Norwegians speak amazing English. The TV is in English. It's not subtitles.

实际上是配音的。所以你所有的娱乐内容都是通过英语吸收的。我会从一个非英语母语者的角度来思考英语词汇。举个例子，在英语中我们说‘black car’表示豪华车，但如果你在亚洲说‘black car’，人们会以为是灵车。

It's actually dubbed. So you're absorbing all of your entertainment in English. And I think about an English word through the lens of how someone who doesn't speak English might interpret it. One example would be, like, in English, we say black car to mean fancy car. But if you went to Asia and said black car, it would be like a hearse.

所以我对这些细节非常敏感。同时我也会思考，一个词的轻微错位或读者不仔细阅读时可能产生的误解。大学时我有次求职面试——哦，这很糟糕。其实这是我第一次重新回忆这个创伤经历。现在这要变成奥普拉式的访谈了，我可能会哭出来。

So I'm very sensitive to those things. And then I also try to think about how something could be misinterpreted with just a slight misplacement of one word or if someone doesn't read closely. So in college, I was in a job interview, and oh, this is bad. This is the first time that I'm reliving this trauma, actually. So this is gonna become like an Oprah thing where I'm gonna start crying.

对。那次面试我说了句话：‘尽管我年轻，但我确实有些below the belt的经验’。其实below the belt和under the belt（正确的表达方式）在实质意义上没有区别。但如果你不是英语母语者，看到这个可能会误解或觉得莫名其妙。所以我尽量在写作中避免使用只有母语者才懂的英语特有表达。

Yeah. Was in a job interview, and I said the sentence, even though I'm young, I do have some experience below the belt. And there's no substantive difference between below the belt versus under the belt, which is the correct and proper phrasing. But things like that, if you're not an English speaker, you could see this and either misunderstand or it's gonna fall flat. And so I try to write without too many of the Englishisms that only a native speaker would know.

这几乎像是另一种行话。

It's it's like a different kind of jargon almost.

你会阅读哪些类型的资料来提升写作技巧？

What kinds of things do you read in order to improve your craft?

我尽量阅读与通讯领域毫不相关的书籍。其一，因为这是我的日常工作，我已深陷其中，所以需要在思想上解放自己。其二，从实用角度出发，若想获得新灵感，阅读内容越多元越好。因此我会选择历史小说、经典名著这类作品。

I try to read things that are as far away from communications as possible. One, because it's my day job, and I'm already immersed in it, so I try to liberate myself intellectually. Two, pragmatically, if I want to be inspired by new ideas, then the more heterogeneous my reading diet, the better. And so I go towards things that are, like, historical fiction. I go towards classics.

接下来这个可能听起来有点傻——我会研究海军陆战队司令的推荐书单。司令官发布的这份书单根据军衔等级精心编排，为高级军官和士兵分别推荐培养特定技能与理念的读物。这份书单堪称精品，像描写温泉关战役的《火之门》就是常年上榜的经典佳作。书单巧妙融合了小说、

And then I go towards this is gonna sound maybe silly, but I go through the marine commandant's reading list because the commandant of the marine corps releases a reading list, and it's beautifully organized by what level you're at. So if you're a senior officer versus if you're enlisted, there's a different recommended list for you based on the skills and ideas that they encourage you to develop, and it's a wonderfully curated list. There are some books that are always on there, like Gates of Fire, which is about the battle of Thermopylae, which is a wonderful, wonderful book. Evergreen on that list. But it's a combination of fiction.

领导力书籍和政治类著作。我经常参考这份书单。最近有位去年退役的海军陆战队上校朋友，给我寄来了他们的条令出版物——包括作战条令、

It's a combination of that, like, leadership books, political books. And so I go off of that quite a bit. And then recently, a friend of mine who retired last year as a colonel in the marine corps sent me their doctrinal publications, which is just their doctrine. So they have different doctrines for how to do things. So war fighting doctrine.

通讯条令（隶属后勤条令章节）等。事实上，他们的作战条令深刻影响了我为团队制定的运作准则，因为核心理念相通——只是应用场景不同。比如关于敏捷性、责任担当、风险承担，甚至详细阐述了风险管理：既要敢于冒险，又要懂得负责任地冒险。

Communications is a section in in another doctrine, logistics. And so the war fighting doctrine has actually informed the doctrine that I've set for our team, for for my team and how we operate. Because it's a lot of the same concepts. You just translate it into a different world. But agility, taking responsibility, taking risks, it even talks about how to manage risks, which is you wanna take risk, but how to do it responsibly.

如果你鼓励下属冒险，那么作为领导者就有义务在冒险失败时不惩罚他们。不能既鼓励冒险又在失败时追究责任。

And if you're gonna encourage your people to take risk, then it's incumbent on their leader or commander to not penalize them for if the risk goes wrong. You can't encourage them to take risks and then punish them if they fail.

