In this YouTube interview, host Haritosh Srivastav talks with storytelling coach and author Philipp Humm about the practical application of storytelling for leaders, entrepreneurs, and salespeople. Humm shares his personal journey from a Bain consultant who was nervous presenting, to an MBA student who took improv and stand‑up classes, eventually becoming a TEDx speaker and full‑time storytelling coach. He defines storytelling as a concise, interesting event about a person that is used strategically to influence outcomes such as sales, motivation, or funding. The conversation debunks common myths—particularly the belief that business stories must be long—emphasizing that effective stories can be 1‑2 minutes or even a few seconds. Humm recounts a memorable Nordstrom anecdote that illustrates putting the customer first. He offers starter advice for beginners, encouraging the use of everyday moments (e.g., answering “How are you?”) to share micro‑stories, and stresses the importance of a simple structure that can later be adapted. He prefers emotional, plain‑language delivery over polished eloquence. Humm recommends three books: Matthew Dicks’s Storyworthy, Doug Stevenson’s The Story Theater Method, and his own The Story Selling Method, which adapts storytelling to sales without Hollywood‑style hero journeys. For sales presentations, he advises researching the audience, anticipating their problems, and preparing relevant personal stories in advance. Contact information is provided via powerofstorytelling.com and LinkedIn. The interview closes with the message that storytelling is a learnable skill that improves with practice.
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Hello everyone, welcome once again to In Conversation with Haritosh Srivastav. I am so excited, and this, to be honest, is our second attempt. Hoping everything goes fine and there's no network issues. I am so excited to have my next guest, which I've been following probably for last few months on Facebook. I've seen him in LinkedIn, and, and he's also written a book called Storytelling. So it's my pleasure and honor to have Philip Hum in the show. Philip, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome. So I know you have donned different hats at different points of time, and I've gone through your intro, but I would love from you to hear what has been your journey like and how did you come into storytelling.
Sure. So from a background, I used to work as a consultant back then at Bain Company, and already during that time, I always felt like, man, I'm good analytically, but somehow I just get so nervous when I present. And I always pushed it out because I didn't have any time. But then during my MBA, which I did in New York, I had some time and I thought, hey, let me look into this. So I started taking some improv classes, some acting classes, some stand-up comedy class, and at one point also storytelling. And what I quickly realized, hey, I'm not that terrible at that. I actually, I'm quite okay at this. And I, over the years, I learned a lot of very cool techniques that I started teaching others. And so that's pretty much how I started with storytelling. Pretty much born through a lack where I felt always I'm very bad at that. But at one point discovering that actually it's, I know how to tell a good story.
Awesome. Awesome. So if I talk to you, what kind of people do you coach nowadays? I know you are a TEDx speaker and you're now, it's your kind of full-time job. I won't say the job, but full-time passion to do Storytelling. So what kind of people that you work with?
I'd say 3 main groups. One, leaders, entrepreneurs, and salespeople, because all of them, well, everyone needs to have storytelling in their life because everyone sells their ideas. But especially these groups, they need to influence, motivate, inspire others even more than other groups.
Awesome, awesome. So my next question to you is, which is where you said about 3 groups, So what is your definition, or no, how do you define storytelling? And then if you want to go further and talk about storytelling from the perspective of leaders, entrepreneurs, and salespeople, how would you do that?
Yeah, the story in its simplest form is just something interesting happening to a specific person, and usually not a company. And now when we take leaders or salespeople, entrepreneurs, is using that story to influence a certain event. So influence a certain sales event, maybe making that sale, to motivate your employees, or maybe to get this funding from investors. So it's always, then you use stories strategically to get a certain thing done.
What are some of, you know, some of the biggest myths, or, you know, when you go out there in the market, when you talk about storytelling, being a storytelling coach myself, I know when I, when I go and talk to people, people think the storytelling is only for the lalabais, and for the kids storytelling. So what have been your experience of coming up with some weird myths that people have when it comes to storytelling?
Yeah, one myth that is around storytelling is that it takes time, and that's completely wrong. In the business setting, a story shouldn't take longer than 1 or 2 minutes. Sure, if you're the CEO of the company and you want to motivate everyone, maybe it can take longer, but usually most business stories are between 1 and 2 minutes long. So don't think that you have to block an entire meeting just story.
