Tell Me a Story

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com. Storytelling. It's as old as humanity, and financial advisors who do it well and do it with integrity find that it's one of the most important tools they have to engage and persuade people. Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, and welcome to Actionable Intelligence. My guest today is Annette Simmons. Annette is a speaker, consultant, and trainer who works with leadership teams around the world. She's also written 4 books, including The Story Factor, which was listed as one of the 100 best business books of all time. By the end of today's show, you'll know how to incorporate storytelling as a way to create clarity, foster action, and deepen trust with your most important relationships. So let's get started. Here's Annette.

Well, let's go back to those stories that we heard when we were 5 or 6 years old. Those stories were actually behavior modification stories in many ways. They taught us how to share. They taught us how to delay gratification. They taught us all the lessons we need to be good friends, good family members, et cetera. And so if you think about it, storytelling is actually the oldest form of influence in human history. And those stories weren't just to entertain. It's nice that they do entertain us, but there's, I think, an evolutionary reason why we have stories, and that is to share lessons learned. So when I first wrote a book about turf wars, it occurred to me that people were talking about what should happen, but they weren't necessarily discussing what actually happened. And so that first book was me gathering true stories. And true stories, a lot of people summarize and say, well, the guy's a backstabber. And I'll say, well, actually, that's not true. Thankfully, no blood, no knife. But tell me the story of what happened. And so as they told the story, things would come up like, well, I started talking in the meeting and this guy turns and starts to text. And I'm like, oh, okay, because that's a very subtle message that they're not interested in what you have to say. And so when I was able to take those stories I was able to help people not do that. They didn't even know that they started it in somebody else's eyes. And then it went on to using storytelling to help facilitate a group. For instance, we know what goes wrong in group behavior. There's somebody who talks too much. There's people who don't talk enough. But having a bunch of rules say, you know, be open and share your thoughts doesn't change people's behavior. But what does change people's behavior is stories. And so I tell some stories about someone who was real quiet, and yet everybody wished that they would speak. And it has to be a specific story about a specific person. I tell a story about this guy who just goes on and on and won't shut up. And it's an indirect way, but they would see themselves in these stories. And when they saw themselves in these stories, then through the privacy of their mind, they could change their behavior. It was much more effective than actually I was trying to call somebody out. Afterwards, I realized storytelling was so embedded in what I was doing that I began to study storytelling like an academic may study it. It just turned out a thousand different ways that storytelling can help us get along better and create more trust.

And as I think about storytelling and in reading some of the work that you've done here in the past, I know you talk about this idea of using stories as a way to understand our reality, or at least our interpretation of reality. You talk about using stories as a means of influence, but of course we always want to talk about ethical influence and not using story as a tool of manipulation to try and get your way. I don't know if this is an example or whether this is a story, so I'm just going to share it with you and get your feedback, and it will help us really, I think, understand what is the difference between giving an example and telling a story. So in the financial industry, I remember many years ago listening to a sales trainer and he shared this. He said, let's pretend that you're a financial advisor. You're in front of a potential client or maybe a client, and you're trying to explain to them the difference between owning individual stocks versus owning a mutual fund. And so he grabs some pencils and then he holds one up and he says, this is a stock. And then he takes the pencil and he just breaks it in two. And he said, if you own an individual stock, there's a possibility that it could go to zero, you know, it could go bankrupt. And then he grabs a handful of the pencils and he holds them up and he said, this is a mutual fund. It is a collection of individual stocks. And then he simulates trying to break the the whole handful of pencils, which of course he can't do. And so that was, let me ask you, is that an example? Is that a story? What is the difference between an example and a story?

One of the things that happens when we get caught up in definitions is we think we're actually helping ourselves by delineating this is this, this is an anecdote, that is not, and that sort of thing. What you've got right there is a wonderful metaphor or an analogy, if you will, and he made it visual. He made it sensory. And so regardless of whether it's going to pass the classicist definition of a story or an example, it works. And what works about it is that you took an idea and you found an analogy or a metaphor, and then you made it real. And in a lot of ways, that's what I'm asking people to do with storytelling, is to go back to what it is that you're trying to communicate. So you didn't say stocks are dangerous, and people like to come to their own conclusions. And so with this metaphor, what you do is you allow someone to come to their own conclusions. You're not shoving your thoughts into their head. You're inviting them to participate, you know, see, smell, taste, touch, hear, in a physical reality in a way that allows them to kind of walk around that analogy in their mind and come to the same conclusions you have. But they value their conclusions a lot more than they value ours. So that's one of the beauties of the example you just gave.