真巧，昨天我正好谈到这个问题。团队里有些人不敢冒险，我对他们的主管说：关键问题是——他们之前犯了错，现在变得畏首畏尾。

That's funny. I had a conversation yesterday where there were certain people on the team who weren't taking risks. And I was talking to this person's manager. And I said, here's the thing. They made a mistake, and they're not taking risks.

要承认错误的存在，但不要因错误惩罚他们，不要对犯错者发火。明确告诉他们：犯错没关系，我就是要你们敢于冒险。

Acknowledge the mistake. Do not punish them for making the mistakes. Do not lash out at them for making mistakes. Say that's okay to make mistakes. I want you to take risks.

但你只能做到其中一两样。我认为这在写作中体现得很明显，作为一个作家，你需要自问：我是否愿意冒险，哪怕常常摔得鼻青脸肿？还是宁愿呆在舒适区？这意味着我将停留在自我成长的平台期，无法突破创作者的天花板。

But you only can do one or two of those. And I think it shows up in writing where I think, as a writer, you need to ask yourself, am I willing to take risks, and often fall flat on my face? Or am I gonna live in this zone of comfort? And that means that I'm gonna be at a plateau of my own growth as a creator.

没错。我常把这比喻成持有现金。如果你长期只持有现金，虽然不会亏本，但从实际意义上看是亏损的——世界在前进，经济在增长，别人都在变富而你没有。而投资虽有涨跌起伏...

Yeah. And I've likened that to sitting in cash. Like, if you're just sitting in cash over time, you will not lose your money, but you'll lose in the sense that the world moves on and the economy grows and everybody else is getting richer and you're not. So you lose in real terms. Whereas if you invest, you will have ups and downs.

但长期来看，只要你承担过风险，经历过低谷，最终总会处于持续上升的轨道。

But over time, in the long run, you'll always be better if you've taken some risks and taken the dips, but you'll be on a secular trajectory upwards.

跟我聊聊史蒂文·普莱斯菲尔的《火之门》吧。

Talk to me about Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

这本书太棒了。你读过吗？没有？它讲的是温泉关战役，三百斯巴达勇士的故事。但重点描写的是战场背后的故事。

It's so good. Have you read it? No. It's about the battle of Thermopylae, the 300 Spartans. But it talks about what happens behind the battle.

比如斯巴达的文化，描写了列奥尼达的领导艺术。有个场景是他让士兵们筑墙，众人开始争执分工，结果他直接放下武器，搬起石头就开始砌墙，最后所有人都加入了筑墙行列。

So the culture of Sparta, it talks about the leadership of Leonidas. It talks about as for example, when he's asking his men to build a wall, and they start bickering about who's gonna do what. And then he just throws down his weapons and goes, and he just gets a rock and starts building wall. And then the wall gets built. People join him.

就是这类关于领导力的基本道理。整个故事非常感人。

You know, basic things like that about leadership. And then it's a really touching story.

它是怎么写的？

How's it written?

写得非常优美。有些短语会深深烙印在你脑海里，让战斗场面变得如此真实。开头有一处描写，激烈的战斗中，坚实的地面因鲜血和恐怖分子的践踏变成了齐膝深的泥沼。这些句子会伴随你很久——我读过这本书两三次，上次阅读已是几年前，但那些句子你永远不会忘记。

It's written really beautifully. There's a there are phrases that just stick with you that make the battles so visceral. There's this one phrase towards the beginning where in this fierce battle, solid dirt ground has been churned to knee deep mud from the blood and terrorists. You These phrases stick with you for the last time I read this book I've read it two or three times. The last time I read it was more than a couple years ago, but these sentences you don't forget.

当我指导写作学生时，尤其是年长的学员，他们最挣扎的就是丧失人性化的表达。明明在酒吧闲聊、散步喝咖啡时，他们风趣幽默、俏皮活泼，充满胆识和个性（用希伯来语说就是'ruach'，意为灵气）。可一旦坐到稿纸前，就突然开始用规避风险的机器人式文风写作。

When I talk to my writing students, like, thing that they just so struggle with is, especially the older ones, it's just like, they lose their sense of humanity. And I feel like, I don't know what it is, but you'll be talking to somebody. You'll be at the bar with them, you'll be out on a walk with them, get a coffee with them. They're funny, they're goofy, they're playful, they got chutzpah, personality, know, ruach, the Hebrew word for spirit. And then all of a sudden, sit down to the page, and all of a sudden, they're trying to write in this weird robotic fashion that is full of risk aversion.

该如何打破这种框架？

And so how do you shatter that frame?

这就像镜头对准时的状态。就像现在录音时，你谈吐自如，我们聊得很愉快。但刚开始镜头亮起那刻，人总会产生表演欲——我脑子里会闪过'优秀播客嘉宾该说什么'的念头。

It's the same thing that happens when the cameras go on somebody. Like, even now as you're as we're recording, you're very engaging, we're chatting. I'm enjoying it. But at the very start, when the cameras turn on, there's the urge of having to perform. You know, there's a moment in my mind where I'm thinking, what would a great podcast guest say?

