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What happens when an idea is so powerful that it deserves to be heard by millions, but you just don't have the tool to deliver the message?
Well, in 2017, I found out myself as I was standing on the precipice of my first TEDx talk.
And I was completely overwhelmed.
But I turned to one book that changed everything for me.
Talk Like TED.
And this book didn't just help me to survive that stage.
It fundamentally transformed the way that I communicate and negotiate every single day.
And for me, it is a great honor to welcome the author of that book, Carmine Gallo.
Carmine teaches at Harvard.
He's a world-famous expert on communication and has written many bestsellers.
And today we're talking about the power of storytelling.
We discuss why great speakers are made through practice, not born with a gift.
And we also explore why your own real-life experiences are your best tool for connecting with others.
If you want to move from just being right to being truly persuasive, this episode is for you.
Let's jump in.
It's just a fun little bit of my origin story as it relates to you.
I had the opportunity to do a TED Talk in 2017 and I was just.
I was overwhelmed by the opportunity and I was trying to figure out.
What do I need to do?
What do I need to do?
And so I got a book you might be familiar with called Talk Like TED completely changed the way that I speak and present.
So this is an honor to have you on the show here, because I personally can attest to just how powerful the communication work that you do is.
Oh, that's excellent.
That's great to hear.
Thanks so much for that.
I'll have to look up that TED Talk.
You probably started with a story.
Let me get it.
I did.
And I've never.
I never, because you know, as a lawyer, the folks who I admired that I would listen to, they're all professors.
And that was the feedback that I got at the beginning when I did my first run through.
They're like, this sounds like a workshop or a professor.
I was like, yes, that's what I'm going for.
They're like, that's not what this is.
Oh, we could really get into the TED Talks.
I have interviewed a number of people who have Who have done a TED Talk and whose TED Talks have gone viral.
And there's so many things that I learned from them, which I then transfer to people like yourself.
But I wrote a book.
I wrote that book, Talk Like TED, not because I thought people would read it and give a TED Talk.
That's a very small subsection of speakers and leaders.
But what could we learn from some of the best speakers in the world?
And a lot of them have given TED Talks.
So it was an excuse, really.
It was an excuse for me to be able to touch base with so many incredible communicators.
And the one thing I learned, and I'm sure you'll appreciate this, we can dive right into it.
I've learned that great speakers are made, not born.
It takes practice.
It is a skill.
And like any skill, public speaking and communication is something you can sharpen if you're aware of the tactics, if you practice and if you apply yourself.
Carmine, I'm so glad that you started there, because I think, when it comes to helping people to develop the skill, it's so important to obliterate some of those self-limiting beliefs that hold people back.
Because people can say, well, I'm not a natural speaker.
It doesn't come naturally or easy to me.
I have stage fright.
And to me, when I hear that, I say, it sounds like...
You need to develop the skill of public speaking.
And what you're saying sounds a lot like some of the best speakers we know.
They started off in the same place.
They just worked really hard to learn that skill.
Well, you know the story of Warren Buffett, the true story.
Don't you, Kwame?
Have you heard that story about?
I'm intrigued.
Okay.
All right.
No, this is a true story.
You can look it up. because Warren Buffett himself has said this numerous times.
So Warren Buffett was terrified of public speaking.
And early on in his career, when he was a financial advisor, a stock advisor, he realized that this is a skill that he is going to have to develop.
So he signed up for what was then like a Dale Carnegie type of course.
I think it was about $100.
And he lost his 100 because he was too afraid to go to the class because they would ask him to stand up and say his name.
That's how paralyzing the fear was for him.
A few months later, he got up the courage again.
He went back to class.
And to this day, this was in a documentary.
To this day, the only certificate, the only diploma that he has hanging in his office is not the one from business school at Columbia.
It's from a Dale Carnegie public speaking course because he said that's the number one skill that you have to develop today as a leader.
And if you're not good at it, get good at it and go to class, take some classes, read some books, whatever it is you have to do to start taking those steps.
And if they're tiny steps at first, that's okay.
But you have to recognize that this is a skill that you have to develop if you hope to become successful.
That's powerful.
That's powerful.
Well, first of all, I'm just glad that he could afford the $100.
Yeah.
Probably the best ROI on any career.
I've often said that about my books, Kwame.
You would appreciate this.
It's quite funny.
For this new audio program that I published called Viral Voices, I interviewed a lot of people.
One of them is a founder, an entrepreneur of Square, Jim McKelvey.
Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey created Square, which is now called Block.
But it's the, you know, the mobile credit card reader that all merchants use.
Well, Jim McKelvey said that he read one of my books to prepare for the square pitch.
And looking back I now realize I said Jim, since you are now a Forbes billionaire and that book at the time was probably about twelve, ninety five, that could be the best ROI ever.
Of any book, of any publication you've read.
But seriously, you're so right.
And you know what's funny to me about this?
