On today's Super U Podcast, we go deep on becoming a better storyteller!
I'm Al Roker! I'm here with Equalman!
Word of Mouth is now World of Mouth
Because someone asked, "What's the social play? What's the mobile play?"
Our clients and customers are telling us, "Hey, we love what you're doing here."
"Are you doing more of that today?"
What I'm telling you here today I'm not suggesting we get rid of Face-to-Face.
Digital Leaders are made... not born.
Like a lot of things in life storytelling is part art
and part science. It's an ongoing process for me both on stage in life and also writing books.
So I'm gonna unwrap this in two different ways; Storytelling as a
writer. As well as storytelling if you're performing on stage. So let's start off
with telling stories on stage. The first thing you want to do is get the audience
in the same boat with you. What does that mean? It means that they probably have a
story similar to the one that you are about to tell. A great trick to get
people in the same boat as you before you tell your story is to ask them a question.
Now I'm about to tell you a story. I used several different stories
when I got on stage but I'll tell you one of the ones I use a lot and I'm
going to use a question that I correlate with that to get the people in the same boat.
Now I'm curious in this room how many of you when you're on a plane, a lot
of you flew in here, how many of you like to talk to the person next to you?
Okay, I'll make I can't suck this you guys are the friendly people. How many of you hate that person?
(Laughter)
So I'm talking to this nice guy and after about thirty minutes I
asked him, "What do you do for a living?" and he goes "I'm a musician." And the poor
man had no idea had three cups of coffee at all so I go "Oh my gosh! Your a musician!"
This is how you use social & mobile! This is what you need to do.
This is what Lady Gaga does with all her little monsters.
The Biebs. You know Taylor Swift went dark now she's back on.
This is how you sell your music today. And the man was fortunately
saved because this nice lady comes up and taps me on the shoulder and she goes
"Can I have an autograph?" And I'm super pumped because no one ever recognizes
an author on a plane but I've been carrying around a sharpie for three
years just in case that's ever happened. So I'm digging through my bag and then I
quickly realized she doesn't want...She doesn't want my autograph she wants his autograph
(Plays James Taylor Music)
She wants five-time Grammy award-winning James Taylor's autograph
and I'm going three more hours until L.A. I was saying, "James, if only use this stuff
maybe you'd sell a record or two out there. So unpacking that we talked about asking
the question to get the audience on the same page they've all talked to someone
on the plane. They're leaning forward. You haven't given a way to pull the rug moment
That's another thing about great storytelling is you want to pull the rug
That's one way to do it. There's different arcs but one great way to
story tell is to zig when they think there's a zag. So they have no idea that
I'm sitting by James Taylor until the very end
And that's when you get the big laugh. Towards the middle and towards the end
there's a low point of the story. Your ultimate despair. If you think about
Rocky any Rocky movie it's in the middle he's not gonna be able to do it and then
he kind of rises from the ashes. So here's a sample of a story that I tell
on stage and what that arc might look like. So I was up in Indianapolis so it's
gonna give a talk in the afternoon but I was running in the morning and I saw the
n-c-double-a headquarters was there and I said oh man you are an idiot how could
you have not set up a meeting with the n-c-double-a and set up a partnership
with them a partnership meeting because we have the book what happens in Vegas
stays on YouTube but we also have the college version of that since so many
universities were using it we adjusted it to what happens on campus stays on
YouTube to include cyberbullying and sexual harassment so I'm saying they're
going wow this could have been really mission-based to help all these student
athletes with their digital stamps so I'm writing I go you know what hashtag
Yolo you only live once let's step into discomfort let's just stop by and see if
we can have a meeting so I run up to the front front doors but it's weird they
have like a lot of security there and they they have this old-school speaker
call box so I go up there with my sales pitch and it was terrible so they said
no you can't get in here so I keep running and I pull up my phones I'm
listening to music I go I bet I've networked before I need the network it
but I've posted it forward sure enough first connection LinkedIn with director
of communication I'm like oh yeah that's right
ami works here so now I go back to the call box
they let me in turns out they have security there cuz Homeland Security is
in the basement of this building we call Amy goes to voicemail I'm like oh man
there's another lady there that says hey she's on maternity leave for next couple
weeks am i great so I leave a note for the
security guard awesome and security terrible note passer but Ryan is going
up for a digital marketing position now keep in mind the CEO a place you can go
sweating is the n-c-double-a for a meeting but Ryan's going up for a
digital marketing position during the course of his interview they show a
version of the video that I showed you and he goes Ryan goes I know this sounds
crazy Josh but Eric I think the guy with the green glasses the gods green glasses
that made that video just showed me I'm pretty sure he was just in the lobby
next day Josh calls me hey this sounds weird but we in the lobby yesterday and
I go it wasn't the lobby then we start a conversation for three years we have a
deep partnership with the n-c-double-a to help all of their Division two
student-athletes so that arc you'll notice that there's a total moment of
despair at two moments number one we get turned away at the security box and then
number two when the note doesn't get passed so that's the way you can do an
arc of a story and sometimes you have a double arc which I just did there so
that's the whole point of storytelling people will lean in they want to know
what actually happens in that moment because a lot of people have probably
been in that situation especially if you're in front of a sales group they're
always trying to produce sales at first they're going this is crazy that this