而不是思考'我真正想表达什么'。企业传播同样如此，当众目睽睽之下，人们总觉得自己必须表演。但表演什么呢？无非是遵循固定模板的企业话术。

Instead of what's my answer? They wanna say. Exactly. And I think this happens to people when they feel in the spotlight, and corporate communications is very public, and you feel like you have to now perform. And what are you gonna perform?

我曾有位朋友是奥巴马总统的演讲稿撰写人，他说绝不能想着这是国情咨文或数百万听众在场，否则根本无法下笔。关于如何突破这点，我喜欢启用非科班出身的新人——当然业内也有不为此困扰的老手，并非一概而论。

You're going to perform the act of corporate communications, which follows a certain template, and you wanna do it right. I had a friend who was a speechwriter for Barack Obama, and he said that he could not allow himself to think that this was the state of the union or that millions of people were gonna be listening because it it wouldn't work. It would completely alter his writing or he wouldn't be able to get anything on the page. So to your question about how to break that, I like pulling people from different backgrounds who haven't worked in comps. There are people who there are people who are veterans of the industry who don't struggle with that, so I don't mean to paint with a broad brush.

但如果你能找到一位曾从事设计、编程或完全其他领域工作的人，让他们以全新视角重新开始，甚至不清楚自己该做什么，这反而是好事。因为经验有时会成为枷锁，有时会因‘应该说什么’的预期而束缚你。而任用毫无经验之人，反而能让他们在创作中获得真正的解放。我认为自己在传播领域最大的优势，恰恰是并非科班出身。

But if you can get someone who worked who was a designer or a programmer or did did something entirely different that they can now come and start fresh without knowing what they're supposed to be doing, that's good. Because sometimes experience can be a shackle. Sometimes experience can burden you with expectations of what you think you're supposed to say. Whereas if you take someone who doesn't know any better, that's actually really liberating for them to go and do creative work. I think one of the big assets that I've enjoyed in my career in communications is not coming from comms.

创办公司前，我对传播学毫无经验。所有知识都来自联合创始人的教导与塑造，但这恰恰赋予了我更具创造力的优势。

Before we started the company, I had zero experience in communications whatsoever. I learned everything from my cofounder who trained me and molded me, but it gave me the benefit of being able to be more creative.

另外，我喜欢用‘作家脑’和‘朋友脑’来思考。作家脑是你试图表演、面向挑剔观众展示的状态；而和朋友放松相处时，你无法保持这种状态。所以我常通过与人交谈来摆脱思维定式。

And then also, I like to think of what I call writer brain and friend brain. So writer brain is this mode that you're in where you're trying to perform, and you're trying to almost present to a discerning audience. But when you're with your friends, and your feet are up, you can't be in that state. And so a lot of the way that I get myself out of the stockage, is I'll just talk to people.

这就是为什么让五岁女儿、配偶、父母或任何熟悉你真实性格（而非职业身份）的人审阅文稿很有用——他们会直接指出‘这不像你说的话’。我曾发给丈夫某些内容后感到难堪，因为明显违背了本真。若只交给专业编辑或同事，他们只会用‘这个语境该说什么’的标准，而非‘以你个性会怎么说’来衡量。

That's why if you have a five year old daughter or your spouse or your parent or if you have somebody that already knows you as a person and not just as a professional, reading it to them is really useful because they will call you out on not sounding like yourself. And you'll you'll feel embarrassed. There have been times when I've sent something to my husband, and I actually feel embarrassed looking at it because I wait. This so clearly isn't me. And if you were to send it to just a professional editor or coworker, they might look at it through the lens of not what would a person who has your personality say, but what is the thing that should be said in this context?

这样你可能无法获得所需的人性化表达。

And you might not always get the sort of humanity that you need.

聊聊华盛顿的经历吧。你既有DC背景又涉足科技领域，这段经历如何塑造你的写作和沟通方式？

Tell me about DC. You have this DC background, and then you sort of move into tech a little bit more. And how did DC shape your your writing and how you how you communicate?

我在华盛顿从事地缘政治、风险管理和政策工作。这种敏感度对写作很有裨益——它会促使你思考（至少对我而言）：内容可能被如何误解？跨文化或语言障碍时会产生哪些歧义？这种宏观视角是非常有价值的附加层。

I was in DC because I was working in the field of geopolitics, risk management, policy. And, it's a useful I think it's a useful sensibility to to bring to writing because you start to think about things. At least for me, the the background that I gained from working in DC sort of makes me zoom out and think, what are the all the ways that this could be misunderstood or misinterpreted? What are all the ways that this would not translate across a cultural barrier or a language barrier? So I think it's useful to have that extra layer.

其实不必如此。我的意思是，有些人拥有我所不具备的视角。有人会从工程学的角度思考，有人会以设计的眼光看待，还有人可能通过诗歌或文学的滤镜来观察，这些方式同样出色甚至更胜一筹。视角本就多种多样。

And it doesn't have to be that. I mean, some people have a layer that I don't have. Some people think of it through an engineering lens, or some people look at it through a design lens. Some people might look at it through a poetry or a literary lens, and that could be just as good or better. There's there's different ways.