Yeah. And a lot of important things that you said there, one of which is that people value their conclusions more than they value your conclusions. And I know we're, we're going to touch into that here a little bit deeper as we get further into our conversation here. Now, I've also heard you talk about this idea of storytelling from the inside out. What do you mean by that?

When I talk about storytelling from the inside out, I start people always with their who I am, why I'm here story. Clients come to me and they say, well, I just want to know how to describe products. My point is that before you describe anything, people want to know who you are and why you're here. And you can't just say, hi, my name is Annette and I'm trustworthy. Again, they want to come to their own conclusions. And so when I talk about story from the inside out, I teach people to find a significant emotional experience that offers proof of what it is that you're talking about. For instance, trust. If you look to your own personal experiences and you find a time when either you proved yourself trustworthy, it either cost you something to come through, it cost you time or money. I always say that if you want to tell a story of integrity, all you have to do is find it with the last time it cost you time or money to do the right thing. And if you don't have a story, then you have to worry about your definition of integrity. But this is the inside-out part where you're learning how to find in your own experiences examples that offer proof of your trustworthiness, rather than starting with a template and say, okay, my client is the hero because that's the format now, and I'm the mentor, and what challenge is my client going through? That's a very narrow sliver of what storytelling can do. When you begin to see your own life as a resource of stories. My experience has been when I teach people how to do this, they begin to approach all kinds of storytelling from the inside out. You know, the movies have made this whole hero story popular, but Pixar, who has written a lot about storytelling, their characters are almost always developed from people that the designers and the writers new or experienced at some point. And they always start with a real person instead of a construct of a person.

And this example about how do you build trust, I mean, that is so important in the financial services industry when you're working with clients that they trust you. But you can't just look that person in the eye and say, you know, I'm trustworthy, you should trust me.

Right.

You got to show. And I think that's where the stories come out, as you're describing, that you mine your history, you mine your examples. That actually demonstrate that. And instead of saying, you can trust me, it's like, here's a story about that.

And we're so concerned about being professional that what's happened is that sometimes it makes people plastic. It makes them inauthentic because they're trying to get everything just right. When I teach people to look at their stories, half the time they're like, oh, I can't tell that story, or that doesn't have anything to do with business. If it has to do with trustworthiness, it has to do with business, particularly the business you're in. And it's not just a time when you came through with flying colors, a time when you were trustworthy, when it would have been easier to just forget about it, but you went the extra mile to go and return, you know, something somebody had lost, that sort of thing. But it's also important to excavate the times when you felt like you didn't act in a trustworthy way. A lot of people are afraid to tell these stories. But what happens when you tell a story— this is what I call a "I blew it" story. And I'm going through the 4 kinds of story. One is the time you shined, which would be that time when you were trustworthy and you came through. But we all— if you're a human being, you have a time when you feel like you failed your own standards. And what's counterintuitive about that is if you tell that story, somebody can understand that you do understand what it's like to let someone down, and you have decided you are never gonna let that happen again. These also help you understand how do you define trustworthiness. If you don't define it for yourself specifically, then it's hard for you to portray it for other people in a way that they also feel like, you know, you share the same definition. You could use a mentor, somebody who taught you about trustworthiness. We all have those wonderful mentors who taught us about integrity and the sort of work that we do. Tell a story about that person, and what you'll find is that you get double points because not only are you telling a story about trustworthiness, but you're also acknowledging a mentor. You're implicitly communicating that you show gratitude for people who have taught you things. And then the fourth kind of story is a book or a movie, and so you can pull an example out of a book or a movie. Gordon Gekko was the one from my age bracket. And just talk about, you know, you could lift a piece of that movie and say, you know, some people do this, and I remember when I saw it, I decided that'll never be me. So you can, to summarize, find a story about a time you shined, a time you blew it, a mentor, or an example from a book or a movie.

