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To Help People Understand What You’re Talking About Faster, Give an Example Sooner

I just saw a great example of a mistake a lot of us make when explaining our Big Idea or a key concept.

The video below is a great example of how you can be a brilliant thinker and writer, and still forget to make your ideas more instantly understandable to your audience.

In this brief interview with Youngme Moon, author of Different, she describes three different types of brands:

Reverse Brands
Break Away Brands
Hostile Brands

As you watch the interview, notice that the interviewer asks her for an example after she describes each brand type.

When she gave an example of each brand type, didn’t you get more of a sense of what the different terms meant?

I don’t know about your experience, but as I was listening to her definitions, I found myself paying close attention, but not feeling confident I got what she was talking about. But then when she gave an example of a company that embodied the brand and why, the light bulb went on. Oh, that’s what she means!

So…here’s the take away, and something I learned from Klas Mellander, author of Power Learning. When you are explaining a concept, do NOT make this common mistake:

Name the concept , explain it, and then give an example, or worse yet, move on to the next concept without ever giving an example. (BTW, notice how in the video, the interviewee followed up after each of Youngme Moon’s explanations with a request for an example.)

Instead, when you present a key concept:

Name the Concept (e.g. “Hostile Brand”)
Give a Concrete Example (e.g. She shared an example of a company with a Hostile Brand)
Explain Your Concept (e.g. What Youngme did in the interview)

By giving the listener something concrete to attach your abstract words to, they can grasp the abstract far more easily than if you simply try explaining something abstract with more abstractions.

So…give examples; make your abstract ideas concrete…and your audience will love you for it!

Jun 24, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

How to Start Your Presentation Off With a Story…and Why You Want To

Starting a presentation off with a story starts your presentation off with a bang. It captures your audience’s attention and signals “This isn’t going to be one of those boring Death By PowerPoint presentations.

When choosing an opening story, use this list to see how many of these objectives your story accomplishes. Different stories acccomplish different groupings of objectives, so you might find yourself with two really good stories to start off with, in terms of entertainment value, but one addresses an objective that is especially important for your group while the other one doesn’t.

So for instance*, you might be speaking to a skeptical audience who doesn’t think the issue you’re going to talk about is important. You will want to pick a story that addresses the price they are paying for NOT addressing the issue and also subtly communicates your expert status. If you were speaking to a group who already believes in the importance of the issue, you might choose a story that offers hope.

Opening Story Objectives

Bond—“He understands me.” and/or “He doesn’t think he’s better than me.”
Credibility–“She knows what she’s talking about.”
Pain— “Man…I would love to not feel that way anymore.”
Clarity— “OK, got it! This is what she’s going to talk about.”
Cognitive Dissonance— “Wow, I never realized I might be paying a price for…”
Promise—“That would be awesome if that could happen for me.”
Hope— “Maybe this will be the answer I’ve been looking for.”
Fascination— “Wow…I never thought about it in that way.”
Enchantment– “How amusing.” and/or “What a unique way of starting off a talk.”
Positive Anticipation— “This is going to be fun, different than the same ole’ same ole’.”

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* Note: “So for instance…” is one of the most powerful three words in teaching. This phrase helps you take a conceptual idea–like the paragraph that starts with “When choosing an opening story…”–and make it more understandable by providing a concrete example. As the brothers Heath write in Made to Stick, one of the most important ways to make your ideas “Sticky” is to make your ideas concrete through examples, analogies, and stories that illustrate your concept.

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In this video, I am speaking to an ASTD chapter on storytelling and…surprise, surprise…thought it would be a good idea to open up with a story.

Notice the choice of story (and story within a story) and see how many things you notice in terms of why I started with this story, as well as why I started off with the story within the story at the event I referred to…in the story.

In the next post, I’ll play the next part of the seminar where we process this opening story (within a story).

Please feel free to post your observations (and questions) in the Comments Below

To see what the audience picked up on and hear my commentary, go to Starting Off With a Story – Part II.

Also…if you haven’t seen the Add Powerful Storytelling to Your Training webinar recording, click here

Jun 23, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

Make Your Coaching and Selling Points More Persuasive with Analogies

Want to make your important ideas pack a bigger punch?

