How To Master Storytelling

Alright, look, it's Sean here. I don't want to chew my own horn, but beep beep. This is an interview that somebody else did with me, David Porel, 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 11x. 11x means it is 11 times higher performing than his normal videos.

Something good is in this video that is doing 11x on YouTube. And it's all about storytelling. It's all about writing. It's not that a lot of people ask me about, but I've never taken the time to sit down and talk about it.

I gave it to David and I gave it to sit down and tell you everything that I know about this stuff. I hope you like it. I was a little sick during the interview, but it was my Michael Jordan Flu game. I came, I came prepared, I brought the heat.

I'm really hyping this up. And it's because I'm excited about it. I'm really proud of this interview. It's doing really well.

A lot of people are messaging me about it. So we want to ask David, can we run this on our feed? You know, we took the steps up from him. We're going to run on our feed.

It's basically an interview where he's the interviewer and I'm the guest talking about storytelling and writing. So if you like those two things, you're going to like this. Alright, enjoy this episode. I feel like I can rule the world.

I'm going to change. Whoa, what does that mean? You want to work backwards from the emotion? The only thing people will share is things that are LOL, WTF, OMG.

Wait, it's all about here. So like what should I do next time I sit down to write? The real writers, I believe are great at framing their ideas. Oh, interesting.

So Mr. Beast, Steve Bartlett, Dave Chappelle, Pusson Minaj, those are the people I tried to learn from. You know, I could teach a 30 second masterclass. It's just this.

Sean Perry is one of those guys that I really wanted to learn from. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to tell better stories by listening to storytellers, and Sean has really deconstructed 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 a masterclass on storytelling. Come on, it's time to roll. I said this to you when we first show 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 want to compliment you on that. And in particular, there's a lot of things that you do really well in your writing that I'm not good at. And this is one of those episodes where I just have a bunch of questions and I'm here to make my writing way better. And the place I want to start is storytelling.

I have no frameworks for thinking about storytelling. Before you start telling, 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, what respect for you're whatever you said, like my, whatever your score went up a lot during that process.

I learned this from these two guys, Dylan and Henry, they're young guys. They were like 21 on the Metam. And they were recording these videos. I was like, how many views do these get?

And they were like, oh, nobody watches these. And I'm like, but you guys are like really trying. Like, is it like some days somebody will watch these? He's like, yeah, specifically we're creating a binge bank.

And I was like, well, it's a binge 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, it'd be kind of discouraging. Like, I'm not that many people read this or watch this. But they were like, we started thinking about it differently.

Instead, we said, all right, each one is not getting that many views. But I'm creating a bank where if somebody ever said, I'm curious about this guy, I want to learn more. What is it all about? That in the next hour, you'd walk out with like my reputation would be way higher with you, right?

Like you would feel like you know me, you would like me, you would respect me. And it changed the way I thought about that. And so then I, because I used to not, I used to like be like very, um, results driven. It's like, it's not immediately paying off.

It's hard for me to get excited about it. But when I thought of binge bank, I just thought, oh, I need to create this library that it's anybody like if they was going to do research, is that 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 shebang of all right, I told you blog post and I forgot about my guess.

That's like that 40 page PDF with all your main principles. That was like the pool I swam it for the longest. And I ended up there. Yeah.

Who knows? But like that's the you leave that trail. You could probably do it better. But like this idea of creative binge bank, I think is so much more valuable than a resume or a portfolio.

It's like people will come knocking. They will get curious about you and like give them a way to, uh, to just binge your content like it's a Netflix show. And by after two hours, they should feel like you're the man. 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's like the first part, which is if you create something and the feedback loop is not quite there, you're either going to just will power your way to keep going.

You're going to be a very wise person and save results. Take time. I'm neither of those things. Bad will power and not that wise, right?

Like I kind of know that's the answer, but it's hard. So it's a way to trick yourself. And, um, the way to trick yourself is 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 make is important. I want to have that as an asset that's there for me. So what are the 10 things that somebody should go consume? And I started paying attention to that and start putting that together.

One of the things that you are very good at is that I feel like you're just good at learning skills, putting names to them. And this is a good time to dive into storytelling. So I guess that you had this one thing you're like, Oh, I'm going to go check out Aaron Sorkin. And he always comes back to like this one core principle.

