Ep. 6 How to Find Stories Right Under Your Nose!

Hey, Mark. I remember when I was first getting started that as a new emerging presenter, I would watch other people like Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy, and they always tell these amazing stories and I would have story envy because they were so good and so memorable. They stuck with me. And we see people, like, hanging off the side of a mountain and they got to cut their arm off. And you're like, I wish that would happen to me. And then, then I'd have a story.

Well, the truth is, Darren, we all have stories. I discovered a few years ago. We have great story sources literally right under our noses. But most presenters don't know that. They simply have to know where to look.

Man. What?

Anyone can give a presentation, few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation? AHAs. Let's dive right in.

Hey there. Welcome to episode six, when Mark and I are going to help you find the gold in your life, the stories that you can use again and again that are right under your nose. Hey, Mark.

Hey, Darius. Good to see you again, buddy. It's going to be a great time to help people find the stories that will make their presentations unforgettable.

Man. That's why we're here. And I think, you know, stories is such an important part of a presentation. Like, even if it's a corporate presentation, it's that story story that makes the whole message stick. And I think a lot of people, like myself included, before I had your coaching, I didn't know where to look. I was just searching, searching, searching. On the outside, on the outside. I'm on the outside. And then, you know, some people even steal other people's stories, which is even worse. It's definitely forgettable when you're stealing someone else's material or it's unforgettable for the wrong reason. And you're like, oh, well, if they stole that story, they might have stole everything else. You never know.

That's true. The thing is, though, the reason why it's important is people realize stories really add value to their presentations. If first of all think, why are stories so important? We can probably find five or six reasons why stories are so valuable. I mean, everybody loves stories, right? We watch TV serials or soap operas we watch movies, which are really stories. We binge watch Netflix. We'll watch Netflix. Five seasons or ten years of Game of Thrones. Why? Because the story is so intriguing. So the first reason is people love stories. What do you think?

Yeah, and I also, I want to dive into the why first. Because sometimes, like, oh, yeah, I need stories. But if you understand the deeper why, you'll understand the true value of stories and why and how it helps make them unforgettable. So, yeah, number one, people love stories. Who doesn't love a good story? And so if you have some sprinkled throughout your presentation, strategically structured to deliver your message, to make it unforgettable, why would you not use that? So, number one, people love stories.

You know, it's funny, I once heard you more than once share a perspective on how important stories are, even as little kids, you know, with teenagers, little kids, they all love stories. I would love for you to share your perspective on that for us, Darren. Really?

Well, just before bedtime, have you ever had a child come up to you and say, mommy, daddy, show me a PowerPoint presentation? So our brains are wired from childhood to love not just stories, but a good story, well told. And I think that's the difference between everybody else as an average presenter and unforgettable presenters. You know, Craig Valentine says, if you want to be a $10,000 speaker, you. You gotta tell $10,000 stories. And I think we just don't take the time to perfect them or to make them world class. But again, why? Because people love stories. It's almost like they sit up in their seat when you go into a good story.

And that's true. And another reason why we find value in stories is that stories can take information, but the story and the experience helps the listener to change their perspective on the facts, on the details, on the data. Because a story brings a who new view, a whole new angle, and it almost enlightens the listener of the viewer when they realize, oh, yeah, now that makes sense. And stories can put a human face on an abstract concept and then it becomes even more alive. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, absolutely. And just I would say they help change perspective. And if you and I are truly trying to give a presentation, the reason we're up there is to sell a thought or an idea or give them a new perspective on the subject that we're talking about, the problem you're there to help them solve or whatever the reason is you get the privilege of presenting. So if you can change perspective, that's where true Influence lies is changing that perspective. And stories have a way to do that like nothing else.

And what's interesting is also this, Darren. More and more corporate entities are not just talking about their product or their service. They're using their corporate story to sell the product, to sell the service, to gain more clients, gain more customers. And now there's a model going around that businesses are now using stories as the main tool to drive clients to see what they have to offer and become their customers.

Yeah, I was speaking yesterday, and the event that I was at was a smaller event at a Holiday Inn in Madison, Wisconsin. Real name Dropper. I am right. There's a plaque right on the wall in the Holiday Inn about the story behind Holiday Inn and how it started. And I just thought, wow, okay, it's a plaque. And what it is is it's a story. And it tells a story of how the founders started and where the idea came from. And it was just. I was. I thought that was really cool and an example for what we're talking about. Businesses need to tell their stories.

