I have to admit, I just don’t enjoy Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album.

Sure, it got rave reviews from critics, and its Spotify numbers are solid proof of its success.

But I can’t lie to myself: I just don’t like it. I still prefer her debut album, SOUR.

A decade ago, if I didn’t like a piece of art, I always assumed I didn’t like the artist either.

Most people do the same: “I dOn’t lIkE Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, sO I dOn’t lIkE hIm.”

As I grew older, my perspective changed.

Art is like an Instagram post.

Writing is like an Instagram post. It’s just a snapshot of life.

The only difference is an Instagram post is filtered as hell, but art is raw.

When we don’t enjoy a piece of work, there’s no reason to hate the artist.

The art is one thing; the artist is another.

Look, it’s not easy for artists to lie about who they are, how they feel, or how they see the world.

It feels revolting to create something that doesn’t align with your current state of mind.

That’s why art is the most honest snapshot out there.

And writing is no different. It’s the raw, unfiltered snapshot of your life.

Now, you might ask: “What if I write about stuff I’m into, but nobody gives a damn?”

Think about Olivia Rodrigo.

Did she care about losing fans over a complete 180-degree shift in style? I don’t think so.

As Bruce Lee once said:

“Art is the expression of the self; the more complicated and restrictive a method is, the lesser the opportunity for expression of one’s original sense of freedom.”

You have total freedom to express who you are and write whatever you want.

Still, I know you’re terrified of writing something nobody wants to read.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis has sold over 5 million copies worldwide.

But back when he was writing it, he thought his work was complete trash.

He even begged his best friend to burn every single manuscript if he died, convincing himself that nobody would ever want to read it.

After he passed away, his friend refused to follow those orders.

The truth is, you have no idea what your readers actually want.

Sure, some topics naturally have a longer shelf life than others, like:

• Wealth

• Health

• Relationships

And sure, there are dirty games you might have to play, like “being a gatekeeper’s pet,” just to get your work distributed.

But that’s beside the point.

The point is this: if you want to write, but feel like no one wants to read it, just write anyway.

I get it. In 2026, most of you probably want to write just to hit 1,000,000 views and break free from the 9-to-5 sh*thole.

I totally get it.

But I hate to break it to you: writing for traffic and writing for self-expression are two completely different ballgames.

Writing for traffic is all about marketing.

Writing for trust is all about human psychology.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Some writers master both and make serious money doing it. But making money isn’t the primary purpose of writing.

The real purpose of writing is leaving an honest snapshot of who you are. Money and fame are just byproducts.

Again, you might ask: “What if I publish something and it completely flops?

Look at Stephen King.

How many of his books do you actually know?

He has written over 72 books in total, but most people can only name IT, The Shining, or The Green Mile.

Yeah, not every single one of them was a massive hit.

I can’t name them all either.

Still, despite being the master of horror, he could still write timeless masterpieces like Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption.

He can do that because he views his work as just a series of snapshots. Everything is temporary. If readers don’t like it, fine. He simply moves on to the next one.

Now, you might say: “Hey, he can do that because he’s financially free.”

Well, well, well.

Back when he was writing his first hit, Carrie, he was broke and so frustrated that he threw the manuscript into the trash. Luckily, his wife dug it out and told him: “You’ve got something here. Keep going.”

Now you see why he sits down every single day to crank out 2,000 words and keeps churning out such a massive volume of work.

When a piece of art expresses who you are, it’s done its job.

So if you’re afraid of writing, just remember: it’s nothing more than a snapshot of your life. And a snapshot gains its real value when you look back on it years later, not when you look at it today.

Now, let’s start collecting your snapshots.

I gave my intern an AI prompt just to create more work for myself.

“Run this, and you’ll get great results instantly,” I said.

He showed me his screenshot. And I was shocked.

Well, let me rewind a bit...

I was helping a friend grow her social media account, and I had full permission to use AI for the process. She ended up hiring an intern to write (let’s call him Mr. Joker, though no, he’s not a joke, I just rewatched Batman).

To be honest, I had no idea why she hired him.

He knew absolutely nothing about writing.

My guess? Probably because he had the physique of a Greek statue.

But hey, I was there to help, so no complaints.

As anyone knows, teaching someone how to write is painfully hard, unless they’re willing to do hours of copywork.

So, I broke his workflow down:

1. Do the research

2. Create the layout

3. Start writing

Personally, I hate creating layouts.

It’s boring. So I built an AI prompt that automates the outline structure for me.

I thought, “Hey, this will make life so much easier for Mr. Joker.” So I handed him my secret prompt.

Turns out... the result was TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

It made me wonder what went wrong.

So I opened an Incognito window, pasted the exact same prompt myself... and got the exact same piece of trash he got.

What went wrong? Same prompt, but why such a wildly different result?

It felt like I ordered a BLT and got a hotdog. You can imagine the disappointment.

So, here is why: The prompt I gave Mr. Joker wasn’t actually that smart. My AI was.

My AI is like an old friend who already knows how I take my coffee. Because it has spent so much time with me, it understands my writing style and the responses I like.

Mr. Joker’s AI was a random barista on his first day of work. He knew nothing about my preferences.

So, when Mr. Joker plugged that exact same prompt into his fresh AI account, the model had zero context.

If you don’t have the context, the prompt is useless.

Which brings us to the biggest trap of the AI era: Everyone wants to automate their brain before they even learn how to use it.

But here is the funny thing: one of the smartest people in the world doesn’t think like that.

Let me remind you about Elon Musk’s 5-Step Engineering Process. (Hey, please don’t quit just because I said Elon Musk is smart. Yes, he is.)

Here is his 5-step process:

1. Make requirements less dumb

2. Delete part of the process

3. Simplify or optimize

4. Accelerate cycle time

5. Automate

Look at step 5. Automate comes AT THE VERY END.

Most people do this completely backward. They jump straight to Step 5.

And when you run into trouble, you can’t fix it (manually or using a prompt) because you don’t even have the foundational knowledge to judge what you’re trying to fix.

Hey, I’m not saying “don’t use AI.” That’s like telling teenagers not to have sex: it’s impossible.

But you have to do it the right way:

1. Forget the magic prompt.

2. Learn the skill manually first.

3. Do it until it becomes intuitive.

4. ONLY then do you step in and automate.

Yeah, I know my advice doesn’t fit the trend of “AI, AI, AI.”

Sure, AI can accelerate your learning curve, but only you know what is worth learning.

And this doesn’t just apply to writing, it goes for every other skill, too.

I used to sleep like a baby.

But now, lying in bed is kind of torture.

I toss and turn, and my mind opens a million tabs.

As you know, I’m dealing with health anxiety, and I’m working with a psychiatrist.

She’s given me so many techniques that might surprise you.

Ummm... let’s start.

Tip #1: Write Your Heaven

Surprised?

My psychiatrist once told me about a technique used by Navy SEALs.

When Navy SEALs are on the battlefield, imagine them being in high-alert mode.

And there’s no plush mattress.

How do they sleep?

Navy SEALs just imagine their heaven.

A beach in Bali, a getaway in Mexico, or a sunset in Greece.

Whatever it is.

Our body has a superpower:

• If you think about threats, your body gets stressed (and releases cortisol).

• If you think about peaceful things, your body relaxes (and releases happy hormones).

But here’s the problem.

I tried to imagine it, but sometimes, this is what happens:

“I’m on a beach in Bali. This beach is beautiful. This beach is beautiful. This beach is beautiful.”

F*ckkkkkkkkkk.

I couldn’t picture the beach, got angry at myself, and that made me even more awake.

So, what should I do instead?

I write down my heaven during the day (while my mind is running at 100% capacity).

“I’m lying on a beach in Bali. The sand is white and soft. I walk into the water. It’s crystal clear. As I dip my toes in, my whole body cools down and my muscles relax. Later, I head back to the hotel and sip a piña colada. The sweetness of coconut mixed with the tang of pineapple, pure bliss. A soft breeze hugs my skin, carrying the scent of palm trees. I lie down for a massage surrounded by the gentle aroma of scented candles. Then, I enjoy a giant lobster with garlic butter sauce. The taste? Stunning. I look over at a beautiful woman walking in, and it turns out she’s my wife.”

And when my head hits the pillow, all I need to do?

Yeah, just replay my imaginary paradise.

Tip #2: Write Tomorrow’s To-Do List

Have you ever laid in bed with your mind racing about tomorrow?

It happens to me so often.

Let me explain.

Nighttime is when your “CEO brain” (the Prefrontal Cortex) goes to sleep while your “drama queen brain” (the Amygdala) fully wakes up.

That’s why most people (including me) worry about bills, the future, and everything else at night.

To calm down your drama queen brain, eating a bunch of desserts before bed might work, but only in the short run, and it can lead to diabetes down the road.

“Insulin, here I come.”

So, not the best idea.

A better idea?

Spend 5 minutes, grab a pen and paper, and write down everything you have to do tomorrow.

When your to-do list is on paper, your brain sees it.

And when the brain sees it, it stops looping over it.

Now, here is the secret: If you actually can’t sleep, don’t force it. It doesn’t help.

Instead, get up and tackle a few quick items from that list.

Prep your meals, clear your inbox, or do a few low-effort tasks.

Once you do something boring, sleepiness will kick in.

And that’s how you set yourself up for a great day, because a perfect day starts the night before.

Tip #3: Write 3 Good Things

Does this actually work?

It depends.

No, if you’re just going through the motions without really feeling it.

Yes, if you actually feel it.

I used to force myself to be grateful for random things, but that never worked.

So, I pivoted.

I started letting my feelings lead. Because honestly, it’s practically impossible for an entire day to be 100% terrible.

There’s always at least one little thing that brings you joy, relief, or excitement.

I follow those feelings and write them down.

Enjoyed a great meal? Had a good talk with a friend? Or felt the soft fur of your pet?

Write it down.

But what if your day was absolute trash and you can’t find a single good thing in it?

Here’s the trick:

Think about what truly matters to you, and how chaotic your life would be if you lost it right now.

Things like your ability to eat, your ability to breathe, or even having a roof over your head.

When I used this technique, I realized just how much I actually have to be thankful for.

Now, let’s talk about why gratitude works.

It forces your brain to scan for the good stuff in life.

And once you turn this into a habit, something magical happens:

You become happier, because gratitude rewires your brain to naturally look for the positive.

How does it rewire your mind?

The brain operates on a “use it or lose it” principle.

If you’re a naysayer, you’re training your brain to see nothing but doom and gloom.

But if you’re an optimist, you’re training your brain to search for silver linings.

So, what kind of brain do you want? The choice is yours.

The hard part isn’t learning something new.

It’s actually doing what you already know.

I bet you already knew most of this (except maybe Tip #1).

But that’s the deal with any advice in life. Give them a shot.

If they don’t work for you, just pivot. And let me know if it works or not.

Here is the thing.

Last Monday, I set out to write about how to use writing to fall asleep, and I promised to share it today.

But I just couldn’t stop thinking about this instead.

When I can’t get an idea out of my head, it usually means it’s important.

So today, I want to talk about Good Writing.

First things first.

Look at this:

Yeah, this is “good writing” by Kurt Vonnegut’s definition.

But now, take a look at this excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own:

“Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line; and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?”

If writing were a game, she broke every single rule in Vonnegut’s playbook using her ultimate skill: Stream of Consciousness.

Yet, her writing is undeniably fascinating in its own right.

And that brought me to a question: What actually is “good writing”?

Maybe “objectively good writing” doesn’t even exist.

Have you ever felt like this?

You save 89 articles on how to write Substack Notes and go viral.

But the more you read, the more lost you feel.

You end up having no idea what you’re actually supposed to do.

I faced the exact same problem.

I used to believe there had to be a Holy Grail of writing—do this, and your writing will automatically be perfect.

But the more I read about how to write, the more reality hit me like an M16 burst to the chest.

I felt lost.

Then, I realized why: there is no singular definition of good writing.

Everyone looks at it through their own lens:

• Good copywriting must convert words into cash. (But if I just want to show my thought process, does that make my writing bad?)

• Good journalism must spark debate. (But if I just want to express an idea, does that make my writing bad?)

• Good content writing must go viral. (But if I just want to be authentic, does that make my writing bad?)

So yeah, absolute “good writing” doesn’t exist.

And chasing something that isn’t there is a waste of time.

However, we do have something very real

Charlie Munger once said: “Invert, always invert.”

If defining good writing is hard, spotting bad writing is much easier.

All we have to do is find what makes writing bad and stop doing it.

Frankly, this principle applies to almost every area of life.

If you want to get rich, instead of asking “How do I get rich?” (which usually leads you straight to scammers), ask “How do I avoid going broke?”

Now, let’s get back to writing.

Let’s step back and look at writing in general.

Why do we write? Why do people read?

At its core, writing is a communication tool.

Looked at through that lens, the ultimate goal of writing becomes clear:

1. We write.

2. Words hook the reader.

3. Readers keep reading all the way to the end.

4. Words shift the reader’s perspective.

5. Readers take action.

If we fail at any point along this journey, I’d consider it bad writing.

If we pass every check, we’ve created something great simply by eliminating the bad.

Now, if you want to be read, you can’t just say, “I’ll write whatever I want because there’s no such thing as good writing.”

The good news? We can fix bad writing.

The bad news? It takes time.

To avoid bad writing, you first have to understand one thing:

The foundation of bad writing is rooted in biology.

While good writing is an art, avoiding bad writing is pure science.

Here are the 5 biological principles you need to keep in mind:

1. The brain is a comparison engine. Before vs. After, Hard vs. Easy. If you give readers a clear point of comparison, they instantly get the picture. Bad writing gives them nothing to compare it to.

2. The brain is lazy. If you don’t do the heavy lifting for your readers, they’ll wave goodbye. Do the hard work so reading feels effortless for them.

3. The brain struggles with abstract words. It’s hard to visualize “She is beautiful.” It’s easy to visualize “She is beautiful like Jennifer Aniston.”

4. The brain mirrors emotion. Bad writing fails to make readers feel anything. That’s it.

5. The brain is driven by rewards. No one wants to waste their time. We read because we expect to get something out of it. If you spend an hour reading a book and get nothing, you think, “This book sucks.” It’s the exact same logic.

Avoid these 5 traps, and I assure you, your writing won’t be bad.

Good writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned.

I know practicing writing is hard, usually for 3 reasons:

1. You don’t know who to follow because there are a million writing guides out there.

2. You try a method, feel like it isn’t working after 3 days, and give up.

3. You think learning to write is unnecessary now that AI can do it for you.

I get it. So how do you actually learn?

Let me tell you a quick story first.

Most next-gen Nobel Prize winners were actually apprentices under former Nobel laureates.

Did the mentors share some secret formula in private meetings?

No. Nada.

In fact, most Nobel laureates don’t explicitly teach their apprentices, because they don’t even know what they need to teach.

Sounds funny, right?

They simply showed up and did the work.

By watching them in action, the apprentices learned, and eventually became the next generation of winners.

Why I told you this story?

Because good writing can’t be taught, but it can be learned.

So, we’ll use that exact same strategy to learn writing on our own.

