alright look sean here i don't wanna toot my own horn but beep beep this is this is a this is an interview that somebody else did with me david pro who you might know online as the writing guy he 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 eleven x eleven x means it is eleven times higher performing than his normal videos something good is in this video that is doing eleven x on youtube and it's all about storytelling it's all about writing 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 this stuff i hope you like it i was little sick in the interview but it was my michael jordan flu game i came i came prepared and i brought the heat i'm really hype this up 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 it and so we want asked david hey can we run this on our feed you know we took the took the episode from him we're gonna run on our feed it's basically interview where he's the interviewer and i'm the guest talking about storytelling and writing it so if you like those two things you're gonna like this episode alright enjoy this episode we do i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a road last five second of change well what does happening mean you wanna work backwards from the emotion the only things people will share is things that are lol wtf t o g who old on here stop bargain so like what should i do next time i sit down to right the real brake writers i believe are great at framing their ideas oh interesting so mister beast steve bartlett dave chappell hu min those are the people i try to learn from you know i could teach a thirty second master class it's just this sean 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 listen to good storyteller but sean has really d the storytelling process and you hear people saying all the time oh storytelling is 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 masterclass on storytelling come on in it's time to roll i said this to you when we for shook cans 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 wanna compliment you on that and in particular there's a lot of things that you do really well when your writing that i'm not good at and this one of those episodes where i just have a bunch of questions and i'm here to make by writing way better and the place i wanna start is storytelling i have no frameworks for thinking about storytelling before you to storytelling can i give you a compliment on your compliment yeah so great compliment first of all very specific 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 you or whatever you said like my do whatever your score went up a lot during that process i learned this from these two guys dylan and henry they're young guys and they were like twenty one when i met him them and they were recording these videos i was how many views 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 someday somebody will watch these he's like yeah specifically we're creating a binge bank and i was like what's a bank and he goes it's when you basically stack material so that like even though each one of these if we just looked at the view counts to be kinda discouraging like not that many people read this or watch this but they were like we started to think about it differently instead we said alright each one's is not getting that many views but i'm creating a bank where if somebody ever said i'm curious about this guy i wanna learn what is this guy all about that in the next hour you you'd would walk out with like my reputation would be way higher with you right 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 because i used to not i used to like i'd be like very results driven it's like if it's not immediately paying off it's hard for me to get excited about it but when i thought the benjamin bank i just thought oh i need to create this library that if anybody like if they was gonna do research is gonna spend an hour or two hours going like down the rabbit hole i need to leave a little bread from 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 s shebang of alright i told the about blog post that i probably forgot of as is my guests i like that forty page pdf with all your main principles that was like the pool i swim right for the longest and i ended up there yeah who knows but like that's the you leave that trail you can could i should probably do it better but like this idea of create a 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 them away to to just spins your content like it's a netflix show and by you 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 power your way to keep going you're gonna be a very wise person and say results take time i'm neither of those things bat willpower and not that wise right like i i kinda know that's the answer but it's so it's a way to trick yourself and the way to trick yourself just to say oh yeah 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 bank 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 start putting that together one of the things that you are very good at is it 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 let gonna go check out aaron so 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 thing is cool because you know 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 i find that i'm like oh this is a good another example of that to me is 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 over the top of obnoxious version but it generally you wanna on the side of have energy have enthusiasm those are people you wanna do projects with work with be involved with but nobody will ever be like yeah i'm practicing my enthusiasm right like i'm practicing this that sentence doesn't even compute so if there's a thing that has value that other people don't practice or try at 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 you'd 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 i am working on like getting funnier or they're like are you trying to be comedian no like you like funny people though right like of course everybody does whether it's relationships work contact 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 magically happen like we kinda know everything comes to practice every everything is down with practice so storytelling is one of those skills where i knew that i loved it whenever i met somebody who's a great storyteller i wanted to get better at it so then who's the best in the world of this right that's the next question one of the people that came to mind when i googled around was aaron sword and the he's written you know famous tv shows i don't even west wayne news the social network movie it's great for writing dialogue and in these interviews he says this thing he's like they're like what's the key storytelling like can you teach a like a three hour master class because he's like i could teach a thirty second master class like 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 know what the hell he he's talking about but the way this guy 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 clear 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 like it 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 trying to kill him the most powerful wizard of all time is trying to kill right intention and obstacle and basically if you watch if you read any story or you watch any movie you should be a little 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 a their attention will drift away and so 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 the 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 like even gave was harry potter trying to live and the most evil words trying to kill them okay cool but you can shrink that down and actually you get bonus points when you can do intention an obstacle on a lower stakes moment so i wanted a croissant and all the places were closed but i need my croissant you needs your croissant and the but the audience has to believe that you truly needed it and you gotta tell it would be like you gotta make them believe that you really want it i ideally because you actually right you you know you don't have to fabric the story it should be real i'll give you an example i was at a like executive off site my company just got acquired like i put on the exec team of this now like two thousand person company and i don't i feel a little out of place like i've never worked in a company bigger than too twenty people and i wanted to use storytelling to kind of like as a crutch as that's one of my tools in my toolkit how can i use this to better myself alright so we're supposed to go around the circle and like say what's been going on what's something what's this what's something recently that happened that you wanna share with the group some bs like ice breaker 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 working on this thing but then legal said this and it's kinda like boring boring boring and i was like yeah recently i had a big moment big day and okay pause right get people curious i said i just moved out of the house was young right i 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 in badger why don't she invite me over well she doesn't know i'd never invited her over because i don't wanna i don't know how to host she was always the host if someone came over i know how to do adult things so people are kinda laughing right because i'm but i'm like i was like i had been trying to get her to 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 tell the story about how my mom comes over and i decided to cook i decided to cook brussels sprouts the most adult food there is problem is don't know how to cook the brussels sprouts so stop i'm doing it blah and i tell the store cook at the brussels sprouts and i just excuse 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 brussels structure it's hilarious that was some that was so funny what was that i wasn't 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 l and fandom more so than the dramatic i was skiing and there was an avalanche that's cool but it's un unbelievable and actually there's something fundamentally of unreasonable about it and i wanna write usually if i wanna write something it's because i'm trying to whatever i'm trying to have fun but i'm also trying to build an audience of people who like me or a fans of me or get customers who wanna know buy my product or whatever i try to use like for that it was interesting i was at a sort of a very fancy day was like multi billionaire house and you it was one of those dinners where everyone is like you know people had flown in for the dinner and there's like an olympia who's sitting across the table i was like 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 i really wanna impress everybody like when my childhood heroes and not forks i can wait through a lot right and i you know sort of put myself up and i