I've seen that in pizza restaurants. I've seen it in Asian food restaurants. Yes. The stories will help us to change our perspective. Reason number There are additional reasons why we also will tell stories this. We just simply love to be entertained. As humans, we want to be entertained. And stories grip us. They drop. They draw us in. Stories from fantasies to superheroes to, you know, the little kid who. The little engine that could. There's so many different kinds of stories, but stories, we love to be entertained. And stories are a great vehicle to add that entertainment value, especially if your speech material can be pretty mundane, straightforward, and downright boring.

Yeah, honestly, from an ego perspective, we as the presenter, like to be entertaining. So the audience loves to be entertained, and we love to be entertaining. So why would we not put a little more effort into being more entertaining if it's delivering our message? It's not for funny being the sake of funny, or laughter for the sake of laughter. It's laughter for delivering the lesson.

I gotta agree with that. I've taught a technique before of speechwriting where I use a thing called the ira being Jamaican everything Irie man. It's I R I E. And the E in my iri has always been entertainment. We like being. We like to be entertained. And stories can provide some really great entertainment. And if you do that well enough, then here's a fourth idea. You can bring your talk to life when you add a story, especially if you find yourself delivering more technical presentations that have more data, stats and facts. The story piece can really bring a mundane or almost boring talk to life because it puts a human face on abstract concepts. And one of our fellow world champions and CSPs, Ed Tate has a thought about that. He says you humanize the data when you tell stories, Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And he says, our job as presenters is to take the numbers and turn them back into people. And you do that most effectively with stories.

Exactly.

Bring those boring subjects to life. And even if you're doing Mark, like you said, that highly technical talk, if people walking in, your audience knows, it's probably going to be boring. So if you can just plant a really good story right up front or close it or both, it's that you still need the numbers, you still need the data, you still need the case studies. I get that and I want that. But now if you have that story, it almost gets people to sit up. And it's the reason why the data matters, right?

Exactly.

Data affect the listener. It's not just about the data, but how it affects the listener. I think some people just go over that and just kind of like, well, they got to hear the numbers. Here's the numbers. All right. That's our annual report. You know, see, at the next employee gathering.

And the funny thing is, you mentioned annual reports, and you're going to get numbers and shares on stock prices and percentage changes and sometimes a little story about exactly that. You know, a 2% increase in productivity that meant that we were able to provide X to an organization. And we've always maintained that we should give to charity. And that 2% increase meant we were able to give an extra $100,000 to March of Dimes, which meant little kids. So, I mean, a little story about that is now a number that makes sense because it means something to someone. You know, we were able to give bonuses this year. We got. We were able to send. We had five families who. All they wanted to do was to go to Disney World with their kids. And because of all the work we did, and we saw that increase in productivity, we sent those five families to Disneyland and we changed the way they lived. We blessed them again. It could be as small as that. But what does the number, what do the numbers mean to human beings? Take those numbers and turn them back into people. That's a great way to bring your talk to life. Any other ways that stories help us, Darren?

Well, and it's also just before we leave this, like if you're given the annual report or it's corporate Presentation. And it's that must do presentation. If you bring in a story about Mary or Mark who works the front desk and how you were a hero for as the face of the company, not only do you tell a good story and it's like, oh, yeah, maybe I should be nicer to Mary and Mark at the front desk. Or wow, they really did that. And it led to this big customer. You also make someone else the hero. Right Company. And it again, that emotion draws people closer. What did they do, where they went above and beyond. I know. Mark, you and I are so excited because we got Ja Jang that we're gonna. Yeah, he tells that he shows that unforgettable video of how he goes to Krispy Kreme, asks for this ridiculous question with the intention of being rejected, and the employee goes above and beyond. And that ended up becoming a part of the training for Krispy Kreme. And it was crazy, but it was such a great story. And this woman looked like the hero and she was the hero. You know, you just put that in there and now the numbers matter more.

So correct. So correct, you know. But stories, yes, entertain us. We love to laugh, we love to tune in, we love to lean in. But how deep, how deeply can a story really affect us? Darian, what do you think?