Because I don't think funny is the right word.
Ironic.
Because we focus so much, especially in American business, on the power of an idea.
And that is legitimately true.
We understand that ideas can be powerful.
We understand that technology can be powerful.
But I don't think we have fully appreciated how limited the idea itself can be without the ability to communicate that in a powerful way.
And I want to speak to this because I think a lot of times folks like to have the idea or the belief that Hey my, my work will speak for itself.
I don't need to promote this.
And actually it, it cheapens me to have to convince or persuade or communicate this.
So I I want you to to kind of speak to that belief, because I think there are a lot of smart people who are holding themselves back by not investing into this skill.
Yeah.
If there isn't one uh, extraordinary leader or communicator who I've interviewed, who I've written about for my books, who at some point hasn't recognized that this is a skill that they have to develop.
I think there's an entire category of people, Kwame, you're right.
There's a large category of people who do not recognize the need to develop this skill.
But I think those who reach the top in almost any profession, more often than not they have the awareness that there is something they don't know or that they can improve on this soft skill, this very human skill of selling their ideas persuasively.
You can have the greatest idea in the world.
If you cannot sell other people on that idea and drive people to action, which is the definition of persuasion, you will not be nearly as successful.
And I can go through the list of people like Warren Buffett, who has said to college students, when he used to do more public speaking, that the number one investment you can make is in yourself.
And that investment should be public speaking and communication, because everything comes down to sales.
And if you can't sell yourself and your ideas, you have virtually no chance of becoming successful.
Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, has said the most important class that she took in college was public speaking.
Because she developed the reputation within PepsiCo of being someone who can aggregate and assimilate a lot of data and a lot of information and then simplify it.
So she became the go-to simplifier.
Oh, there's a lot of complicated information there.
Ask Indra.
She can explain it.
Which is why I often think if you can explain AI, if you can explain the cost benefits of doing something in technology or AI within your company, you're going to be more valuable.
So everybody, from Warren Buffett to Indra Nooyi, to Jeff Bezos, who I wrote a book about a couple of years ago
I called it The Bezos Blueprint.
Jeff Bezos had a challenge very early on when he was starting a company, an e-commerce company.
The very first question that people would have for Jeff Bezos when he was asking for money at the time was what's the internet?
It wasn't, why should people buy books online?
It was, what's this thing called the internet?
So he had a communication challenge.
And he really pioneered some very interesting writing and communication tactics that made him stand out and also align teams around a common vision.
So many of the people who you see, who are really good speakers, good communicators, charismatic leaders, influential leaders at some point in their career.
If you look Far enough, in the background there's an event.
There's like a triggering event, an inciting incident that convinced them that they had to improve on this skill, which anyone can improve upon.
And that's communicating persuasively, selling your ideas in a way that really grabs people's attention and inspires them to go along on the journey.
I agree 100%.
And I'm thinking about some concepts that have gained a lot of steam recently.
And the word that comes to mind right now is the word authentic.
Because we have a lot of these avatars for who are great speakers that we could aspire to.
And I know with the way that you write, you're not telling people to be somebody else.
It's taking the essential elements and making it authentic to you.
But I think sometimes people get really hung up on that idea of authenticity where they say okay, I hear this advice.
It doesn't resonate with me.
Therefore, I won't use it or it's not for me.
I just want to have a bit of a conversation on that concept and how it can be equal parts empowering and disempowering, depending on how you see it.
I think authenticity is more important today than ever.
And that's because a lot of people are being replaced, okay?
Your tasks are being replaced by AI and artificial intelligence and software that can do things faster than you can.
So I've talked to a lot of neuroscientists about this and I've talked to a number of people who work within these AI companies.
I just interviewed a former executive from ChatGPT.
Chat, GPT and AI are very good at aggregating information, distilling information summarizing clarifying, doing research, but they do not have imagination.
Sorry to pop everyone's bubble.
I know that's a big thing these days.
Is it human?
No.
No.
I've talked to enough neuroscientists to tell you, no, it's not.
So let's not worry about that.
It doesn't have imagination and it certainly doesn't have emotion.
But if you delegate a lot of your writing, you delegate a lot of your communication to AI.
You end up sounding very much the same as everyone else who's delegating their writing and communication to AI.
And now I've just read a number of articles on what's called AI slop on YouTube especially, I guess something like 30 of the videos now are just these AI created channels that get views, but they're not authentic.
So the people with an authentic voice, with real experience, are going to start standing out Kwame more than ever.
Because, as more people get used to synthetic communication, those people who are genuinely authentic and good speakers and have a unique story are going to stand out.
At least that's the theory.
And that's not my theory.
It's a theory from neuroscientists who I've spoken to and people who work as engineers and scientists within the AI field.
I think that's interesting.
So I think you need to celebrate your own unique human voice, because that's something that AI cannot do.
I agree.
And when you think about the unique voice, our unique voice is going to be comprised of the extent of our life experience.
