Stop Telling Stories: A Guide To Unlocking Your Storyteller I Coach Karen Eber @KarenEber

Hi everyone, I am so excited for this next episode of Confident Storytelling Podcast because I've got an amazing international guest. I've got Karen Eber, who is an international consultant, keynote speaker, as well as a TEDx speaker. Her TEDx has got close to 2 million views, which is amazing. She's also the CEO and Chief Storyteller of Eber Leadership Group. She helps Fortune 500 companies build leaders, teams, and cultures One Story at a Time. Her clients include ADP, Big Four, Carrier, Facebook, Microsoft, General Electric, so on, so forth. Karen has got over 20 years of experience and has been a Head of Culture, Chief Learning Officer, and Head of Leadership Development at General Electric and Deloitte. In this episode, you're going to learn and really be mesmerized by her understanding of storytelling. And how her stories make an impact, how you can use stories while when you're giving a job interview or you are in a leadership position, you want to build a trust with your team. You are also going to hear about some of the common mistakes that people make when it comes to storytelling. And also you're gonna hear some amazing stories of New York-based negotiator, and what that has got to do with a corporate client of hers. So I am so excited. Please make sure you listen to the end and she's got a new book. You're gonna also hear about that same. I'll see you in the episode. Awesome. Welcome, Karen. It's so good to have you in this Confidence Storytelling Podcast and let's get right into the podcast. Let's go.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you to actually start about, and I read your book and I love the first chapter. Where you talk about this special condition you have, uh, which is called heterochromia. I'm not going to explain what is that because I want you to explain what this condition is and how that helped you to get into this whole realm of storytelling.

Now, heterochromia is a fancy word for two different colored eyes. So I have a brown eye and a green eye, and it's my favorite thing about myself. Like, I have a built-in answer to the question, tell us something interesting about yourself. I, as much as I loved it though, I realized at a really young age many people don't know what to make of it. When someone notices in conversation, I can see their eyes going back and forth between mine, and it's almost like their brain is trying to decide, like, do I look at the brown eye or the green eye, or the brown eye or the green eye? And as soon as that starts, I brace myself because I know what's coming. It is the same every time. Their words slow down and come to a stop, and they pause and they point at me and they go, "Did you know you have two different colored eyes?" As if I didn't know my own eye color. And I never quite know what to say to that. And so like, thank you. Um, no, I didn't know I had two different color eyes. Like, my response doesn't matter in these moments because they then would get into, um, "What color eyes do your parents have?" Or, "Do you see different colors out of each eye?" Or 'Um, do your eyes give you special powers?' Which I've always wanted to ask people, like, 'Do your eyes give you special powers?' But I would just, you know, you, you brace yourself for this, this constant set of questions that would always end with, 'How did that happen?' And this thing that I loved became this burden because they would call other people over, and I was no longer a person. I was this sideshow where everyone is looking at me and trying to see my eyes and asking me questions and not really listening. And I decided that I was going to tell a different story. The next time I got the "How did that happen?" I started describing how I was born with brown eyes and I was in my bedroom coloring one night. And you know how we all have that box of crayons that we throw all our crayons into? You know, mine was an old cigar box, but you know, some people have a shoebox. You put the broken ones, the peeled ones, the perfect ones, like all your crayons go in this box. Well, I was getting hungry and dinner wasn't going to be for a few more hours, so I reached into the box and I pulled out a green crayon and it didn't really smell like anything. When I tasted it, it almost had the texture of gum and I liked it, so I ate it and I ate another and another until all the green crayons in the box were gone. And the next day I woke up and my eye was green. And I would tell this and then I would be quiet and I could see people look at me sideways like, is she for real? I can't— like, logic tells me her eyes did not change colors because she ate 'But she's being so serious. I don't know what to make of it.' And I would let them off the hook and tell them my eyes did not change colors because I ate crayons, but it created the shift in energy. And so I went from being this sideshow and this, this not even human that, that everyone was wanting to look at and, and really ask all these questions of, to now we had a connection and people recognized that. They asked me really weird questions like, 'Do you see different colors out of each eye?' And this shift happened in our interaction to one that was really meaningful consistently, that we probably never would have even had had it not been for the story. And so I recognized really young that stories aren't just a way to entertain or educate or even inspire. They can create these connections and they can create a shift in energy when things are feeling uncomfortable or even artificial.