I would say they reach the subconscious mind. And I think that for no other reason for that, if you want to influence, if you're trying to sell an idea or a thought, you've got to touch the subconscious conscious mind. It's got a story well told. So there's two ways to get things into the subconscious mind. Repetition, repetition, repetition. That's why In a commercial 60 seconds long, we hear the phone number three times. And by the way, if you listen to our last two episodes, we talked about the thread or the theme, both Mark's speech and my speech and how that carried it. And it's almost like that repetition of connecting people back to the main reason. Well, an advertisement does that by repeating the website or the phone number. And that's one way to get people to remember to be unforgettable. The other way is a story well told. And a story well told will go right through the conscious mind into the subconscious mind. The stats say there's all these different stats. Just go do some research or something. But we forget about 50% of what we hear in a day, and the next day we forget another 50%. The next day we forget another 50% is. Our buddy David Brooks says, by next week you'll swear I Wasn't even here. So how do we make them memorable? And having a story go right through into the subconscious mind? You know, we've heard stories well told from our parents, from our aunts, from our uncles, from our teachers that we just hear it once and bam, we get it, we understand. And. And that's what we're talking about here. Take a story and make it well told. The purpose of this podcast is to help you find them. There's so many right in front of you, right under your nose. As Mark said, if you know where to look and how to mine that gold.

I can't tell you how many times I've met people who have said, I remember you spoke about this eight years ago, or you came to India in 2010. And they may not have remembered the exact point, but they remember the stories I told and that's what hooked them. And they still remember after 10, 15 years. So they do have a way of sticking with us. And the thing is, what happens, what's cool is not only will it affect our subconscious mind, but it has. It gives us as a presenter, an opportunity to make an emotional connection with our audience members. And I've had the privilege, through you, of course, Darren, to work with Michael Hague, who's a renowned Hollywood script consultant, and he's an expert on stories. And he told us many, many years ago, he said that stories have one real purpose. He says the purpose of the story is to elicit emotion. And it occurred to me, hearing Michael, this great story expert, talk about this, that the stories, which are memorable and well told, they strike a chord with us. And we have this emotional connection with our audience, and that's what they remember about us. They see something, they remember something from our story that connected with them on a heart level, on an emotional level. And that's why stories can be so powerful. Stories can be, in a good way, a weapon that we can use in a positive way. We can wield that we can tell those stories, draw people in, establish an emotional connection and the story, that connection allows them to fully appreciate our message, to get our meet, our message, our premise. So when we have a call to action, they're so fully invested, it's easier for them to understand, to relate, and to respond because we want to move our audiences and spur them on to action, to. Through our presentations. And stories are a great tool to help us accomplish that. And you're right, Darren, they are everywhere. We just don't often know where to look. And it's so funny as you and I both know, we've been trying to tell stories for years and trying to find a great story. And you mentioned earlier, we try to find that great big amazing, awesome story, it's going to change the world. Woohoo. And I discovered and I learned this and I teach this, your story does not have to be sensational, it just has to be sincere. And sometimes simple stories, well told with a simple message are the ones that touch the hearts of the audience. I think many presenters make a mistake, Darren. They try so hard to find the next magnificent blockbuster story of how they had to walk to school in the snow in the Tibetan mountains, barefoot, uphill, both ways on a summer afternoon. I mean, you want to get all this drama and sometimes a simple story or an encounter at an airport, I talk with a little child. It could have been, could be anything, something you saw down the street. It could be any simple story that occurs to you every single day. But we don't realize it, we are tuned into it and we don't keep a record of it. And there are ways to do that in a powerful way to really help you to build your arsenal. We call it our story file.

Right? Yes.

Occur every day.

