How To Master Storytelling

All right, look, it's Sean here. I don't want to toot my own horn, but Beep beep. This is this is a this is an interview that somebody else did with me. Uh David Prel, who you might know online as the writing guy. He uh invited me out to San Francisco and We did an interview. For his podcast called How I Write. And my episode is doing so well.

So well, it is I have this little Chrome extension. This thing is doing 11X. Eleven X means it is eleven times higher performing than his normal videos. Something good is in this video that it's doing eleven X on YouTube. And it's all about storytelling. It's all about writing. Uh it's stuff that a lot of people ask me about, but I'd never have taken the time to sit down and talk about it. Well, David got me to sit down and tell you everything that I know about the stuff.

Um I hope you like it. I was a little sick during the interview, but it was my Michael Jordan flu game. I came I came prepared and I brought the heat. Um I'm really hyping this up and it's because I'm excited about it. I'm really proud of this interview. It's doing really well. A lot of people are messaging me about it. So we want we asked David, hey, can we run this on our feed? Um, you know, we took the took the episode from him, we're gonna run it on our feed. It's basically an interview where he's the interviewer and I'm the guest. Talking about storytelling.

and writing. So if you like those two things, you're gonna like this episode. Alright, enjoy this episode. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like a day The story is a five second moment of change. Whoa, what does that mean? We want to work backwards from the emotion. The only things people will share is things that are L O L

WTF. OMG. Wait, so all out here. Stop the broadcast. So like what should I do next time I sit down to write? The real great writers, I believe, are great at framing their ideas. Oh, interesting. So Mr. Beast, Steve Bartlett, Dave Chappelle, Hassan Minaj, those are the people I try to learn from. You know, I could teach a 30 second masterclass. It's just this. Sean Purry is one of those guys that I really wanted to learn from. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to tell better stories by listening to good storytellers, but Sean Has really deconstructed the storytelling process. And you hear people saying all the time, oh, storytelling's really important. You should get really good at it.

But there's not a lot of people who come in with concrete clear frameworks like he does. So this is a master class on storytelling. Come on in. It's time to roll. I said this to you when we

For a show of hands, but This podcast Was probably the biggest increase in terms of how much I've admired a guest. and how much that's grown through the prep process. And so I just want to compliment you on that. And in particular, there's a lot of things that you do really well in your writing that

I'm not good at. And This is one of those episodes where I just have a bunch of questions and I'm here to make my writing way better. And the place I want to start is storytelling. I have no frameworks for thinking about storytelling. Before you do storytelling, can I give you a compliment on your compliment? Yeah. So Great compliment, first of all, very specific. Uh but the second is actually it's a writing tip which is

I didn't The thing you said where you're like, you know, I started kind of going down your rabbit hole. And my like Whatever respect for your whatever you said, like my uh whatever your score went up a lot during that process. Uh, I learned this from these two guys, Dylan and Henry. They're young guys. They were like twenty one when I met'em.

And they were recording these videos, I was like, How many views do these get? And they were like Oh, nobody watches these. And I'm like, but you guys are like really trying, like Is it like some day somebody will watch these? He's like Yeah, specifically we're creating a binge bank.

And I was like, What's a bench bank? And he goes It's when you Basically stack material so that like Even though these If we just looked at the view counts, it'd be kind of discouraging, like uh not that many people read this or watched this.

Um But there were like we start to think about it differently. Instead we said, All right, each one's not getting that many views, but I'm creating a bank where if somebody ever said, I'm curious about this guy, I want to learn more, what is this guy all about? That in the next hour you would walk out with like my reputation would be way higher with you, right? Like you would feel like you know me.

You would like me, you would respect me. And it changed the way I thought about that. And so then I'cause I used to not I used to like be like very um results driven. It's like ah if it's not immediately paying off. It's hard for me to get excited about it.

But when I thought of the Binch Bank, I just thought, Oh, I need to create this library that if anybody, like if David's gonna do research. He's gonna spend an hour or two hours going like down the rabbit hole. I need to leave a little breadcrumb trail that by the end he's like I love this guy. I'm all about this guy. Guess where I ended up? Guess what like the final thing was, which was like the shebang of all right, I totally go. And like that forty page PDF with all your main principles. That was like the pool I swam in for the longest.

And I ended up there. Yeah. Who knows? But like that's the you leave that trail. You could probably I should probably do it better, but like This idea of create a binge bank, I think is So much more valuable than a resume or a portfolio.

It's like People will come knocking. They will get curious about you. And like give'em away to uh Binge your content like it's a Netflix show.

And by y after two hours, they should feel like you're the man. That's that's a goal I think people should have. So what do you do to do that intentionally? Well the first thing is like you don't get discouraged by like how small your thing is today. That was like the first part, which is If you create something and the feedback loop is not quite there. You're either gonna just Will power your way to keep going.

You're gonna be A very wise person and save results take time. I'm neither of those things. Bad at willpower. And not that wise, right? Like I I kinda know that's the answer, but it's hard.

So it's a way to trick yourself and um The way to trick yourself just to say Oh yeah, um this one thing, it doesn't have to like go viral for this to be successful. This is for my binge bank. I know the idea of a bitch make is important.

I wanna have that as an asset that's there for me. So what are the ten things that somebody should go consume? And I started paying attention to that and and started putting that together. I feel like you're just good at learning skills, putting names to them and

This is a good time to dive into the storytelling. So I guess that you had this whole day, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna go check out Aaron Torkin and he always comes back to like this one core principle. Tell me about what you've learned from storytelling and then maybe even like the meta of how you learn new skills. The storytelling is cool because Yeah. I think everybody intuitively knows storytelling is a

Pretty dope ability. And I look for this mismatch between Things that have a lot of value. But you're not taught. Or even better.

It sounds kinda lame to say you're working on it. Like if I find that I'm like ooh, this is a good one. Uh another example of that to me is uh Enthusiasm. Anybody who's been around somebody who's like got high energy enthusiasm, you like that person. That's inherently like a

It's a very likable trait. Of course, there's a over the top obnoxious version, but it generally you want to err on the side of have energy, have enthusiasm. Those are people you want to do projects with, work with. Be involved with. But nobody will ever be like yeah, I'm practicing my enthusiasm. Well, like I'm practicing this. Um that sentence doesn't even compute. So

If there's a thing that has value that other people don't Practice or try at. Uh and even better, it's like almost taboo or lame to say you do it. I've found that those skills are actually like Premium skills to me.

Because Yeah. almost like differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Storytelling is another one of those. Joke telling is another one of those. Like if you're like Um I am working on Like getting funnier. Like, Are you trying to be a comedian? No. Like

You like funny people though, right? Like Of course. Everybody does, whether it's relationships, work Content creation, whatever you're doing. If you're humor level if you're more humorous, people will like it better. Nobody practices.

So it's like what do you expect? Just You know That's magically happened? Like we kinda know everything comes from practice. Everything is downstream of practice. So storytelling is one of those skills where I knew that I loved it whenever it was

I met somebody who's a great storyteller. I wanted to get better at it. So then who's the best in the world at this, right? That's the next question. One of the people that came to mind when I Googled around was Aaron Sorkin. Written, you know, famous T V shows.

I don't even know. West Wing Newsroom. the social network movie great for writing dialogue. And in these interviews he says this thing. He's like Like what's the key to storytelling? Like can you teach a like a three hour master class? He's like I could teach a thirty second master class. Like It's just this.

It's Intention and obstacle. And he said it even better, he goes, I worship At the altar. Of intention and obstacle.

And I was like, I don't even know what the hell he's talking about, but the way this guy's serious about it Tells me like I need to Go dig in. What is he talking about? So what does this mean? Intention and obstacle is just

At any given moment. The the hero of the story. Whether it's you or someone you're talking about. has to have a very clean. What do they want? And under that is like why do they want it?

How bad do they want it? What happens if they don't get it, right? That's what goes into intention. And then obstacle, like who's in the way, right? So you know, Harry Potter wants to live, what's in his way, Voldemort's trying to kill him, the most powerful wizard of all time is trying to kill him, right? Intention and obstacle. And basically if you watch if you read any story or you watch any movie, you should be able to pause At any moment.

And just point at the screen and just say, What's what do they want right now? And what's in their way. And if you ever go like Five minutes without that being clear. People will lose attention the their attention will drift away. And so um once I realized that

I made that the central premise of any story. And what I realized was that This was A incredibly powerful tool. It is the fundamental like building block of storytelling. And um

The mm. More interesting thing, which we could talk about is It doesn't have to be life or death. So most people think of it when like the example I even gave was Harry Potter trying to live and E most evil words are trying to kill. Okay, cool.

But You can shrink that down and actually you get bonus points when you can do intention and obstacle. On a Lower stakes moment. So I wanted a croissant. And all the places were closed, but I need my croissant. You need your croissant. And the but the audience has to believe that you truly needed it.

And you gotta tell them, be like You gotta make them believe that you really want it. I ideally because you actually did, right? You know, you don't have to fabricate the story, it should be real. I'll give you an example. I was at a um Like executive offsite. Uh my company had just got acquired.

Like I put on the exact team of this now, like two thousand person company. And I don't I feel a little bit out of place. Like I've never worked in a company bigger than twenty people. And I wanted to use storytelling to kind of like as a crutch, as as one of my tools in my toolkit. How can I use this to better myself? All right.

So um We're supposed to go around the circle and my Say what's been going on. Uh or like what's something what's this What's something recently that happened that you want to share with the group? Some B S like uh

Icebreaker. And every single person just did it in a work context. Oh, we're working on this thing. But then this person on my team has did this problem or they quit or whatever. Oh, we're working on this thing, but then legal said this. It's kinda like boring, boring, boring. And uh I was like, Yeah, recently uh had a big moment, big day.

And uh Okay. Pause, right? Get people curious. I said um I just moved out of the house. I was young, right? So I was like I just moved out of the house.

I'm living in my own place. I've been living there for a year now, but I've never invited my mom over. And my mom's in Badger, why don't she invite me over? What she doesn't know is I'd never invite her over because I don't wanna I don't know how to host. She was always the host if someone came over. I don't know how to do adult things. So people are kinda laughing, right?'Cause I'm

But I'm like I was like I had been trying to get her to like treat me like an adult. But the reality was I'm like I'm not. I'm actually still a little little boy, right? And so I'm telling the story about how my mom comes over and I decide to cook. I decide to cook Brussels sprouts, the most adult food there is. Problem is, don't know how to cook the Brussels sprouts, so I'm doing it, blah, blah, blah. And I tell the store cooking the Brussels sprouts.

And I kid you not, everybody's like Everybody's entertained. They listen to it. During the break everybody made a point to come up and be like Dude, that bros shot story is hilarious. Um That was so f that was so funny. Like what was that? And what even just happened? They kinda couldn't even explain it.

And For me, it was just another example of using storytelling even on low stakes moments actually Builds. Like ability. And um

Fandom. More so than the dramatic I was skiing and there was an avalanche. That's cool, but it's unrelatable. And actually there's something fundamentally unlikable about it. And I wanna write Uh usually if I want to write something it's because

I'm trying to Whatever. I'm trying to have fun, but I'm also trying to have build an audience of people who like me or are fans of me or get customers who wanna, you know, buy my product or whatever, I try to use likability for that. It was interesting. I was at a

sort of a very fancy dinner. It's like multi billionaire's house and y it it was one of those dinners where everyone is like you know, people had flown in for the dinner and there's like an Olympian who's sitting across the table who is like a big fan of grown up and And we're all going around doing introductions and it's my time to do the introduction. So I'm nervous and I really want to impress everybody. Like one of my childhood heroes snork. Two o'clock, right? And uh I you know sort of pup myself up and I talk about hey, this is what I do for a living and I'm like oh crushed. You know, man, everyone would love this.

And we're We're hanging out after after dinner in back in my apartment. My buddy goes Yo. You did the worst job ever. Like That was a

Horrible intro. It's like what are you talking about? Every word to the bone, like have my one liners like ready to go. Crushed it. He's like No. You were just trying to sound impressive. In a moment like that. You tell a funny story or you make a joke and you lighten the mood.

