The power of strategic narrative | Andy Raskin

The way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think way most people did, is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain, I have a solution, you know, a treatment. And I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatments. And the structure that I read about in these movies was different. Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world and I call this shift the shift from the old game to a new game. And the archetypal example of this, I think in the business world is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, hey, software is over and there's this new world called the cloud. A new game, new rules. You know, that's the new way to win and we're going to help you if you're in there. This structure really is about defining a movement and that's very different from, hey, I'm going to solve your problem.

Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Andy raskin. Andy helps CEOs and company leaders align their teams around something he calls a strategic narrative, which as you'll learn all about in this episode, is essentially a simple story that helps people understand why they need your product and with that, helps you align your sales, marketing and product teams along with your fundraising and even your hiring efforts. Andy has worked closely with some of the most successful founders and companies out there, including companies like Gong, Dropbox, Uber, Salesforce, Square, IBM and many others. In her conversation, Andy explains why most people are pitching their product completely wrong, why focusing on the problem you're solving for people is no longer an effective pitch, and how the strategic narrative helps you frame your solution in a much more effective way. Andy also shares a ton of examples of the framework in action and why focusing on categories and category creation is so limiting. Signs, your narrative needs work, and so much more. Enjoy this episode with Andy Raskin. After a short word from our sponsors.

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Andy, welcome to the podcast.

Oh thanks Lenny. So great to talk with you.

So you're quite known as someone that helps CEOs optimize their pitch, their story, their strategy, which we're going to get deep into. But before we do that, can you just give us a little glimpse into how you found your way into this line of work?

So I started as a coder. I was a computer science major undergrad. A friend and I had an idea for an app. So this was like during the dot com years. So Windows app and we coded a little prototype and we started, we put it out there, we started getting some users and we thought okay, maybe we can get some investment. So of the two of us, I spoke English fluently. So we decided, okay, I'll write the investor pitch. So I wrote the pitch, sent it out and the reaction was really bad. And one VC wrote back and said, listen I rate every plan I get on a scale of 1 to 10 and yours is a 1. And next to the one he wrote in parentheses, worst in case, we thought like maybe that was the top of his rating scale. Yeah, brutal and. But then lower down. So this was back when they would like you'd print, send the hard copy of the plan and they might mail it back with comments written and he had written in. Not a compelling story. And a few weeks later, I'm walking by this Barnes and Noble and there's a sign in the window and it says for anyone who wants to tell a compelling story, okay, that's me. And there's an arrow that's pointing to these books and they turn out to be screenwriting books. And I didn't know anything about this, so I started reading these books and it strikes me like a movie is a pitch. Like, you know, what is Star Wars a pitch for? It's a pitch for, you know, be good. Like care about people, trust the force, you know, in their terms. But I don't have a couple hours, you know, I'm pitching a business. It's very different. You know, I'm not writing a three act screenplay. So like what applies? What doesn't apply? I mean, these are questions I think I'm still asking. But I did my best to kind of take some of the learnings of how the movie was structured. It was very different from how my pitch was structured and kind of restructure it. And we did that and we sent the pitch out and we start getting more interest, like it's really clear. And then we, we had a term sheet I think a few months later. And I'm like, what is this story thing that, you know, we didn't change the product. It was basically the same I business just sort of how we talked about it. That was really interesting to me. And I mean over the next like 10, 15 years I thought about like, hey, maybe I could do consulting with this. Like CEOs who heard about this would like ask me about it. But I still was like, no, no CEO is going to like budget a line item for the story. You know, like that's not a thing. So I just didn't do it for a really long time until eventually I was proven wrong about that.

And how many years ago was this at this point?

So this was dot com. This was like 98 when I was pitching that company.

Amazing. I think there's a couple interesting tidbits about this. One is that interesting opportunities arise when you're doing something you're excited about. So you had the startup, it didn't work out, but, like, you've. You had a problem that you solved for yourself, and that led to another. A bigger opportunity.

Yeah, totally.

So that's interesting. And then also just some of the best opportunities arise from solving your own problem, not having. Not planning to start something with it, but just like, I have a problem.

Yeah. I think that's the same with you, right, Lynn? Like, you started writing about stuff and like, boom, like, that became the thing.

Absolutely. It was not quite boom, but eventually, eventually became boom.

Feels like boom from outside.

That's. Yeah, that's. That's how it goes. It always feels. It always feels overnight for everyone else that isn't here.

Right, Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so. So let's get into it. So you help CEOs at this point come up with what you call a strategic narrative, and you help them not only come up with this strategic narrative, but you help their teams align around this strategic narrative. So let's just start with what is a strategic narrative.

Yeah, you think, like, I've been doing this for, like, 10 years. I'd have a very snappy definition of it. And I don't know if I'm really happy with, like, I've ever found one that totally gets at it. Yet. The one thing I say is, like, it's this one story that the CEO uses to drive success in marketing, sales, but also product. That it. That it becomes like a North Star. Strategic North Star for. For product, roadmap, for fundraising, for recruiting, really everything. And what I think is really interesting as a kind of qualifier is that this story has a certain structure. Kind of like I said, like when I found those screenwriting books, I sort of shifted the structure and the traditional structure. The way I learned how to pitch in business school, I think the way most people did, is what I call the arrogant doctor. So you have a problem, a pain. I have a solution, you know, a treatment. And I'm going to tell you why it's better than all the other treatments. Not to say it's not better, but just this is the structure of it. And it kind of sets you up for bragging, like, let me tell you why it's so great. And the structure that I read about in these movies was different in the movies. Every movie starts with some kind of shift in the world, in the character's world. Right. And I call this shift the shift from the old game to the new game. And the archetypal example of this, I think, in the business world, is what Benioff did with Salesforce. So he comes in and he says, hey, software is over. Like, meaning software in the sense that we're going to own it and maintain it. And, uh, and there's this new world called the cloud. A new game, like the new. New. New rules. Everything has changed. And we're gonna, you know, that's the new way to win. And we're gonna help you if you're. You're in there. Th. This structure really is about defining a movement, and. And that's very different from, hey, I'm gonna solve your problem.