而这恰好是我的视角。

This just happens to be mine.

等等，这非常有趣。我们不妨探讨这些不同的写作视角，我想看看最终会得出什么结论。

Wait. That's really interesting. Let's go through these different lenses of writing, and I wanna see where we end up.

我希望自己具备的是更具文学性的叙事视角。所以我现在正在读一本关于剧本创作的书。虽然我无意写剧本，但我想研究故事的构成要素——如何塑造引人入胜的角色，比如打造一个让人愿意支持的主角，如何营造剧情张力，如何让读者感受到利害关系并沉浸其中。我读这本书是为了学习。如果我有剧本创作或文学的背景视角，那将是巨大的优势，我羡慕那些具备这种能力的人。

The lens that I wish I had would be a more literary storytelling lens. So I'm reading a book now about how to write a screenplay. I have no intention of writing a screenplay, but I wanted to study what the elements are of a story and how to build a compelling character, like how to build a protagonist that you wanna root for, and then how to create forward momentum and how to feel like there are stakes and get people invested. So I'm reading that to study. But if if I had that background, if I had that lens of screenwriting or literature, I think that would be such an asset, and I envy people who do.

你为什么想要这种能力？

Why do you want that?

因为我认为这能让人成为天生的故事讲述者。我觉得'讲故事'这个词现在...

Because I think it makes you a natural storyteller. I think the word storytelling is

已经用滥了。

cliche right now.

超级陈词滥调，而且被过度使用了。人们并没有真正定义它。现在它就像一个流行词。但如果你将讲故事定义为制造悬念，给人们一些支持或恐惧的东西，并让人们期待一个结果。每个好故事都会让你期待一个结果。

Super cliche, and it's overused. People don't really define it. It's just like a buzzword at this point. But if you define storytelling as creating stakes, as giving people something to root for or to fear, and making people want an outcome. Every good story makes you hope for an outcome.

你希望某些事情发生。那么如何将这种感觉灌输给人们，实际上，我认为有一个公式。我不知道那个公式，但我正在尝试了解它。我现在正在研究它。我认为如果你有文学背景，那么那就是你一直以来的写作框架。

You're rooting for something to happen. And so how to instill that feeling in people, there's actually, I think, a formula to it. And I don't know that formula, but I'm trying to get to know it. I'm studying it now. And I think if you did come from a literary background, then that's the frame that you've always written through.

我的意思是，我会给你另一个定义，就是你之前给出的定义，我们的大脑都有这些空洞，而故事是与这些空洞最匹配的东西，这样信息就能嵌入记忆中。

I mean, I would give you another definition, which is the definition that you gave earlier, that we all have these holes in our minds, and stories are the things that match up most with the holes so that information slots in to memory.

是的。我们的接收器是以故事的形式存在的。它们不是以事实、谈话要点或统计数据的形式存在的。这就是为什么，顺便说一句，很多时候当你看到公司试图为自己辩护时，他们已经输了，因为指控通常是一个故事，而辩护通常是一个统计数据。所以当你回想一下，这里有一个来自我华盛顿地缘政治背景的故事。

Yeah. Our receptors are in the shape of stories. They're not in in the shape of facts or talking points or statistics. And that's why, by the way, a lot of times when you see companies trying to defend themselves, they're already losing because an accusation is usually a story, whereas the defense is usually a statistic. So when you think so look back at here's a here's a story from my DC geopolitics background.

北约和自由贸易。数据显示北约和自由贸易的通过是好的。就是好。在很多方面都更好。它提高了这么多生产力，提高了这么多GDP，创造了这么多就业机会，等等。

NATO and free trade. The data says that the passage of NATO and free trade is good. Just good. Better on a ton of different scores. It lifted productivity by this much, lifted GDP by this much, created this many jobs, etcetera.

自由贸易的反对者没有这些数据，但他们有故事。所以反对者会说，看看大卫。他是七个孩子的父亲。他因为工作外包而失去了工作。他是一个玉米农民，现在他不种玉米了。

The detractors of free trade don't have that, but they do have stories. And so the detractors will say, well, look at David. He's a father of seven. He lost his job because it got outsourced. He's a corn farmer, and now he's not farming corn.

他在家里抑郁。这不应该超过许多生活变得更好的人，包括你，如果你现在能拥有一部iPhone，而以前不能。但指控会是一个故事，而辩护会是，哦，但生产力提高了4%。你知道，一个人的死亡是悲剧，一千人的死亡是统计数据。如果你用统计数据来对抗一个故事，你总是会输。

He's at home depressed. And that doesn't and shouldn't outweigh the many people whose lives are so much better, including yours if you have access to an iPhone now and you wouldn't have before. But the accusation will be a story, and then the defense will be, oh, but productivity went up by 4%. And it's the, you know, one death is a tragedy, thousand deaths is a statistic. If you're fighting a story with a statistic, you're always losing.