talked about and this is what i do for a living and i'm like i'll crushed you know man everyone would love this and we're we're hanging out after after dinner and back of my apartment my body goes y you did the worst job ever like that was a horrible intro was like what are you talking about every word to the bone like how my one liners is 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 first of all great friend perfect that's a great friend can we call that out and you're you're absolutely right i learned this from hu vin the comedian because i was gonna go on stage i was like hey dude like you do this for me i don't wanna do this and he goes you wanna he goes comedy is a most status scam so he goes you know you're gonna be up on sage you're nervous so your natural tendency is gonna be to puff your chest out to kind of project this b false p provide but he's like actually what you wanna do is build connection with people and you build connection with people through vulnerability through low low stakes through 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 intention him and his wife been trying to get pregnant and they haven't him been able to and they went to a doctor and he's like the worst news ever give us my fault eyeballs balls don't work basically right like is there a lower status thing as a guy than to be like ibm my junk doesn't does such just the way like that that word choices is inherently funny exactly and so you he's obviously a master at this and trying to trying to learn from people who to 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 i would try to learn for the people who their thing is storytelling writing or entertainment because they're gonna be the best at this you know aaron so comedian those are the people i try to learn from so 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 in general one of my biggest writing rules is right like you talk most people have this false thing we do i think it's from school like school kinda teaches you like they're like reed shakespeare write these essays you know i need six pages six pages minimum you know double spaced you know all the 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 would just pretend like 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 you know good writing is simple good writing is easy to read good writing is entertaining to read good writing has a voice it's not just like this you know archaic sounding thing so anyways i you know one of the principles is right like you talk so if i'm gonna write a story i will actually say it first and know then i'll just write down what i said that's like a starting point for me because for most people 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 so you just say okay so what is the story like forget the words what are you trying to say i'm trying to tell a story about the one time with the sprouts and blah blah cool what makes it interesting alright great where did it start what's the start of the story well sergey when i blah blah blah and what's the end well the end end was when this happen alright cool sounds like you at a beginning middle end you know what happened and you roughly hit the outline cool maybe now i'll start writing and so right like you talk is an important principle and then the other thing is there are nuances that are different for example in writing i'll use a ton like parenthesis because you can't do that in you kinda you can break the fourth wall basically when when you're write but when you talk it would be like me saying so we were going this way you know we we always take that route right it's like a that's a parenthesis when you're talking when you're writing it's actually much easier to do but when you're talking you can use pauses in a dramatic pause how do you do a dramatic pause in writing it's kinda hard to do you have like use like line breaks or thought that whatever right like you gotta try that so you some tools are a little bit different but 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 you know i think another misconception is shorter the better you know too long as too boring and actually you know anything could be any length it just says you can only be as long as it is interesting this a 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 posts but it's interesting to way fantastic that's the right length however you should always try to understand like what is your level of credibility or buy with the audience so here in a podcast you can kinda r in a podcast you could be like dude what yeah we could talk about something we said in the lobby or be like you just had sam alt on to see a bodyguard like we could just not talk about riding 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 is level of buy in with you you can kind of dance around subjects versus be very direct immediate and try to provide value right away to hook people right away so you know tiktok is a platform you're swiping like and if it's not interesting the first like point nine seconds you're going so on tiktok you see people right away try to say a thing on podcast podcasts you'll see people shoot the shit 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 is 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 you have how do you think about the hooks for a story like one of the things i've noticed with comedian 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 it drones and that hook of how you bring people into the story is super important i agree however i so what is so a hook is basically it's the first thing you're gonna say trying to hook their attention great i think actually right now for for the type person who's gonna listen to this you probably have studied a little bit of copy maybe or you've kinda pay attention to what like oh this person's blowing up on twitter what do they do oh they like you know they write their threads and the first line to their thread is like here's the unbelievable story about how this you know chinese immigrant took a simple t and turned it into ten billion dollars whatever i'm like unbelievable sounding of a that you're like oh you have to pivot 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 you know let's i don't know have a good example on top of my head but we'll do the one that we just talked about that how a comedy thing right i told a little story about what he's doing in in his opening line so i could just say here's what he did 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 awesome mina right so i could take the same contact where gonna talk about starting with a low status thing but i can put it in the frame of this is not just for comedian this is actually when you're at a dinner party and you're supposed to make an intro and you don't know what to hell to say this is how to not make an ass out of yourself you change the frame right and so i think that more important than a hook which is just like a grab you by the throat attention grab 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 trick the person to the clicking yeah let's gets super concrete here so you wrote a super viral thread on club house and this was the standard way to do a frame so it says one parenthesis club house existential threat number one time to value ratio le let's brainstorm and you're like jargon and fancy words that be writing that was somebody else exactly yeah i don't like it it like brainstorm like no story and then it didn't do that well and you come in you're like so doctor thought everyone seems to think club house 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 that if you compare the two and like on know your youtube you should put these like side by side so people could see it the other one was written by this guy chris who created an app that was kinda like club went super viral was called secret back in the i don't know if you ever this called secret with super viral they raised like a hundred million dollars the founder like sold some second bought a ferrari like it was like the hit product for like a very short of time and then it died so if anyone has the credibility to say why club asked might fail that guy was actually the guy the problem was he was extremely dry told no story and just said and use like very like know twelfth grade reading level jargon like club house existential threat the 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 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 here's why is logic and rationale so that's kinda why i wrote it that way was and then the rest of the thread the reason this thread got like twenty million people to read it was because i wrote it almost like a screen play i was like i didn't say here's the five problems with club house i wrote you're the founder of club house first of all fuck yeah you you're winning everybody's is talking about your app your app is cool you know kanye and your dms vcs are throwing money at you and i set it up right like 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 most business twitter writing goes is that it's an intelligence contest and i was telling a story and and so you know that's why i think it worked i think if had with the you know me trying to be the the nine thousand i iq guy in the room it would not afford so when you see people say that i'm writing now and i'm like alright i'm not gonna do intelligence contest i'm gonna try to do exactly what aaron jorge said there's intention then there's obstacle i'm gonna frame what i'm saying in terms of store i'm gonna focus on the frame and say that my writing still is just like y 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 the same way that comedy is great but not every line should be a joke storytelling is great and not every piece of content needs a story so i think one challenge is like i wrote that one as a story it did great doesn't mean everything i write online is like screen play story type of thing and that worked in that situation not gonna work in every situation so you gotta know like the tools and when to use them hammer is 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 stab at this and specifically in 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 or oh you know it drone on too long or i don't really have a point maybe this shouldn't have been a story maybe it shouldn't 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 could do a hundred of those then i bet your stores 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 mister beast ism of he's like everybody asked me like how do you do youtube good gotta tell all the same exact thing make a hundred videos and every video make well make do something better than you did before any anything doesn't matter what it is one thing better than for do a hundred then come back and talk to me and he's like two things happen first of all nobody