I think the Salesforce example is an awesome example of your approach. If they were thinking about it in the old way, what would Salesforce have done? How would they have pitched it? If not for everyone's moving to the cloud, you're dumb if you're using desktop software.

Well, I think they would have just come out and said, like, oh, you know, hey, I mean, CRM, by the way, was already a category. I mean, they were already, you know, Siebel was the huge giant of that space. There were already even companies doing it online, you know, doing it through the web. And so they would have come and said, oh, you know, we're easier to install than, you know, faster to get up and running than Siebel. Or we have this much functionality compared to. I think it was. Was it netsuite or. I don't know. So it was some early, early Salesforce, like, thing that was out there. They would have done these sort of comparison things. And. And, you know, Benioff, I mean, he's. He's a pretty proud guy. I think he did still say, like, hey, we're the number ones here. But that wasn't what they led with. They. They led with this. This story about this fundamental paradigm shift. And, you know, are you in or are you not in? And what they did was instead of just saying like, hey, we're better than they, they said, hey, all those others, those. Those Siebels, and they're part of that old game. You want to play that software game, be my guest. Go. Go by Siebel. And, you know, of course, we know how it played out.

So the crux of the approach is, instead of problem solution, you should go do this. It's. The world is changing. Here's where it's going, and we're going to help you get there. And I want to go in a little more depth of the framework. But before that, what are some other examples to give people a sense of like, oh, I See, I understand what this might be.

So another great example, and no coincidence so is Zora. So Zuora is the company I wrote about in this post called the greatest sales like I've ever seen. The CEO of Zuora Tien Suo was employee number 11 at Salesforce. So he learns this from Benioff and he's pitching, hey, in the old world, businesses operated on transactions. You sold things to people outright. In this new world, he calls it the subscription economy where we people want the benefits of those things without necessarily having to pay for them. And of course gives all these examples of all the winners, you know, in this look at all the winning companies. They're all basically going to this new model. And you know, and so he's pitching someone like Ford. And you can imagine they're going to Ford and pitching, you know, a subscription for car service which is quite different from just a lease. And they're starting out with this, you know, this is the big shift. Another one team I worked with early on and I think, I think they'd agree, like their story came out of this work was Gong. So gong, you know, everyone probably knows by now, like they, they, you know, they take the video recordings of all your sales calls and they stick AI onto it and come out with all these insights. And that story is, you know, hey, goodbye Opinions. Used to be the world where we we sales is run. Opinions, hello reality. That now all the winners are gonna are adopting this new mindset where we really have to see what's really going on.

In the Gong example, let's say, what would they have done if, if they were going like, here's the problem, here's the solution, here's what we're gonna do for you.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what they were doing when they started out. And, and I'm not saying like that that didn't work. Totally. I mean, already by the time they started doing this, like they, they were starting to become a big company. I remember Amit Bendav said to me, listen, Andy, you know, they were around like series B, I think this was around 2018. He's like, we're gonna be a huge company. The question is how huge? And, you know, I think that this narrative, like, along the lines of like, Azora Salesforce, if we get this right, this is going to be a multiplier on our growth. So, you know, I don't remember exactly the pitch beforehand, but it was very much like, hey, we're going to record your calls, we're going to get insights from them. They're better than the insights you could get Salesforce from Salesforce. There wasn't this kind of unifying, kind of movement ideology that put it all in context. And what was really interesting was one thing. I don't think they'd be upset if I shared. And maybe it's known like, you know, initially they were seen as a tool for, like, sales operations, you know, for someone who's going to record the calls and what this narrative did for them. And I think it was already starting to happen. But what it really coalesced was this is a tool for sales leadership.

You talked about Zura and the post you wrote, and I imagine many people listening are like, oh, shit, this is the guy that wrote that post that everyone's always sharing with me about how to make a deck. And I wanted to ask how impactful was that one piece of writing for you and your career? Just like, as a tangent, I had.

Written some other posts on Medium in particular. Medium. Medium has changed quite a bit. But back then I found that I could write stuff there and get really, like, a lot of people who were interested in what I was interested in would sort of come in and create some noise about it. So I was already doing this kind of work for a couple of years, but that post immediately got something like 2 million views around the world. And I started getting inquiries from teams all over the world. And it was, I think, what really allowed me to sit know, okay, I could do this work that, that CEOs would budget a line item for this. Because I think if you really understand that post, it's not really about a sales deck. It's really about this story that Tien and that, you know, the CEO is telling everywhere and that, you know, is showing up in the sales deck and structuring it that way.

I think it's just another example that comes up a bunch on this podcast. Just the power of writing and the power of content. And there's. Yeah, and you're shaking your head.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I had a. I had a little mini career as a journalist, as a freelance writer, and I really love that. I actually, I took a class in New York called How to write a Magazine Article. I was, you know, sort of mid career, I was sort of curious, and the class wound up being more about, like, how to sell a magazine article. And I found I really love that, like, pitching articles and, you know. But one thing that was always a downer for me, it was like, there's always this editor, you know, sort of like Deciding what, what I'm. What's going to be out there. And you know, when you work with a great editor, it's great. Like they make your stuff better and they're priceless. But still there's this intermediary. And what started to happen, I think around. When I started writing, around 2013, 14, you start to see these platforms like Medium, even LinkedIn, where you can just write and have this audience. And I think, no way I could do this. What the work I do if that development hadn't happened first.