Here is an 8-step framework to do it:

1. Stop reading writing tips.

2. Set a specific goal. Don’t say, “I want to write good copy.” Say, “I want to write a high-converting landing page.”

3. Grab a pen and a piece of paper.

4. Copy by hand. If you don’t know what to write, pick a book or piece of writing you actually love and transcribe it manually. (Yes, this is the exact same method apprentices use.)

5. Hit a wall, then read tips. Once you run into a specific problem, then go read writing advice to solve it.

6. Test everything. Put every tip you read to work in your own writing.

7. Create your original style.

8. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not easy, and it takes time.

I can’t promise you’ll immediately get the exact writing results you want.

But I can promise that if you stick to this process, you definitely won't be a loser, because you’ll have overcome the fear of thinking and finally started doing the real work.

Your writing style isn’t just about the words on the page.

We’re wired differently.

That’s why every writing journey is unique.

It’s a combination of your perspective + your knowledge + your life experience + your specific skills + the painful process of practicing.

How do you know you’re actually getting better?

Writing is like any other skill.

It shows you the signs when you’re getting better.

Here are 3 signs you’re improving:

1. You articulate your thoughts more clearly.

2. You genuinely enjoy reading your own work.

3. You write faster.

Wait, what about making money or going viral?

Making money isn’t about writing; it’s all about marketing.

Going viral isn’t about writing; it’s all about understanding algorithms and social proof.

Nietzsche wrote a masterpiece like Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Yet for Part 4, he had to pay out of his own pocket to print it, gave away 40 copies to friends, and was barely read.

Was Nietzsche a bad writer in his time?

Don’t confuse making money or going viral with good writing.

They are completely different things.

The thing is,

first, I planned my newsletter this week to be about how I use writing to beat insomnia.

Then, this man changed my plan.

He is Leopold Aschenbrenner.

Damn, his last name is so hard to spell.

He was all over the internet last week.

Why????

6 months ago, this guy was like the god of investing.

He is smart. He made a 439% return (more than Warren Buffett).

Then, last week? This man just blew up his funded portfolio.

His fund lost big.

Wait. Wait. Waaaaait.

“This is a newsletter about writing, right?”

“Why are you talking about an investor?”

You might ask.

Well, I know nothing about finance.

But take a look at this.

And this.

You can search Google. You can search on X.

And you will see so many people creating content around his mistake.

Simply put:

One man’s mistake = 1,000,000 pieces of content.

I beg you to make a mistake.

When we were kids, mistakes were dangerous.

And that’s why our parents taught us to avoid making them.

Don’t touch squirrels. Don’t eat weird mushrooms. Don’t do drugs.

Sure, some mistakes ruin lives. I agree with that.

But most mistakes in the modern world aren’t fatal.

When we grow up, the problem is that we treat mistakes as a threat.

Because we think the stakes are getting higher and higher.

That’s why we avoid mistakes at all costs.

But mistakes are like bacteria.

Some kinds of bacteria are bad. They cause disease. Everybody knows that.

But think about probiotics.

Yes, the bacteria in our guts.

We give them a place to live. In return, they digest our food and release good chemicals into our bodies.

Not all bacteria are bad. That’s the point.

The funny thing is, as we grow up, we try to avoid mistakes at all costs.

“If my writing doesn’t go viral, I won’t write it.”

“If she doesn’t love me after the first date, I won’t ask her out again.”

“If I don’t get jacked after my first day at the gym, I quit.”

Because we don’t want to waste our resources—time, energy, money, you name it.

But hey, I know the taste of a mistake is like chewing a plastic bag.

The texture and taste are shit.

However, the right kind of mistake provides you with first-hand information.

It shows you the right and wrong direction.

So, I beg you:

Make mistakes.

Make a ton of mistakes for the rest of the year and beyond.

Because the more mistakes you make, the more insights you gain.

And somehow, that will lead you right where you want to be.

Plus, your mistakes are a digital gold mine because you can always turn them into content.

What kind of mistakes does your audience like?

Not all mistakes are created equal.

The line between a rant and a useful insight is razor-thin.

And your audience isn’t a priest.

They aren’t obligated to listen to your sins.

So, to avoid making that wrong turn, here are 3 major kinds of mistakes people actually want to hear:

1.) Funny mistake:

You know what? I used to think that if I ever pooped my pants, the world was over.

Then one day

I don't know if YouTube was spying on me or what.

My feed showed a story about a girl who pooped her pants.

I clicked, listened, and realized: as long as the storyteller laughs while telling it, even the most embarrassing moment becomes a funny story.

And people love a funny mistake, as long as it’s not theirs. So, if you have a funny, clumsy mistake? Cool. Share it.

2.) Novelty mistake

This is the actual gold mine.

People love to know the wrong path so they don’t waste energy going there.

If you say, “Hey, I tried this way, it didn’t work, so please don’t do it. But here is the lesson I learned,” your content will help you gain authority.

That is super helpful for building an audience.

So, the goal of sharing this mistake is to provide the insight.

3.) Big mistake

Let’s say Creator A shares, “I lost $10 investing in SK Hynix,” while Creator B shares, “I lost $10,000,000 investing in SK Hynix.”

Which one do you think is gonna go viral?

The latter, right?

It’s the exact same logic.

Sometimes, people just love to lecture others when they see someone mess up.

It’s free entertainment for them.

So, we reverse-engineer human psychology: If you make a massive mistake, share it.

People will jump in to flex on you and tell you how dumb you were, but you’ll get an insane amount of traffic.

So, after reading this, I don’t mind if you’re gonna write on the internet or not.

But I hope you’re not afraid of making mistakes.

Last week, I made a huge mistake.

I wrote about Bryan Johnson’s content strategy. 2,000 words—just to see what would happen if I tried long-form.

The result? It sucked.

But hey, if you’re reading this, I’d love to know your opinion: What newsletter length do you prefer?

• 300 – 500 words

• 700 – 1,000 words

• 2,000+ words

Please let me know!

Listen to me, no one ever deserves this.

But... Bryan Johnson went viral because most people want him to die. Sad, but real.

If you don’t know who Bryan Johnson is, here’s the quick detail:

He was the founder of Braintree. The company acquired Venmo, and he sold it for 800 million dollars. After that, he became obsessed with his health.

His goal? Live to 120.

How?

He started the “Don’t Die” project and did so many weird things like infusing his son’s plasma into his veins or taking a hundred pills a day. Stuff ordinary people like us just can’t do.

Now, the “Don’t Die” guy is rotting from the inside with an autoimmune disease.

He’s slipping. And the second he stumbles, the internet lights up the torches. They aren’t just watching him fall.

They want to tie him to the stake and watch him burn. It’s a modern-day witch hunt.

I used to sit back and wonder why the world wanted this guy dead. But then I plunged into his comment section.

Jesus Christ.

It’s a graveyard of bitter souls. The moment you step in, you can smell the blood.

The reason?

First is jealousy, I guess. It’s that burning feeling of being left behind: “If this guy can be immortal, but I have to die? This is not fair.”

Second, he is trying to do what most people don’t dare to do. Cheating death. From the outside looking in, it’s kinda like a sin because he is trying to do something God prohibited.

That’s why most people think he is an enemy of society.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with trying to live forever.

Emperor Jiajing of China wanted it, so he drank elixirs made of mercury.

Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia wanted it, so he ate pages of the Holy Bible.

King Charles II of England wanted it, so he drank drops distilled from human skulls.

Instead of being a villain, he actually provides something to humanity.

He invested his own wealth to find a way to make us live longer. But the first group to get access will be... Yes, the rich.

I know most of us hate the feeling of being outsiders.

But wait, look at history.

After Edison discovered the lightbulb, do you know whose house got electricity first? No, it wasn’t the president.

It was J.P. Morgan’s house.

So, yeah. I know you hate the truth, but that’s just how the world turns.

Now, get back to our story.

Why does making people wish you death generate so much traffic?

Let Ryan Holiday explain.

In Trust Me, I’m Lying, he wrote: “The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.”

Think about the world we live in today.

We are trapped in an economy where human attention is weaponized and meticulously engineered by algorithms.

Every second, millions of dollars bleed into systems built to gouge out your attention. Yet, in this endless war to lobotomize our minds, nothing crucifies your focus like pure, unadulterated anger.

Nothing triggers the urge to comment, react, and share faster than the feeling of blood boiling under your skin.

This isn’t just marketing gossip.

Jonah Berger, a Wharton marketing professor, literally proved this in his landmark study on virality.

He analyzed thousands of articles to find one brutal truth: online virality is driven by high-arousal emotions. And right at the top? Anger.

A single spike in rage increases the odds of your content being shared by 34%.

When people get mad, their brains demand immediate action.

They click. They comment. They share. They become puppets to their own rage.

In Bryan’s case, his haters are actually his most aggressive, unpaid marketing team. They think they are destroying him, but they are actually feeding his fire.

Every single time a hater types a furious comment wishing for his downfall, they give him free attention. Every time someone shares his post just to mock him, his name spreads.

The harder they wish for him to die, the more traffic he gets.

It’s the exact same reason the world can’t take its eyes off Donald Trump.

Outrage is a gold mine.

But holding people’s attention with just pure anger doesn’t last.

Think about the modern media. It is a hollow, starving beast.

Every day, media companies have to face a harsh reality.

Investing money in long, deep investigative journalism is too risky. It takes months, costs thousands, and might end up with zero clicks.

But journalists still need to put food on the table, and executives still need profit.

So, what do they do?

Instead of taking risks, they just look for a cheap, pre-packaged angle that is weird enough to grab people’s attention instantly.

And Bryan? He acts like a man biting a dog every single week.

He turns his own life into a non-stop reality show.

He infuses his teenage son’s plasma into his own veins.

He chokes down a hundred custom pills a day.

He hooks up clinical machinery to map the biology of his nighttime erections.

He is crazy enough to execute the dirty work, so the media executives don’t even have to employ their own brains.

And for us? Our only job is to sit back on our couches, stare at our screens, and watch him play his part.

When a journalist runs out of ideas, they don’t investigate reality.

They just scrape the skin off Bryan’s life, copy the madness, paste it onto their homepage, and watch the traffic explode.

He is Patient Zero.

He has turned his entire existence into a virus, infecting the digital ecosystem with stories the mainstream media is forced to broadcast for free.

They think they are exploiting him for clicks, but they are actually just playing right into his hands.

Yet, why can’t other creators just copy what he does?

Why does the media have to source everything directly from him?

Take taking vitamins as a quick example. Generic creators will sit in front of a camera and say, “Hey guys, vitamin D3 is great for your immune system.”

That is boring. Even my cat knows that.

Bryan doesn’t do that.

He tracks his blood work and shows you the exact raw data of his body turning back the clock. He is the first person to turn his own medical journey into a primetime reality show.

Look around you. In 2026, there are three types of people who make content.

1. The Content Summarizer

2. The Content Synthesizer

3. The True Content Creator

Content summarizers will go to hell soon because AI can do their job with a snap. Content synthesizers are different. If they do it properly, they can become the next Robert Greene.

But what about Bryan Johnson? He is a True Content Creator.

A real one. And he is going to win the content game.

Why? Think about how AI search engines work today.

Every second, platforms like Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT are crawling the internet. They don’t create anything.

They are giant digital parasites that skim the web, scrape articles, and summarize other people’s work.

But when everyone else is just repeating the same old internet wisdom, the algorithms get bored.

AI search engines don’t want to show users ten different websites that all say the exact same thing. They want the primary source.

They want the person who actually did the experiment, discovered the bug, or tracked the data.

When you create something completely new, you become the only source of that specific truth on the internet.

Because AI cannot manufacture real-world execution, its search engine is forced to rely on you.

They cannot just spin up a summary from thin air.

They have to cite you and push you to the top of the page because your unique experience is the only valuable thing left in a sea of AI trash.

But even with firsthand data, authority is useless if people don’t understand what you’re talking about.

Most scientists ruin their breakthrough data by speaking in boring, abstract terms.

Bryan did the exact opposite.

He killed the abstract. He doesn’t say, “I want to live as long as possible.” That is just white noise.

Instead, he says, “I will live to 120.” It is super concrete.

Most people say, “I’ve been having some gut issues lately.”

Bryan says, “My stomach is eating itself.”

It paints a visceral picture. It sticks to the walls of your brain.

Why does this matter? Because abstract language is a death sentence for attention. When you use abstract words, you force the audience to do the heavy lifting. Their brains have to translate your vague ideas into a real-world picture.

In a world where people swipe away in two seconds, nobody has the energy to do that. If they have to think to understand you, you already lost.

Science actually proves why this happens.

Allan Paivio, a researcher who studied how the mind processes information, discovered the Dual-Coding Theory.

His research showed that the human brain remembers concrete words twice as well as abstract words.

When you hear a word like apple or blood, your brain does double work.

It remembers the word, and it instantly builds a picture in your head.

But when you hear a word like justice or longevity, your brain stays blank because it cannot picture it.

In other words, when you use concrete language, the reader’s brain doesn’t just process words.

The brain sees them.

When you blend that brutal, bone-crushing language with raw, firsthand data, and wrap it all inside pure public rage... you build a fortress.

You don’t just win a niche. You chain it up and lock it down.

At the top of the food chain, you get to eat everything, while the rest fight like rabid dogs for the leftover bones.

How?

Think of the human brain as a tiny, crowded hotel.

In every category, there are only two rooms available on the top floor.

The first room belongs to the leader, and the second room belongs to the runner-up. Everyone else gets thrown into the dark basement of forgetfulness.

Our brains are naturally lazy.

We hate sorting through lists of fifty different brands. To save energy, the brain creates a mental ladder for every single topic. If I ask you about smartphones, your brain instantly climbs the ladder and sees iPhone and Samsung.

That is it.

The ladder ends there. If a brand is not on the top two rungs, it practically does not exist in the human mind.

Remember: The human brain only has real estate for “The Best” or the most extreme of any category.

But longevity gurus are everywhere, like David Sinclair, Peter Attia, and Andrew Huberman. Most of them experiment on their own bodies too.

But there is only Bryan Johnson.

He is the only man who openly says he plans to not die.

That is how he built a whole new ladder in a brand new room.

When you enter someone else’s arena, you compete on their terms.

But when you build your own arena, you don’t compete. You rule.

Bryan didn’t try to be a better doctor than Peter Attia. He became a totally different species.

And when you own the category, nobody on earth can compete with you.

If you have no idea how to create your own arena, let me recommend two books.

The first one is Blue Ocean Strategy, and the other is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

I’ll admit it.

I’ve been acting like a content summarizer lately.

But looking at Bryan’s strategy reminded me that I need to take bigger bets and build my own data.

If you scroll through his X account, you won’t find generic advice. You’ll find unfiltered biomarker sheets, exact blueprint protocols, and raw daily routines.

A million content templates are waiting for you right there.

Thanks for reading, see yah.

Ron, your silly cat.

What I read this week:

• Hit Makers by Derek Thompson

• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

• Freedom from the Known by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Here’s the thing.

Because of my anxiety and depression, I recently discovered I have ADHD.

Luckily, my psychiatrist told me, “You don’t have to take medication for ADHD.”

Why?

She said since I’ve successfully navigated a neurotypical world for 30 years without major issues, I might not need it.