Our lived experience is in itself unique.
Your lived experience.
That's a term that came up quite a bit in my interviews.
Oh, nice.
OK, so we're on it.
This is.
This is great because and I think what would be helpful too as we think about the value of authenticity we recognize, it will help us to stand out, help us to sound unique.
How can somebody still stay true to themselves and be authentic while, at the same time, communicate using the tried and true principles that we know are associated with effective communication?
Yeah, that comes down to storytelling, which is why I really think that this word storytelling is something we should focus on.
I teach at Harvard.
I teach executive education at Harvard.
I also speak to a number of very high-level leaders in everything from healthcare to technology.
And storytelling is not something that comes natural.
I love it because I've been immersed in in this topic for many, many years.
I enjoy talking to speech writers.
I enjoy learning from screenwriters, people who live and work in Hollywood.
How do we apply Hollywood tactics to presentations and communication?
So I've realized Kwame that I have been immersed in storytelling for years, maybe two decades now.
But when I bring it up to business professionals, they don't quite understand how it applies to them.
They think, is this a creative writing course that I that I just got into?
What does storytelling have to do with me?
So I think storytelling is something that we should focus on and clarify, because it really is going to be your distinction, especially as a lot of content becomes derivative of one another.
It's the unique story.
Like you said, your unique lived experience.
So real quickly, let me just explain why storytelling applies to each and every one of us.
One of the many experts I've interviewed is Yuval Noah Harari.
And Yuval wrote the world's best-selling nonfiction book called Sapiens.
I'm sure you've heard of it.
And in Sapiens he argues that the reason why our species became the dominant species in the world, even though we're not as strong or as fast or as big as other species, is because we had a unique ability to use language in a unique way to tell stories, and stories elicit cooperation among large numbers of people.
That's the only way we were able to get anything done.
We were much stronger in terms of our ability to cooperate with one another.
Now that's Yuval Noah Harari's theory.
I spoke to another neuroscientist, one of my favorites, one of my mentors, a guy named John Medina who has been studying molecular biology at the cellular level for some four decades.
And he told me something very similar.
He said that it is deep within our DNA that for some reason, we are attracted to information in story form.
So when two people are just delivering facts and information to each other, it's really hard to have that brain sync.
And they're actually studying this in the lab.
We only are connected to each other when we share each other's stories.
And that's why stop giving PowerPoints.
Don't give a PowerPoint after this session, after this podcast.
But let me be clear.
You can use PowerPoint to complement a story.
I'm not saying don't use the slides, but the story has to come first.
Tell a story first.
Bring people along on a journey.
Use PowerPoint, if you'd like, or Google Slides or any other app to complement the story.
We are visual people, but the story has to come first.
And AI cannot create a story.
It can help you maybe write it so it's a bit tighter.
But it has to come from you, has to come from your unique lived experience with maybe, a frustration, a problem that needs to be solved.
Stories break down barriers with each other to one another.
I remember interviewing Bryan Stevenson, who gave a very famous TED talk.
He is a human rights attorney.
And he told?
In 18 minutes he told three personal stories from his life, three stories that related to the theme of his talk.
They weren't completely random.
They relate to the theme, but they were very personal stories.
And I asked him later after his Ted talk.
I said Brian, why did you isolate and identify those, those particular stories?
And one of them was about his grandmother.
And he said, Carmine, everybody's got a grandmother.
It's an instant connection.
It's a way of breaking down barriers to persuasion which, as you know, is very critical for any negotiation to take place.
So if you really dig deep into this stuff, you'll realize that people who are persuasive, who are good negotiators, who stand out, are in effect storytellers.
They may not call themselves storytellers, but they are.
And in fact, some people actually do.
I interviewed Richard Branson for this new audio series.
And Richard Branson said that storytellers, entrepreneurs are storytellers.
Good entrepreneurs are storytellers.
And he said storytellers drive change.
Storytellers drive outcomes.
So again, it's something that I think you'll start to notice that the people who have reached an incredible level in their lives or have amazing influence, who you consider a good communicator, now start listening carefully about why.
What do they say?
How do they say it?
More often than not, you'll realize that they're storytellers first.
The information is wrapped within a story.
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Brilliant.
It's so true.
It is so true.
When somebody tells a story, it's hard not to listen, especially if they are skilled storytellers.
Again, focusing on that word skilled.
It's a skill.
It's hard.
You have to work at it.
I've been studying storytelling for years and I'm always coming up with new ways of helping people understand what it means to be a storyteller.
But it's hard.
I'm not going to pretend that this isn't an advanced communication skill, frankly.
Right.
And let's get into this, because I think we are so surrounded by stories, and great stories, that we take it for granted.
We're raised with stories.
And so we say okay, I mean, I've been in around stories my whole life, but couldn't I just learn this through osmosis?
No, it takes skill.