And going back to what you just said about A, the subconscious mind, B, simple story, and C, creating it and making it well told, making it world class, making it unforgettable. When I was in Taiwan a year and a half ago, there was a woman there, name is Therese. And Therese was my escort who brought me, she was the district director and she brought me from one city to another and translated for me and made sure I didn't get lost because I couldn't read any other time. And I remember we were sitting on a high speed train going from one city to another city in Taiwan. She looked at me and she said, I have to tell you this story. I said, okay. And she put her hand up and I know you can't see this, listening to the podcast, but she shook her hand back and forth and she said, I remember you six years ago, you spoke at a little workshop at a corporate event outside of Toastmasters while you were here in town. And she said, I wasn't even a Toastmaster. I heard that story of your first time on stage and how nervous you were. That's when, when I originally told that story, that, that's when I shook my hand and showed how nervous, how my hands were shaking. And that's that emotional connection she could relate to. So it was very relatable. And she said, I ended up joining Toastmasters. I ended up joining the leadership and now I'm the district director six years later, which is an amazing fast track, by the way. But she said that it started with that story now backing up. How did that story become good and relatable and well told? Well, it's because that was the story I took from my keynote speech and competed in the district Toastmasters contest because I wanted to work on it, work on it, work on it, work on it to make it so good. In the earlier episode, my buddy Dave Fitzgerald, one of my mentors, said, darren, stop trying to find that story and instead take one of the stories you already have and make it so good someone will pay to hear it. And so that was my intention. So I joined the contest not to win, but to work on that story to then just put it back in my keynote speech in a much improved format. And that was, that was perfect. But I had no idea by following that advice how much it would help me impact lives and be unforgettable. So it was really that question and then doing the effort to make it unforgettable.

Now he said, take a story you already have. The issue for some is we think, well, you know, now my life is so boring. I don't have any really good stories. I mean, even my look, I go to work every day. I come home, I go to Toastmasters, I go to my NSA meeting. You know, I may give a talk here or there, but I don't have anything really amazing. I didn't have to climb up a hill and cut my arm off. Nothing where I even find stories from, man. And I think the mindset is we just need to a blockbuster. That's not the case, Darren. We have really cool stories all around us. And you remember the time we went to Ukraine back in 2016 to do that two day training there. Yeah. And we were in a break, having breakfast at a restaurant in the airport in Germany, just talking about stories and stuff. And everybody told you a technique I had discovered and you grabbed, you grabbed the paper napkin off the table and with a pen and he began to write notes down.

I want to hold that for just a second. The conversation that we had and the brilliance that you came up with that I still teach to this day. You still teach this day? Mark and I also teach live workshops. If you ever interested in spending two days with Mark, I mean, you can join us. Just check out stagetime workshops.com we have some live events. Mark, when you and I went to Ukraine, so it was for a group of corporate executives. We were brought in by this woman. Her name was Alona.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, it was her.

And Alona didn't speak English. We had a translator there and they had set up. So we're speaking to all these corporate executives of Luxoft. So it was a workshop we were doing for them and their executive team. If you're not familiar with Luxoft, it's a huge financial institution, giant over in Europe. And they brought Mark and me in and the night before, Alona had set up a seminar for Mark and me and we did a seminar for some locals there who were presenters and we just had so much fun. But it was interesting because I told the Mark Brown story.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah. When I tell it everywhere, pretty much have you in the audience when I say it. But I, you know, I set the stage so I set it up and I said, you know, if you don't know Mark, he stands about 6 foot 2. Because Mark hasn't taken the stage yet. I said, mark stands about 6 foot 2, he's got a heart of gold and he's got this beautiful booming laugh like the guy from the old 7Up commercial. And I tell that story. Now, Alona, who doesn't speak English or speaks broken English, she heard that and it resonated with her. And this goes back, Mark, what you're talking about, that emotional connection.

Yeah, yeah.

And so she didn't speak English, but she spoke laughter. In fact, Mark, if you could fill in the details.

Oh, yeah.

She went home and she was. Well, first she started there at the event. She started doing the Mark Brown lap.

And it's funny, I gotta, I'm gonna complete the story. But one thing you said is so important. You simply talked about you don't know Mark Brown. He's six' two, has his heart of gold. You told a short story of the first time you and I got together. And that short story was not sensational. It really wasn't. And here is Alona, who has broken English. She gets a part of it, but she gets the laugh. And she begins to go, ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Me away was two things. One, she allowed us to videotape her doing the laugh, doing a break in the session. And number two, she went home to her six or seven year old son and I don't know what she said to him, but she was able to speak laughter so well, she ended up, her son began to like the laughter. And one day, out of the blue, I get a Facebook messenger message from Alona in Ukraine. She Sends me a video, a five second video of her and her seven year old son going ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

And the connection was made through a short story about how Darren and I met. One little piece of it, the laughter was able to resonate with her. And what did she do? She shared that with her family. You gotta catch this, friends. Even the simplest of stories well told, that has the emotional connection that Michael Hick talks about can be so effective. People will pass it on to people they know they love and they care about. And your story, as simple as it may seem, can have a far reaching effect beyond the audience. You just don't realize it.

