(BEST OF) Three Words to Your Next Story

(upbeat music) - I ever wonder how a breakthrough idea actually becomes reality. Hi, I'm Susan Linder, and this is the Innovation Storyteller Show, where I sit down with the change makers behind the world's most inspiring innovations to learn how they did it and the stories that helped them make it happen. If you've ever had a big idea or want to tell yours in a more powerfully connected way, you're in the right place. I promise you'll get new ideas for how to tell a better story to your audiences too. So let's dive in. We are doing something so different this time around, and I'm so glad you're gonna be on the journey with me. I have invited my favorite storytellers to come on the podcast with me, who are gonna be giving you guidance from different lenses, not just mine, but there are incredible storytellers out there, probably as many as there are stories, who have unique and different frameworks that they use to help their clients tell stories. And I want you to begin thinking about story as this expansive practice that no one story is going to be sufficient to help you tell the story around your innovation, a breakthrough product, a launch, or even a process change going on inside of your business. I want you to think about story as this ever-expanding learning experience where you learned how to communicate better and better with each audience that you encounter. And that's why I want to start off this series with one of the storytellers whom I admire most. Park Howell is a 40-year brand storytelling veteran. He is known as the world's most industrious storyteller. And certainly, and it's prolific in his very popular podcast called The Business of Story. He is an author. He is the co-creator of the story, Cycle Genie, a whole new AI product that you can use to tell better stories. And his goal is to help all of you excel through the stories that you tell. So, Park, I'm so humbled and honored to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Susan, it's my pleasure. And thanks for having me here. So, let's get into it. How did you first become a storyteller? Like, where did that come from for you? What's the-- - Oh my god. Sorry, it's not a storyteller. - It is probably in the third grade when my parents kept saying to me, "Park, stop telling stories." I don't think it worked quite believing everything I was sharing with them. But, you know, I got in the advertising branding world 40 years ago, precisely because I was so inspired by the great advertisers that were amazing storytellers. And honestly, at the time, I didn't connect it to. I didn't think, "Oh, I love these guys and gals because they tell such great stories." No, I was just involved in the stories they were telling. And as I got into the advertising world and studied it and learned from my failures in it, I realized that, oh, there is such a thing as a structure or an algorithm to story that we can all use because, you know, as homo sapiens, we are intuitive storytellers. We are the only organisms that we know of that plan, organize, and act in story. You know, if you think about it, every sales pitch is a fictional story until you use the brand or marketer actually make it come alive in people's lives. They buy into it and then you deliver on those promises and the stories you make. So, the more and more I studied of it, you know, from what Hollywood knew, knows through the hero's journey in Joseph Campbell to the remarkable book, "Sapiens," where Noble Harari takes an expeditionary look at the power of story for us homo sapiens from when we first survived this savannah to where we are today, that the more I learned about it, the more excited I got about the science, what I like to call the "Scientim B. witchery" behind storytelling. - Yeah, what is that to you? What is the B. witchery? I love that you call it that. - Last time you heard a story, Susan, did it make you laugh? Did it make you cry? Did it make the hair stand up on your forearms in the back of your neck? Did you shiver? Were you excited? Were you disgusted? How did it physically make you feel? And if you think about that, that's simply energy. That's the transmission of energy from a story, you know, really disembodied element of a story being told to you that has a physical visceral reaction to you. What we teach is that the defined science of the algorithms of story to lead to that B. witchery that you are trying to create in your audiences, which is really related in business to influence and persuasion to get people to do something they didn't previously know they should probably be doing. That's the thing with you. - You know, and goodness knows, innovation is about behavior change and getting people to adopt a new thing that they never thought of before, right? And so we actually need the story to accompany that massive sea change from status quo to new thing because we don't get there without that bridge that is story. - Now, that's exactly right. And what does story do? It fires up the theater of your mind. So you can picture what could happen. You can imagine it. Your body and your brain comes along as if it's already happened and it starts crafting that story internally. But the trick is if you are not crystal clear in your storytelling, that brain is going to make up a story to try to make meaning out of what you are trying to communicate to them. So if you're confusing, you lose them. If you obfuscate the information, you're gonna lose them. They're gonna make up their own story. And that's why I find storytelling is so critical for leaders, from innovators to leaders in every aspect of life, to be able to really understand how to use these algorithms, these story structures that speak to that primal pattern seeking