Creative on Purpose Live!

Speed of bytes. And just like that, we are live. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live. These conversations are about cultivating greater fulfillment and equanimity and endeavors that make a difference. I'm your host, Scott Perry, author of Onward!, head coach at Akimba Workshops, and Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to cultivate equanimity and make a bigger difference, visit creativeonpurpose.com and grab a copy of The Burnout Solution. Let's meet today's guest, Margo Lightman. Please welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where they can go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Sure. My name is Margo Lightman. I write books about storytelling and teach people how to tell stories better in the world for whatever purpose that person may be using it for. I have 3 books out on the subject, and I currently have a bunch of workshops enrolling on my website. Margolightman.com. And I also give a lot of talks on the subject.

Fantastic. How did you get into storytelling? Is something that, that this audience is really invested in. One of our taglines is choose your story, choose your future. It's a way of deciding your mindset when you're approaching the difficult work of making things better. And just curious, how did you, how did you get into the world of storytelling and writing about it?

Probably it began by reading. I started reading a lot of personal narratives and memoirs, and I got very inspired by the written story. And then I saw a show or two when I lived in New York where people were either reading or telling oral stories, and that's what got me inspired of maybe this would be something I could translate to a bigger medium. In terms of using the power of telling true stories for all different things. But it really started by, like a lot of things do, by reading, reading about it, which I always tell people, if you're not reading, you're not learning. So, you know, you got to read all the time.

Awesome. What, what, what's your feeling about the learning about storytelling by actually just doing the work of telling stories?

You've got to rip the Band-Aid off. I have a lot of clients and students that want to work and polish a story so much and then they never do anything with that. And then they— it's almost like a crutch, like to keep— sometimes I'll set clients free and say, I'm not going to help you with this story anymore. It's fine. Like at a certain point, you just need to go and try and put it out into the world and see how it's received because there's nothing more I can do. So I do find that people get trapped in that. Uh, it's almost like— I'm not currently dating, I'm married— but friends that date that say that they have— they meet people online that only want to stay online, they never want to meet, for example, right? Like, it's that same thing of like, are we ever going to actually execute this, or are we just going to keep going in circles? So that's a problem I see quite a bit. And the thing is that to get the story I always say get the story out of your head onto the page and then out into the world and then work on the next one. But if you just keep it in your head or on the page, it's just going to swirl there forever and you're never going to move on.

Yeah, I love that. Well, it begs the question, if a story lives in your head and no one hears it, did it ever really exist?

So, yeah, absolutely.

And one of the things that I remember kind of taking away from your book is the importance of, um, of telling stories in a way that's actually kind of conversational and not, not completely memorized and scripted and, um, kind of over-rehearsed. Like, there was a, a kind of a spontaneity that you seem to be encouraging in your storytelling. Um, can you tell us a little bit about how you keep stories fresh, stories that you're repeating over and over again?

Sure. Well, my motto is don't improvise and don't memorize. So do not get to whatever medium it is that you're performing on and just riff and just tell a story and hope it works out. What I have found with that process is people shockingly have no idea how long they've gone, or they never get to the actual story, or there's many, many tangents. I've had Multiple times, I had a client once who was like, "I'm just gonna riff it, we'll see." And it was just a story about a trip to Italy. And I said, "Do you know how long that was?" She goes, "I think it went a little long, maybe 7 minutes." I said, "It was 22 minutes." And she just didn't know. And I've seen that before. So that is problematic if you don't write anything down. On the other hand, if you over-prepare, which I also see a lot, you come off like you're insincere, like you're giving a very like, rehearsed political speech, for example, which is not what storytelling is. There's a place for that, but that's not what this is. Also, if anything goes wrong in a situation like that, which we all know in this time online, I mean, you ain't living at something that's not going wrong with your presentation. So, but the people that are so over-rehearsed, when something blips, they can't even move forward from that because they don't even know how to adjust or be flexible in that. So the medium ground is to prepare your story, but then not memorize it word for word. What I do is I prepare the story and then from there make a set list of the most important moments that I need to hit. So then I think, what is, what happens next? Not what's my line or what words do I need to say? What happens next? And what happens is you stay really on track, you follow the map, and essentially what you've done is you've told a story that sounds like it's coming, you're coming up with it off the cuff, but really what you've done is prepared. And that's the ideal sweet spot to be, to make it sound conversational, but you have prepared for it.

