The WORST Way to Tell Any Story (And Everyone Does It)

Let me know if this is something you're facing. You've been showing up consistently producing content, but your content isn't growing, your channel's not growing. It's not because you're boring, it's not that you're shadowbanned or anything else, it's just you're being skipped. In this video, you're going to see a sample of what I do inside of Content Lab, where I'm coaching creators just like you. Let's dive in. So, Melissa, tell me a little bit about you. Okay. So, I am a black and Japanese musician, primarily. Um I went to school for violin. classical violin. Nowadays, I play all styles. Um I've had a lot of really wonderful life-affirming moments lately where the uh fracturing of my path from the strict classical path onto a more modern path has really uh you know, kind of come full circle recently. Just last uh in July, I got to play with the San Francisco Symphony, where they were playing Led Zeppelin, and I'm ripping a violin solo over Led Zeppelin with the whole symphony behind me. So, like, you know, it's been a beautiful time. Um but the issue that I'm kind of facing now is like, I want to be a personality. I have a wild story to tell. I You actually uh watched I don't know if you watched the whole thing cuz it was a long video, and I apologize. I didn't think anyone was going to watch it at all, so I was surprised that it went through, and even further surprised that thank you to Andrus, who checked it out, uh was even uh more interested, you know? So, I was surprised that — Whoa, hold on. Now you're going too fast. It's like we have everybody from staccato to like now speed demon. Okay. Yes, yes. Sorry. Okay. What caliber of musician are you? I mean, there's no whole — God, just say it. All right, I'm world-class. There's not a lot of other people — World-class, that's all I want to hear. You're world-class. Are you first chair? Uh if I did classical music, depending on the scenario, I could be. Violin is an interesting thing. I'm not a classical violinist, so I cannot outplay a classical violinist. Um I went to school for classical music, so my chops are good. Um it's what I got my degree in, but um my specialty is in modern styles. I like taking, you know, I like playing violin over uh you know, Tupac California Love. I you know, my kind of thing is to be more — Ooh, I like that. Okay, okay. So, there's not a whole ton of us. All right, I got it. So, you are a world-class musician. Okay. Uh now, let's take a look at the content, okay? Yes. — Let me share this first. — Can I give you a tiny bit of context? I'll be quick. Yeah, you can. Cool. It was a 5K lore drop because I hide a lot of things about myself, cuz sometimes I'm scared to share. Um I got a whole bunch of new fans from this thing called Street Beefs, because I went and played violin for one of their fighters, and I also did a fight there. So, I got a lot of exposure. All these people came in, so I was like, let's do a lore drop about the fact that uh I'm black and Japanese, because my parents were cult members, and they were part of a cult called the Moonies, and the uh cult leader's son beat up my dad and declared him the devil and me the Antichrist when I was born. So, I was like, you know what? That's a fun story. Let's start that. Let's start sharing more of the things that are interesting about me, because I don't want to just be a luxury event and wedding violinist. I want to be a real artist, and I want to create a fan base and have leverage to do that. So, that's what I'm here for. Okay. That was a lot for me to process, but I got the story. Let me share. So, you're you were raised in a cult, or did you immediately leave? — left right when right as I was born, basically. So, yeah. And Antichrist. I got you. — That's me. The Antichrist of world-class musicians, that's your intro. Here we go. I'm going to share this, and okay, we're on this Safari window here. I'm going to hit — huge cult for a long time, very powerful cult, um including, you know, him doing ceremonies for people, members of Congress, and like, you know, people in the world government, and in massively powerful media. Pretty scary stuff when you consider the scope of his power. Um so, he was a very powerful figure for a long time, and um one of the tenets of the church is that you had to have kids in order to, you know, understand the true father's