So those are the— these 4 buckets as you're describing here, those are 4 places that you can mine in terms of trying to find your authentic stories. But one of the things that I did as a result of reading your book is I started capturing my stories. And now I actually have a list. I keep them digitally and I have descriptions of them. And so whenever things happen, I just write up a paragraph or two and store it electronically. And so it's a way for me to just really pull those up, whether I'm giving a presentation or whether I'm writing an article or whatever, but just being able to capture those stories.

So it'll be there when you need it. Yeah, that's excellent. A lot of people don't do that practice, and then they're like, well, I need a story. If you've been keeping notes, and the thing is you keep notes on a significant emotional event, Anytime you have a significant emotional event that makes you feel warm or connected, take a few notes about that. And then when you need it, when you're about to do a presentation, you can flip through those and that's where they are. I'm so glad. Will you tell one of your stories that you use? Do you have a who I am, why I'm here story?

Well, let me tell you a story of when I blew it.

Oh, good. Everybody loves those stories.

I probably shouldn't share this because I think what I actually did could land me in jail perhaps, but I'll take a risk here. So just being authentic. So I remember back several decades ago when I went to a fast food restaurant. I was with a buddy of mine who in hindsight was a bad influence. So we're at this restaurant and somebody had left their billfold there. And so, you know, we're young guys, we open it up and there's some money in there. And so we each took $20 and we left the billfold there. And then from there we went to what was a pinball— this is when pinball machines were kind of a big thing, we're talking many years ago. And so we went and we blew $20 playing pinball that afternoon, and it really hung on my conscience. And so, like, the next day I took another $20, I went in the backyard, and I burned it. And that was sort of in my young, naive way of trying to reconcile. I just stole $20, trying to make amends, trying to make amends that, well, I'm not going to benefit from it now because I just burned another $20. So I'm at net zero. And I mean, that still haunts me to this day that I actually stole that money. So that's my "I blew it" story.

That's a powerful story. It's a very powerful story. I just want to point out some of the things that in terms of storytelling that you do really well. When you said, you know, "Could land me in jail," I bet you every listener was leaning forward, you know, because these little sentences are not just stimulating because it seems like a risky thing. It's stimulating because you're opening up. You're going to tell somebody something that demonstrates that you trust them to take this story in the context it's delivered. And one of the things I love about sharing a story like that is that in the trust dance, somebody has to go first. And when you share an authentic, you know, I blew it story, one of the benefits is that you are showing people trust, and then they will in turn Show trust back.

Yeah, I appreciate that. So you mentioned these 4 buckets on where to find your personal stories, but I know you also have the 6 kinds of stories that you can tell and when to tell them. I think you shared a couple here, but let's go through— why don't you just start with telling me what the 6 are, and then I've got a couple of questions I want to ask you about some of those.

Sure. My background has been group process. I'm more of a social psychologist and also in behavior change, behavior modification. And so, because my experience was these meetings where I would watch people not tell the truth and then go into the bathroom, check for feet, and say, well, that was a big waste of time, it occurred to me that if you would tell the truth in the room, you know, we could solve problems instead of let them fester and, you know, 2 years later have a much bigger problem. So the 6 stories are really a function of what I learned about group process and how to create direct and authentic communications. So people want to know who you are. We already talked a little bit about that, but they are going to evaluate everything you say. So it doesn't matter how much good, you know, data you have about the mutual funds you're selling or whatever, because that's going to be filtered through the bandwidth of whether they feel like you're a trustworthy person or not. So explaining to someone who I am is not really an aspect of ego, it's an aspect of humility. Here's who I am first so that you can make your judgments about whether you want to hear what I have to say next. Then it's the why I'm here. People will make judgments about your information based on what they think you're going to get out of it. And as a financial advisor, people are going to make money out of giving advice, but what's the real reason why you went into this business? Do you have a story about that? When you decided to do this work, what's the real reason? Not just the money, but what's the real reason you went into this business?

Really, it goes back to when I was growing up. So, my dad has been an investor for— he's 91 years old, and he's been an investor for probably 70 of those 91 years. And so, I remember growing up as a kid back in the early 1970s. And the radio was on, the local radio station. And at 5:18 PM every afternoon, they would come on and they would talk about stocks of local interest. And today, ConAgra did this, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at that. And we were pretty methodical in terms of when we ate dinner, so that always came on while we were eating dinner. So I remember hearing that, and then I ended up with $2,000 from saving money from paper routes. And I went to my dad one day and I said, Dad, I said, I'd like to do something with this. And he said, well, you should invest it. And I said, well, what should I invest it in? And he suggested Standard Oil of Indiana. So to make a long story short, I took half of my net worth of $2,000, I put $1,000 into a dividend reinvestment program, and a few weeks later I got notification that I owned 12.5 shares of Standard Oil of Indiana. So that was way back when I was a sophomore in high school when I actually made that investment. And ever since then, and that's been several decades since.