And so, When you think about the biggest mistakes that you see professionals making when it comes to storytelling, what are those mistakes that often come up?
Not having a structure, not understanding that you are a storyteller.
Even if you're given a PowerPoint, even if you are just delivering information, you're a storyteller.
We're all storytellers.
Storytelling is wired deep within our DNA.
When we sat around campfires, when our ancestors sat around a campfire, they told stories.
And stories inspired, they informed, they ignited people's imagination.
There's another book I read that that's how we became explorers.
See, unless you hear a story of a faraway land, you're not really going to be inspired to get in a canoe and paddle out there.
So everything comes down to the stories that have inspired us.
So one, you are a storyteller.
Understand that.
You're not giving a PowerPoint presentation.
You are a storyteller first.
It is deeply wired in our DNA.
And there are a number of neuroscientists who are studying this in the lab.
So there's anecdotal evidence, there's historical sociological evidence, and now we're starting to see it in the lab.
Different chemicals are at work.
It's very interesting.
But now you have to start looking at yourself as a storyteller and say, well, what does that mean?
What does that mean to be a storyteller?
Well, a good story has a structure.
This goes back to Aristotle.
We understand what this formula is.
Aristotle was the first person to say that a story or a speech has a beginning, a middle and an end.
Okay.
What is Hollywood done with that?
Hollywood took the beginning, middle, and an end, created a three-act structure around it.
So the first 30 minutes of any movie is the setup.
That's when you learn more about the characters.
What is act two is the conflict.
Every great movie has to have tension, conflict, heroes, villains.
And act three, of course, is the resolution, when the hero you know, guess what they want, or there's a satisfactory ending and everyone lives happily ever after.
So there's act one, act two, act three.
Every Hollywood screenwriter has to follow those three acts in order to create a successful movie.
The only person I heard that doesn't is Quentin Tarantino, who pretty much rearranges everything.
Right.
We're not Quentin Tarantino and we're just in a business presentation.
So let's stick with the three act structure.
Here's why it's so important.
And now again, people will be listening to this thinking oh OK well, that's still very creative and doesn't apply to me.
It sure does, because I know as a fact, I saw this after it happened.
Steve Jobs, the great Steve Jobs who, when he delivered the iPhone presentation in 2007, when the first iPhone was introduced, he used a three-act structure.
And I know that is a fact because I saw some early designs of that presentation by the people who designed the slides for Steve Jobs.
It's a three-act structure.
It was a perfect three-act structure.
Three acts, meaning If someone comes out and says hey, we've got an exciting new product to show you today.
And here's a PowerPoint slide or here's a slide.
Take a look at it.
Isn't it cool?
That's not a story.
That's information.
A story is something like Two guys growing up together in a garage and they decide to start a company because they want to create products that are beautifully designed, that are easy for people to use, to take the power of computers and make it something that is simple and fun and interesting for people to use.
Those two guys were me and Steve Wozniak, and here's a picture of us in my parents' garage working on the first Apple computer.
And since then we started making other tools and other computers that are beautifully designed and easy to use.
But now we've reached a problem.
There's a problem in this category, and that category is called smartphones.
How many of you have a smartphone?
Oh, everyone has a smartphone.
There's a problem with it.
The problem is that they're very complicated and very hard to use, aren't they?
Oh, pretty soon people are nodding in agreement going, yeah, yeah.
Why?
Why are they hard to use?
Oh, it has to do with these keyboards.
The keyboards are in plastic.
They don't move.
It's very hard to add apps or features.
So we came up with a better way, a way to solve this pain, a way to solve this problem that you have.
And it's called the iPhone.
And here it is.
And then the next, you know, 90 minutes of the presentation was, let's dive into the iPhone.
But the iPhone didn't, Steve Jobs did not introduce the iPhone until act three.
Act one is the setup.
Here's who we are.
Here's our values.
Here's what our mission has always been.
Now we can get into act two, which introduces the the problems, the villains.
In this case, the villain was an entire category of product.
And act three is here's the solution.
Here's the hero who's going to make your life better.
The reason why that was such a beautiful presentation and anybody can go on to YouTube today and watch all 90 minutes of it.
The reason why that was so effective is because at the beginning of that presentation two days earlier, most of the business press was skeptical.
People were asking, why do we need another smartphone?
There's so many different types of smartphones from Samsung and all the others, and Apple has never built a smartphone.
Why do we need a smartphone from Apple?
90 minutes later, People are lining up around the block to get that.
That's persuasion.
That is persuasion at a masterful level.
But here's the thing.
Do you think that just happened?
You think it just happened?
Steve Jobs goes, okay, here's some slides I want to talk about.
And let's just go out and introduce our cool new product.
No, it took many, many months many, many weeks of designing and how they were going to tell the story.
Years later, Tony Fidel, who worked not only on the iPhone, but he's called the father of the iPod he worked side by side with Steve Jobs later went on to start Nest, which he sold to people for 3 billion.
