Insights with Ben Chodor

Conversation with Joe Lazauskas (The Storytelling Edge)

May 20, 2020 Ben Chodor/Joe Lazauskas Season 1 Episode 2
Insights with Ben Chodor
Conversation with Joe Lazauskas (The Storytelling Edge)
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Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of Insights, Ben sits down with Joe Lazauskas, author of The Storytelling Edge

The Storytelling Edge offers an insider's guide to transforming your interactions ―through the art and science of telling great stories.

Ben and Joe dive into the neuroscience of storytelling, the elements of powerful stories, and methodologies to craft the powerful stories that not only build brands and engage customers, but also build relationships and make people care―in work and in life.

To learn more about Joe Lazauskas and the Storytelling Edge, visit https://www.thestorytellingedge.com/

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Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are welcome to Insights. This is my opportunity to sit down with opinion leaders, authors, just people who have some success in their lives and get a chance to ask them some questions and not about sales motivation, and not about how you build a business. But really how you communicate. And I love that one of the first people I'm interviewing is Joe and his book, you know, the story telling edge by contently, him and his partner Shane wrote the book, welcome to the show, Joe. And I read this book in one sitting, which is, first of all, it's not that long. I mean, it's about just under 150 ish pages. But was that is it really was telling a story. Everything you guys did in the entire book was like, little anecdotes about what chain went through or you went through and it really struck home and I think I learned best when someone's telling me story. I think most of you Do and that's

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it sort of was a lot of the motivation behind the book was is because, you know, as leaders as marketers, as you know, just people in the world, we want to teach people something they want to communicate the things that we're passionate about. And thanks so much in Modern Marketing, we have gotten caught up in this sense of, I just need to speak the jargon of the industry. Right, right. I need to use these buzzwords about the AI and power digital transformation that's going to revolutionize the paradigm of 2020. And we're often not saying anything, but really as human beings what we're, we're built for stories. as a species. We're addicted to story, Jonathan Gottschall the author of the storytelling animal, this great line I love which is that even as a species, we're addicted to stories. Even when we go to sleep at night, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories. It's really true. We are Storytelling animal in every way. And really the key to everything in our lives is

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stories. What are some of the elements from good storytelling?

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So in the book, we explore four key elements of effective storytelling relatability. So we're naturally drawn into stories that we can see ourselves in. So this is why when we're teens, we love to go see teen movies. If you go and see an older rom com like something's gotta give, with Diane Keaton, jack nicholson, right, you're gonna see a lot of more Boomer audience out of that film. It's why buzz dedes entire growth strategy is really effective, where we'll have, you know, 23 things only kids at Stanford can understand or 17 signs are raised by a Jewish mother. We're naturally drawn to these stories that we can see ourselves in and that we can relate to. The second key is is novelty. So our brains are programmed to actually light up when we see something new and something new enters our environment. This is obviously really helpful. If you imagine your cavemen around the fire, there's new threats that come into your environment, new people new lessons about where food is, or about how the weather is acting or what migration patterns should be. Those of us who respond more to new things, and capacitor genes and thrive. But it's also happens when we perceive received this information via story. There's something new in the story that we haven't seen before, we're much more likely to perk up and we're much more likely to remember it. The third eye is fluency. Right? So this is this idea that you want to make it as easy as possible for someone to get absorbed in the story that you're telling. You want to break down that barrier between you and your audience. So a lot of companies struggle with it. Right? We have white papers that are so can I say I'm a

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death by PowerPoint. Want to talk about corporations? And besides white papers? It's like

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you can't PowerPoints was the speaker support, right? It's not supposed to be your script. So is creating a PowerPoint not telling a story, right? I don't think you'd say

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that. We're creating a PowerPoint isn't telling you a story, but I do think that you can tell a story through a PowerPoint. Right are okay, so think about the way your pitch deck right? Yep. Sales narrative. Yep. I would argue that it's actually something we go over in a content strategy course we recently I contently, that a pitch deck is a great opportunity to tell to follow a classic storytelling pattern, the narrative. You want to start saying you're that pitch deck with the exposition, right? And say I'm selling contently or anything or what what's, what's the stage? What's happening in our industry, what's

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happening in marketing or content right

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now? And then into the rising action, right? What are the stakes? What's at hand? Who are going to be the Organizers, then you show the promised land, right? What word can we get to? And then you can have the falling action, which is, what is the actual solution look like? And the resolution, how will I help you?

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And you, you have to do with, you know, with a story in mind, right or a formula, right. It's not just slide, slide, slide slide, right. No, yeah,

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but you, I think people tend to say, like, think of think of some mediums of storytelling mediums and other mediums and it's not a storytelling. I think anything can be a storytelling medium. It's simply about how are you practicing the principles of good storytelling? In whatever you write you are so you might be stuck. Creating a lot of PowerPoints, I would challenge you every time you sit down to create a PowerPoint. But what is the story in that PowerPoint? Creating a PowerPoint? Without a story, even if you're presenting just to, your board? Yep. What story are you telling with that data about where your company is and where you're going?