Tell me about what you've learned from storytelling and then maybe even like the meta of how you learn new skills. The storytelling is cool because, 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 kind of lame to say you're working on it.

Like if I find that, I'm like, Oh, this is good. Another example of that to me is, uh, enthusiast. Anybody who's been around somebody who's like 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 not just version, but generally you want to air on the side of have energy, have enthusiasm. Those are people you want to do projects with work with be involved with, but nobody will ever be like, yeah, I'm practicing my, yeah, I'm practicing this. Um, that sentence doesn't even compute. So if there's a thing that has value that other people don't practice or try at, uh, any 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 almost like differentiate yourself in the marketplace storytelling is another one of those joke telling is another one of those. Like if you're like, um, I'm working on like getting funnier than you're trying to be like, Oh, like you like funny people though, right? Like, of course everybody does, whether it's relationships, work, content creation, whatever you're doing, if you're a 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, this magically happened? Like we kind of know everything comes back. Everything is downstream of practice.

So storytelling is one of those skills where I knew that I loved it whenever I met somebody who was 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 Sorkin there. He's written famous TV shows on the West Wing Newsroom, the social network movie. It's great for writing dialogue.

And in these interviews, he says this thing. He's like, what's the key to storytelling? Like can you teach a three hour master class? He's like, I can teach a 30 second master class.

Like, it's just this. It's intention and obstacle. And he said even better, it goes, I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. And I was like, I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

But the way this guy's serious about it tells me, like, I need to go dig in. What does he talk about? So what does this mean? Intention and obstacle is just, at any given moment, the hero of the story, whether it's you or someone you're talking about, has to have a very clear intention.

What do they want? And under that, it's like why they want it? How bad do they want it? What happens if they don't get it?

That's like, goes into intention. And then obstacle, like who's in the way, right? So Harry Potter wants to live. What's his way?

Voldemort trying to kill him. The most awful wins of all time trying to kill him, right? Intention and obstacle. And basically, if you watch, if you read any story or you watch any movie, you should be able to pause at any moment and just point at the screen and just say, what's one 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 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 an incredibly powerful tool.

Because the fundamental building block of storytelling and the more interesting thing, which we can talk about is it doesn't have to be life or death. So most people think of it when like the example I gave you in games or trying to live and eat most evil words or trying to kill them. Okay, cool. But you can shrink that down and actually you get bonus points when you can do intention and obstacle on a lower stakes moment.

So I wanted a croissant and all the places were close, but I need my croissant. You need your croissant. But the audience has to believe that you truly needed it. And you got to tell them, you got to make them believe that you really want it ideally because you actually did, right?

You'll have to fabricate the story. It should be real. I was at an executive office site. My company just got acquired.

I put on the exact team of this now, a 2000 person company. And I don't, I feel a little bit out of place. I'm never working a company bigger than 20 people. And I wanted to use storytelling to kind of like, as a crutch as one of my tools in my toolkit, how can I use this to better myself?

All right. So we're supposed to go around the circle and like say what's been going on or like something recently that happened that you want to share with the group. Some BS like Icebreaker. And every single person just did it in a work context.

Oh, we're working on this thing. But then this person on my team did this problem or whatever. Oh, we're going to the thing. But then legal said this.

I was like boring, boring, boring. And I was like, yeah, recently I had a big moment, big day. And okay, pause, right? Give people curious.

I said, I just moved out of the house. I was like, I just moved out of the house. I'm living in my own place. I've been living there for a year now.

But I've never invited my mom over. And my mom was in Badger. Why don't you vibe over? Well, she doesn't know.

I never invited her over because I don't want to, I don't want to host. She was always the host. If someone came over, I don't want to do adult things. So people are kind of laughing, right?

Cause I'm like, I was like, I had been trying to get her to like treat me like an adult. I'm actually still a little boy, right? And so I tell the story about how my mom comes over and I decided to cook. I decided to cook Brussels sprouts.

Most adult food there is. Problem is, don't know how to cook Brussels sprouts. So I'm doing it by my mind. I tell the story of cooking the Brussels sprouts.

And everybody's like, everybody's entertained. They listened to it. And during the break, everybody made a point to come up and be like, dude, that Brussels sprouts sort of hilarious. That was so funny.