Yeah, I love that. It reminds me a little bit of a story I heard Simon Sinek telling about his Start with Why talk that became famous as a TEDx talk.

Oh, great.

It was something that he had presented many, many times in small gatherings, and then at the TEDx talk, his microphone went out. And had he been really over-rehearsed and entirely scripted, he would have completely lost his train of thought and not been able to continue on. But, and instead, he was able to switch out microphones and then just kind of continue because, um, it was just kind of— he, he, he had told it enough that he knew, to your point, where all the, all the, the marks that he had to hit And could find his way really, really quickly again in his narrative. And that leads me to ask you what might seem like a kind of a silly question, but one of the things that we love to do at Creative Our Purpose is define our terms. What is a story and what is storytelling and what's it for?

A story is something with a beginning, middle, and an end. A story is different from an anecdote, I believe, in terms of that a full story that is fleshed out, the narrator experiences some sort of change within the story. So you could be telling a story about how you love chocolate cake at the beginning, and by the end, you're never eating chocolate cake again, is enough of a change. An anecdote is to say, "I had a really good piece of cake the other day." But a story, that's the big difference. So it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What was the second part of your question? Sorry.

And what is storytelling for? What do you think?

I mean, I really feel strongly that storytelling is to unite us, see how similar we all really are, to come together, to connect with people, to find your tribe, to realize you're not alone, to help others through your own misfortunes. There's so many benefits to storytelling in the world, to be able to be a more effective business person, to be better on a date, to be more likable in an audition room. I mean, there's so many ways that it affects your life, but the positive of it is that you can be, I see this all the time, I meet with clients and we could not be more different in age, in race and gender, every across the board, you know, where we are in the country, everything's different about us. And then they start sharing the story they wanna talk about. And immediately in my head, I have a connection to this person because something in my life connects with them. Via the story. And it shows us that we're not really— I mean, at a time where our country feels so divided, it's actually really beautiful to see how similar we are through personal narrative and our own stories.

Yeah, I love that. One of our guests recently was Bernadette Jiwa, who has created the Story Skills Workshop, and she shared the exact same point that you did about Stories being different than anecdotes, and her— she has a similar framework, that beginning, middle, and end. And it sounds really simplistic and almost kind of silly, but it's actually really, really important to, to make sure that you have those three parts, because if you don't have those three parts, you don't have a story, you have a kind of a rambling anecdote.

And what I see with that, the problem with that, is so many people never get to the middle. They give so much backstory that they never even execute the story. Like, I used to run a show in New York City, and we gave people, I think it was 7 minutes, and then they'd get a light because we had another coming in after us. So everybody had 7 minutes, and people all the time, the light would go off and they'd go, oh gosh, I haven't even gotten to my story. It's like, you've gotta, you've gotta prepare. But you know, the backstory just goes on forever with a lot of people. So I would say the mistake I see the most is people don't have People only have a beginning.

Well, and you're also pointing again to the importance of the practice of, you know, you get better at storytelling by telling stories. And probably, at least in my experience as a storyteller and as someone that does a lot of writing, there's a— you do a lot of bad writing and a lot of bad storytelling before you do any good storytelling. And so it's a matter of showing up every day and doing the work, practicing your craft, and that will earn you the skill, which also will earn you the confidence to tell better stories.

And I think we do that all the time in other things in our life. We work on— I've had a daily yoga practice since the pandemic. And if I were to look at myself at the beginning and now, I'm fantastic at it now, and I was not at the beginning, but I— and there was so much in between, but yet we're so hard on— and but for me, I'm like, well, that's not a professional thing, that's just a hobby. So it doesn't matter that I've slowly chipped away and got better at it by working at it every day, but it's the same thing. But we, we somehow hold ourselves to this unattainable standard when it comes to this. I tell people all the time, because nerves are really big for people, that it's a problem. And I know that public speaking is a huge fear for most people. And although I have many other issues, public speaking seems to be fine for me. So I get it, but I always tell people, life will, will not change that much after the story. You know, like it's not going to be drastically worse if you tell the story and it doesn't go well. And it's not going to be drastically better if you tell it and it does. So know that your life will pretty much go on tomorrow and then let go of the fact that this is everything is riding on this because we all know as professionals that nothing is on one thing. It's a cumulative thing. So I mean, I, people will say, oh, you got a perfect 10 in a storytelling competition and got a book deal. No, I lost the story competition 5 times. You know, I had tried to get an agent who was No longer interested and had to refind another. I mean, it was a whole journey. It wasn't just that I won this thing and then everything's fine, but people love to hear, like, to think that it's all based on one thing and it's not.