And honestly? Thank god, doc. My depression meds are already more than enough.

But she also said one thing that completely blew my mind: “Labeling it won’t help. ADHD or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is experimenting to find the right tools for you.”

That’s how I ended up reading How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe.

End of my backstory.

Funny enough—maybe because I’m obsessed with writing patterns—reading that book actually taught me 3 powerful writing lessons you can apply today.

Here they are:

Lesson #1: Write as if your readers have ADHD

I never realized why I was so drawn to Kurt Vonnegut’s writing style.

It’s short. It’s raw. It cuts straight to the chase.

On the other hand, the writing style I just can’t handle is Virginia Woolf’s.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s like music—just because I enjoy heavy metal doesn’t mean classical music sucks. It’s just a preference.

But in a world where attention is as valuable as Bitcoin, if you can hold the attention of someone with ADHD, you can hold anyone’s attention.

That’s why we need to write like our readers have ADHD.

Lesson #2: Share the struggle (and how you overcame it)

Robert Greene would probably hate this.

According to his rules for power, showing your struggles makes you look weak. The laws of power are meant for kings.

But we are artists. And in writing, sharing your struggles is a superpower.

Why? Because it builds connection.

Take a look at the comments on Jessica’s YouTube channel whenever she shares her productivity struggles. People don’t just watch; they feel seen.

But hey, if your life is perfect and you don’t have any struggles, that’s fine too.

Just look at what your audience is struggling with, lend them a hand, and share your solution.

Lesson #3: Find what works for you

Years ago, I shared a ton of writing tips on Medium.

The funny thing is, what works for me might not work for you. Too often, we waste time searching for that one Holy Grail setup, hoping it will solve all our problems.

Reading Jessica’s book reminded me of this.

The truth is, most productivity tips, tools, and strategies are designed for neurotypicals and not for ADHDers.

Why force yourself to use the best-selling system on the market if it doesn’t actually fit your brain, right?

ADHDers have to develop their own unique strategies.

This realization made me look back at my own writing journey.

For the longest time, standard advice from prolific writers, like “write every single day,” just didn’t work for me.

At first, I thought it was my fault. I thought I just wasn’t disciplined enough. So, I tried harder.

But trying harder didn’t get me better results; it just led to burnout. So, I stopped.

“Write every day”? I can’t. So, I batch write instead.

Even then, I’ve learned that some strategies work for a while and then just stop working.

I used to drink three lattes a day to boost my energy.

Now? I can’t touch them because of my anxiety.

The life of a writer is the life of a practitioner.

Keep experimenting. Find what works for you right now.

You’ve spent a year practicing writing.

But your account doesn’t grow.

You don’t make money.

I get that.

Because I used to be that person—spending hours sitting down, trying to learn how to write better.

But one day, while sitting at Starbucks, this question suddenly popped into my mind:

Do you think J.K. Rowling’s writing skills were significantly better when she wrote Harry Potter Book 7 compared to Book 1?

I don’t think they changed all that much.

And yet, the life of a writer is the life of a practitioner.

So, what did J.K. Rowling actually develop over those years?

It was this:

Yup.

She focused on developing her magical world instead of just honing her writing skills.

That made me question:

When should we stop focusing on writing skills and move on to the next set of skills?

This question melted my brain.

I spent a while jumping down the rabbit hole.

Until I found this:

The Law of Diminishing Returns.

In economics, there is a concept called the law of diminishing returns.

I’m not an economist, so I will explain it as simply as I can.

Let’s say you have a job as a writer, and you get paid per word.

• First 300 words = $20

• Next 300 words = $10

• Next 300 words = $5

• Next 300 words = $1

This means the more you write, and the more time you spend, the less money you make per word.

This is the law of diminishing returns in action.

The Law of Diminishing Returns means after a certain point, the more resources you put into something, the less incremental return you get back.

But the problem is...

How do we know when we’ve hit that point of diminishing returns?

Here is a clue: You aren’t getting the results you want, and the harder you push, the less progress you seem to make.

So, what skills do we need to learn instead of just “writing”?

I recently read Derek Thompson’s Hit Makers.

Reading this book felt like getting hit in the stomach with a guitar.

Going viral comes down to two things:

1. Distribution

2. Familiarity

You can write something absolutely brilliant, but if it isn’t promoted well, or if it’s so radically new that no one can relate to it, you are doomed.

So, what do we need to learn instead?

To be honest, I don’t know the exact formula for everyone.

But as a human being, I believe we must all learn:

• Copywriting (To understand what motivates your audience)

• Storytelling (To get people to buy into your ideas)

• Learning how to learn (To keep up with a fast-changing world)

• Philosophy (To ask sharp, meaningful questions)

And the rest? Those are your specific niche skills. We use the four foundational skills above as an amplifier to project our specific skills to the world.

When is it time to stop learning about writing?

Well, that’s a tough question.

But for me, if you can already articulate your thoughts clearly and write with a distinct style, that is enough.

You can stop obsessing over “writing skills” and start spending your time learning other skills instead.

I believe one year of intense, focused practice is enough to take your writing from zero to good enough to communicate effectively.

And the fastest way to master writing manually? Copywork.

Because you don’t just learn how great writers use vocabulary; you learn how they think, structure their arguments, and articulate their thoughts.

AI writing intimidating you???

Yes, it’s intimidating me. LOL.

But that’s okay. Everything is collaboration, and I see this as a great chance to upgrade my writing.

The core of good writing remains the same.

But what makes it pop out like Anne Hathaway showing up in pure white to an all-black party in 2026?

It’s a unique angle + a unique writing style.

Sadly, a unique angle is something that develops over time.

I don’t have a formula for that yet.

But how about a unique writing style?

I just read Albert Mudrian’s work—where he spent years interviewing people from the heavy metal underground—and I found so many brain-melting metaphors.

Take a quick look at this insight from his interview with Ben Weinman (from the mathcore band The Dillinger Escape Plan):

“To me, the only way to get energy from technical stuff was to make it like a machine gun hitting you in the chest. Whether you understood what was going on or not, you felt that shit smack you in the face like you were a little bitch.”

Yeah.

“A machine gun hitting you in the chest.”

These are metaphors that AI never uses.

Oh, sorry. I mean AI writers, because... well, you know.

So, it makes me wonder: What if we could “give birth” to our own metaphors to make us stand out in the age of AI?

Can we do that?

Yes, of course.

If you read this, you will have a chance to smack your metaphor straight into your readers’ brains—even if you’re using AI.

But first of all, let me tell you why you need your own metaphor.

Why Do We Need Metaphors?

I’m not a scientist.

So, I will keep it short.

In 1971, Allan Paivio discovered that our brains possess two distinct memory channels:

1. The Verbal Channel (for text and language)

2. The Visual Channel (for images and physical objects)

If you write, “Writing into the void hurts,” it’s purely verbal.

Your readers will forget it in no time.

But if you write, “Writing into the void is like sitting on an electric chair,” you trigger Dual-Coding in their brains.

Suddenly, it becomes impossible to forget, and incredibly easy to recall.

The second mechanism is Conceptual Mapping.

What is that?

Well, the brain is a lazy organ. It always wants to save energy.

When you introduce brand-new, complex information, the brain feels forced to build a whole new folder from scratch. It hates that.

But when you throw in a metaphor that hooks onto an existing Schema—a piece of old knowledge they already understand—the information sticks instantly.

Let’s take this as an example.

When Albert Einstein had to explain his Theory of Relativity, it was incredibly hard because he had to explain time dilation and complex spacetime physics.

So, he said this:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”

Well, I used to sit with a hot girl. I used to sit in front of a hot stove.

Both made me sweat, but the only difference was how I felt about the time.“

“So, I get exactly what he was trying to say: Time can squeeze and stretch.

(Note: This exact theory applies to learning. That’s why a student who mastered high school physics will lean easily into university physics. They already have the previous schema built.)

Well, I think these two theories are more than enough to explain why a phrase like “Sour grapes” has been stuck in human brains for centuries.

How to Create Your Own Metaphor

A memorable metaphor comes when you put two things that seem completely unrelated together.

The Formula:

Because the ultimate goal of a metaphor is to turn something abstract into something concrete.

And when it’s concrete, readers can see it. When they can see it, they remember it.

And not only do they remember the metaphor—they remember you.

Let’s imagine I’m a food critic. I want to describe the Butter Chicken I just had, and I happened to be watching Jaws last night.

I would write something like this:

“The creamy taste of this Butter Chicken is lingering, but its bold spiciness is like Bruce the great white shark trying to rip through my mouth.”

New metaphor unlocked.

Sure, it’s not perfect yet, but if you consistently use a phrase like “Bruce the great white shark trying to rip through my mouth,” readers will start to remember:

“Hey, this writer always compares spiciness with a savage shark from Jaws.”

This is exactly how we set ourselves apart from AI writers.

AI is programmed to play it safe—like a straight-A student.

They are designed to be predictable. They can’t create something delightfully weird, unless you teach them to.

But to stand out today, we need to act like the kids sitting at the back of the class.

It’s time to turn our rebel minds into our greatest advantage. Write something that has never existed before.

Well, now it’s your turn to forge your own metaphor.

You can use this exact method for absolutely anything.

Feel free to drop yours in the comments.

This is a safe space to learn and experiment. I will share more of mine down there too.

Yeah. That’s exactly what you’re doing.

And don’t forget to keep using your words.

P.S

And for the literature bros out there—I know the difference between a metaphor and a simile.

But as I said, if it doesn’t paint a picture, it doesn’t matter what you call it. What you know is useless.

Richard Feynman once said that you can know the name of a bird in every language, but it doesn’t mean you know anything about the bird at all.

Yeah. That’s exactly what you’re doing.

You have to be willing to walk through hell to get what you want.

I was listening to a Mark Manson podcast the other day.

Just in case you don’t know: I’m not addicted to self-help p*rn anymore.

But I don’t know why I chose him—maybe because I was bored at the bus stop, didn’t want to listen to music, and didn’t want an audiobook because those actually make me think.

Self-improvement content seemed like the perfect “background noise” because we listen, we get energized, and then… we forget. Haha.

Manson shared his view on happiness.

He said happiness is overrated, that suffering is universal, and that a life without suffering is a life without meaning.

Woah. Take it easy.

I couldn’t confirm whether I agreed with him or not.

But I can tell you this: if you decide to write, suffering is waiting for you.

Suffer #1: You vs. Yourself.

Writing is a mental game in disguise.

Beginner writers have to shut their inner critic to even start.

They have to fight self-doubt while writing into the void of zero views.

Successful writers?

They have to deal with the pressure of past successes, the fear of audience expectations, and the need to kill the ego the moment the market changes.

Whatever stage you’re at, you have to fight your inner self.

Right now, I’m back to being a beginner again.

I stopped writing for a long, long time.

This is day 15 of my new streak.

I know exactly how it feels to write something no one reads. It doesn’t feel good.

But am I willing to suffer through this hell?

That’s the question I keep asking myself. And the answer, for now, is absolutely yes.

Suffer #2: You vs. The Gatekeeper.

Lately, I’ve had a big project called: “The Law of the Artist.”

I’ve been diving into the rabbit hole of artist biographies to understand what makes an artist succeed or fail.

I expect to spend at least a year on this.

Anyway, I found something interesting:

Writers in the 1900s had to bribe editors to get published.

Writers in 2026 still have to “bribe” algorithms to get their work distributed.

If artists want their work to spread, they have to impress the gatekeepers.

Even Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci—the greatest artists of all time—needed patronage from the Pope and the Medici family.

It’s a truth you can hardly deny. (Well, if you have any cases to challenge me on, I’m all ears.)

So, the second suffering is: You vs. The Gatekeeper.

Sometimes, artists have to sacrifice their purity to make something the market actually wants.

It’s a clash between yourself and the audience.

If you sell your soul and focus only on the market, you die inside because you feel inauthentic.

If you don’t give a sh*t about what the market wants, you die because of hunger.

This is the struggle every artist faces. And yeah… are you willing to go through this?

Me? Yes.

If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have started such a niche project.

I know what I want to say, and I’ll find a way to bribe the gatekeeper later.

Everything is a collaboration.

We can’t avoid suffering, but we can change how we see it.

To deal with yourself, the first person who comes to mind is Warren Buffett.

He does the exact opposite of what Manson suggests.

He clocks in and reads for 8 hours a day—with pure joy.

But if you look at a gambler who only cares about money, living the Warren Buffett life would be absolute torture.

So, to deal with yourself: I believe in making the process fun.

I don’t have an exact answer for you; it’s your job as an artist to make the process feel like “hellish fun.” But if it’s not fun, just find something else to do.

We’re all built differently.

To deal with the gatekeeper, I’ve found an interesting law I call “Be a Gatekeeper’s Pet.” (As I said, this project is unfinished; you can come up with a better name).

But what does “being a gatekeeper’s pet” mean?

If you’re making art and constantly fighting the gatekeeper, you’re creating unnecessary friction.

Funny enough, that friction will keep interrupting your workflow, and eventually, you won’t have enough energy or resources to create anything.

That’s how you get destroyed in the long run.

Great artists are smart.

They know they can’t fight the gatekeeper when they have little power, so they balance what the gatekeeper wants with what they actually need.

If I had to summarize, it would be this: Everything is a collaboration, and everything is art.

Therefore, art is collaboration.

You can collaborate with your suffering and create something great.

You can collaborate with the sh*tty gatekeeper and make some viral art.

Yes, “Everything is a Collaboration” is another law from the Law of the Artist.

So, what’s your suffering when it comes to writing? Are you ready to face it?

Let’s talk in the comments.

Hi guys, how are you?

I’m sorry for the long hiatus.

Here is a quick snapshot:

1. I was washing the dishes.

2. The glass exploded. A piece ricocheted into my face.

3. My luck made me question my mortality.

4. Death thoughts stressed me out.

5. My mood turned bad. I became a grumpy guy.

6. My body showed strange signs. It felt like the Hulk was squeezing my body (and my pogo stick).

7. I visited a neurologist. We found nothing.

8. The neurologist referred me to a psychiatrist.

9. The psychiatrist said, “You’re depressed,” and prescribed a ton of antidepressants.

10. The side effects caused me headaches and nausea.

11. I couldn’t even sit down for an hour. Writing? Forget about it.

12. Call it a “disability” if you want. I can barely function anyway. I just call it “This-ability.”

13. Right now, I’m in therapy to get over my fear of glass.

14. Anyway, I’m trying my best to write and regain my momentum.

Yeah, that’s the short story.

What am I up to these days?

1.) I’m regaining my momentum on Medium.

I plan to write for 30 days in a row.

I failed my last 30-day attempt (I stopped at 15). Right now, I’m on day 7.

Why Medium?

Nobody reads it.

I’ve sentenced myself to write in this soul-crushing place—my own form of grounding.

I’m not allowed to leave until I prove I can write for myself, not for the likes.

Wish me luck.

2.) About this newsletter

1. I will share writing tips starting next Monday.

2. I will find an easier way for the Storytelling Gym. (I’ll figure it out later. Let me know if you have feedback).

3. I’m thinking about rebranding this newsletter to “Everything plus writing.” We’ll see.

Anyway, are you guys still writing in the age of AI? I stopped writing for a year.