Use analogies.

Analogies don’t just make abstract ideas concrete, and therefore more understandable. They also make your points more persuasive. Often when you are trying to teach or persuade, ideas that to you are self-evident are NOT self-evident to your audience.

They don’t have all the context you have which makes your point obviously true. They don’t have your experience or expertise. So your job is to put your idea into terms they CAN relate to, and into terms where it makes your point an “Off course!” idea.

Analogies from within your audience’s realm of knowledge and experience help you do that.

So for instance, take a labyrinth.

From the ground view, finding your way out of it can be daunting because you can’t see the big picture. You can’t see the path out. However, someone from an aerial view can easily see where you are, and what path you need to take.

“Hmmm…what might this be an analogy for?”

Now…think about what a labyrinth could be an analogy for.

Hey…I’ve got an idea? How about….”the value of coaching”?

One of the biggest benefits of coaching is that the coach can see things that the person in the midst of their problem—their labyrinth—cannot.

When we are in the midst of our challenges, we often cannot see the big picture or the way out because we are at the ground level. All we see are walls blocking our way. A skilled coach, however, can see possibilities and options that we cannot because they are not in the middle of the drama. They have perspective. It’s like their having an aerial view of our labyrinth.

Now, this analogy also speaks to the fact that as a coach, you don’t have to have special powers or a Mensa IQ (although those might help). Just the fact that you are NOT that person gives you a perspective they cannot have.

Here’s an An Analogous Experience (and an Example of Using an Experience as an Analogy)

It’s like when I was a therapist many years ago and participated in peer supervision. I often noticed with bemusement how my colleagues and I were always far more confident in our treatment recommendations for each others’ clients than we were of our own. Because we weren’t emotionally involved with the issues our colleague was dealing with, we could take a more dispassionate view and not have our perceptions clouded by the emotionality of the situation.

Having some distance from the problem didn’t just allow us to see options that the therapist immersed in the challenging situation couldn’t. Having that distance also helped us not second guess our intuition and judgment.

Because we weren’t having to deal with the issues that the situation was triggering for the therapist, or have to deal with the client’s doubts and fears, we would not have the self-doubt they would. We felt confident in our assessments and recommendations.

But then…when it was our turn to share our challenging case, WE would be the one feeling conflicted and self-doubting.

I bet you can totally relate to that phenomenon.

Here Are Three Ways You Can Apply This:

Feel free to use the labyrinth analogy when explaining to a potential client the value of having a coach and how it’s not about them not being smart enough or somehow “less than.” It’s just part of human nature that others can see things that we can’t when we’re in the midst of them.
Identify key points you frequently make and see if you can come up with analogies from other domains that make those points more punchy and more “Well of course that makes sense!”-able.
Also…notice how the picture of the labyrinth makes the analogy hit home even more (aka “A picture is worth a thousand words”). For your presentations, find pictures that visually depict your analogy.

Jun 23, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

How to Be a More Fascinating Interviewee

One of the best ways to learn how to tell stories that make the media and podcasters want to interview you–and that make potential prospects light up when you talk–is to listen to the interviews on EntrepreneurOnFire.com.

First, you will hear great stories.

Second, you will occasionally hear interviewees NOT telling stories and then you will hear the interviewer, John Lee Dumas, challenge them and coach them on how to actually tell a story as he had originally requested.

It’s sort of like “Shark Tank for Entrepreneurial Storytelling” minus the bruising feedback (yet still candid and very useful).

Let me give you an example of how NOT to answer a question if you’re being interviewed.

John: Give us one of those examples, because we like the aerial perception. Then we dive into a real story, a real example. We want to be there with you when this happened recently. Tell us a story.

Interviewee: One of the things that I do on a regular basis is I do video book reviews of other experts’ books. I’m a huge believer in shining the spotlight on other experts. You obviously, John, are the same way with your show and with your whole empire that you’ve built.

But I think the more value that we can add, the more that we can feature and leverage other people, shine the spotlight on others, post on other people’s Facebook walls messages of gratitude and thanks and sharing the impact that they’ve had on you personally and professionally, showcasing other people’s book reviews.

