Newsletter

Years ago, a girlfriend and I had a ritual: We would get take-out from the Boston Market restaurant, and then we would take it home and eat dinner while watching a movie we rented from Blockbuster (later, of course, the kids would coin the phrase "Netflix and chill"...

There's a great study from a university in Finland about using storytelling in B2B sales. The study looks at an IoT (internet of things) company that was selling sensors for factory machinery, and it was also selling an upgrade where they would monitor the machines...

The other day a friend sent to me a link to a video on YouTube, "How Anthony Jeselnik misdirects the audience." Anthony Jeselnik is an American comedian. I hadn't heard of him before, so don't worry, if you don't know his name it doesn't mean your knowledge of...

In my quest to put a financial number to the value of storytelling, to hold stories up to an ROI calculation, I often get the pushback that putting a number to the value of storytelling will somehow strip storytelling of its magic, that somehow it will kill the...

I have an elderly black woman who lives inside me. She wears a plain print dress with faded pink flowers and blue-green stems set on a white background. She lives in the state of Georgia or Alabama (I've never tried to figure out which one), speaks with a heavy...

The other day I was re-watching one of my favorite movies, "Not Fade Away." I've probably seen it 9 million times. Some of you know it, too. One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes during one of the band's practices, when the main character, played by John Magaro...

As many of you know, I am on a quest to quantify the value of storytelling. I want to put a number to it. I want a calculation I can put into a spreadsheet. It is not enough to say, "Storytelling is good, we should do more of it." It is not enough to say,...

You know how I bang on on a regular basis about how important mirror neurons are, and how important it is that when you are presenting, you display the emotions you want your audience to feel? Here's a little story related to that: When I was a teenager, I was really...

The other day I was reading a March 1847 issue of Scientific American magazine. Don't worry, I don't normally read 178-year-old Scientific American back issues. I was looking into something else and just so happened to stumble across this one. There was this great...

When I was 29, I was careening through the streets of Hong Kong in the back of a taxicab with my friend Teresa. It was nighttime, so we were probably heading to dinner somewhere. Her dad had created a business that had become one of our vendors, and she was taking it...

I was watching a TV show recently, Outer Range. It started out so well. Rancher in Wyoming, a "strong but silent" cowboy-type played by Josh Brolin. Loyal wife. Two photogenic kids. Cute grandkid. A couple "hot, but realistically-so" types (one a vaguely-disturbing...

One of my favorite movies is “Cadillac Records.” It’s about the founding of one of the seminal record labels for American Blues. It and the movie “Not Fade Away” are must-sees for anyone interested in the birth of rock. In the the movie, Beyonce plays Etta James. She...

The other day I wrote about chaos theory. Today I'm going to write about a mixed tape a friend recorded for me when I was a kid. And believe it or not, there's a connection. When I was 16, I lived in eastern Washington state and drove my dilapidated Volkswagen back to...

These days, I am reading a book called "Fluke," by Brian Klaas. It's about chaos theory. You know chaos theory: Basically, "butterfly flaps its wings in Japan, and a hurricane hits the United States." A lot of people hear about chaos theory and think, "Boy, that...

Recently I wrote about the genius zone. Remember the genius zone? It's the place where you are doing something almost no one else can. The activity comes to you naturally. You don't even need to think about it. It's like god put the words in your mouth, you are simply...

Today is my birthday. I have never made much of my birthday, even when I was a kid. My birthday comes sandwiched between two of the biggest holidays in the world, and I figured, well, people are exhausted from all the holiday-ing, so I'll just shut up and pretend it's...

An excellent example of the value of storytelling comes from the non-profit world. Yes, the non-profit world. We like to tell ourselves that our world of business is the real hard-nosed one, and non-profits are for fuzzy do-gooders, but the reality is this: Cash...

I've mentioned before how the use of AI in your organization will be making the base of your organization's pyramid narrower, and how this could impact succession, and in turn competitiveness, and in turn the stability of your enterprise value. The question comes up,...

The other day, a friend and I were talking about whether he could do work outside of his genius zone. You know the kind of work I'm talking about. The kind of work you can do, but others can do it too. My answer was "Yes, but don't." Why not, if you can? Because you...

Regular readers of this email have heard me mention the economics blog "Marginal Revolution," and have also heard me spout forth opinions related to AI and how it is changing, and will change, the world of white collar workers and the organizations they work for. So...

In the summer of 1992, I had just graduated from university and I needed some quick cash for my upcoming trip to China, so I worked on a construction crew building a house in Utah. I was a college boy who had studied Chinese history, so I was the lowest man on the...