在叙事框架方面你思考了多少？因为这是另一个关键点。对吧？一旦控诉方掌握了框架主动权。所以当你开始回应时，就已经失去了框架掌控权。

How much do you think about framing in terms of the narratives? Because that's the other thing. Right? Once the accuser has the frame. So once you're responding, you've lost the frame.

我认为确实如此。控诉方选择框架。就像国际谈判中，当你们试图敲定条约时，执笔起草条约初稿的一方拥有难以置信的优势地位，这正是各方争夺的位置。同样地，如果有人先抛出故事而你在被动回应，你就天然处于劣势，因为你必须遵循他们的框架，而他们已经设定了评判标准。

I think that's right. Yeah. The accuser chooses the frame. I mean, the world of negotiations, like an international negotiation, if you're trying to hammer out the treaty, whoever has the pen to write the first draft of the treaty is an incredibly powerful position, and that's the position you jockey over. And so here too, if someone else is putting that story out there and you're reacting to it, you're automatically in the losing position because you have to react to their frame, and they've set they've set the criteria.

我需要你的帮助。关于《我是如何写作》这个栏目，我们该如何运用传播和写作来推动节目增长？我认为我们面临几个挑战：首先希望这个写作栏目能促进'成人礼'写作学校的成长，我们需要通过YouTube和Twitter上的视频片段来推广节目。

I need your help. So how I write? How how should we think about using communications and writing to grow the show? So I think we have a few challenges, which first is we want how I write to help us grow rite of passage, my writing school. We wanna use clips on YouTube and Twitter to promote the show.

同时还要清晰传达这档播客的定位，让人们向朋友推荐时能准确描述：'这就是这档节目的精髓，你该收听的理由，它是独一无二的'。假设我是创业者，你第一天来上班，我们的对话应该怎么展开？

And then also really want to explain what this podcast is about in a way that when people are talking to their friends about it, they're like, oh, this is exactly what this podcast is. This is why you should listen to it. There's no other show like it. So if I'm the entrepreneur, you're coming in for day one of of work, how what does this conversation go like?

我们会从空白谷歌文档开始，创建四个标题。第一个标题是'你的商业目标是什么？'——你已经列出了这些。与之相关的是'需要采取行动的目标人群是谁？'比如那些对写作感兴趣或重视写作的人。

We start with a blank Google Doc, and we create four headings. First heading is what are your business objectives? And you you've laid them out. So related to that, who are the people who need to take what action? So you want someone who is already interested in writing or who cares about writing.

期望行动是他们报名课程或收听播客。而要让这些人采取行动，他们需要相信某些事——比如这能提升写作能力从而助力职业发展、增加收入、获得声望，或是朋友验证有效的方法。明白吗？类似这样的信念。这样你就明确了受众。

The action is that they should sign up for the course or listen to the podcast. And in order for those people to take those actions, they need to believe something, which is they need to believe that this is going to make them a better writer in a way that's going to help them have a better career or make more money, in a way that's going to bring them more prestige, or they're gonna do the thing that's worked for their friends. Right? Some version of that. So then you have your audience.

你有了商业目标，明确了受众，也初步构建了信息框架。这里要稍作停顿——初创企业尤其容易陷入的误区是，对自己在做的事过度兴奋，恨不得向所有人宣扬。

You have the business goals. You have your audience. You have the beginnings of the message of how you wanna frame it. And here, just a pause for a second. The temptation for startups especially is to get really excited about what you're doing and wanna tell everybody about what you're doing.

没人在乎。没人在乎对你意义重大的新爱好，也不关心你找到了激情所在。即便你从小在祖父膝下就对此感兴趣——他们依然不在乎。只有当它能证明你的资质确实可信时，他们或许会稍加关注，但归根结底，他们只关心：这能让我的生活变得更好吗？这正是加密货币一直面临的问题。

Nobody cares. Nobody cares about your new hobby that is so meaningful to you and you found your passion. And ever since you were at your grandfather's knee, you've been interested in they don't care. They might care a little bit if it proves a credential that you're actually legitimate, but all they care about is how is this gonna make my life better? And this is the problem that crypto has had.

许多加密货币公司（并非全部）都存在这样的问题：'这很酷吧？我们基于区块链构建的。'而大多数人的反应是：'我不在乎是否用区块链，也不在乎是不是Web3，我只想知道它能让我的银行业务更便捷吗？'

A lot of crypto companies, not all, have had the problem of, isn't this cool? We built this on the blockchain. And most people are like, I don't care if it's on the blockchain. I don't care if it's Web three. Is it gonna make my banking easier?

这东西怎么用？我有点担心AI的某些领域也会陷入这种陷阱。比如'哦，这是用AI构建的'——好吧，但它能为我做什么？

How do I use this thing? And I'm a little worried about some parts of AI falling into this trap too. Like, oh, it's built on AI. Okay. But what is it doing for me?