plight and life. So, essentially, um they my non-biological parents were too old to conceive children. So, my biological parents were like, "Oh, no problem. We'll just make you a kid. " So, that is why, if you've been wondering, uh that's why I am black and Japanese, but I have a German last name, Melissa Folsom Logan. My actual name was supposed to be Kingdom Harmony Folsom Logan, but because of the events that will follow shortly, my parents decided maybe that wasn't such a good idea. And then they decided on Melissa as my name, because that was the most normal name they could think of. Now, um shortly before my birth, I have to actually double-check all of the timelines on these, but loosely, — All right, this is getting too long. I'm going to hit pause, okay? Yep. There's a lot of things here, so let's go look at your account. Uh it's as a Bay Bay, like Bay Toven. I like that. It's pretty clever. Yeah, Bay Toven. I'm going to look at your account here. reels. Okay, so uh Was it this one that we just watched? Yes. Okay. So, I made that for an audience of like basically no people. I'm surprised anybody watched it. Okay. You can tell she's a serious musician. Her whole ceiling is with acoustical panels here, and she's got a bunch of guitars in the back. I'm not a musician. I wish I were. Yeah, there's time. — Here's one. When you're rocking out with 118,000, and there's 1. 2, you mentioned something about fighting or fights or something. Let's check out these two, okay? Let's do it. Yeah. — I'm going to play this one and see what happens. — or they win, lose, draw, I don't want him to get hurt. Mighty Mouse. Yep, I'm in a Mighty Mouse video. It's a basic trailer. Uh it's not very eventful, but all my — Somebody else shot the video? Yeah, yeah. I did not — doing this music live to it or a post? I was playing violin live. So, the music you were hearing was probably but then afterwards, yeah. — That's Death Sentence. I love freak show stuff, cuz I'm a freak, you know? So, when people let their freak flag fly, it inspires me to do the same, you know? — Okay. The way it is I could either hear this or listen to you. Which one do you prefer? Uh listening to me, cuz there's not really anything happening in the video that's uh important, I guess. Um Okay, okay. So, uh where is this? NorCal? This is in Washington. One of the Washington videos, yeah. Okay. And who do you know in this that got you roped into doing this fight? I just hit up the guys from Scrapyard, cuz I was I've been doing martial arts for like 4 years. So, I actually went there to do a fight originally, and they were like, "Hey, do you want to play some violin? " And I was like, "Yeah, boy! " So, they asked me to play violin for Death Sentence, who is this gentleman here, who is very internet famous, because he's a character, you know? He's a character. Yeah. No pants. His pants are a little tight. Okay. Huh? Yeah. Must be his thing. It is. It is indeed. Uh that that costume malfunction's really done a lot for him. Yeah, he needs to wear a cup. This is dangerous. He's not going to. All right. Well, his future children may or may not think of this, okay? All right, so you're into this, okay. So, it seems like those again, we're genre smashing here. We're doing something quite unusual. Um performing live for a fight. Mhm. Okay, okay. Now, we get further back, we're getting more into like, this is me being like, I'm trying to get weddings, corporate, you know? Yeah. I don't post as much as I should, but, you know, I think my issue sometimes is I don't want to just be a corporate wedding events violinist, and I but I don't want to separate those two parts of my personality, because I want to be one entity. myself. I don't necessarily think I would be best served by splintering off who I am as a comedic and fun person, uh as opposed to just having a clean corporate wedding violinist energy, you know? Yeah. I'm going to play this one, okay? Let me just listen. This is while you're playing on stage here. Okay, I get it. I get it, okay. You have a lot of fun doing what you're doing, I could tell. Yes, me. — lot of a lot of flair. Thank you. You got Okay. So, what do you think is what do you suspect the reason why your content isn't blowing up? Because I think a person who can play music is was born for this platform. Well, um I think it's a couple of things. I One, I just don't post enough, obviously. That's going to be a problem for growth. Uh two, I am scared to uh I'm scared to tell my stories, and then not have the attention or the focus on it, you know? I've spent so long in obscurity, uh releasing stuff that got