What was that? It wasn't even just happened. They kind of couldn't even explain it. And for me, it was just another example of using storytelling, even on low stakes moments, actually builds likeability and fandom more so than the dramatic.

I was skiing and there was an avalanche. That's cool. And actually, there's something fundamentally unlikable about it. And I want to write, usually if I want to write something, it's because I'm trying to, whatever, I'm trying to have fun.

But I'm also trying to build an audience of people who like me or are fans of me or get customers who want to buy a product or whatever. I try to use likability for that. It was interesting. I was at a sort of a very fancy dinner.

It was like a multi-billioner's house. It was one of those dinners where everyone is like, you know, people have flown in for the dinner. It was like an Olympian who's sitting across the table where it's like a big fan of grown-up. And we're all going around doing introductions.

And it's my time to do the introduction. So I'm nervous. I really want to impress everybody. I really say, I'm not a cork.

Yeah, I do a lot, right? And I sort of put myself up and I talk about, hey, this is what I do for a living. And I'm like, oh, I'll just crush it. You know, everyone loves this.

And we're hanging out after dinner and back in my apartment. My body goes, yo, you do the worst job ever. Like, that was a horrible intro. Like, what are you talking about?

Everywhere to the bone? Like how my one liner 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 a first of all, great friend.

Great friend. And you're absolutely right. I learned this from husband and hodge the comedian because I was going on stage. I was like, hey, dude, like you do this for a living.

I don't want to do this stuff. And he goes, you want to use comedy as a most satisfactory. So he goes, you know, you're going to be up on stage and you're nervous. So your natural penance is going to be to puff your chest out to kind of project this performance bravado.

But he's like, actually, what you want to do is build connection with people and you build connection with people through vulnerability, through low stakes, through low stats. 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 and trying to get pregnant. And they haven't been able to.

And they went to a doctor and he's like, the worst news ever. It was my fault. My balls don't work. Basically.

Like, is there a lower status thing as a guy that would be like, I think my junk doesn't just go away. Like that word choice is inherently funny. Exactly. And so he's obviously a master at this and trying to learn from people who are like, I'm in business.

I don't try to learn how to be a better storyteller or better writer from business people. Why would I do that? I would try to learn from people who their thing is storytelling and arriving or entertainment because they're going to be the best at this. You know, Aaron Sorkin, comedians.

Those are the people I try to learn from. And so I think that was one principle that sounds like you learned the lesson the hard way to how is storytelling different for you in writing versus speaking? It's not that different. In general, one of my biggest writing rules is write like you talk.

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

Use a big vocabulary. All the things that don't work in the real world, you learn in school. I think what school teaches you is basically just pretend like, 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, you know, one of the principles is write like you talk. So if I'm going to write a story, I will actually say it first.

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, like blank page, you know, death is like the most intimidating thing. It's very hard to even get started. But if you are stuck and 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 first thoughts and blah, blah, blah. Cool.

What makes it interesting? Great. Where did it start? What's the start of the story?

Well, it's the end. Well, the end was when this happened. All right, cool. Sounds like you got to be getting middle end.

You know what happened and you roughly hit the outline. Cool. Maybe that'll start writing. And so write like you talk is an important principle.

And the other thing is there are nuances that are different. So for example, in writing, I'll use a ton of like parentheses because you can't do that in you can break the fourth wall, basically, when you write, but when you talk, it would be like me saying, so we were going this way. You know, we always take that route. Right?

It's like that's a parentheses when you're talking when you're writing. It's actually much easier to do. But when you're talking, you can use pauses and dramatic pause. How do you do a dramatic pause and writing?

It's kind of hard to do. You have to like use like line breaks or whatever, right? Like you got to try that. So you have some tools are a little bit different.

But I was like 80 to 90 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. And actually, you know, anything could be any length.

It just says you can only be as long as it is interesting. This is general rule. It can only be as long as it is interesting if you can go this long, you know, along, you know, blog posts, but it's interesting all the way. That's the right length.

However, you should always try to understand like what is your level of credibility or buy in with the audience. So here in a podcast, you can kind of riff in a podcast. You can be like, dude, we can talk about something we said in the lobby or be like, oh, you just had Sam Altman on the scene in the bodyguard. Like we could just not talk about writing for five minutes.