And Mark, one of the things that was happening when you and I were in the Ukraine is we did a little sightseeing and of course driving around the city. So a few things happened that led to that conversation in Germany on our flight back. And one of the things that just, just blew my mind is they park on the sidewalks, you know, not just parallel, like perpendicular walks. And so it just blew my mind. So I naturally pulled out my camera on my smartphone, took a picture of it and I was taking pictures. I even took a little video of you and I on the sidewalk, driving off the sidewalk.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

And then we're at the event. We were at the event and preparing and they're getting ready. And now here's, I want to say 40 or 50 top executives, you know, one of the guys there was in charge of 4,000 employees. This was not Frontline people. And here we are. And this key to the story, they grabbed this fishbowl and one of our handlers, one of the assistants grabbed this huge fishbowl and started passing it around. And everyone was putting their cell phone in it.

Again, I was blown away.

No one will believe me back in the United States that they collected cell phones. Like people would die if you tried. People would be shot if you tried to take themselves.

Cold, dead fingers.

It would be like a fisticuffs going on. And so I took a few pictures of the bowl with the cell phones in it. I took pictures of her actually walking around collecting it because I thought no one's gonna believe me. So it just grabbed me. And so I took a picture of it. Took several pictures. And then Mark, when you and I were doing a tour, when you're sighting between events, we went to the city square where there a few years before, there was a shooting battle.

Yeah.

Going on actually right in the city square. And there were just flowers upon flowers and Monuments. And it was powerful, moving.

Yeah, it was, yeah.

We, of course, took pictures of that. But, man, your mood changed. All these things happen. And then Mark and I are flying back, and what I started taking from this is capture what captures you.

Write that down. Write that down, friend. Capture what captures you. See, if you don't know, Darren has his camera with him all the time. I think Darren goes to bed at night with the camera in his left hand. I don't know. I can't prove it. I would not know. His point is really powerful. Capture what captures you. Find a way to keep a record of it. And if you think people won't believe what you tell them, get a photograph and capture it. And as Darren said, we sat down to have breakfast in this German restaurant, and he took out his paper napkin and began to write down what I was telling him. So I realized that Darren was actually gold mining with his mobile phone. All of us, pretty much all of us, have a mobile device, a camera, and we can take pictures. The pictures are the roots of great stories. Sometimes simple stories, but powerful stories. Like the one about Alona, that was not sensational, but wow. She went and told her, kid who can't speak English is Jamaican guy who laughs funny. It's interesting about the human connection. And I realized over time that if we can find commonalities in our stories, that will connect us to the audience. And I found something, and we're having this discussion. I said, darren, if we go through every single day, we go reflect on our day and our experiences, we might find we have really good material for stories. And if you look at our camera roll, our photo gallery, we have hundreds upon thousands of pictures that could tell stories. When Darren took those pictures in the square and we went back and looked at him, we both got really quiet because the emotion was so real for us. The idea of people losing lives of what they believe in and they were not forgotten by the people of Kyiv and Ukraine. And I realized these different photographs we asked for at the restaurant, we asked for chicken Kiev. And I mean, it was done, but it was done so well. Darren actually asked the chef how he did it, took a picture of it. They offered us ginger mint tea with honey. Now, in America, where we live, you get ginger mint tea. You get a nice little tea bag, herbal tea bag, put hot water in there. Maybe you want some ginger powder. You can do that. And honey, you get a bottle and you pour the honey out. And if you're lucky, you get to go to the farm and actually get fresh, pure Honey, no, no. They gave us a huge decanter with boiling hot water. They had ginger root in the decanter, they had mint leaves in the decanter. And they gave us a honeycomb to get the honey. Remember that, Darren? What did you remember? Do you remember it now, though?