like, you know, 100 views and stuff, that I think that fear is still inside of me, that I will express myself to the world, and I will still not be heard, and the effort will be for naught, and I will be just someone who people can see tried hard and failed. Even though I have career success in a way that I, you know, I could have dreamed of when I was younger, and now I'm doing those things, but I still, you know, I worry that, you know, what if it's just not for me? What if I don't ever figure it out? Okay, okay. Couple things. Number one, uh the piece that you submitted, I just want to give you some feedback on, okay? Mhm. You have a wild, crazy, interesting story, but you're telling the story in a linear way. is mostly like what people do in a narration style. Do you listen to the Moth Radio Hour, much? — No, but people keep telling me to listen to it. Yeah, there's a reason why they're telling you to listen to it. Cuz they know how to tell stories. So, listen to the Moth Radio Hour. They have a podcast and they have built on themes and they're very good. Now, here's the thing that surprised me but doesn't surprise me. Almost all the ones that have me in tears listening in the driveway while I'm still sitting at home, it's because they're writers. Duh. Writers know how to craft a story. So, I think when you're doing top of dome, it can be a little sloppy and unstructured. So, I would love for you to sit down and try and write your story. And we don't begin the story at the beginning, we begin it at the point of greatest conflict. Okay? Um Uh some of you don't know this, but I was labeled as the Antichrist. Let's just say, they're like, "What? " Okay, and then you reverse engineer and you tell just parts of the story. And you have to kind of keep telling people what's at stake. Cuz your story is and then and then and then, which is not that interesting. Instead, if it's like but it or instead of this happened, there's twists and turns, right? So, we have to kind of give them enough to figure out what's going to happen and then create tension around, no, if this didn't happen, this happened instead. It's those little diversions or kind of turns in the road, the forks in the road, that make a story really interesting. And you have to kind of set up an expectation and then disrupt it. So, great stories have other senses, sensory detail. It's rich in dialogue and you're painting the scene. You need to act out those moments. So, when you're just saying it to camera like that, although it could be the world's most interesting story, it's not being You're not giving it the best chance to succeed. So, go back and think, okay, like here, I'll give you an example, okay? If you're going to write content, everybody, think about this in your mind. What are the top three turning points in your life? Just think about that. And you should be able to quickly scan your memory bank and say, there's one, there's two, there's three. And then write about it like, what was it that flipped the switch for me? And if you know how the story ends, you'll know how to begin and you'll know what parts to include and what parts to exclude. So, you could tell your story in multiple parts. Act one, how does this story end? And then only tell the parts that build up to that ending. Otherwise, it's just extra information. Okay? So, in this story I'm trying to figure out, so cult, uh there's the black and there's Asian and then there's the biological, the non-biological. There's a lot for me to figure out and not all of that is relevant to landing the plane. You'll see that master storytellers and comedians usually will tell you something, but they only

tell you the parts, right? I saw this comedian recently. He's brilliant. I'm spacing on his name right now. I follow him, too. I think he's Italian. He goes, uh being dairy intolerant or lactose intolerant is not a something that you bring up on a first date. He says, "So, I'm already feeling tension. " So, he goes, "So, I don't say anything and I eat the dessert and I pay for it later. So, we wind up back at her place and I'm like, um "Yeah, uh so, do you like have a bathroom I can use? " You know? It's like, we're just thinking in her mind, quite figuratively and literally, holy crap. What's going to happen? And he goes, "I was expecting her to like go down the hallway and leave the building and then I can deal with my business. " She goes, "No, it's right here. " And they're watching a movie together. So, he's setting up only the parts that make sense. He didn't tell you about what she looked like, where they were, what they ate for just being on a first date, you don't tell people you're lactose intolerant. You just ask the bed later. That's what he says and people laugh. So, you see what I'm saying is a lot of editing. So, you think, where does this story end and how do I begin it with a maximum amount of tension? And now, once you have them hooked, they can't get off. They just can't get off and you keep the tension, okay? So, I would love for you to literally just sit down and figure out what the turning points in your story are and then figure out how many parts of the story you