What a fabulous story. You know, people, when we tell these stories, there's little holograms, little details. The detail I love about this story is that your dad's 91, y'all are obviously close. And not only do you have all the years of your investment experience, dad rubbed off on you. So, you've got that 70 years, you know, kind of credit of investment experience. And it makes it more about your family tradition and understanding, you know, how to steward your resources, and much less about the fact that you do make a living by this. That's a wonderful story.

Yeah, what's even fun too is for many years now, on January 1st, we each send each other an email. And we pick 5 stocks and we put an imaginary equal amount of money in each of those 5 stocks and we just monitor them for the year. And at the end of the year, we take an average of the performance of those 5 stocks and whoever's portfolio performs the best over the year, the loser owes the winner $50. And so, so we—

That's great.

Yeah. And, and so, you know, we're always talking about the market. So yeah, you're right. It's one thing that we certainly share.

That's even a teaching story, if you will, which is keeping going through the 6 kinds of stories. The way that you and your dad track and experiment without risking money has bound to have developed your skills and talents over the years. And so teaching story— not everybody will do that, but with my investments, one of the things I do, what's called a watch list, just to see if I had bought that, would it have been a good idea? And it's very slowly, I'm not to your level of expertise, but it does help develop the skills. So that's a teaching story. I would call that a teaching story. That's a good one. But that goes into the next kind of story, which is the vision story. If you're gonna talk about integrity, ethics, anything that's gonna require personal sacrifice or delayed gratification, you really need to tell a vision story so that someone can see into the future, how this time of frustration or self-discipline is worth it in the end. Otherwise, it's just, I can't have what I want, or I can't do what I want. So a lot of times when we're trying to build up advocacy for a project, we have a pet project, we want to get a bunch of other people involved in it, we have to tell a vision of what it's going to look like in the future. Otherwise, the frustration of the people who may be doing the itty-bitty tiny parts of it, It's meaningless frustration. But when you tell a vision story, then all of a sudden, these little pieces of maybe difficult behavior make so much more sense in the big picture. So vision story is one of the 6 stories that I think you need to know how to tell.

And what would be— I think maybe we got a couple left here on the 6 stories.

So the values in action story. And you remember when we used to have values printed on these laminated cards? And, you know, these are our corporate values. Well, nobody took the card out again, and really it's not necessarily what's written on a card. It's what's repeated and the behaviors that we see. So we all know that quote from James Baldwin, I can't hear what you say because of seeing how you act. Value and action story makes these values real. So if empathy is a value, of yours, then you must have surely many situations in your life where it costs you something to be empathetic. And again, we go back to those 4 buckets. It was a time you shine, could be a time you weren't empathetic. The point is that we can't just throw these words around because if they don't mean anything, they don't change someone's behaviors. So telling a value-in-action story is a good way to model the values, even though it's only in virtual reality of a story, it's much more effective than just saying, you know, giving a list.

Annette, there's a couple things I want to add here when it comes to the values in action stories. So I was listening to another podcast that you were on, and I think I heard you say that you do not use contracts with your clients.

That's actually true. Yes. I mean, sometimes I have clients that, that they they simply couldn't hire me without a contract, and I'll do that. But I want to demonstrate to people what trust actually means in action. And if I say I'm gonna show up and you say you're gonna pay me, then we have an agreement. And I think that a lot of times people get hidden behind these contracts. One of the things contracts do is all they do is list the worst-case scenarios, which decreases trust. And by showing this level of trust, towards my clients, then they return that level of trust to me. And if they have a contract, I'll sign it. But I'm out to demonstrate to people what real trust is, and that it's not a piece of paper. It's actually a sense of social reciprocity whereby we agree to take care of each other in the best way we know how and to accommodate the problems that come along in the best way we know how. So yeah, I don't use contracts.