I do.

We got his camera out the honey, we got the decanter, we got the ginger, we got the mint. It was amazing. And of course we saw the biggest Big Mac ever in the world when you were there. And a picture of that too. But all these photographs were on his phone, said Darren. Your phone is a gold mine. The photographs are wonderful tools to tell connecting stories. The key is to harness them, to capture it and then to use it. You got to ask and answer some very important questions. And Darren grabbed a paper napkin and began to write it down. Yeah, I said darren, ask yourself at the end of your day and look at your phone. You could your phone and ask yourself what amazed you, what amused you and what moved you? What amazed you, what amused you and what moved you? Now look at stop. I can stop right here and take one day of our lives in Ukraine. Amazed us. The cars parking on the sidewalk that.

Might have been amused.

Well, it was pretty amazing. Alona's laughter and then her telling her son, that's pretty amazing and amusing. And the flowers laid out throughout the square that was moving in a 24 hour period. We were amazed, we were amused and we removed. But then comes the key question, and it isn't an a question, isn't an amazed, amused or moved. It was, what did you learn? What can you then use? How can you use that story to teach someone else a lesson? What amazed you, what amused you, what moved you and what did you learn? And you can then share. If you look at your camera, rol, there are photographs that will amuse you. Some will amaze you, some will move you. And there are stories embedded in those mobile phones which we literally hold under our noses every single day. And the stories are rich right there. Then ask yourself, what did I learn? What can I share from these experiences? And before you know it, you get a great story to add to your presentation or even a story to anchor your presentation. And that can make it unforgettable, I.

Think at least if you go back and pull out your phone. So seriously, as soon as you can pull out your phone or while you're listening to this, look at your photo or camera roll, whatever you call it in your phone and just skim through. And I would be willing to bet that at least 10% have golden stories behind them. Yeah, look at them. Why did you take it? What was the reason? And then if there's, if it's amazed, amused or moved, that could be a story. And as Mark said early on, start a story file. If there's one thing we can get you to do, it's start thinking. If you're a presenter, if you want to be unforgettable, you gotta have a story file. These are the different, just a collection of the different potential stories. You may or may not go into them and write them all out, but list them because you never know when one story or one idea is going to be gold for you. You if think about it as a presenter, our stories are inventory. If you owned a carpet company, your inventory is carpets. If you owned a chair company, your inventory is chairs. As presenters, our inventory is stories, metaphors, analogies. So start a story file. Any idea when you're going through these pictures? Ed Tate uses Evernote. So it's a free app you can download for those younger viewers. Paper, pencil and pen is another way to grab them. I just use a Word document that works for me. I like how searchable it is. Evernote is searchable. The cool thing about Evernote too is you can add JPEGs, PDFs and then tag them and search that way. Whatever works for you. But have a story file. This is your gold. You may or may not know when you'll ever use that, but when you skim through your photos, I guarantee you you're gonna see some. You're like, oh, oh, yeah. So maybe the story needs to be developed. This is a. This podcast is about how to find them. And you have more than you ever ever considered. And it's right under your nose, as Mark said.

You know what's cool? Not only does our camera roll give have. Have stories for us day to day experiences. You may see something on television that gets your attention. You may hear a recording, a cassette. Somebody may say something like, what would you dare to dream if you knew you couldn't fail? And that could so move you. It could be the beginning of a story. A story that Darren Lacroix has told time and time again. A story that led him to the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking because he heard a few words on an audio cassette. And for those millennials who are here, in audio cassette is a little device that resembles this. Nevermind, you look at Google it. But Darren, you heard a few words on an audio cassette that moved you in some way. It led to a piece of a keynote speech you gave. It led to this contest speech. It was in the contest speech. You win the contest, you become the world champion. And since that time, you've traveled the world on the heels of a short story as a part of a seven minute speech. You have no idea the reach your story can have if it's well told and used wisely in a presentation. And stories come from everywhere. When I competed, and if you go back to either Darren's podcast recording or mine, episode three, you will see I used Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I'm watching cartoon with my kids. And I was moved by one scene. And that one scene that moved me led me to write this speech on a social issue that 24 years later, people are still talking about. Because I was moved by a scene I saw. I was moved by what happened to a reporter in New York City back in the 1980s. And I was moved by that. I saw value in it. I used it, I put it in a seven minute speech. And as a result of it, I have traveled on five continents across the world and spoken to 2 million people because 2 million people, because I was willing to see the value in a little story, apply it. And now I'm being told that both Darren's speech and mine, in the minds of many, are pretty much unforgettable.