problem solving, decision making, buying, limbic brain. That's the ultimate goal. - Yeah, Park, you've developed incredible frameworks over this time that you've been doing storytelling. Tell my audience a little bit about your magic three words that make things happen. And then we'll dive into the really meaty focus on the hero's journey. - Yeah. Well, those magic three words are as simple as and, but therefore, now I can picture your audience rolling their eyes right now. I can really park these three words and but therefore. It's a framework that I learned from Dr. Randy Olson, Harvard, PhD, evolutionary biologist, USC Film School Grad, wrote and produced three documentaries on climate change and global warming, but the body of his work is teaching scientists and academics how to evolve their complex messages into a simple, compelling, concise message using the end, but therefore. Those three words basically are the outline for the three forces of story of agreement, the end statement of agreement, the butt statement of contradiction and the therefore statement of consequence. And they work because, again, a pattern seeking problem solving decision-making, limbic brain is primarily our survival center. So that's what we want to speak to. So you start with an end statement of agreement setting the stage. We can agree that this is important and we want it because of this and you get everyone nodding in agreement. Yeah, that's right, Susan. But now here's the pivot, here's act two, here's the conflict of the contradiction, but we're frustrated, we're losing ground, we're losing market share because of this major problem. Oh my God, you're exactly right. The limbic brain kicks in. What do we do about that? The therefore statement of consequence is that therefore, imagine what in two years will look like when we install this innovation and really make it work by simply doing this. And then that's your call to action on what to do next. So that setup problem resolution is simply the algorithm or the software, if you will, of how the hardware of our limbic brain wants to receive and process information to make meaning out of the madness of being human beings. - It's so funny. I'm sure you experience this in your workshops and the work that you do, like story that takes forever. You know, my boss is the three bullets and send me the Excel spreadsheet with the backup data. I don't have time to tell a story in a meeting. I'm gonna get shoved out of that discussion faster than you can say boot. Is this the antidote to that? I don't have time for a story. - Without question. So number one, you go into that meeting and we've all been there. The boss gives you five minutes to make your case. You never start with, let me tell you a story. Don't ever use these. - No. - You just simply go in and you look at your boss. My boss is Ann. Ann, we can all agree that this is what we've been working hard for as a team. And if we can achieve this, then, we are going to be able to knock it out of the ballpark. But we are stifled right now because of this major problem. Therefore, I need a couple of minutes to share with you a vision I have for how we can solve for this. All right. So that just took about 15 seconds. I used the three forces of story on my boss and to connect with their limbic survival brand and goes, Oh, interesting park. Then the next question in their mind is, that's your premise for this meeting park. I need to see it in action. So then the second thing that I coach is tell a short little anecdotal story, a real world story that you can tell in under one minute. That's actually still based off of the end, but therefore, but now you're going to bring a little bit more nuance to it. So you would not say, well, now let me tell you a story. You would say, for instance, and last Tuesday, and then you would go on and talk about that moment in time when something happened to an individual that was trying to do this, but then the whole thing blew up around them because they didn't have the proper stuff in place to do it. And therefore, that's why this need is more urgent now than ever. So now remember that ABT you shared with your boss and took about 15 seconds. That little anecdotal story to show the problem in action took hopefully under a minute. So you haven't even used 90 seconds of your five minute time slot with Ann to use two different story structures. Not to speak to her logic, reason, brain, but to speak to her emotional survival center. So Ann sits up and goes, oh my god, you're right. There is a problem. What do you think we need to do about it? Now you've got three minutes left roughly three and a half minutes left to now start speaking to that executive functioning brain because you have emotionally connected with your boss and she's listening in. She's leaning in and you're saying, here are the pragmatic steps we need to take. Bing, Bing, Bing. And here's the very first step. But in order to do that and we need to have your blessing. And what happens typically that I hear from people that use this first, the ampute therefore followed by a little anecdote that backed up with the logic and reason is boss and finally says, I've got some more time. Let's delve a little bit deeper. And now that also not five minute meeting is a consequential 20 or 30 minute meeting and your whole goal is to get Ann to sign off on that. But you are speaking to her emotional survival center first and then back it up with the logic and the reason. Where was it said that we have to come to work and leave our emotions at the door? I mean, I think it's probably been one of the most deleterious impacts on how we communicate as human beings in the office that we don't want to hit that emotional button on our listener when it