That, that's incredible. And absolutely, I can see that people think that you have to have that 18-minute TEDx or, or 7-minute big speech for storytelling. Actually, yeah, the, the shortest story could be a few seconds and that can have a large impact. Awesome. So on that note, I'm going to ask you that, can you share one of the stories that has a profound impact on you?
Yeah, um, I can share one that I just read a few weeks back and I loved it and I think it's pretty cool. Um, that story is from Nordstrom, which is the clothing— no, the retailer in the United States. And, um, so I'm going to share that story. In 1979, uh, Craig Traunz was working as a store associate in the Nordstrom in Fairbanks, Alaska. And on that one day, he saw something very particular. It was this man rolling in his tires into the store. A little bit confused, he walked up to him and he asked, "Excuse me, sir, can I help you?" And the man said, "Well, yeah, I wanted to return the tires." And Craig said, "Sir, you know that we don't sell any tires. We're a clothing retailer." And the man said, "No, no, that's the exact building where I bought these tires." It turned out that the man had bought the tires from the previous tenant of that same building. At first, Craig didn't know what to do, right? Confused, he thought, "Ah, what should I do with that guy?" But then he decided to do what felt right. He called the local tire agency to get an estimate of the price because obviously he had no clue. He then took the tires and gave a refund. He gave a refund for a product that Nordstrom didn't even have. Now, that just shows what it truly means to put the customer first.
That's incredible and, and totally relate. I can see how this story can be used for salespeople, for leaders, and for entrepreneurs. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that.
Pleasure.
Now, now let me ask you about, um, how can somebody who's just got interested or just want to know about stuttering, how can that person get started?
There's one place where you can always get started. Let me first share what I did wrong at the beginning. What I did wrong, I started and I thought always, let me have that perfect story ready. Let me craft this beautiful story that will wow everyone. Everyone will just praise me for how beautiful it is. That's the wrong way to start it. The better way to start it, even if you're completely beginner, is to start sharing small stories. Every day we get the opportunity to share a small story.
When?
When someone asks you, how are you? Every day we're being asked that one question, right? How are you? These are the moments where you can share a story instead of just saying, well, yeah, good, beautiful weather today in Amsterdam. You share a tiny story of what has happened today, right? Something that shows a little bit more about you as a person. Let me think what happened today. If someone were to ask me today, Philip, how are you? I'd respond like this. I'd say, uh, you know what? Something really cool happened this morning. A friend shared this beta access for this YouTube creator course. And I've watched this for like 2 hours and it's blown my mind. I just can't wait to try out all the techniques here. Um, anyway, that's about me. Um, when was the last time that, I don't know, you, um, looked into a new hobby and how was that for you? No need to respond here. But see, when someone asks you, how are you? You have the option to share a short story. And right now, The story was completely off the cuff, right? I improvised on the spot. Could it be better if I planned it? For sure. But it's not about that. It's just about starting to share something about yourself.
Awesome, awesome. I, I love that. So, because yes, I, I feel that a lot of people, first of all, they don't understand the significance, but once they understand the significance, they feel like, oh, I, I don't have enough stories, I don't know how to get started, I don't have that big budget movies stories to say, but absolutely you can start with having one-to-one conversation or in your team meeting when you start off the meeting, why not start with a small story of what happened last week or last weekend and I've seen that, I've tried that and it really brings up the charm in the whole meeting and you feel like I'm doing really good.
For sure.
Awesome. So the next question comes is the importance of, let me put it in this way, I'm going to ask you a few things and I want to to take your opinion. What do you prefer? Do you prefer structure or do you prefer impromptu story?
I follow a structure almost all the time. That being said, I follow a structure so that I can then play with that. So recommendation to everyone starting off, start getting familiar with a structure. Doesn't have to be the perfect one, but just stick to one, get very familiar with that, and from there you can always play a little bit with that, but it's key to become familiar with one at the beginning.
Awesome. And the second part is emotions versus eloquence. Which one do you prefer?
I'm not eloquent at all, so I would then go into emotions. For me, when I was young, I always tried to be more eloquent, right? Speak more intellectual. But what I realized, first, I'm not that person, and second, that just creates a distance between you and your audience. So if you really want to connect with your audience, you gotta bring it down. You gotta speak like a 5th grader. You gotta almost channel your inner Trump. By the way, I'm by no means endorsing him in any way, but just tone down your language because then your story just lands better.