You did exactly the wrong thing. Right. Yeah, that's uh first of all, great friend. To say that great friend. Can we call that out? And you're you're absolutely right. Uh I learned this from Hassan Minaj, the comedian,'cause I was gonna go on stage. I was like, Hey dude, like

You do this for a living. I don't know how to do this stuff. And he goes. You wanna um He goes, Comedy is a low status game. So he goes, you know, you're gonna be up on stage and you're nervous, so your natural tendency is gonna be to puff your chest out to kind of project

This pr false bravado? But he's like um Actually what you want to do is build connection with people and you build connection with people through Um Vulnerability.

True. uh low low stakes uh through um low status. Specifically. He starts his comedy special. I went and wrote it out to try to like understand what he does. His last comedy special.

He starts out. He's sitting on a stool. He's talking about how intentional Him and his wife been trying to get pregnant. Um

And they haven't been able to. And they went to a doctor and he's like The worst news ever. It was my fault. My balls don't work, basically, right? Like Is there a lower status thing as a guy than to be like I my junk doesn't doesn't perform? Just the way like that that word choice is inherently funny. Exactly. And so you know he's obviously a master at this and trying to

Trying to learn from people who are like I'm in business. I don't try to learn how to be A better storyteller or better writer from business people. Why would I do that? Uh I would try to learn from the people who

Their thing is storytelling, uh writing or Entertainment because they're gonna be the best at this. Yeah. comedians, those are the people I try to learn from and so Uh I think that was one principle that sounds like you you learned the lesson the hard way too.

How is storytelling different for you in writing versus speaking? It's not that different. Um In general. one of my biggest writing rules is write like you talk. Um

Most people have this false uh thing we do. I think it's from school, like school kinda teaches you like they're like read Shakespeare Write these essays, you know, I need six pages, uh six pages minimum. You know, double spaced, you know, all this stuff.

Use a big vocabulary. It's all the things that don't work in the real world, you learn in school. I think what school teaches you is basically just pretend. Like uh Hey, be something you're totally not. That's what good writing is.

In the real world, I don't think that's true. I think uh you know Good writing is simple. Good writing is easy to read, good writing is entertaining to read. Good writing Has a voice. Um it's not just like this you know, archaic sounding thing. Um

So anyways I you know, one of the principles is write like a talk. So If I'm gonna write a story I will actually say it first. And then I'll just write down what I said. That's like a starting point for me'cause

For most people, uh myself included, if you sit down the like blank page you know, of death is like the most intimidating thing, it's very hard to even get started. But if you are stuck and s you just say Okay, so what is the story? Like

Forget the words. What are you trying to say? I'm trying to tell the story about the one time with the Burst Spouts and blah blah blah. Um cool. What makes it interesting? All right, great. Um

Where did it start? What's the start of the story? Well sure is when I blah blah blah. And what's the end? Well the end was when this happened. All right, cool. Sounds like you got a beginning, middle, end. You know what happened.

And you roughly hit the outline. Cool, maybe now start writing. And so Uh Right like you talk is an important principle. And the other thing is There are nuances that are different. So, for example

In writing I'll use a ton of like parentheses. Because you can't do that in Uh you kinda you can break the fourth wall basically when when you write, but when you talk It would be like me saying, um

So we were going this way. You know, we o we always take that route. Right. It's like a that's a parentheses when you're talking. When you're writing it's actually much easier to do. Um But when you're talking you can use pauses.

A dramatic pause. How do you do a dramatic pause in writing? It's kinda hard to do. You have to like use like Line breaks or dot that or whatever, right? Like you gotta Try that. So you some tools are a little bit different. I would say eighty to ninety percent of it is

The same to me. Have you learned anything about the pacing of a story, like the how you drag it out or compress it, like does that change for different platforms? How do you think about that? Definitely. Um You know, I think

Another misconception is Shorter the better. too long is too boring and actually Um You know, anything could be any length.

It just says you can only be as long as it is interesting. Listen, general rule. It can only be as long as it is interesting. If you can go this long, you know, a long you know blog post, but it's interesting the all the way, fantastic. That's the right way. However You

should always try to understand like what is your level of credibility or buy in with the audience. So here in a podcast You can kinda riff in a podcast. You can be like, dude, what yeah, we could talk about something we said in the lobby or be like Oh, you just had Sam Alman on? Does he have a bodyguard? Like we could just Not talk about writing for five minutes, totally fine.

However. If it's cold traffic on the internet, you better have like an amazing headline. And a first line that's gonna hook people and be right about the match what the headline was because you don't You don't have that reputation with them.

So if you know your audience's level of buy in with you, you can Kind of um. dance around subjects versus be very direct and immediate and try to provide value right away. Um to hook people right away. So you know.

TikTok is a platform where You're swiping Like And if it's not interesting in the first like n point nine seconds, you're gone. So on TikTok you see people right away trying to say a thing.

On podcasts you'll see people shoot the shit. Um and build you know, there's a chemistry thing. Because people aren't gonna swipe away from the podcast in in the first thirty seconds. It's not usually how people consume podcasts. And so you gotta know your medium and you gotta know your audience, what's the level of buy in you have. How do you think about the hooks for

A story. Like one of the things I've noticed with comedians And really studied. Is how fast they're able to build context. They can do it in like six to eight words. Where some people just go on and on and on and on and on at drones.

And that hook. Of how you bring people into the story is super important. I agree. Um However I t so ho what is a hook? So a hook is basically it's the first thing you're gonna say, it's you try to hook their attention. Great.

I think actually right now, for for the type of person who's gonna listen to this, you probably have studied a little bit of r copywriting maybe or You've kinda pay attention to what like, oh, this person's blowing up on Twitter, what do they do? Oh, they were like, you know, they write their threads and the first line of their thread is like Here's the uh unbelievable story about how this

You know, Chinese immigrant. took a simple thimble and turned it into ten billion dollars, whatever. So I'm like Unbelievable sounding of a that you're like, oh you have to pick it's like maximum clickbait, right? I actually think that hooks somewhat overrated. Underrated is frames. So what's a frame? So a frame is

You take an idea. An idea can be this big or it can be this big depending on the frame. So I can be like um Yeah, uh uh what's this I don't have a good example on top my head, but we'll do one that we just talked about, the Hustamanaj is a comedy thing, right?

I told a little story about What he's doing in um in his opening line. So I could just say Here's what he dated at the start of his thing. I could say here's what you can learn about public speaking.

From One of the greatest public speakers in the world. So I could take the same content where I'm gonna talk about Starting with a low status thing. But I can put it in the frame of

This is not just for comedians. This is actually when you're at a dinner party and you're supposed to make an intro. And you don't know what the hell to say, um This is how to not make an ass out of yourself. You change the frame.

And so I think that m more important than a hook. Which is just like a Grab you by the throat, attention grabber. Is Think about how you're gonna frame your ideas.

Hooks are about The words you're gonna write? Frames are about the idea and how you're gonna make that idea relevant and how you're gonna connect two ideas that seem unrelated. To be related. The real great writers I believe are

Great at framing their ideas. More so than like Just coming up with that perfect one line hook thing that's gonna like You know, just kinda trip the person into clicking. Yeah, let's get super concrete here. So You wrote a super viral thread on Clubhouse.

And This was the standard way to do a frame. So it says One. Parentheses. Clubhouse existential threat number one, time to value.

ratio lex let's brainstorm. And you're like Jargon, fancy words. That wasn't me writing it. That was somebody else. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't like it. It like It brainstorm, like no storyline and then It didn't do that well.

And you come in, you're like, so dot dot Everyone seems to think Clubhouse is the next big thing. But I think it's gonna fail. Here's how I think it all goes down. Yes.

Why did you choose that? So the if you compare the two. And like on your YouTube you should put these like side by side so people could see it. The w other one was written by this guy, Chris, who Created an app. That was kinda like Clubhouse.

Went super viral. It was called Secret back in the day. I don't know if you remember this. It's called secret, but super viral. They ca raised like a hundred million dollars. The founder like sold some secondary, bought a Ferrari, like It was like the hit product for like a very short minute of time and then it died. So

If anyone has the credibility to say why Clubhouse might fail That guy was actually the guy. The problem was He was extremely dry. Told no story.

And just said Cl and use like very like twelfth grade reading level jargon like Clubhouse's existential threat.

Yeah. the time to value ratio, like immediately felt like homework. Whereas my thing was Everybody thinks X. But I think why.

And more the most important part was Here's how I think it's gonna go down. Not Here's why I'm right. So Here's how it's gonna go down is basically like

Gossip. It's story. Um Here's why is logic and rationale. So that's kind of why I wrote it that way was And then the rest of the thread. The reason this thread got like twenty million

Was because I t I wrote it almost like a screenplay. I was like I didn't say Here's the five problems with Clubhouse I wrote.

You're the founder of Clubhouse. First of all. Fuck yeah. You know, you're winning. Everybody's talking about your app your app is cool, you know, Kanye's in your DMs. VCs are throwing money at you. And I set it up, right? Like you that's the setup. That's you right now. And already you know if you're reading that.

This is not how most Business, tech, Twitter, writing, goes. Business tech to writing goes is it it's an intelligence contest. And I was telling a story. And um and so you know, that's why I think it worked. I think if I had ridden it with the you know

Me trying to be the the the nine thousand IQ guy in the room. It would not have worked. So when you see people Say that I'm writing now and I'm like, all right.

I'm not gonna do an intelligence contest. I'm gonna try to Do exactly what Aaron Sorkin said, there's intention and there's obstacle. I'm gonna frame what I'm saying in terms of story. I'm gonna focus on the frame and say that my writing still is just like, yo, this is lame.

What do you think is going on there that makes it feel dry or like it lacks a sense of momentum. Well, in the same way that comedy is great. But not every line should be a joke. Uh storytelling is great.

And not every piece of content needs a story. Um so I think one challenge is like I wrote that one as a story. It did great. That doesn't mean everything I write online. Is like Screenplay story type of thing. That worked in that situation. It's not gonna work in every situation. So you're gonna know like

The tools and when to use them. Hammer's not good. If you're just trying to open a door. Sometimes a key is what you need. And so That's the first thing. Don't just force it in. The second thing is like you probably need reps, like

I don't know, I've done this a lot of times. That wasn't the first story I've ever written. So if you're like cool, I'm gonna get better at storytelling Be prepared. Like Tell a hundred stories. Starting with Maximum Cringe.

And get to not cringe, right? Like But it's gonna take a hundred. Expect that it's gonna take a hundred stabs at this. And specifically In t a hundred intelligent reps. So it's like

Do it. And then The next one you have to be like, what could I do better? Oh, my hook was a little weak there. Oh, you know, it droned on too long. Or

I don't really have a point. Maybe this should should have been a story. Maybe it should have been something else. And so hundred reps for each one, you try to say, What's one thing I could do better than last time? Just one thing. That's it. And then you just keep going. And if you can do a hundred of those, then I bet your stories will work. It's not gonna be it's not gonna feel forced. Because you'll learn the skill. Through those hundred reps. This is the Mr. Beast ism of uh

He's like, everybody asked me like how do you do YouTube good? He's like I tell them all the same exact thing. Make a hundred videos and every video make one make Do something better than you did before. Any well, anything. Doesn't even matter what it is. One thing better than four. Do a hundred.

Then come back and talk to me. And he's like, Two things happen. First of all, nobody does it. They all wanted just like some answer. They had no a no intention of actually going in. Doing the work. And then of the few people who actually do the work, they never need to talk to me again. By the hundredth one, they've figured it out. They're doing great. You know, like they never come back for advice. That's why it's

The perfect advice to give someone'cause it's true. And it saves both of us the hassle, uh, you know, if you actually followed it. Yeah. What did you learn from Storyworthy? Storyworthy is a amazing book by this like

the s twenty time storytelling champion of the moth storytelling I didn't I didn't even know what this thing was. But whatever. If you're the champion of something I pay t l a little bit of attention. He's got this book and in the book it's basically how to tell better stories. I would say

You know Probably worth reading the book. He's got one thing that I really took, which was stakes. So he's like um Every great story needs stakes. Meaning if the story is intention and obstacle, but

If you don't make it clear What's at stake for the For the person if they don't get it. Um then the story's not gonna have very uh not be very compelling. So, you know

when you tell a story, let's say it's the and it doesn't have to be high stakes, like it doesn't he he's actually very again he the other thing he says is like Don't tell like it calls it like vacation romps, so it's like No, just tell a story about this great night you had, this party'cause like Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear about your vacation, nobody wants to hear about your cool college party you went to. Like just fundamentally those are bad stories.