I'm taking us off track, but I want to go a little deeper with this. I find that there's kind of two paths to writing online. One is like. Is your path where you write one piece that just like blows up like crazy. The other path is more my path where I just write consistently for a long time and both work. And most people try to go your path and they never succeed. It's really hard to make something gets 2 million views, but you can go that path.

You know, this is like you said earlier, like, hey, it seems like boom, but really it. So I had. That was. That was probably the 30th or 40th piece, you know, and they were gradually getting more and more traction. There was one I wrote before that about it's kind of dissecting Elon Musk's pitch for the power wall, the battery that they sell. And that one got maybe like few hundred thousand views and also was a big jump. And then, you know, the next one got, you know, some paltry number of. So there, there was a. What I find is like, yeah, there's this. There's this a while where you're writing and it feels like you're talking to nobody. And then sort of gradually it grows and. And you'll have these peaks and then. But then, you know, over time is where the magic is.

Okay, I'm really glad you pointed that out that it rarely is just you write one thing and boom. Yeah, great.

I'll also say sorry because I worked at a magazine. I haven't done a newsletter because that idea of like having a deadline all the time and like constantly having to. We used to call the magazine Feed the Beast. Like I feel so free not to have that. So for now at least, I haven't done that.

I know that well. So let me take us back on track and let's talk about just the high level framework here. So you talked about. It starts with this idea of tell people world is changing during this movement. What's like the simple way to think about the pieces of this strategic narrative framework.

A lot of times people contact me, say, hey, I tried it, didn't work. And, well, one. One very common thing, at least earlier, was they would basically just take the Zwora deck. They'd get a hold of it and just, like, put their logo on it. And so, you know, that's not gonna work. One thing is, you know, we're not just saying, hey, the world is changing. And there's. Sometimes I'll see the world is changing and there'll be used to be, and there's a long list of things. And then now it is a long list of bullet points, right? What's really, I think, key is naming it. Like naming that old game. The examples you saw. Software, cloud, transactions, subscription, opinions, reality. This very, very concise naming is really key. And it's hard because in making it compact, you're losing completeness. So, you know, you can imagine you're in a meeting, someone says, like, hey, how about we do transactions to subscriptions? And so it says, well, I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't really subscribe to. Subscription economy, really. So we're always kind of overstating it in a way, but it's not a problem. Like, you don't. I don't think people say, like, oh, you know, that's wrong. Subscription economy, because I still go to the grocery store and buy things, right? So anyway, that's the first piece. The second piece is what I call naming the stakes. And there's a few ways to do this, but one that's really great, if we can do it, is to name the winners, to show that winners are already playing this new game. So for instance, with Zwora, they're saying, hey, look. Look at all the new winners. Like, this is like 2015. So, like Airbnb Box, you know, all these companies, they're already doing this subscription thing. And by the way, overall, like, they show this scary stat about the, like, the. The longevity of Fortune 500 companies. It's getting smaller. And so it's a little disingenuous. But basically, they make this case that, hey, companies are dying. The ones that are winning are doing this, right? And so to the extent we can, we want to make this life and death just like a movie, right? And this is, again, I'll make the parallel to Star Wars. So Luke spends, like the first 15 minutes of the movie bellyaching. Like, he wants to be a pilot. He wants to go out and have adventures in space. So Obi Wan comes, he says, hey, we got this mission, this princess. We got to rent and all this stuff. Let's go out and let's go. I'll teach you to be a pilot. We'll go have adventures in space. What does Luke say? He says, ooh, you know what? I can't really get involved. They gotta go home, it's late. Who does this sound like? The reluctant buyer, you know, so, yeah, I want to be innovative and all this. Ooh, you know what? I don't have budget this quarter, so. So how does. How does George Lucas change Luke's mind? He basically kills the aunt and uncle. Sorry. Spoilers. It's been 40 years though. But if you haven't seen it, it's probably. You're probably not gonna see it. Kills the aunt and uncle. Now it's pretty clear they're coming for Luke. Now the stakes are life and death. Probably he's gonna be dead. But there is this other path that Obi Wan holds out for him. And whenever I work with teams and I talk about this, so they're like, okay, I guess we gotta then for kill the prospects aunt and uncle. And basically, yes, I mean, like, figuratively, we gotta show them that the future is not gonna just be sort of okay. That there are. It's probably. People talk about like, making it emotional. And I've always wondered, like, what does that mean? Like, literally, what is the definition? And this is, for me, the definition is that the prospect doesn't see the future as sort of okay. They see it as split between a very negative outcome and a potentially very positive outcome. The third piece is what I call naming the object of the new game. I used to call it the Promised Land message, but I've changed it to this because I think I found that it's sort of a little more fruitful. This subscription economy transactions, it can get a little high falutin and sort of big, right? So, you know, but like on the website, when we just have to boil it down to a couple of words, that's going to be clear, like right away, what can we say? And I find that, you know, what's the object of the new game? Really boils it down is kind of the rallying cry of the movement. So the example with Zwora, the object for a while was turn customers into subscribers. Very simple, you know, just sort of flows from it. Airbnb for a while had this one live anywhere. You know, if you think about, you know, belong anywhere. Well. Well, actually it was so you're right. It was belong anywhere and then it switched to live there. It was, it was both. I'm not, I may have the, the chrono chronology wrong, but it was the two of those things you know better than I do. Right. But either one, I mean, I think they're saying very similar things. Hey, there's this new world where you can, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to live in hotels, you can stay in people's houses. What's the, what's the object of that game is to, to belong anywhere but live there. Right. And it's a, I love it when it works that way, where it's almost like an asymptotically unachievable thing, like you're never literally going to live there. But. And if you think about it, this, this buyer mission statement is this rallying cry. I think of it really as the mission of the company. I mean, what, what is the mission of Airbnb other than to help people live there? You know, if they're going to be customer focused and all that. The fourth piece is, okay, well, this object of the game, you know, winning this game, it better be hard, right? Because if it's not like, we don't have a, like why we even exist, just like with the movie, like, if it's, if, if, if Luke can just go like, destroy the Death Star, then, you know, no movie. So there's gotta be sort of obstacles in the way things that are preventing them from. So, so saying, okay, you want to, you want to turn customers into subscribers. So whereas Zwora, where they go next is say, okay, well, how are you going to measure lifetime value? Because now you have this always on thing. How are you going to measure preferences and how they're changing over all these new kind of challenges that didn't exist before. And then, and these are like the opposite. These are like the, you know, the, the, the monsters in Lord of the Rings or, you know, the, the Empire and Star Wars. These are the obstacles. And I think about them because they sound like problems, you know, nor. This is what people would normally say, oh, these are the problems we solve. But by setting up this story thing first, we've kind of repackaged them as obstacles to a, to a new goal state that we've already positioned as life and death. So they take on this much more emotional meaning. We understand why they matter. And then, of course, the last piece is, is, is now talking about, well, how are we going to overcome these obstacles? How, how, you know, in the narrative, people in the movie business, they call these, like the magic gifts that the main character gets to go, you know, help them win. What are the ways now we can talk about that and success stories and all the rest of the stuff.