So he did okay, too.
He was on a podcast a few years ago and the host asked what did you learn from your boss, Steve Jobs?
And he didn't say design.
He didn't say executive management experience, supply chain management.
He said, storytelling, storytelling, storytelling.
If you can't tell a story Kwame, nothing else matters.
They're going to have a hard time persuading anybody to hire you, to promote you, to invest in you, to buy your product.
Man, you're so right.
And you know what?
One of the things that you mentioned was when it comes to storytelling effective storytelling it doesn't just happen.
And I think that's one of the things that makes it so hard for folks who are trying to learn this skill.
The people who are so good at it make it seem so natural, like it's just off the cuff.
And so this kind of ties to the conversation about authenticity.
How do you make it feel natural in delivery and the reception?
How do you make it feel like it's not contrived?
Because the best storytellers seem to be able to pull that off.
It has to be authentic to you.
It has to be something that is relevant and personal to you.
Yeah, if you're copying somebody else or you're trying to be somebody else, you are going to come across as inauthentic.
But each and every one of us have stories.
When I teach at Harvard, I say there are different types of stories that each and every one of you has.
You just don't think of yourself as a storyteller.
Personal stories.
Personal stories are really powerful, but very few people like to tell personal stories, especially in a business meeting, simply because they're not used to it.
They don't think it's professional.
Now it's all about my PowerPoint slide and my bullets.
Let's turn to look at the slide.
No, it's about your story first.
Your slides complement the story.
It's a matter of just reframing yourself.
Let me give you a good example.
I had this rare interview, rare opportunity to interview Melanie Perkins who, as you might have heard, has started Canva.
She is now the wealthiest self-made female entrepreneur in the world.
I think Canva is worth $40 billion as we're speaking.
But you know what Canva is, right?
The online design platform.
Well, Melanie told me something really interesting.
She told me that she was rejected.
The Canva pitch was rejected over 100 times.
She was feeling really frustrated.
She needed money in order to get an engineering team together so that they could create this online cloud-based design platform which, as you can imagine, is not that easy to do.
You need a whole team.
So she was trying to convince investors to back Canva, and a lot of people turned her down.
And she realized something.
She wasn't telling the origin story.
Remember you said Simone has an origin story?
A lot of people have origin stories.
They don't even realize it's an origin story, so they don't tell it.
Melanie Perkins had a great origin story, and it was very, very simple.
When she was a university student in Australia.
Like many struggling students, she needed to make ends meet.
So she had a skill, which was design.
She was really good at graphical design.
She started teaching other students and her peers graphic design on the side.
The problem was, okay, you see how act one, act two, act three, act one is who is this girl?
What is she up to?
Student at university in Perth, Australia.
The problem was that when she started teaching design, she realized that most people don't know design one, but the design tools were very expensive.
Photoshop at the time, you remember Photoshop, The old software was boxed software.
So you had to buy the software, which was a really expensive and then install it on your computer.
So not only was the software really hard to use, but also very expensive, too expensive for most college students.
Let's now we transition to act three.
How are we going to solve this problem?
Hmm.
Well, there's this relatively new thing called the cloud, which allows anyone to store their projects online.
Can we use the cloud to give people access to tools that will help anyone become a good designer?
Democratizing design.
Ah, that's a cool mission statement.
Yeah, we want to democratize design.
That story.
Then she said as soon as she started telling the story in that way, the pitch changed and she said it was very transformative.
She used the word with me, transformative, because prior to that, they were just focused on the features of the product, like most of us are.
Oh, there's a really cool product we came up with.
Look at all the features.
Look at what it can do.
Instead the backstory, the origin story helps categorize it for other people and to help explain the why behind it.
But again, Melanie did not call herself a storyteller when I had a conversation with her.
She didn't call it a three-act structure, but I recognized that's what she was doing.
She was getting back to telling a story, not just pitching an idea.
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It's brilliant.
I love this example.
I spend way too much time on Canva.
I'm sure you could imagine.
And it's incredible to know that something that's so powerful may not have been what it could have become had it not been for story.
And it really makes you think just how story has shaped the world, not just in terms of what we do see, but perhaps what we don't see, because they might have had everything they needed but a story and i think for a lot of professionals it requires a little bit of humility too, because they might see themselves as a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, whatever it happens to be, and that is the leading identity, and they say all right it.
It is that identity is based on the intellect that I have and the data that I have as well.
But now you're saying okay, I love this advice of changing your identity when you're communicating to a storyteller.
Because when you see yourself as a storyteller now, there's a little bit of humility, vulnerability that goes into it.
And it's all about the person that's in front of you connecting with them through that story.
And it's okay to fail.
It's okay to share stories of failure. and hurdles, that makes for a much better story.
Richard Branson taught me this.
He said, nobody wants to hear a story that's just one success story that goes up in a straight line.
There's gotta be hurdles and challenges that you overcome.