does it they wanted just like some answer they know no intention of actually going and doing the work and then of the few people who actually do the work they never need to talk you again by the hundreds one they figured it out they're doing great i they're like they never come back for advice that's why it's the perfect advice to give someone because it's true and it saves both of us to hassle you know if you actually followed it yeah what did you learn from story worthy story worthy the is an amazing book by this like teacher guy who's like this twenty times storytelling champion of the math story i didn't i didn't even know what this thing was but whatever if you're the champion of something i paid 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 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 then the story is not gonna have 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's actually very again he the other thing he says is like don't tell like it comes like vacation rob so it's like don't just tell a story but there's great night you had this party because like nobody cares nobody wants to hear about your vacation nobody wants to hear about your cool college part you into like just fundamentally those are bad stories the second thing is like a great story is not just i was assuming the ocean of a shark pip and i survived like it doesn't need to be extreme and again potentially almost better if it's not but you still need stakes so how do you have stakes even if it's not a shark biting you're often his his answer was the stakes come 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 brussels sprouts thing embarrassment is what's on the line right like i'm gonna be embarrassed and my ego is gonna take a hit so as long as you believe that that's true for me the story will be entertaining when it's trump when i actually tell it when it's actually delivered the other one he says is because what is a story story is a five second moment of change well what does that happening mean a five second so he's like you know everything and you tell in the story comes to this one moment there's five seconds where the characters transform you know just i use movies because 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 come is like some version of the following you'd the guy a player he's never gonna settle down that's the start of the movie or she's a high powered lawyer i was doing great in her career but never made enough time for love that's always the start of the story is the only two rom comp right like she was in love that thought she thought they would get happily married he broke her heart start of the rom comb so well guess what the ending of the rom gonna be always the exact opposite of that if she was the high powered lawyer who never made time for love she's not gonna be in love and she's gonna actually quit her job as a alert and be like open up a bakery right like that's how the movie is gonna end or if he didn't wanna settle down and he was a player by the end he's gonna be chasing her and he's gonna like proposed right he's gonna wanna settle down so spoiler for all rom comm ever and it'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 you know sc hates christmas he loves christmas or with right 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 because they were finally cornered like whatever it is right 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 i don't know if you're ever this part of the dark night or or one of one of the batman movies and the mentor was like only one person ever got out he's like how did he do it he's like he didn't use the rope that like maybe basically 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 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 if i'm trying to tell the story for a passage or you know you think of all these companies always starting in a garage we money this what we believe right you have airbnb b you have like the obama owes and then you have brian c who's like going into the houses and he's like taking photos with his own cameras like doing the hustle it's like these founders really believe so how does how do we take these ideas and apply it to what we're building origin story of all silicon mali companies is is similar so let's take airbnb for example what was the you know moment of change the moment of change the the origins story of airbnb is we were broke jokes who had right the beginning of the rom com we're were broke jokes not only do we not have a success company we didn't even have an idea it's 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 old designers and the narrative was you gotta be an engineer to build a you gotta be developer to build a a tech tech company and so well the moment of change is basically they i think they had no money like they didn't have enough money to pay rent or something like that so they the moment of change is basically one of them had a crazy idea to be like hey what if we rent out our space here for this there's a design conference in town what if it create a like bed and breakfast for people who are coming because all the hotels are sold out they're ben in breakfast because we don't have a we don't have a hotel and they're were like well we just put an air mattress here and they laughed and they're were like whatever and then three people came stayed paid the money and had a great time and 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 cereal thing we they tell the story about when they were getting knocked off by a big by the sam warner brothers of rocket internet they were cl their company and gonna kill them and he tells that story it's like we you know face this life for deaf death moment and then we had to make a decision and we changed we went from being scared to being like alright we're gonna compete with these guys we're gonna beat them 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 what's called signature stories so your signature stories are the like the four or five stories 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 rite a passage what's the origin story like i'm assuming you didn't just create this because life was good you already were good at everything and and you know there must have been some moment where you were like i gotta do something here we helped 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 like six four know big beer he's just not like super welcoming guy super talented super talented and i wasn't doing super well my job and he sort of calls me to his office and i was working on a pitch deck for cardi 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 y that is not a good word to be using you're not he said something ineffective 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 it raised i'm like oh my goodness 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 because i'm not a good ride 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 of years two three years and i'm learning how to ride to start building 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 fear these things out at a desperation for how to learn how to write then that led into write a passage and that's how the company got started okay great so let's workshop that cool alright so let's go back to the origin let's do so there's a beginning middle of then k beginning your start of your rom com you're working in a job you're not you said you're not doing so well your boss kind of embarrass you and you end up getting a laid off act one or of of the movie i think to make that part just to make that part so i think you have the element there act three is i you know 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 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 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 max payne got laid off cool and 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 amazing story how we actually make it better yeah so the first part is your act one you didn't focus on the pain enough of the intention in 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 raise so i don't know what that is right you remind us wanna leave the promotion raise out it doesn't really add to the story it's been sort of confusing conflicting messages right never let the truth get in the way of a great story let's soon 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 happen 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 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 felt really proud and you've accomplished and you've overcome but at the beginning you probably felt embarrassed you know somewhat insecure whatever so for example if you were like i 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 did nothing 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 we'll like make that more real of what was the moments where you set were if you said i wasn't doing so well that it really hit home for you you know something like that let me just wrap everything we've spoken about into what i'm gathering is it's the rom comp i got my beginning i got my end i wanna a perfect yin yang between them okay then what i want is i wanna build up to those five seconds of change so i want one emotion lead up to that change that is the moment of of of tension where something pivot 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 would 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 thinks that i'm not very good so now in my obstacle so that's sort of what i'm getting from you right yes exactly you you nailed it now let's go to the five second because what you said was basically some version of your were like the beginning was pretty good and the ending was pretty good the middle you were like so that 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 it's probably a moment when you decided actually i wanna get good at this that's usually a very important part of every story it was like what triggered the turnaround so you wanna know that and then wanna explain that part and then you basically were like and then i got better and then everything was great and that's like whoa what do you you fast forwarded the montage is too fast like what triggered the turnaround and then what you actually go do and not like in a long specific but what's the first thing you started to do to get momentum and then what was like maybe some resistance you felt at you over k because like you know the pixar rules for storytelling on a pcs twenty two yeah the most important one i don't know what the twenty two say but i remember one which was something like the hero doesn't have to win 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 of 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 and the last thing i'm i'm kinda emphasizing to you that thing think anybody can do in their storytelling is 