So there's some obvious parallels to the Hero's Journey here. I imagine that was a source of inspiration. And the Star Wars, I think, is like the epitome of that journey. Can you talk about just how related those two are, how you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, so Hero's Journey is this. This book that comes from. I think it's Hero of a Thousand Faces is a book by Joseph Campbell, sociologist. And he looks at myths over different cultures and different times, and he finds this kind of common structure that he calls the Hero's Journey. I mean, it's. There's some controversy about that, about his book. You know, is it a very male oriented sort of take on things and a bunch of things. But, you know, even that aside, I found when I would talk about Hero's Journey and stuff, it's just like it didn't really tell me what to do.

Yeah.

Like, okay, yeah, I got to do this pitch. So, you know, in the Hero's Journey, there's like, refusal of the call. That's actually that thing where Luke, like, doesn't. Says he doesn't want to go and where the buyer says, you know, hey, I'm. I don't have budget. But I don't know, it was just like, too theoretical for me to really. When I use it, people seem to sort of glass over. So I just don't really talk about that at all. But yeah, I mean, that's behind a lot of this stuff for sure.

Yeah, that makes sense because I think people hear about that all the time and they're like, become a better storyteller. Tell your story in this Hero's Journey. And it's like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah. Also I would say, you know, there's storytelling as a skill kind of thing, which is a great thing. You know, you learn how to tell stories better, blah, blah, blah. I'm not really interested in that in my work. What I'm interested in is the one story and the structure of that one story. And this one story doesn't really have a. You know, the world has moved from transactions to subscriptions. Like, there's not a main character in that story who's like, having a problem and getting sick. You know, it's. It's almost as if what's Happening is we're present, we're. We're turning the person we talk to into the main character by, by creating this, by, by spelling out the shift. We're like changing their world and we're asking and we're saying, hey you, you gotta, you gotta change and you wanna come with us.

Yeah. And it's almost like you're putting them into the hero's journey like you can. That's how you win.

Exactly.

I love that. So let me just try to summarize what you shared this five step framework. So you start with, here's the new movement that's happening and you wanna name it. You want to name the stakes, and there's winners and losers, and here's what's already happening and it's really important. Then you want to name the object of the new game, like turning customers into subscribers. Then show the obstacles, here's why it's challenging, and then talk about how you're going to overcome these obstacles.

Yeah. And by the way, the naming of the, the object of the new game, I find it often is really nice to do it as a question. So, you know, so we asked. So, so hey, there's this shift from transactions to subscriptions and look, everyone's doing it. So we asked a simple question. What would it take to turn every customer into a subscriber? You know, and this way we're kind of bringing the person we're pitching to along almost like they're coming along with us. As a co. I don't know. Adventurer in crafting this story.

I love that this episode is brought.

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Just to reinforce this even more, what if we go through the five steps and just with one company as an example and just talk about what each of those were for them.

Okay, great. So there's a company called 360 Learning. So this company, I don't know if folks know, but this company has raised like over $200 million. They're in the space of like corporate training software. You know, so big companies, they, they have to train their people on all kinds of stuff. So you want to go through that one?

Yeah, that sounds great.

