Meet the Author: Sai Vasam

It feels undeniably weird to have a newsletter going out right now. It has for a while. What’s happening in Minnesota—brutal ICE raids, federal agents murdering people on the streets, the abduction of small children, the attacks on all of our rights in an attempt to shock us into submission—is agonizing to watch. Watching the people of Minnesota come together to defend each other and our democracy keeps me feeling hopeful, however, and energized to do what I can to stand in solidarity with them from afar.

I talk to friends and colleagues regularly about how dissonant it feels to try to run a business, especially a solo business, in the midst of all this. How can any of us focus on making money when the horrors keep piling up, when there is so much other work to do? And yet, all of us also have our own lives and needs, which require money to meet. It’s a hard balance to find, and I’m not sure I always get it right, but I am attentive to it.

I am also in the position of being in a business that focuses on writing. On storytelling. And as I’ve said so often, I believe that writing is magic. Stories are a uniquely human form of magic, in the literal sense: a genuinely extraordinary form of power that can enact change in the world.

Writing is powerful. The stories we tell—the stories we are told—shape how we see the world, each other, and our place in it. Stories offer us pathways to connection, point out the possibility of a different future, and offer us comfort when we need it. Writing, as today’s interview notes, offers us a way to see ourselves.

In a moment when competing stories—truth and lies, love and hate—battle for dominance, I have to believe that writing matters. Helping people find their voices and claim their power matters. Our stories matter.

If you would like to offer your support to Minnesotans, from wherever you happen to be, I recommend checking out this resource page.

Today’s interview, as I mentioned above, talks about the importance of writing. Sai Vasam and I talked about his journey to writing his first book and the changes that have taken place in his creative practice since then.

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Sai Vasam is an author, educator, entrepreneur, and speaker helping young adults and youth become confident Self-Investors. He creates 1-1 and group spaces and opportunities to deeply connect on topics that plague today's twenty-somethings, like career confusion, lack of community, unhealthy habits and addictions, and destigmatizing discussing personal finance.

You can learn more about Sai at his website, pick up a copy of his book Self-Investor, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Tell me about your journey to writing your book. How did you decide to write it?

I started writing during Covid. I think a lot of people started some sort of practice when they were spending time with themselves or their families and at home doing something.

So for me it was writing. I realized at that point, as I started getting into that practice, that I wanted to write a book. I don't know what it was going to be on, but I started blogging, started writing some newsletters, experimenting, and took a course in 2022. It was like writing a punchy book in 100 days or 90 days.

I actually looked at it over the last couple months, and it was like, “Who was this?” The first draft was not even remotely close to what the topic of this book actually was about. But it's like, getting that shitty first draft out of the way, it's like, “Oh, I've done something that has X amount of pages. Is a complete idea developed?” How cohesive that is, how relevant that is, is a separate question, but it's an idea that was developed.

The process of writing this book, it actually started as a newsletter. My goal at the time was to take the James Clear approach: keep writing blog posts or newsletters, and then eventually combine them into this book. Each individual thing would be a chapter.

I maybe published 10 or so of those, and I realized those are getting longer and longer. When this one was actually ready to be published, it was 20,000 words, and I realized that's not going to be a newsletter, that's the start of the book.

So I did not publish at that time. I went back to the drawing board. That was draft one, and I wrote another draft. I was like, “Okay, what if I spent even more time developing there?”

Draft two, draft three, I got feedback and sent it back to a few people. It's like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” One piece of feedback that still sticks with me today is someone who said that the voice in my book and the voice that I use when we're having conversations was different.

And I was like, “Oh, okay. How I talk and how I write are two different voices, and that's normal,” but he was just pointing that out. How can I sound more like myself in the book, if that's what he's recognizing?

I went back to the drawing board. I realized the draft at that point was all logical. It's all logical, the frameworks and intellectual parts. For draft three, I wrote the story out without regard for the actual frameworks and stuff. I had two separate drafts.