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So I love that So when you were doing all this and coming up with the book and working with Shane, what was some of the most surprising things you found about how our brain governs our emotional responses to a good story?

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It's that's actually a really interesting question. I, on one hand, one of the most interesting things was how much the neuroscience research validated what we instinctively have known about stories in terms of the fact that the classic story arcs from the hero's journey to Vonnegut's six archetypes of stories actually held up, you know, like these, our brains do respond to this, which is fascinating. But, in, especially since the book, I've done more and more and more and more time with neuroscientists doing different sorts of research on I actually just finished a study that we conducted last week with a company a couple blocks from here called neuro insight, where we tested three democratic political ads that were very narrative centric to see how people responded to them. And neuro insight has some really exciting new technology that shows memory encoding in the brain. So the moments in the story where I'm going to remember this brand, or I remember that's the message on and in that when you drill down into like the second by second analysis of the story, I think that's where a lot of the surprises come. Because you, you see things that you wouldn't have seen otherwise both in terms of how certain

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points universally a fairly people, but also

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how stories often transcend the bias that you had coming into it. So in this study indicated to me yet because of analyzing all the data, the candidate who performed best was not actually the candidate who most of the voters came in supporting to begin with on end, so I think of our assumptions about what the study would show were flipped on its head so much based on the power, the narrative and the ads. That

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was being followed.

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I can't wait to see when, when that's done a global report. Yeah, we're hoping the editor in a pretty big publication, so I can't wait to read it. it's defintley going to happen for you guys. All right. So here's a question I got for you. So how should brands and companies frame their story in the hero's journey? It's another one of the fascinating things I read here. It's so common sense. And I fall into it every time when I watch a movie. Yeah, I love the hero's journey. So and what is the hero's journey yesterday? No.

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So hero's journey is a classic storytelling archetype. And it's really centered around the the conflict and intention that we go through in the story and that thing that keeps us on the edge of our seats. I think that's ultimately as opposed to just always using the hero's journey and like the hero's journey is one storytelling archetype. That is For some stories, but in the underlying principle behind all storytelling archetypes on is probably

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the most important thing for companies to understand. Which is

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that sense of tension right? In a

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story, which a lot of companies shy away from because we don't want to talk about, like, challenges. We don't want to talk about what's not going well in our industry. We don't want to talk about like actual hurdles that our

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customers had to overcome and say case study video.

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We want to sugarcoat everything and make it seem like everything is hunky dory. And, you know, Aristotle described tension as the gap between what is and what could be, and the key to a great story is opening this gap and closing it over and over again.

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So think about like,

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what's your favorite rom com? My favorite rom com? There's so many. I think it has.

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Wow, I'm actually stumped right now on what might What's your favorite rom com.

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Alright, so it's holiday season. So I love Well, actually, I love it. Alright, so actually, that's one of my favorites. Yeah. A little bit problematic. But like something that was actually like, give me all the warm fuzzies, especially around Christmas time. And this is he wants there's a lot of different narratives in there, right? But with everyone say with, you know, with the little boy and the girl that he's in love with, there's this gap between what is and what could be right he's in love with this girl in his class yet but she doesn't even know he exists. So he decided for the drums and he starts to close that gap. And it seems like he's really gonna, you know, close the deal and he's gonna get this, you know, get her in his lane, but then she's moving to London. So this gap opens again, or she's moving after that which is moving here, the actual movie and then he starts to close it again. But then right as it seems like he's killed the last performance, she's leaving for the airport, and that gap opens again and he has to run through the airport and kiss her at the end of the terminal. And it's like Like this hugely satisfying moment where it's what keeps you emotionally engaged this gap between what is and what can be and, and this is what keeps us on the edge of our seat in action movies, in thrillers in Ocean's 11 anything you can think of is the sense of tension. And that's the biggest key to storytelling that anyone in any situation needs to embrace it.

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Can we use an example like, how did GE get it right?

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So GE is one of my favorite examples of brand storytelling. So a big part of GE's turn around about a decade ago was the way that they started to reframe how they identify as a company, right from pure for an industrial company to an innovative technology company. And a big part of that was GE reports which is their corporate blog. It's like centered a lot both for GE geeks as well as investors that look that does what Tomas Kellner their editor in chief calls a shoe leather reporting about the work going on inside of GE. So GE is this company with all these amazing breakthroughs being worked on, you know from solar energy and wind energy and jet engines and travel around the world that, you know, normally only get released when it's a finished product and it's a press release, but what Tomas did is he came over as an editor from Forbes. And he built this program in which they just did reporting breaking news on the innovation happening inside GE and talking to these engineers and scientists who are super geeked out to talk about this new winter when they're developing. And those stories were so well told,

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and it costs a ton of mediums. They're one of the first brands on

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on Periscope. They really embraced a lot of a lot early live streaming on Facebook and Twitter. Tomas would go out there in like these little one seat airplanes and shoot these really cool videos, as well as just normal. articles with really nice photography. And they were able to go viral on Reddit, they built up this