That makes for a much more interesting story.
So Richard Branson told me something so funny and I'm glad I captured this in Viral Voices because we had an audio interview and so it's in Viral Voices.
But Richard Branson told me that when he you know, he's he's an adventure, right?
He's a risk taker.
And he used to do these really crazy stunts to get publicity for Virgin.
And once he tried to cross the Atlantic, he tried to beat the world record for crossing the Atlantic in a hot air balloon.
So he went with two people in the hot air balloon.
And it was him and another forgot the gentleman's name, but he was a experienced hot air balloonist.
And so they they, they got across, but then they crash landed, I think, off the coast of Ireland.
And they crash landed because, because of the wind,
And even though if you look back at the story, it.
Oh yeah, they crash landed, but they survived.
No, when you actually go into the story.
They barely survived because one guy jumped off the hot air balloon, you know, about 50 feet into the ocean.
And then without the weight, the hot air balloon just went straight up with Richard Branson in it.
So like he had to be real cool, calm, collected.
He even wrote out, you know, a note to his family saying you know this was it, but I love all of you.
Eventually he figured out how best to kind of start lowering it enough to where he could jump in the water.
By that time, there were some rescue ships coming.
And so he jumps in the water.
And if you look at the news reports, the very last thing that is on the image of all the TV the TV sets back then was the Virgin logo on the balloon sinking into the ocean.
And Richard Branson said, you know what?
That publicity was worth it because if we had not failed and crashed into the ocean, that majestic scene of the Virgin balloon sinking into the, into the Irish Sea would not have happened.
He said that was a much better story than if we had survived or if we had succeeded the first time.
And then we succeeded the next year and it was great.
So he said stories of struggle, near-death experiences.
Not that we would all hope for a near-death experience, but every movie has one.
Frankly, it's that moment when all is lost, when you don't think your company is going to make it, when you don't, when something happens or a crisis happens and you don't and You don't know if you're going to be around.
You know that next month or where that company is going out of business.
Those stories are really, you know, those stories of near death, company experiences or career experiences.
Those are great.
Those are great because they really connect you to people, because they could all see themselves in your struggle.
So if you have a struggle like that Not like hot air balloons not many of us are going to have that.
But if you have those kind of struggles where hey, you don't know if this project could have taken down the whole company, but you managed to align that team around the project and get things done, even when no one else believed it would happen.
Hey, that's a good story.
So that one story can give more information.
Display more information about who you are and the values you hold than an entire book and entire PowerPoint presentation.
So sometimes those stories are those authentic stories are absolutely key to getting what you want, you know, in a negotiation or in a job or a promotion.
Wow.
This is so powerful because one of the things that's really hitting me hard is that everybody has a story.
Everybody has multiple stories.
And when it comes to storytelling, I think one of the biggest things that holds people back is the fact that they don't realize how powerful the stories they already have are or could potentially be.
And it sounds like we could take a story of struggle, adversity, any kind of story from our life.
And if we are doing, if we do a good enough job, we can create a creative nexus to the point that we're trying to make in the, in the presentation or the negotiation or the conversation.
And it's not so much what that story happens to be about, but the message you can take from it and connecting it to the ultimate message you want to share.
I think good communicators and great leaders are very deliberate about the stories they share.
Why does the entrepreneur James Dyson, who invented the Dyson vacuum, why is it that he starts his book which I know I've got his biography here somewhere?
The very first page?
He says he failed 5126 times.
Why does he start with that?
He failed 5,126 times because he was trying to invent this new product, this new vacuum cleaner.
But it set the theme for the rest of the book because that's what invention is.
That's what a great inventor does.
They take risks.
They don't allow failures or mistakes to stop them.
They learn from their mistakes.
They learn from their failures.
So the fact that he could always tweak learn experiment fail, learn experiment that tells you so much about who he is as an inventor.
And about his now his company and this and the ethos or the vision that pervades that company.
So sometimes a really good story becomes what I call a signature story, a signature story about that brand or that company.
Case studies.
A lot of people, all sales folks, every sales person I know at least who's a good one has case studies.
Let me tell you a story about another client that I had, or that we had, who was in the same position you were.
They started using our software.
They improved their margins.
They improved their sales.
And now they're leading the category.
It wouldn't have happened unless they purchased our software.
You could do the same.
That's a case study.
But again, the sales folks who I've talked to don't see themselves as storytellers.
Even though they have these stories, they don't always introduce the stories as frequently as they should, because that's what people remember.
They're not going to remember your PowerPoint slide.
They remember the stories.
So be deliberate about the stories that you take into a meeting or a presentation.
I would like all my clients to know that if you thought my keynote was good before, just wait this year.
It is getting better by the minute.
I can't wait.
I can't wait to see the new one.
This is incredible.
One of the things that you mentioned earlier, going back to the Steve Jobs story, was the introduction of a villain.
And in that story, it was the clunky, difficult-to-use smartphones.