The second thing is like A great story is not just I was swimming in the ocean and a shark hit me and then I f survived like It doesn't need to be extreme, and again It's actually almost better if it's not. Um

But you still need stakes. So how do you have stakes even if it's not a shark biting you off? And his his answer was Um the stakes home from the emotion. So as long as you believe That that other person was gonna feel a certain way. Then the story has stakes. So for example If I'm trying to impress my mom doing the br Brussel sprouts thing.

embarrassment is what's on the line. Right. Like I'm gonna be embarrassed and my ego's gonna take a hit. So as long as you believe that that's true for me, the story will be entertaining. Um when it's pro when I actually tell it, when it's actually delivered. Um the other one he says is because what is a story story is a five second moment of change. Well what does that mean?

A five second so he's like, you know Uh Everything in you tell in the story. comes to this one moment, this five seconds where the characters transform. You know.

Just I use movies'cause it's easier that most people don't have like a big archive of writing in their head, but like we've all watched the same shows and movies. Every rom com is like some version of the following. Uh you the guy's a player and he's never gonna settle down. That's the start of the movie. Or she's a high powered lawyer, who's doing great in her career, but never made enough time for love.

That's always the start of the story, isn't it? There's only two rom comp, right? Like She was in love. They th she thought they would get happily married. He broke her heart. Start of the rom com. So Well guess what the ending of the rom com's gonna be? Always the exact opposite of that. If she was the high powered lawyer who never made time for love. She's now gonna be in love and she's gonna actually

Quit her job as a lawyer and be like open up a bakery, right? Like that's how the movie's gonna end. Or If he didn't want to settle down And he was a player, by the end he's gonna be chasing her and he's gonna like propose to her. Right. He's gonna wanna settle down. So

Spoiler for all rom com's. And um that's actually all movies ever. Die Hard, Jurassic Park, you could do the same exercise. Watch the opening one minute. The end is gonna be that character The opposite of his current lifestyle or belief system or habits.

Um You know, Scrooge hates Christmas, he loves Christmas or whatever. It's all every movie, every story is the same. So The heart of the story is the five second moment when they actually made the transformation, when they switched. And it's usually when they lost it all, when they had the heartbreak

When they hit rock bottom, when they had no choice but to be brave'cause they were finally cornered, like whatever it is, right? Uh You know in Batman when it's like He's in the cave and he's gotta get out and nobody's ever made it out. I don't know if you remember this part of The Dark Knight or or one of one of the Batman movies. And uh The mentor was like

Only one person's ever got out. He's like, How did he do it? Um It's like he didn't use the rope. Like maybe basically he he jumped with no safety net. And so the five second moment of change is The character. Climbs up the thing.

Takes off the rope. If he doesn't make this jump he's gonna die, but actually because he was gonna because of that Makes the leap and actually Makes it. That's the transformation moment.

Everything is based all stories, yeah, if you don't know what's the five second moment of change. For the k for the main character? You don't really have a great story. How does this apply or not apply to like the story of a company. Like I'm trying to tell the story of a passage or

You know, you think of all these companies, oh, we start in a garage, we have no money, this what we believe, where you have Airbnb, you have like the Obama O's, and then You have Brian Chesky who's like going to the houses and he's like taking photos with his own camera, he's like doing the hustle. It's like these founders really believed. So how does How do we take these ideas and apply it to what we're building? The origin story of all Silicon Valley companies is is similar. So let's take Airbnb, for example.

What was the, you know, moment of change. Uh the moment of change the the origin story of Airbnb is We were um Broke jokes who had the beginning of the rom com were broke jokes. Not only did we not have a successful company, we didn't even have an idea.

So like we were The worst situation for an entrepreneur. No money. No team, no idea, no respect, no reputation, no nothing, right? Even worse, wrong founding DNA. We were all designers and the narrative was you gotta be an engineer to build a uh you gotta be a developer to build a tech comp tech company.

And so um Well, the moment of change is basically they I think they had no money. Um like they didn't have enough money to pay rent or something like that. So they the moment of change is basically one of'em had a crazy idea. To be like hey

What if we Rent out our space here for this there's a design conference of town. What if it create a like uh bed and breakfast for people who are coming'cause all the hotels are sold out.

Though Ben and Breakfast we don't have a we don't have a hotel. And they're like, Well We can just put an air mattress here. And they laughed and they were like, Whatever And then Three people came, stayed, paid the money and had a great time. They're like Holy shit.

This might be a thing. And then there's several holy shit moments, right? There's like We ran out of money again. So we did the Obama O's seri thing. We Uh they tell the story about when they were getting knocked off by a big uh by the San War brothers of Rocket Internet. They were cloning their company and gonna kill them. And it tells that story. It's like We know face this life or death death moment and then we

Had to make a decision and we changed. We went from being scared to be like, all right, we're gonna compete with these guys. We're gonna beat them. Um, and that's the moment. That's that's what the each of those micro stories is about. The way I've learned this is you have

uh what's called signature stories. So your signature stories are That if I only could tell you these four or five, you would know Everything there is to know really about me. So for example

Your origin story. Like for you with Right of Passage. What's the origin story? Like I'm assuming you didn't just create this'cause Life was good. You already were good at everything.

And uh and you know, there must have been some moment where you were like I gotta do something here. Will you help me improve my origin? Yeah, give me what it is right now. Alright, so I worked this job at this New York advertising agency and I was super intimidated by my boss. He's like six four No big beer. He's just not like super welcoming guy.

Super talented. Super talented. And I wasn't doing super well in my job. And he sort of calls me into his office and I was working on a pitch deck for Picardy. I was trying to be all impressive and stuff like that. And I wrote in the pitch deck that the idea that we had

was gonna be epic. And he was like, Yo, that is not a good word to be using. You're not he said something to the effect of you're not in college anymore. We don't write like that here. And then through writing that sentence He then started saying, Hey, you really need to improve your writing, you're just not a good writer.

And I was like, Well, you know, I tried learning to write in school. I don't even like writing. My whole job is writing. And I gotta get good at this. So that was in like November Then we go through December, I get a raise, I'm like, Oh my goodness, this is gonna be great, life's going well. Then January fifth. Seven months out of college.

I get laid off. And Of course my head. I'm like I got laid off'cause I'm not a good writer.

Uh oh, I gotta learn this crap. But I don't even like writing. But then I'm seeing all these people who are good at writing and they're just making moves on the internet and stuff. So I spend Years. two, three years and I'm learning how to write. I start building an audience. And during that time, people reach out to me. They're like, hey, you're pretty good at this. Can you start teaching me how to do it? And I'm like

Wait, I learned all these things on my own. I had to figure these things out. out of desperation for how to learn how to write. Then that led into Rite of Passage. And that's how the company got started. Okay, great. So let's work shop that. Cool. All right. So um

Let's go back to the origin. Let's do So there's a beginning, middle, and then beginning. You're starting your rom com. You're working in a job. You're not you said you're not doing so well. Your boss kind of embarrasses you.

Uh and you end up getting laid off act one of of of the movie. Uh I think to make that part just to make that part better. So I think you have the element there. Act three is Uh yeah, so we know act one is gonna be Don't like my job and my job doesn't like me. Even worse, my job doesn't like me, right?

Uh second part is I'm not doing so well and I'm kind of embarrassed and I'm kind of intimidated by my boss. Great. Super relatable, super likable, all that. Um You have a moment where you got specifically embarrassed around the epic thing calling you like a college kid or whatever, and you're like, Okay, hopelessness. Um, Max Payne got laid off.

Cool. And yeah, I'm sure you had some feelings about that. Act three is Now I get paid millions of dollars to teach people writing, and I'm doing a podcast interviewing my writing heroes, and they're like, dude, you're awesome. I'm a big fan. Okay, great. So we have the element of a amazing story.

How do we actually make it better? Yeah. The first part is Your act one, you didn't focus on the pain enough, or the attention and the obstacle and the feelings you had at that time. So for example, you said I wasn't doing too good at the time. And then you're like, but then I got promoted or a raise. So I don't know what that is, right? Uh

Yeah, you might as well leave the promotion arrays out. Doesn't really add to the story. Sort of confusing. Conflicting messages. Never let the truth get in the way of a great story. Let's start with that. So why did you not think you were doing well? The company was constantly trying to figure out what do we do with this person. I I I can't believe this happened but He literally

Brought me into his office. And he goes. I need you to stop thinking like Jeff Bezos. And I was like Can you explain? He's like, Do your job. You are a sales guy, focus on that. I don't want you focus on the the future of media and where that's going. And so there's just a lot of tension there. And he and I never really got along that well. Right.

So yeah, I think you wanna f I'm bet you if you zoomed in, go back to the memory bank and you remember like any moments where you felt the opposite of how you're gonna feel at the end. At the end you feel really proud and you've accomplished and you've overcome. At the beginning you probably felt Embarrassed, you know, uh somewhat. Uh insecure, uh whatever.

So for example, if you were like I um Yeah, I remember there was this new guy that just got hired. And I was training I was like trying to like welcome him and train him a little bit. And then he got promoted before I didn't. I was like I'm doing something wrong. Or You know at my performance review I remember there's a category for pros and he had like three words and then cons or whatever, like Needs needs improvement was huge, right? A little anecdote like that, I think will like make that more real.

Uh What was the moments where you set the where you if you said I wasn't doing so well that it really hit home for you. Um, you know, something like that. Let me just wrap everything we've spoken about into what I'm gathering. Is It's the rom com. I got my beginning.

I got my end. I want a perfect yin yang between them. Okay. Then what I want is I want to build up to those five seconds of change. So I want one emotion lead up to that change. That is moment of of of tension where something pivots. Then I get to the end, there is the opposite and then

What I wanna do is intention and outcome. Obstacle. Intention and obstacle. Thank you. So my intention is I wanna be good. I wanna be good at my job. I wanna be valued, I wanna be respected. Actually, I could even bring it into like I want to

Be a worthy human being. And I'm in my first job and I'm like, dude, you have no skills. So I have that. And I'm like my job is about being a writer. And My boss.

Things. that I'm not very good. So now my obstacle. So that's sort of what I'm getting from you. Right. Yes, exactly. You you nailed it. Um Now let's go to the five second'cause what you said was basically some version of you're like The beginning was pretty good.

And the ending was pretty good. Uh the middle you were like. So then I got laid off and so then I started thinking about, well, I wanna improve my writing. Sounds like a arbitrary epiphany. Maybe there was a mentor that told you something, or maybe you read something online. That inspired you or maybe you had a long talk with yourself on a long walk. One night and you were like, You know what? Screw this, right?

Probably a moment when you decided actually I'm gonna get good at this. That's usually a very important part of every story. It was like What Triggered.

The turnaround. Mm. So you want to know that and then you want to explain that part. Um And then you basically were like

And then I got better and then everything was great. It's like whoa, what do you You fast forwarded the montage too fast. Like what triggered the turnaround? And then What'd you actually go do? Um not like in a long specifics, but like what's the first thing you started to do to get momentum?

And then what was like maybe some resistance you felt that you overcame? Because like You know the Pixar rules for storytelling? I don't know if you've seen this. Twenty, yeah. The most important one, I don't know what the twenty two say, but I remember one which was Um

Something like The hero doesn't have to win. Um the audience loves the hero because of the way they try. And that was really important to me. I was like oh that's right. Every underdog story is lovable because Up how hard they try.

And If somebody just tries something and immediately it works. That's not a very good story and you're not very like You don't feel good for that. So you gotta say what you tried

What resistance you felt and then how you overcame that resistance. It doesn't have to be a long thing. But you wanna Make it feel real. Uh and the last thing I'm I'm kinda emphasizing to you that I think anybody can do in their storytelling is

Um You're not saying what happened. You're zooming into moments to explain how you felt. with ideally some relatable visual or audio like Moment. So it's like

I remember he said this to me, and I'll never forget these three words. He said, you know, like whatever some some sentence or I remember looking around Um You know, there was nobody else there.