Now, I see everyone writing like they ate Hemingway.

What is wrong with the internet? Can someone explain?

Want to start writing but don’t know when to begin?

You know what?

Summer is the best time to start.

“Hey, Ron. Summer’s supposed to be the time for outdoor activities.”

Fishing. Road trips. Barbecues.

“How the hell am I supposed to write when I’ve got a million things to do?”

Yes, you’re right.

Others might tell you to skip the fun, lock yourself in a room, and write like you’re bleeding onto the page.

But I’m not gonna do that.

Here’s why:

I believe writing is a way of life.

You have something worth writing about when you actually live.

When you soak in real experiences.

Winter?

Nah.

Most people (including me) lock themselves indoors.

Grey skies.

Cups of hot tea.

And a free dose of seasonal depression.

But summer?

You’ve got millions of chances…

To explore.

To meet new people.

To make stories worth telling.

“But Ron, I don’t wanna sit down and write in this kind of weather.”

Well… you don’t have to.

Here’s what you can do instead:

1. Grab a notebook.

2. Go live your summer to the fullest.

3. Jot down the little stories as they happen 

Then?

When fall or winter hits, and you’re stuck inside again…

You’ve got a notebook full of stories, ready to be shared.

Enjoy the sun.

Live your life.

Live fully = collect real stories = quit being an internet parrot.

Your writing will thank you later.

P.S

I’m developing my 2025 playbook.

I originally planned to share it on August 6th during the writing challenge, but I don’t feel like it’s quite ready yet.

I want to make sure I’ve fully tested it before sharing, so I’m going to postpone it for a while.

This is totally my fault.

I admit it, and I’m sorry about that.

Did you know?

How to Use Storytelling at the Gym

• As a reference: Grab the story and retell it in your own voice to make your writing more compelling.

• To understand good storytelling: I’ve added notes on why this story works — so you can learn from it.

• To practice storytelling: Try copywork. Just grab a pen and paper, and copy it by hand. That’s how you learn.

• To get the life lesson: I’m picking stories that aren’t too niche, so you can learn life lessons through them.

Story #1

I just rewatched Toy Story — from the original all the way to Lightyear.

Toy Story 1? Not a kids’ movie at all. No wonder it got an Oscar. Dark, funny, and brilliant.

Toy Story 2? Still a classic.

Toy Story 3? It made me cry — like, ugly cry.

Toy Story 4? The ending caught me off guard. Heartbreaking.

Lightyear? Meh.

Why was Lightyear so “meh”?

It’s not the animation.

It’s the characters — they added too many useless ones.

Some random guy who can’t do sh*t — not worth rooting for.

I can’t even remember his name.

Characters worth rooting for — that’s everything in storytelling.

Because when we tell a story, the listener always sees themselves as the protagonist.

They’re looking for a way to connect.

Adding useless characters = killing attention.

And killing attention = killing the story.

Another problem?

Weak intentions.

In Lightyear, only Buzz has a strong goal.

The rest? Ughhh.

I don’t get why they’re even there.

I don’t know why the director bothered adding them.

And I have no clue what they’re supposed to want.

You know what?

Even Chewbacca, who only says “Rrrgh,” gets his point across.

But this Zap Patrol crew?

A girl, a grandma, and some clumsy guy.

Ugh, seriously.

Well. Well. Well.

The story I’m about to show you doesn’t make the same mistakes.

It shows:

• A strong intention

• A character you can root for

Let’s dive in.

Story #1 by Chris Guillebeau

San Diego graphic designer Julia Kelly wanted to make extra cash. 

After graduating from college she took a part-time summer gig as a caricature artist at a local amusement park. 

She'd always been good at sketching quickly, and drawing people sounded fun.

Despite her skills, Julia's summer job started with a terrifying experience: the park had a strict rule that artists couldn't sketch in pencil before committing to the finished product, so right from the start she had to use permanent markers. 

In other words, there was no undo button—no way to back up from a mistake or erase and start over. 

Drawing in front of a crowd of onlookers is intimidating, and even more so when you have to commit to each stroke from the beginning.

The trial by fire was intense, but it worked. 

After a few weeks, Julia no longer felt terrified. 

Instead, she felt confident. She'd mastered a new skill! 

She was rewarded with the smiles of happy chil-dren, as well as the gratitude of their parents who walked away with a tangible memory to place on the refrigerator or maybe even frame on the wall.

There was just one problem: the job paid only minimum wage, so her rewards mostly consisted of those smiles. 

Happy faces are nice, but you can't deposit them in your checking account.

Once the summer ended, Julia wanted to keep drawing portraits but naturally she also wanted to make more money. 

That's when it hit her: maybe she could sell her services on her own somehow. 

She wrote to every school in the area, asking if they'd consider hiring her for their next event.

After her fourth pitch, someone replied to say they had something coming up the same week. Could she bring her stash of markers and work for a few hours?

Indeed she could. That event led to another, then another—and before long, she was charging $100 an hour for corporate events, a rate far higher than what she'd earned at the amusement park. 

That was a tremendous success on its own, but Julia wasn't finished. 

She had one more big idea that would catapult her earnings even higher.

With more experience, she had learned how to draw digital caricatures, a new form of media that hadn't been widely seen before. 

Instead of sketching with markers, Julia used a tablet computer. When she finished the drawing, she could print it out and email the image to the person, who often posted it to Facebook for all their friends to see.

This gave her work a "wow" factor that no other freelance artists in her area had, and the perceived value of her services skyrocketed. 

She began charging $250 an hour, focusing on corporate events that had larger budgets for this right kind of experience. 

The higher rate was too much for some event planners, but plenty of others gladly accepted—so she was now making two and a half times as much while working the same hours. 

Julia's money tree was growing fast.

Want to read more? I got this story from this book.

Story #2

This story has everything you need:

• High stakes

• A strong opening hook

• A question that keeps you curious

• A character worth rooting for

• A personal story blended with real expertise

• Simple, jargon-free language

• Raw emotion

• Relatable moments

• And a clear lesson in storytelling

Okay, that’s a lot.

Now it’s your turn to read and learn.

Trust me — it’s worth every second.

Story #2 by Martin Inderbitzin

Two years ago, I thought my life could not be better. 

I'm a neuroscientist, and in neuroscience, we try to explain everything with formulas and equations. 

So, I know my talk isn't scheduled for the science session, so I'll try to keep it a little bit simple.

Why was I having such a good time? 

Well, I had just finished my PhD, I moved back to my hometown close to my family, and I found an amazing new job where I could bring my own ideas. 

After all this time in academia, suddenly a dream was coming true.

A dream that was destroyed by three words: "You have cancer."

I actually thought for a long time how I should explain to you how I felt, but I think words are not enough. 

So I will try to do this with a picture.

It felt like hitting the wall, but so slowly that I already could see it coming. 

No, I could feel it coming. 

And in this picture I made some years ago, you only see vegetables and no blood. 

I already felt pain inside of my body, despite still sitting in the comfortable chair in front of my doctor.

So what do you do when you get a cancer diagnosis? 

You're probably going to be in shock, and then you're probably going to cry a lot—at least this is what I did. 

But after that first wave is gone, what do you want to do? 

What would you do?

Well, probably you would do what nearly every new patient does: you go to the internet. 

I mean, the internet is great, isn't it? It's great for science, for news, for communication, and for watching cat videos. 

It's also great if you want to find out something about your flu. 

But what about cancer?

Well, it took me less than five minutes to realize that with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, I have a mean life expectancy of three years. 

Wow, great is the internet, isn't it?

I think cancer is not only one of the biggest medical challenges we face today as a society, I think it's also one of the biggest underestimated mental challenges. 

Why is that? 

It's not because we don't know, and it's not because we are ignorant. 

No, no, it's because we are blinded by the bald heads and the weak bodies, by the so visible part of this horrible disease.

In neuroscience, we call this phenomenon intentional blindness, and one of the best examples to explain you this is an experiment by Daniel Simons where people like you are instructed to watch a video like that of basketball players and counting the passes they do. 

In the middle of the video, suddenly there appears a gorilla, makes some funny movement, and walks out of the scenery. 

Fifty percent of people watching this video with this instruction will not see the gorilla.

So in our case, the bald heads are the balls, and the gorilla? 

Well, the gorilla is your fear. 

You don't see it until you have it, but once you have it, you cannot miss it, because this gorilla starts sleeping next to you every night, snoring, waking you up.

When my doctor had to give me my diagnosis, he told me a little story of a similar case, and he said, "Look, this guy today is still well up, skiing in the mountain." 

For him, it was a kind of a side comment, but for me, it became a headline, it became my mantra that kept me going through this time, this horrible time, that helped me to make my decision that I want to face my fate.

Yes, I knew I could not turn back time. 

There are things we cannot change, but we always can change the way we look at things.

I knew a long treatment in the hospital was in front of me, so I packed my stuff and informed my friends and family. 

And I told my godchild that I will miss her birthday because I have to go to the hospital. Curious as she is, she asked me, "Why do you have to go to the hospital?" Well, not being able to tell her the truth, I was telling her that I have a "boo-boo." 

So she asked back, "And the doctor, can he not put a plaster on it?"

When you're in chemo, you will realize very fast how your body changes. 

Actually, it feels like having a huge hangover, with a little difference that you haven't even been drunk, and it doesn't go away with an aspirin. 

No, it lasts for months. 

You don't want to move, you cannot sleep, you don't want to eat. 

Actually, the only thing you want and you can do is lying in the bed and watching the ceiling.

And I always thought that life outside academia is a bit more funny than that.

Anyhow, once a week I got my weekly infusion, which is a kind of a weird situation because to do that, you share a room with other patients and you don't know these people, but you know why they are here. 

Sometimes they're alone and sometimes with relatives. 

Sometimes they talk, like once the guy in front of me who suddenly asked me, "Do you know what's my deepest wish?" 

"No," I said, "How should I?" 

So he answered, "That I can die in peace."

So here I was, 32 years old, literally chained by this infusion in this chair, in this room, in this situation I never chose but was chosen for me, thinking about what he just said, "that I can die in peace." 

Well, isn't this a universal wish of all of us, that at the end of life we can look back and say, "Yes, I was exactly living the life I wanted to live. I was choosing my time wisely." 

Well, being connected to my chemo, fighting for life, I don't know if I chose the most optimal moment to ask myself such questions, but I did. 

And I said, "Yes, I think this guy is right with the wish, but wrong with the timing."

So I picked up my phone and made one of the most important decisions of my life.

I said, "If I ever get a life out of here, I'm going to finish a triathlon." 

And even before all the toxic liquid could enter my body, I got my confirmation email in my inbox.

So the same evening I called home. 

My parents, they wanted to know how I am, and I said, "Great! You know what? I'm going to make a triathlon." 

I wondered what they were thinking, but yes, it was kind of funny. 

I have to add a little detail: I never practiced seriously endurance sport before, just a little detail, but this was not holding me back to start my training the very next day, which means walking up and down in the hospital alley for five minutes. 

I was so convinced that my plan was going to work out that I was already putting the running shoes on.

I was not allowed to swim, so I went biking. Normally people in the gym have two plugs connected to the body. 

Well, I had three, and the guy running the physio room was quite surprised seeing me walking in with my biohazard bag. 

I mean, he was more used to broken legs and twisted knees. Anyhow, he let me do my business, and I was very happy. 

Of course, those activities had nothing in common with the real triathlon training. 

We're talking here about 1.5K swimming, 40K biking, and 10K running.

But this was not important. 

What was important was that I believed in myself, while all around me all the circumstances were saying no.

In my PhD, I studied emotions. 

I know that the mind influences the way we breathe, the way we behave, the way we are. 

It affects the regulation of hormones or immunological markers. I know that people can walk over fire without getting hurt or become ill from baking powder hidden in anonymous letters.

Yes, there is a very powerful connection between the mind and the body, a connection we do not fully understand and maybe never will, until one day we experience it ourselves. 

I can tell you the five years of theoretical research were not as insightful as the first five days of my decision.

I felt changed. 

What happened? 

Well, I don't know. 

Can I explain to you with a formula, an equation what was going on? 

No, I can't. And I believe nobody can, because I think this is the point where science stops and the mystery, the magic called life, starts.

Now I had a goal, an objective, so I stopped counting the weeks until my chemo ended.

I started counting the weeks until my race began. 

And I remember very well reading these books of these triathlete pros telling me that I should start easy training day with a 5K run to get into the mood. 

Well, I was doing my five meters walk to the toilet to get into the mood, realizing that my body was not able to finish the second part of the task was putting me even more into the mood.

Yeah, it was kind of ironic, but I kept reading, and more important, I kept dreaming.

When I left the hospital, my situation improved, so I went for a walk, then for a little run—two Ks—then all my joints were hurting because I had no muscles. 

So realizing how my body was coming back was one of the most intense experiences I ever had. And I'm not talking about triathlon, I'm talking about moving, sleeping, or digesting. 

It just felt like getting reborn, but in full consciousness.

So the time passed and I trained more and closer came the race. 

Three months after I left the hospital, the big day was here, and I, well, I was ready. 

At least I thought so. 

Everything went fine in the beginning, but then in the bike track, my problems started.

You know these times when you're ambitious and you want to achieve something and then you realize suddenly that maybe it was a bit too much? 

Well, this day was one of those. 

Sometimes in the middle of the bike track, I realized that my legs really started to hurt very badly, and I knew when I finish this, I have to run another 10K. It felt like hitting the wall again, but in a way different.

In this very moment, an ambulance appeared next to me, and I was like, "Whoa, I mean yes, my legs are hurting, but we don't have to overreact, no, do we?" 

And while we were driving in parallel, I actually could see on the side of the ambulance that it was coming from my hospital. 

In this very moment, I suddenly started to think about all the patients I saw: the guy who wanted to die in peace, the old couple who always came together, or the young mother I only saw once.

And I realized they have their story, and I have mine, and mine is that I'm sitting now on this bike finishing this task. 

And in this very moment, my legs stopped hurting, and one and a half hours later, I crossed the finish line of my first triathlon.

Some weeks after this race, I gave a talk in my hospital sharing my story, which was very beautiful on one side, but it also made me very sad on the other, because I realized that I am not alone with this fate. 

Unfortunately, we know today that 30% of all of us will get confronted once in their life with a diagnosis [of cancer], which means we either need a lot more chairs in this room for the gorilla—the fear that comes along with it—or we find a method to keep them out.

After the talk, a young man came to me and said, "Thank you, thank you for sharing your story.

My mom just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and it was very beautiful to listen to it." His comment hit me like a stroke. 

When I was a patient, I was so eager to find stories like the "skiing patient" which was my mantra, and now suddenly my story became a mantra for somebody else. 

A story that shows that sometimes statistics can be wrong. 

A story that shows that you are not a number, because your body is not a number. 

Your body is made out of millions of cells with uncountable interactions no scientist ever can quantify. 

So your body is not in the internet, neither is your future.

What is in the internet, unfortunately, is a lot of negative news, and I know how great it makes you feel to read those numbers. 