And Mark, if. Let's go back to. Also, if you're a pastor, if you're a corporate presenter, the point of the story is to convey your message, to help deliver the message, almost spoon feed the message to the audience. Why? Because their brains have been trained since childhood to love and absorb stories. So if there's channels in your brain that are already conditioned to take in or accept an idea or message, it's our job as presenters to put it in that format so that they will receive it and it will go to the subconscious is, which is where it becomes unforgettable. Anyone can give a presentation, as we say in our intro, but few are unforgettable. Why? Because they might find the story, but then they don't necessarily convert it into an unforgettable one. So that's like another step so you can check out our events again. If you want to know more about that, check out Stagetime workshops.com. you can join me or Mark or me and Michael, but check that out. But Mark, here's the other cool part about going through. Well, number one, we said go through your phone, but what about around your house, the pictures that you put on? Why do you Put those pictures up. So I'm looking right across my office here in Las Vegas, and there's a picture of stage time Toastmasters Group in Sydney, Australia. And it was a group photo when I was there, and they started that club based on my mantra. Stage time. Stage time. Stage time. And when they heard me speak when I was there, they started a club and encapsulated the idea into the club message and mission and what they're doing. But I have that picture. It meant it was important. Important to me. So I framed it. So look at the pictures around you and they're framed, which means you put more energy and effort in story, behind it and in your family albums, you know, for those of us who are older.

Albums. Yeah.

Your mom or your dad or maybe your grandmother has that album. Well, here's the cool thing. You could just pull out that album, flip through it, and then take a picture of the pictures. And what's the story behind it? You know, I remember there's one mark of me as a child because I was born with a club foot, so my mom never wanted to take pictures of me with the braces on. And so there's only one, and she's kind of covering my knee. And I always remember that photo because they, like, took the brace off to take the picture. But I always had these Forrest Gump braces or this big, big metal bar between my two shoes. And my mom didn't want me to remember it. It's cool at work because I don't really, other than other people telling me about it. If you flip through your family album, your high school years, your college years, when you did crazy or stupid things.

Yeah.

Your child, your favorite toy, maybe your dog. Here's the coolest part. There are so many cliche slides out there for people who use PowerPoint. Why not use one of your pictures that symbolize your story and your point? Now, the cool thing is no one's ever seen that before. It's not that. The cliche slide of, you know, this hand and this hand shaking and, you know. Anyway, you get the point. It's not cliche. It's yours. You own it. It's unique, and it helps reinforce and gives us a visual that's yours and unique to remember your story.

You know what's really crazy, Darren? My background is in information technology. I was a mainframe computer programmer back in the ninet, 1980s. And so you think I'm pretty nerdy. Well, I have what they call a photo gallery on my phone. You really can't See, Darren, nobody can see in the audience outside, but I have literally folders in my phone. I got screenshots, downloads, I got a daughter, some daughters, I've got family, I've got soccer, I've got photographs from my childhood. And I keep folders of photographs on my mobile device. And if I want to talk about family, I go to my family album. I see all kind of photographs in my family. And you have not only the albums in your phone, the physical old school albums look on the wall in your home, or if you go to a grandparents home or a family member's home, look on the wall. One of the photographs. My wife has a wall or den area with family photographs that look at our children's age progressions from they were born. Now my kids are in their 20s and 30s, but you can see the progression as they age. And each, each of those photographs represents a stage in our children's lives. And sometimes you might want to consider just one option to find stories. Think of the seasons of your lives and then you can find stories. Darren, you mentioned for me you were stupid in college, doing dumb things. If you look at your life when you were in elementary to high school as one season, look at your college years as one season, you know, your first job of the season. If you look at your life seasons, you have so many stories that you can really jump all over and go, wow, I never thought of that. And I have found myself. I still tell stories of playing high school soccer in my. I told one last month at the Toastmasters convention. I gave a keynote there. And I told a story from being in high school in the 1970s, playing soccer. But it was an important story for an emotional connection and a point I was making in my keynote. And I found value in a story from 1976. So you have signals of your life. There are stories there. You have to just know where to look for them and how to mine them. That's why we say keep a story file and you can categorize in whatever way seems best for you. One of those ways is to look at the seasons of your life. Your marriage, your children, your work, your higher education. You can look at those experiences and recall individuals whom you met or worked with and encountered. And right there, there is so much rich material for stories.