That's such an amazing story. And I read that in the book and I said, I have to get the story. And while you were telling that story, this is the power of story, you'll also recognize that when you tell a good story from within, somehow we find something relatable. So while you were telling that story, it reminds me of the time, I mean, I think I have had hundreds of people say, you know, Haritosh Srivastav, do you know you look like exactly your mother? Like, thank you, I didn't know that. How do you know that? And that's how the stories resonate when you tell a story It somehow evokes that. So my question is related to this only, which is how does it happen? How do you think that when we tell stories versus when we tell just information that, yeah, my eyes are blue and my eyes are black, one eye is just like that, what happens in our brain when we are telling stories? Because it's so captivating. So love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that are happening, but it's almost like this example of if you hear someone talking about a vacation, they went on and they just list, this day we went here and then we went here and then we went here and then we went here. You're just getting a bunch of, of itinerary locations, but you're not hearing anything about what did you feel when you were visiting that, or what did it taste like, or what was your favorite part, or what was a disaster that happened on this vacation. So you're hearing a whole bunch of events and, you know, 10 minutes later you're not going to remember where they went because it doesn't mean anything to you. It wasn't your vacation. Something similar happens with information. If we're just sharing information and running through data or just sharing basic information, but not adding anything that's gonna make it really engage the brain, people aren't gonna remember it within an hour. And there's just truly language comprehension happening where the brain hears the words or reads the words, it processes them, and then that's it. You're not interacting with it. But if I talked about the vacation and I talked about, I don't know, my favorite spot on the vacation, or maybe I talk about the backpacking trip where we ran out of water and how we were, you know, laying on the trail in the middle of the day because it was so hot and we didn't know when we were going to find water again. Now we're telling a very different type of story that you can start to engage with. And if I start talking about how it was so hot, it was just hard to breathe in, or how the shade like lowered the temperature at least 10 degrees, now your brain is starting to engage in a more dynamic way. And what happens with storytelling is that you're not only engaging the whole brain, but you are creating experiences inside the person's head. It's almost like artificial reality where they are having their own version of the story. They are having that, you know, did you know that you look just like your mother, play out in their head because there's the story of it you are experiencing, but there's also your own stories that are triggered.

Absolutely.

When we're listening, it is going to dynamically put us there and have us engage with it in a much more memorable way. But it's not enough to tell a story. The way you tell it really does make a difference in the experience. And that's where I'm trying to focus and help people recognize that you can do certain things to put together the perfect story.

Love that. Love that. And thank you so much. And I think I was reading this research, I don't know from which university, where they talked about that when you just hear facts, it only lights up couple of portion of the brain. But when you hear a captivating story, it lights up as many as 9 different sections of the brain, and which is what allows us to retain the story long after you have read or heard it. And that's all I— that's how I remembered your crayon story. And maybe beyond that. So Karen, you work with a lot of these Fortune companies, big corporations, which one of, one of the things that I've noticed is that they are very largely data-driven. They want data in and out. Now, if there is a corporate, how do you really convince them that no, you need to learn data storytelling? What is your perspective on that?

I start with an image that is an inkblot. So there are these famous Rorschach inkblots where it's truly a blot of ink spread on a page in random pattern. And when you put it up, you're asked what you see and everybody sees different things. So I will put up one of these images and I will ask people what they see. Inevitably, in a room full of people, the majority see something different. And the reason why is that as we are having these experiences, as we're taking information through our senses, it's almost like when you take a photo on your phone, and you swipe up, that photo gets stamped with the date, the location, the f-stop, the, the megabytes, like everything used to take the photo is stored on it without you doing anything. All you're doing is, is making that photo. Something similar happens in our brain when we're experiencing, when we are having sensory experiences or when we're having an emotional experience. They get stamped with emotions and stored in our long-term memory. So this is what makes up our understanding. This is what makes up how we are using information, because as we're taking in information through our senses, they're stamped with emotions and senses stored in our long-term memory. So when our brain is going to make decisions, it's going and it's looking at all of these existing things in our memory to ask, when you see this inkblot, is this something we know, or is this related to something we know, or is it brand new? Our understanding is truly made up of our experiences. When it comes to storytelling with data, I start with this image because what happens is you will see something different than I will see, and another person will see something different. And so if I have 5 people, I have 5 different suggestions for what the inkblot is. And I talk about the science and why, how we're forming our own understanding and using that to inform our decisions. But then I make the comparison of the same exact thing is happening when you put up data. I'll put up a very simple chart and walk people through what seems like, you know, a bar chart that has no room for misinterpretation. We'll be able to unpack in the room how we each have a different understanding of it. And it very quickly demonstrates data does not speak for itself. So often people will put up a slide and say the data speaks for itself. I'm not going to talk to it. But what's happening is if you aren't taking people through the understanding of the data, if you're not sharing that story, we are each going to have our own understanding of it because we each have all these different experiences. We're going to be making different assumptions. So I start there with this example because then people recognize, okay, now I can see where it seems so obvious and clear, but we're each coming at it from different perspectives. And so now I can understand where telling a story of the data gets us to the same starting line for a conversation. Even if we have different opinions about what should happen.