Like again, T uh Tony Robbins, I'm a big Tony Robbins fan. He does an amazing job telling his story. He's like, I remember sitting in my apartment I looked in the bathroom and I was doing I had'cause I used to do dishes in the bathtub'cause my s my dishwasher didn't work. So I'd soap up the bathtub and he's All he's trying to say is I'm a loser. I was a loser. No, I'm super successful.

Why? Because I'm Tony Robbins and I figured it out. And you can too. But first he has to convince you that he used to be a loser. Otherwise the whole Tony Robbins shtick doesn't work. So he's like, How do I convince somebody I'm a loser? I could say that I wasn't doing too well.

Or I could say that I used to have to wash my dishes in a bathtub. 'cause that paints a picture of a loser. He's like I remember I was s and then he says I was s in my apartment And I didn't have any furniture because I didn't have any money. So I just had this one chair, like I didn't have a sofa, I had a hard chair that I used to sit on.

He's like it was just a chair. He's like and I remember uh the s a song was playing that was like I don't have a friend or something like that. It's only me in my chair. And he's like, Dude, that's me. It's just me in the stupid chair. And he's like, so I went for a run. He's like even though I hadn't run in years, I was overweight, I went for a run and even when my lungs were burning

I was like no you You may be a loser at all things in life, but you're not gonna lose this run. And he tells a story and it's kind of inspiring when you're hearing this, and he's just zoomed into one moment that's visual. That's audio, that's a feeling. And he's convinced you of

that before state so that the after has some impact. The two things that I'm getting there is first You Can tell a story. A story is not a record of what happened. Absolutely. It is not you saying this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened.

It is almost this It's a transformation. Oh interesting. The world was one way, and then it was another way. I was one way and then I was another way. My company was failing and then it was succeeding.

All the story is is just change. You only want to include The what happened so much as it explains how that change came to be. Um Yeah, it's not just a a a timeline of events.

And then you're also really cuing into emotion. Yeah. How about it? Uh that's what like people respond to, you know? Um Like in my writing course I used to teach um

I used to teach this one thing uh that I was like, you know, you wanna work backwards from the from the emotion. I learned this from uh a guy who used to be my my I don't know intern or something like that? We hired him when he was twenty years old, Steve Bartlett. Today a lot of people know Steve Bartlett.

He's got a big podcast called Diary CEO. He's Built a company, he's done a bunch of things on Dragons Den, like he's a famous guy now. I met Steve when I was twenty. Alright, when he was twenty. I was Twenty five, maybe. And uh he flew from the UK, he lived in our office.

Like slept in our office and he wanted to work with us and we worked together for I don't know. Nine months or a year or something like that. Um And Steve was awesome in a bunch of ways that he was obviously just like a twenty one year old in a bunch of other ways. But the awesome thing I remember was he was like

He told me something he goes I just think about What is Jenny in her bedroom gonna think when she sees this? I go who's Jen who's Jenny? What are you talking about? He's like Oh, like if we're making a piece of content that's gonna go on social media.

Social media is Jenny in her bed, laying down. Just scrolling, just swiping. And she's like Basically This has to make jenny and jenny like stop.

Think something and share this with our friends. Otherwise it's going nowhere. There was no point in writing this thing or doing this thing. 'Cause it created no reaction from the person. They're just gonna keep swiping. The world is full of infinite content. We only stop at things that we have some reaction to. And um

So I stored that away. And then I heard it the same idea from another person. This is how you know a good idea. The BuzzFeed guy goes. Everything we do at BuzzFeed. It's about Debbie at her desk. I'm like Jenny in her bedroom, Debbie at her desk. She he goes

He goes, the most powerful network in the world is the board at work network. He goes, All when BuzzSpeed was like growing like crazy at the time. It's like BuzzFeed basically taps into if someone's bored at work And they just want to like You know, have a distraction for five minutes. We want to make a piece of content that will distract them and get them to forward it to a bunch of other people who are also bored at work. Right. And that's the whole network is the board at work network.

All right, second time I heard the idea. Then I heard the idea a third time. This guy Chris Quigley. He ran a advertising agency that would make videos go viral. And at the time I was like going viral is like a lottery ticket. Like

How do you do a viral video? I don't know. It's just like something amazing must happen. So I go, What's your hit rate on virality? Like one out of a hundred, two out of a hundred. He goes. No, like Eight out of ten.

I don't eight out of ten. And he's like Yeah, look, he showed me the their views. I was like How do you do this? You know, over time the more viral videos you make, you have like a base of an audience, but he's like that just gets you like some people will see it. But how viral it goes is how much they share it.

He goes, So what we do is we work backwards from an emotion. He goes The only things people will share It's things that are L O L W T F O M G

A W W He like all the acronyms for all the emotions. So like oh my God. Wow. Like ha ha ha like. If it doesn't do that, nobody will share it. So he goes We first start with

This is the desired reaction we have. Then we'll write a script. Or uh write a write a uh blog post or whatever. And then we'll go check. Do we think that's gonna create this reaction somebody? No? All right.

Plus juice it up. How do we make it more Funny. How do we make it more Outraging. How do we make it more Endearing and heartwarming. Like whatever those are. And uh so th once I heard that three times I was like, Okay.

I get it. I need to create a reaction reaction out of the average person just in their bedroom or at their desk. And I need to start with the emotion I my target emotion and then work backwards from that. Write the thing that will create that emotion. Yeah, it's funny because when you write, you're like, Okay, I'm publishing uh this on the internet, bunch of people are gonna read it.

You know, get a big audience. And so you think of Hey, there's all these people. But actually you're just writing to Debbie in her bedroom or Sally at her desk, you know. And

People consume your content alone. And when you're writing, you are writing to one person in one place at one moment in time. And you have to remember that. Because the nature of the connection that you're trying to make is different. And Two Double down on that idea.

in a lot of our media environment, especially with a platform like Twitter. when you scroll Twitter, like you're on the throne, you're on the bus, you're waiting in line, you're you know, your friends seven minutes later, you're like, Come on, where the heck are you? I'm trying to Reservation's coming up. And you're just sort of browsing, browsing, browsing and your brain's only like halfway on.

And if you can really first understand your own state when you're in that environment and then write to the person who's in that state. Now you have a very keen sense of Who is this person? And you're writing for one person. Even though if you're looking, you're seeing, hey

Hundred nineteen thousand impressions. Those are not a hundred nineteen thousand people at once, like a football game. They're a hundred nineteen thousand individual people. at a hundred nineteen thousand individual instances in time and if you think like that, you communicate very differently. Yes. Perfectly sad. You're writing to one person.

At one moment in time. That's I think a very good point. And the other uh thing that this reminded me of is do you know this person Miss Excel? Have you seen this person? Yeah, yeah. So she um for anybody who doesn't know, she's basically like an Excel influencer for lack of a better word. Um, she basically teaches people Excel tric tricks, but the reason she got popular, she went on TikTok, she started Dancing while like putting an Excel trick on the screen or a tip on the screen.

Um weird combo, but it works. I was reading some interview with her and they were like how do you Create your content. Like what's what's your process? I was like, Oh, I'm curious what our process is and she goes. Uh I don't

She's like, it's kinda weird. She was like, um Most people if you say, What's the process and they're like Consistency, like Wake up at a certain time, start right away, you've got to write every day, you gotta post at a certain time, you gotta do all these things. She's like, I don't do any of that. She goes, I literally

First. Like just change my own energy. She's like I weren't I she's like I'm kinda woo woo woo in that way, but like I basically get myself into a peak state of mind. Like I Get myself into a certain mood. And a certain state of mine where I feel

magnetic. I feel charismatic. I feel And energetic. I feel it's like it's like a energy. It's like literally like a science called energetics. She's like I work on my energy and two things happen. One Ideas start coming to me much faster than if I sat down and said, What are some ideas? I need to come post some content today.

And so she's like, I just work myself to that state, I let ideas come to me. An idea will hit? And as soon as it hits, she's like I run to my phone. Hit record and I just do it because I believe all content is just energy transferred through the phone. It's my energy.

Shifting to you. My emotion that I've how I feel about this, if I feel excited. About this insight that I have, or excited about this this Tip that I have. I wanna get you excited about that tip too.

And the best way to do that is for me to be there first. And I think this is a very underrated thing for writers because most writers They're not performers. All performers know this. No athlete goes on the field without

being warmed up and being hyped up. No stage performer goes on stage just kinda cold and low energy. But almost every writer starts cold and low energy and just sits there somewhat miserably. And um and there's even some weird glory from like Just like

I don't know, this like pain, that's martyrship of like how you need to be as a writer. I think that's all stupid. Um I think it's very similar to performing in any other way. I think you should get yourself in a great state of mind.

And then have that energy and then sit down and write and let it flow and let that energy rip through you. So that the the other person who reads it is gonna feel the same excitement you have about the insight. Or feel the same excitement you have about this plan. Or whatever it is, um, you know, you want that to come with it. And a lot of times when people write, they have this idea, they're away from the computer, like they're at the bar with their friends, they're on a walk with somebody else, they're at Thanksgiving dinner, they're like, Man

You know, auntie Auntie Diana, she has no idea what's going on in the world. That woman was crazy and you're so annoyed at like eleven PM at Thanksgiving, and then you try to write like three days later. And the problem is They're not capturing the energy that Miss Excel is capturing before she does the videos. And

People end up writing in such a sober state. That their writing ends up being Boring and sterile. Hundred percent m the thing I said at the beginning of this podcast where it was like I look for things that I think are important that other people don't practice, overlook.

Or be too embarrassed to say they're working on. This is an exact example of them. Of one of those. Nobody wants to work on their like state. Their energy. They don't want you know, Miss Excel does, she's like, I'm gonna make myself magnetic before I make content.

Oh, I like that. That's pretty cool. I don't even know I don't even know what that means if that sounds provocative, right? Like Okay. Uh that's better than whatever the hell I'm feeling. Uh when I sit down to write, okay, that's a new standard for me. I'm gonna do that. And so um I think most people would probably in their heart believe that this is true, that if you

kinda got your energy right before you did the thing, it'll probably turn out better. Nobody's gonna do it. Which is the best part. It's the arbitrage. It's a a less talented person like me could do really well. Wait, so hold on here. Snap the podcast. So like what so what should I do next time I sit down to write? How does this actually work? Where am I gonna dance, do some jumping jacks, like what do we actually use? Exactly. That's exactly right. So state change is three things. Number one.

Radical change in your physiology. So You can sprint. You can do push ups, you can dance. You can um do twenty air squats.

You can dump your face into cold water, whatever it is. You will im it's the fastest way to change how you feel is a radical change in your physiology. So first I Um so do that. That's the that's the very first thing. Uh my I have a friend who's a professional poker player. He does the same thing. He goes during uh poker players are like notoriously degenerate, like you're literally sitting there in a casino, which is like the worst air pumped in environment. There's no windows.

And you're around other degenerates all day, people are smoking, it's bad. Um She's like a monk. And he w during a tournament in the breaks, he goes in the parking lot and he does wind sprints. He's not doing it.

To be a better runner. He's not doing it to increase his VO two max, he's doing it because he wants to make a better decision when he gets back to the table. He knows he makes better decisions when he changes his state. And um that's part of his edge while he's been a European like you know poker champion and uh uh tour champion uh uh in a f several years.

So First thing is a change in your your um Your state. The second thing is a change in your focus. So what are you even focused on? Um

Wh like you know, the way I imagine is I have this laser beam of focus. I don't know if this is true, but it's what I've convinced myself, which is if I just turn my attention to this I will crush this. This will be amazing. If I If I put a hundred percent of my focus on this podcast right now, oh this podcast didn't stand a chance. And the only limit to me is just where I'm pointing the beam. And if I'm trying to point it in five different places or whatever

That's gonna be a problem. This also works with like If you have to write something and there's a deadline If your focus is on the deadline, it's the wrong place to focus, right? If your focus is on, you know, um

Your uh how hard it is for you to do something, if you're focused on how hard it is. It's not a good place to focus. Like you need to focus on the thing you want. Um so you know, don't focus on the wall where you're like trying not to crash like Turn, right? Focus on where you're turning. And then the last one is basically your story. So what's the story you tell yourself? Um

We all have some story that we tell ourselves and If you improve the story, you'll change the state of mind that you have. So I go into the store if I go into this podcast right now. And my story is Um

Uh, I'm just h I'm doing a favor to David. I'm just doing this oh man, like, you know, I had to drive an hour to come here and You know, this means I'm not gonna be able to do this thing and what That's the wrong story. Obviously I'm not gonna perform very well. I'm not gonna be in a peak state. Whereas if my story was There's gonna be someone who was one person. One person who's listening to this podcast.