We like to think that B2B is the rational one, and that B2C is the one dripping with emotion, and that somehow we are playing a more rational game when we walk into work. But reality is showing something different. I'll get to a couple examples in a moment. But first,...

One of the things that I enjoy about writing this newsletter is trying to find the connection between things that normally have little to do with each other. For example, what does the rock band Love and Rockets have to do with storytelling. In doing so I tend to, a...

This is a real quick gut check, a filter you can put your stories through. Only takes a couple seconds, you can do it outside your customer's office to calm your nerves before you go in there. H = Hero (usually your customer)G = Goal (usually your customer's goal)O =...

Last week I was talking a lot about the Boy Meets Girl story structure. Remember, BMG is one up, one down, one up. Insert yourself and your product/service towards the end of the second leg. Today I want to mention a second story structure, "man in hole." Basically,...

In 2014, I started working primarily with CEOs and board members of publicly-traded companies. You know these companies by name, their ads are everywhere and these people get asked to speak on just about every panel that ever existed. At that time, I was working...

The other day I was writing about storytelling in business, and how it can be so much easier than you might think. Today I want to dive deeper into the topic of storytelling. But if that was Storytelling 101, this is Storytelling 102. So in other words, nothing too...

I am reading a book called "Wanting: The Power Of Mimetic Desire In Everyday Life" by Luke Burgis. "Mimetic" is a fancy word for "imitative" (don’t worry, I had to look it up too), so the book is basically about how we learn to desire things because other people...

Recently, in two separate emails, I mentioned the band Love and Rockets and a storytelling structure. Both are going to come back today. First, Love and Rockets. They have another great song, "No New Tale To Tell." In the song are these lines: People like to hear...

The other day I was talking about the value of storytelling in customer retention. Stories are one of the best ways you can get your clients to remember your product. But if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “Oh, we don’t have time for stories in this...

Want to know one of the best customer retention techniques ever devised? Learn how to tell a story, and then become the one who tells your customers' stories back to them. One of the best bands to come out of the 80s, a band that produced music that sounds as good...

Almost as soon as I got to high school, I wanted to drop out. You see, I realized that classes at college were worth more than classes at high school, so if I went to the college and scheduled my classes just right, I could be out of there by 10:30am, instead of the...

Question: Where can I find these drywall anchor bolt words? The short answer: In the headlines of the Financial Times. Okay, here's the longer, more thorough answer: Keep in mind that your client has a gazillion other options, and often, you are not competing on...

Recently I wrote about Pink Floyd and how listening to rock songs is a good way to learn how to make a limited vocabulary go a long way. Today’s email digs deeper into that theme. Some of you saw an article like this from me in March, but many of you haven’t seen it,...

I feed the stray cats outside my apartment each morning. I call it "Breakfast Club," a reference to the 80s movie of the same name. I've been doing this every morning for a couple years, so the cats learned long ago that when the hall light comes on at 5:05, "Salam...

A few weeks ago, I wrote an email about AI and corporate succession. Remember that one? It's the one where I referred to AI as the crusher of white-collar labor costs, like the steam engine was the crusher of manual labor costs, and how that means the bottom of your...

There are 4 things that I tend to work on with my clients, four things you can do in order to express yourself really well without learning any new English. Of those four things, the fourth is “use vivid vocabulary.” A lot of people seem to think that means they need...

There's a guy who exercises in the park. He's 85 years old. He's one of the regulars (there are only three or four of us in that time slot, actually). He's there, rain or shine. In late January, when it's cold, and it's dark, and it's rainy, he is there, wearing his...

Forget the presentation skills this time, I'm not even going to bother tying this one in, today we’re just going to geek about microchips and cocaine a little … As most of you know, I'm a huge fan-boy of the Acquired podcast. In fact, I'm such a fan-boy that not only...

My dad, may he rest in peace, used to have an orchard grafting business. He started out doing pit fruit (plums, peaches) in central California, and as he was expanding the business into the vineyards of western California's wine country, we would often combine our...

A while back, a friend of mine named Tuba was working on her public speaking skills at Toastmasters. I encouraged her to make sure that in all her speeches she "put some Tuba in it," by which I meant to put some of her own personality into everything she said. These...

Lately, as you can tell, I've been binge-reading the blog and cartoons at Gaping Void, like this one… In the blog post this cartoon is in, they mention the phrase "humans don't scale" -- one of my favorite phrases, especially in this era of social media and...