really is the thing that actually drives action. I think, yeah, it's my hypothesis. Yeah. Once we step into our organization, our company, our whatever, what do we feel like we have to do for survival? We've got a look smart. We got a sound intelligent. We can't come across like we're offering stupid ideas and we think the way to do that is to speak to the logic reason driven brain. But it's the first thing to swat away your ideas and your opinions and your assertions because you're positioning yourself as an expert and at home or SAP and sitting across from you is like crosses our arms and say, okay, expert, prove it to me versus speaking up on them. Show them the problem. Have them feel the problem. Have them sit up and be afraid of that problem. And then they logically say, how do we fix this? Boom, let me show you how. Yeah. You know, as a New Yorker, I asked my clients the question, where is my listener bleeding from the neck? This is a very violent place where I come from. But if we can really tap into the agony, right, that our listener or our customer, our partner, what have you is going through, then we are getting so much closer to the urgency of finding the solution together. Well, I have a break by once Trevor Hill told me, said, park, you know, all sales is, is find the hurt, amplify the pain, heal the wound. There's no logic in any of that. It's all visceral pain and emotion. And now let me show you how we can fix that for you. I love that. I love that. Okay. So now take us on a deeper journey. So that is the, got to get my point across. And by the way, you know, Stanford's done some of the research for us. We know that when we just show up with three bullets, it's forgotten on average, about six minutes after leaving the meeting. So you might think you've had a meeting of consequence, but in reality, it's out the, it's out of their minds before you've left the room and wrapping in and story create is a memory making device. So take us on the deeper journey. Some of my listeners are really working on very sophisticated projects and need a deeper dive into how they tell the story. And I know you're a big proponent of the heroes journey. How many of us first learned about the glories of story from Joseph Campbell? You know, I just have the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation on my podcast this week. The business of story, his name is John Booker and he has sensational. So if any of your listeners want to do a deeper dive, it's episode 550 of the business of story. And we talked a lot about this very subject. So what I want people to think about say you've got a big presentation coming up. And I like to kind of snarkly say, you know, nothing kills your presentation faster than a PowerPoint riddled with bullets. You're going to lose the room immediately. So think of that presentation. It could be a 10 minute, 20 minute, 30 minute. Think of it as a screenplay. You want to take your audience on a story arc from where they are when you show it up in the world, you know, for that presentation of the way they currently envision the world to where you want to take them, this new way of looking at the world. And there definitely points steps along the way of points you want to make through that presentation. That's just the overarching thing. And I don't want people to get too lost in that because where your points really work is when you maybe use two or three or four stories within the overarching presentation to make your business points for you. And again, these are little anecdotal stories. They don't go on it and add infinitum, but they're making your business points because everybody in that room in their mind will argue with your opinions and your assertions and your findings, but they can't argue with the true story well told. So I like to use our story cycle system, which is based off the hero's journey, but mapped to business to 10 step process that takes you right through the presentation. How to structure that presentation, when to speak to the emotional center of your audience and then when to back it up with the logic and the reason and the whole idea is you're simply taking them on a transformative journey through the stories you're telling so that they can picture what you're trying to get them to do. They can feel what you're trying to get them to do. And those feelings are important because some point in that presentation, you want them to feel awful. You want them to feel afraid. You want them to feel if we stay in status quo, there's going to be a real problem here. You're going to find that hurt and you're going to amplify that pain, right? But at the end of that presentation, you're healing the wound to show them how this innovation that you are professing is going to make the difference in their lives. So it's a story is very meta where you've got the overarching brand story and then we have these little scenes used with the end but therefore, and oh, by the way, that overarching story is a gigantic and but therefore. The lead in is your and section. The middle part is the largest part that is your but section. That's where the action takes place and then your therefore section is that final call to action at the end of how you are going to enroll your audience into the what it is that you want them to do. So it's very meta, but once you get it down starting with the ABT, all the rest of your narrative intuition builds and everything else starts falling into place. Where do you think storytellers really screw it up? Where do you think getting it because it's not a first draft and done kind of process in creating story, right? We're working and reworking this presentation that we're going to give several times in order to really make the story stick. So