And they're gonna hear one thing that I say, one story, and they're gonna be like, Wow. I can't unhear that. That was amazing. And that person's gonna go on and do amazing things, if they're gonna write me a letter one day and be like Dude, that podcast you did changed my life. I'm gonna approach this podcast differently, right? I the different words will come out of my mouth if my story about what's happening is different. So similarly, if you wanna basically change your state.

Physiology first, focus second, story third. Nice. One of the moments I had around story that I thought was

Really revealing was I I work with a coach and we were talking about My riding and I was in a slump. I was down. And

What's a writing slump? What does that mean? I just wasn't vibing, I wasn't feeling it and I just wasn't proud of the stuff that I was doing. And I can get inspired. And uh

He said, Well what is it that you want? And I said, Well, you know, hey I used to write these These pieces, these long form pieces that I was really proud of. No what I want? I wanna be

creative force. I want to be a creative force. That's what I'm going for. And I sit down to write, I'm like, I want to be a creative force, that's what I'm all about. And it's like hold on, hold on, hold on. Stop. Stop the train. You said you used to be a good writer. And you would

Getting a great flow. What did you do back then that you don't do now? I was like True. Actually is pretty simple.

I Find an idea. That Was interesting. I would

try to figure out that idea for myself. And then I figure it out for myself and I say, well, then I gotta share this with other people. And I just do that over and over and over again. And I never stopped. That's all I did. And that's all I focused on. He's like, Hold on. What you're saying is now you're focused on being a creative force. That's your story. That's not working for you. Let's get back to

Finding an interesting idea. Not judging the interestingness. Figuring it out for yourself and then sharing it with others. Ever since that, no more swamp. Right. All that was was a change in my story. Yes. Amazing. Uh that's amazing. And I think you know the other Part of what you said there, which is

Letting curiosity be the The guide. the driver. Um Sounds very simple. But

All great ideas are actually quite simple. You know, there's a I think there's a profound. Um Benefit of

Revisiting simple ideas and then saying, Am I doing those? Um I don't look for new ideas as much as I look for Ideas I've already heard. that I haven't fully actualized yet. And you know, that's one. Um

You've read like Paul Graham wrote this essay. Um Great work. I assuming you've read that one. Yeah. I recently I read it. Two nights ago. So good.

For the first time. He wrote it like a year ago. And it was like Thirteen thousand words. Sounds like I'm not doing this too long. Well, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So I'm ready to I'm thinking about what do I wanna work on right now? How do I wanna do this? And I

Went back to that. And in that he he has this great line. He goes, If I had to boil down all great work into one word, it would be curiosity. And he says another thing, which is Curiosity drives in a level of excitement, it goes an excitement. Excitement is really a great indicator. Excitement is the engine and the rudder of the boat.

It's the engine and that excitement is motivating, it's dri it's a driver to get you to go do things. But it's also the rudder, it also can point you in the right direction. If you don't know which path to choose Just choose the one that's most exciting. Just go keep following that. And that will lead you to the right place. It's a excitement is the engine and the runner. Um I think it's a really

powerful idea. And I every time I've drifted away from that, like you did, like I start with that, good things happen, and then I'm like ooh, now Ambition is the driver. Or um Doing something that sounds cool or important or money is the driver. And then like all the bad things happen. And I'm like shit.

Uh why aren't these working? And it's like, Well,'cause you stopped doing the working formula. which was leading to all these great things, um, because you thought you needed to like You know. You thought you need to do something different. And I told you so many people are like, Oh, I hate writing. And most of the time.

It's that they associate writing with doing things that they don't want to do. And then when they think about well, it's time to write They Subconcio Don't allow them to write about the thing.

That they're the most Because in school That's not what you get to do. No one's excited about the average school paper. Maybe one or two things, but People just aren't trained to think like that.

One of the things that I need to reconcile with you and try to sort sort of figure out'cause yeah. Two Sean ideas and we need to figure out how they sort of come together. Is This line that you have.

If you're in your head, you're dead. Love that line. So good. At the same time You are Always deconstructing things. You have

You find something that you like and you're like, Hold on. What's going on here? Let me try to break it down. Okay, I'm actually gonna go check out this book, go talk to this expert, try to figure out what's going on. So how is it that You are

deconstructing thinking being fairly analytical, but at the same time not getting in your head, those things feel like polar opposites to me. Yeah. Two things. One, I read something yesterday, uh, this is like mini book online that was called Things called like a technique for Technique for coming up with new ideas? It's like some old book.

Um And in it, it said this thing, he goes The uh the most valuable Traits you can have sound like opposites. When you know if you pair them together. So you guys you know

Uh imagine an entrepreneur who was both Visionary and detail oriented. That's a That's a Steve Jobs, for example. Like Steve Jobs is famous.

For being a visionary. He He doesn't ask the consumer what they want, they just want faster horses. He you know, they want a car, actually, right? That's how he that's You know the iPhone and figures out what to do. But he's insanely detail oriented where he's like, What does the inside of the box look like? And they're like, Dude, Steve, nobody's gonna look at this. He's like, I'm gonna look at this. I will know what's inside the box. It needs to be beautiful at that level of detail, pixel level detail. Um

Same thing for all things, right? Uh I consider myself a creative person. I'm also highly analytical with data. Sounds like Opposites.

Um And so there are many things where The exact opposite. If paired together creates a like one plus one equals three type of Reaction.

And um they're often presented as false choices. You're either this type of person or you're this type of person. Screw that. Be the type person you want, which sometimes means having both gears. And knowing when to go into which gear. When do I need to be uh creative? When do I need to be analytical? When do I need to be

hard charging entrepreneur when no need to be silly playful dad, you know, paint my nails, whatever, right? Like I have to have these gears to have the life I want. Similarly. You wanna be in your head at the times it makes sense to be in your head. The brain is a valuable tool. It just cannot be the master. So the you know, I need to be in my head when it's about Maybe it's

Uh uh uh analysis. Oh, I'm feeling fear. I need to actually use logic. And I asked myself, is this fear even true? And what's the probability of that? And if that happened, how would I handle it? I guess I would just do this. I guess it's not so scary after all.

So usually um If the problem is emotional You can solve it with emotion. If the problem is logic, you can solve it with logic. And so I try to use them at the right times.

The if you're in your head, you're dead is basically a as more of a life philosophy than it is a work philosophy, which is People who ca kinda go around life Not Feeling a whole lot. Being present in the moment, they're in their head about stuff.

Uh, they're missing life. Um and That's that's a problem, you know, more so than Have you ever seen that advice from Ray Bradbury where he says don't think. So I heard that Uh what you said here and it immediately reminded me. He says I have a sign and my typewriter says don't think.

And I'm like okay. That's interesting, is like I'm trying to surprise myself at the keyboard. And the only way to surprise myself is Once I'm in my head, I can't do that. And I think that a lot of writing a first draft is like this. You're you're trying to get outside of that part of your brain that judges, that condemns, that says, No, no, no, it's not good enough and just put stuff onto the page and you know that you're doing it well.

when what you're doing is like, whoa, where did that come from? Where did that come from? Where did that come from? And then the question is, how do you engineer yourself? to do that. Like for me If I'm sitting and typing Can't do it.

Like My ideas that for me is where I do editing. The thing that was game changing for me was voice transcription getting really good,'cause now I can stand and talk. Walk and talk, just blah blah blah blah blah. Half of Austin definitely thinks I'm some sort of like crazy psychopath kind of guy. But you know what? It's made my writing better.

And a bunch of people I work with, they're like How do you just bang out first draft so fast. I'm like,'Cause I don't sit and type like everybody else does. I just go for a walk. Yeah, I think that's a that's a great point. I think you need to to figure out a way to engineer that for yourself so you can consistently have it.

Um I think everybody's got a different version of of how to do it. What you said reminded me of something though. You go, um You're talking about Red Battery, don't think. Uh

I think this is a uh a very useful troubleshooting tool. So When you're stuck. Many ways to get unstuck. And one way to get unstuck, like I said. radical change in something physical you do. I think that's a good tactic. Music is a good way to get unstuck too.

Um, but in general, a philosophy for how to get unstuck is Yeah. If you're stuck in the specifics, go general. Meaning If you're stuck in the logistics of how something is gonna happen, it's not quite adding up.

What you gotta do is not Just keep trying to do this, you can just zoom right out. Go super general. All right, super general. What am I trying to do here? I'm trying to do this. Super general. Um If I had all the superpowers in the world, well how would I do this, right? Supergeneral is just like um

You know, uh who's somebody who's done this before? Or super general. Okay, I don't know exactly what type of thing I wanna write. What inspires me? Right? The way to get out of these sometimes is to go general to go uh and so even if like don't think it's hard'cause it's very hard to turn off the brain. But it's not so hard to redirect the brain. And so redirecting it I think is is a useful tool. You can redirect it towards I'm gonna

go rock climbing or go exercise. That'll take my brain off of it. It can also be I'm stuck in the muck here and I need to just zoom out. And that's it. Or if I'm stuck in the general.

So for example, sometimes I'm stuck in the general of like, what do I want to be in life? I'm like, you know what? What I wanna do and who am I and all the stuff. Um Specific. What's the like what's the best idea you heard in the last two days? Well like if you were gonna write about that, what would it be?

Or like What's the most interesting phone call I've I've had? Um You know, then you go specific'cause you're stuck in the general. So it's a very useful thing to do is just like To get unstuck, no if you're stuck in the specifics, go general. If you're stuck in the general, go specific.

And you're you'll redirect the brain. I wanna switch over to talk about voice. You're really good at putting your voice onto the page and you do something very Specific. That I'm not

sure how consciously you do this, but you're so good at getting inside The head of a reader. to understand all right, how are they feeling about this in the moment? And b basically you said it earlier, breaking the fourth wall. And then by doing that building trust and connection and then it creates this friendly casualness, as if we're

having a conversation Yeah. My goodness, that is levels away from most from what most writers are able to do. Have you ever read the Boron letters?

Years ago. Okay, so this is uh must read. Yeah. Uh copyrighting. Copyrighting. I'm surprised you don't have them like printed out of your pocket. They're that good. So the Boron letters are this amazing thing by this uh Like kind of renowned copyrighted.

Gary Halpert, I think. uh writing to his son And he's in jail. So the hi the writer is now in jail and is writing to his son Uh Bond, I think. Um is his name. And so It's like a series of twenty three letters.

And um I put'em they're hard to find, too. It's really annoying. They're hard to there's like one blog. So I put it I hosted them on my blog now. Um, because I was like this is It's crazy that so valuable and so hard to find. So anyways, um he posted the he wrote these letters and he just wrote it again to one person. He's like I'm writing to my son

But obviously. These were kind of like general principles of life and copywriting and marketing And he's teaching, he's trying to teach him everything he knows. Uh but the

But because of the way he wrote it with such a casual like Like warm relationship. He's not even just writing to one person, he's writing to his son. And because he's writing it to his son, he's like And this dear bond is where things get interesting. For example, you're probably wondering Dad, why do you say this?

We're gonna get to that. But first, a little detour. And he just started writing so differently that I was like, Ooh, I like this style. This is just like has a swag to it that uh that is just like appealing to me. Um

So I started stealing that basically. I was like, Oh, I'm gonna write like that. I'm gonna write Like I'm writing in one person And that one person is like My little young grasshopper. It's like this is my kid or it's my My little cousin or it's me when I was younger, it's like

Uh I know what you're thinking. Blah blah blah. Mamma Mia, you're wrong. Right now I'll just like try to like try to just make it fun and interesting as if it's written to one one one person that has like a warm relationship. Somebody that's kind of like I wanna be the sensei and they th that's how I write in in those words like a

Master teacher relationship. And other times it's the opposite. It's um I'm the beginner. And I know the other people are more more uh knowledgeable about this. And I'll be like

And I just will be open about that. I'll be like So being the idiot that I am I'm gonna I I decided I was gonna do these three things. I knew there was probably a better way to do this. You probably know four four four better ways yourself. You're probably staring at us right now, wondering how could this guy be so dumb? Well, the answer is blah blah blah. Right. And I'll I'll try to say it like that because I'm just trying to make it where I'm trying to imagine what is the reader thinking at this. What would I think if I was them?

