MBA1198 Must Read: Lead with a Story by Paul Smith

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Because your business is your baby, we take care of it every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and Today's Episode is a Must Read Episode. On our Must Read Episodes I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Lead With a Story by Paul Smith. Lead with a Story teaches you how to enhance your skills as a great leader by harnessing the power of storytelling. We learn through stories. When somebody starts telling a story, we start to pay attention by taking examples from one of the most successful companies in the world. This book shows you how to craft a great story that motivates people and improves their productivity. We all know that storytelling predates nearly every human invention. Storytelling is the original way we teach through stories, through examples. Stories is the way we learn through examples. It's one of the best ways to impart valuable information and motivate behavior. See, we all need context. We need to see what does this really mean in the real world. And that's why stories really work. So in today's episode, I'll be sharing with you the insights from this book. Lead with a How you can use stories to motivate your team, how to lead your team as well as how to use them when you're actually presenting, whether you're making a sales video, whether you're creating a course online, whether you're on stage speaking at a conference, starting with the story really, really makes an impact. I'll show you how in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Recently, Nicole and I hired a business coach. His name is Dan Martell, and he specializes in coaching SaaS businesses, software as a service. He's had a lot of great success in his own businesses, his own SaaS businesses, and now he coaches people like us. After I would watch a video of his or get online and watch one of his live trainings, I found myself saying, hey, this guy really teaches well. I feel like I've learned a lot. I understand what to do and why I have to do it and how to do it. This is actually quite rare. So I took a closer look at his format. How does he actually teach? And one of the things I noticed is that no matter what he's teaching, he starts with a story. It's easy to follow a story. It's easy to pay attention to a story. So if he's going to teach something very complex, like lowering churn in your business, for example, before he gets into the nuts and bolts and what you have to do and how to solve certain situations, he starts with a story about his own life, his own career, his own business, or a story from a company we all know and heard of. The point is, is that when you begin with a story, it frames the discussion. It also allows people to understand the context of what they're about to learn and also just kind of happens without even noticing. So you're following along with the story, you're listening to the story, and by the end of the story you're like, aha. This is why this is so important. This is why we have to learn what we're about to learn. The penny drops and listening to stories is effortless. It comes natural to us as human beings because, again, it's one of the first things we ever did as human beings as a species. We still do it today with children, nursery rhymes and stories like the Boy who Cried Wolf. And stories are just a great way to communicate why you do something, why is it important? And this book, Lead with a Story by Paul Smith, really emphasizes using stories to because when you're leading people, when you're managing people, people want to know why? Why are we doing what we're doing? They know why. The how is easy, the when is easy, the what is easy. All that stuff is just, okay, just tell me what to do now, because I'm on board, I'm sold. But when you're managing adults, they need to know why. They need to understand the context. They need to understand what the point of all this is. There's a question this book asks the reader, and the question is why is it that some of the longest running shows on television are are soap operas? Soap operas have the stigma of being cheesy and overly glamorous and predictable, but the answer is that people just love a good story. And whether it's the drama in the soap or a riveting page turner in a book, people are really captured by a great story. But it's not only authors and screenwriters that have profited from the art of a great story or the art of storytelling. In fact, a great deal of businesses have done well with with having stories a main part of how they lead and give instruction. Companies like Nike, Microsoft, FedEx, Costco. This book actually outlines real examples of these companies using storytelling. One of the areas of this book focuses on is that you should capture customer stories that can greatly improve your customer service. I mean, when's the last time that you had a remarkable or horrible customer service experience? For example, here's a story to illustrate what I'm talking about. They mentioned the story of Ray Brook, who's visiting Portland, Oregon for two busy days filled with meetings. Not living in Portland, he needed a car and decided to hire one from National Car Rental. Once he got to the counter, he was shocked to discover that his driver's license was expired just a few days, meaning the company couldn't legally lend him a vehicle. He was in trouble. How on earth was he going to make all his meetings on the next day, as he waited for his new license, one of the employees at national rent a car, agreed to drive him around from his meetings to his hotel to another meeting, and they even drove him to the DMV to renew his license. Naturally, Brook was astonished by the quality of service that he wrote a letter to the CEO of National commending their actions. Impressed, the CEO began to use the story during his speeches to his staff all across America used it as a case study of hey, this is what I mean by great service. This is what I mean by going the extra mile. If he just said in his speeches, hey, I want you all to go the extra mile, it doesn't really have any meaning unless he tells a story. And indeed, a good customer service story is useless if he doesn't Even use it. So he has to use these stories as a leader of the company. When a customer of yours has a win, has some sort of success with your product or service, you