Yeah, well, I like that because there's the symmetry here where you're putting that value in action and you're walking the walk and talking the talk here. So I think that's good. I do want to share a story here about values in action, and it's not mine. It's not my example, but it's one that I read about that I thought was really, really good. And I'd love to get your feedback on it. And it goes back to 1968 during the Mexico Summer Olympics, and there was a marathon runner by the name of John Akhwari, and he was from Africa, and he was running in the marathon, and I think he was at maybe the 16, 17-mile mark, somewhere along there. He became disoriented because of the high altitude. He fell. He banged up his knee really badly, and was bleeding. And eventually he got up, he kept walking, he tried to jog a little bit. People were on the sides of the streets were telling him he needed to stop, he needed to get some medical attention, but he kept going. And then about an hour or 2 hours after the last person had finished the marathon, People were in the Olympic Stadium, and all of a sudden, somebody's coming out one end of the Olympic Stadium, basically limping, walking around the track. And eventually, the crowd realized what it was. It was John Okwari trying to finish the race. And the crowd in unison started clapping and clapping and louder and louder. And then he eventually, he got to the finish line. He finished the race. After the race, they take him to the hospital. Somebody's interviewing him, and they said, Mr. Akhwari, why didn't you stop? Why didn't you drop out of the race? Obviously you were in tremendous pain. And he looked at that person and he said— and he's from a poor country in Africa— he said, my country didn't send me 8,000 miles to start the race. They sent me to finish the race. And I thought, oh my gosh, talk about values in action. There it is.

Yeah, that's a warm fuzzy story. That's a goosebump story. You can imagine all the people standing and cheering as he comes in limping. I can imagine myself standing there clapping too. And that also causes me to divert a little bit. That's the kind of story that could be a vision story as well for yourself. I think that times are hard right now. The politics is crazy. And how do we keep ourselves grounded? How do we keep ourselves aware of what is important and what is not important? And so this story, I can imagine even having a picture of this guy, maybe on my bulletin board, and understanding that it's not, it's not about winning, it's not about getting in there first, it's about lasting the distance. And right now that is going to be a more valuable sort of way for me to pay attention to the things that I have on my plate. Is that it's about perseverance. That's a great story.

Yeah, love that. All right. So I think we've got one final story here of the six.

Yeah, that's my favorite. I know what you're thinking story. And I actually learned it, my mentor, Jim Farr. We used to run self-awareness workshops as a part of the leadership development. And the self-awareness workshop really was more transformative. You know how you can, you can actually learn skills or you can have what I call a come-to-Jesus meeting with yourself. And if you do that, you become a better version of yourself. But we would, you know, you can't put people in a pressure cooker of looking at their own lives without giving them a chance to make their own decisions and being generous. And so what we would do, thinking ahead, knowing what sort of rebuttal they may have or yes, but, or whatever objections they already have to changing their lives, we would say it first and resolve it so that they never actually had to stake themselves out and say, no, this won't work for me. So when you know, and tell me, what is, what are some of the objections you already know that your clients are going to have about investing?

Well, Oftentimes a common one is, well, I need to think about it.

Right.

And you get that often.

Right. So, and I'm not coming up with an exact story, but telling the story in a situation where one of the last people I worked with it, the thing is, if they say I need to think about it first, then it's not really going to work. The story, you know, this, this I know what you're thinking story, the magic of the story is saying it before they say it.

Exactly.

So knowing what the example is, say, you know, we worked on this and he said he was going to think about it. And I completely forgot to get back to him. And by the time I got back to him, we had missed the opportunity. And I'm sure there are some true stories that you can find that follow that format. Then when the person gets to the place in the conversation where they said, well, I'm going to think about it, they can't say that without having this alternate interpretation that's in their own mind. And you get a chance to overcome their objections really before they get to them. Great.

Okay, so just to recap here on the 6 stories, we have the who I am story, why I am here, the vision story, teaching stories, value and action stories, and I know what you are thinking stories. And then earlier you mentioned 4 buckets that you can dip into in terms of where to find these stories in your own life: a time when you shined, a time when you blew it, a mentor, or a book, a movie, or A folktale. So great, great tools right there. All right, let's just talk about if someone says, you know, I really want to become better at this, and I'm not looking for a, you know, a cookie-cutter ABC template kind of thing, but are there some storytelling principles, or what are some key things that you think people should keep in mind that if I want to be more effective at storytelling, what are some basic principles I should keep in mind and try and become more of a master at?