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 and you know there was nobody else there like in took tony robbins i'm a big tony robbins fan he does an amazing job telling history and he's like i remember sitting in my apartment i looked in the bathroom and i was doing i because i used to do dishes in the bathtub because my my dishwasher didn't work so i'd soak up the bathtub tub 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 to convince you that he used to be a loser otherwise the whole tony robbins stick doesn't work so he's like how do you 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 because that paints a picture of loser he's like i remember i was sitting and he says i was sit in my apartment and i didn't have any furniture because i didn't 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 and i remember the a song was playing that was like there's some song where he's like i don't have a friend something like that it's only me in my chair and he's like dude that's me it's just me and the stupid chair and he's like so i went for a run he's like even though i hadn't run years i was overweight i went for a run and him even when my loans were burning i was like no you you may be to loser at all things like but you're not gonna lose this run and he tells the story and he's kind 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 transformation it's a oh interesting story is just a change 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 in succeeding all a story is is just change you only wanna include the what happened so much as it explains how that change came to be yeah it's not as just a a timeline of events and then you're also really queuing into emotion yeah how that's what like people respond to you know like in my writing course i used to teach i used to teach just one thing yeah that i was like you know you wanna work backwards from the from the emotion i learned this from a guy who used to be my my i don't know intern or something like that i re 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 dia ceo he's built the company he's done a bunch of these on dragons 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 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 or something like that 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 jenny who's jenny what are we we talking about he's like oh like if we're baking a piece of content that's gonna go on social media social media is jenny and 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 their friends otherwise it's going nowhere there was no point in writing this thing or doing this thing has 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 so i stored that away and then i heard it the same idea from another person this is how you know a good a good idea the buzzfeed guy goes everything we do at buzzfeed is about debbie at her desk i'm like jenny in her bedroom debbie her desk scott on here she he goes he goes the most powerful network in the world is the board at network he goes all my buzzfeed was like growing like crazy at the time he's like buzzfeed basically taps into if someone the board at and they just wanna like you know have a distraction for five minutes we wanna make a piece of content that will distract them and get them to forward to a bunch of other people who are also bored at right and that's the whole network is the board at network alright second time heard the idea then i heard the idea the third time this is guy chris qui he ran a advertising agency that would make videos go viral and at the time i was like going viral was like a lottery ticket like how do you do a viral video i know it's just like something amazing must happen so i go what's your hit rate on viral alley like one out of a hundred two out of a hundred he goes no like eight out of ten i go eight out of ten and he's like yeah look he showed me the their views i was like how do you do this he's like well you know over time the more viral did 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 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 is things that are lol wtf t f o g aw hey like all the acronyms for all the emotions so like oh my god wow like like 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 write a write a a blog post or whatever and then we'll go check do we think that's gonna create this reaction to somebody no alright plus choose it up how do we make it more funny how do we make it more out outrageous how do we make it more end enduring and heartwarming like whatever those are and so once i heard that three times i was like okay i get it i need to create a rash reaction out of the average person just in a bedroom desk and i need to start with the emotion at 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 up this on the internet bunch of people are gonna read it you know get 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 sal 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 to double down on that idea in a lot of our media environment especially with a platform like twitter when do you scroll twitter like you're on the throne you're on the bus or waiting in line you're you know your friends seven minutes late you're like come on where are the heck are you know i'm trying to reservations coming up and you're just sort of browse and browse and browsing and and your brain's is only like halfway on and if you can really first understand your own state when you're in that environment and then right 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 saying hey hundred nineteen thousand impressions those are not a hundred nineteen thousand people at once like a football game there a hundred nineteen thousand individual people at a hundred nineteen thousand individual instances and time and if you think like that you communicate very differently yes perfectly said you're writing to one person at one moment in time that's i think a very good point and the other thing that this reminded me of is do you know this person miss excel you seen this person yeah yeah so she for anyone who doesn't though she's basically like an excel influencer for she lack of a better word she basically teaches people excel trip tricks but the reason she got popular she went on take tiktok she started dancing while like putting an excel trick on the screen or tip on the screen 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 i'm curious here's what her process is and she goes oh i i don't she's like it's kinda weird she's like most people if you say what's the process and they're like consistency like wake giving it at a certain time start right away get right 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 changed my own energy she's like i i she's like i'm kinda woo that way but like i basically get myself into a peak state of mine like i get myself into a certain mood and a certain certain cinema of mind where i feel magnetic i feel charismatic i feel energetic i feel it's she's like it's like like it's like literally like a science called energetic 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 post some content today and so she's like i just work myself of the state i let ideas come 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 goes 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 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 the performers know this no athlete goes on the field without being warmed up and being hiked 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 and there's even some weird glory from like just like i don't know this like pain that's ship of like how you need to be as a writer i think that's all stupid i think it's very similar to performing any other way i think she get yourself no great state of mind and then have that energy and then sit down and write and let 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 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 or on a walk with somebody else or thanksgiving human dinner they're like man you know auntie auntie dia diana she has no idea what's going on in the world that woman was crazy 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 the thing i said at the beginning of this podcast where i 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 they're energy they don't want you know miss zelda does she's like i'm gonna make myself magnetic before i make content well i like that actually i don't know i don't know what that means and that sounds provocative right like okay was better than whatever the hell i'm feeling when i sit down to right okay that's a new standard for me i'm gonna do that and so i think most people would probably in their heart and 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 with all on here south the bog so like what so what should i do next time i sit down to right how does this actually work when get a dance do some jumping jacks what do actually exactly that's exactly right so stay changes three things number one radical change in your physiology so you could sprint you can do push ups you can dance you can do twenty air squats you can dump your face in a cold water whatever it is you will it's the fastest way to change how you feel is a radical change in your physiology so first thing so do that that's the that's the very first thing i have a friend as a professional poker player he does the same he goes during poker players are like notoriously degenerate it's 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 degenerate all day people are smoking it's bad he's like a monk and he during a tournament in the brakes he goes in the parking lot and he does win sprints he's not doing it to be a better runner not doing it to increases his v 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 decision than when he changes the state and that's part of his edge why he's been a european like you know poker champion in a tour champion or in know several years so first thing is a change in your your your state the second thing is a change in your focus so what do you even been focused on like you know the way i imagine is i have this laser beam of focus don't know if this is true but it's will have 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 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 super 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 your how hard it is for you to do something if you're focused on how hard it is not a good place to focus like you need to focus on the thing you want so you don't focus on the wall where you're like trying not to crash like turn right is to focus on where you're turning and then the last one is basically your story so what's the story you tell yourself we all have some story that we tell ourselves and if you improve the story you'll change state of mind that you have so if i go into the store if i go into this podcast