I love that. I love that. And while you were telling that, I could picture myself showing up a big PowerPoint with a couple of graphs and say, what do you think? And some people say, that's an excellent result. And some people say, what is that? Is that even good enough? And this is what happens when we don't put a narrative. Like, no, if you don't put that story behind what happened and how this data arrived and what you can interpret, everybody has their own interpretation. That may not be the right thing to do. Awesome, awesome, love that. And let's take this to the next level where how can storytelling be used by specifically for leaders? Because there's, you know, there's in those, in this world, the biggest commodity, biggest energy is of the trust that we have. And as a leader, we have to build trust among our team members, our customers, our management. How can we use this storytelling as the Swiss knife to really build that connection and trust?

Yeah, let's talk about what happens in the brain even further when you are experiencing stories, because this is why this is such a key tool for leaders. As someone is telling a story, the neurochemical oxytocin gets released in the brain, and it's released in response to someone being vulnerable. So it doesn't have to be a personal story or a very vulnerable story, but because you are sharing a story, our brains We're like, oh, good for you. You're sharing a story. Yes. And we respond with oxytocin because oxytocin is this bonding chemical. It's often seen between mothers and babies, but it's seen in a moment of connection because what's happening is your brain feels like, oh, you trust me enough to share this story with me. I in turn am rewarding you with this oxytocin. I feel a little bit closer to you, or I feel like I'm included in what you're trying to do. As that oxytocin is released, the more dynamic the story, the more empathy we have in, in response to it, the more increase in trust we actually have. Oxytocin also creates this almost nonverbal signal in your brain as the listener that this person feels really safe to be around. So this is why if you are a part of a team at work and you've had a meeting or an offsite meeting, or you've shared a meal together, you come away feeling a sense of bonding with the people around you. It's because you've shared stories over coffee or tea, it's because you have had that informal discussion or you've had the chance to have these, these conversations that are a little more in depth and you've shared stories. There's a neurochemical shift that is happening in these moments. And that shift is not only, thank you for sharing this. It is a, wow, I feel more trust towards you, but I also feel a little bit of psychological safety because you're feeling safe enough to share this with me, and I in turn feel safe enough to be with you. So as a leader, you know, attention is the most, most precious thing that people can give us. And you can talk at people, or you can put up slides of data and say the data speaks for itself, or you can dynamically harness the brain that is sitting in front of you and maximize all of its ability by connecting through a story where you are going to connect to their hearts, their motivations, their interests. So as a leader, it's a powerful, powerful tool in how you are communicating. If you are trying to navigate change, if you are trying to coach someone in a moment, if you are trying to motivate someone or motivate a team, it just is going to give you much better return on investment than just talking at people.

Absolutely. I can't agree more to that. And I think really I've experienced so many times when we have these deep conversations, whether it's our peers or leaders or sometimes subordinates as well, you feel really having a great bond even though you haven't done anything additional. But just that feeling of sharing your story and showing your vulnerable part, I think that really builds the trust through the use of oxytocin amazingly. Now we talked a little bit about how our brain is really— I mean, it's like, it's like It's a pet food is to get some good stories and then how you can use data along with stories to make a real impact and you can use it to build trust. Now let's talk about a little bit mechanics of storytelling. Well, you also said that and I read in the book that there is an art part of storytelling, there is also a science part of storytelling and as a storyteller, what are some of the common mistakes that you see people make every day and you feel like, oh no, please don't do that. I would never let you do that. What are some of those mistakes that you have seen people make?