One of the little mantras that I have as well is people are not tired of hearing from us. They really aren’t. What they are tired of is they’re tired of hearing from you about you. So who else can you raise up? Who else can you showcase and feature and leverage and point out, because really as experts we’re continually seeking expertise.

The more that I shine the spotlight on others the more that shines back on me as someone who is looking to take care of my audience and my tribe and my readers and my followers. So I do that daily, weekly, monthly, always.

John: … great focus. But again, you still haven’t told us one story of you doing that in actual practice. Let’s hear it… I want to hear about a failure. I don’t want to hear about an overarching vague failure and what happened and why. I want you to take us down to a day, a time, a moment that you failed. I want to be there with you, when you failed. Take us to that moment in time and share with us the lessons you learned from that.

Notice how the interviewee’s answer is abstract. He talks in general terms and take away messages. While his message is valuable, it is neither moving nor memorable. You don’t feel drawn into it like you do a story. There’s no drama. There’s no movie playing in your head about what happened.

Compare that response with the gripping story Mike Michalowicz told in his interview:

Take Away Message

Use examples and short stories to make your important points come to life. –So for instance, in this post, I could have just exhorted you to use stories in your interviewees and explained why. However, by sharing a story of what it sounds like when you don’t do that…and then sharing a story of when the interviewee DOES tell a story…it’s much clearer what I’m saying and—hopefully—makes the point hit home far more forcefully.

To Apply

Listen to EntrepreneurOnFire.com to get schooled in storytelling
Collect examples and stories that illustrate your key messages
Get coaching if you’re unsure of how to tell a good story or aren’t sure about the stories you’re using

Jun 21, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

Start Your Presentation Off Right with a Pain and Promise Story

If you want your audience to care about your message, start off with a story that speaks to their pain and presents your promise of what can happen if they listen and apply what you’re going to share.

Here’s an example of a Pain and Promise Story that I used to open up a webinar hosted by the American Society of Training and Development on how to use storytelling to jazz up your presentations to about 600 corporate trainers and Organizational Development professionals.

While this story was relevant to my audience (and you’ll see why), this story is even more applicable to entrepreneurs, consultants, and other experts who are great at what they do but….might not be the most confident or interesting speakers….and are therefore very nervous about bombing when they speak.

How to Apply This

1. Identify your market’s/audience’s major sources of pain.

2. Get clear on the outcome your product, service, or message facilitates in relationship to that pain.

3. Identify some examples of this transformation.

4. Tell the story to someone who knows how to tell a story and get feedback on whether it works as an opening story, how compelling it is, how it can be improved.

BTW…at 1:07 notice the language pattern. This is something from the “old days” of using and teaching hypnotherapy and therapeutic storytelling. I’ll write about that later.

Finally..we will be talking about how to start off with a story and more at the upcoming program

Jun 02, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

Ouch…Watch How Derek Halpern Uses a Story to Pack a Punch

Derek Halpern of Socialtriggers.com in his recent post “How to Lose Customers and Alienate Clients” gives a great demonstration of a major customer service Moment of Truth that caused him to leave a bookstore/coffee shop despite having been a “frequent flier” and big spender there.

Besides being worth watching as a reminder about the importance of being customer-centric and not creating rules that drives away great customers or clients, it is a great example of how using a personal story makes your lesson pack a punch.

Watch it and learn!

Want to be a kick butt storyteller so people WANT to hear about your cool business or game-changing ideas? Then come to

Tell a Better Story. Create More Interest. Get More Business

A seminar for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, consultants, and coaches

With David Lee and Donna Galluzzo

June 20^th • 9AM-12PM

SALT Institute, Portland, Maine

click here for more info

May 29, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

Use EntrepreneurOnFire.com to Become a Captivating Communicator

If you’re an entrepreneur—or any expert for that matter—who wants to be a more powerful speaker and someone the media wants to interview—tell short, punchy, captivating stories.

You cannot speak in 30,000 foot generalities and hope to get media attention or keep any listener’s attention.

When you talk, the listener needs to be able to play a movie in their head of what you are saying. Better still, you want to create a virtual reality experience.

So how do you get good at telling stories? One obvious place to start is paying attention to people YOU find mesmerizing, people who grab and hold your attention.

Notice how they do it. What do they do that captivates you?