what are some of the mistakes people make along the way? Mistake number one, the most prominent mistake is not making your story or your presentation about your audience. You're making it about you or your innovation or your initiative or your brand and people don't care about that. They only care about what's in it for them. So it requires the storyteller to make a paradigm shift is stop writing this story about you. Write it about your Arya. that's what is in it for them. That's number one. Do that and you are going to be way ahead of the curve already, because in doing so you create and demonstrate that you understand your audience, that you appreciate what they want and why it's important to them, and you are also demonstrating that you are empathizing with their negative emotion because of the problem that is keeping them getting from what they want. So when I talk about the three forces of story of agreement, contradiction and consequence, I also think of the three forces of trust building, of understanding, appreciation and empathy. Those are all built into the end, but therefore, and is built into the overall story cycle system. Number one, make it about them. You are not the center of your story, your audience is. Number two, your story is not about what you make, but what you make happen in their lives. They don't care about your initiative. They don't care about your innovation. They don't care about your widget, your product or your service. They only care about the outcomes of what that makes happen in their life. Outcome, trumps, offering every single time. So the two ships, your story is about your audience, and it's about what you are going to make happen for them. Not about what you make happen, period. It's so important, I think, for so many of my listeners that are product-focused people, and we get caught up in designing the world's greatest lightsaber, and we have to remind ourselves that the story is about Luke, you know, and what happens to Luke holding that thing. It's not, and everything that unfolds from there, it might be the greatest weapon ever invented in yet. That's not what we're here for. We're here to find out what happens on the other side of that. It's not about the ring, right? It's about Frodo. Exactly, and what it brings to life. It's vanquishing the dark side so that everyone can live happier and healthier lives. How do you do that? Well, I got this really cool lightsaber. Okay, give me one of those. I just also had a conversation with Christopher Vogler, who wrote one of my favorite books on storytelling called The Writer's Journey. He breaks down the hero's journey. It was initially meant for screenwriters and Hollywood, but it truly is an instruction manual for life, for business strategy, for communication, and so forth. He talks about the power of wish and will. If you think about that, every story begins with a wish. The protagonist wishes for something to happen, and then the audience is coming along saying, "Yeah, I want that same thing, right? I hope they get that too." But then they've got to trigger the will to act in order to make that wish. The triggering of that will now takes you through change management. You've got to go in, and we've got to change these systems and do this here, and oh, by the way, it's going to get harder before it gets easier, but our goal is to get out of this trough of innovation so that we can arrive at a higher, more enlightened place, but you've got to have the will to act. Well, those are two emotional forces. Those are two energetic forces. What do you wish to have happen in your life? You could ask that yourself yourself as a storyteller of your audiences. What do they wish to have happen? And how do I trigger their will to act? Knowing that when we do act, we are going to be tested. We are going to have allies. We are going to have villains. We are going to encounter fog in what we don't know. We are going to encounter crevasses of gaps in our thinking and gaps in our performance and in our ability to act, but we need to overcome those together in order to get to a higher ground. That is all emotional resonance that creates and triggers that energy in people to physically do something. Yeah. And I think so much of innovation storytelling is just helping people overcome their own inertia. God, yeah. We love status quo. Our brain thinks status quo is safe, because I can sit on that couch right behind me there. Go into a meditative state and do nothing. Chances are nothing will come and kill me. I will not put myself in harm's way doing that. Well, the same sort of mindset goes, you know, happens in business. Hey, we've always done it this way. If we, oh, my God, what happens if we change? Oh, we can lose our oil, you know, whatever. And yet in business is always evolving, especially in this day and age with AI, if we stay trapped in status quo, nothing will kill us faster. So it's a dichotomy. Our survival instincts are to remain in status quo. But our survival reality is we have to shed that cloak and have the guts and the courage to move into a new and brighter future. Yeah. I had a guest on and say who said she's an amazing innovator who said, you know, I have no problem with the status quo. As long as none of our competitors change, as long as there are no disruptive forces in the market, as if there are no new regulations or compliance requirements, or that the consumer just doesn't get bored of our products that we've been making for the last few years. With that, I'm totally fine with the status quo. If you can guarantee me those things. I love that. So you mentioned AI and park you've developed your own AI around storytelling. