How To Write Like Break The Wheel Author and Marketing Genius Jay Acunzo
Every couple weeks, I go behind the scenes with a different writer about their process. It makes me a better writer (and hopefully same for you!).
This time, I’m pleased to have dug in with my man Jay Acunzo, former Google digital media strategist and head of content at HubSpot. He’s been in technology venture capital and sports media, and he currently creates documentary series with brands about people who do great work.
He’s also one of the most clever writers I know.
Jay’s new book, Break the Wheel is about escaping the endless cycle of conventional thinking and trendy tactics that hold us back from doing our best work. It’s a must-read for intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, growth hackers, or anyone trying to do things differently in business.
Here’s how Jay Acunzo writes:
Q: What’s your process for putting together a big writing project like Break The Wheel?
JA: “Quick: Describe your process for untangling your headphones after they’ve been crammed in your pocket.”
Just kidding.
My main business is a combination of keynote speaking and hosting/producing docu-series for brands, so the sneaky advantage I had was that, for two years, I aerated ideas and stories in public with my speeches and my own personal podcast, Unthinkable. Not only did I benefit from audience feedback, I put in a ton of reps on communicating the stories and insights in a way that made sense. Additionally, I usually schedule a handful of one-on-one video calls with my newsletter subscribers every month. Those are always crucial to my work, including with the book.
From there, the actual outlining, writing, editing, and promotion process felt fluid. I felt like I’d been preparing to write Break the Wheel for two years. While writing and even through that horrifying moment when you’re told you can’t touch the manuscript again, my ongoing speaking and show-running helped me improve my thinking. Looking back, all my projects connect and grow each other like a flywheel. It took awhile to get that spinning, but now I can describe it and sound smart on the newsletters of incredibly smart authors named Shane.
Q: How did you use the principles of the book, if applicable, during the process of writing it?
JA: Oh man, so many things in so many ways, from heuristics that help you find clarity in your work, like “first-principle insights” and “true believers,” to the three psychological barriers to making good decisions. But I’ll cite one example more specifically: aspirational anchors. I explore them more deeply in the book, but the benefits are important to understand here. Think of aspirational anchors as goals with baked-in motivation. Whereas a typical goal is like a mile-marker and may incentivize “at all costs” approaches, aspirational anchors combine both your intent for the future and some kind of hunger or dissatisfaction you feel today. They force you to never settle for the status quo and to start asking open-ended questions to investigate new possibilities instead. With an aspirational anchor in mind, we overcome a crippling psychological issue called the foraging choice, and we avoid settling for cheap tricks or stale approaches “because we have numbers to hit.”
So, in my case, I used my aspirational anchor to quickly vet the seemingly infinite amount of advice I received as a first-time author. It felt like I had a kinda of decision-making filter, and some advice made it through, some got stuck, and some only partially applied to me. The only way I could tell (and do so quickly) was to have a well-articulated aspirational anchor. For instance, I was told by several veteran authors that my book needed a practical methodology to supplement my stories and insights. However, since I aspired to write a business book to inspire more thinking for yourself and less following the list, it made no sense for my methodology to be a prescribed list of steps, an over-promised “secret to success,” or my version of “I Succeeded and So Can You!” Instead, the book’s methodology is a list of questions to ask, directed at the three aspects that are always present in a given situation at work. I also encourage readers to come up with their own questions.
Q: What rituals, if any, do you have as a writer?
JA: Very few. I subscribe to the old Chuck Close idea: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us show up and do the work.” But that doesn’t mean I don’t get stuck. When I feel a lag in momentum, I always come back to the same mental tick: I write a story.
It can be about anything. If the blinking cursor taunts me, then I need to start with a sense of place or character, add some conflict, and shoot for a resolution. For some reason, this doesn’t feel like “trying” to write. I just … write. Even if the story gets scrapped later, I reclaim some momentum.
For this book in particular, I also relied on three other rituals, if you can call them that. First, every Thursday during my writing weeks were blocked off to write. Period. That was gospel. Secondly, I tried to arrive at my favorite writing spot (a coffee shop down the street from my then-home in Queens, New York) at 8am every day, order the same drink, sit in the same chair, and write until 11 or 11:30. Third, I created a Spotify playlist for deep work that I’d play lightly in the background to create white noise alongside the coffee shop sounds. I actually shared that playlist publicly so readers can access that over on Spotify.
Q: What’s your writing toolkit?
JA: Google Docs, Evernote, and something I call an “extraction.”
I start with the extraction — quite literally, extracting the underlying framework of work I admire. I do this with most complex creative projects. For instance, when I first launched my podcast Unthinkable, I knew I wanted to build a narrative-style, people-centric show, so I extracted the framework from Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. I grabbed a notebook and wrote down the various blocks and beats and how long each lasted, then tried to compare that one instance to several episodes of his show. Lastly, I would adapt and insert my own sense of style and creative taste to that framework. Over time, I’d keep reworking this until I felt it was my own.
For the book, I pulled from several writers’ books and articles (like Charles Duhigg and this fella named Shane Snow that people should totally support by paying for his newsletter). Then, I created a new note in Evernote for a given chapter, pasted in the refined and combined framework, wrote a quick outline to place all my notes in the right places, and away I wrote over in Google Docs.
Q: Where do you go for inspiration?
JA: Way, way, way outside the echo chamber. Also? Simply outside. I go for a walk. (It helps to have a nagging but adorable beagle pup as your officemate.)
Coming from the marketing industry, I tend to avoid books, blogs, and podcasts about the subject. Instead, I steal from documentaries about travel and food, standup comedy (nothing lights up my brain like comedians discussing their craft), and those cheesy feature stories about athletes. Man, I love those. I love story-style podcasts that don’t adhere to the NPR house style, like Everything Is Alive (which pokes fun at that style), The Way I Heard It, Reply All, Breakaway, and Origins. I also own several collections of Calvin and Hobbes.
But honestly? Inspiration hits me most when I’m making stuff. In my experience, when you start doing the work, even if it’s bad, it opens up all these little avenues you can poke down until you realize there’s way more around a corner than you anticipated. That lets you ditch this notion of meandering in the world “looking for inspiration” and focus more on the actual work.
Q: What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever read in your life?
JA: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. (Are you sensing a theme?) Not only did I love the material, the style was new and refreshing to me when I first read it. He had this way of speaking the unspoken but obvious truths of an industry or place or moment in time, lacing it with humor, story, and insight. For Break the Wheel, I asked readers and subscribers to blurb my work (instead of experts and author friends doing me a favor). The common theme I got from them was similar: I like to say what everyone’s thinking about the workplace or about a certain industry, like marketing, but so often hesitate to say. “Wait a second, this sucks, right? We can do better, can’t we?” Bourdain opened my eyes to the benefits of doing that, wrapped in emotional stories to drive it home — and the sheer joy of it all.
Q: What’s the first book you remember reading?
JA: Because A Little Bug Went Ka-Choo by Dr. Seuss. Goodreads gives it a 4.3 out of 5 which if you ask me is a sign that people just don’t understand the deeper meaning behind the book. See, there’s this bug, right? And he goes ka-choo…
Q: What’s your best piece of advice for writers?
JA: Write for resonance, not reach.
Q: What do you want written on your tombstone?
JA: Here lies Jay Acunzo: loving father, devoted husband, maker of creative things, and longest-lived human in history.
(That’s projected in a hologram above a montage of my life’s highlights, or at least the moments captured from the year 2075 onward thanks to ocular inserts. Were you getting that?)
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