If you're lucky, maybe once you will find a nice story in the internet, like the story of Harriet Thompson. 

Harriet finished this year the San Diego Marathon in 7 hours and 7 minutes. 

Well, it's not the best time you could say. 

Yes, you have to know that Harriet had seven weeks before this race a radiation treatment to treat her tumor on her leg, and that Harriet is 91 years old.

The problem is not that we don't have any stories. The problem is that they are not visible. And this is where I see a call for action. I have a vision, my dream is to find more inspiring survival stories and document them with short videos on the internet, so we can make them available to those who need it most: patients in treatment.

Why am I not going to write about survival stories? Why I don't want to make short videos? Well, that's very simple. 

Have you ever tried to watch The Godfather or read a book when you have a hangover? 

I mean, when you have a hangover, you watch cat videos. 

People who are in treatment, they don't have the attention span of a normal person. 

They are happy if they can decide what to eat for dinner.

I believe that a patient from Bangladesh can inspire a millionaire in Hollywood. 

Wow, sounds very cheesy, doesn't it? 

Yes, I know. But you know what?

When I got my diagnosis, I realized one thing very, very fast: you cannot buy everything with money. 

Yes, you can get a better treatment, fair enough. 

But what do you do with your fear? 

Unfortunately, your gorilla will not accept your MasterCard. 

This you have to handle alone. 

But what if we can give you something, a story, something concrete that you can grab like a stick so you can keep your gorilla at distance, or maybe just a banana so he has something to eat and calms down? Well, then we are already one step closer where we want to go.

So what's a good story?

Do you have to run a marathon or do a triathlon?

No, I mean, I think it's fun if you're able to move your body, but I don't believe that life is a race.

So what is it then that makes a good story? 

Do you have to survive? 

Does it mean that when you die from cancer that you're a weak person? No.

I got my diagnosis two years ago, and according to numbers, I should be gone in one. 

But this is not defining how I live my life.

Today, standing here, I have no traces of any tumor inside of me.

Does it mean that I am healed? 

Does it mean that I will survive?

Well, of course I will survive. 

I will survive until I die, and in the meantime, I will choose very wisely how I spend my time.

Two years ago, I thought that my life could not be better. 

Today, standing here, I know that I was wrong. 

Because today I live very consciously the life I want to live. 

What I've learned is that it's much more important how I live my life than how long I'm going to live. 

This is what I have learned from having cancer.

Thank you.

Note: You can watch his TED Talk here.

Story #3

What makes your story unique?

Well, unlike Steve Jobs’s story, readers can’t just Google yours.

When you tell a story that only you can tell, it builds your authority.

But why tell a story in the first place?

Simple — to convince your readers.

“Okay, Ron. That’s easy to say.

But how?”

Let this story show you.

It follows a simple framework:

Hook. Story. Value.

This one nails it.

It hooks you with a blunt, bold statement:

“Don’t wait. Date.”

Then it reveals Shea’s story — he kept waiting for everything to be perfect.

That’s the story.

Then it wakes you up by showing you why waiting was a mistake.

That’s the value.

This is a great example of storytelling in action.

Read it. Learn from it.

Story #3 by Logan Ury.

DON'T WAIT, DATE

HOW TO OVERCOME THE HESITATER TENDENCY

I met my new client, Shea, on a hidden patio in downtown San Francisco. 

It was several blocks from his office. 

He was thirty-five and over six feet tall. (He later confided this gives him a big advantage in the Jewish dating market here.)

I knew very little about Shea beforehand. He seemed confident, charming. 

While he stood in line for our coffees, I sat at our table, guessing why he'd contacted me. 

Was he struggling to choose dates? 

Did he need help ending a bad relationship? 

Or was he trying to re-enter the dating scene after a tough breakup?

He returned, handing me my latte. 

"Well," he began, "I guess I'll start at the beginning. 

I've never had a girlfriend. Okay, maybe one in high school, but not since then."

I was surprised by his minimal dating experience. "Why do you think that is?" I asked.

"I've never felt ready," he explained. 

"First, I wanted my job in order. Then, I found a great job, but I needed enough money saved to support a wife. I got close, but then I started therapy. I wanted to work on myself first. I recently switched jobs. Now, I feel I won't be ready to date until work settles again."

He ultimately wanted a wife and family. 

Yet, he believed he wasn't ready. 

He'd only reached out to me because his parents had pressured him to get help.

You might be nodding. "That makes sense," you think. "Good for him. He'll date when he's ready."

Except, when I pressed for details, I discovered Shea was ready. 

He'd been a lawyer at a big firm for ten years. 

He was financially stable. He was self-aware, mature. 

He had hobbies (played guitar, "poorly," he claimed).

He had friends. 

He enjoyed a close relationship with his family.

I've met many clients like Shea. 

They seem like a great catch. 

But they aren't actively dating. 

I call this group the Hesitaters. 

They come to me because they feel they should be dating. 

Yet, they struggle to take action. When I ask why they haven't gone on dates, their "I'll be ready when" excuses tumble out:

"I'll be ready when I lose ten pounds." 

"I'll be ready when I get promoted." 

"I'll be ready once I finish grad school." 

"I'll be ready when I have new pictures for my dating profile." 

"I'll be ready when things calm down at work."

We all want to improve. But these aspirations can become excuses. 

And I get it: dating is scary. 

Fear paralyzes the Hesitaters. 

Fear of rejection. 

Fear of failure. 

Fear of not being good enough. 

No wonder they avoid dating. 

You can't fail at something you never attempt, right?

But people who wait until they are 100% ready underestimate what they're missing.

Why It's a Mistake to Wait

You'll never be 100% ready for anything. Especially dating.

The urge to wait until you feel "fully self-actualized" is understandable. 

What if you meet your ideal mate too early? What if they reject you?

For Hesitaters, there's a story in your head. 

One day, you'll wake up. 

You'll feel ready. 

That story is fiction. 

That's not how life works.

Everyone feels awkward sometimes. 

Most people feel nervous in high-pressure situations. 

Many of us have parts of ourselves we don't want to reveal. 

And yet, these very same people still go on dates. 

They kiss people. They fall in love. They break up. They fall in love again. They get married.

Eventually, you just have to get out there. Start dating. 

Imperfect as you are. 

Everyone else is imperfect, too. Even the person you'll end up with.

And, by the way, what if you do reach this "state of perfection"? 

You get that promotion. You shed ten pounds.

Then you enter a relationship. 

Will you worry their love is conditional? 

That they'll leave if you lose your job, tailspin, develop a ravenous cheddar cheese addiction, and gain twenty-five pounds?

When you wait to date, you're missing out on more than you think. 

Economists call this the opportunity cost of decisions. 

It's the price you pay when you choose one option over another. If you face two mutually exclusive choices, Option A and Option B, your opportunity cost is what you give up from Option A if you choose Option B, and vice versa. A quick example illustrates this.

Imagine you're deciding between 

Option A: attending grad school, 

or 

Option B: continuing your current job. 

Tuition plus living expenses for two years totals two hundred thousand dollars. 

If I ask you, "How much does grad school cost?" what would you say? "Two hundred thousand dollars," right?

Wrong. 

You've neglected the opportunity cost. 

If you go to grad school, you can't keep working full-time. 

So, the total cost of grad school includes forfeiting your current salary. 

Therefore, the real cost of grad school is two hundred thousand dollars in tuition and expenses, plus the money you would've made over two years if you'd worked instead. 

That's two hundred thousand plus two times your current annual salary.

Or, let's say you're choosing between your friend Samantha's birthday party at a bar, or your coworker David's housewarming party. 

The cost of going to Samantha's isn't just time, money spent at the bar, or the next day's hangover. 

It's also the opportunity cost of not getting to know David and your coworkers better at his party.

When it comes to dating, Hesitaters wait. 

They wait for more confidence. More money. More whatever. 

But they're neglecting the huge opportunity cost of not starting.

Want to read more? I got this story from this book.

3 Storytelling Prompts

1. Review one movie that has the best protagonist worth rooting for (please not Forrest Gump).

2. Tell one positive story that makes you smile.

3. Tell a story about someone (it can be you) who lost an opportunity because they kept waiting.

Happy storytelling!

Ron (your silly cat)

P.S.

You know, writing more led me to dead ends.

I felt pain, like I was a fish banging my head against the tank, trying to break out.

It completely destroys me.

So, I decided to take a break.

Stopped writing.

Without telling anyone.

Now, I’ve recovered.

I’ll share what I discovered soon.

Talk soon.

#1

Not only storytellers tell stories.

This story I’m going to share with you comes from an ex-Navy SEAL.

That’s proof anyone can tell a story.

Speaking about stories, there are two big ways to tell a story:

1. Craft your life story (by living it to the fullest)

2. Steal and retell

Good storytellers don’t do just one or the other.

They do both.

But the best? They combine other people’s stories with their own life story (like I showed with Jeff Goins’ story last week).

And again, not every story is worth telling. A good story people want to hear isn’t about you, it’s about your audience.

Make them feel.

That’s how you get their attention.

Story #1 by Brandon Webb

In May 1927 a young aviator named Charles Lindbergh made history by piloting his monoplane across the Atlantic.

Lindbergh, of course, became an American hero, ticker tape parade in New York City, Time magazine's very first "person of the year,” the whole nine thousand yards. He also inspired a young mechanic named Douglas Corrigan.

Douglas worked for the company that built Lindbergh's plane; in fact, he installed the fuel tanks and instrument panel and assembled the wings. He wanted to solo the Atlantic, too. Douglas was a first-generation American, and since his family had come over to the United States from Ireland, that would be his destination.

His plan did face a few problems, though. For example, he didn't have a plane. Or a pilot's license. Or any money.

He got the license, started a business taking passengers up for rides, and eventually bought himself his own little monoplane. In 1935, he applied for permission to the Bureau of Air Commerce (predecessor of the FAA) for his proposed Ireland-bound trip.

They said no, his plane wasn't up to it.

He worked on the plane, applied again, got another no, then applied five more times and got turned down five more times.

He never did get a yes. But he didn't let that stop him.

In July 1938, Corrigan took off in a thick fog on a scheduled, approved flight from New York to California. Except that he flew in the other direction. And landed about twenty-eight hours later in Dublin.

When flight officials questioned him, he told them he'd gotten mixed up in the fog, misread his compass, and simply flown the wrong way. They grilled him for a while, and he kept repeating the same answer. Finally he just shrugged and said,
"That's my story."

When he returned to New York (by boat) he was greeted as a hero. The New York Post printed a giant headline saying,

“HAIL TO WRONG WAY CORRIGAN!” — with the line of print running backward, right to left.

He was celebrated with a ticker tape parade up Broadway with more than a million people lining the streets of Manhattan — a crowd several times larger than Lindbergh's.

The nickname "Wrong Way" Corrigan stuck with him for the rest of his life.

To me, though, that misses the point.

To me the point is not that he disobeyed the authorities and flew off in the opposite direction from his approved flight plan. It's that he was hell-bent on crossing the freaking Atlantic Ocean, and nothing was going to stop him from doing it.

He stood on the cliff, heard all the reasons why he couldn't jump.

And then jumped.

Lindbergh had financial backing, corporate resources, a brand-new plane in mint condition, and permission.

Corrigan had none of those things. His plane was a wreck he'd picked up secondhand for a song, with an engine he cobbled together from two old Wright engines, and five extra fuel tanks that completely blocked his forward view. Some of the parts were held together with baling wire.

During his cross-Atlantic flight his little plane developed a serious gas leak, which he "fixed" by punching a hole in the cockpit floor with a screwdriver to let the excess fuel drain into the ocean.

And he crossed the freaking Atlantic.

Talk about a leap of faith.

Corrigan's story is a great illustration of jumping off, but I include it here for a personal reason, too.

Recently my mom was digging into our genealogy and family history, and she discovered that her family, like so many others, immigrated to this country from Europe a century ago.

Her great-grandmother's cousin was a guy named Corrigan.

Yes, that Corrigan.

Kamal says everyone has a superpower.
"Brandon," he tells me, "yours is that you get shit done."

I'd always assumed that came from my father, that ability to make a decision and then follow through come hell or high water. We're going.

Turns out, it runs in my mom's side of the family, too.

#2

This story is around 2,400 words, which is super long.

But trust me, it’s worth every second to read.

Why?

Because it will teach you more than storytelling.

It also teaches you how to start a business.

This is the real story of Aaron Krause, the founder of Scrub Daddy.

Why is it so good?

He tells the story using a very famous "but... and therefore" pattern.

What is it?

It’s a storytelling pattern that keeps readers hooked by throwing problems at the main character and then providing a way out.

And that keeps the story rolling.

Example?

1. I wanted to bake a cake for my friend’s birthday, but I had never baked before. Therefore, I followed a YouTube tutorial step-by-step.

2. But when I added what I thought was sugar, it was actually salt — I grabbed the wrong container by mistake.

3. Therefore, the batter tasted terrible, and I knew the cake was doomed. But instead of giving up, I decided to make a batch of sweet frosting to cover up the salty disaster.

4. But when I served the cake, everyone’s faces looked like they bit into a lemon.

5. Therefore, I promised never to “improvise” again and ordered a cake instead.

Yeah, anyone can tell a simple but killer story using this pattern.

Cut back to Aaron’s story.

If you read it, you will see he never gets what he wants on the first attempt.

But he finds a way to keep his story and business moving forward.

Want to know about the but-therefore pattern?

Let this story show you.

Story #2 by Aaron Krause

When I was just a little kid in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, my dad started teaching me to wash the dishes, which is actually how I ended up in a sponge company.

I was about 10 years old, laying in bed, staring at the light switch, thinking,"Oh my God, I need a way to turn that off."

The next day, I got some wheel casters and dental floss, the longest piece of rope I could find, and I hooked up a pulley system so I could turn the lights on and off from my bed.

"And that was, like, the first time I realized that I could come up with a crazy idea, build something and change my world. And from then, I literally started looking at the world completely different."

I’ve been washing cars since I was a kid. I became a professional car washer when my dad told me I could make $10 a car, and I had been washing cars throughout all of high school to make money.

After graduating from Syracuse University with a psychology degree, in October 1992, I decided I was just going to start my own car washing business.

While I was proud to be my own boss, some of my family didn't receive the news too well. My dad had just paid $100,000 for my education, my mom was crying, and my grandmom even said,"Just disown him!"

My dad told me I had until the end of the summer to make it a "real business" and get it out of his garage, and that's exactly what I did.

But not only that, I kept my innovative side going while working at the car wash.

It was in 1994 when I invented my first big invention and got a patent on it: a buffing pad for polishing cars.

This came about after I damaged a car, and I didn't think it was my fault; I thought it was the shape of the pad.

I had the idea that the pad shouldn't be cylindrical; it should have edges and a recess in the back to protect the backing plate.

I went around asking distributors if they had such a pad, and they had never heard of it, so after the second guy, I decided to"Forget I mentioned it,"and I went and got a patent attorney and filed for my first patent.

That was how I learned about polyester urethane foams, which became a key part of what Scrub Daddy is made of now.

This is a flexible, open-cell foam known for its ability to compress, resist mildew, and insulate.