And I want to know how we can amplify our story in a tactful, tasteful way by introducing a version of a villain into the story to, to make the plot a little bit spicier.
Every story has to have conflict.
Otherwise it's not a good story.
There isn't one screenwriter in Hollywood that won't tell you there has to be conflict.
Okay.
Um, Aaron Sorkin, the great screenwriter from West wing and, and, um, Yeah.
Anyway, you know, Aaron Sorkin, Aaron Sorkin's like an amazing writer, a few good men.
But Aaron Sorkin.
I saw him on an interview once and he said all story, all great story, is intention and obstacle.
A hero has an intention to do something, but there's an obstacle in the way.
So this is the easiest thing anyone can do.
If you start looking at yourself as a storyteller first, think of yourself as a screenwriter.
You have a new product that you're pitching or a service that you are pitching to a new prospect.
Think of yourself as a screenwriter in three acts.
Act 1, 2, and 3.
Act 1, this is actually called the hero's journey.
It goes back to Joseph Campbell.
People can study that if they want.
I mean, you could really get into the weeds on this stuff.
But in its simplest form, Act 1 is the setup.
That's the ordinary world.
This is the world in which we're living today.
You could do this with any client.
This is the status quo.
This is the world that you're living in today.
This is how you're doing business.
By the time you say this in two or three sentences, you got somebody nodding.
Yeah.
OK, that's they've done their research.
They know our company.
That's that sounds right.
Here's the problem.
Now you introduce the conflict.
Here's the problem.
That you are going that either you're facing or you will face by continuing to do things the way they've always been done.
Oh yeah, that's a.
That's a good point.
Now you get people leaning in a little bit, going no, that's interesting.
The genius of steve jobs was that he can introduce a problem and convince us we had a problem that we didn't even know we had.
That's, that's genius.
But as long as you can at least Explain the problem in a way that's clear and that your prospect understands and can agree with.
That's all you need to do, Kwame.
We're not writing a two-hour screenplay.
We are just trying to get people to lean in.
Now I can set up the solution, which could be my idea.
It could be my service, my company, my product.
But I can't get there unless I'm drawing you into that story somehow.
So that's the simplest way you could do it.
Take them on a hero's journey.
Act one, act two, act three.
Status quo, problem with the status quo, solution.
Buy my solution.
Everybody lives happily ever after.
By that time, you'll get a second meeting.
I've actually been told by great salespeople at Big companies.
They say, you know, Carmine, sometimes it's all about getting the second meeting.
Very few people are going to write a check there today.
But if you can get if you can intrigue them enough to get a second meeting, that's a win.
That's brilliant.
And now this became mandatory listening for my sales team.
So thank you for that, Carmine.
I appreciate that.
And if I recall correctly, isn't it something like 70% of the Fortune 500 you've worked with?
Something like that?
Yeah, I'm really proud of that.
I've worked directly with senior executives at at least seven of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies.
So everybody from AWS, Amazon, Walmart, Microsoft, Google.
And I learned something from each and every one of them.
I remember at Google Kwame, I met somebody who was a data analyst, a very senior level data analyst, globally renowned as someone who understands math and data.
Because, you know, Google is a data driven company.
But within Google, he called himself Google's chief storytelling evangelist.
And I said, why do you go by that moniker?
And he said, because it's all about convincing our prospects to do business with us.
And the scope of change that we're trying to get is so big that you can't just give them information.
You have to package it in terms of story.
So what he did is he worked with the sales folks to interpret, to help them interpret the data that google has and turn those into case studies and stories that then they can offer their customers or their prospects.
But i found it i found that fascinating that one of the world's leading data analytics experts internally called himself the chief storyteller.
Right.
Which goes back to what you said about identity.
You have to see yourself as a storyteller in order to become one.
And don't get caught up in dismissing this as a soft skill.
It's not.
In fact, the hard data shows that it's a valuable skill.
I'll give you one great example.
Change the way I think about this.
This happened a few years ago.
I was interviewing the head of Y Combinator.
Some of you, some of your listeners may have heard of Y Combinator.
It's a little under the radar if you don't live in Silicon Valley, like I do, but they are the seed investor and angel investor to many of the brands that we know today.
Everything from Reddit to Airbnb.
They're the ones who have this program, where they bring in these usually very young or untested entrepreneurs.
They give them some money and then they mentor them for a few months before they let them out in the world.
But they have a stake in it.
So Y Combinator if it wasn't for Y Combinator, you don't have Airbnb and many, many other companies.
So I was speaking to the head of Y Combinator big investor at the time, and he told me something really interesting.
I was minimizing this whole thing about storytelling.
See, now I'm confident enough, Kwame, to talk about the importance of storytelling.
Back then, when I first started kind of dabbling in it and explaining it to business professionals, I wasn't sure if it was going to be as important as it turned out to be.
So I minimized.