want to tell and then just break it into bite-size pieces. Make each part work and then when you glue them all together, they should work really well. Okay. That's my feedback for your story. It's just too much for me to consume and it's too much information for me to remember, okay? Yeah. Number two. In terms of your musical content, I've seen things where people break genres and they do mashups that do really, really well. Clearly, in your fighting stuff, there's two things that are working for you. I do not expect a half black, half Asian woman to come in with a violin right before a guy with pants too tight for him to punch each other in the face. That is such an unusual pattern interrupt, no wonder it has so many views. And the other part to it is it was produced well. It was like good camera, good exposure, good movement on that kind of stuff and so you're getting the help of like good production. All things being equal, better production outperforms like sloppy production. Better concept beats better production, but all things being equal. So, I would love for you to try to give yourself the best shot of giving yourself good production. So, the one where I watched you performing on stage with a bunch of people, the camera's not even on you. It's low quality and I hear the other instruments sometimes more than I hear your instrument. So, you know those ones where they like sing in middle of like a cavernous parking garage and the reverb on it's crazy? Yeah. It's clearly focused on the audio experience. So, I want you to perform when you're the focus of attention, when your audio is the cleanest and clearest so that I can just hear you. Unless you're one of you're doing what do they call those things? Buskers? Where you're like in the middle of the street and you just perform and you do something a little unusual, then the environment is the story, it's not the instrument itself, but I want to be able

to hear your instrument more. Okay? Especially you out in the wild, I think that's going to work and especially as you're busting genres. Like you said, you'd rather play violin to Tupac or something. Those are things that get a lot of attention because we've not heard it that way before. Your interpretation of it what's what the thing that excites people, so I just want to see more of that, okay? Okay. Okay? Is that cool? Yeah. Are you in LA? Where are you? — LA. Yeah, I'm in LA right now. Oh, what part of LA? Uh right now I'm in Long Beach. After this, I'm literally running up to Hollywood to play for Maz Jobrani. Oh, he's like a big comedian, so like that's, you know, I'm having a good day. — Maz Jobrani, he's a Iranian? Yeah, uh I'm not 100% sure, so I'm not going to say cuz I don't Maz Jobrani, I know him. He's kind of tall and skinny? Yeah. Oh, no, no. Habibi? Is that guy? Yeah. You're playing for him? Yeah. Dang. Will you say hello to him for me? I'd love to have him on a pod or something. Happy to pass along the word. Yeah, he's funny as heck. I like him. Okay. All right. This is very cool. So, LA is your base of ops and you said Long Beach? Yes. Okay, cool. All right. Well, dang. I mean, you're in part of all this stuff, all the craziness, all the hip-hop, everything, right? Mhm. And you play the drums, too? Is that the drums you play on? No, this is just my full studio, but I we have a drum kit. I play drums terribly. I have a lot of fun with it. You know, that's probably your bio. You should listen to me on the violin. That's a pattern interrupt, by the way. Yeah. Okay. Who knows? All right. I mean, you could literally do this in a video. I don't know if this is a good idea. You could literally just play it out like, no, I'm not kidding. You just jump over to pattern interruption. Yeah. Just again, don't hire me to do this. — Yeah, yeah. You should You're like, "You did terrible. " You're like, "Hold on, hold on. Let me do this other thing. " Yeah, yeah. It could be kind of cool. Uh do you roller skate or do you anything else? Um well, aside from martial arts, that's really my main other thing. I like I play violin and I kick ass. That's my Those are my two main hobbies or my two main things. What kind of martial art? Uh boxing, Muay Thai. Muay Thai, mostly. Bud, the violent kind. Yeah, I'm the violent violinist. That's me. Is that what you call yourself? Yeah, that's my fighting name, the violent violinist. — Well, I would just put that in your bio. But I would love to hear your stories. Black, Asian, cult, Antichrist, violent violinist. — my problem. I know I have too many stories. I don't know how to tell it in a way that is concise cuz nothing is concise about me. Yeah, and that's the problem. You sometimes may have an abundance of ideas and it's overwhelming