Yeah. A daily discipline of small steps can get you really, really far. Swinging for the home run every time probably is just going to result in a lot of strikeouts, at least in my experience.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So one of the things that was coming up for me in what you were sharing is I think that human beings actually make sense of themselves, the world, and each other through storytelling. It's— we all have— well, not the science now says that not everyone has an inner narrator, but many of us have a voice in our head that's talking to us and narrating our experience and maybe placing some value judgments that might impede or enhance our experience. And just wondering what you think. So when you were talking about someone failing at a storytelling competition or something, and it's not a fatal thing, but the story you're telling yourself might make it seem or feel like it is. What's the role of storytelling in terms of just our own inner lives and our pursuit of well-being and equanimity in our lives?

Well, the stories we tell ourselves are really easy to believe that they're completely factual and true, that you are terrible or that you're worthless. But also the flip side of that is I've seen and I've learned from people that are so just telling a story for the fun of it. That I will never forget. I went to a storytelling open mic competition, which is The Moth in LA, and there was a woman who got on and she was just, had something funny happen to her. She got on, it was a 5-minute limit. She maybe, her story was maybe 2 minutes. It had a beginning, middle, and an end. It was funny. Her scores that she got were not great. She walked off stage like, "Yeah, I did it." And I remember walking up to her and I was like, I think you did a great job. You had something fun to say, you got on stage, you shared it, you did it to, you did it from the beginning, middle, and end, and you succeeded. And she was like, I thought it went really well too. And I thought I was envious of her because she was a novice. And for her to just tell the story was such a win for her. It didn't matter that she got up in front of a crowd and did this, was everything. And I thought, I've got to learn from that because for me, I, at times, am guilty of the same thing that you're talking about is that I don't give myself the freedom to fail. I don't give myself the freedom to fail in front of a crowd because I worry that there's pressure because I'm deemed this expert in this. And, but what we see is that we see experts fail all the time and it doesn't matter. We see amazing filmmakers make flops. What if they just stop after one flop? So we have to realize that just telling the story is the win, no matter how it goes, and keep reminding ourselves of that. And it's really hard because the story we tell ourselves all the time is that it needs to hit and be perfect in order for it to be a success. And it's just not true.

I love that, that telling the story is the reward. I think that's a really, really helpful maxim that people can take away from this conversation. Well, Margaret, you mentioned that you've written actually 3 books on storytelling. Can you just share the titles with us and maybe a quick summary of what each one is?

I have them all right here. So here, give me one second. All right. So this was my first book, Gawky: Tales of an Extra Long Awkward Phase, which actually really came from all of my live work. So this is a funny memoir of my adolescent stories. It starts with my growth spurt in 4th grade where I grew 6 inches and was 5'6" at the end of 4th grade and all of the things that come from being a child in an adult body and goes through the end of high school. So it's all about that awkward time in your life that was incredibly awkward for me. My second book, which I think is the one that you're referencing, is, Long story short, The Only Storytelling Guide You'll Ever Need. And that is my instructional manual, which is based off of my live workshops. And eventually what I did was my workshops were working so well and I realized I could only physically get to so many people at a time that I thought if I put my lesson plans and what we do in a class and my teaching methods into a book, then more people can learn. And the best thing I could have done was to be— to give away my teaching methods. It was actually, so many people are so precious about stuff like that, but it was the greatest thing for my career. It was the greatest thing that I could put out into the world. And the biggest service I could have done was to help others do this. And I'm so glad I did put it into a book because I get letters every day from people thanking me, which is just so wonderful. And then I just about, in 2019, this book came out, "What's Your Story? A Workbook for a Storyteller in All of Us," which is filled with guided prompts prompts and lists and really breaks down how to write a story and holds you accountable to write stories. So this book is more interactive, um, than, than the others as well. And it's meant to be written in and start generating your stories as well. And those are the 3 that I have published right now. I'm always working on the next one, but those are the 3 that are out into the world.