That's when I actually started working with the publisher. Long story there, but I ended up self-publishing. The next draft after that was the combining and the editing process of looking at the logical, looking at the emotional, and going, this is how they weave together. There's a story you can tell, then here's a lesson, or here's an idea, here's a concept, here's a framework that they can take away from it.

The process of writing the book was obviously going through the editing process a few times and then then, essentially, quickly publishing right on Amazon and other platforms.

You started blogging and writing newsletters, and then realizing you had a book on your hands. What writing strategies did you use for these different formats?

When I actually started writing the book, it was like sprints. It was a sprint of a few weeks at a time. The book ended up being around 30,000 words. I would write for three weeks, let's say, and I would take this break, just let it digest. Maybe there's new ideas that come up. There are new things that you want to talk about or remove. The editor kind of takes its time.

Even if you're self-editing or whatever, I would recommend actually stepping away from the book, because when you're in it, you can't really see the forest for the trees, right? So stepping away from it gave me not just the insight or the perspective, but also the energy to feel like this long, dragged-out process was these series of short sprints and different things.

I wrote the original newsletter in ‘23 and published it in spring of ‘25, so a year and a half or so. Zooming out, it wasn’t too much of my time, especially when you chunk it out to a concentrated period of a couple hours a day, or a few minutes.

I have the benefit of not having family responsibilities or anything, no kids, stuff like that. I understand that piece of it. I don't have those obligations right now. Let me take the most advantage of that.

As far as writing strategies, I think it's just the practice of it. I didn't necessarily decide when I first started writing that I was going to write a book. When I'm living the experience, I wasn't like, “Oh, this is going to become a book.” It's just taking note of, hey, this is what's happening, and just becoming a better writer through the daily practice of it.

You're not going to become enlightened by meditating and that’s it. Same thing with the gym, same thing with any habit. It's just showing up for maybe five minutes a day.

The different types of writing allowed me to go from very logical to very emotional, and maybe other types too, where I can lean into more of those things depending on what I actually have the energy for.

Bullet journaling allowed me to get into my more logical side. I need to get these things done. That's what I'm grateful for. And then on the emotional side, it's like, “Okay, what if I wrote this in a narrative. Maybe let me read more novels or read more poetry, or things that allow me to tap into my emotions.”

You mentioned that you were working with a publisher and ended up self-publishing. What was the publishing process like?

That was a case of wrong timing. It's funny, one of the lessons in the book that I share is that the most important thing when investing in yourself is the who, it's not necessarily the offer. Alot of times we look at the what: how much money is this, am I going to get a discount, or am I going to get a rebate? The financial side of things.

I realized, it's the who that matters the most. That doesn't discount the other things. But what I realized is, if I’d worked with this person a few years ago, things would have been more smooth. They ended up selling the company. It was just a matter of timing, and they were also working a full time job at the beginning of the engagement.

At some point, I saw the writing on the wall, like, hey, I wasn't the top priority. And fair enough. They’ve got a couple young kids, and they're selling the company, and there’s a full time job as well. Maybe I could have done a little bit more due diligence on my side.

But then after a while, I was like, “Okay, this is a sign for me to go through the process myself and learn it for myself. If I struggle, and YouTube hack it together, ask people—whatever it is, I want to do it myself and see what happens.” What does this end product look like if I do it myself?

When I have more financial ability in the future and when I publish second, third, fourth books, I won’t mind spending four figures or five figures if it’s the right way to get something done.

On the non-writing, publishing side of things, I was exploring different book designers and interior formats. And I was like, this is not exactly the way that I want. It's finding this balance between wanting done and feeling like this has to be right. This has to feel right.

This has to feel like my book. This is my baby. I want to feel 100% with whatever I put out there, whether it's the title, whether it's the subtitle, the exact design, the fonts, the colors, all the things. The graphics inside, the theme of the graphic, the designs inside everything, every small detail. The sizing of the tables.

I wanted to do that myself, get the copies. I think I went through four or five rounds of ordering author copies, because, “Oh, man, this table spacing is off here, the font size or the graphic size, whatever.” If I notice it, I want to make the adjustment.