right now and my story is i'm just i'm do 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 at a peak state right whereas if my story was there gonna be someone who was this 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 un hear that that was amazing and that person gonna go and do amazing things that they're gonna write me a let everyone they be like dude that podcast you did change my life i'm gonna purchase this podcast guess 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 the coach and we were talking about my writing and i was in a slump i was down and what's a writing slump what does that i mean i wasn't driving i wasn't feeling it and i just wasn't proud of the stuff that i was doing and i can get inspired and 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 you know what i want i wanna be a creative force i wanna be a creative force that's what i'm going for and i sit down to right i'm like i wanna 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 get in a great flow what did you do back then that you don't do now i was like is pretty simple i find an idea that was interesting i would try to figure out that idea for myself and then i figure out for myself of that table 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 interesting figuring it out for yourself and then sharing it with others ever since that no more slot right all that was was a change in my story yes amazing that's amazing and i think you the other part of what you said there which is letting curiosity be the the guide the driver sounds very simple but all great ideas are actually quite simple with the beauty of them you know there's a i think there's a profound benefit of revisiting simple ideas and then saying am i doing those i don't look for new ideas as much as i look for ideas i've already heard that i haven't fully actual yet and you know that's one you've read like program or this essay great work i assume maybe read that one yeah i recently i read it two nights ago so good for the first time he wrote like a year ago and it was like thirteen thousand words so sounds like i'm not doing i think this it's too long well when the student is ready the teacher appears so i'm ready to i'm thinking about what it was i wanna work on right now how do i wanna do this and i went back to that and in that he he has his great line he goes if i had to boil down all great work into one one word he 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 it goes excitement is the engine and the rudder of the boat it's the engine in that excitement is motivating it's a driver to get you to go do things but it's also the rudder it it also can punch you 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 excitement is the engine and the rudder i think there's a really powerful idea and every time i've drifted away from that like you did like i start with that good things happen and then i'm like oh now ambition is the driver or doing something that sounds cool or important or money is the driver and then like all the bad things happen and i'm about shit why aren't these working and it's like because you stop doing the working formula which was leading to all these great things because you thought you needed to like you thought you me to do something different and i show 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 wanna do and then when they think about well it's time to write they subconsciously don't allow them to write about the thing that they're the most curious about or excited to write about because in school that's what you get could do yeah the 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 of figure out because i got 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 your debt love that line so good at the same time you are always d constructing 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 d 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 what i read something yesterday looks like mini book online that was called i think called like a technique for technique for coming up with new ideas like some old book and in it it said this thing i guess the the most valuable traits you can have sound like opposites when you know if you pair them together so you guys you know imagine a entrepreneur who is 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 met you know the iphone and it figure out what to do but he's insanely detail oriented where he's like what is the inside of the box look like and they're like dude steve nobody's what he's gonna look at he's i'm gonna look at this i will know what's inside the box it needs to be beautiful at that level of detail picks pixel level detail same thing for all things right i consider myself a creative person i'm also highly analytical with data sounds like opposites 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 they're often presented as false choices you're either this type a person are you 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 creative when do i need to be analytical when do i need to be hard charging entrepreneur window 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 analysis maybe it's oh i'm feeling fear i need to actually use logic and nice 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 just do this and i guess it's not so scary after all so usually if the problem is motion you can solve it with emotion if the problem is logic can solve logic and so i try to use them at the right times the if your inner your head your dead is basically a as more of a life philosophy than it is a work philosophy which is people who kinda go around life not feeling a whole lot and not being present in the moment they're in their head about stuff they're missing life and that's that's a problem you know more so than than a writing tactic have you ever seen that advice from ray rat where he says don't think ever seen this so i heard that what you said here and it immediately reminded me he says i've have assigned and my type writer says don't think and i'm like go ahead that's interesting i'm trying to surprise myself at the keyboard and the only way to surprised 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 out side of that part of your brain that judges that condemns that says 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 it's like whoa where did that come where did that come 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 idea is that for me is where i do editing the thing that was game changing for me was voice transcription getting really good because now i can stand and talk talk walk decide walk and talk just blah blah blah blah blah half of austin definitely thinks i'm some sort of like crazy psycho path 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 because i don't sit in tight like everybody else does i should 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 i think i everybody's got a different version of of how to do it what you said reminded me of something though you go become ray battery don't think i think this is a a very useful troubleshooting tool so when you're stuck many ways to get un stuck and one way to get un stuck like i said radical change and something physical you do i mean that's a good tactic music is everybody to get un stuck too but in general a philosophy for how to get un stuck is you're 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 can gotta do is not just keep trying to do this you can just zoom right out those super general alright super general what am i'm trying to do here i'm trying to do this super general if i had all the powers in the world well how would i do this right super general is just like you know who somebody who's done this before or super general okay i know exactly what type of thing i wanna write what inspires me right the way to get out of these sometimes just to go general to go and so even if you like don't think is hard because 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 i'll go exercise they'll take my brain off of it it can also be i'm stuck in the mu here and i need to just zoom out and that's it or if i'm stuck in the general to for example sometimes i'm stuck in the general like what do i wanna be in life i'm like you know what what i wanna do and who am i and all this specific what's the like what's the best idea you heard in the last two days what 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 you know then you go specific because you're stuck in the general so it's a very useful thing to do is just like to get on stuck know if you're stuck in the specific go general if you're stuck in the general go specific and you're you'll redirect the brain i wanna switch over and 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 alright how are they feeling about this at the moment and basically you said earlier breaking the fourth wall and then by doing that building trust in connection and then it creates this friendly casual as if we're having a conversation that my goodness that is levels away from most from what most writers are able to do have you ever read the bo letters years ago okay so this is must yeah copywriting copywriting i'm surprised you don't have them like printed it out in your pocket that good so the bo on letters are this amazing thing by this like kind of renowned copywriter carrie hal i think writing to his son and he's in jail so the the writer is now in jail is riding to his son bond i think this is his name and so it's like a series of twenty three letters and i put they're hard to find two it's really annoying they're heard there's like one blog i put it i hosted them on my blog now because i was like this is it's crazy that he he's so valuable and so hard to find so anyways he posted the he wrote these letters and he just wrote it again to one person he's like i'm running 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 but the but because of the way he wrote it with such a casual like like warm relationship like he's not even just writing at one person he's ready to its son mh and because he's ready to do his son and he's like and this dear bond is where things get interesting i was like you're probably wondering dad why do you say this we're gonna get to that but first a little detox and he just started writing so differently that i was like oh i like this style this is just like has a swag to it that that is just like appealing to me so i started stealing that basically i was like oh i'm gonna write like that i'm gonna write like i'm into one person and that one person is like my little young grasshopper it's like is my kid or it's my my little cousin or it's me when i was younger it's like i know what you're thinking blah blah blah but mama 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 was like a warm relationship somebody that's kind of like i wanna be the sensei and