Love that. Love that. And I am absolutely the same. I recently published Reels on my Instagram which say that a lot of people when they are speaking, they're not actually speaking the speaking language, they're actually speaking the written language. So they'll start using the 3-line or 4-line or 30-second long sentence, and by the end of the sentence people will worry, what exactly you're talking about? I forgot the first part. So if we just start using simple sentences, something which is, as you said, 5th grader, 7th grader, high schoolers can understand I think it would be much, much better. Awesome. So, uh, the next question for you is, uh, if you were to recommend a few books on storytelling, maximum 3 books, what would you recommend?
Okay, for personal storytelling, I'd recommend Matthew Dicks' book Storyworthy. It's great if you want to share stories on stage. For that, it is beautiful. Second book I recommend is, um, what was it called? The Story Theater Method by Doug Stevenson. That book is a great book if you're more into the theater type of storytelling. So you tell this beautiful story, but you already bring in a lot of elements of acting. And then the third book, obviously, if you are into sales, my book, The Story Selling Method, which helps you to share stories in, any customer-facing role.
Absolutely. And I was— you actually segued me to the next question, which is about— I know you wrote a book and it became amazing, number one bestseller. So tell us more about the book you wrote, which is Storyselling.
Yeah, um, that book is really about how to tell beautiful stories in any customer-facing role, so to build trust, to stand out, and at the end to boost sales. And now, why did I write it? I just felt that a lot of the books that I've consumed before They made it very hard. They made it very much like Hollywood type of storytelling. So yeah, sure. Here's the hero's journey. And I felt that these stories, these big stories, they're perfect for stage storytelling, but not good for these casual situations in business or in sales. So I wrote that book to help that. So how can you share these tiny, tiny stories still to build a connection with anyone? One.
Let's say, uh, somebody who's a salesperson and, um, who understands the importance of storytelling and is, is, you know, that I have a sales presentation in a, in a coming week, and he comes, reaches out to you that, Philip, give me one or two tips that can help me get better or maybe get more convergent. What would be the tip that you would give?
Let's start by analyzing, okay, who do I have in front of me that next meeting? Um, understanding who's, who's your audience and making already some guesses about what could be their problems. And so once you have an understanding of who your audience is and what their problems might be, then you can think, hmm, is there something from my background, something from the previous projects that I've worked on that could be a relevant story here? And then start thinking whether there's any experience and then start crafting already some of these experiences out there. So already prepare that in advance. Sure, maybe that story doesn't work out at the end because the person has completely different problems, but it always helps to already anticipate what could be potential stories that you could bring in.
I love that perspective. Yes, knowing whether it's storytelling or public speaking, communication, knowing your audience is so, so essential. Because if you do not know who you're gonna speak to, maybe you will speak something that you're not supposed to, and that can result to a lot of things that you don't want to. So absolutely agree to that. Do your research, find out who you're gonna speak to and what could be their potential challenges and how you can bring up your stories to that. Awesome. So Philip, if somebody is interested to work with you or learn more about you, how can they reach out to you?
Mm-hmm. I'd say check out my website. It's powerofstorytelling.com, power-of-storytelling.com. I know it's a little bit longer, or just ping me on LinkedIn. So Philip, 1L2PHUMM, and then happy to answer any, any questions that people might have. And yeah, it would be delighted to be connected with anyone that is interested in hearing more about storytelling.
Awesome, thank you so much, Philip. So what is your message for— last message before we complete this interview— for anyone who is watching this and who you think should know about storytelling?
Okay.
Yeah.
Storytelling is a skill, right? It's not this natural talent that just people have. By having worked now with hundreds or even, I think, thousands of people by now, I know for a fact that it is a skill that can be learned like anything else. So just go for it, take some reps, make these messy reps, and by that way you will improve very quickly on storytelling.
Awesome, thank you so much. So as you said, storytelling is a learnable skill, which means that anybody can learn. So thank you so much. It was an honor and pleasure to have you in my show. I'm really looking forward to future conversation. And for my audience here, this is Philip Ham and this is Coach Haritosh Srivastav. You want to know more about it, subscribe to the channel, find out about a podcast. And as I say every time, Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. This is Coach Haritosh Srivastav. I'll see you with another guest, another show. Take care, stay safe.