I would be probably a little softer on the mistakes because I still make them. So let me start there. I made the first one that I'm going to tell you. I made this mistake myself. The biggest mistake that we make most often is that we're telling the story that we want to tell and not the story that the audience needs. And this is almost like your uncle that is at the holiday table that is telling the same story over and over and over. And it doesn't even really matter if you're there because he's not telling the story for you. He's telling the story for them. What happens most often in this is that we get really excited by an idea and we want to share it and we forget to stop and think, what is meaningful for my audience? What is it that I want them to experience or to to know and feel after, or to actually take action on. That's where a story begins, with the audience, not with the idea, not with the thing that you love that you want to share. And so it's a mistake that is so easy to fall into because we get excited by stories that we want to share with someone. There's a connection we have, and I want you to have that same connection. But if I don't take a beat and think about how am I being really intentional about what this is for the audience, then you might not connect with that story and it may miss the mark. And so always start with your audience. That's the biggest, probably. The second is that we will sometimes lack a story structure, and that looks a little bit like this. If I started telling you about last week, I went to meet a friend for lunch on Tuesday, and actually I think it was Monday. It must have been Monday because I was running late and I, you know, it was raining and I got all scattered and I meant to, to bring my umbrella with me, but I forgot. And, um, no, actually it might have been Tuesday. See, when people do this, there's no story here, but we do this all the time because what we're trying to do is get our head back into the moment that we're about to recount because we want to tell it as accurately as we can. So we're trying to remember the details, but first of all, most of those details are not relevant or important for your audience. And second, you need a structure not only to tell, because it's going to make it easier for you to tell the story, that structure makes it easier for the audience to hear the story and process it. And so making sure you are taking even 5 minutes before you tell a story, you're thinking about how do I put this together, can make such a big difference in the experience of it.

Awesome. Awesome. I love, I love both of your mistakes. And I tell when I teach about storytelling to my, uh, my students that always think about this word which is called WIIFM. Your audience is always thinking about what's in it for me. I mean, yeah, it's great you went to Mount Everest or you did this 1,000-kilometer walk, but what am I going to get? Unless you add that with the takeaway message, with something that is relevant and something that they can apply in their life. Probably most of, I mean, I'm not talking about the entertaining story, but 90% of the business story can be avoided if you don't have the takeaway message, because that's what people are looking forward. What is in it for me?

Before I opened my company, I worked inside some big Fortune 500 companies, and one of them I was heading up leadership development for very senior executives, and I was helping put together a course on negotiations. And I brought in a New York City Police Department hostage negotiator over dinner to speak to the group because the steps that he takes to negotiate for hostages is very similar to the steps they were learning throughout the day. I thought this was going to be such a great way for them to be in a different environment, to hear someone in a different context and think about what they had been learning and practicing. And it completely flopped. Because he didn't know how to relate his experience to theirs. And they're listening to this person talk about negotiating for people's lives and negotiating difficult situations. And all they can think is, well, goodness, my negotiations aren't for someone's life and I don't do that. And that's really hard. And none of them could connect the dots, even though it was the same thing. None of them could connect the dots. And so I messed up on that because I could have easily bridged the gap for them both. And that could have been even more meaningful for them to learn something through a different context. So best of intentions, it should have worked, but sometimes the audience can't make that jump themselves and you need to do that for them.

I love that. I love that. And, and one of my, uh, quotes says that the context is actually more important than the content. If you don't give the context, you give the world-class content, maybe the audience will not understand what, what it is for them, what can they learn out of it. Truly love that. So if I ask you a cheeky question, what you would have done in case you have to do that now and get that negotiator and you have, you have a workshop where you have a corporate audience, how would you build that bridge?

I would have been the intermediary. I let him tell his stories because I thought this was going to be an evening of storytelling and the group would ask him questions. I would, if I was doing it again, I would step in. And have him tell a section and then turn back to the group and ask them what their version of that is. Ask them how they would relate it. I would use questions or I would make connections based on what we talked about today. I would be much more explicit in helping them see that, and I would go around and ask them where they see the similarities and differences as, um, it just, it didn't, I didn't realize how much they were struggling with it until late in the dinner, and it was almost like, oh gosh, it's too late to fix this now, but I would have stepped in and been explicit present in that and helped facilitate that conversation and been almost the translator for him and them. Absolutely.

I love that. And thank you for sharing such a vulnerable story. Not everybody will share that. No, I missed that part. So really appreciate that. And also sharing the right path, I think, which is very, very important for us. So you talked a very important concept here, which is the concept of connection, connection between the storyteller and the audience. A connection between any two parties. So now we are living in a world where I and you are, for example, thousands of miles apart and we are still connecting. We are, we are recording it on online on Zoom. And one of the problem I see is in this new world after, especially after 2020, where we have to do a lot of virtual meetings, a lot of virtual connects. How do you really build connection in a in a virtual setup?