And then I try to address that. In the moment. 'Cause it's very frustrating to me when Like imagine if you ask somebody this question, like how did you do it? And they're like I just did this and you're listening to a podcast and then that podcast host

Doesn't ask them like Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean it just worked? Like how or What do you mean he gave you a million dollars? Why did he give you a million dollars, right? Like It's the most frustrating experience in the world when that doesn't get addressed. So in writing I try to do that too. Like I try to just call out the thing I would be wondering about.

Or I would be skeptical of or I would be excited about. in that moment. I just try to include it in the the dialogue. One of the things that we talk about all the time in Rite of Passage, one of my core principles is imitate and then innovate. And it's exactly what you did there. So I asked you a question. And you said, Okay.

Have you ever heard of this thing? Well Gary Halbert does this very well. And then what you did was you deconstructed exactly how he does it. And then you said You found a general principle of his work. So you said he's not just writing for one person, he's writing to his son.

And then the implications of that are this, this, this, and this. And The Roadmap. That you took.

to give me that answer, I think is very revealing of how you think about writing. Where you start somewhere, you deconstruct, and then you say, How does that show up in my own world? And then you try to build up a generalizable principle that then you can use for your toolkit whenever you're typing yourself. Yes, that's exactly right. Uh I think that is A great thing for anybody to try to do. If you want to get better at something, that's a that's the way. Yeah.

By the way, I randomly just thought of the best example of framing. From way earlier. While you were talking. Which is kinda how the brain works. The brain relaxes and then something comes to it. Um Have you seen the Dave Chappelle thing?

Called Unforgiven. Have you seen this on YouTube? No. Alright, so Do you remember a while back, uh, Dave Chappelle was in a feud with um I think it was Netflix.

And he was like, um The Chappelle show was put on Netflix and he wasn't getting any royalties. So like it's his name, it's his face, it's all his life's work. And not only was he not getting paid for it, he had had a big falling out with the creators of the Chappelle Show We're like

She ended up quitting. Right when they they the story about the time was they offered him fifty million dollars, he said no, and he went to Africa and uh became a crackhead instead. That was like the rumors like If Spell's a crackhead now and he's in Africa. And it was like and then later he was like No, I just said no. Why did I have to be a crackhead in Africa? I went home. Like what are you talking about? So anyways.

Here's the objective. His objective was He wanted people to boycott Tchau. How do you get people to boycott the show? You gotta If you wanna drive people to take action, you gotta be smart with how you're gonna

Uh How are you going to persuade them through the written word or in his case, he wrote it first and then he performed it on stage. And what he did was instead of talking about Netflix Or talking about his show or saying Go Boycott my show, please. He

Started A com a reframed the problem. in a totally different way that I thought was brilliant. He just changed the frame completely. So He tells a story, he goes. Um

I remember I was fourteen years old. First time I did ever did comedy I was fourteen years old. I go to this comedy club. And I tell this joke and he's like, I'm not gonna say, I'm gonna admit it. I was good right away. Comedy came naturally to me. I'm not one of those people who's like it took me a decade. He's like, honestly, I was good and I was fourteen, fifteen or fifteen years old, I think.

He's like I was sh underage, but I was good. And he's like I came back stage and there's a guy who's been doing this for twenty years and They were like, Hey kid, you did pretty good, man. And was like one guy came to me, was like, Hey man, I like that joke. I had this big audition coming up for this TV show or something like for this other thing. You mind if I use that joke?

He's like, even as a kid, I'm fifteen, this guy's you know Bigger, older I looked up to this guy He's like I um Didn't want to do it. Sounds like

My joke's all I got. I got no money. All I have as a comedian is my jokes. He's like, but this guy was kinda asking, I felt uncomfortable. He said he just needed it for this audition, so I was like all right man, like Sure, you can use the joke for that is.

Guys, all right, cool. 'Cause I Several months later. I go to the club, I'm about to perform, that guy's before me. He tells my joke.

And the joke kills. He's like, I was pissed. He's like didn't want to do he's saying afterwards I went up to the guy, again, I'm a fifteen year old. I'm p like he basically is framing it as I'm this powerless kid. And this guy's taking advantage of me. He goes

I told him I was like, Hey man, you said you were just gonna use it for that thing. Like I I don't want the I want my joke back. And um I think maybe you'd give him a hundred bucks or something like that. And uh And the guy's like

The guy kind of roughed him up, he grabbed him and he was like I was just asking to be nice. You know. I could just take it. He's like I was scared, I didn't know what to do.

Uh let that guy take my joke. Okay, so that's stor is I'm gonna tell you another story. It tells a story about later on he's in New York. And he's uh He's like I get on a date with this Jamaican girl. He's like fine girl. Yeah, banging on you. I couldn't wait to go on this date.

I didn't have any money, I'm a I'm still a struggling comedian. But now I'm older, I'm twenty two, twenty four, or something like that. He's like And I walk around New York and I see these guys doing like that three card money where they like, you know, that game. And I'm watching it. And a guy puts down a hundred bucks.

Moves the thing around. I know it's over here. He guesses the wrong one, he loses, he shows it's over there. Next guy goes, same thing, puts down twenty bucks. Uh I know it's over there, he picks over here.

He loses all my God, I could do this. So I step up. I put all a hundred bucks down. I think I'm gonna double this, that I'll take the take my girl out tonight. I know the wall's over here. I say that one.

Balls over there. He's like what the hell just happened. He's like I was pissed I lost a hundred bucks. I had this date tonight. So I stuck around and I watched. And I realized

Those tourists. They didn't leave. They were still here and they did it again. He's like, Oh they puzzled me like Those guys are in on it together. They pretended not to know where it was. And I was the Mark who came up and said, Oh, I figured this out and they got me and then

Somebody else. Uh came up. They were about to make the same mistake and I told them Don't do it! They're all in on it. And the guy goes, Oh, okay, and leaves.

Is like the guy. Wraps him up again and he goes. Hey man, uh he goes. I don't care what you think, he's like Never.

Get between a man and his next meal. He's like, You just took money out of my pocket. This is my job. This is my livelihood, and taking away a man's livelihood is the equivalent of killing him. It tells them that. Okay, cool. Then he they finally gets to the Netflix story.

And he basically weaves together. They didn't ask me if they could put it on Netflix. They didn't ask me to they're basically like They didn't ask for anything. They just took my name, took my face, took all my content.

They just took it. He's like and then the second thing was uh he's the the people would say, Well, you signed the contract, Dave. He's like I was a twenty one year old kid. hired lawyers to read these contracts. Uh they told me everything I said, hey, you can use this forever in perpetuity in all parts of the universe.

And they're like, It's standard, Dave, don't worry about it. This is standard Hollywood. Don't worry don't worry about it. So he's actually signed it. Later on I realized Those guys all go out to dinner every week, the Laura's on my side, their side They're all in on it. This is just like the three card money. That's how Hollywood is.

I was the Mark. So yeah, I signed it. But he got the whole audience on his side. By like making this argument by using these two stories I think it is the most brilliant like

Example of of PR or like a written story. that I have ever seen. The way by the end of that thing you're like, I will Delete Netflix if they don't take the show off. And that's exactly what happened. People saw that that video on YouTube, it went super viral.

'Cause it was so well done. Um People boycotted Netflix, they took it off, uh and they Netflix said we don't have to do this day, but we voluntarily will do this like We were also moved by your story. Uh, we're not gonna put it put spells up there unless you

Say we can do it. Even though contractually we have the right to do whatever we want. We're gonna honor the non contract here. I thought that was the power of like, you know. Reframing.

Not like oh I'm getting screwed, I want money. To like A more universal. Yeah, you're getting picked on by the man. You're getting screwed by people who are all in on it. And I thought that was absolutely brilliant. Nothing. Just go watch this thing. It's amazing. Yeah.

I wanna talk about Distribution. So one of the things that we're working on at Right of Passage is what I wanna figure out is I wanna figure out How to take anybody. People who don't write all the time, don't really have an audience, they've just published something really good. Like say that you are uh absolute expert in like the distribution of San Pellegrino waters from like the little town in Italy, how they

w where they package it, you know, what's the story of the label, all that sort of stuff. And you are like, this is how the sparkling water boom came, and I'm gonna tell a story of how it begins in a little town in Italy with San Pellegrino water. Okay. You have this expert. He, she, never written online. They write something, it's awesome.

And I wanna help them. Distribute it. They come to me, they say, Well what do I do? How should I talk them through that? I think distribution is

built over time. I don't think that's something you can do from day one, right? Like Uh It's kinda back to that hundred videos thing, uh from earlier. If you're going to

Right online. There is sort of a uh Beachhead moment. You have to create. You have to create a trusted audience over time and you have to know that the distribution is earned. Why distribution is so valuable,'cause hard to replicate.

So for example My buddy Jason used to say this thing, he goes. Oh, I have the one two three rule of interestingness. W what does that mean? He goes Tell me one one thing that's interesting. Right, you tell me one thing that's interesting about San Pellegrino, I'll say that's interesting.

Tell me two things that's interesting. I'd be like those were interesting. That's two interesting things. You tell me three interesting things, I'll say you're interesting. Hm and this is just like a general philosophy I think you should have with writing. It's like you don't deserve that like trusted follow or relationship. I tell you.

And three is a small number. Really on the internet it might be like twenty things like You might have to tell somebody twenty interesting things before they're like, This guy's interesting. I can't wait to get his next one. And You just have to build that up. Like you have to build you have to consistently be telling somebody something interesting.

Um multiple times. For you to earn that. Yeah. you know, channel between them where they're now gonna be receiving your content or they'll be willing to vouch for you and spread you to another person.

Not just on the merits of the one thing, but because You are interesting and you consistently share interesting things. And then when groups of people think you're interesting. It's even more powerful, right?'Cause then Another person comes in and just says

Oh, everybody thinks this guy's interesting? Cool, I'll follow. Right. Like Which is why The more Twitter followers you get, the more you're gonna get. Right. Uh and it's actually not a bug. People get mad about that, like the rich get richer. Um It's not a bad thing. It's actually a useful mental shortcut.

The people who have earned a following are probably likely worth following. With some exceptions, but is a useful hack versus I have to individually vet every account. To figure out who I want to follow? That's The slow way. Like I'm going to

follow the people that other people follow. That is It sounds just like oh you're just being a late it's part of the herd mentality or group think or whatever. But There's a reason it exists. There's like a evolutionary advantage to doing it too, which is it saves you a lot of time of having to

Individually for every person. So I would say to that person who wants that distribution, it's cool. That's one interesting thing. Let's do twenty. And uh you know, start with your friends, start with your friends and family, start with some group chats.

Start with Yeah. Maybe you have to push the wheel wheel a little bit, you know, send it to some people who might find that interesting that you know of. With a personalized message of why you think they might find that interesting. Yeah, you're gonna have to do some of that hustle at the beginning to get To get the word out.

But you should also not like have some expectations that just because you said one interesting thing. Mm. It deserves to be, you know, spread everywhere. This is not really how it works. Right. On

Twitter itself, you have built a huge audience without writing that many things. And you've had a few things that are just Absolutely crank. What do you think that you understand about that platform and communicating there that other people are missing. Well

I'll say this. I think It what I did worked on Twitter. So basically I I remember I was at twenty thousand followers, which is a lot in general. But I was like, I'm gonna get to a hundred. Now I'm at four hundred. Sorry like oh I way overshot that goal.

Um four hundred thousand followers but it Most I say the generic best practice is be consistent. And uh define what your niche is and then talk about stuff in that niche. I don't really do that.

So I would say I defy that, but I don't think that's what helped. I think I almost won in spite of doing that. I think if I had been more consistent. And I had to find my new I would be at a million followers instead of four hundred thousand. So Let me put that out there. Even though I didn't follow the best practices. I don't think the right takeaway is

Those are the wrong. I think the right takeaway is it would have been even bigger had I followed those. The one thing I did get right was I knew it when everybody's attention was on a certain subject I had an interesting take. It's not my writing so much as it is the thinking.