Totally fine. However, if it's cold traffic on the internet, you better have like an amazing headline and a first line that's going to help people and be right about the match that the headline was because 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 and try to provide value right away to people right away. So TikTok is a platform where you're swiping like, and if it's not interesting the first like nine seconds, you're going.

So on TikTok, you see people right away trying to say a thing. On podcast, you'll see people shoot the shit and build, you know, there's a chemistry thing because people are going to swipe away from podcasts in the first 30 seconds and not usually how people consume podcasts. And so you got to know your medium and you got to 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 comedians and really studied is how fast they're able to build context. They can do it in like six to eight words where some people just go on and on and on and on and on and on at drones. And that hook of how you bring people into the story is super important. I agree.

Um, however, so what is so what is so hook is basically it's the first thing you're going to say is try to hook their attention. Great. I think actually right now for the diversity of this, you probably have studied a little bit about copywriting maybe or you've got to pay attention to what like, oh, this versus blowing up on Twitter, what do they do? Oh, they're like, you know, they're right, they're threads.

And the first line of the thread is like, here's an unbelievable story about how this, you know, Chinese immigrant took a simple thimble and turned it into $10 billion. So I'm like unbelievable sounding of like, oh, you have to pick it. 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 and idea can be this big or to be this big depending on the frame. So I can be like, um, you know, what's this? I don't know how I'm going to talk about my head, but we'll do one that we just talked about that husband is a comedy thing, right?

I told a little story about what he's doing in, um, and it's opening line. So I could just say, here's what he did at the starting of his day. I could say, here's what you can learn about public speaking from one of the greatest public speakers in the world. I was in the middle, right?

So I could take the same content where I'm going to talk about starting with a low status thing, but I can put it in the frame of this is not just for comedians. This is actually, when you're at an identity party, you're supposed to make an intro and you don't know what the hell to say. This is how to not make an asset yourself. You change the frame.

And so I think that more important than a hook, which is just like a gravity by the throat attention grabber is think about how you're going to frame your ideas. Hooks are about the words you're going to write. Hooks are about the idea and how you're going to make that idea relevant and how you're going to connect two ideas that seem unrelated to be related. The real 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 going to like, you know, just kind of trick the person to clicking.

Yeah, let's get super concrete here. So you wrote a super viral thread on clubhouse and this was the standard way to do a frame. So it says one, parentheses clubhouse, existential threat, number one, time to value ratio, let's brainstorm and you're like jargon, fancy words, I don't like that. That was somebody else.

Exactly. And brainstorm, like no storyline and then it didn't do that well. And you come in, you're like, so dah, dah, dah, everyone seems to think clubhouse is the next big thing. But I think it's going to fail.

Here's how I think it all goes down. Yes. Why did you choose that? So if you compare the two and like on YouTube, you should put these side by side so people can see it.

The other one was written by this guy, Chris, who created an app that was kind of like clubhouse went super viral. It's called secret back in the day. I don't know if you remember this. It's called secret, super viral.

They raised like $100 million. The founder like, sold himself, I bought a Ferrari like it was like the hit product for like a very short one time and then it died. So if anyone has the credibility to say like clubhouse my fail, that guy was actually the guy. The problem was he was extremely dry, told no story and just said, and he was like very like 12th grade reading level jargon like clubhouse is existential threat.

The time to value ratio like immediately felt like homework. Whereas my thing was everybody thinks X, but I think Y and most of our art was here's how I think it's going to go down. Not here's why I'm right. So here's what's going to go down is basically like gossip.

It's story. Here's why is logic and rationale. That's kind of why I wrote it that way was and then the rest of the thread, the reason this thread got like 20 million people to read it was because I wrote almost like a screenplay. I was like, I didn't say here's the five problems with clubhouse.

I wrote you're the founder of clubhouse. First of all, fuck yeah. You're winning. Everybody's talking about your app.

Your app is cool. You know, Kanye's and your DM's VC's are throwing money at you and I said it up right. Like you that's the set up. 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 tech or writing goes is it it's an intelligence contest and I was telling a story and so that's why I think it worked.

I think if I had written it with the, you know, me trying to be the 9000 IQ guy in the room, it would not have worked. So when you see people say that I'm writing now and I'm like, all right, I'm not going to do intelligence contests. I'm going to try to do exactly what Aaron Sorkin said. There's intention and there's obstacle.