It's not different. The difference is the cadence. The difference is the timing in the space. I think everyone thinks I have to do something different. I have to speak differently. How do I, how do I do this when we're not in a room? When you are in a room, there is sometimes a feeling that is created within that room. And that's because once our neurochemicals start to shift, once the oxytocin starts flowing, it's a little bit contagious, right? We start to get a vibe in the room that is a little bit harder to do through a camera. When you are virtual, the same things apply. It's just recognizing that if there's a discussion, you need a little bit more space. When you ask a question, you need to give space for people to think. The communications is sometimes awkward if there's a wall of windows and you're trying to decide like, am I going? Are you going? Who's speaking here? What do we do? But the space is also important because our, our brains and our eyes get tired looking at the camera, especially when we're on it all day. And so what you want to do is ask questions and give space for people to think about it and respond. When you have discussions, it's important to give maybe a little bit more time than you would in person because you're not able to read all of the nonverbals at the same time the way you would if you were in a room together. If we were in a workshop, I could ask a question and immediately see the body language and know where to go and to call on things. But if I ask a question on Zoom, I can see a couple of windows at once, but I can't see everyone. And so the biggest thing is the frequency. Same thing for one-on-ones and coaching. It's not that you do anything different, it's that you just have to be thoughtful about the cadence. So if everyone before was in an office together in the same space, you have the ability for random interactions. When you are in different spaces, you need to be intentional about planning this casual time where you are checking in on people, seeing how they're doing, and having what would be those conversations when you bump into each other in the hall. So what you do isn't different. It's just planning the cadence and the time to make sure that you are having the interaction and the space to think about it. I have done sessions virtually, though, where we have still had a really profound connection and shift that happens through a screen. It's just you have to be able to shut out all the noise around you and not make people feel rushed that they're trying to get to their next call, their next thing, and they don't have the space to really be in that moment.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. And I, I agree. I think I have been to so many meetings which have been a pure waste, to be honest, but there have so many meetings where I really had some transformation, something shifted inside. And I think a lot of time we as speakers and storytellers put it on the audience like it is a virtual, it is their responsibility. But I honestly believe that it's more responsibility of the speaker to make sure that he or she is catering to the audience needs and making sure that they are in a safe space. They are setting the cadence, as you said, and making sure that, you know, you're giving time for any activity, giving little, being little bit more patient than usual to get the response and follow-ups, etc. Love that. Love that. Thank you so much, Kat.

Of course.

Awesome. So we are coming towards the end, but I have one more question, which is related to the practical aspect of storytelling. A lot of the listeners of this podcast are job seeker, someone who's trying to get into a job or, or maybe switch to another job. And one of the most dreaded part of that is going through the interviews, as we all know. So how do you think storytelling can really help them come across as more confident, as more articulate person? Or if there is any other aspect when you think storytelling can help, please tell us.

Yes, it's very important to use storytelling. If you think about an interview, The person interviewing you is going to form an understanding of you based on the questions that you answer. And if you use stories, you are helping build that understanding in their mind. You are not leaving it up to them to make assumptions based on their own experiences and guess what the inkblot is. You are helping them understand this is who I am. This is where I'm at my best. This is how you leverage me. When you don't do that, you risk the person having to make their own assumptions and potentially getting them wrong. So it is definitely important to use storytelling because it's gonna immediately build this understanding in their mind. There's a few steps to it to think about. The first is you want to come up with 3 words or phrases that uniquely describe you, and these are meant to be really memorable. This isn't meant to be I'm conscientious, or I'm hardworking, or phrases that everyone would say but no one would remember. This is meant to be really descriptive and memorable. Like, I might say to you, um, that I'm a tour guide of storytelling, that I'm gonna take you to new destinations and you're gonna learn things along the way. So if I work that into a conversation in an interview, you're going to remember that. And after a day of interviewing a bunch of people and you're debriefing with the team, you would say, oh yeah, that, that tour guide of storytelling, there was, you know, that was interesting. Interesting. So come up with 3 words or phrases that uniquely describe you and are memorable, because you will work them into your answers. You can also work them into a follow-up message. And these are a meant-to-be things that you want that person to remember. You want to also go through those questions that are the behavioral questions of the tell me about a time, tell me about a time you faced a challenge, Had I, um, had conflict on a team? You know, your best experience, worst experience. There's a whole bunch of these online. Pick the, the ones that are most common and think about times in your career where you have responses for them. And you wanna frame them up with a simple model. You wanna answer with what is the context? What's the setting of the story? What was the challenge that you were facing? You want to Um, describe what action you took, what was the outcome. So you've got the context setting the stage, that the outcome— what action did you take, the result, what happened as a result of your action. And the last one, which is the most important that people forget, is what did you learn. So you're setting the context, you're saying what outcome, what action you took, you're saying what the result was, and now you're describing what you've learned. And what you've built for the interviewer is, here's the experience, here's what I did, here's what I've learned. And now they're getting not only what experience you've had, they're getting how you think, how you're continuing to grow, and it just helps build that understanding. And then you start to work in things like amateur guide of storytelling into those answers, and now you've created a really memorable set of answers that is going to help them not only know you but remember you and be able to know what to do with you.