I'm glad I ended up publishing it with my own name and my mark on the book, because it feels more like me.

I think being in a startup for a few years also helped. I was able to wear these multiple hats, working with all the teams. Say I was in a large corporation where I was purely marketing but then had a different designer, so I wasn't missing around in Canva, I wouldn’t have had that level of confidence to go in and change the things myself.

What has all of the writing you’ve done taught you about yourself?

The experience of it is so individual, I don't know. I think we're taught, at least for me growing up, it was like five paragraphs: introduction, conclusion, thesis sentence, like all this stuff. Sure, maybe for academic papers, that makes sense.

But there's such a larger world of writing. Play around with the structure. What are the basic rules of English? Play around with the structure. Write however you want. You can combine words and art. What if you take the vowels out of a word? People can still understand the meanings of the words, most likely.

What does it look like to write for 10 minutes? Just 100% focused. Sometimes, my 10-minute, 15-minute sessions of writing, I get so much out there. Pages and pages. Sometimes I'm sitting at a blank page or feeling like ideas are fluttering out over the course of an hour. A few lines. And that's okay. That's the process.

Sometimes you're going to have that. You're locked in and tapped into, some say, a higher power. You're tapped into your intuition, whatever that feels like.

But I’m just learning that there's so many different ways of writing. I'm still exploring that right now. When you zoom out, I’m six years into my writing practice, I would say, which feels like a lot. But then when I say it out loud, it’s like, I'm a baby.

I'm just really excited to see what that looks like in five more years and the amount of, hopefully, the expansion I’ve experienced with my writing styles. This season of life that I'm in right now has meant a lot of changes.

I realized that part of it, when I was talking about the logical and emotional side of writing the book, there’s this whole other side of emotional writing. I did the best I could then and now, it's like, that was probably 10 percent of where I'm operating at right now.

There's such a different energy that is through those words, expressing them in the words that are meant to be written, versus trying to logically write a book, trying my best to get my emotions out. I was just flowing.

It's taught me to practice, practice. You’ve got to get into the dojo, to this classroom, whatever analogy you want to use, and do the reps, do the reps, and that builds that confidence.

I love what you said about how you have five, six years of writing experience, and that feels like you're just at the beginning stages of what's to come. I think a lot of people are like, “Well, I have been writing for so long, shouldn't I be further along? Shouldn't I feel this other way?”

One thing I’ll add is that writing is words, but speaking is also words, right? These are all just forms of expression. What that’s taught me about myself is that I can get to a state of really expressing my emotions through writing, where I'm able to speak about those things as well. There's a stream of consciousness is, is a little bit quicker when you're speaking, because you don't necessarily have the time delay between thinking a thought or or feeling an emotion.

Writing something, there is a little bit of a delay. Writing has a little bit of that delay. Speaking it, it has to come directly. Sometimes I'll just speak the thing, the energy will be there, and then it's transcribed, right? Then we can use tools to help get that into words that we can see, but still have that energy.

It's not just actually pen to paper or keyboard, or even a typewriter, right? It's, what is the energy that we want to express? And the energy just comes in from people as art, as dance, as speaking, as words on a piece of paper, and marrying all these different forms.

What is one area of your life in which writing has added some unexpected value?

I’m going to go back to tapping into my emotions. As a man, that’s not something I was taught or even learned implicitly from father figures or men mentors or teachers or anyone like that.

It’s only now I’m seeing that writing is a pathway to emotional expression. There’s obviously different ways. But as a man, I kind of see that we’re pigeonholed into expressing our emotions in a certain way. It’s like, “Go to the gym and work it out,” you have to be this huge masculine man.

But there’s so much depth that comes with being able to actually feel the sensations within the body and write that out. Sensing and perceiving your emotions and being able to express those. I think those are two different things that I’m recognizing.

I’ve developed that and it’s a gift. It wasn’t always a gift, but I’ve developed that strength and that gift. There are a lot of men who are not able to tap into that on demand, and that level of depth of emotional expression.