Chances are, a big part of how they do it is by telling stories that make you feel like you’re there, going through the experience they are recounting.

Want a great resource for listening to great storytelling in action?

Check out the daily podcast EntrepreneurOnFire.com by John Lee Dumas. Each day he interviews an entrepreneur and asks them to share stories that illustrate key teaching points, such as an AH-HA moment, their proudest moment, and a failure that proved to be a great learning experience.

It’s no accident that EntrepreneurOnFire.com provides listeners with a rich tutorial on how to be a captivating storyteller. John Lee Dumas explains to his guests in their pre-interview conversation: “They want to hear your journey, not generalities, not vague, aerial perceptions of what you think failure means. They want to resonate with you as a person. I want you to tell a story…to really tell of a specific time in your life. We want to feel like we are there with you…we are all about the story

Here’s an example from a great interview John did with Mike Michalowicz, the entrepreneur behind three million-dollar businesses, and the author of The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.

John asked Mike to share an AH-HA moment.

Here’s Mike’s answer (I edited it a bit to make it read smoothly. If you’ve ever read transcripts of great speeches or interviews, the spoken word and written word flow very differently)

The AH-HA moment for me actually came in another dark day, which I was referring to, but has become the most important moment of my life and I think it always will be…

It was the day I had lost all the money I made.

After I sold that second company, I told you I became an angel investor, but I also became arrogant. I believed that my worth was represented by what I had, not in what I was contributing.

So I bought three cars. I bought the Viper, the BMW, the Land Rover… literally all on the same day.

I moved into the biggest house in town; I had all this stuff.

I promised myself I would never be that guy, but I became that guy.

I was a dick, a total dick. I wasn’t rude to people, but I thought I was better than people, which is the rudest thing of all.

After about three years of living this arrogance, I lost everything.

I was investing and losing. I was buying and losing. I was living off savings.

I wasn’t making money. I was trying to figure out what I’m going to do next.

I came home one day, had another fateful call with my accountant. He said, “Mike, your taxes are due now and you owe $50,000 in taxes.”. I literally had $30,000 left in my bank account.

I was like, “I can’t pay my taxes.” He’s like, “Oh, you may have to declare bankruptcy.” I was like, “I’ll never declare bankruptcy, but holy crap.”

I came home and I was sobbing, in front of my family and just saying, “I’ve lost it all.”

Everyone was blankly staring at me because they’d never…I mean…this is your father or your husband, who has done everything to protect the family.

Now he’s lost it all.

My daughter ran away…

She was eight or nine years old at the time.

She comes back about a minute later with her piggybank, and she puts it on the table and she goes, “Daddy, we’re going to make it.”

What I learned in that moment – and I’m choking up now as I remember it – what I learned in that moment is that we are not our number.

We are not our stuff.

We are our authentic self.

That was what taught me about authenticity. My daughter just put out the most of her that she could in the moment, and it changed the moment.

I realized if I put the most of me in the situation, if I put my authentic self out there, that’s where I can change moments and help change people.

So that was my biggest learning moment. It was in my darkest period where my eight-year-old daughter taught me the lesson, the ultimate lesson…

(BTW, at the end of the post, I’ll give you the link to the actual interview, so you can hear him tell the story)

As you read Mike’s story, couldn’t you just picture it? Didn’t the story just grab you and refuse to let go?

That’s what stories well told do and that’s why you want to get good at telling stories.

Think about how different it would be if John asked Mike to share an AH-HA moment and Mike said something like “After building and selling a multimillion dollar business, I felt I had arrived. I felt like I had it all figured out….and then I lost it all. That was a really hard thing to go through…but fortunately…I picked myself back up and now I once again have a successful business.”

How inspiring would you find that?

What about if you are an entrepreneur going through tough times, not generating any income, racking up credit card debt and thinking “Will this every change?”

Wouldn’t you find Mike’s story just the dose of inspiration and perspective you needed to realize “This tough time is just a chapter in my life’s story…it’s NOT the whole story.”

That’s the difference between speaking in generalities and platitudes and telling a riveting story.

So…I highly recommend you listen to EntrepreneurOnFire both for the inspiring and instructional content from the entrepreneurial perspective, but also from the “How to Tell Great Stories” perspective.