所以在这个练习环节中要记住：信息传递必须对准他们的接收器和文化敏感带。针对他们担忧的事、渴望的东西，你必须解释清楚你的方案如何满足这些需求。如果现有方案与需求存在差距，你就必须搭建桥梁。当明确了目标受众和核心信息后，接下来就需要传播策略。

So that's one thing to remember as you're going through this part of the exercise. The messaging has to be targeted to their receptors and their cultural erogenous zones. The things that they're worried about, the things that they want for themselves, you have to explain how it does that. And if there's a gap between what you're offering and what that thing is, you have to you have to build that bridge. And then once you have the goal, the audience, and the crux of the message, then you need your distribution.

必须在认知层面与他们同频。比如他们平时听什么播客？浏览哪些网站？是参加行业会议，还是在其他社交场合聚会？找到他们思维聚集地，然后带着信息（必要时连同信使）出现在那里。

You have to meet them where they are intellectually. Like, what podcasts are they already listening to? What, websites are they reading? Are they going to conferences, or are they hanging out with friends in some other setting? Like, find where their thoughts are hanging out and then show up there with the message and if needed with the messenger.

具体来说，以播客为例：你的目标听众肯定还收听其他播客节目，你可以直接触达这些现成受众，给他们'入门诱饵'——'喜欢A的人通常也会喜欢B'。找出他们收听的播客，播客广告的投资回报率其实很高。

So to zoom in on that, the mediums of distribution for you, for example, there are going to be other podcasts that your audience listen to where you can just show up to that audience that's already there and then give them the gateway drug. Hey. If you like a, you'll probably like b. So identify the podcast that they're listening to. Podcast advertising is really good ROI.

我会投入部分预算在这些播客投放广告。更理想的是作为嘉宾参与他们的节目，介绍你正在构建的项目及其价值——这相当于免费广告。把所有信息放在节目备注里。对写作感兴趣的人很可能关注了大量Substack专栏。

So I would spend some money on just advertising on those podcasts. And then even better, get yourself as a guest on their podcast to talk about what you're building and why it makes sense. So that's, you know, free advertising. You put everything in the show notes. People who are interested in writing are probably following a lot of sub stacks.

他们可能关注了很多博客。他们可能关注那些写关于写作的人，从而建立合作关系。你总是希望以提供某种价值的方式去接近某人，而不是索取什么。如果需要，你可以提出请求，但理想情况下，你应该主动提供些什么。

They're probably following a lot of blogs. They might be following people who other people who write about writing, and so forging partnerships. You always wanna go approach somebody in a a a way that you're offering something as opposed to asking for something. If you need to ask for something, you can. But, ideally, you go and offer them something.

所以我的做法是，找到那些发布播客的人，他们的听众正是你想吸引的听众，然后邀请他们上节目。这样他们会向自己的听众宣传自己参加了这个播客，之后他们可能会回请你。

So what I would do is find who posts the podcast whose listeners you want to be your listeners and invite them on so that they'll promote that they were on this podcast to their audience, and then they might invite you back.

我在成人礼学生身上经常看到的一个问题是，他们很难向别人解释自己是谁。我敢打赌你在与公司打交道时也是这样，甚至在你自己的写作中也是如此。你是怎么思考这个问题的？

One of the things that I see with rite of passage students all the time where they get stuck, it's very hard to explain who you are to other people. And I bet that you're doing this with companies. I bet you do this in your own writing. Like, how do you think about that?

你对某件事了解得越多，就越难描述它。因为你会被大量对他人无关紧要的知识所拖累。所以你的挑战实际上是剔除99%他们完全不关心的事情，找出他们真正在意的那一点。

The more you know something, the harder it is to describe it. Right. Because the more burdened you are by excess knowledge that's irrelevant to people. Yeah. So you have to actually you have the challenge of cutting through 99% of things that they don't care about at all to identify the thing that they do.

而且你对自己了解得太多了。如果你只知道自己四件事，你可以从四个中选一个。但你知道一万件事，从一万个中选一个真的很难。所以与其思考'我是谁'，不如想象《超级名模》里的场景。

And and you know you know too much about yourself. If you only knew four things about yourself, you could pick the one out of four. But you know 10,000 things, and picking out the one out of 10,000 is really hard. And so instead of thinking about who am I? Like, imagining the zoolander scene.

'我是谁？'你应该思考的是'我对这个人来说是谁'，以及'这个人需要什么'。你可能是一个兄弟、儿子、朋友、战锤爱好者等等。但这个人有他们正在寻找的特定需求，可能是友谊。

Who am I? You're thinking about who am I to this person, and what is this person looking for? You know, you you might be a brother, a son, a friend, know, Warhammer hobbyist, anything. But this person has a set of things that they're looking for. They might be looking for friendship.

那可能不是你。他们可能在寻找健身教练，那也不是你。但如果他们需要的是写作教练、激励者和老师，那么恭喜，这就是匹配的机会。

That's not you. They might be looking for a, you know, fitness coach. That's not you. But if one of the things they're looking for is a writing coach and a motivator and a teacher, then bingo. There's a match.