need to make sure you document that and you got to use those in your meetings and in your updates, in your retreats that you do, your team retreats, your off site retreats. I highly recommend you create a document, a Google Doc, really easy to access, called your story Box. This is from the book Create a story Box where you basically create a document where you put all these stories so you can use these stories, but you can also put these stories on your website. This is better than reviews. These are actual scenarios of how your company goes above and beyond the call of duty. This book also shows you how stories are a great way to, to convey the company's culture, the company's values, and not just say, we believe in these things. For example, here's a story. You hear companies saying things like, we're a family, we treat everybody on our team like family and we want to see you succeed and you know, enjoy working for us and be proud to work for us. These are all just words, right? They don't have any meaning unless it's actually backed up with action and backed up with a story that people can understand. The example that they give in the book is back in 2011 when the revolution was happening in Egypt, some of the foreigners that were living in that country had a hard time getting out of the country, getting out of Egypt. However, one of the people that were trying to get out of Egypt when that situation was happening was Rasool Madadi. He was an employee of Procter and Gamble. He and his family are trying to get out of Egypt to avoid all the conflict that was happening at the time. He was there working, struggling to get out, to get a flight out of Egypt. Maditi called Procter and Gamble. The company promised to do whatever they could to make sure him and his family can get home. They actually bought tickets for him and his family and made sure, just in case his current flight was canceled, they were booked on the next flight. And once they got on the plane and it was confirmed that they took off, the company made sure that when they landed, they had accommodations and supplies to welcome home. They really did put him first. They really did treat him like family. Stories like this are worth millions of dollars. And Procter Gamble didn't spend that much money to pull Medidi and his family out of Egypt and give him that accommodation and that warm welcome home. A story like this shows that Procter and Gamble really believes their employees are like family. And it's not just a bunch of words, a bunch of empty promises. They walk to talk. The book also touches on the idea of rules really have no meaning. If you have, like rules policies for your company, they really have no meaning unless they're based in reality. People believe reality, and reality is basically a story. Let's say, for example, your company is taking a firm stance against being inclusive of all kinds of people. But if a new hire who maybe is disabled doesn't have access to a disabled, let's say restroom and requests for that to be taken care of and it takes months on end and it really doesn't get done, then your rule or your values or your policy of hey, we're inclusive doesn't really matter. Reality is the rule, reality is the policy. What you actually do becomes the rule. I learned this as a teacher on a very basic level when I used to teach and we used to give out exams in the classroom or a quiz or something. And let's say, for example, you had a rule that says no talking during exam. It's a very clear rule. But if somebody talks during an exam and nothing happens, if they're not penalized in any way, there's no consequence. Then the rule is feel free to talk during an examination. The reality is the rule. And the same applies in the workplace.

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To wrap up today's lesson, Lead With a Story is a great book by Paul Smith showing you the power of storytelling and how you can use it in your business to lead, to have a better team to attract customers and just be a better communicator. I really tried to take this on board recently and in my last few public speeches, I've been trying to incorporate as many stories as possible and actually looking at my outline, my script for the speech, and saying, are there enough stories here? And I would actually highlight the stories in green and it's an easy way to say, hey, there's not many stories here. Maybe it's hard to, you know, kind of grasp the concepts I'm talking about in the speech. I need to, you know, add a few stories to explain. The same goes with podcasting. The same goes with shooting videos. The same goes with creating an online course. See how many stories you have in your content to support the information you're trying to convey, to to support the argument you're trying to convey, to support what you believe in. Pick up lead with a story by Paul Smith. You won't regret it. Thank you so much for listening to the hundred dollars NBA show. If you love the show, hit subscribe right now on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify, Citra Radio, Apple Podcast, Overcast, it doesn't matter. We're on everything. By hitting subscribe, you get all our episodes automatically downloaded to your device so it's ready for you when you're ready to listen. That way you never miss a beat. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to all our episodes in the archives. Over a thousand episodes on how to build a better business. That's it for me, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. About five or six years ago, I had a hard time understanding this concept, stories and why storytelling is so important. I heard it so many times. I'm like, I don't understand. Just doesn't give the people the information they need. Let's just give them the facts. Let's give them the procedures, let's give them the tactics, let's give them the tips. I got time for stories, but I realized stories allow people to digest the information easily. You can give people how to do something. They understand the context, they understand why they have to do it. It's useless. So by starting with telling a story in the beginning to give context, it gives so much value to what you're saying and it gives so much more value to your tactics and your strategies you're about to share. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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