NOTE: The story I shared above starts at 13 minutes in the Mike Michalowicz interview. However, I recommend listening to the whole interview. It’s one of EntrepreneurOnFires’s best.

About John Lee Dumas: EntrepreneurOnFire is a top ranked, 7-day a week business podcast, hosted by John Lee Dumas, interviewing today’s most successful and inspiring Entrepreneurs. We share the journey of our spotlighted guest, highlighting a failure and lessons learned, an AH-HA moment and the steps taken to turn that moment into success, and the LIGHTNING ROUND where John asks five questions that extract nuggets of wisdom from his guests.

Since EntrepreneurOnFire’s launch in September of 2012, we’ve had the pleasure of featuring Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, Chris Brogan and over 500 inspiring Entrepreneurs.

EntrepreneurOnFire is all about inspiring YOU to take YOUR entrepreneurial leap. We know that by hearing the failures, AH-HA moments, and successes of others, you can begin to craft your dream and take inspired ACTION!

About Mike Michalowicz: Mike is the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies and the Author of The Pumpkin Plan and the business cult classic, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. With a popular, quirky website at MikeMichalowicz.com, he is a globally recognized entrepreneurial advocate. He is a former small business columnist for the Wall Street Journal and now hosts the business make-over segment on MSNBC’s Your Business.

Apr 25, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

How to Use Analogies to Make Your Point More “Sticky”

In Chip and Dan Heath’s excellent book Made to Stick, they discuss the power of analogies to make abstract ideas more understandable…and pack a bigger punch. Analogies do this because they:

Make Your Abstract Concept Concrete…and Therefore Easier to Comprehend-It’s much easier for the brain to process a concrete image or example than make sense of an abstract thought.
Make Your Ideas More Interesting–Hopefully you will find that to be the case in this short video.
Connect the New and Unfamiliar to the Familiar--It’s a lot easier to understand a new concept when we can link it to something we are already familiar with. Analogies do that. In the video below, you will notice that I use analogies to make my points more clear and…
Turn an Idea from Being Vulnerable to Skepticism to Seeming Like a “No Brainer“–One of the very cool things about analogies is they help you reframe ideas and rigidly help beliefs. They do this by taking a point of view that the listener or reader holds as true or even self-evident, and then uses the same or similar viewpoint in a context where its validity is easily called into question. Without getting into the hypnotics of it all, doing this also helps to link up the feeling of uncertainty, where before there was only certainty.

This video is from my main website HumanNatureAtWork.com

Feb 14, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

Falling Asleep and the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven

Note: If you would prefer to listen to this, the podcast version is at the bottom of this post.

Are you missing important clues that can guide you on your life journey?

Do you sometimes sleep-run through your days, your mind filled with all you have to do, not noticing the people and particulars around you?

And truthfully…do you only half-listen to those speaking to you?

When we do these things, we fail to notice important clues the universe provides us. Just as the hero on the Hero’s Journey must remain alert for clues that can mean life or death, we must remain alert if we are to recognize clues to important issues we are wrestling with. We must practice being present if we are to hear answers to questions we’ve been asking.

When we navigate our days on autopilot, when we remain lost in our thoughts and our drama, we tune out potentially life-altering perspectives and wisdom, offered in the form of throw away lines from the person who chats us up at Starbucks, or the unexpected experience in the checkout line.

I was reminded of the importance of staying awake and practicing the discipline of mindfulness at the 2013 Wisdom 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

At the conference, I attended a lunchtime webcast presentation by Eckhart Tolle. The webcast was held in a cavernous hall of the exhibition center in San Francisco. Between the timing—right after lunch—my brain being on information overload, the live cast being held in a dark hall, and… Eckhart Tolle having shall we say…a low-key, hypnotic presentational style, I found it hard to stay focused on what he was saying.

OK, to be truthful, I found it hard to stay awake.

My mind drifted, farther and farther afield until I was semi-conscious. Suddenly, my torpid slumber was pierced by these words “…and when you can do that, you will have the key to the kingdom of Heaven.”

What was that?

The key to the kingdom of Heaven?

Did he just say “that’s how you get the keys to the kingdom of Heaven”?

