So, confession.
I have this ambitious goal of getting to $100k/mo with YouTube. It’s sooo so ambitious I’m nervous telling you lol.
But the problem is my videos aren’t doing well.
Behind the scenes I get a lot of love. Some people really love my videos. But tbh I don’t even love my videos.
It’s not that the experiences, stories, or lessons I’m teaching suck. It’s that my videos just sound like everyone else’s.
I recently watched my friend Aprilynne’s video, “why no one makes ‘original’ videos anymore”, and I really related. It’s something I’ve been feeling for the last year.
When I watched my early videos on YouTube, there was something special about them lol.
The retention wasn’t great, the editing was amateur, and my “thumbnail strategy” was literally just taking a screenshot… but they had soul.
It reminds me of the digicam trend right now. People love the grainy early 2000’s photos for the vibe. The newer cameras are nicer, like the Sony FX3, but they’re too perfect.
Same thing with AI.
Lately I’ve been using it so much that everything’s too perfect, to the point where everyone sounds alike.
Like if you swap my face with a Kevin Nguyen on my videos, I don’t think anyone would notice the difference.
So I decided to do something about it.
I’m “human-maxxxing” my videos so they don’t sound like AI slop lol.
The only skill I’m betting my entire life savings on is storytelling.
Storytelling is why we watch movies, chop it up with friends, and listen to yappers vlog their day. We’re all chasing the same thing of finding others going through similar human experiences.
Here are the three things I’m doing daily.
1. Get my raw voice out first.
After 1-2 years of using AI, I noticed I was having trouble with unique thoughts.
My writing and thoughts started sounding less like me, and I was really unhappy with the output.
Redditors will call it “user error”, but my writing just never had the nuance I was looking for.
So I started doing morning pages by Julia Cameron… but with a twist.
It takes 30-45 minutes a day, but it’s the best investment for unique ideas so far.
Basically, you write 3 pages of continuous, stream of consciousness writing. There’s no writing prompt. You just write down whatever comes to mind.
Some days, I write lists or moments from my day. Other times I feel creatively constipated like… “honestly idk wtf I want to talk about today” and I’ll write that for 1-2 pages.
People say it helps “get the pen moving”, but it’s more than that.
These are MY thoughts, raw experiences, and feelings on the page… not AI slop BS.
Sometimes it’s crap. But a lot of the time it’s messy (kinda like my abg ex in K-town). Other times it’s gold. Either way it gets out the things I’ve been repressing.
When I’m done, I take a photo and save it to my blog and Google Photos.
But as I’ve been doing it, the problem with morning pages is they take time.
And I wanted a more effortless way to capture moments in my life… kinda like FaceTiming a friend.
So I started yapping into my phone for 10 minutes a day while walking.
I do this at a mall, on the walk to BJJ or the gym, or at a coffee shop. I use an app called Letterly to capture everything, then a Zapier integration pushes it to Notion.
IMO this is much easier. And even though it’s good for ideas, I find it more helpful for telling me when I need to go touch grass lol.
Part of having stories “worth” telling is actually experiencing life.
So if things are dry, it reminds me to take myself on an artist date (aka 4 hours of fuck off time).
I’ll go to a bookstore, watch a movie, check out a new coffee shop, or write “things to do” in Google or Claude and do the first one spontaneously.
Like this week I went to a massage, then a bookstore, bought a journal, and watched Spiderman and Odyssey back to back lol.
If we want our own thoughts based on human experience, we have to live a life first lol.
…plus it gets me to 10K steps so I can hit 185 lbs and look great naked.
2. Turn moments into stories “worth” telling.
Once I had raw yaps and morning scribbles, I started asking… what are the stories worth telling?
I scrolled hours on IG and YouTube for advice from “expert” yappers. Then I found Jun-Yuh and his way of capturing stories.
What I love is his holistic approach.
His take is that people don’t just relate to the niche you talk about. They relate to the human experiences behind it, specifically in four areas:
- Love (hobbies & relationships)
- Identity (culture, sex, faith, age)
- Fitness (mind, body, spirit)
- Earning (career, clients, and skills)
Then I write two things.
- What happened?
- Why does this matter? (I ask 3 times.)