I got a crash course education in every company in the world that makes urethane foams because we started buying those foams and making them into buffing pads.

It wasn't for years later that I found the Scrub Daddy material, which is a "very, very unique, highly engineered polymer,"and at that time, it was only made by one company in Germany.

This company sent me a rock-hard, yellow material. I started cleaning my hands with it, and it was unbelievable how well it worked and how easily it rinsed clean.

With the help of the German foam manufacturer FoamPartner, I could modify the pore size and density of my buffing pad."I realized instantly we had a home run."

We put some ads in trade magazines, and within three months, we were selling buffing pads all over the United States, and within six months, all over the world.

We now call this material FlexTexture.

In 1995, I sold my car washing business and turned my focus to my new venture: Dedication To Detail, a buffing pad manufacturer.

When I first worked with this material for hand cleaning,"I basically cut a rectangular shape, like a traditional sponge, and I just started scrubbing my hands with it."

"What you find out is that this is an uncomfortable way to hold a sponge. Like, this is not the shape of your hand. Actually, that's the shape of your hand. And it turns out that a circle is the easiest thing to hold on to while you're scrubbing your hands."

Then, "I was like, 'You know, I don't want to go around my fingers. I'll just cut a hole in it. And I'll just clean my fingers. It's so much easier.'"

For cleaning under nails, "I took a knife and I cut some ridges."

"I cut another hole so I could put two fingers in and grab it. So it had these two eyes, what looked like hair, and it started to look like a little face."

I stopped selling this specific foam material after about a year because of low sales in the auto market.

And then, on September 3, 2008, my company, Dedication To Detail, was acquired by the multi-national manufacturer 3M.

Interestingly, my sponges with the smiley face design ended up sitting at the back of the factory for five years until March 2011 because"when we sold the company to 3M, they didn't even want it."

"They thought it was a worthless product and they carved it out of the deal and left it with me because it was so worthless."

In March 2011, my wife "started nagging me to clean the lawn furniture."

After a traditional sponge scratched the paint, "I remembered this box of this hard plastic scrubbers that we had."

"When I dunked this rock hard circular sponge that looked like it had hair on it with two eye holes, it got totally soft. And we didn't know that. We hadn't designed that or built that in."

This was a byproduct of when I had told the company in Germany to make the material stiffer and denser.

"But when it got into warm water, it's like a thermoplastic and it started to get soft."

"When I took it out and I started to scrub the furniture with it, because it was 50 degrees outside, I could feel it crystallizing in my hands. And the harder it got, the better it scrubbed. But then it was filthy dirty."

"When I put it in the warm water and it got soft, it rinsed out totally clean."

"And I was like, 'Wow, what is this?'"

I had thought I was going to throw these sponges away, so I just"left it at my sink."

That night, "I started doing the dishes. And I saw it and I picked it up. And I thought, 'Huh, I wonder how this will wash the dishes.' And it wasn't scratching anything. I'm like, 'This is unbelievable. Where is the flaw? Where is this not going to work?'"

"And then I picked up a mug. And I realized where it's not going to work. And as I went to put it down, I saw the two eye holes. And I put my fingers into the eyes. And I went all the way into the bottom of the cup and it cleaned the sides at the same time it cleaned the bottom."

"And then I pulled it out. And I looked at it and I thought, 'Why would you ever hold onto a sponge if the sponge would hold on to you?'"

Then, a new idea sparked:

"Wait, hold on a second. If I cut a smile in this thing, I could clean the silverware on both sides."

"I took a knife, cut the smile, put the spoon in and squeezed and pulled it. And I could hear the angels start to sing."

The very next morning, "as the angels ascended back to heaven," I shared this rediscovery with my coworkers at the factory.

I told everyone, "I'll tell you what. Everybody take it home and we'll reconvene in two weeks. Go wash your dishes and come back and tell me."

"And when they came back, it was clear. Everybody was like, 'This is the greatest dishwashing tool in the world.'"

With that confirmation, I knew I needed to act fast.

I personally invested $150,000 into the smiling sponge.

I also secured a patent for the shape, design, and features of the sponge. But I strategically left out details of the scrubber's material composition, which was its main selling point.

"When you patent the material, I need to tell you what it's made of, how we make it, all the processes of doing it. And I just told everybody how to copy our exclusive material that only one company knows how to make at this point."

By August 2011, I knew it was time for Scrub Daddy to hit the shelves.

Thanks to a friend who owned five local grocery stores, I pitched Scrub Daddy for about eight hours a day, nearly every day of the week. I did all this while still serving as a developer and consultant at 3M.

But I knew I could do more; I knew I had to leverage the local press.

They put us on the front page of the Sunday Inquirer in the business section, and they said,"He's the daddy of the Scrub Daddy."

The website exploded. The phones lit up. And we started selling a sponge almost two or three minutes.

The next thing I knew, I got a call from a guy who says,"Have you ever thought about selling this on QVC?"

I was like,"The women's shopping network? Like, no one watches that."

He said,"Oh, you'd be surprised."

We went in and we did a little pitch. And they said,"We love it. And we want you to be the on-air person."

I was like,"Absolutely not. I'm not going on TV. I don't know how to do that."

Next thing you know, I'm in front of the bright lights, the cameras are coming on, and"I am frozen and I'm scared and we don't sell well. It's pretty awful."

I went home, I was despondent. I remember just feeling like I had one chance to be on TV and I blew it.

But then, the broker calls me up and says,"You're not going to believe this. I just got a call from the buyer and the producer and they loved your energy and they wished that you had more time to talk. They're going to give you another shot."

I went back on QVC and I told the next host,"This is probably my last show. Anything that you can do to help me, I will be so appreciative."

And she said,"Aaron, I'm gonna go wow, wow, wow. And you just go and do your thing."

Scrub Daddy became a hit on QVC.

And so did I.

This newfound confidence on camera convinced me to explore other major networks.

I was at home, bragging to my wife about being on TV, when she pointed out Shark Tank was coming on. We watched an episode where entrepreneurs with "beer-flavored ice cream" gave a terrible pitch, not knowing their numbers, and got eviscerated by Mr. Wonderful.

I thought, "What a bunch of idiots. How do you go on a national TV show and you don't know your numbers?" and immediately felt,

"I could go on that show and kill the sharks."

I found the Shark Tank website and filled out the form, including a link to my QVC show.

Three months later, I received a call from a California number I didn't recognize, and it was Shark Tank.

They assigned me two producers who would have weekly calls, warning me not to get excited as there were 50,000 applicants.

They asked for my pitch, starting with:

"Hi, sharks. I'm Aaron Krause from Philadelphia and I'm the daddy of the Scrub Daddy. 

Today, I'm looking for a $500,000 investment in exchange for 10% equity in the Scrub Daddy business."

They pushed me to condense my seven-minute pitch down to six minutes.

The process involved two months of hiding in cornersbecause the discussions were totally confidential.

Eventually, the producers told me,

"Aaron, this will be our last call,"

because they were flying me out to Los Angeles for the next pitch in front of 30 producers from ABC and Sony.

I didn’t let this opportunity go to waste, knowing I had one shot to make Scrub Daddy explode positively in the public consciousness.

My goal was not just to win over the sharks but to demonstrate for"7-10 million people"to gain their support.

I memorizedevery one of our numbers,including cost of goods sold and customer acquisition costs,andstudied all the sharks.

I even created flowcharts for each shark, predicting their questions and my responses, noting that most of Mr. Wonderful's paths ended with him being"out."

On the day of the show, a producer surprised me by saying they had"subbed Barbara out for this new lady"called"the queen of QVC,"asking if I’d heard of her – Lori Greiner.

Despite being on QVC four times, I hadn’t.

I walked into Shark Tank determined:"Don't talk about QVC,"having prepared for everything anyone could say and resolved not to appear arrogant.

The first shark out was Robert Herjavec, who said,"I don't see the retail vision. I'm out."

In my mind, I thought he wasn't "the brightest" for not seeing the vision in the smiley face sponge, but I simply said, "I understand."

Mark Cuban was next, stating,"But I'm not a scrub pimp. So I'm out,"which hurt, as I"wanted to work with him so bad."

When Mr. Wonderful made"the worst offer ever for 50% of the company,"

I just laughed, knowing where it was headed and anticipating his"out."

Finally, it was Lori's turn.

I tried to downplay my QVC experience, saying I sold in"some local supermarkets and, like, some television network?"

When she pressed, I revealed,"Like, I've been on QVC, like, four times, you know, over the last four months."

I assumed she'd be out, but instead, she said my pitch was"flawless,"like a QVC pitch.

Then, she accused me of a"scam,"claiming I used two different sponges and weights to demonstrate the FlexTexture's temperature-changing ability on TV.

I insisted it was"100% real."

She challenged me to change the texture of the sponge I had just given her, and as she dipped it in hot and cold water, the other sharks screamed,"Lori! Lori, does it work? Does it work?"

Lori looked at me and exclaimed,"Oh my god, it's magic,"a moment I deeply wanted to air on national TV for vindication—though it was ultimately cut from the show.

I left Shark Tank with $200,000, double what I asked for, and a 20% equity stake deal with Lori Greiner.

After the episode aired, sales started going through the roof on QVC, and major retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond and Walmart called me directly.

Within 24 hours, Scrub Daddy hit a million dollars in sales, and in 2014, I left my position at 3M to focus on Scrub Daddy full-time.

Story #3

Story makes people connect.

How?

When someone exposes their flaw, the listener releases oxytocin, which helps them connect to the storyteller.

And this headline squeezed my brain to release oxytocin in me in just 3 seconds.

I rarely read the news, but this popped up in my Google Chrome feed and I couldn’t help but click.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the story directly (to protect myself from copyright issues).

But I can tell you why it’s so great:

1. It expressed the pain so well. (She just said it was cold and I could feel it.)

2. It had a happy ending.

3. Her writing skills are through the roof. (She can tell a story so vividly.)

You can read it here.

3 Storytelling Prompts

1. Tell a story using the but-therefore pattern.

2. Have you ever had a leap of faith moment — a time when you did something before figuring it all out? If yes, tell one story.

3. Tell a story about the worst winter you’ve ever faced.

Happy storytelling!

Ron (your silly cat)

P.S.

Sharing your daily wins is great for mental health.

It’s simple: just write down your daily wins.

Do it for only 21 days and you’ll feel like you love yourself more than ever.

But most people can’t stick with it for 21 days.

No worries though, my You vs Yourself will help you overcome the consistency challenge (in any kind of writing, even journaling).

Talk soon.

#1

Most people believe that writing a great story has to be fancy, like Harry Potter.

But the reality?

A great story is just raw conversation.

How do you write a simple but killer story?

You only need two things:

Use dialogue.

Narrate the scene.

Then bring your readers through:

• Act 1: The beginning.

• Act 2: The pivot.

• Act 3: The transformation.

That’s it.

Just these two patterns, and you can become a storytelling king.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s an example.

Story #1 by Russel Brunson

"Russell, are you a smoker?"

"What?" I responded."No, I've never smoked in my life ... why do you ask?"

"Well, I noticed that your teeth are turning a little yellow, and I wasn't sure if you were a smoker ... or maybe you drink coffee?"

"No, I don't drink coffee either ...," I said."My teeth look that yellow!?"

Those were the first words my new dentist said to me about 10 minutes into our first appointment.

When I started my new business a few years earlier, my wife and I had no insurance of any kind.

I was just hustling to sell things online to try and put food on the table.

Then about four or five years into my business, I started hiring employees.What I didn't realize when I first hired them was most "real" companies give their employees benefits.

Because I had never had a real job before, I wasn't really sure what benefits were(besides hanging out with me all day, which I assumed was the best benefit ever!).

No, they wanted health insurance and dental insurance.

So I decided to cave and get them all a benefits package.

Within days of getting our new dental insurance, I got a postcard in the mail offering a free teeth cleaning.

Sweet. We've got insurance. It's a free cleaning. I'm in.

And that's where it all started...

Within minutes, the dentist commented on my "yellow" teeth.

“No, I don't drink coffee or smoke.”

“Are they really yellow?”

"Yeah, they are. But don't worry. If you want, I can go out back and make some custom teeth-whitening trays for you. You'll have to use them for a few weeks, but if you follow the system, your teeth will be white again."

Well, I'm sure you know what my response was...

“Yes, please. I don't want yellow teeth.”

The dentist kept working on my teeth, and a little while later, he said:"So, did you have braces when you were a kid?"

"Yeah, I did. How can you tell?"

"Well, your two bottom teeth are shifting again, and that usually happens to people who had braces."

My teeth are shifting? Seriously? What can you do about that?

"Well, if you want, I can build a retainer for you, which will help keep your teeth in place."

“Yes, please.”

When I walked into the dentist office that morning, I had come in for a free teeth cleaning.And in less than an hour, I walked out paying over two thousand dollars for my whitening kit and my new retainers.

This dentist had strategically taken me through a powerful process that I call a Value Ladder.

#2

It’s hard to convince other people using only your own story.

Sometimes people think you’re not telling a story. They think you’re bragging.

The solution?

Leverage other people’s stories.

How?

Tell their stories and link them to your personal story.

This is a simple writing playbook but it is really effective.

Why?

Because you give readers two stories.

Someone else’s story to convince them and your story to confirm it.

Story #2 by Jeff Goins

In the 1930s, the streets of Japanese cities were overtaken by a group of artists who sold candy and performed picture-based plays for children.

At the height of this phenomenon, there were 2,500 vendors called kamishibaiya in Tokyo alone. Each performed up to ten times per day for as many as thirty children. That’s over a million kids watching every single day.

For artists who might have been unemployed during a depressed economy, it was a lifeline.

This mobile, candy-selling form of theater was called kamishibai.

It means "street theater using painted illustrations."

The artists traveled from town to town by bike. A miniature wooden stage was mounted on the back. They would stop at a corner, bang two wooden sticks together, and yell out:

Kamishibai! Kamishibai!

Kids came running.

If they had money, they could buy candy from the back of the bike and get a front-row seat.

The candy paid the bills. The storytelling was the art.

The storyboards were part of a business. Dealers would commission and rent artwork to the storytellers for a fee. Some kamishibaiya created their own art. Others relied on these dealers.

The process looked like this.

First, the artist would sketch with pencil. Then they’d go over the lines with a thick brush and India ink. Next, they added watercolor to show background and foreground. After that, they brushed on tempura paint. At the end, they applied lacquer to give it a glossy finish and protect it from the weather.

Kamishibai characters often had oversized eyes and high contrast between light and dark. This helped the story pop, even for kids sitting in the back row.

Each show had three stories. Each story lasted about ten minutes. The storyteller would act out the scenes while a picture sat inside the frame of the little stage.

As the story moved forward, they would pull out one picture and slide in the next.

The final story always ended on a cliffhanger. That way, the kids would want to come back tomorrow.

This form of street theater faded away when television arrived in 1952. But the storytellers didn’t disappear. And neither did the art.

Many of those same artists helped create something new. It was called manga.

Today, manga is a global billion-dollar industry. And kamishibai is being revived at festivals and fairs around the world.

The spirit of kamishibai still lives on. You can see it in comics. In animation. In every story told with pictures and heart.