I’m just bubbling up with life force and words and all these things that are coming up because of the daily small practices of writing for a few minutes a day, or several days a week. That ability to tap into my emotions and process a lot of the things that are going on in my life has been a huge unexpected value that maybe previous me would not have been able to access.

It sounds like this intuitive, embodied practice that is opening you up to things that culturally you’re taught to suppress or ignore. What a gift to give to yourself and the people around you.

I’ll add on to that, too. Feeling seen relates to it. When everything is in your head as a person, but especially as a man, trying to translate that into the physical and work it out or whatever… we rarely give ourselves time to be seen.

Writing is a way to do that. Writing is a way for the energy that’s within to express itself as words and not just into the ephemeral by speaking, but by actually putting pen to paper and seeing the words that actually came out of our brain, came out of our heart, and see it physically.

That is literally a way for us to see ourselves, and so that has also enabled me to tap into my emotions. I love writing for that.

What comes next for you creatively?

I don’t know. I mentioned the blog that I started in 2021. Everyone had a podcast or a blog. It’s still going in the background. It’s fine.

There are hundreds of entries. That way my first foray into maybe expressing and sharing some emotions. Looking back, it’s like, that’s such a little percentage of what I’m feeling right now. So I started a Substack, as did many other people.

Now I’m exploring. This book, a lot of it came from my logical mind, which I’m accepting, and I love myself for that. Substack is now the area where I’m exploring writing from the heart. What does it mean to write more poetically, or write in a different style?

I’m challenging myself, but it’s coming effortlessly. There’s also a tension. Previous me would have written about what I’m feeling in this intellectual way, versus now, it’s like—what if I use an analogy or different writing styles to express the same thing that I’m feeling? What if I use different words to elicit the same emotions or deeper emotions within myself or the reader?

I’m just exploring Substack as my avenue for writing, publishing, sometimes twice a day. It’s opening me up to a lot of possibilities. If someone wants to follow along with the art, that’s the place. If someone’s more coming from, “Hey, give me a roadmap for something,” especially as a young adult, then the book is great.

If you were going to give another writer a piece of advice, what would that be?

Start in silence. For me, some of the best ideas have come from sitting still, allowing the thoughts to come through. It's like, “Oh, this one clicks, let me dive in here.”

Or showering, thinking, driving—these activities that maybe we turn off our mind, in a sense, but then that emptiness is actually the time when those ideas actually come in. I write those ideas down in Notion and then I come back to it later, if I don't have time to develop it fully.

But starting from a place of emptiness is so beautiful, and starting from silence is so, so nice and peaceful, because there's no pressure to perform, there's no pressure to publish something, and it leans more into the intuition, the energy of what you're feeling.

It allows you to tap into something that needs to be expressed, rather than something that you think and have to type.

It’s a kind of extension of one of the things I'm living by now, which is energy, or strategy. Lead with energy, and then strategy will automatically come, whether it's business or life or whatever. Same thing here.

I'm starting with what energy do I want to elicit and express right now? The words will come from that.

What is the best book that you have read recently?

A recent one is Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (affiliate link*). I like how it thinks about things more systemically. It’s not just like, “What can I do?” A lot of writing and how-tos, they kind of end up as, “How can I do something? How can I help?” That book is looking more at, how can we do something together? Going from “I” to “we.”

One of the big things I liked about the book is that it talks about things systemically—how poverty and housing impact our education systems, impact our financial systems, all these things.

I also want to give a shoutout to another book. Matt Hill’s book, A Starry Night (affiliate link*). He’s been my coach for a while and is a friend now. The premise is that there are these two people with very different perspectives having a conversation, and you as a person, you’re seeing the conversation happen.

When I talk about what does it mean to express yourself emotionally through words, he’s someone that I look up to and follow. He makes me want to tap into that more.

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

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This conversation with Sai invites us all to think about what role writing plays in our lives and how we can be braver with our storytelling. What story is waiting for you to tell it?