they that's how i write and and those words where it's like a master teacher relationship and other times it's the opposite it's i'm the beginner and i know the other people are more more 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's probably a better way to do this you probably know four for four better ways yourself you're probably staring it as right now wondering how could this be so dumb well the answer is 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 because it's very frustrating to me when like imagine if you ask somebody this question you're 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 by wait what do you mean 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 tried to do that too like i tried 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 i include it in the the dialogue one of the things that we talked about all the time and read a passage one of my core principles is imitate 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 hal does this very well and then what you did was you d constructed 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 road roadmap that you took to give me that answer i think it's very revealing of how you think about writing where you start somewhere you'd be construct and then you say how does that show up in my own world and then you try to build up a general principle that then you can use for your toolkit whenever you're typing yourself yes that's exactly right i think that is a great thing for anybody to try to do if wanna 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 early while you were talking which is kinda how the brain works the brain relaxes and something comes to it have you seen the dave chappell thing called unforgiving have you seen this on youtube nope alright so do you remember a while back dave chappell was in a feud with i think it was netflix and he was like the pell 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 a big falling out with the creators of the show where like he ended up quitting right when they they the story what the time was they offered him fifty million dollars he said no and he went to africa and became a crack head instead that was like the rumors like if she spells a crack head now and he's in africa and was like and he later he was like no i just said no why i have to be a crack at 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 the show how do you get people to boycott cut the shut you gotta if you wanna drive people to take action you gotta be smart with how you're gonna like how you're gonna 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 blake caught my show please he started he reframe the problem in a totally different way that i thought was brilliant he just changed the frame completely so he tells the story he goes i remember i fourteen years old first time i everybody did comedy i was fourteen years old i go to this comedy club and i tell this joke he's like i'm not gonna yeah i'm a admit i was good right away comedy came naturally to me i'm not one of those people who was like it took me a decade he's like honestly i was good and i was fourteen fifteen fifteen years old i he's like i was under underage but i was good and like it i came backstage and this guy who's been doing this for twenty years and they were like hey kid you did pretty good and i that that was good i was like one guy came and 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 of i'm fifteen this guy's you know bigger older i looked up to this guy he's like i i didn't wanna do it because i was like my jokes all i got i got no money all i have is a comedian is my jokes he's like but i this guy i was kinda asking i felt uncomfortable he said he just needed it for this audition so i was like alright man like sure you can use the joke for that addition the guy say alright cool he's like 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 hey he's like i didn't know what to do he's take afterwards i went up to the guy again i'm a fifteen year old kid i'm like he basically it's framing it as i'm this powerless kid and this guy's taking advantage of me and he goes i told him i was hey man you said you were just gonna use it for that thing like i i don't want i want my joke back and i think maybe he had give him a hundred bucks or something like that and and the guy's like the guy kind of rough him up he grabbed them him and he was like i was just asking to be nice you know i could just take it he's like i scared i didn't know what to do i let that guy take my joke okay so that's story thing i'm gonna tell you another story he tells a story about later on he's in new york and he's he's like date with this jamaican girl he's fine girl yeah banging lot i couldn't wait to go on this date by having money must i'm still a juggling comedian but now i'm older i'm twenty two twenty four or something like that he's like and i walk around new and i see these guys doing like that three card money where they like you know that game and i'm watching it and guy puts down a hundred bucks moves a thing around i know it's over here he guesses the wrong one he loses he shows it's over that next thing i go same thing puts down twenty bucks i know it's over there he picks over here he loses on god i could do this so i step up i put all hundred bucks down i say i'm gonna double this that i'll take the take my girl out tonight i know the ball's over here i say that one ball's over there he's like what the hell just happened he's like i was pissed i lost a hundred bucks i at this dates night he's like 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 they got me and that somebody else came up and they were about to make the same mistake and i told him don't do it they're all in on it and the guy goes oh okay raymond leaves he's like the guy wraps him up again and he goes hey man he goes i was 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 oh he tells him that okay cool then he they finally gets to the netflix story and he basically weaves together those parts from before he's like they didn't ask me if they could put it on netflix they didn't ask me to you basically said like they didn't ask right 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 he's the the people would say well you signed the contract dave he's like i was a twenty one year old kid i hired lawyers to read these contracts 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 with stuff don't don't worry about it so he's like so i signed it later on i realized those guys all go out to dinner every week the lawyers is on my side they're side they're all in on it this is just like the three card money that's all all he it is i was the mark so yeah i signed it but whatever and 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 p r 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 up and it's exactly what happened people saw that that video on youtube it went super viral because it was so well done people boycott in netflix they took it off 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 we're not gonna put put spells up there unless you say we can do it even though contractually we have the rights to do whatever we want we're gonna honor the non contract here i thought that was the power of like you know ref framing not like oh i'm getting screwed i want money to like a more universal you know you're getting picked on by the man you're getting screwed by people who are all in it and i thought that was absolutely brilliant that easy yes you 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 a 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 they you are absolute expert in like the distribution of san pell waters from like the little town in italy how they 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 pell green 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 and they say 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 it's kinda back to that hundred videos thing from earlier if you're going to write online there is sort of a beach head moment you have to create it you have to create a trusted audience over time and you have to know that that distribution is earned why distribution is so valuable because hard to replicate so for example like buddy jason used to say this thing he goes oh i have the one two three rule of interesting this what does that mean he goes tell me one one thing that's interesting right you tell me one thing that's synergy you about san pell i'll say that's interesting tell me two things that's interesting but those were interesting that's two interesting things you tell me three interesting things i'll say you're interesting 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 until you and three is a small number really on the internet might be like twenty things like you might have to tell somebody twenty interesting things before they're like this guy is interesting i can't wait to get his next and you just have to build that up like you have to build you have to consistently be telling somebody something interesting multiple times for you to earn that that 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 because then another person comes in and just says oh everybody thinks this guy's actually cool follow right like which is why the more twitter followers you get the more you're gonna get right and it's actually not a bug people get mad about that like the rich get richer 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 it is a useful hack versus i have to individually vet every account to figure out who i wanna 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 let 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 individual 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 you know start with your friends start with your friends of family start with some group chats start with you know maybe you have to push the 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 just because you said one interesting thing it it deserves to be you know spread everywhere this is not really how it works right on twitter itself you have built huge audience without writing that many things and you've had a few things that just absolutely cranked 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 what i did worked on twitter so basically i i remember i was that twenty thousand followers which is a lot in general but i was like i'm gonna get to a hundred now i'm i'm about four hundred so like oh i way over shot that goal four hundred thousand followers but it most i i say the generic best practice is be consistent and 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 one in spite of doing that i think if i had been more consistent and i had to find my niche i would be at a million followers that 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 rent takeaway is it would've 