Walt Disney once said, “I don’t make pictures just to make money. I make money to make more pictures.”

That’s what most of us want. Not to get rich from our work. But to earn enough to keep going. To create what matters. To have time and freedom.

When I became a full-time writer, I knew I couldn’t rely on books alone. I had friends who were authors. I heard their horror stories.

So I taught my craft. Just like Lewis Hyde talked about.

That turned into an online business. That business gave me what I needed. The freedom to write without pressure. The ability to say no without guilt.

Even today, I still follow that model.

Your art can help you build the life you want. And you don’t have to deliver pizzas to survive.

For the kamishibaiya, candy paid for the art.

No candy meant no show. No audience. No storytelling.

The business side made the creative side possible.

And that little street corner theater helped launch a genre that’s still thriving today.

#3

This story can teach you two lessons.

First,

People don’t want to listen to your yesterday’s dinner story.

If they do, the only reason is that they’re being polite.

But what kind of story are people actually willing to listen to?

It’s a story that relates to them.

And this story relates to most people,

because most people work hard and get no results.

Second,

A story is one thing, but how you tell it is another.

How do you make it lively?

1. Use dialogue to make it feel raw.

2. Make the scene vivid to make the story less abstract and more concrete.

3. Add characters worth rooting for — in this case, someone working hard, 60 hours a week.

4. Use simple language to make it feel like you’re speaking to friends.

5. Tell Act 1 fast, keep playing Act 2, and write a clear Act 3.

Good news: this story does all five of these things.

Story #3 Jeremy Miner

I got started in selling 22 years ago, a broke, burned-out college student, and I got my first job selling home security systems door to door.

Most door-to-door companies back then hired on straight commission, pretty much hiring everyone, giving them a script, a couple of books by sales gurus, and then driving them out in a van.

They’d kick you out of the van and say:

Hey, go make some sales. It’s going to be easy. We’ll pick you up after dark.

My sales manager, Exan, gave me advice:

When you knock on the door, show them how excited you are about the product. Show them you believe in it. Be enthusiastic — they’re going to believe it if you do.

I thought that made sense: if I showed excitement and belief, they’d magically believe too.

I started knocking on doors, excited.

Talking about features, benefits.

Saying we were the best this, number one that, with the best quality and service.

But right from the first door, I started hearing objections:

We don’t need it.

We can’t afford it.Your price is too high.

I need to talk with my spouse.

I’ll call you back.

After seven or eight weeks of nonstop rejection, I thought,This is not very fun.

I remember working 12 hours one day and making zero sales.

That whole week, I worked 60-plus hours and made zero sales.

I started feeling pretty defeated as a human being.And I thought to myself,Maybe selling just wasn’t for me.

One day, my manager picked me up and popped in a Tony Robbins CD.

Tony said:You will fail for one simple reason — you haven’t learned the right skills necessary to succeed.

He explained that everyone is taught some skills, but most people fail because they haven’t been taught the right ones.

There are levels to skill.

For the first time, I realized maybe the skills I was learning from the company — and from old-school sales gurus — were just outdated.

Or not the right ones at all.

That day, I committed to myself:I’m going to figure this out.

I’m going to learn how to do this properly. I need to develop the right skills.

Even when I used the traditional selling skills that sometimes worked, I noticed a pattern.

A lot of the time, they’d actually cause me to lose the sale.

When I was more assumptive, prospects shut down.

They got defensive.

They gave more objections.

I found myself chasing and begging them to fix their problems.

And when I asked questions, I got vague, surface-level answers.

At the same time, I was in college, majoring in Behavioral Science and human psychology.

Behavioral Science is about how people make decisions — how the brain really works.

My professors, including Robert Cialdini, were teaching that the most persuasive way to communicate looked nothing likewhat the sales gurus were teaching.

So I hit a wall:

How do I take everything I’m learning about the brain, behavior, and decision-making... and 

build that into a step-by-step sales structure?

That structure didn’t exist at the time.

I started developing my own questions and techniques — ones that worked with human behavior.

I shifted my tone.

I lowered buyer resistance.

I stopped pushing.

Instead, I focused on getting the prospect to do the work.

Instead of me selling them...They started selling themselves.

They persuaded themselves.

They overcame their own objections.

They pulled me in, instead of me chasing them.

Suddenly, selling became easy.

Exceptionally profitable.

Almost overnight.

3 Storytelling Prompts

1. Tell a story using only dialogue and narrate the scene.

2. Imagine one person and one message you want to share. Then craft the story using these tactics: start with someone else’s story to convince, and tell your story to confirm.

3. Tell a story about your dentist experience.

Happy storytelling.

Ron (your silly cat)

P.S.

Storytelling is one thing, showing up is another.

I know showing up is hard. Talking to the void is not fun.

Writing and feeling like no one cares is the pain that makes most people quit.

Now, I’m creating a “21 Days Writing Challenge.”

The name of it?

You vs Yourself.

If you feel showing up is intimidating, this challenge is for you.

Talk soon.

The average business in the US sells for $800,000.

So why do restaurants only sell for around $200,000 on average?

Because 60% of restaurants fail within the first year.

And 80% fail by the fourth year.

So, why do most restaurants fail?

If we think about it like a business, here’s what we see:

• Restaurants don’t make a lot of extra money from what they sell.

• It’s easy for many people to start a restaurant.

• And starting a restaurant needs a lot of money to buy things like ovens and tables.

But now, let’s change the focus and reverse engineer this.

What makes people start a restaurant business?

Yes, yes, yes.

It’s the love of cooking.

And now, we’re starting to understand the harsh truth together:

Love of cooking alone isn’t enough.

And the same goes for writing.

Here’s my painful story.

This year has been a bit rough for me.

My income from writing has decreased.

So I tried other ways to make money.

But the funny thing is, I found myself digging even deeper into writing.

Because it’s fun.

And I believed that getting good at something would help me make more money.

I was absolutely wrong.

Good news: Six months later, I realized I was going about it all wrong.

How did I realize it?

I sat in a cafe, watching the owner operate.

He didn’t just stand there, handsomely brewing coffee.

He had to do a ton of crappy jobs too.

He cleaned tables, handled deliveries, managed inventory, dealt with difficult customers, fixed broken equipment, and even handled the books.

At that moment, I realized running a writing business is like running a food or beverage business.

I have to wear many hats, not just the creative part, but also sales, marketing, customer service, and finance.

Patrick Bet-David, the author of The Next 5 Moves, says something interesting:

If you want to make more money, focus on four things:

• Sales

• Negotiation

• Human psychology

• Money

Yup.

If I could turn back time, instead of just writing, I would have focused on those four subjects instead of digging deeper into writing.

Why am I telling you this story?

If you feel like your writing is good but you’re not seeing results, maybe it’s not a writing issue.

It could be a different subject you need to master.

And the good news is...

Writing is self-improvement on steroids.

Because you can’t get good at it without mastering other human-related skills, the ones school never taught you.

Don’t waste six months like I did.

P.S.

Luckily, storytelling is one of the sales skills, because humans buy based on the stories they tell themselves.

#1

Every story can end in three sentences:

• First sentence: the beginning.

• Second: the pivot moment.

• Third: the transformation.

But what keeps readers glued to the story?

It’s the roadblock before the transformation.

And conflict means nothing without stakes.

If your main character doesn’t face any consequences for doing something wrong, it’s hard for readers to invest emotionally in the story.

Now you know why a story like “My Iced Americano” doesn’t land.

Because it has no stakes.

No stakes → no tension.
No tension → no attention.

So, what kind of conflict is the most powerful?

A life-threatening event.

And here’s an example.

Story #1 by Greg McKeown

Let me tell you the story of Patrick McGinnis.

He had done all the things he was supposed to do.

He had checked all the boxes.

He graduated from Georgetown University.

Then from Harvard Business School.

He joined the ranks of a top finance and insurance company.

He put in the long workdays he felt were expected of him—eighty hours per week, even on vacations and holidays.

He never left the office before his boss; sometimes, it felt as though he never left the office at all.

He traveled so much for work that he earned the highest frequent flier status on Delta—a level so high it didn’t even have a name.

Meanwhile, he served on the boards of four companies across three continents.

Once, when he refused to stay home sick, he had to leave a board meeting three times to throw up in the bathroom.

When he returned, a colleague said he looked green.

Still, he powered through.

He had been taught that hard work is the key to everything you want in life. It was part of the New England mindset: your work ethic is evidence of your character.

And ever the overachiever, he took this to the next level.

He didn’t just believe working endless hours would lead to success—he believed it was success.

If you didn’t stay late at work, you must not have a very important job. He assumed that in the end, his long hours would pay off.

Then one day, he woke up to find himself working for a bankrupt company. That company was AIG.

The year was 2008. His stock had fallen 97 percent.

All the late nights at the office, all the countless red-eye flights to Europe, South America, and China, all the missed birthdays and celebrations—had been for nothing.

In the months after the financial crisis hit, McGinnis couldn’t get out of bed. He started having night sweats.

His vision blurred—both literally and figuratively.

He couldn’t see clearly for months.

He was floundering. Lost. He was sick with stress.

His doctor ran some tests.

He felt like Boxer the Horse from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the farm’s most dedicated laborer whose answer to every problem was, “I will work harder”—until he collapsed from overwork and was sent to the knackers’ yard.

So on the cab ride back from the doctor’s office, McGinnis made what he called “a bargain with God.”

He promised, “If I survive this, then I will really make some changes.”

“Working longer and harder had been the solution to every problem,” McGinnis said.

But suddenly, he realized, “The marginal return of working harder was, in fact, negative.”

So what could he do?

He had three options:

1. Carry on and likely work himself to death.

2. Aim lower and give up on his goals.

3. Find an easier way to achieve the success he wanted.

He chose the third option.

He stepped down from his role at AIG but stayed on as a consultant. He stopped working eighty-hour weeks.

He started going home at five.

He no longer emailed on the weekends.

He stopped treating sleep like a necessary evil.

He started walking, running, and eating better.

He lost twenty-five pounds. He started enjoying his life—and his work—again.

Around this time, he was inspired by a friend who was investing in startups. Not with huge checks—just small investments here and there. It piqued Patrick’s interest. He invested in a couple of companies. He now has a twenty-five-fold return on his portfolio.

Even during tough economic times, he’s felt optimistic about his finances because he isn’t dependent on a single source of income. He’s made more money working half the hours he used to. And the type of work he’s doing is more rewarding, less intrusive.

“It doesn’t even feel like work anymore,” he said.

What he learned from this experience was this:

When you simply can’t try any harder, it’s time to find a different path.

What about you? Do you ever feel like:

• You’re running faster but not moving any closer to your goals?

• You want to make a higher contribution but lack the energy?

• You’re teetering on the edge of burnout?

• Everything feels so much harder than it ought to be?

If you answered yes to any (or all) of these, this book is for you.

These people are disciplined and focused. They’re engaged and motivated. And yet, they are utterly exhausted.

#2

Have you ever had a story that helped you get unstuck from a problem?

I have.

Every time I feel stuck with creativity problems, I retell myself this one story.

That’s the power of the stories we tell ourselves:

• They compress all the information we need.

• They encourage us.

• They help us push through challenges.

Wanna know what mine is?

Here it is.

Story #2 by Jonah Berger

Tom Dickson was looking for a new job.

Born in San Francisco, he was led by his Mormon faith to attend school at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, where he graduated in 1971 with a degree in engineering.

He moved home after graduation, but the job market was tough and there weren't many opportunities.

The only position he could find was at a company making birth control and intrauterine devices.

These devices helped prevent pregnancy, but they could also be seen as abortives, which went against Tom's Mormon beliefs.

A Mormon helping to develop new methods of birth control? It was time to find something new.

Tom had always been interested in bread making. While practicing his hobby, he noticed that there were no good cheap home grinders with which to make flour.

So Tom put his engineering skills to work.

After playing around with a ten-dollar vacuum motor, he cobbled together something that milled finer flour at a cheaper price than anything currently on the market.

The grinder was so good that Tom started producing it on a larger scale. The business did reasonably well, and playing around with different methods of processing food got him interested in more general blenders.

Soon he moved back to Utah to start his own blender company. In 1995, he produced his first home blender, and in 1999, Blendtec was founded.

But although the product was great, no one really knew about it. Awareness was low. So in 2006, Tom hired George Wright, another BYU alum, as his marketing director.

Later, George would joke that the marketing budget at his prior company was greater than all of Blendtec's revenues.

On one of his first days on the job, George noticed a pile of sawdust on the floor of the manufacturing plant. Given that no construction was in progress, George was puzzled. What was going on?

It turned out that Tom was in the factory doing what he did every day: trying to break blenders. To test the durability and power of Blendtec blenders, Tom would cram two-by-two boards, among other objects, into the blenders and turn them on—hence the sawdust.

George had an idea that would make Tom's blender famous.

With a meager fifty-dollar budget (not fifty million or even fifty thousand), George went out and bought marbles, golf balls, and a rake.

He also purchased a white lab coat for Tom, just like what a laboratory scientist would wear. Then he put Tom and a blender in front of a camera.

George asked Tom to do exactly what he had done with the two-by-twos: see if they would blend.

Imagine taking a handful of marbles and tossing them into your home blender.

Not the cheap kind of marbles made of plastic or clay, but the real ones. The half-inch orbs made out of solid glass. So strong that they could withstand a car driving over them.

That is exactly what Tom did. He dropped fifty glass marbles in one of his blenders and hit the button for slow churn.

The marbles bounced furiously around the blender, making rat-tat-tat noises like a hailstorm on the roof of a car.

Tom waited fifteen seconds and then stopped the blender. He cautiously lifted the top as white smoke poured out: glass dust.

All that was left of the marbles was a fine powder that looked like flour. Rather than cracking from the punishment, the blender had flexed its muscles.

Golf balls were pulverized, and the rake was reduced to a pile of slivers. George posted the videos on YouTube and crossed his fingers.

His intuition was right. People were amazed.

They loved the videos. They were surprised at the blender's power and called it everything from "insanely awesome" to "the ultimate blender."

Some couldn't even believe that what they were seeing was possible.

Others wondered what else the blender could pulverize. Computer hard drives? A samurai sword?

In the first week, the videos racked up 6 million views. Tom and George had hit a viral home run.

Tom went on to blend everything from Bic lighters to Nintendo Wii controllers.

He's tried glow sticks, Justin Bieber CDs, and even an iPhone.

Not only did Blendtec blenders demolish all these objects, but their video series, titled Will It Blend?, received more than 300 million views.

Within two years, the campaign increased retail blender sales 700 percent.

All from videos made for less than a few hundred dollars apiece.

And for a product that seemed anything but word-of-mouth worthy.

A regular, boring old blender.

#3

It’s easy to tell a story.

It’s hard to make that story compelling.

But Dave Chappelle always nails it.

He makes every story vivid.

How?

He’s mastered:

• How to use dialogue

• How to frame the story

• How to write a punchline

And here are some of his best examples.

Story #3 by Dave Chappelle

I know what it's like to have a cold house. I wasn't allowed to touch the thermostat growing up without asking my father, and it would be freezing in the house.

