TRANSCRIPT 🔗
B27: I got asked to do my first ever American Marketing Association workshop. And I can remember I prepared all of my slides. It was very educational. And my sole goal was to cut all the entertainment fluff out of it and just focus on what actionable content could people get out of what I was sharing. And it totally flopped. Welcome to B2B on Air. I'm your host, Joseph Lewin. And in today's episode, I'm going to share one really interesting thing I've learned about. Storytelling that's helped me connect much better with audiences. Now, if you've been around marketing at all or anything around creators or anything like that, you'll hear people say constantly that you have to tell stories. And this was always really difficult for me because what does that even mean? How do you how do you tell a story? I've done a ton of research on it and read tons of books and listened to tons of podcasts, but there was one thing that I learned that's really helped me to tell better stories, especially when I'm planning something out ahead of time. And that is to start out with an interesting story that doesn't even have to be relevant to what you're talking about. The goal of a story when it comes to communication is the story is a vehicle to get the idea that you're trying to tell across. And so in this example, I told that initial story to be a vehicle to illustrate what it looks like when you just have education content and you're not adding any kind of story or anything interesting into what you're doing. People will tune out. Fast forward a few years and I was on stage in front of a couple hundred people at my friend Matthew Dooley's event, social media, show and tell. And this time I started with a story. It actually had absolutely nothing to do with the main content, and it wasn't even a story about myself. I started out talking about how Zanzibar was an island that all of this trade happened, including slave trade and gold and spices, to s paint a picture of Zanzibar. And then that tied into my own personal experience in Zanzibar that then led to. Illustrating how I made a massive career change. And all of that storytelling, which took up the majority of the talk, was all there just to be a vehicle for my one line, which is one conversation could change anything. And so I started with a story that wasn't relevant at all to one conversation could change everything, to tee up my personal story about how I had a conversation that changed my life. And then all of that led into that line. And people took away that line way more concretely than they would have if I would have just tried to talk philosophically instead of using that story as a vehicle. And one interesting thing I've noticed with some of the best people at giving speeches is that they don't always tell their own stories. And the story that you're telling, again, doesn't have to be relevant at all to what it is that you're talking about. Talking about the slave trade off the coast of Tanzania on this little island called Zanzibar has absolutely nothing to do with the ultimate thing that conversation or that speech was about, which was one conversation could change everything, and then leading into how to do that practically, which is through a podcast. And the and the the normal stuff that I talk about. And so when you're going to give a speech or you're going to be on a podcast or you're going to do anything, it's really helpful to think through what is the main point that I want to get across and then craft a story, whether that's from yourself, from a client, or from something completely separate. And as long as it's a vehicle to help you illustrate that point and people take it more concretely, it's actually going to help. educate people far more if they attach what you're saying to a story. now that switch in framing for me, where a story is a vehicle, and that that story doesn't even have to be my story or anything to do with me has helped me to get way better attention, especially when I'm kicking off a speech. And this also applies when you're podcasting. So anytime you're gonna do a podcast, you can kick it off with a story and it's gonna help draw your audience in. And with that, thanks so much for tuning into this episode and we'll see you on the next one.