Okay, great. So the story, and, and by the way, Nick Hernandez is the CEO and Nick's been on my podcast so he's talked about this. So they for a long time were pitching themselves as collaborative learning. So they have, you know, features that let people sort of collaborate on courses and all kinds of stuff. And, and Nick is often pitching CEOs, of course, his team is as well. And he told me that it was sort of like kind of falling a little bit flat like people. Collaborative learning. Okay, whatever. You know, how are you different from this learning platform? This learning platform. And so when we worked together, you know, this collaborative learning, it's almost like a category name or descriptor or something. They was so embedded that I decided like, I don't, I don't even want to like take it out. But can we define it in terms of like a, of the story? So the story they came to was, hey, used to be that companies train their people through a, basically a mindset of top down learning. There's going to be some like learning guru at the company. They're going to get all the courses, they're going to, you know, put it all together and like sort of set out this training material to everybody. And what's happening now is winning companies are, are, are, are approaching this differently in, in this, they're, they're adopting this approach we might call upskill from within, which is, you know, if you look at like Google, like there's this page where I think you can go, it's a public, you can like connect with like Google's AI experts. They literally turn their internal experts into like champions that are educating not even just the company, but even external people. They've created this culture of our own, people are going to be the educators. So that's the shift from top down to this upskill from within. And of course, I just even started to do the second piece, which was like, hey, there's. There's. Look at the big companies who are doing this. And then I think they showed, hey, you know, you're not doing this. Look, training is becoming very expensive. It's. People don't care. People, you know, so this is the downside. So we're creating these sort of stakes. And also, I think he had something about, you know, how training now, like companies, like, if you don't adapt, like, if you can't get these skills to your people, like if you're a car company and you can't get these skills around, you know, electric cars, you're dead, you know. So Nick was in France and he saw this poster from a recruiting poster from McDonald's. And it said, hey, if you work at McDonald's, you're going to learn from everybody else on your team. And it was like, wow, there it is. Right? So it was another example we used as a kind of winner example. And so then the question became, you know, how. I can't remember exactly. It was something like, how do you upskill from within? Like, what would it take for you to turn your experts into, like, champions of learning in the company and turn them into stars and all this, Right? And then I'm gonna forget here what all the obstacles were. But I think it was things like, well, how are you gonna make it possible for anybody to create a course? You know, people who don't even know how to, you know, might have expertise in, in electric engines, but, you know, don't know how to create a course? That happened. How are you gonna make sure that there's still, like, the, the learning department, they're gonna keep control and, and can, you know all this. You can imagine all the different kind of questions. And then, of course, now 360 learning starts talking about all that stuff and what Nick has told me. I'm actually going to be on a. On a. A webinar with Nick where someone asked me, like, could you bring in a CEO who could talk about, you know, this stuff, not just you blabbing on about strategic narrative? And so Nick is going to join it. Join it. And we had a dress rehearsal the other day and he was telling me, like, it's just like when he starts with this now he doesn't even get the question anymore of like, well, how are you different from this other learning platform, you know, which used to always be the thing. And it's, it's just a much more seamless like, okay, yeah, talk to our learning people, get this, get this going. So it's just sounds like it's been really effective for them.

That's actually was what I was going to ask next is what kind of impact have you seen with someone shifting their pigeon story from this doctor, what was it? The arrogant doctor approach to the strategic narrative?

Yeah, I mean, it's always this kind of thing, I hear. I mean, of course it's very difficult to say, to measure this. I mean, like, what was the value of the strategic narrative for GONG and its growth? You know, was it, was it 3x versus 1, 2x or. I don't. Who knows, right? But the things I hear from CEOs, a few things. One is that, yeah, when they're pitching, they're not pitching features out of context. They're pitching now a movement, you know, which is a lot better place to be, I think. You know, you're, you're, in a way, you're not pitching product. Product. Your product is like a prop for making the story come true. Very important prop. But there's this higher level overlay that becomes the focus of the conversation at first and of course we're going to get into product and that, that helps sell. Once we have this story, then everything in marketing can be all about this story. You know, with Zuora, when they, if you look at their website, well, when they, when they first started doing this, like maybe 80% of the content is not, hey, let me tell you about how Zora is so great or here's our new release or whatever. It's, here's how music companies are embracing subscriptions. Here's how luxury goods companies are embracing subscription. You know, it's like all these kind of almost trend pieces that become unlimited fodder. And again, you're not touting your, it's less salesy. Right. Another thing I, I just hear, always. I just interviewed a CEO this morning for, for my podcast and, and this is the first thing he actually said was it becomes the strategic north star for the product. So what he was telling me, and this was actually a little unusual, I, I asked him like, why did you come to me at first? And of course I've asked him that before, but he said something that I this time that was like a little different from what I heard before. He said, you know, we are constantly getting feature requests through sales, through customer success and we had sort of no like way bar for to decide, like, well what do we take on? What don't we take on? And this clearly has become our bar, you know, if you think about it for 360 learning, you know, does it help us upskill from within? It's in does it not or it's prioritized, you know, does it not less prioritize? Amit Bend off told me this directly. He said, you know, we exactly the same thing we used to. We. He said, we get a lot of requests for features and a lot of them are basically about opinions. Like some, some way to. To. To record opinions.

And this is gone.

We're not going to do those in gone at Gong. Yeah, we're not going to do those.

Are there any companies out there that maybe aren't clients that you see as like, wow, these guys are nailing it and they're doing a great job with the strategic narrative.

Well, one that really comes to mind is, I mean it's been out there for a while, but drift, you know, drift comes out with a. With essentially like a chatbot for your website, which might be like the 30th chatbot for your website. And they don't say, hey, here's why our chat bot is the best one. They come, they, they start from a completely different place, which is, hey, used to be people would sort of wait around for you to get back to them. You know, it was a world of sort of later of. They called it the world of forms. You know, you put up a web form and you expect someone's going to fill it out and maybe wait a few days while you take your sweet time deciding if they're going to. You're going to get back to them. And there's and, and David cancel and David Gerhardt start from right the beginning saying now we're in a world of. Of now where they, where buyers are. They. I think they showed this woman, I remember this woman sleeping with her phone. Like, that's your, that's your prospect. Your prospect. Like they're, they're just always on and they're going to expect you to be engaging with them right away. And they called this conversational marketing. And you know, they really went with that and created, I think, a whole movement and they broke away from all of the other, you know, chatbots.