I'd be like, "Dad, please, can I please just turn the heat up to like, I don't know, 32?

N***a, it's really cold!"

And my dad would say, "Just put more clothes on, David."

I'd be like, "Got all three of my outfits on, n***a! Well, you look at me, I'm freezing up here!"

And he said, "Just don't think about how cold you are, David."

I didn't say it to him, but I said it in front of him so he could hear.

I said, "I fucking hate being poor!" And my dad got really upset.

He didn't scream or holler; that wasn't his way.

He just threw his newspaper on the floor and he said, "David, David, David, you are not poor."

He said, "It's a mentality that very few people ever recover from.

Don't you forget it, son, you are broke."

3 Storytelling Prompts

1. Tell one story about a life-threatening event—either yours or someone close to you—and how it changed your life.

2. Tell one story that helped you get unstuck.

3. Tell one childhood memory using dialogue-based storytelling.

I was standing at the front door of the farmer’s market.

“Could you buy me some buns, please?”

A random homeless person asked me.

I wanted to show her my Medium earnings, but I felt she would pity me instead, so I said, "No, thanks."

I headed into the building.

But I stayed curious.

When will she give up?

Who is going to buy her the buns?

So I kept observing her.

30 minutes passed. Then, a woman showed up.

Curly hair. Blue dress with sunflowers.

And she bought the homeless person some buns.

Umm. Interesting.

After the homeless woman got her buns, she disappeared like a ninja.

So I went to the woman and asked,

“Why did you buy her the buns?”

Her answer surprised me.

She said she believes giving is healing.

And giving to the homeless makes her feel better.

That moment reminded me of a Seth Godin quote:

“Successful marketers are just the providers of stories that consumers choose to believe.”

It got me thinking—how do people shape their worldview?

The answer?

It’s not facts.

It’s not logic.

It’s not stats.

It’s the story they tell themselves.

Take this woman, for example.

She believes in giving to the homeless.

So today, she bought someone buns.

That action became a story she tells herself.

A story that says, "I'm kind. I help people. I make the world better."

And when she tells that story, she feels good.

That’s the reinforcement loop.

Because that story confirms her beliefs.

The moral of the story?

Ever wonder why your story doesn't land?

Sometimes, it's not your storytelling skills.

It's that you're telling a story that doesn’t match your audience’s worldview.

Take politics, for example.

If you're a Democrat, you might believe every story Trump tells is a lie.

But if you're a Republican, you might believe every word he says is the truth.

Same story. Different beliefs.

So, as a storyteller, before you craft a “killer story,”

1. Sip some coffee.

2. Take a step back.

3. Look at the world through your audience’s eyes.

4. Figure out what they already believe.

5. Then tell the story that fits.

Remember.

You can’t convince someone by telling a story they don’t want to hear.

Bonus

This is your crash course in changing someone’s mind.

• Identify the pain.

• Show them you have the solution (at least 3x better than their current reality).

• Tell a story about their dream life after taking your solution.

• Then give them the solution.

Because people don’t change with facts.

They change with incentives.

And the strongest incentive?

Getting out of pain.

Stories are just a tool. Use them wisely.

Long time no see.

How’s your summer going?

Me?

Well, my MacBook just broke.

The screen is wrecked. Like someone took out their frustration on it with a rock.

But hey, it’s understandable.

This MacBook has been with me for nearly 10 years. That’s like 100 in laptop years.

So I thought, "No biggie, I’ll just write on my iPad with a keyboard."

And

It’s not as great as I imagined.

Anyway, I’m planning to buy a new MacBook next Thursday.

Why Thursday? Because my boss (aka my wife) is only free then to go shopping with me.

The part I’m most excited about?

This time, I’m buying it using the money I earned from writing.

If you had asked me 18 months ago, I wouldn’t have believed this was possible.

I still remember walking into a Tim Hortons, using all the money I made from writing to buy a small black coffee.

That was the only thing I could afford back then.

Thanks for reading my little story.

Now, here’s a quick update-and my Q3 plan.

1. 21-Day Writing Challenge

I’m bringing the challenge back!

Why 21 days?

Well, my first challenge was 30 days.

Too long. Most people dropped off after day 7.

My second challenge was 7 days. Too short.

Not enough time to build a habit.

So this time, we’re aiming for the sweet spot-21 days.

Here’s the plan: Every day for 21 days, I’ll give you one practical writing tip.

You get better at writing. I get to refine my strategies. Win-win.

But the challenge won’t start right away.

Let me enjoy the summer first (and promote it a bit).

Start date: August 1st.

My takeaway: Launching a product every quarter teaches you more than any course ever could.

2. Newsletter for Connection

Social Media = Growth.

Newsletter = Connection.

That’s my Q3 approach.

I’ll shift toward writing mid-length (about 300 words) pieces for my newsletter.

These will be more personal, raw, and helpful.

What about Medium?

Working with clients lately has given me a big insight:

On social media, success isn’t about how often you post.

It's about how strong your ideas are.

So I’m rethinking how I approach Medium.

I’ll treat it like YouTube: publish fewer but better pieces.

That means deeper research, better structure, and more value.

For daily thoughts and quick insights, that’s what the newsletter is for.

Let’s see how this split strategy plays out.

3. I’m writing another book.

I used to be the guy who read every self-help book out there.

Now?

This year, I’ve been diving into biographies.

Why?

Because biographies are like self-help books on steroids.

You don’t just get tips.

You see real people playing the life game with everything on the line.

And here’s what I noticed: Most successful people weren’t born with a platinum spoon.

They had resilience.

We love reading stories like:

"This guy was $1M in debt. Then made a comeback and is now a billionaire."

Sounds cool, right?

But actually living that story? That’s hell.

It takes insane mental strength.

And trust me, you don’t build that just by reading.

We learn resilience by getting punched in the face, over and over.

But here’s the question I’m curious about:

Why are some people better at resilience than others?

So… I want to write a book about it: "How to Be Resilient"

It’s a topic that won’t leave my head.

And I’ve learned-when something won’t leave your head, it’s probably worth exploring.

Will it be easy? Nope. Will it take time? Definitely. Will I finish it? I’ll do my best.

Follow your curiosity. It’s the best playbook for any creator.

Alright, that’s all for now.

Enjoy your summer. Take breaks. But never stop building what matters.

See you soon ✌️

Hey guys,

Welcome back to Storytelling Gym.

This week’s been super busy for me. How about you?

As always, you don’t get better at storytelling by memorizing theory.

You improve by practicing it yourself.

But trying without examples? That’s tough.

That’s why Storytelling Gym exists.

This week, I broke down three stories for you.

Let’s dive in.

Story #1 by the Koerner Office

You will not believe what he did.

So this guy walked into Buc-ee's, which is a Texas billion-dollar gas station.

It's like a redneck Disney, and he noticed they didn't sell any of their products online, which he could not believe.

So one day, he walked into Buc-ee's and bought one of everything.

It cost about $3,000.

He wanted to pull a viral publicity stunt.

After buying one of everything, he took professional photos of all of them, put them up on a website, and started cold emailing reporters about what he was doing.

He wanted to get Buc-ee's attention because they wouldn't respond to his cold emails.

Finally, the reporters wrote a bunch of articles, and it went viral.

Buc-ee's reached out to him and said, "Hey, hey, hey, we actually don't mind what you're doing.

We just don't want you to impersonate us, so make a couple of changes on your website."

That was four years ago, and today that business does multiple millions of dollars per year.

And guess what? That's me.

I did that. I'm that guy in all these articles. Me and my partner Kirk did this.

He runs the business, and it's an amazing business.

So follow me if you want more stories like this.

3 Reasons Why It Works

1. It’s simple
   The story reads like a conversation between friends. It shows you don’t need fancy language or clever metaphors. Just write like you’re telling a friend something wild on a phone call—and that’s often enough to make it great.

2. It’s inspiring

   This story makes starting a business feel possible, even exciting. And no, stories don’t always have to be inspiring, but they should never feel dead. Keep the emotion alive.

3. It has a clear purpose
   Yes, it’s entertaining and inspiring, but it’s also doing something smart—nudging you to follow the creator. That’s the power of storytelling. It moves people when facts alone can’t.

Story #2 by Robert Greene

For Yoky Matsuoka, childhood was a period of confusion and blur. Growing up in Japan in the 1970s, everything seemed laid out for her in advance.

The school system would funnel her into a field that was appropriate for girls, and the possibilities were rather narrow. Her parents, believing in the importance of sports in her development, pushed her into competitive swimming at a very early age.

They also had her take up the piano. For other children in Japan, it may have been comforting to have their lives directed in such a fashion, but for Yoky, it was painful. She was interested in all kinds of subjects, particularly math and science. She liked sports, but not swimming. She had no idea what she wanted to become or how she could possibly fit into such a regimented world.

At the age of eleven, she finally asserted herself. She had had enough of swimming and wanted to take up tennis. Her parents agreed to her wishes. Being intensely competitive, she had great dreams for herself as a tennis player, but she was starting out in the sport rather late in life. To make up for lost time, she would have to undergo an almost impossibly rigorous practice schedule.

She traveled outside Tokyo for training and would do her homework on the ride back at night.

Often having to stand up in the crowded car, she would crack open her math and physics books and work out the equations.

She loved solving puzzles, and in doing this homework, her mind would become so completely absorbed in the problems that she was barely aware of the time passing. In a strange way, it was similar to the sensation she felt on the tennis court—a deep focus where nothing could distract her.

In the few free moments on the train, Yoky would think about her future. Science and sports were the two great interests in her life. In them, she could express all of the different sides of her character—her love of competing, working with her hands, moving gracefully, analyzing, and solving problems. In Japan, you had to choose a career that was generally quite specialized. Whatever she chose would require sacrificing her other interests, which depressed her to no end.

One day she daydreamed about inventing a robot that could play tennis with her. Inventing and playing against such a robot would satisfy all of the different sides of her character, but it was only a dream.

Although she had risen through the ranks to become one of the top tennis prospects in Japan, she quickly realized that this was not to be her future.

In practice, no one could beat her, but in competition, she would often freeze up, overthink the situation, and lose to inferior players. She also suffered some debilitating injuries.

She would have to focus on academics and not on sports. After attending a tennis academy in Florida, she convinced her parents to let her stay in the States and apply to the University of California at Berkeley.

At Berkeley, she could not decide on a major—nothing seemed to quite fit her wide-ranging interests. For lack of anything better, she settled on electrical engineering.

One day, she confided to a professor in her department about her youthful dream to build a robot to play tennis with her.

Much to her surprise, the professor did not laugh, but instead invited her to join his graduate lab for robotics.

Her work there showed so much promise that she was later admitted to graduate school at MIT, where she joined the artificial intelligence lab of robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks. They were developing a robot with artificial intelligence, and Matsuoka volunteered to design the hand and arms.

Ever since she was a child, she had pondered her own hands while she was playing tennis or the piano or while scribbling out math equations. The human hand was a miracle of design.

Although this was not exactly sports, she would be working with her hands to construct the hand. Finding at last something that suited a larger range of her interests, she worked night and day on building a new kind of robotic limb, one that possessed as much as possible the delicate grasping power of the human hand.

Her design dazzled Brooks—it was years ahead of anything anyone had ever developed.

Feeling that there was a critical lack in her knowledge, she decided to gain an additional degree in neuroscience. If she could better understand the connection between the hand and the brain, she could design a prosthetic limb that would feel and respond like a human hand.

She continued this process, adding new fields of science to her résumé, culminating in the creation of a completely new field, one that she would dub neurobotics—the design of robots that possessed simulated versions of human neurology, bringing them closer to life itself.

Forging this field would bring her great success in science and put her in the ultimate position of power: the ability to freely combine all of her interests.

3 Reasons Why It Works

1. Robert Greene brings the story to life

His superpower is telling other people’s stories and making them vivid.

How? He adds two key ingredients: conflict and emotion.

Take this example:

“But for Yoky, it was painful. She was interested in all kinds of subjects, particularly math and science. She liked sports but not swimming. She had no idea what she wanted to become or how she could possibly fit into such a regimented world.”

See? It shows emotion and conflict at the same time.

2. It’s relatable

Yoky’s struggle isn’t unique. Most people feel stuck too. That’s what makes the story resonate.

3. It’s economical

Even in a dense paragraph, Greene keeps the pace tight. He gets the most out of every sentence by doing three things:

• Stating the feeling

• Setting the scene

• Showing the action

Reading this story is like watching a movie. The scene changes every 3 to 5 sentences. That’s how he manages the pace.

Story #3 by Morgan Housel

There's a scene in the movie Zero Dark Thirty in which the CIA director questions a group of analysts who claim to have located Osama bin Laden.

"I'm about to go look the president in the eye," he says.

"And what I'd like to know, no bullshit, very simply, is he there or is he not there?"

The team's leader says there's a 60 percent to 80 percent chance Bin Laden is in the compound.

"Is that a yes or a no?" the director asks.

Most people get that certainty is rare, and the best you can do is make decisions in which the odds are in your favor. They understand you can be smart and end up wrong, or dumb and end up right, because that's how luck and risk work.

But few people actually use probability in the real world, especially when judging others' success.

Most of what people care about is, "Were you right or wrong?"

"Was that a yes or a no?"

Probability is about nuance and gradation. But in the real world, people pay attention to black-and-white results.

If you said something will happen and it happens, you were right.

If you said it will happen and it doesn't, you were wrong.

That's how people think because it requires the least amount of effort. It's hard to convince others—or yourself—that there could have been an alternative outcome when there's a real-world outcome sitting in front of you.

The core here is that people think they want an accurate view of the future, but what they really crave is certainty. It's normal to want to rid yourself of the painful reality of not knowing what's going to happen next.

Someone who tells you there's a 60 percent chance of a recession happening doesn't do much to ease that pain. They might be adding to it. But someone who says, "There is going to be a recession this year," offers something to grab on to with both hands, something that feels like taking control of your future.

After the Bin Laden raid, President Obama said the odds placed on whether the terrorist leader was actually in the target house were fifty-fifty.

A few years ago, I heard one of the SEALs involved in the mission speak at a conference. He said that regardless of whether Bin Laden was in the house, the team felt the odds they'd all be killed in the mission were also fifty-fifty. So here we have very high odds that the raid would have ended in disappointment or catastrophe.

It didn't, but the alternative outcome isn't a world many pay much attention to.

We rarely do.

Probability and uncertainty are just so difficult for us to comprehend

3 Reasons Why It Works

1. The purpose of storytelling
   The core message is that people crave certainty, but certainty is rare and hard to grasp. Instead of stating this directly, Morgan Housel uses 454 words to tell a story that naturally leads you to the idea. It's persuasion through story, not instruction.

2. The packaging
   He uses a movie scene as a hook, retells it in his own voice, and then delivers the key message. It is a smart and relatable way to communicate. Anyone can use this technique.

3. Use of dialogue
   The story includes dialogue to make it more vivid. It's a simple tool most people overlook, but it makes the writing more engaging.

3 Storytelling Prompts

1. What is a simple business story you’ve heard that made a ton of money?

2. Tell one story about an athlete you admire.

3. Convince someone using science from a movie you’ve watched, and connect it to the message you want to share.