Recently I wrote about Netflix, AI, and the importance, nay, the duty, of rocking the boat. Getting good at tapping into this next tip will be one of the best things you ever did for your career: Keep in mind that one of the most basic desires most humans have is to...

Usually in this newsletter I take whatever little story I start out with and find a way to tie it to presentation skills. If presentation skills are what bring you here, sorry man, couldn't do it this week. So if you're one of those people, come back next week, and in...

These days I'm reading a book about the early days of Netflix, written by one of its founders, Marc Randolph. I came to the Netflix game in 1999, a few years after they started. At that point, internet speeds weren't good enough for streaming, so they would drop your...

Like the steam engine crushed the labor cost center, AI crushes the white collar cost center. Here's what that meant for the labor world: The need for labor didn't go to zero, it just went down a lot. We still have construction workers and farm laborers, just fewer of...

As many of you know, I go to the park to exercise in the pre-dawn hours. I've been doing this for years, it's one of my favorite activities each day. Last week I suddenly, out of nowhere, started limping on the way to the park. The problem was my ankle. You see, the...

A couple weeks ago I wrote about selling evil eye (nazar boncuğu) bracelets. When you're selling a $20 bracelet, trust enters into the picture, but not that much. These days I'm in another world though, one in which my projects might be for 2,000 times that, and on...

Years ago when I was walking across Turkey, I was out in the middle of nowhere in the eastern part of the country. Some old beatup car, like a 1970s Datsun or something like that, stopped on the other side of the road and a man got out and walked towards me. This was...

Some years ago, there were some protests near my house in Istanbul. So I grabbed my camera and figured I'd see how close to the action I could get. I didn't get very close before the tear gas turned me away… (click image for video) That day, I learned that a spray...

Today it's all about Iranian weddings. I've written before about how when I came to Turkey I started a business selling evil eye bracelets. After a couple years in that business, I saw Amazon getting into the game, and I knew their reputation for being ruthless about...

Recently I wrote on dogs chasing cars and our human predilection to assign cause when there is in fact none. Today I want to talk about puking cats. Don't worry, I promise that it has to do with something, and also that future issues of this newsletter will deal with...

You know how when a dog chases a car, the car leaves? From the dog's perspective, the car left because he chased it. Sure, from our human perspective, we know the car was going to leave anyway. But from the dog's perspective, chasing cars is 100% effective. Chase a...

Time and again, one of the most common things I see in presentations is the speaker not spending enough time describing the problem. Plenty of time is almost always spent describing the solution, but not enough attention is given to the description of the problem that...

When I first moved to Istanbul, some Brits invited me to play in their weekly football game. Keep in mind that I have never had any football skills whatsoever. None. If my life depended on my ability to dribble a ball, I would be dead within a second. They invited me...

Many years ago, in a former life, I was an inventory planner for a kitchenware import company in the US. We would design stuff, get it made (mostly in China, surprise surprise), and import it into the US. Since I was managing one of the largest assets on the balance...

In the podcast short below, Romanian entrepreneur Vlad Cazan talks about the learning process that has continued, and still continues, throughout his entrepreneurial journey. The guy, and his business partner, have between them decades of experience in IT, sales,...

Years ago, when I was walking across Turkey, I adopted a phrase: "Every day be born a dumbass anew." It doesn't mean forget all the stuff you've learned, it just means put that stuff aside for the moment, confident that it'll still be there if you need it, and let the...

A few years after arriving in Istanbul, I found myself saying, "You know, what this place needs is a Toastmasters club." (for those of you not familiar with Toastmasters, it's basically a place where people practice their public speaking skills) So I started one up....

I used to hear that phrase "Do what you love," and think, "That's a lot of woo-woo hippie-ish BS," about loving everything, always being happy, The Secret, etc. "Life's not like that," I'd counter, "sometimes it throws a lot of suck your way." Now, though, I agree...

Back in 2003, one of my first entrepreneurial activities was to get a 20-foot container of galvanized steel springs made in China. They were called "Branch Benders," and their purpose was to open up the branches of a new tree so the sunlight could get in and the tree...

Some of you have asked why we are doing a podcast miniseries on international sales expansion. What does that have to do with presentations? You've asked why I am interested in this subject. What is my tie to this subject? These are very good questions. The answer is...

I'm a presentation coach. But even I have presentations that go, shall we say, "less than ideally" (read: disastrously). I tell myself that having disasters of my own makes me a better coach, because I know what to look out for. 😉 I remember one in particular, in...