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So over the years, over the past 20 years, I have been working in studying story. That's why my clients called me the world's most industrious storyteller. I didn't give myself that moniker a client did one day and I said, I'm going to take that. I love it because I studied every aspect of story you could possibly imagine. And I've applied it to business and we've had great effect with brand development and leadership development and so forth using the applied science and be witchery of storytelling. One of my clients came to me one day and said, I love your story cycle system approach. In fact, it helped us build our digital agency and Sacramento to the point that we were able to sell it and make a lot of money. It enabled us to brand our SaaS platform, the mirror content management platform, sell it and make a lot of money. And I've been out helping other friends with their businesses and I've been trying to use your story cycle system. But he says it's hard and it takes time and you have to do a lot of thinking. He goes, I think we can make an AI driven narrative native product out of it so that it can collapse the time of two, three, four months of creating that brand narrative strategy down to one or two hours. And we spent two years building it and we call it the story cycle genie and it works beyond my wildest imagination. So we've been able to reduce brand development time by 98% in the cost of it by 99% and still provide world class branding based on our IP key around the story cycle system which guides the story cycle genie and of course built into its narrative core is the am but therefore within the overall genie, this is what we make. There's over three dozen specialized agents. So when you use it, it's like having a brand content firm of 30 plus people working for you all based inside the story cycle genie. And then to work with it all you do is you feed it to your website. It comes back to you with a brand assessment. I shared your brand assessment with you. And then it's kind of like mirror, mirror on the wall. How is my brand showing up for all? It tells you are showing up in the world and then you go in and iterate in it because it's going to validate what you're doing well. It's going to reveal gaps in your storytelling that you can quickly easily fix and it's going to inspire you with new ways to think about how you're telling your story. Once you get out dialed in it builds out an overall brand narrative story strategy again which would typically take two, three, four months to do. It takes you about two hours. Builds the brand brain and then from there it will create all of your marketing strategy, your social strategy, your content calendars and it will create all of your content based on your input. But it's always going to be on brand and every time you iterate inside the genie it learns about your brand voice and becomes more authentic in the writing of your thought leadership pieces, your videos, scripts, your presentations. In fact, even with the presentations what we talked about is when you use the presentation genie you tell here's my audience. Here's what I'm trying to tell them. Here's the download on it. It's going to work from your brand brain, your content playbook in that and it will follow the story cycle system and create a presentation for you. It could be a two-minute presentation, a 20-minute presentation, a two-hour presentation. But it will then put it in the arc of the story cycle genie and provide you opportunities throughout recommendations throughout where to use story in their anecdotes to make your business points for you. So what it ultimately does is democratizes brand story development and activation for everyone from solo per newers to four to five hundred companies. So what did you find looking at mine for I'm curious? Well, I should really ask that of you because I do not know your brand, you know, intimately like you do, like it came out and I thought it was interesting when it said your position statement here. Let me just read that says innovation storytellers is the only innovation storytelling consultancy that combines anthropological expertise with fortune 100 proven methodology to transform breakthrough ideas into business critical priorities. So what surprised me or what I thought was cool that I would love to go to the genie and iterate on that a little bit more is this idea of anthropological expertise, that idea of ancient wisdom of what we are digging up and really understanding about the archetype and personalities of our people and our clients and our communication combined with the latest fortune 100 methodologies. So you've got this ancient wisdom combined with today's greatest technology to create innovative storytelling. I thought that was pretty interesting. Yeah, as an anthropologist, you know, it's probably pulling on that background of mine and my instinct when I go and do storytelling inside of a company is I think of every company like its own country and you know it has its own culture, it has its own religion and values, it has its politics most definitely and certainly its economic incentives and structures and every department feels like a different state or province inside of that country whether they get along with one another or they don't but there's a whole societal structure that we can look at every time we enter a new country or a new company. It feels like I need a passport sometimes to and a translator. I'd love for you to understand it, but I think you're down on, I mean the culture, that's the emotion of the organization and so how do you embrace that? How do you talk about it and then their customers, how do they really understand the culture going on between the years of their customers? That's what story and the story cycle genie helps you