I I'm sure I haven't listened to all your interviews, but I am sure one of the most common themes is that Great writing is just great thinking. Clear writing, it says clear thinking. Writing helps you think better and thinking better thinking helps you write better. They're so tightly intertwined.

That The unhelpful but true advice is I think I had an interesting thought to say. And I said it at the right time when people were paying attention to that subject. And then thirdly, I wrote it in an interesting way.

That helped the spread of it. I wrote some thread about the metaverse that went super viral. And I don't think it's because of how I wrote it. I think it's because the thought in it was genuinely a good thought. Uh like I remember at the time. Facebook had just rebranded to Meta.

And Zuck went on the Lex Friedman podcast and was like, Yeah, I read this really interesting thing on Twitter, blah, blah, blah. It's like He wasn't saying it because my prose was great or my grammar was great or my hook was reaction. He read it'cause he thought the core idea, underlying idea was unique and interesting. Um and I think that's more what to strive for is like

You're building up these two skill sets. having unique and interesting things to say. Being good at packaging ideas. Two distinct skill sets. You can't do only one and not the other, or it'll

reveal itself to be pretty shy. If you just have interesting things to say, have crappy packaging. You don't get very far. If you have great packaging, but Mundane things to say, people get very fatigued of it. It doesn't really work. One of the ways that I like to judge a writer is like if I like as a measure when I read their stuff is like

How good is this person at building a connection with their readers? So some writers like Let's take chat GPT. Chat GPT is like a zero, right? It can be super informative, right? It's You learn a lot. But you're not actually building any sort of emotional connection. Same thing with Wikipedia, right?

And then there's other people like you. I think this is something that you're very intentional about and I think that for the average word that you have, there is like a real connection that is built and I think that you're really focused on that because of your goals as a

Creator. And how do you go about doing that writing so that it's not gonna be just this one and done, but so there's actually gonna be like a glue of like, Sean, like I like this guy. wanna consume his stuff and actually I want to consume his stuff every single day. When you say connection, do what do you mean by that? You mean trust, do you mean

Likability, what do you mean? I think what I mean is an indispensability. From that creator. So I I did the lamest thing ever once. I hired a consultant.

Who was an expert at personal branding. I pay this guy five grand. That feels like almost feels like you're not even being serious. The lamest thing ever. I'm aware how lame it was. And it's not like I was like oh I wanna change my image or whatever, but I was like Well Truth be told, if I am a creator, that means I am kind of a individual brand. Okay, so what

And this person worked with all these people, so I was like, All right, let's do this. It goes back to the theme of what is something that is super important that people want something that's valuable that other people either overlook Or actually would be embarrassed to do. Totally. If your boy's not embarrassed. So I'll do it. I'm just gonna And um I So now and we talk and I'm like, Okay, I learned a bunch of things from him. One of the things he taught me right as People will

Follow you. To the ends of the earth. Yeah. You are giving them a feeling That they can't get anywhere else.

More consistently than anybody else is gonna give it to them. So What does that mean? He basically was like, Think of yourself as a little Shopify store. And you're only skew. You're a little mur you're a merchant. Got him.

Your m your merchant your your only skew is basically One W how somebody feels after they consume your content. So for example Um I used to love Ted.

Ted back in the TED Talks. I remember Ted Talks are like Ted Talks used to be the shit. Now they were so good. Twenty fourteen. Twelve twelve, twenty four. Ted talks were the shit. And um Or even before that, I was in college when the when they were cool. So the Why do I like a TED Talk? Even the sound, the music of the The whoosh out of a TED talk or the intro saw the sound. And the the way that it looked.

It was like this like Training, like Pavlov Pavlovian training of like You're gonna hear one really cool idea. In eighteen minutes. You're gonna walk away feeling inspired. No, inspired about the world in some way. Inspired to either go do something, inspired that the world is

Improving in some way, inspired to make a change, whatever. And Ted is a f merchant of inspiration. And so I thought about that. I was like oh yeah, that's right. I I listen to these comedy podcasts. Why?

'cause I get this feeling that I'm hanging out with my My friends, my funny friends, but like they're not my friends, they're just Comedians that hang out. But that's why I think comedy podcasts are so popular. 'Cause they can consistently give somebody the feeling of

Camaraderie. Bullshitting with your boys. Without you ever having to like Actually be funny, have funny friends and go hang out. Right? And so like you're getting that without the cost. Amazing. And um

So anyways, but and this is why like, you know, we got acquired by Twitch. People watch Twitch, people watch other people play video games. 'Cause you get the feeling of playing a video game without having to actually sit down and buy a system, buy the game, get good at the game and play the game. You get the same rush watching this guy try to Win. Just by watching, it's it's kind of amazing.

So Once I realized that I was like oh okay, this guy's right. You know, what I gotta do is pick what feeling I want people to have. And then I gotta deliver all I gotta focus on is delivering that to them more consistently than anybody else is gonna give it to them.

If I do that. All my Personal brand dreams will come true. Um, you know, so that was the the big takeaway. That was the less I had there. So when you say It seems like you're intentional about it.

That's what it that's the underlying thing that it is is Picking up front, what am I trying to do? What's that feeling? And then consistently be like, All right. How could I do that? What's a story I could tell? What's a framework I could give them? What's a Nugging I could give them that would that would do that for them.

It seems like I want to talk about editing and it seems like Your thing is that you're really good at writing first drafts and actually you're not like a you don't seem like somebody who's like a eighth revision, I'm gonna put this away for, you know, six years kind of guy with editing. You seem like you're pretty off the cuff, you're sort of like Miss XL.

What does they want to ha the emotion wanna have? I would guess. Then you sit down, you write it, then you go away for a few hours, you know, maybe going to walk, come back, look at it. Ship it off. Right. So For you.

Let's Bring together A motion. Editing. How do you edit for

the sort of emotion that you're talking about there. Um okay. First thing I learned was from Sam Parr. He as his principal, I think he came on your show too. Uh, which is the walk away. Uh so you for you you do the shitty draft. You jump it.

And I kinda knew editing was important. And the mistake I used to make is I'd edit right away. That's a terrible idea. Don't do that. So you first do your research and your thinking. You dump your you do a quick brain dump.

And you gotta walk away. So you you read it. Well the last thing I do, I read what I wrote. And then I'm gonna like forget about it. So I then will go do stuff. So I will go work out, I'll go play with my kids, I'll go

For a walk. And I'm not trying to think about it at all. I know, I'll come back to that later. And I know it sucks today. I'm gonna go I'm gonna edit it later and make it great. I'm certain of that. But I don't consciously think about it. And then I come back to it, usually let's say four hours, six hours, eight hours, twenty four hours later.

And I'll read the thing. And immediately I'll be like, Oh, this bad Bad. Change this. Oh why don't I talk about this instead? Or

I wanted it to have this takeaway. I don't think it has that right now. All right, where would I punch that up? Like I wouldn't have wrote this if I didn't think it had the potential to give you that,'cause I was very intentional up front, thinking this will do it. It's not coming through.

Where uh and the the analogy I'll use is like imagine a river's flowing So Um There's a useful analogy because I think a lot of people are like

There's nothing there to make it happen. Another Story you could tell yourself is. It's a river. The water wants to flow. My ideas are excellent. People are gonna love this.

They want to consume this and my ideas are worth consuming. But there's some rocks in the river that are blocking the flow. What are the rocks? All I gotta do, if I just simply remove those, the water will flow. Nice. It was a more empowering thing for me versus like I gotta make this good. It's bad. I gotta create good. Like no I kind of assume. If I got to the point of writing something, it's gotta be like there's something good in it. I just gotta remove the suck out of it, right? Uh

Pixar uses that. that analogy too. They say Uh all movies we make Start with Start.

Would suck. And our only job is to just remove the suck with every draft. So they do another revision. Say what sucks about it now. Well it sucks that the main character's not that likable because blah blah blah. So then they remove that suck and they come back again. That's kind of the same met mindset. So I'll just look at it after after I come back.

And I'll say, Is this doing what I want to d do I think this is dope? Does it do what I want it to do? And if not What are the rocks I can remove? What's the suck I can remove from this? This part's boring.

This intro is doesn't really hint at what's gonna what's to come. This ending is just kinda like So yeah. That's it. That's the idea. I don't have a good ending. Okay, so then I'll just find that area and I'll just try to fix that.

Two. How about with humor? What have you learned about writing with humor? Are are you formulaic about that? Have you studied it? That's where I'm looking now. Like I'm Starting to to pay attention. Um What I've learned so far, I'll tell you what I've learned so far is like a white belt in the humor game. It's just uh

You know You don't want it to be Humor is the sauce, it's not the entree. So some people are writing something to be funny. Like it's this is meant to make you laugh. Usually that's not me.

Usually it's I'm trying to get a point across, but I'm gonna make you laugh along the way, which will make this more enjoyable for you to consume. So it's the sauce on the on the meal, but it's not the meat, it's not the protein of the of the of the thing. Which is good. Depressurizes it. It's like oh it does apply a little bit here. Um That's the first part. Second part is all humor is just surprise.

So um Every joke is a setup in a punchline, but the punchline if you see the punchline coming, it's not very funny. So humorous surprise. Means I have to

set it up in a way where you don't anticipate this is what I'm gonna say. And the contrast of what you thought I was gonna say. And what I actually said is what makes you laugh. So you just kinda have to look for those moments where There's a bit of an expect you set up an expectation and then you subvert the expectation. Jerry Seinfeld, article in the New York Times. Here's how he starts it.

knew this was gonna come in come in clutch and it just came in handy. He goes. When I got my first apart in Manhattan in the hot summer of nineteen seventy six. There was no pooper scooper law. And the streets were covered in dog crap.

I signed the rental agreement, stepped outside, and my car had been towed. Despite this, I still thought This is the greatest place I've ever been in my life. Sets it up. Pooper Scooper, funny words. Yeah, what's going on there? And I think that maybe we can go into funny words because It is interesting how certain words have a much higher

propensity to be funny than other ones, right? If he has said there is no law around Cleaning up your dog's extramment that that now is very pooper scooper is like Jovial, funny, right? Exactly. And then he goes and goes sort of takes you into this other time period just think about poop. But then he goes.

my car had been towed and you're like, Oh my goodness, this sounds terrible. And then You said surprise, which is why I thought about that. He goes Despite this, I still thought This is the greatest place I've ever been in my life. And this is in like this ode to New York City. Theo Vaughn is super um That's exactly who I was thinking about. He's super popular right now. So good. And he's been great. I've followed him since like the real world days, basically, uh Road Rules Days. And so he's

If you just listen to him talk, that his brain just does something different. He's his brain is like almost wired different. That was my initial story, but then I was like I bet you could practice feel vawning a little bit. As'cause like what Theo does, if if you've never, it's not gonna make any sense. But if you've seen him This will make all the sense of the world, which is that

The Yavon will Basically improvise he has no idea what he's gonna say. But he improvises, he uses random language or he'll Make up a story that makes That this is totally not true, but it's kinda believable and he keeps us, you know, a a deadpan face when he's doing it.

Um you can kind of practice that. And so Yeah, I think you know Practicing is is obviously the best way to do it. Well that's a big one. Let's follow this. Made up language. Coming up with words, things that other people hadn't thought of.

And How do you go about doing that? Like it's a fun little thing to play around with. One of the things that I did I like the Thinking through the juxtaposition. So I

wrote a piece about how I fell in love with the Bible and I was like, it needs some little bit of humor in it because it's you know it's the Bible, right? It's it's it's this. It activates a part of your brain where you're like, okay, this is behave. Exactly, right. Bible should actually just say behave. That should be the whole thing. Exactly. So it activates that. I was like, I need something that's funny. So I was like okay.

What is the emotional state that somebody's in and I was like working on it. I was like serious. You know, you think of almost like this fancy library and then I'm like I would do my Bible studies at a Schlotsky school. Parking lot. in a strip ball in the hill country.