What is it that you have to do to have those Key?

In a nanosecond, I had shifted from a somnolent lump to a full on, hyper-alert student.

But it was too late.

He had moved on.

I turned to the woman next to me, confessed I had been dozing and asked her what the keys to the kingdom of Heaven were.

She didn’t know. She too had been asleep.

While hungering for what Eckhart Tolle had said, I also stood back and smiled at what a great metaphor my experience was for how we miss out on important messages—messages that might prove life-changing–when we are not awake, when we are not present.

Even more interestingly, when I did an internet search on Eckhart Tolle and “keys to the kingdom of Heaven”, here’s what I found at http://voices.yahoo.com/eckhart-tolle-god-5887512.html?cat=34

In Eckhart Tolle’s philosophy, accessing the now is the key to the kingdom. Only when a person is “present”, and therefore free of the clamor of incessant thought, is he really conscious in any meaningful way. In that state all of life’s riddles and complications melt away like butter in a flame.

In another article Ekharte Tolle and the Kingdom of Heaven Within, Eric Nelson adds the piece “within”, as in “being present is the key to the kingdom of heaven within.”

How ironic that the very thing I was NOT doing was what Ekhart Tolle had been saying was “the key to the kingdom of Heaven within.”

So…where and when are you not as present as you might be? What opportunities await you, that…if you remain awake, present, and mindful…you will gain access to the kingdom of Heaven within?

Storytellers Note: While I hope you enjoyed this story for its own message, I also encourage you to examine it as a model for stories you can “catch” and tell. Notice:

It was a simple experience, yet it contained an important message.

It was an experience that triggered bemusement and curiosity. These are often great experiences to use as stories because they can be used to add more punch to a teaching point, get people thinking, or provide a new perspective in a fun, engaging way.
It was an example of how you can use a self-deprecating story to challenge someone. So for instance, if I were coaching someone and wanted to challenge them to be more present and to be aware of what they were missing because they weren’t present, I could tell this story. Because it’s about ME not being present, I get my message across without taking a one-up “I’m the guru here” position or like I am admonishing them. Instead, the subtext of the message is “I am relating to you as a fellow traveler”.

So…how about if you pay special attention to things that happen in the next few days that leave you feeling bemused, curious, or surprised and then think about how you might use them as a teaching or coaching story….

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Feb 13, 2014 | 0 comments View Post

The Cost of Perceived Disrespect and Injustice in the Workplace

One of my favorite truisms that I share with managers and leaders is:

“Power may bring immunity from feedback, but not reality.”

In other words, one of the “perks of power”–or having a strong personality–is that people are less likely to give you feedback on how counterproductive your behavior is. The more power a person has, the less likely people are to say: “Hey…it really bothers me when you ______.”

But…just because they aren’t saying it, does not mean they aren’t feeling it. Nor does it mean there are no consequences, no underground blow back to that behavior. Employees have a way of expressing their displeasure in many silent ways: not working as hard, taking “slick days”, not sharing ideas that could make a difference, dragging their heels on projects, complaining about “safer topics” (while never addressing the real source of their outrage).

Anyway…you get the idea.

This post is about how to get this point across in a way that has impact.

One of the ways I try to bring this concept alive and make it more “sticky”- a la Made to Stick–is through a story I tell that comes from the movie Casino titled The Movie Scene Every Manager Should See…But Might Be Afraid To.

Another angle I approach the issue of respect and justice in the workplace, is to share to really cool lines of research and then translate their implications to the workplace.

These two areas of research are:

1. The Ultimatum Game

2. Which doctor’s get sued and which one’s don’t (this is especially fascinating)

Here’s a video clip about this research. My hope is that it will both give you food for thought and…illustrate how to make scientific research come alive and use it to make your key message hit home at more than just an intellectual level.

It also is an example of how to use a story to “challenge without challenging”, so your message doesn’t trigger defensiveness.

If you want to be a more compelling communicator, inject scientific research–told as a story–into your presentations.

If you want to stimulate conversation in your workplace about how to create a more respectful and thoughtful environment, share this video with your team and then do the exercise talked about in the presentation.

Dec 20, 2013 | 0 comments View Post