Awesome example. So earlier you threw out this word category. And I've noticed you haven't talked about category and category creation too much. And I think that you're kind of not a fan of this idea of creating a category and focusing on category. I'd love to hear your perspective on how that all relates to the stuff you recommend.

Lenny, are you trying to get me in trouble? Like that guy who, that, that, that guy on your podcast who, who attacked jobs to be done apparently.

Let's do it. Let's see what kind of trouble we can get into.

I would, I would soften it a little bit and not just because I, I don't want the ire of the category design folks, but I, I really would soften and say I, I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of creating category look. I think the, you know, if you look play bigger which has been become kind of the, the bible of that category creation thing. You know, if you look behind that, they're going to what. What do they say the category is? They say it's a narrative, it's a story about how the world was to, to how. How it is. And, and, and so what I find though is that when people think about category creation, they tend to just focus on like, okay, well this, this category name gonna be that we got. What are these three words that are or two words, whatever that are going to sort of magically make us seem like we're totally different from everybody else. And a. I think that's not really possible. Like these three words aren't going to do it. Take gong. I mean already other companies were using this term Revenue Intelligence, right? With gong, it suddenly becomes a thing because I think they have this opinions to reality story behind it. You know, at one point I again I asked Amit. He said yeah, in he. Because he had really. I remember he really struggled. What should we call it? What should we call it? He came up with, with, with that one. But then when I asked him later, he's like, yeah, you know what? In hindsight we probably could have called it like Strawberry Intelligence. It didn't matter. It was really the story that. That was sort of mattered. I, I think he was exaggerating a little bit. But. And I think the category people would actually agree with this. I think they would agree with like hey, your. The. These three words are. It's sort of a shorthand for this movement for of old game, new game narrative. But I guess that, I guess I feel like still by calling it category and category name like we're just focusing on those three words so much. And what happens often is CEOs will. They'll kind of come up with this little category like what happened with nick at the 360 Learning with Collaborative Learning, we have this name, but we don't know how to tell the story around it and that, you know, so my feeling is like, well, let's. Let's focus on the story. So that's why I talk about strategic narrative and, and movement creation versus category creation. You know, if someone decides that your movement is a category, great bonus.

I see. So essentially your approach is category can play a part of this. But there's a bigger question you have, what's the story? What's the movement? What are the obstacles? And category is an element of that potentially.

I mean, I always almost see them as orthogonal. Like, you know, with HubSpot, you know, HubSpot had this narrative around inbound. You know, it used to be just outbound still. Now we're going to have inbound. And that. That wasn't really a category. There's still. I think if you. Back then they were probably known as marketing automation. Now they're probably known as CRM because they broadened. But this movement is the thing that's sort of the constant and in some ways orthogonal to whatever category they're. They're. They're in.

You know, is the strategic narrative framework right. For essentially any company or is there like a sweet spot? I've noticed most of the companies you've been talking about are B2B SaaS. So I don't know, maybe like, if there's a spectrum of perfect fit for strategic narrative framework, and then like, not a fit at all. What's, like, what's along that spectrum?

Yeah, well, you can see, I mean, it, it takes a little time, I mean, to tell this story. And it's a kind of. You were kind of framing it a little bit, and we're telling it in lots of different channels. Right. So I think it does really play well in sort of like this enterprise sales context, because also we have a group buyer there. So it's not just one person who's, you know, doing some research. And like there's, there's like this whole group has to sort of have a. A united, a uniting story. So I think you're right that in noticing that the companies that this tends to, you know, resonate with tend to be B2B enterprise sales technology, I think, because often the product is very complicated. You know, that arrogant doctor stuff, you know, comes from an age when the things people were selling were like products on shelves that didn't change much. You know, cans of soup at the supermarket or, or like a car in the dealership. Even software back Then, you know, shrink wrapped in a box doesn't change. Soft B2B software, you know, this stuff is changing by the minute. And does it even make sense to make a claim to say, like, oh, we have these features and they have those features, therefore we're better? I mean, like, does that, can you even, does that make any sense? That said, you know, hey, I was looking for, I was looking for like a sports watch, you know, like a Fitbit. And then, you know, and I'm, yeah, I'm comparing specs and I'm doing all that stuff, you know, and so that mode of buying is still happening. But I think that's, you know, in that. So yeah, when like consumer products companies contact me, I usually say no. Occasionally they still say, okay, yeah, we'll build this. We still want to have this narrative. But yeah, I think it has the most value, most impactful right away for B2B enterprise technology companies.

Just a few more questions. One is just, what's a sign that you should spend time in this area that something is broken in your strategic narrative story pitch?

Well, I can tell you what I hear from CEOs when they contact me. Like, why did I, I always ask like, what's happening? Like, because that, that idea I had. No CEO is going to budget a line item for this. I'm basically asking like, why was I wrong? Like, what? So a few things they tell me. One is that the company is maturing from a point, a stage where they've been successful, but that success is. One CEO put it this way as like, was brute force of the founders. So the founders are in every meeting, they're in every product discussion, every sales call and that's shifting. The company's getting bigger. Usually I'm seeing this around like series B where the company is getting. So they can't be in every, every sales call, every market and they're looking to kind of transmit all the good stuff and some direction in a way that people are going to remember and, and all, and, and all that. Everything from how we pitch to what the product should be and all that. And they see this as that. There's another kind of point that I see people contacting me at, which is where they're growing. It's usually a bit later where they've scaled tremendously successfully. Now we're either acquiring or building out whole new product units and that old story we told is just, it's just not big enough and we gotta expand it to something bigger. This is, this is the example of like OneTrust which was on my. Which I'll have on my. The CEO, I'll have. My podcast recently, you know, starts out with just sort of, I think, data privacy around, you know, the regulations that people have to be able to say, don't track me. Things like that. And then they're. They buy these other companies, and now we have this much bigger, bigger offering. So how do we tell the story? And then I guess the third one is some form of pivot where, hey, we were telling an old story, but we're, you know, whatever. The market changed or whatever, and we're. We want to go in a different direction.