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 listed all of 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 right 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 i wrote some threat about the meta 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 like i remember at the time facebook could this rebranded to meta and z went on the le friedman podcast i was like yeah this is really interesting thing on twitter mobile blah it's like he wasn't saying it because my pros was great or my grammar was great or my hook was he ready because he thought the core idea underlying idea was unique and interesting 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 right two distinct skill sets you can't do only one and not the other or it'll reveal itself to be pretty out if you just have interesting things to say a crappy packaging you'll get very far if you have a great packaging but monday mundane thinks 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 i 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 gp the chat gp is like a zero right right that gonna be super informative right it's you'll learn a lot but you're not actually building any sort of emotional connection same thing with a wikipedia right 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 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 shot like i like this guy wanna consume stuff and actually i wanna get consume stuff every single day when you say connection do what do you mean by that do you mean trust do you mean like ability what do you mean i think what i mean is an ind from that creator so i did the lame thing ever once i hired a consultant who was an expert at per branding i just five five brand that that feels like almost feels like you're not even be serious you brand as the lame thing ever i'm aware how lame it was and it's not like i was like oh i wanna change my image 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 like alright let's do this it goes back to the theme of what is something that a super point the people something that's valuable but other people either overlook or actually would be a embarrassed to do totally and your pool is not embarrassed so so i hire this guy and i stood out and we talk and i'm like okay i learned a bunch of things from them one other the things you taught me you guys people will follow you to the ends of the earth if 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 basically was like think of yourself as a little shopify store and your only skew your little you're a merchant got them your your merchant your your only sku is basically one how somebody feels after the consumer content so for example i used to have ted ted back in the ted talks i remember talk like ten used to be the shit now they so good they make fun of them or whatever twenty fourteen hell twenty twelve twenty fourteen ted touch with the shit and are you up before i was college with the they cool so why do i like a ted talk even the sound of music of the the wu out of a ted talk or the intro sought the sound and the the way that it looked it was like this like training like pa pa training of like you're gonna hear one really cool idea in eighteen minutes you're gonna walk away feeling inspired now 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 merchant of inspiration and so i thought about i was oh yeah that's right i i listen to these comedy podcast podcasts why because i get this feeling that i'm hanging out with my my my friends my funny friends but like they're nine of my friends are just comedian i hang out but that's why i think comedy podcast podcasts are so popular because they can consistently give somebody the feeling of cam bullshit with your boys without you ever having to like actually be funny have funny friends and go hang out right it's so like you're getting that without the cost amazing and so anyways but and this why like you know we got acquired by twitch people watch twitch people watch other people play video games because you get the feeling of playing of it again game without having sit down and buy a system by 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 it's sky 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 can give it to if i do that all my personal brain dreams will come true you know so that was the the big takeaway that was less i had there so when you say it seems like your intentional about it that's what it that's the underlying thing that it is is picking up front what am i trying to deliver what's the what's that feeling and it consistently be alright how can i do that what's a story i could tell what's the framework i could give of them what's a nugget i could give them that would that would do that for it seems like i wanna talk about editing and it seems like your thing is that you're really good at writing for 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 kinda guy with editing you seem like you're pretty off the cuff you're sort of like missing out does they wanna 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 gonna walk come back look at it ship it off right so for you let's ring together emotion editing how do you edit for the sort of emotion that you're talking about there okay first thing i learned was from sam par he has his principal i think he came on your show too which is the walk away so you fur you you do the shitty draft you dump it and i kinda knew editing was important and the mistake i you should make because i'd edit it right away as terrible idea don't do that so you first do your research and your thinking you dump your you do a quick brain up 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 we'll 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 i don't know i talk about this instead or i wanted to have this takeaway i don't think it has that right now alright 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 because i was a very intentional upfront thinking this will do it it's not coming through where and the the analogy uses is like i imagine our rivers flowing so there's a useful analogy because i think a lot of people are like there's nothing there and gonna 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 it's like no i kind of assume if i got to the board right i it's gotta be like there's something good in it i just gotta remove the suck out of it right the pixar uses that that analogy altitude they say all movies we may start with start with 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 let's sucks that the main character thought 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 it do i think this is dope does this 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 and so then i'll just find that area and i'll just try to fix that cool how about with humor what have you learned about writing with humor or are you formulaic about that have you studied it that's where i'm looking now like i'm starting to to pay attention what i've learned so far i'll tell you what learned so far as like a white belt in the humor game is just you know you don't want it to be humor is the sauce it's not the ent 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 trying to get a point of across but i'm gonna make it 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 depress it it's like oh it does say to apply a little bit here that's the first part second part is all humor is just surprised so every joke is a setup at a punch line but the punch line if you see the punch coming it's not very funny so humor 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 expectation you set up an expectation and then you sub convert the expectation jerry seinfeld article in the new york times here's how he sucks it knew this was gonna a come cove clutch and it just came in andy he goes when i got my first department in manhattan in the hot summer of nineteen seventy six there was no poop or scoop 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 you know exactly sets it up cooper scoop 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 right if he has said there was no law around cleaning up your dog's instrument that that now is very poop scoop like joe viola old funny right exactly and then he goes and goes sort of takes into this other time period just thinking about poop but then he goes my card 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 owed to new york city theo von is super that's exactly who i was thinking about he's super popular right now so good and he's been great i followed since it's like a real world days basically road rules days and so he's if you just listen to him to his brain just does something different he's his brain is like almost wired different that was my initial story but i was like i bet you could practice theo von a little bit as because like what theo does if you've never seen them just not gonna make any sense but if you've seen them this will make all the sense of the world which is that theo will basically imp he has no idea what he's gonna say but he improvised he uses random language or he'll make up a story that makes that is totally not true but it's kinda believe what keeps us you know a a dead pen face when he's doing it you can kinda 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 that's all that's 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 is i like the thinking through the j position 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 too bible right it's it's it's this it it it activates a part of your brain where we're like okay this is your exactly bible should actually just say hey 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 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 sc parking lot in a strip ball hill country and now you just get this j position i'm not sure it's was like that funny but i think that it adds much to 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 readers in for most of this piece and then let me just like what you're saying like sprint a little bit of tobacco sauce of the opposite yes yes so that's is exactly right i i think you know an exercise you can do is so like a theo exercise is basically he takes a thing so let's say it's the bible so it's the bible but what a theo humor like kinda lane he does is he'll he'll call the bible something else that's kinda funny like he'll be like you know he'll be like mad that jesus is binder and he'll be this is the it's the bible but now he cause is jesus bind then he'll do another one and he'll be like he's like that old you know like the old himalayan diary and he's like what what he's saying like he he just keeps coming up with different ways to say the bible or he's he'll just be like you know that that big brown behavior book and like he'll just keep going and like i don't never done this before but like you could try that so