Well, one of the interesting things about storytelling is it's actually an art you can learn by osmosis. So if you listen to really good storytellers, you're going to become a better storyteller because you begin to notice what works. And it filters into your brain which comments and details helped bring about— because the goal is to bring about a co-created, imagined experience. So that it's real for them and real for you. Now, it may not be exactly the same reality. I always tell a story about my dog Larry, and people may have a different version of Larry than I do. That's one of the joys of storytelling, is that you can use one little detail and they'll fill in all of the sensory information. But when you listen to stories like— are you familiar with The Moth?

I am.

The Moth was started by George Dawes Greene way back and they have written stories now, but I particularly prefer the video stories because you can see the facial movements. One of the things that I want to warn against is, remember I was talking about sometimes people can be too professional? One of the things that I learned in teaching storytelling, as opposed to public speaking, public speaking is teaching you things like you need to make eye contact, and so you stand in front of a room and you look to the people to the left, and then you look to the people to the right, and then you look to people to the left again so that you make eye contact. And the result is you look like an oscillating fan. You're not actually, you know, achieving the goal. The goal isn't to make eye contact. The goal is to connect. And so with the Moth and with all of these different kinds of storytellers, you begin to understand that it's your style, your authenticity that makes your stories real. So instead of saying, well, you can't put your hands in your pockets, all of these crazy rules that somebody made up about what public speaking is and isn't, Some of them work against your ability to be authentic. So being authentic is one of the side effects of just watching these fabulous stories and enjoying the stories. You begin to stretch your imagination about what story is. The second thing is that understanding that your goal is to create an imagined experience, the original virtual reality. And so in order to do that, You need to give their imaginations from your imagination something to work with. You need to give them something to see, something to hear, something to smell, something to touch.

I could talk to you for hours here because there's so many more things that we could go into, but I know we're starting to bump up a little against time. And I do want to go into a final piece here that I call You Said It. And so I found a few quotes that you said or wrote. I think these come from your book, The Story Factor. So I'm going to share your quote here, and I'd love for you to just give a little additional context. So the first thing that you said here is, quote, "Story is like mental software that you supply so your listener can run it again later using new input specific to the situation," end quote. So what do you mean by that?

It does sound kind of geeky, doesn't it? What I talk about is that you can lay out a journey on how to experience something that's different than the journey that this person might have taken. So storytelling is developmental. For instance, we talked about you can't say, "I'm trustworthy." What you do is you give them a circumstance A, B, and then C happened, and then D happened, and then they conclude that you're trustworthy. Well, this developmental aspect of the story, the A, the B, the C, the D, are a sequence of conclusions of events that show the relationship between untrustworthiness and trust, or relationship between family, or whatever the relationship is. And once they've started to travel in that journey of interpretation, then what you have to say next, assuming they have concluded that you are trustworthy, is now filtered— not filtered through the, "Can I trust this person?" They've already reached that conclusion. Now they can filter it through, is this product right for me?

Got it. All right. The second quote here that you said is, facts don't have the power to change someone's story. Their story is more powerful than your facts. As a person of influence, your goal is to introduce a new story that will let your facts in, end quote. Now, this in your book, this is something that I highlighted and I starred because I think it's so, so important. So I'd love to hear you describe what I just quoted here.

Tell me a little bit about your interpretation first.

Yeah, so the way I think about this, where you talk about how facts don't have the power to change someone's story— so, so often in the financial industry we get hung up on, well, here's what the market's done in the past, or here's this product, or here's that thing. And so we should share facts and we show, well, here's what happened when Democrats are in power and here's what happened when Republicans are in power. Those are facts, okay? But as I interpret what you said here and the other context that goes around it, it's about, okay, facts are one thing, but I'm not gonna change how I feel or think about something just based on the facts that you've shared with me because I've got my own facts. My facts are more powerful than yours.