Love that, love that. Both the part where you put 3 words, 3 phrases. And if you notice, I put everywhere that I'm not just a storytelling coach, I am a confidence storytelling coach. And that's how I branded myself everywhere. This podcast is called Confidence Storytelling Podcast with the same vision that I want to differentiate, to have another word to where people recognize, okay, that's not a typical coach or not only a storytelling coach. So love that. And also love that the context, action, result and learning. I totally agree to that, that if you don't put that learning part, I'm like, it's not answering the question, what's in it for me? Or what's in it for the company? Because why should we hire you? You did that great there, but can you do that over here? But if you have the learning, you can probably do that. So love that.

And the learning also shows how you're continuing to grow because as we move through experiences, we recognize things that we would do differently or what we're taking from that to build on. And so So that is just such a helpful thing for the leader to know, oh, here's how this person is thinking and where they're going. And I now understand how to leverage that, which is helpful. If you don't do that, if you just said, I had this project and this is what I did and here was the result, the leader then is forced to figure out on their own what that means and is that good or bad and what did they think about that and do I agree with that? Would I have done something different? But when you're telling that full story, you're making that much more dynamic and making it easier for them to come away with the shared understanding that you want.

Absolutely. And, and we saw an example of you telling about this negotiator story and then telling the reflection. I think that's a perfect example we witnessed today. So thank you so much, Karen. It was amazing to have conversation with you. I understand you have written a book, which I'm so excited about. So why don't you tell us about the book that you have published? And I think it's already a bestseller. So tell us about the book.

It's called The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inform, Influence, and Inspire. The title is a bit playful because people often hesitate to tell stories thinking, I don't have the perfect story to tell, and they don't exist. You make the perfect story from your own experiences for each audience. The book takes you through the process of that. It starts by helping you understand why it's not enough to tell a story the way you tell it makes a difference. So it shares the science of storytelling in really relatable way, breaking down 5 principles that you can use when you are building stories, and then takes you all the way through figuring out your audience, building a structure, putting in all the good things that are going to engage the brain, how to tell stories with data, how to avoid manipulating with stories, navigate the vulnerability. And, um, there are fun storytelling vignettes at the end of each chapter from people like a creative director Pixar or a co-founder of Sundance, people that tell stories in very different ways in life that are sharing a little bit of their perspective. So it's meant to take you step by step through the process, and if you're already a storyteller, it's meant to elevate your practice.

Awesome, awesome. And I— and to my listeners and viewers, I've already got a copy and I've already gone through a couple of chapters, and I can truly say that it's a very mesmerizing— I couldn't get hold of it. Like, I have to finish this chapter, specifically the first part where you talked about this, the condition that you have. And like, okay, I want to go through what all Karen has to offer. So thank you so much for writing the book. Now, how can, uh, our listeners and viewers find that book? Where can they find that?

Easiest place is through my website, which is my name, karenber.com. There's a book link in there, and within that there's links to different sites in different countries. Um, it's available many places all over the world and continuing to be translated, but that's the best place to get started and find it.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. I can only say that I am so grateful to have you in the podcast and, and really learn so many things about storytelling in different contexts. So really appreciate you coming out and helping me this with this podcast. I hope you continue to tell amazing stories and inspire millions of people across the world.

Thank you so much, and I enjoy your stories as well. Continue telling them.

I will. Thank you so much.