I'm the storytelling coach.
I'm the storyteller.
And I minimized it in front of this guy.
The video is on YouTube.
You can see it.
And I said, well, I hate to bring this up, but what is the soft skill of storytelling?
How does that apply to pitching an investor like yourself?
And he stopped me and he goes, soft skill.
Why are you calling it a soft skill?
He said if you can't come into Y Combinator and pitch a story, because most of the time you're not going to have a real product to show.
You'll have a minimal product.
Maybe it's nothing more than an idea.
If you cannot convince me to go along on this journey with you, then you're not going to get investment and you won't be nearly as successful as you could be.
So that idea is going to die on the vine.
It's going to be really hard for you to get buy-in to that idea.
And then he paused and he looked at me and he said, you call storytelling a soft skill.
I call it fundamental.
Wow.
Wow.
Thank you.
I am never going to call it a soft skill again.
Thank you.
The storyteller was minimizing his own concept.
I had to have an outside investor tell me, well, that's silly.
Why are you calling it a soft skill?
It's fundamental.
Unbelievable.
That's fascinating.
That is fascinating.
And what I love about that story is that it shows that there's still always for everybody something more that we can either learn or a paradigm shift that we can have, which leads me to the last question, because I've been a fan of your work for a long time.
And now to see that you're coming out with something new, Viral Voices, I'm intrigued.
And I have two main questions.
Okay.
Question number one considering everything that you've already contributed to the world in terms of thought leadership, what made you feel like you needed to do another project?
And then number two, what was the most surprising revelation that you learned through that project?
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Okay, two good questions.
It was fun.
It's a fun project.
I've written 10 books.
I write.
I write books.
I speak.
I write columns.
That's been the extent of my thought leadership is the printed word.
Well, as you know, things are changing.
And this Viral Voices is an audiobook original that I co-wrote and co-produced along with my partners at Macmillan, which is a giant audiobook publisher in New York.
And so unlike a traditional audiobook, which I've done, traditional audiobooks are read.
It's typically you read a printed book.
Out loud.
Okay.
People buy the audio book.
A podcast like you're doing is ongoing with guests.
An audio original, there's a few more of these now.
You'll be seeing a lot more this year.
They are limited series audio books on one topic.
So this is like 10 or 12 episodes, chapters on the topic of very advanced storytelling and persuasion skills that you can still get wherever people get their audio books or their podcasts.
But it gave me the ability to bring things to life.
How else can I talk about vocal delivery without not only hearing my voice, but maybe hearing other experts, and then cutting to archived audio of somebody speaking in the way we're telling you to speak?
So, for example, I interviewed one of Barack Obama's speechwriters, and it was fascinating.
We talked about why do you keep words short?
Why do you stick to the rule of three?
Like, yes, we can.
Okay, that's all very deliberate.
How do you deliver?
How do you deliver the words for ultimate impact?
So you hear me.
You can hear the expert who I'm speaking to.
But then we could also cut to archived audio as well, or John Kennedy or Dr Mike or Mr Beast.
You know more contemporary artists.
So that's been a lot of fun.
I think it actually gave me much more creativity, because this is a hard concept to talk about in the printed form.
So I like the whole idea of bringing the audio to life.
But you asked me what I learned because I spoke to so many neuroscientists.
And I also spoke to people who were our influencers or successful creating content.
So content creators.
And I learned something fascinating.
The tools of communication have changed.
The human brain has not.
So everything from a speech given in Aristotle's time, 2000 years ago, to a short-form, 60-second viral TikTok will follow the same pattern.
Those haven't changed.
Our platforms have changed.
But the human brain is not.
So if you understand psychology and you understand what the neuroscientists are trying to tell us about how we process information, you'll realize that people are.
Whether they're doing it on TikTok or delivering a PowerPoint presentation, the fundamentals still apply.
We're just using different platforms to do it.
But the human brain has not changed.
That's been the most fascinating theme that I certainly learned and I made sure that it was pretty consistent across Viral Voices.
Amazing.
Well, Carmine, you sold me.
And listeners.
I know you could probably hear it in his voice, but the way you lit up when you started talking about this project, you were lighting up the whole episode, but there was a particular glow when you started talking about viral voices.
So I'm excited to check this out.
And so for the listeners who want to not just listen to viral voices, see your other work, but potentially work with you, what is the best way for them to connect?
If you can remember a good Italian name like Carmine Gallo, I am easy to find.
CarmineGallo.com or on LinkedIn.
I think I'm one of the few Carmine Gallos, if possibly the only one in California.
But yeah, I'm pretty easy to find.
So just go to CarmineGallo.com.
You can learn more about my books, Viral Voices, which will be available.
Wherever you get your podcasts and audio books or podcasts, please contact me.
I'd love to hear from you.
Amazing.
Carmine, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Kwame, thank you.
I appreciate the fact that you're as much into this content as I am.
So I appreciate you.