那就是你。一旦你到了那里，就像是某种老师？什么样的教练？而且，显然，它必须是真实的。不能只是他们想要什么，我就变成那样。

That is you. And then once you're there, it's like, kind of teacher? What kind of coach? And, obviously, it has to be real. It can't just be here's what they want, so I'm gonna become that thing.

必须是他们想要的在这里，我在这里，然后在维恩图中找到重叠的部分。

It has to be here's what they want, here's what I am, and then find the overlap in the Venn diagram.

作为一个利用互联网成长的人，我自己，我们的听众，比如，我们能从比特币中学到什么？比特币似乎是一个非常有趣的项目，有一个化名的创始人，一个宗教般的狂热追随者，还有所有这些门徒。它包含了很多你过去一小时左右谈到的要素。

As somebody who's using the Internet to grow, myself, our listeners, like, what can we learn from Bitcoin? It seems like Bitcoin is this really interesting project, where you have a pseudonymous founder, you have a religious cult, and you have all these disciples. It has a lot of the ingredients that you've spoken about for the last hour or so.

是的。三点。第一，比特币没有通讯负责人。是的。它不仅在技术上分散，而且在信息传递上也是分散的。

Yeah. Three things. So one is Bitcoin has no head of communications. Yeah. It is not only decentralized in the technology, but decentralized in its messaging.

有一种，你知道，你可以阅读白皮书。有一个真相的来源。但人们认为比特币是什么，某种程度上是他们看到传播的人和信息的平均值。所以这其中的强大之处在于，人们自认为是比特币的传道者，相信这个东西是他们身份的一部分，因此，你不需要付钱给他们。没有比特币通讯部门为他们做广告付费。

There is a sort you know, you could read the white paper. There is a source of truth. But what people perceive Bitcoin to be is sort of the average of the people and the messages that they see spread around. And so what's powerful about that is that people identify as a Bitcoin evangelist and believing in this thing is part of who they are, and therefore, you don't need to pay them. There's no Bitcoin comms department paying them for, like, advertising.

他们得到的是宣扬这部分身份的奖励。所以你想从中吸取的教训是，你想抓住的是那些想宣扬自己是作家的人。他们为成为作家而自豪。他们为写作之旅而自豪。他们为终身学习并想成为那个社区的一部分而自豪。

What they get is the reward of publicizing this part of their identity. So what you would wanna so the lesson from that, what you would wanna latch on to is people who wanna publicize that they're a writer. They're proud of being a writer. They're proud of being on a writing journey. They're proud of being someone who is learning their entire life and wanna be part of that community.

这给了他们激励，把人们带入社区并进行推广，因为奖励不是你付钱给他们。奖励是它滋养了他们渴望成为的东西。

And that gives them the incentive to bring people into the community and to do that outreach because the reward is not you paying them. The reward is it feeds into the thing they're aspiring to be.

以及一种身份认同感。是的。

And a sense of identity. Yeah.

还有社区感。没错。社区会让身份认同更加牢固。这是我从K-pop粉丝圈学到的一点——当你想要融入其他粉丝时，你会变得更加狂热。因为成为粉丝这件事本身在更高层面上就很有趣。

And community too. Yeah. And two and and community makes identity more sticky. This is the one thing I learned from K pop fandoms, which is that you become more of a fan if you wanna fit in with other fans. Because being a fan is actually fun on, like, a meta level.

所以这里存在两个维度：你有多喜欢这个乐队，以及你有多享受作为粉丝群体的一部分。如果你想在粉丝圈里获得更高地位，就必须加深对乐队的喜爱程度。第二点是——喜欢某件事物的人群会让你对这件事物的喜好程度增减。

And so there's how much you like the band, and then there's, like, how much you enjoy being part of the fandom. And if you wanna be a higher ranking part of the fandom, you have to increase how much you're a fan of the band. Two is the people who like a thing can make you like the thing more or less.

确实。

Yes.

素食主义本身没问题，但如果你遇到一群惹人厌的素食者...素食主义本质上没有错。但如果你遇到一群烦人的素食者，或者你觉得他们很讨厌，你对素食主义的好感就会降低。所以你要谨慎选择你的'传教士'。你需要那些能让外围人群产生向往的人，因为他们的风趣、酷炫、成就或烦人程度会直接影响到外界对你的评价。

Veganism is fine, but if you meet a bunch of annoying vegans, you're gonna there's like nothing inherently wrong with veganism. But if you meet a bunch of annoying vegans or if you find them annoying, you're gonna not like veganism as much. So you wanna choose who you want your evangelist to be. You want to have people who are going to be aspirational for the next circle of people because they will make you look better or worse by how funny, cool, accomplished, or annoying they are.

没错。说到底，人们最终都会演变成人身攻击或赞美。

Right. It's like, at the end of the day, people devolve into ad hominem attacks or praises.