for people. You need a good editor, that's what you need. I don't mean like a person cutting your videos, but a person's like, "You know, you need to just focus in on this. " Make it about that. Okay, so, what you have to do is you have to show constraint. It's like drinking from a fire hydrant, it's just too much. So, try one thing and just stick to that and see like how that works and then you can try a different idea and stick to that for a little bit and So, let's do this. When I do like content workshops, I tell people to do the 30-30-30 plan. It's a 90-day plan. The first 30 days, no rules, do whatever the hell you want. No results, who even cares? Just experiment, have fun. Do 30 experiments. Every day do a weird thing. Okay? And don't even look at the results. Like forbid yourself from looking at the results because they'll be disheartening sometimes, okay? Do it as a form of exercise. The next 30 days, what you do is you look at the first 30 days and you see, what are the two or three things that worked the best and gave me the most joy? And see if you can repeat that. So, now we're kind of having an informed decision and we're kind of narrowing it down. Like you said, "Oh, Chris had a better production, so I've only been working with people who shoot nice videos. " And that didn't do anything for me. Or it did do a lot for me. Or he said, "Do this in the street and do genre mashing, whatever it is. Or make sure I'm the focus. " You know, try that. Try a couple different things and see what happens.

happens. And you're kind of like I say this in the most respectful way, like you're kind of cooking weird and I like that about you. Thank you. So, you got to lean into that. Mhm. to it. Maybe it's one of these things where you come up to the sugarcane, you just crack it in half and you pick up the violin and play. I don't know what it is. Mhm. I don't know your level of violence. You do you and see what happens. So, first 30 days, 30 experiments. Do not look at any results because they'll influence the other whatever experiments you're going to do. Second 30 days, look back, form a hypothesis, the two or three things that you think work that also give you the most joy. And for that month, just work on those things. You don't have to create 30 days then. You probably create one every three or four days. And then the last 30 days, I think I found something. Refine, refine. That usually gets you to something that's going to both give you joy but also build an audience for you. Okay? Okay. I wish you well. Continue being the violent violinist, just not towards me. And say hi to Max for me. Will do. Thank you. Okay. If you are a person who creates content, you are a coach, an author, a thought leader, and you're tired of just making content for content's sake. And you're invested in this. You want to see it work because you know the value of content. I'm not here to convince you. But if you've enjoyed any part of this and you think I'm the kind of guy who you would get along with and who could possibly help you, this was a little sample. This is an amuse-bouche. This is what we're going to do inside Content Lab, a new program that we're launching. There'll be a link in the description. We meet twice a month. We do hot seat coaching, which is each

person 10 minutes. And I think for the first 40 people who sign up, you're going to be guaranteed a coaching spot. And we have resources. I've compiled a bunch of things on how to tell a really good story, how to write compelling hooks and lines. We have 52 writing prompts, like once a week. So, you always know that you have something to do. But not in a way that overwhelms you. I think once a week is a good cadence, especially if you're not used to consistently producing content. Look, if you enjoy the kind of content that I produce, if you engage with it on social media, if you like the style in which I deliver things, that's all I'm going to do is I'm going to teach you how to do what I do, period. Uh so, no engagement groups, no weird black hat stuff. It's all above board, white hat. And I don't really care about schedules or posting times and optimizing for any of that. I'm sure some of you want to do that, and that's okay if you do. But my style is when I feel inspired, I write. Luckily, I'm inspired a lot, so I write a lot. I want to help you do that. So, Content Lab, how much does it cost? It's $500 a month. So, that's $6,000 a year. Essentially, if you buy the year plan, which I recommend you do, you basically get 2 months for free. So, you pay for 10 months, which is five grand. Um and if you think one new lead, one new prospect is worth five grand, then it's a no-brainer. Okay? And that's it for me. Bye, everybody.