And now you just get this juxtaposition. I'm not sure it was like that funny. But I think that it adds so much life to the piece. And I always try to think of like If I'm trying to be funny or create suspense. What is the emotional state that the reader's in for most of this piece? And then let me just like we were saying, like spring a little bit of Tabasco sauce of the opposite.

Yes, yes, that's exactly right. And I I think you know An exercise you can do is um So like a theavan exercise is basically He takes a thing, so let's say it's uh the Bible. So it's the vibe.

But what a Theo Vaughn humor like kinda lane he does is he'll s he'll call the Bible Something else that's kinda funny. Like he'll be like uh You know, he'd be like Man that Jesus' binder.

And he'll be like, it's the Bible, but now he calls it Jesus Bind. Then he'll do another one. And he'll be like he's like that old You know, like hi the old Himalayan diary and it's like what what are you saying? Like he just keeps coming up with Different ways to say the Bible. Or he's it'll just be like, you know, that that big brown behavior book and like he'll just keep going. And like I've never done this before, but like that

You could try that. So you could just take anything and be like, I'm gonna come up with Six. Like I'm just gonna keep going. And it's so hard to do. Like just now when I was doing it, I don't know I was like, Why the hell are you trying to do this live on a podcast? But That's how you get better, right? So

You know, doing that is it trains your brain in a very different way of thinking than We are used to. And that pays off because again Common traits.

Uncommonly together. is very, very valuable. You don't need to be the funniest. Nor do you need to be the m smartest. If you're pretty smart. And you're kind of funny.

You're like the best. You know? And so that's that's my whole strategy was basically to do that. I know I'm not funny enough to be a comedian. But I'm funnier than the average smart guy. And I'm smarter than the average guy. So it's like Pretty smart.

Kinda funny. Well it's funny because uh I went to you know it was church last weekend and I was with a friend And Basically

We After the service, she was like And you know, that was a That's really good sermon. And I was like, Well, what do you like about

About the pastor. And she was like, You know, he does a really good job of talking about very serious, sort of like weighty things, but then layering in Tons of humor, right? So like

He was talking about He was talking about you know you could have said good people go to the light and they're focused on moral values and integrity. And bad people move to the darkness and they run away from, you know, righteousness and stuff like that. And you're like, Okay, that's not right. And he goes

At any moment you can either be a cockroach Or a moth. Right. And I grew up in South Carolina. And you know, you go into the pantry sometimes and there's some cockroaches on the ground and like you want to step on those things, but those things fly. And they go all over the place and like they'll start eating your Ritz crackers. I swear those cockroaches are so big they can practically pick up the babies and they'll take'em to cockroach land or wherever, right? And cockroaches, they run away from the like.

Right. And then you have your mops. And the moths, they go to the light. And then he like weaves these cockroaches and the moths throughout the entire sermon. So you're getting this like chuckle. But then through the chuckle, it's like creating this avenue for like extreme depth.

And somehow it's in the juxtaposition of those two things that the sermon ends up really hitting. And the humor like lowers your defenses on like needing to be a super, you know, perfect person and all that. And it's like, okay, we can have some fun here. But then the fun actually allows us to then get to the depth. That's framing, right? He framed it differently. Same principle, framed differently, all of a sudden more accessible. Uh more fun, more more entertaining, more memorable.

And memorability is is massively underrated. Uh you know. What's the point of having the good ideas if Nobody remembers them, right? Like you know, part of your job. A a responsibility if you actually have something worth

Worth remembering. is to take the time and effort to m package it in a way that is gonna be catchy and memorable. Um my buddy Trevor, he was my roommate in college. He um he made his whole career do one thing. He basically reads what white papers, which are like

Scientific journals. They're the most like boring like read the abstract, read the whole study, whatever. People sp it's crazy. The scientists spend their whole life working on this thing and then they package it. In the dullest format possible. Oh yeah, with pride. Because that's like a yeah, it's high status for them.

It's like it's so boring that only another person who's dedicated their life to this would possibly read this. Which means that none of the insights take get taken to the real world until you know somebody comes in and builds that bridge. So he built that bridge. He's He would go learn something. He'd read this and he'd go talk to the scientists like some, you know.

Somebody's been doing this for fifty years. And you know, the number of people who follow them and listen to them is like, you know, thirty five. And then My buddy you started writing a blog and newsletter that eventually YouTube. He built like a hundred thousand person email list about a really like dry subject, which is like

Uh you know. uh growth mindset, uh, which is like how it applies into the classrooms and stuff like that. And so he the way he did it was the same type of frame. He's like Imagine two tigers. One tiger grew up in the zoo.

Um and and yeah, a tiger that grows up in the zoo, you know, and he does it he'll teach this to like third graders or he'll teach it to the New York Yankees. Uh you know. CEOs of companies or you know. Kids basically, he does the same speech to both of them because it's so easy to easy to understand. It's so memorable. He's like Tig uh tiger that grows up in the in the zoo.

Has the life been easy or hard? Pretty easy, right? Do they fight for their own food or is it given to them? It's given to them. Okay, cool. Uh Jungle Tiger. Jungle Tiger's life hard, right? Lots of adversity. They have to fight for their own food, they know how to survive, blah blah blah.

If you take a um jungle tiger You put it in the zoo, what happens? It would get bored. It's like if you take a zoo tiger, you put it in the jungle, what happens? Like it's dead. Like it doesn't know how to survive.

And he's basically like, You want to be a jungle tiger, right? Like, and how do you do that? Well, you have to get out of your comfort zone, the zoo, where everything is easy and handed to you. And So when you reach those moments where you're out of your comfort zone Say to yourself like this is my jungle tiger, but I got a jungle tiger this right now. 'Cause I have to go I have to put myself out of my comfort zone to do this. He gave them a language to remember

A whole set of principles. That were all Previously packaged in very boring scientific terms. You know, one of the things that I'm Noticing from from you like

I always think okay, I'm doing these interviews, like how is my writing process gonna change? And one of the biggest things I've picked up is I don't need to learn from writers at all. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go study comedians and I'm gonna be more deliberate. About finding communicators who I really like.

And then trying to say, what are they doing? And then bring that into my writing. And then also I think that you really see a fluidity between mediums that talking, writing. Humor. storytelling, these things can all sort of play together and they're sort of like paint colors where yeah, you can have You know, you have the white paint, the black paint, the blue paint, the green paint, but then you can also have like a You can begin to mix them together and then you can get all these different colors and that maybe we shouldn't be thinking about writing as like

All these separate lanes. actually for a lot of the different skills that you want to learn to make yourself a better writer. Don't even study writers, the best people for that might be in a totally far off field. Yeah, yeah. You you nailed it. Uh

Good job. You synthesized it very, very well. I I do think it's a sh good strategy. Um To Basically pick and choose from adjacent fields'cause you're gonna Do something different than other than you're only looking in

your own lane, it becomes very It's why everything becomes the same. because we all look at the same things, we all study the same things. And so like you know, I was hanging out with Mr Beast and he said the same thing. I was like, What YouTube channels do you like? He's like I don't really watch YouTube that much anymore. You're the number one YouTuber in the world. You s like live and breathe YouTube. Yeah, my channel.

But then I was like, So where do you learn from? He's like Well, right now we think that one thing we're weak at is character development. So we study shows T V shows and movies that are good at character development. Or uh whatever. And then he's like trying to steal from other areas than

He's like everybody else, if you're just on YouTube looking at other YouTubers, you'll just become lost in a just sea of sameness. And um I I think that's a a useful tip for people to to take on. I wanna end here. If

You know, you built a newsletter called Milk Road and you had to train another writer to write in your voice. And you believe that learning to write is actually teachable. So when you're teaching other people to write, what were some of the things that you focus on? Uh yeah. So we

Ta the teaching was important because I didn't want that we had to send the email out every morning at like six A. I was like, I'm not doing that. I'm not good with consistency and C anyways, I don't wake up that early. Uh I know that no matter how fun this is that I will hate doing by like day thirty. So from day one, I was like I'm not gonna write this.

But it's gonna be in my voice and style. How do you do that? Hire a guy who's never written before. And I sound down and I was like Um, first my business partner, I was like, You write this and I was the editor.

I was I was his editor for thirty days and I said, Cool, now you're the editor, now you've got to hire a writer. We hired a guy I've never written before. Um In any professional capacity or even blogged I don't I don't think he had a blog either.

Uh But I told him and basically what we did was we took a One thing that helped is the newsletter was like a consistent format, so it wasn't like Ten different formats. One format.

And I broke down Why we write it the way we write it, line by line. Our opening line at Milk Road was always like Good morning. This is the milk road.

The you know, the and we would say what we do and then we would say in a funny way and then we would add a ta we would tag it with a joke. So we would say We are the number one source for Figure out what happened in crypto yesterday. Uh we Think of us like

Um, think of us like a toast of strudel. A fresh, tasty sweet for you and uh treat for you in the mornings. And then parentheses we tag the joke again. And we would just be like What the F happened to struggles anyways. Kids these days, they're missing out, right?

It's like we would Tag the we're so we'd always tag the joke. We are uh Jim, we're the we're the Milk Road. We are um We give you exactly w everything you need to know about crypto in the morning and nothing nothing that you don't need to know. Um

And then we would say we would tag it but be like, um I'd say something like we're R uh reading this newsletter is as is the second best feeling in the world. The first best, of course. Is When you're in a car, you roll it on the window and you start doing that cool dolphin thing with your hand. Right? Like some relatable, funny thing that's just like put you in a good mood. Awesome. And we were like, Can we give them the s can we get you to smile and can we get you to be like, I like I love these guys. Can we give you a reason to open this that's not

Based on the bitcoin price was another way of thinking about it. And so we So I started training I was like the first line This is what we do. Here's why we're doing it. And here's ten examples of doing it good.

And then he was like, cool, got it. I can I can pattern match to that. The other thing that we did was He was um He was doing the school thing where he's like he thought he had to be a different guy, like Ooh, maybe I need to be a really sophisticated do sophisticated analysis or I need to do

Kind of like people think when they write they need to do something outside of themselves. The whole point of writing is to take you and just push it out. And so don't try to create this fake thing that you think other people might want. Just take you and push it out. And so for example

He would talk about subjects And the writing was fine, but the subject was boring. So I was like, dude, why'd you pick this? He's like, I don't know, I felt like Yeah, it was in the news, people needed to know about it. I was like, Did you care about this? No. Uh not really. And I was like, would you have ever like texted me or slap message me or send me a voice note being like

Dude, did you hear about this? This thing's awesome, or this is crazy. Did you hear about this? This is really interesting. He's like, No, I would never say that. I'm like, Cool, then why are we telling why are we telling two hundred thousand people about this if you wouldn't tell me And so s what I made'em do, I was like every morning I want you to have send a voice note. Send a voicemail and just

Tell me the news. Before you write anything. Just be like, Oh yeah, everybody on Twitter's freaking out because they're worried about this. uh thing that happened. Or Um the price is up today because of

Because there's rumors about this right now. And what that means is that if that happened, then this would happen. So he would just say it to me. And it was it was such a good filter because he could stop himself if he was gonna tell me something that was boring. He would catch himself like I would never say this to somebody. It's boring to me and it'll be boring to you. So it filtered out the subject beautifully. So like those are the two big things was

Show him what we do in an like giving him a sample and then saying Here's what good looks like. Examples of good. Um and then secondly, installing that one step of like

Don't Do that impostor thing. Where you start talking about shit that you're not even that interested in. 'Cause guess what? Nobody else interested in it. Like and the filter for that was send me a voice memo. If it's not interesting in the voice memo, it's definitely not gonna be interesting in low text.

Why do you think that dolphin thing It's so funny. It is hilarious. It's it's not even that's funny. It's just like funny that we put again, it's unexpected. Like why are you writing this? Um

Everybody says we're the best. We said we're the second best thing in the world. So immediately like w what's first best. First best, and then I can't say a serious thing. I have to say an unserious thing. So I'm like

The first best thing is this feeling,'cause we all know this feeling. It's great. Like you know that feeling. It's an amazing feeling. And so um We just knew like okay, things like that. Surprising, likable, funny. You can do'em in one line. So it's not like you have to like set up a long story or joke.

It was very useful, it was very efficient as a like mechanism there. Next week. That was good fun. Thanks, man. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like

So on the road less travel, never looking back

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