I'm going to frame what I'm saying in terms of storm and focus on the frame and say that my writing still is just like, yo, this is lame. What do you think is going on there that makes it feel dry or like it lacks a sense of momentum? Well, the same way that comedy is great, but not every line should be a joke. Story story is great and not every piece of content needs a story.

So they want challenges like I wrote that one as a story. It did great. And I read online is like, screenplay, story type of thing. I work in that situation.

I'm not going to work in every situation. So you're going to know like the tools and when to use them. Hammer is not good. If you're just trying to open a door, sometimes the 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 going to get better at storytelling. Be prepared. Like tell a hundred stories starting with maximum cringe and get to not cringe.

Like, what if you want to take a hundred expected to take a hundred sabs of this and specifically into a hundred intelligent reps. So it's like, do it. Or, oh, you know, it droned on too long. Or I don't have a point.

Maybe this shouldn't have been a story. Maybe it shouldn't have been something else. And so hundred reps where each one, you try to say, what's one thing I did better than the last time? Just one thing.

That's it. And then you just keep going. And if you do a hundred of those, then a better story is a work. It's not going to be, it's not going to be a forest because you'll learn the scale through those hundred reps.

This is the mischiepeism of, because like everybody asks me like, how do you do YouTube? Do you tell them all the same exact thing? Make a hundred videos and every video make do something better than you did before. Any, well, any matter of it is one thing better than four.

Do a hundred. Then come back and talk to me. And he's like, two things happen. First of all, nobody does it.

They all want to just like some answer. They know that 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 to me again. By the one they figured it out.

They're doing great. 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 a hassle.

You know, if you actually followed it. Yeah. What did you learn from Storyworthy? Storyworthy is an amazing book by this like teacher guy who's like the 20 time storytelling champion of the month.

Storytime. I didn't even know what this thing was. But whatever. 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 intentional obstacle, but if you don't make it clear what's at stake for the person, if they don't get it, then the story is not going to be very compelling. So, you know, when you tell a story, let's say it's the, it doesn't have to be high stakes. Like it doesn't, he's actually very, he's not the thing he says is like, don't tell like, vacation, Rob. So it's like, don't just tell a story about this great night you had, this party, nobody wants to go back to vacation, nobody wants to go back to your cool college party you went to, like just fun to know those bad stories.

The second thing is like, a great story is not just I was living in the ocean and I was shark pipping and I survived. Like, it doesn't need to be extreme. And again, it's actually 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, your answer was the stakes come from the emotion. So as long as you believe that that other person was going to 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 going to be embarrassed and my ego is going to take a hit.

So as long as you believe that that's true for me, the story will be entertaining when it's actually delivered. The other one he says is what is a story, a five second moment of change. Whoa, what does that mean? A five second, so he's like, you know, everything in you tell in the story comes to this one moment, this five seconds where the characters transform.

You know, just I use movies because it's easier that most people don't have a big archive of writing in their head, but we've all watched the same shows and movies. Every rom-com is like some version of the following. The guy's a player and he's never going to settle down. That's the start of the movie.

Or she's a high-powered lawyer. It was doing great in her career, but never made enough time for love. That's always the start of the story. It was only two rom-com, right?

Like she was in love, she thought that we'd get happily married. He broke her heart, started the rom-com. So well, guess what the ending of the rom-com's going to be? Always the exact opposite of that.

If she was the high-powered lawyer who never made time for love, she's not going to be in love and she's going to actually quit her job as a lawyer and be like, oh, but that's not a bakery, right? That's how the movie's going to end. Or if he didn't want to settle down and he was a player, by the end he's going to be chasing her and he's going to like propose her, right? He's going to want to settle down.

So spoiler for all rom-coms, and it's actually all movies ever. Die hard, Jurassic Park. You can do the same exercise. Watch the opening one minute.

The end is going to be that character, the opposite of his current lifestyle or belief system or habits. You know, Scrooge, Hey, Christmas? He loves Christmas. 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, when Batman, when it's like he's in the cave and he's got to get out and nobody's ever made it out. 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 job, he's going to die. But actually because he was going to, because of that, makes the leap and actually makes it. That's a transformation moment. Everything is based on all the stories.

If you don't know what's the five-second moment of change for the main character, you don't really have a great story. How does this apply or not apply to the story of a company? Like I'm trying to tell the story for a passage or, you know, you think of all these companies always saying, you know, what's the difference between the character and the character? You think of all these companies always starting to garage, we had money, this is what we believe of Airbnb.