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huge mailing list of people who just

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wanted these updates, because it was just pure storytelling, about really cool innovations that inherently promoted the brand. Right? It means, you know, think of GE as Wow, that's really innovative, cool company that could save the world that could help us tackle all of our challenges with climate change. And, yeah, that I think is just such a great example, about the type of storytelling you can do because every company has really interesting original data, innovations, things they're passionate about, but they need an innovative way, in a way that's going to engage the audience to really care, right? Yeah, but I don't think the formula is that complicated, like you have to why doesn't everyone get it right then if it's uncomfortable, complicated, I didn't how many companies are willing to hire a really good journalist and let them loose inside their company reporting everything I've learned On inside of it,

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there's everyone people are scared.

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They're scared to not have everything be super controlled to be in this tight er Tupperware container. And they are they think that it has to be more complicated than it is that storytelling somehow has to be this hundred thousand dollar investment that your agency is pitching on, like, that's a lot of the principles that we just built around contently where, you know, at the core, what we do is, you know, we you sort of content strategy technology to tell you what was your stories you should be creating. And then we have

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the richest and most highly

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rated roster of freelance creative journalists and storytellers and videographers on earth. And then we work with the companies to really like, let them loose telling stories that don't really understand and it It works like that. It's not very complicated at the end of the day, and this I don't know for me, that's no is a frustrating thing. We'll do that. Our industry, I think is the aversion to just letting keep great storytellers do their thing, right.

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And we all have incredible stories. Right? So with limited time we have left. Can you give me a couple examples of some, you know, some organizations telling the story that you love.

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I love Patagonia. Why? Well, I mean, they do beautiful storytelling. If they really they transport you to the world that they love in the short films that they make the articles they post on their blog, like if you're someone who's a Patagonia nut you know, you can only like love going on outdoor explorations. They transport you to those worlds, but it's also there's an authenticity to it. And it's a very overused word or your industry, right authenticity. But Patagonia really backs it up, you know, they've given over almost $200 million to climate change causes on Black Friday, which, you know, we have coming up here They shut down their stores but open it up for just allowing you to repair your existing Patagonia goods so you don't like

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have to waste you know more material in the world

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and their stories they tell just tie

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so tightly to their values as a company so they're one example that criminal more is really admirable I one more guy there's a lot to choose from

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i

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i've been focused a lot on financial services storytelling lately because it's cheaper a goal for us so from marketing perspective, that's when we're going after a lot.

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I think that she's actually does a really good job of the

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stories that they tell because they tell very fluid stories for people they do a lot of animated explainer videos, something come through us on they did this series also through now this that's really good. The social video Empire they're very like simple industry. videos that cost almost nothing to make but are very effective and very shareable. They do longer form storytelling about their CSR work. They do very good personal finance advice on their blog. And I think in an industry that's really tough to tell good stories or seems like it's really tough because of the compliance regulations. They're a great example as well, that's, you know, very different side of the coin, then,

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can I ask you to tell one of the stories from the book that I kind of love how the homeless man by changing his messaging, was able to get more people to give him money?

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Sure, yes, the story of Jacques in the beggar the drop who

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are 100 years ago, he walked by a beggar on beggars asking for money he saw that he was getting No, he's getting nothing. Jacques was a poor artist. So they went to the beggar and said, I can't give you money. Can I rewrite your sign, and he re-wrote his sign, and the next time he sees the beggar, the blind beggar, and he says, I don't know what you wrote. But my life has been changed since you wrote it. I'm getting so much more money every day. And what he wrote was, Spring is coming. But I won't see it.

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It's a very simple story.

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I think just shows the power, the few

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words that mean, even in the shortest story

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and have

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transformed the way we see a person, the way we see a company, the way we see

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ourselves,

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even when you tell the story. And I've read it now three times in the book. It kind of moves me right, just hearing those simple words. You know, I guess it gets your oxytocin going, right? Yeah. And you write a lot about our oxytocin has, if anyone doesn't know, let's end with it. How? Why does it have such an importance on how we see everything? Sure. So oxytocin

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is a neurochemical in the brain that fosters a sense of empathy and human connection.

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And we didn't know a ton about

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oxytocin until about 10 years ago. But it's something that we've had a lot more research on, in part because the US military funded a lot of research on it for propaganda purposes, if you read about in the book, and essentially what we figured out is that oxytocin, which previously we only knew appeared when say, like mothers with their children, actually is fostered in this very much the same way when we hear a great story. So when we hear a great story, we feel this sense of empathy and human connection.

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It makes us

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care. And that's the thing that the

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books really about is that story is the two super important things. Stories make us remember, stories make us care. I think that's the

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perfect way to end to interview anyone out there who you know every business or anyone internally at in Intrado or any of our customers and prospects. Every time you're dealing internally or externally, you're telling a story, and you need to get your audience engaged in care, Job, Thank you so much. I love the book. I highly recommend it. And I can't wait to see what comes next and you and Shane and Contently they very much different

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