understand is even a brand intelligence genie inside of it that you can go directly to a brand intelligence genie and say tell me more about this particular audience or prospect or customer whatever it might be and it kind of does that anthropological digging for you, but it doesn't replace you. It's not completely perfect. It's really there to work off of your own emotional intelligence and your own business leadership understanding of market trends, customer relations, you name it. So I like to say it's emotional intelligence plus artificial intelligence equals a whole new ROI and that is return on intelligence. Your intelligence as a leader amplified through the latest technology of AI. Wonderful. Park, I'm going to ask you the three questions I asked everyone who comes on my show. What do you think is the greatest innovation of all time? Well, are you sitting down? I sure am. The toilet. The toilet. I'm not sitting on it, but yeah. The resulting sanitation, now the romes did a pretty good job of giving us the basic anthropological infrastructure of sanitation, but what it has meant to humanity and human health and survival is pretty remarkable. And as disgusting as that innovation might be, to me, it's like probably the most profound. Having lived in many places where there isn't indoor plumbing, I could attest to that absolutely. So if you had the chance to join any innovation team in human history, which team would you have joined? What would you like? Oh, gosh, it's part of it. Probably it went a lot of year. People say I'm guessing. I don't know. I'd love to have joined Steve Jobs, innovation team. And it's not because he was inventing, and they were inventing new products. It was how they were iterating on products that already existed, almost like a metaphor, taking two different technologies, bringing it together for a third more powerful technology. To me, I think that would be really fascinating. And probably selfishly, it's because of that's kind of what I've done with story. I have not invented any of this stuff we're talking about today. It's been around since the beginning of time. But what I have done is iterated with it and brought it to business in new ways that is really powerful for people to be able to use it leaders to, as you said earlier, to excel through the stories they tell. So I would love to have been on his innovation team early on just to see how we melded all of these different technologies into an iPad and iPhone. The max that we're using right now, that would have been really fascinating to me. Yeah, it's the ultimate peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right? They're good independently, bread, peanut butter, jelly, but together, that's the whole thing. And lastly, what is the story that the world needs now? Oh, God. We are so divided, starting with our leadership on down, not to get political, but I've never seen America and the world as divided as it appears to be. I think the story people need is to pump the brakes, to listen to the people they're talking to, whether they get along with them and believe in their politics or their approaches or not. And find middle ground. So it's the story of finding middle ground that we can then build on, whether we agree with our audiences, our colleagues, our co storytellers or not. Neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. Abs. Now, park, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah. You know, the best thing probably through Instagram, I'm the only park howl on there that I know of. Shoot me and I am. Shoot me a connection. Let me know that you heard me on Susan's show here so I know where you're coming from. Would love to meet you there. If you like, you can also come through our contact page at thebusinessofstory.com. And there you're going to find a whole ton of resources, free resources and some paid for resources. And the final thing I'd say is if you would like to test the strength of your existing brand story, go to storycyclegini.ai, the very button you're going to see near the top of that page is your free brand assessment. Click on that, put your name, your email address and the URL that you would like it to review in under 60 seconds. It's going to give you a grade from A plus to F minus and a 14 point storytelling assessment. Again, we'll validate what you're doing well, reveal gaps that you can easily fix and inspire you with new ways to think about your own brand story. But of course, if you feel like, wow, I really need to start doing some work on this brand story, then feel free to jump into the genie. It's a monthly subscription thing you can get in and that first monthly subscription is the growth or the startup plan is only $200. And here's my deal. If you are not 100% enthralled with what the genie gives you in that first month, we will return all of your money that first monthly subscription and you keep all the assets the genie created for you. We believe in it that much. We know the power of it. That's wonderful. And thank you for making that available to my listeners. I really appreciate it. Park Howell, please check out the business of story. One of my favorite podcasts I learned so much from Park every day. So thank you, Park, for being on the show. Well, Susan, thank you so much. I love being here with you. I truly hope you enjoyed today's conversation. If you did, be sure to like, follow and subscribe so you never miss the next story that could inspire your own. And if you want to learn more about me or how I can help you and your team to become master storytellers to get your big idea to its finish line, head over to innovationstorytellers.com and schedule a call with me. Thanks so much for listening and keep telling your story. The world needs to hear it.