That's fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing, uh, the third one, especially since I wasn't aware of it. And now I know what I'm going to get next. I loved— so I, with your book, I did what I do with most books these days is I began with the audiobook and listened to it. And then of course it's one of those books like, oh well, there's lots in here. I need a physical copy that I can highlight and dog-ear and write in. And so both formats really, really well done, loaded with insight and inspiration. Really, really highly recommend the audio version and the hard copy of Long Story Short.

The audio is my voice, warning, which is a slightly, you know, if you can tolerate my slight Jersey accent for like 9 hours, go for it.

I love it when authors read their own work. I, for the first time, I've published several handbooks and for the first time I did my last one in an audiobook. I don't know what your experience was, Margot. It was— I had a lot of resistance about reading my book aloud.

Really?

And knowing that other people were going to hear it. Well, there's a story there. When I was in 7th grade, I went to a very small school where I think there's only 7 kids in my 7th grade class. And at English class, we were reading The Hobbit, and every day we would read The Hobbit out loud, take turns. And we would sit in a circle and each person would read several pages, whatever. And I sat next to Marci, and Marci was, um, had this beautiful kind of churchy, um, African-American voice. I mean, it sounded like God was, was talking when she— and so she would read and everybody would be like, oh my 'God, that's so beautiful.' And then, you know, Scott with his voice crack, it was traumatizing. So I had to get over that. I put in a lot of practice before I put my audiobook out there. And just as much as I enjoy hearing you read your book to me, I've experienced people saying how much they enjoy me reading them my book.

And there you go, see?

Really, it's a— I love the intimacy of it, and I think, you know, everybody has— not every— everyone, unfortunately, but many of us have stories and remembrances of our parents or an adult reading to us as children. It's just a— I don't know, just feels really, really warm and intimate, really, really good to have that format.

Absolutely, absolutely. I I have a theater degree. That's what I went to college for, which I just read is in the top 5 lowest, uh, most least useful degrees to have. I'm grateful I have it. Well, I've used it, but it certainly came in handy when doing that audiobook. And I imagine that— I don't know if I'm stereotyping— I don't think you majored in theater in college. So there you go. I had a head start of years and years of training. So don't you worry about it.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I know that I began my adult life as a schoolteacher, which is a fairly low-paying occupation, and then I found something that pays even less, and that's being a professional musician, so I feel you on the utility of a theater.

Oh, believe me, I worked in public radio.

Oh, I remember that now. Well, are you willing to share what you might be working on now?

Oh, I'm working on a number of things. Yeah, I'm working on launching a very specific storytelling business for a very specific group of people as well, like a type of professionals that can't be announced just yet. But, you know, like really targeting a certain group. I'm working on my first work of fiction actually, which has been loads of fun and loads of challenges. If I did not have a foundation of story first, I think I would have given up by now. But I am writing a comedic thriller, actually, where I'm about, I'm pretty far along, actually, about 18 chapters in. And so that's been a real challenge to myself. And then I have a ton of workshops all up on my website that are coming up. This is actually, this season is pretty busy for me. I have that you can take. They're still, unfortunately, all online. Fortunately, unfortunately for me, because I don't get to connect with you in person, fortunately that I can now have people all over the world in one workshop. So it's, you know, both ways, but they're all on my site and I have a lot of those coming up as well. So those are a bunch of the things I'm working on in addition to my hobbies. Lately I've been fostering puppies and I have 2 in my house right now.

That's awesome. Well, thank you for the difference you're making for, for for the doggies out there.

They've been remarkably quiet during this interview, unlike the one I did last week where they destroyed it.

I always tell my guests that pets and young children are welcome additions to the broadcast. It actually is really heartwarming to see people with their pets and their kids. I'm really curious about your— if you don't mind unpacking some of your struggles with writing fiction, because it is something I have thought about as taking on as my next challenge. And I have some thoughts about what I'm anxious about, but I would love to hear.

This will be therapy for me because I got to—

There you go. No, that's fine.