You have like the Obama-O's and then you have Brian Chesky who's like going to the houses and he's like taking photos with his own camera. He's like doing the hustle. He's like, he's founders really believed. So how do we take these ideas and apply it to what we're building?

The origin story of all silly-mally companies is similar. So let's take Airbnb, for example. What was the moment of change? The moment of change, the origin story of Airbnb is we were broke jokes who had the beginning of the rom-com.

We were broke jokes. Not only do we not have a successful company, we didn't even have an idea. We were the worst situation for an entrepreneur. No money, no team, no idea, no reputation, no not things.

Even worse, wrong founding DNA. We were all designers and the narrative was, you have to be an engineer to build a tech company. So the moment of change is basically they had no money. They didn't have enough money to pay rent or something like that.

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 design conference in town? What if we create a bed and breakfast for people who are coming because all the hotels are sold out and we don't have a hotel. We put an air mattress here and they laughed and they were like, whatever. And then three people came and paid the money and had a great time.

They were like, holy shit. This might be a thing. And then there are several holy shit moments. There's like, we ran out of money again.

So we did the Obama O's cereal thing. They tell the story about when they were getting knocked off by a big, by the sound war brothers, rocket internet, they were cloning their company and going to kill them. And he tells that story. He's like, we faced this life or death moment and we had to make a decision.

And we went from being scared to being like, all right, we're going to compete with these guys. We're going to beat them. That's the moment that's what 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 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 of passage, what's the origin story? I'm assuming you didn't just create this because life was good. You already were good at everything.

And there must have been some moment where you were like, I got to do something here. We hope you improved my origin. Give me what it is right now. All right.

So I worked this job at this New York advertising agency and I was super intimidated by my boss. Like six for big beer. He's just not like super welcoming guy, super talented, super talented. And I wasn't doing super well on 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 going to be epic. And he was like, yo, that is not a good word to be using. You're not, he said something to the fact that 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 got to get good at this. So that was in like November, then we go through December, I get a raise. I'm like, Oh my goodness, this is going to be great.

Life's going well. Then January 5th, 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 writer. Oh, I got to learn this crap, but I don't even like writing.

But then I'm seeing all these people who are good at writing and they're just making moves on the internet and stuff. So I spend years, two, three years and I'm learning how to write a 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. I'm like, Oh, and I had to figure these things out at a desperation for how to learn how to write, then that led into a rite of passage. And that's how the company got started. Okay, great.

So let's workshop that. Cool. All right. So let's go back to the origin.

Let's do. So there's a beginning, middle, then you're getting your start of your rom com. You're working in a job. You're not, you're not doing so well.

Your boss kind of embarrasses you and you end up getting laid off at one or of the movie. I think to make that part just to make that part better. So I think you have the element there. Act three is, you know, so we know, act one is going to 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 intimidated by my boss. Great. Super relatable, super likable.

You have a moment where you got specifically embarrassed around the epic thing calling you like a college kid or whatever. You're like, okay, hopelessness. Max Payne got laid off. Cool.

And I'm sure you got 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. That'll be actually make it better. Yeah. The first part is you're at one.

You didn't focus on the pain enough. 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 raised. So I don't know what that is, right?

You might want to leave the promotion to raise out. That doesn't really add to the story. It's just confusing. Conflicting messages, right?

Never let the truth get in the way of a great story. Listen to 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 can't believe this happened, but he literally brought me into his office and he goes, I need you to stop thinking like Jeff Bezos. And I was like, can you explain? He's like, do your job. You are a sales guy.

I focus on that. And so there's a lot of tension there. And he and I never really got along that well. Right.

So yeah, I think you want to, I 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 going to 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, welcome him and train him a little bit. And then he got promoted before I did. 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 call on whatever.

And he was like, needs, needs improvement was huge, right? A little anecdote like that, I think will like make that more real of what was the moments where you set, 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 wrong calm. I got my beginning.

I got my end. I want a perfect yin yang between them. Okay. Then what I want is I want to build up to those five seconds of change.

So I want one emotion lead up to that change. That is moment of of tension where something pivots that I get to the end. There is the opposite. And then what I want to do is intention and outcome, obstacle, intention and obstacle.