you could just take anything and be like i'm gonna come with six like i'm just gonna keep going and it's so hard to do like just now what i was it i don't i was like why the hell 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 un uncommon together is very very valuable you don't need to be the funniest nor do you need to be the smartest if you're pretty smart and you're kinda of funny you're like the best you know so that's that's my whole strategy was basically to do that it was like 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 of funny that's a good help well it's funny because i went to you know i was church last weekend and i was with a friend and basically we after the service she was like man you know those was a those was were 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 weight things but then layering in tons of humor right so like he was talking about he was talking about you you could've 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 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 wanna step on those things but those things fly and they go all over the place and like they'll start eating your r crackers elsewhere swear those cockroaches are so big they can practically pick up the babies and they'll take them to cockroach land or wherever right and cockroaches they run away from the like right and then you have your masks and the mo they go to the light and then he like weaves these cockroaches and the mo 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 depths and somehow it's in the j position 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 but that's framing right he framed it differently same principle framed differently all of a sudden more accessible more fun more more entertaining more memorable and member abilities is is massively underrated you know what's the point of having the good ideas if nobody remembers them right like you know part of your job a responsibility if you actually have something worth worth remembering is to take the time and effort to package in a way that is gonna be catchy and memorable my buddy trevor who my roommate in college he he made his whole career doing one thing he basically reads white papers which are like scientific journals they're the most like boring like read the abstract read the whole study whatever people it's crazy the scientists spend their whole life working on this day and then they package it in the dull format possible of get with pride because that's like a a status 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 get taken to the real world until you know somebody comes in and builds that bridge so he built that bridge 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 followed 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 you know growth mindset which is like how it applies into classrooms or 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 group in the zoo and and you know a tiger that grows up in the zoo you know and he does that he'll teach this to like third graders or he'll teach it to the new york yankee you know ceos of companies or you know kids basically he does the same speech both the because it's so easy to easy to understand so memorable he's like tag tiger that grows up in the in the zoo has a life been easy or harm pretty easy right do they fight for their own food or isn't given to it's given to them okay cool jungle tiger jungle tiger life heart right lots of adversity they have to fight their food they know how to survive look if you take a jungle tiger they put it in the zoo what happens they're like it'll get bored like if you take a zoo tie you're put in the jungle of what happens it's like dead like it doesn't know how to survive and he's basically like you wanna be a jungle type 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 to your comfort zone say to yourself like this is my jungle tire i got a jungle tiger this right now because i have to go i to put myself out of my comfort zone to do this you gave them a language to remember a whole set of principles that were all previously packaged in very boring in scientific terms you know one of the things that i'm noticing from from you like i was say hey i'm doing these interviews like how is my writing process gonna change and one of the biggest things i picked up is i need to learn from writers at all what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go study comedian 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 a fluidity 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 begin to mix them together and then can get all these different colors and that maybe we shouldn't be thinking about writing is 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 it you you nailed it good job you synthesized it very very well i i do think it's a good strategy to basically pick and choose from adjacent fields because you're gonna do something different than other than you only looking in your own lane it becomes very so why everything becomes the same because we all look at the same things we all study the same things and so like i was hanging out with mister beast and he said the same i was like what youtube channels do you like he's was like i don't only want you youtube that much anymore like you're the number one youtuber in the world you like larry didn't breathe the youtube was again my channel but then i was like where do you learn from he's like well right now we think that one thing we're we at is character development so we study shows tv shows and movies that are good at character development or whatever and then he's like trying to steal from other areas than is like everybody else if you're just on youtube looking at other the youtube but you'll just become lost in a just sea of same and 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 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 yeah so we the teaching was important because i didn't want that we had to send the email out every morning at like six am i i'm not doing that like it i'm not google consistency and anyways i don't wake up that early 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 hired guy who's never written before and i sound down and i was like first my business partner i was like you write this and i was the editor i was like i was his editor for thirty days i said cool now you're the editor now you got a hire writer we hired the guy never written before in any professional capacity or even blog i don't don't think you had blog either but i told him i basically what we did was we took up one thing that helped is the newsletter was a consistent format so it wasn't like ten different formats it was one format and i broke down why we write it the way we write it line by line our opening line at mil road was always like good morning this is the mill road the you know and we would say what we do and then we would say in a funny and then we would add a we'd tag it with a joke so we would say we are the number one source for figure out what happened in crypto yesterday think of us like you think of us like a to str a fresh tasty suite for you and treat for you in the mornings and then parenthesis we tag the joke again and we would just be like what that happened is social struggles anyways kids these days they're missing out right and it's like we would tag we were so we always tag the joke and we be like we are gm we're the we're the milk road we are we give you exactly everything you need to know about crypto in the morning and nothing nothing that you don't need to know and then we would say we would tag it but be like i say something like we're reading this newsletter is is the second best feeling in the world the first best of course is when you're in a car you rolled on the window and you start doing that cool dolphin thing with their hands that like some relatable funny thing that's just like put you in a good mood and we were like can we get this 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 you know so i started training was like the first line this is what we do here's why we're doing it and here's ten examples of doing a 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 he was doing the school thing where he's like he thought he had to be a different guy like oh maybe i need to be a really sophisticated do sophisticated analysis or i to do kind of like people think what they write they need to use something outside of themselves now the whole point of writing is to take you and just push it out and so don't trying to create this fake thing that you think other people might want just a 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 did you this he's like i know i felt like you know it was in the news year's people needed to know i was like did you care about this no not really and i was like would you have ever like texted me or slack slack 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 why are we telling why are we telling two hundred thousand people about this if you wouldn't tell me and so what i'm adam them do i was like every morning i want you to send a voice note send a voice memo and just tell me the news before you write anything just be like oh yeah everybody on twitter's is freaking out because they're worried about this thing that happened or 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 you would just say it to me and there was it was such a good filter because he could stop himself if he was gonna tell me something that was boring and he would catch himself like i never say this to something it's boring to me and it'll be born to you so it filtered out the subject beautifully so like those are the two big things was showing him what we do in like giving him a sample and then say here's what good looks like here's ten more examples of good 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 because 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 is so funny it is hilarious relatable and like you know it's it's under as funny it's just like funny that we again it's unexpected like why are you writing this you know everybody says we're the best we said we're the second best thing in the world so you're immediately like what's first best first best and then i can't say a serious thing i've just say an serious thing so i'm like the first best thing is this feeling because we all know this feeling it's great like you know that feeling it's an amazing feeling and so we just knew like okay things like that are surprising likable funny you can do them in one line so it's not like you have to like set up a long story or your joke it was very useful it's very efficient as a like mechanism there sweet that good fun thanks matt yeah absolutely thanks round here i feel like i could rule to where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never looking back