So, well, we throw that term, the fact term, around a lot. Yeah. And I'm a visual thinker, so I'm drawing on a piece of paper right now, and in the middle is a fact. And so I have a little circle that has a fact, and then there's me, and I see that fact from this point of view, and then there's somebody else that sees it from another point of view. And there's usually about 5 to 6 different opinions on every fact that you could find. And so what I I'm trying to do is I see how I'm viewing that fact because I'm viewing it from my particular point of view, but unless I understand the story of the person who is in a completely different place, time, and experience, then I don't understand how it is that they interpret that fact because people aren't responding to a fact. They're responding to what that fact means to them, and they're also creating a hierarchy of which facts are more important. So before I can, I I can take my fact and deliver it to you, one of the things I need to understand is what story are you telling yourself about that fact? And in this particular case, I'm just going to segue to one of the most important things I think in looking at storytelling is thinking about what is the story that this person is telling themselves about who you are and why you're here? And look at the fact. What is the story this person is telling themselves about that fact? Only then can you figure out a way to maybe move them. You know, you've heard of the 5 blind men describing an elephant. Have you heard that metaphor? You know, an elephant is wide and flat and leathery. No, you idiot, an elephant is round and stout like a column that touches the ground. Well, we're all right. So with particularly right now, these facts that are out there are really interpretations of facts. And so understanding that people have different interpretations, if I go to your world and I ask you to tell me a story about how you see a particular fact, what happens is that I earn reciprocity. Then I earn the right perhaps to tell you my story about what it is I see about that fact. And I see people failing to understand that it's, it's an act of reciprocity. I need to go see your story first. And I validate your story. I say, "Oh, that makes sense. I can see how you would see it that way." And then, in return, I can tell my story, but I'm going to do it with the information that I didn't have before, which is how you see it. And it makes for a much more reliable interpretation that can get this person into the same place, seeing the same thing. Again, without manipulation.

Okay, and then just the third quote here, just a single sentence. You said, "A counterintuitive secret that all good storytellers understand is that the more specific the story, the more universal the connections." Absolutely.

I struggle when I'm teaching business executives how to tell stories. They say, "Well, you know, the guy got angry and it ruined the project." It's like, well, that may be, you know, literally your interpretation of what happened, but if you describe, "He walked into the room, he picked the folder up, and without opening it, threw it in the trash can. When he did, no one spoke. He walked out and closed the door." For one thing, I'm thinking that the piece of the story I told you probably has more of an emotional impact. When you can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. It doesn't matter that you've probably never seen that exact— I hope— I've never seen that exact scene before. I have. But you know what I'm talking about. All of us has been in that position where we're excited, we think we're moving forward, and then we get pushed back with really disrespectful, disdainful behavior. Now, I could say you know, disrespect is the way to end a project and try to make that a teaching story. But when I describe it very, very specifically, all of a sudden the universality of understanding what it feels like in that moment, especially if it was your folder that went in that garbage can, it's much more real and becomes much more universal.

Yeah. And I think you've also talked in some of your work about tapping into these universal emotions. And that's what the best storytellers do, is you can put yourself into that story, into that emotion, and relate it to your specific experience. And that's what's super powerful.

Everybody has a story about a time when they were helped and they didn't deserve it. Everybody has a story of a time when they let somebody down and they were forgiven anyway. Everybody has a story about a time they were betrayed Everybody has a story about a time they fell in love, and everybody has a story about a time you were dumped. And if you don't have that kind of story, we're really not interested. Pretend, please. So, so these universal human experiences— and I think there's a finite number of universal human experiences— this is where we find meaning. And if you found meaning there personally, that's your best bet and understanding where other people might find meaning.

Well, Annette, I think that is a great place to end the conversation. So what is the best way for people to connect with you if they want to learn more about your work?

Well, my email is annette@annettesimmons.com. Of course, that's the website, annettesimmons.com. And you can find my books, The Story Factor, 3rd Edition, doesn't necessarily show up first on Amazon, but it's also available on Audible. The Story Factor and Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins, that's available on Amazon as well in a second edition. Great.

Well, I appreciate you spending some time with us today, and I thank you for the work that you've done.

Such a pleasure. Thank you.

My key takeaway from my conversation with Annette is that it's your style, your authenticity that makes your stories real. And while there are techniques for telling stories, it's not technique that's going to make your story come alive. A perfectly recited story that's devoid of life is going to fall flat. By contrast, an imperfect story that's delivered from a place of genuineness is going to land with great power. Life full of imperfections. And if you remove them from your story, you also remove the life from your story. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platform. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe. This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.