By doing this, our stories go from safe to real to raw. The raw stories are the ones worth telling.
And when we’re ready to tell our stories, I use Jun-Yuh’s 3P framework (so I don’t go off the rails lol):
- problem (the tension)
- pursuit (what I did about it)
- payoff (what shifted even if it’s a little bit)
When I started asking why is where my nuanced takes started coming out.
Sometimes I’d hit a line and think “dude, that’s a fire quote”. Other times, I’d be like “this fucking sucks”, which meant it was a boring ass story.
What I didn’t know was this process was helping me build “taste”, which is that gut feeling that tells you what’s good or bad before you can explain why.
3. Treat AI like a friend, not a ghostwriter.
When I think about why I loved AI, it was that I could ask it anything at 2 AM and it didn’t cost $1000 an hour lol.
…omg I made AI sound like a late night escort lol.
But what I didn’t like were the weird tics. The “it’s not X, it’s Y.” Or taking two sentences to say absolutely nothing.
Like no one wants to read AI slop.
So I started handwriting all my first drafts, so it’s undeniable my voice comes through.
It’s definitely not perfect, but I think that’s the point.
Sometimes I go way too long. Sometimes I hit writer’s block. But when I handwrite, the love and care come through the page. It’s kinda woo woo, but it’s like old school pen pals or passing a note in class back in the day lol.
Only then do I bring in AI, and I treat it like the advice I would get from a friend.
Like no friend is going to write my YouTube scripts or write these emails for me. But they’ll give me different angles to make a story more raw, catch typos, or flag what to cut.
My only goal is to ask… “what stories can I tell to hit the feels and make this memorable for the person reading this?”
It takes way more time… kinda like a homemade meal.
But at least the core content, the newsletter and the videos, is always in my voice.
Maybe the reason why people don’t stand out (me included) is because we don’t do the work of finding our own thoughts.
Is this going to get me to $100k/mo?
I’d honestly bet money on it, but no one knows for sure.
All I know is storytelling is timeless.
I was watching the Odyssey the other day, a 3,000 year old story still getting retold in the age of AI lol.
It’s also the one meta skill that improves everything.
…whether that’s marketing, social media, sales, making friends, or rizzing up ABGs. And it’s definitely more timeless than learning retention editing lol.
But the real reason I’m doubling down is that storytelling is more than going viral or getting subscribers.
Storytelling is really for us.
Storytelling helps reshape our future. It lets us rewrite the meaning behind the moments we experience, so they work for us, not against us.
Anyways, that’s what I have this week.
If you’re down, I’d love to hear a “one minute” moment from your week. It doesn’t have to be profound or life changing. It could be like… “I tried this Costco rotisserie chicken hack. It sucked. And I had to eat it all week.”
With love,
Kevin
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My Favorite Things 💯
📖 Readwise Reader – I’ve used this for 3 years. My books, PDFs, articles, and YouTube videos used to be scattered everywhere. Now I just share anything to Readwise and it lives in one place. When I highlight or take notes, it syncs to Notion (or any knowledge base you want). I’ve been reading way more since, and I run my highlights through Claude to figure out how to actually apply them to my business and life. They have full 60 day free trial here, and the subscription is affordable. Better than Netflix lol.
✍️ TUL Rollerball Pens – When I started morning pages, I hated it LOL. My hand would cramp and I didn’t want to get up early just to write. So I made it easier. Now I order a Vietnamese coffee, a coconut water, and write with my TUL pen. As a former drug dealer (aka pharmacist), I’m really particular about my pens. It’s the same ink as the Zebra Sarasa, but the metal body feels way more premium and comfortable. Personally, I like the 1.0mm or 0.7 mm because of the glide. A few years after using this, I actually look forward to journaling now.
📚 Effortless by Greg McKeown – Confession… I’m a recovering overachiever. Maybe it was pharmacy, maybe it was too many years in entrepreneurship, but my default was always… how can I do more? Now I’m hitting 40 soon, my schedule’s tight, and I get tired. This book flipped the question to… what if it could be easy and fun? So I started letting myself rest more. Now my 4-5 hour days beat my old 12 hour days lol.
Quote of the Week 💭
“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”
-Greg McKeown, Essentialism
Resurfaced from Readwise 📚