So say a founder is listening to this and they're like, okay, I realize I need to do this. I haven't spent enough time on this. Something's not working. This could be a huge unlock for us. What are the first couple steps they could take to start to figure this out? And I imagine at some point it's like, go talk to Andy. He'll help you through this. Is there stuff you can do on your own? How do you go about?

Well, a lot of folks have. Have emailed me over the years, like, hey, well, I told you before, there were some who emailed me, like, hey, tried it, didn't work. But many, many more have have emailed me, hey, I tried it. It did work. Thank you. And so, yeah, just try to lay out that structure and try it. I mean, even when I work with teams, I adapt what people might call sort of lean approach. Like, I want to get that thing out there into sales calls. You know, we're not rolling it out to the whole sales team right away, but getting it out into some sales calls and get a sense like, hey, is this resonating? Are people, like, given the nods? Ideally, by the way, one way I look to test it, you know, is. Is it working? Is like, when we talk about this shift, shift and the stakes and the, you know, do they stick? Do they kind of say, like, yeah, let me tell you how that's playing out for us. And. Or. Or in my. Yes, I'm seeing that. Let me. Sometimes I'll literally, I'll. I'll train salespeople to ask them that question, like, am I crazy or are you seeing this? And. And what did they say? And, you know, you can usually tell, like, if they're in and it's qualitative, but I really like that kind of kind of testing to see if it's working. And I think anybody can do that.

Is there a template or guide you have online for folks to follow other than maybe just listening to this podcast and reading. Is there a post that's like, here's the framework defined and go follow these steps?

I mean, I guess the closest is that the greatest sales deck I've ever seen post, which is this WARA deck. But even there, I, I, I really, people have asked me, like, for a framework, like, and, and like, you know, presentation companies, could we have your, your template so we could like, make it available to people. We'll, we'll revenue share with you or something, you know, and I am so against this template. Like, every team I work with, it's different. You know, it's not like the same number of slides. Sometimes we can lay out this shift in one slide. Sometimes it just feels better or the team likes it better, whatever, if it's a few. And we're sort of getting, sometimes there's no slides. So I am really hesitant to sort of recommend any template. And what I'd say is, like, these are principles for, you know, for, for building it. Not, not any prescribed formula.

If they do want to reach out to you while we're on this topic, what's the best way to contact you?

Connect with me on LinkedIn. That's usually a good one. I, I'm, and I'm usually posting things on LinkedIn that I've learned from working with other teams.

Awesome. Last question before we get to a very exciting lightning round. I saw, speaking of LinkedIn, you posted how in a working session with companies that the second session is always this, like, low point they all go through and everyone's starting to get discouraged and pained. And first of all, I love the expectations heading. You're like, this is going to suck initially and it'll get better. Why is that the low point? And what is it that they focus on in that second session?

Well, apparently I'm not doing enough of an expectation setting because, like, what, what that post was about was like this, this, this woman who. So when I work with a CEO, I always ask them to create a, what I call strategic narrative team of up to four people. And usually those are leads of like, marketing, sales, whatever. In this case, the CFO was a really important person in this company. And so the CEO wanted her as part of this team. And she said to me at the end, she's like, you know, I would love where we got to. I always ask what worked, what didn't work. And she, I love where we got to that worked great. What didn't work was like, you told us that this Second session was going to be bad, but I don't. I think you could have drilled home more like, exactly how bad. So. And then I asked her, actually, could I. Could I have that quote with your face on a slide that I now present to future team? She said. She said, yeah, you could do that. So the way. The way I work it is in I have a kickoff session where essentially I'm asking people on the team, like, what are these pieces? What is this old game, new game, Shift? How do we talk about winner, set the stakes and everything? I just took you through. We have five people in the room. There's going to be. We're going to come out of this with notes and notes, boards, boards and boards of ideas of, like, this stuff, right? And so then two things happen. One is I asked the team to start interviewing customers about how they see the shift. And sometimes the customers will literally give us the words. And that can be helpful in sort of aligning if we have differences. But I also start working with the CEO, one on one. And we start and we build a first version of this thing. And it's the second session where we present this first version to the team and think about what's happening. Like, the team has just given us, like, millions of gold ideas. Like, truly, they're all. And in order to make something sort of clean and powerful, the CEO and I have had to pretty much throw out all of them, you know, save one or two. Right. And there's going to be feelings about that, first of all. Second of all, you know, if this were easy to just, like, get all the, you know, interview everybody, come up with it, they would have done it, right. So it's going to be wrong. But the good news is this is where the team gets to weigh in. I also ask what's working, not working in this thing. And when we learn how it's not working, that gives us the juice to. Then me and the CEO go back to the drawing board. We plan on this in advance. We're going to go back to the drawing board and then bring up something good. So I. You know, having a shit draft is like a million times more valuable than having all these great ideas, but it's also really painful. It's painful not only for them, but for me. Like, no matter how many times I say this, I want it. I expect they're gonna love it in that first one, too. And I'm really pissed off when they don't. But. But luckily now I've done it enough times. Like, I know that's gonna happen.