guy went and did that but I've done something like that in my career and I
want to see how that pans out so again they're kind of in the boat with you if
they're salespeople they go I've had to do some crazy sales calls where I had to
step into discomfort just show up randomly and try to get that meeting the
other key with storytelling is context so I purposely did not give you context
before I told that story about going to the n-c-double-a the context for the
audience is it's example of the offline in the online coming together
so I usually tee that up before actually tell that story but most
importantly after you're done telling the story remind the audience the
context of that story so now we're going to talk about how to write and story
like fashion when you're writing a business book what you want to do often
when you're writing a business book is let that person figure out the solution
themselves to say oh I know he's talking about so you don't overtly say I'm
talking about John F Kennedy you tell a story with some clues and let that
person kind of be in on the joke with you and let them figure out who it is or
maybe they never figure it out and at the end they go oh that's who that
person is so here's an example the title of this section of the current rough
draft of this book says being Noble in the late 1800s a man in Sweden received
an invaluable gift this gift was courtesy of a grave heir made by his
towns local newspaper the lucky man was able to do the impossible he was able to
read his obituary while he was still alive there were two brothers Ludwig and
Alfred when the eldest Ludwig passed away the Swedish newspaper erroneously
reported in its obituaries that it was the younger Alfred who had died as you
can imagine Alfred was shocked to read of his own death his shock turned to
horror the more he read the words used to describe him in his legacy were
terrifying at the time alfred was a very successful entrepreneur his ingenious
and popular invention had made him a very rich man his invention dynamite as
such the obituary headline read dynamite King dies it later went on to call him
the merchant of death alfred was so dismayed about being
tagged a merchant of death that he immediately set out to ensure this was
not how he would ultimately be remembered not wasting time
Alfred drafted his last will and testament in this
four-page document he donated the majority of his vast fortune to a very
specific in new charitable cause when Alfred eventually did pass away his
obituary read positively different by changing his focus for his life before
it was too late Alfred successfully changed his legacy
and helped to positively change the world while many today may not
immediately recognize his greatness they certainly know the prizes he established
and left behind one of these prizes the first Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to
Henry Dunant the founder of the Red Cross you see reading his erroneous
obituary shocked Alfred into changing his life's focus as
a result alfred is not known today as the merchant of death but rather as the
man who established the prizes of chemistry economics literature peace
physics and medicine to carry his last name the Nobel prizes Alfred Nobel
learned the magical power of focusing on what matters most okay so that's an
example of a historical example of someone famous that you try to get the
reader to guess who your target about before the end and even if they don't
guessed it at the end that's a nice surprise and delight and also that they
learn something very fascinating about someone that's quite famous it also had
the bonus of helping the reader discover why something is named something for
example why do people say he was caught red-handed
that comes from way back in the day in the early years when he had livestock
and someone would steal your livestock and they'd slaughter that livestock and
then the neighbor would come over and go have you seen my Pig and they're sitting
there with your hands with blood on him you're caught red-handed so that's one
way to story tell another way to storytelling writing business books is
to cover social science studies that are shocking they're counterintuitive to
what you would think would happen and this is one such example on how we've
written it for the upcoming book we call this paradox of choice jam jam it all
started with Jam one day mark in scheana carefully placed 24 varieties
of gourmet jam forming a very large display in an upscale supermarket each
customer that sampled the jam were given a dollar off coupon every few hours mark
and scheana adjusted a large display from 24 varieties of jam to only six
options what they found is that larger display of 24 jams received more
attention 60% in fact than the display of only showcasing six jams that's right
the large display got 60% more attention however what transpired from there is
quite remarkable while the large display garnered the most attention and it also
had by far the most choices when it came to actual sales
it was outperformed by the table with less choices available the results
weren't even close people were 10 times more likely to
purchase from the table with fewer choices it doesn't in there either
increases in choice can often lead to increase dissatisfaction after you make
his selection most popularly known as buyer's remorse then we need to factor
in that additional choices often caused us to waste additional time and effort
researching the various choices which can lead to unnecessary stress and
anxiety this Jam study as well as many others like it has become known as
choice overload or the paradox of choice so again they're what we did is we set
you up what you'd expect to happen so we said that the 24 jams received 60% more
attention so you got yep that's what I thought and then you pull the rug that's
when you say but guess what they sold 10 times less than the table and only 6
jams so it's counter intuitive the way we'd think because you think about the
24 it has those six jams in the 24 plus all these other amazing gourmet jams
and then you remove it down in just those six jams it's the paradox of
choice our brain wants things to be simple so anyways speaking of simple
that's when it comes to storytelling trying to be as simple as possible have
fun with your storytelling I hope you found this helpful
feel free to keep sending us in your questions and remember keep listening to
the supérieur podcast because we're all about unlocking and unleashing your
inner superpower