Evan Carmichael and Stephen discuss why 80% audience connection isn't enough. Stephen uses Deschutes Craft Brewery as an example of constant iteration, recommending you gather feedback through recordings, surveys, and coaching to reach the remaining 20% and push toward 100% connection.
Next question comes in from Trudy. I've been telling my story since 1990. I've done a lot of training in the early '90s, and in my surveys I found 80% liked the fact I was using a story to reinforce something, 20% did not. Do you have any advice? So most people are liking this. Do you worry about the other 20%? You just keep going on the 80%, or can the stories be better? What would you tell Trudy?
I think, Trudy, I think if you do a few things, and it probably was your story from the '90s, around connecting your heart and your head, connecting to the audience, being authentic, making your story super clear, you know, making it hopefully visual as well, you've got 80% love from your community. I'll kind of go after the other 20% on kind of what are they missing? Because 80% connected totally with your story, and I'd say that's good enough. But you can always improve. And, you know, actually, one of the interesting things, one of our customer stories from a company up in Oregon, Deschutes Craft Brewery, their kind of motto is, "Do your best, and next time do better." Now, they built a social enterprise, effectively, as a business. They're never gonna sell out to a conglomerate. So they are grounded by producing awesome beer. And every time they sell a crate of beer, they basically give a dollar to a community charity. So they've raised, I think last year, $850,000 in the communities where they sold the beer. But also, they've given every one of their employees stock ownership in the company to make a really clear statement that we're all in this together, we're following our dreams, we're producing awesome beer, and we're going to play a role giving back to the communities. So with that, the reason why I tell you that story is every time they do anything in their business, they want to make it better. So with those 20% that you left behind, why don't you know, in the world of social media now, you could access every one of those individuals and find out what is it they're missing in terms of the connection with your story. And you could get up into the high 90s and touching 100%.
I love it. I love the drive and ambition there. Yeah, I think 80% is a good number. If you're starting at 80, That's quality. If you're speaking and you're moving 80% of the room, that's definitely a great start. And I would just echo Stephen's point there too, like always try to get better. It's a good mark, but how do I get to 100? What do I have to do to get there, right? How can my storytelling be better? Whether it's his advice of going out and trying to find them on social media, whether it's recording your speech back and watching it again and seeing where you might be able to improve. Doing surveys of the room, trying to find people who like left the room and ask them what happened. That can be a tough pill to swallow, like, hey, why did you leave my session? But you'll get some honest kind of truthful advice that will help you get better. You could do coaching with other professional speakers or speaking coaches to give you guidance on how your next speech can be better. I think if you want to be good at something, then you should want to be great at something. And every time you do it, you may suck at the start, but the most important part is that you are better than yesterday and you keep working on it. And most people who start with their stories, it's uncomfortable at the start. You feel like, who wants to learn about me? You know, and you have to understand that you telling your story isn't about you. It's not an ego trip for you. It helps the customer connect to you better. It's for them and it's for your business. And so at the start, you will probably be terrible at telling your story. And then every time you do it, you'll get better and better and better and better. You move to 80%. Move to 90%, hopefully move up to that 100%.