Mm. I was just watching a documentary about Annie Lamont, who came up with the shitty first draft concept for writers that I stick to.

I'm a firm believer in that. Yeah.

As you're talking. One last thought that I had is, so you work with CEOs and founders. I feel like this could be just as useful to product leaders, product managers working on a product that they're launching. Just like, what is the movement, where it's happening? Here's why this product's important. Do you. Do you find that, too?

Absolutely. And very frequently, like, the product leader, chief product officer is part of this group. And. And what I'd say, though, is that, you know, the. The reason I. So when I looked after I did this work for a few years, I looked back and I was like, which were the ones where. Which were the engagements I did where, like, I can see it. And it. It just. The narrative is like, really this true North Star for everything. And it was always the ones where the CEO was. Was leading it, not just, like, in name, but, like, literally the person who called me, who was like, in, you know, working on the drafts with me and, like, going through, like. And so initially I didn't. I didn't insist that it would be the CEO doing that, but eventually I started to. And I think even for a product leader, like, you're going to want the support. You don't want to be just telling that story in product. You're going to want that supported from, you know, the Zora person who gave me the initial deck, he said, you know, it was like I had. It was like I. I had air cover, and I was just going down and knocking down deals on the ground. You're going to want that air cover in marketing, sales, recruiting, everything. And, you know, how much better is it if it's. If it's really driven by the CEO and you have that.

Amazing. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on or you want to share before we get to our very exciting lighting round?

No, except I. I love category design people. And it's really just. It's really just sort of terms that I like that are. You know what? Forget it. Scratch that part.

I thought that was funny.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, we could leave it in. We could leave it in. You could even leave this in where I'm telling you to scratch it.

Sounds good. I was actually going to joke that I was going to cut this out and leave you hanging, but.

Okay. No, you could do that. Yeah. Category design people love you don't don't hate me. Thank you.

Great. I love it. We're going to be okay, I think.

Okay.

Well, with that, we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

I'm ready. I haven't seen the Qu. I saw the Qu. You sent them, but I didn't really look at them, so I'm just going to tell you what I said.

Perfect. Excellent. The best version of this. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

One of the books that I read initially in that. From that Barnes and Noble, it was story by Robert McKee. I think a lot of people know about it who are sort of interested in story stuff, but it's kind of a bible of people who are doing screenwriting and stuff. If you know anyone who's in Hollywood or thought about going to Hollywood, they know about this book. I love a book called out of Sheer Rage. It's really not about what I do or anything, but it's, uh. The author is Jeff Dyer. Jeff. He's a. He's. He's written a lot of books that are kind of essay memoir. And this is a book about him trying to write a book about D.H. lawrence. So it's all about procrastinating and like, oh, like him. I'm supposed to write this book. I think I'm gonna. I'm about to go on a trip somewhere. Should I bring the collected works of D. H. Lawrence with me on the trip? Because that'll help me start the book. But maybe I shouldn't, because it's not gonna. Then I could come back refreshed without having, you know, basically, it's all that. It's all this sort of like, in the head. I just really enjoy that book.

What's a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?

Station 11. Station 11. That was just so beautiful to me.

Trippy. It was a trippy movie. Did not expect to go where it went.

Yeah.

I usually ask what's a favorite interview question you like to ask? And I don't know how often you're interviewing people, but does anything come to mind when asked that?

Well, I can tell you one thing I ask when I speak with CEOs is I like to ask what role this narrative played in your leadership? What does it play in? How does it work in your leadership? It's always really interesting for me to hear that because I often hear things that I don't expect.

What's a favorite product you've recently Discovered that you just really like.

I recently got a Fitbit. I think I may mention it earlier. I was like looking for a product like that, and so far I'm really loving it.

Amazing. Have you tried other versions of Fitbits or. That's the one that's working.

I also ordered a Polar at the same time and wound up returning the Polar. Basically it was just a little clunkier on my wrist, so I went with a Fitbit. Why do you have one that you recommend instead?

I just have the Apple Watch and I've never tried a Fitbit and it gives me all this stuff that seems cool, but I've never gone, never gone further.

I got the Fitbit like a week ago and I actually still am on the fence whether I bring it back to return it for the Apple Watch. So I'm enjoying it. But we'll see.

Okay, final question. You're expert on presentations, and I imagine you spent a lot of time in decks. And so just what's like one small change people can make to how they put together a deck or a presentation that will make their presentation a lot better.

This is the one thing make the title the takeaway of the slide so that the person looking at it has to do zero work to take away. So example you'll sometimes see like the problem or the team replace like the team with our team, you know, is a veterans of whatever industry or every single slide. The takeaway, it's a takeaway, not a label and it'll make everything flow a lot better.

You did a killer job answering the Lightning round questions without having a peek at what they were going to be. Andy, this was incredibly insightful. I'm going to go start working on my strategic narrative for my podcast and newsletter. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, learn more, maybe consider working with you? And then how can listeners be useful to you?

So I mentioned LinkedIn is a way to connect with me. That's fine. My website is andyraskin.com I also have a podcast where I talk with CEOs. So if you're interested in hearing more details about actual use of this. It's called the bigger narrative. My mom introduces every episode. I call her, I send her the interviews in advance. I call her an interview about what she thinks people will get out of it, and that conversation becomes the intro to the podcast episode. And what was the last question?

How can listeners be useful to you?

Useful to me? Just, you know, if you try any of this stuff, let me know. Like, hey, worked, didn't work. You know, have this question. I would love to hear that stuff.

Amazing. Andy. Thank you again for being here.

Thanks so much for having me, Lenny. This is really fun.

Bye everyone.

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