It was— it's different in a sense that I actually had to restart the whole thing and write it from the first person because I am so used to writing memoir, writing personal narrative, telling stories that I— when I was doing she/he writing a story from that perspective, I was lost because I only know how to tell a story. So then what I had to do is then I am— this main character is very, very different from myself, but to write it as I was helpful because then now everything's in the first person. And then I had to start thinking that she's telling the story to the reader instead of I am writing a story. And it became this thing where I was putting all these expectations on it. Because I'm of that this had to be, you know, very, very heavy-handed and all these things. And I realized that I have to just write fiction and tell the story. It's a story that is not true, but I have to use all the skills that I already have and put them in. So then it became funny. It became first person. It became a little bit more easy to read, less— and that for me is my style of how I tell a story. I have friends that tell stories that are very, very, very written and polished in it, and that's a different style than me. But that's what I had to do. But that's the big struggle. The self-doubt that you were talking about earlier has come in a thousand times. I've had to learn and be humble that I needed some training. I've taken a couple master classes and a couple of two different writing classes online to learn it. I've joined accountability groups. I mean, I have done all of the things that my students do to get their work done. I mean, I run an accountability group for 6 people working on first-person memoirs. And then I realized I needed this for myself. So then I had to find one as well. So all of those things are struggles. But the big thing was realizing, I don't know that I know this format. I've got to go back and train this. I've got to not say to myself, everything you know about storytelling is different in fiction. No, I've got to intertwine it. And I still had to be me when writing it. And I'm now in a place where I'm pretty happy with it and I've gotten pretty far with it. But it's been a big struggle. And then additionally, the struggle of our lives being uprooted. You know, I've written 3 books so far and I wrote them pretty quickly back to back, even with having young children. But the pandemic and having young children home all the time drastically changed my ability to write. At a certain point had to be forgiving of myself about that because it just isn't normal life, wasn't normal life.

Yeah, for sure. Well, maybe there's a story in that sometime soon too. I don't know.

I always say you have to be over it to write it. I don't know that I'm over it yet.

Well, I'm really fascinated by and appreciate those reflections. The thing that I know I'm struggling with is think about writing a novel is dialogue just seems to be a really tricky type of writing. Writing dialogue for me has been the hardest part. I definitely feel the need for training. And I love that you brought up this idea of writing in community. Akimbo Workshops, where I'm a head coach, has a program called Writing in Community. And I wrote my last book in a 6-month Writing in Community group where we sometimes just showed up on Zoom and wrote in silence together just as a way of having a great idea. Yeah, showing up.

Well, Margie, no, I might steal that.

There you go. Steal like an artist. You have shared so much insight and inspiration already, but I always like to ask my guests at the end of our conversation if there was just one piece of advice that you could share that would help someone tuning in that aspires to or wants to advance in the difference only they can make? What would that piece of advice be?

They want to— can you repeat that one more time? Because I thought you were going in a different direction with that.

Sure. So the folks that are tuning into this broadcast are people that aspire to make the difference only they can make, or maybe they just want to advance in an endeavor that is trying to help make things better. If there was just one piece of advice from your experience that you could share that would help them fly a little bit higher in the difference they seek to make, what would that be?

I think it's okay to create something that hasn't been done before. I think a lot of people say, I want to have this type of job or this type of job and get hired somewhere. And if the job does not exist, it's okay to create that job. I could tell you the humiliating and degrading things people told, said to me when I said, I want to tell stories for a living and how much I was shot down for that and how much I was steered in other directions and how much time I wasted saying, well, okay, I guess I'll write screenplays like my friends are doing, or I guess I'll keep auditioning for TV because that's what I went to school for. And when in my heart, I knew what I wanted to do. And the second I listened to that, I mean, it was like doors opened. So it was like, it was an organic situation of doors opening. And it was this, when I listened to the fact that I needed to create a job that didn't exist, that was right for me rather than follow a path. So I think that if what you want to do does not exist yet, I think it's okay to create that for yourself and know that it may take a little time to monetize it and have other sources of income in the meantime, but it will work out. You just must stay true to that vision. And I think that's a big thing.

I love that. As, as someone who created the role of Chief Difference Maker for himself at his own enterprise, I think that is brilliant advice. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Margo and I really appreciate you lending us some of your valuable time and attention, and we hope to today's broadcast motivates you to lean into an endeavor that matters with greater curiosity and courage. You can learn more about Margo Lightman at margolightman.com. And of course, it's always great to see you at creativeonpurpose.com as well. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and keep flying higher in the difference only you can make. Margo Lightman, thank you so much for— Thank you.