是的。但你要建立的品牌实际上由三部分组成：你大卫作为个人形象，加上公司组织'Right of Passage'，再加上向朋友推荐的人。接收者对整个品牌的印象就来自这三者的平均值。有些人讨厌比特币或加密货币，就是因为他们见过某些骗子也在玩这个，于是觉得'既然那家伙像个骗子，这东西肯定也是骗局'。

Yeah. But your brand, you know, that you're trying to build is actually you, David, as a person, plus the company and the organization, right of passage, plus the other person who's telling their friend about it. It's the average of those three things that becomes the impression that the receiving person has of right of passage. And some people don't like Bitcoin or don't like crypto because they've seen some of these scammy people who do, and they're like, well, it must be scammy because that guy seems scammy.

当然。

Of course.

第三点是个警示故事，我之前提到过，很多投身比特币和加密货币的人——我本人也是比特币和加密货币的拥护者——但他们过于痴迷技术本身，关注点全在技术和‘这是加密货币’这一点上，而非它能为人们带来的实际益处。这就是为什么总有人嘲讽‘加密货币毫无用处’、‘区块链毫无价值’。我不认同这种观点，但这类言论之所以盛行，是因为许多公司上线时，网站横幅都写着‘我们是Web3企业’。

The third thing is a cautionary tale, and I alluded to this earlier, but a lot of people into Bitcoin and crypto and I'm I'm a fan of Bitcoin and crypto. But a lot of people who are get so excited about the technology that they focus on the technology and the fact that it's crypto as opposed to the actual benefit that it would bring to people. And that's why you end up with the trope of crypto has no use case. Block blockchain has no use case. I don't believe that's true, but it's easy to say that because all these companies launch, and their banner on the website is we're a Web three company.

没人在乎。就像你说‘这个博客是用WordPress搭建的’一样毫无意义。谁关心你的技术栈？重要的是它能为我做什么。所以我认为这对所有人都是个警示。

Nobody cares. You might as well be like, this blog is on WordPress. Nobody cares what it's hosted on. Just what is the thing it's gonna do for me? And so that would be a cautionary tale, I think, for anybody.

具体到你的情况，就是要避免说‘这是我创业旅程的下一站，很高兴终于能推出这个项目，因为我一直想做这个’。不，重点不该是这样。虽然我觉得你有这种直觉不会掉进这个陷阱，但你的正确路径应该是：明确现有资源储备，发现其中的缺口，然后找到填补缺口的东西。

The way it would look for you is to make sure that you're you're less like, here's the next step in my entrepreneurial journey. I'm excited that I've gotten to launch this thing because I've always wanted to do this. No. Right. And I don't think you're in danger of falling into this because you have these instincts, but it is you have been looking for this, and here's your existing stack of resources, and here's the gap in it, and here's the thing that fits into that gap.

最后一个问题。写作的什么特质让你愿意终生投入其中？你不仅是作家，但写作似乎是你工作的基石——无论是沟通方式，还是你在这个世界的存在方式。

Last question. What about writing has compelled you to spend your career doing it? I mean, you're not just a writer, but it seems like writing is the foundational aspect of your job in terms of how you communicate, in terms of how you even show up in the world.

我从没想过会从事这个，但它确实充满魅力。我认为魅力在于：你用这些平凡的砖块，却能建造出宫殿般的结构。随着时间的推移，它会成为永恒的印记。我做的当然没这么宏大，但这就是可能性，是它的潜力所在。同时这也是个挑战，因为你必须思考策略。

I never thought I would be doing this, but it is compelling. I think the reason it's compelling is that you take these very prosaic building blocks, and you can build structures with them that become palaces. Over time, it becomes something that is an artifact that lives on forever. I'm I'm not doing anything this grandiose, but it's the potential, is the potential of it. And it is a challenge because you have to think about strategy.

就我而言，必须考虑商业和财务问题，思考这些文字如何转化为收入，还要研究人类心理。所以这是个融合了至少五门学科的领域，就像解谜题。有时我甚至觉得像在解数学方程式。

You have to think about, in my case, business and finance. You have to think about how are these words gonna translate to revenue. And you have to think about human psychology too. So you have a discipline that combines, like, five other disciplines, and it feels like a puzzle to solve. Like, sometimes I even think of it like a math equation.

如果你能解开这个谜题，就能点燃真正神奇的火花，也可能彻底搞砸。而这正是刺激的一部分，对吧？一旦失误就会付出代价，确实可能出错。

And if you can solve that puzzle, then you can spark something really magical, or it can go really wrong. And that's part of the thrill too. Right? And if you mess up there there are stakes. It it can go wrong.

犯错在所难免，我自己也犯过错。但正因如此，这件事才如此引人入胜、令人振奋。

You can make mistakes, and I have made mistakes. But I think that's why it is so interesting and exciting.

你正在深刻改变企业沟通方式，我从未想过会被你这样职位的人所激励——这大概是对你工作的最高赞誉了。

You're profoundly changing corporate communications, and I never thought I'd be inspired by somebody in your position, which is sort of the ultimate compliment to what you do.

谢谢。感谢邀请

Thank you. Thanks for having

我。

me.