So my intention is I want to be good. I want to be good. I want to be valued. I want to be respected.

Actually, I can even bring it to 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'm that.

And I'm like, my job is about being a writer. And my boss thinks that I'm not very good. So now I'm my obstacle. So that's sort of what I'm getting from you.

Right. Yes. Exactly. You nailed it.

Now let's go to the five seconds. Because what you said was basically some version of your like, the beginning was pretty good and ending was pretty good. The middle you were like, so then I got laid off. So then I started thinking about, well, I want to improve my writing.

Sounds like an arbitrary epiphany. Maybe there was a mentor that told you something or maybe you read something online that inspired you or maybe you had a long talk with yourself on a long walk one night and you were like, you know what? Screw this. Right.

Probably a moment when you decided actually I'm going to get good at this. That's usually a very important part of every story. It was like, what triggered the turnaround? So you want to know that and they want to explain that part.

And then you basically were like, and then I got better and then everything was great. That's like, whoa, you fast-worded the montage too fast. What triggered the turnaround? And then what'd you actually go do not like a long specific sort of what's the first thing you started to do to get momentum?

And then what was like maybe some resistance you felt bet you overcame because like, you know, the Pixar rules for storytelling. I don't know if it's 22. Yeah. The most important one, I don't know what the 22 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 them. So you got to say what you tried, what resistance you felt and how you overcame that resistance. And that's the wrong thing.

But you want to make it feel real. And the last thing I'm emphasizing to you that 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 sentence or I remember looking around and, you know, there was nobody else there. Like, I'm talking about Tony Robinson, a big Tony Robinson fan. He doesn't amazing job telling his story. He's like, I remember sitting in my apartment.

I looked in the bathroom and I was doing, I used to do dishes in the bathroom because my dishwasher didn't work. I was like, I'm not going to go up the bathroom. He's always trying to say I'm a loser. I was a loser.

No, I'm super successful. Why? Because I'm Tony Robinson. I figured it out and you can too.

But first he has to convince you that he used to be a loser. Otherwise, the whole Tony Robinson stick doesn't work. So he's like, I don't 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 a loser.

He's like, I remember I was sitting in my apartment and I didn't have any furniture because I didn't have any money. So I just said there's one chair. Like, I didn't have a sofa. I had a hard chair that used to sit on.

It was like, it was just a chair. He's like, I remember the song was playing. That was like, there's some song where he's like, I don't have a friend or something like that. It's only me in my chair.

He's like, dude, that's me. It's just me in the stupid chair. And he's like, so I went for a run. He's like, even though I hadn't run in years, I'm overweight.

I went for a run. And even when my loans were burning, I was like, no, you may be a loser at all things left, but you're not going to lose this run. And he tells a story. It's kind of inspiring when you're doing this.

And he's just zoomed into one moment. That's visual. That's audio. That's a feeling.

That. It's like, I'm just going to let you know, it's a feeling. And I can't use that before state so that the after has some impact, the two things that I'm getting their is first, you can tell the 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 true. Oh, interesting.

So, is this a change? So, world is one way and then it was another way. I was one. And then I was another way.

My company was failing, and then it's succeeding. All the story is, it's just change. You only want to include the what happened so much, as it explains how that change came to be. That's what people respond to, you know.

Like in my writing course, I used to teach, I used to teach this one thing that I was like, you know, you want to work backwards from the emotion. I learned this from a guy who used to be my intern or something like that. I retired when he was 20 years old, Steve Bartlett. Today, a lot of people are Steve Bartlett.

He's got a big podcast called Diary of the CEO. He's built a company, he's done a bunch of these on Dragon's Den. Like he's a famous guy now. I met Steve when I was 20.

All right, when he was 20, I was 25 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 year or something like that. And Steve was awesome in a bunch of ways that he was obviously just like a 21-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 going to think when she sees this?

Like, who's Jenny? Who's Jenny? What are we talking about? He's like, oh, like if we're making a piece of content that's going to go on social media, social media is Jenny in her bed laying down, just scrolling, just swiping.

And she's like, basically, this has to make Jenny and Jenny like stop, think something, and share this with her friends. Otherwise, it's going nowhere. There was no point in writing this thing or doing this thing because it created no reaction from the person. There's going to 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 the same idea from another person.