And when you and I do the storytelling webinar, if you want to see a whole webinar on, you can get up, check out storytellingwebinar.com and Mark and I did one. And when you tell that story of, I think it's football.

Is that the football, man? Yeah, man.

We showed a picture of you playing soccer, your youth, and it just, it become. It takes the story and makes it even more memorable. One of my coaches, her name is Dawn Nacera. And dawn said something brilliant about the subconscious mind. When a thought or an idea goes into the subconscious mind, you get an aha. And when she defined what an aha was, I thought, uh huh. And she said it this way. She says, an aha is the letting go of a previous belief. An aha is a letting go of a previous belief. And again, that goes back to the why. Because stories can change perspective. They can reach the subconscious mind. And that's where true influence is going to happen.

You know, I'm going to give one more tip now, Darren, you and I both know we do a workshop about stories. And we have. In our workshop, we have. I don't know how many questions you can ask. Maybe 91 questions.

Yeah. Not even exaggerating. We go so deep.

Yeah. 90 questions to ask yourself, to draw out the stories. Listen to me carefully. To draw out the stories that are inside you that you may not even know are there. And I use one quick technique to find stories in a hurry. I'll share that with you. I call it last and first, best and worst. And what that is, is write this.

Down right after what amazes you, what amuses you and what moves you. And then in parentheses, what was the lesson learned? This. This. This is gold.

Go ahead, mark last and first, best and worst. You can take any noun in your life. For example, let's say the word job. What was your last job? Who do you remember? What was the experience like? First job. What was your first job? What was it like? Were you nervous? Were you scared?

What did you do?

Who did you meet? Who was your best coworker? Who was you? Okay. All of the experiences surrounding your last job and your first job. You invest some time in that last and first. You're going to find stories. You're going to find stuff. Laughing out loud when you remember certain things. I did this. I was at Boeing a week and a half ago and I mentioned this to a Boeing employee. We had a consultation afterwards and I said, think of your last job and your first job. And she just laughed out loud. I said, okay, let's do this. Use the word boss. Last boss. First boss. Best boss. Worst boss. Car. Last car. First car. Best car. Worst car. Vacation. Last vacation. First vacation. Best vacation. Worst vacation. And so it goes. You take last and first, best and worst. Put Any noun you want. After that, you invest some time in that. You will fill pages and pages and screens of. Screens of notes. Why? Because this situation will also bring up individuals. If you think of last job, first job, best job, worst job, job, what will happen? The best boss is going to come in. The worst boss is going to come in. The best co worker, the worst co worker, best experience. All of those begin to flood to your mind. You begin to write those down. You can build so much. And here's a cool part we said early on that stories can connect us, right? Chances are there'll be people in your audiences who can relate to exactly what you went through. They say, oh, yep, I had a boss just like that. Her name was Michelle. And. And boom, Instantly. Remember, I used to give talks in middle schools across North America for years. And I would tell my story of being in the sixth grade when I got attacked by the three toughest bullies in my elementary school. Three mean, nasty, cruel sixth grade girls. And they always laugh at me. But you know what? They could relate to the stories I told. So here am I, a guy who's nearer 60 than 50, and these kids are 13 years old, but they could relate to me because the stories I told, they understood because they lived a similar experience. So when you recall these best and worst and last and first, people in your audience are going to recall their own similar experiences. If you get into a conversation, Darren, about your first car with a bunch of people, how long do you think you could talk with them about your first car? Because they remember, yeah, my first car. Oh, I had a 1973 Dodge Dart van. And before long, everyone begins to relate to your story because it's a common ground. You have gold when you think best and worst, last and first. I invite you to invest some time to expand your story file by using that technique. Couple that with the question, what amazed you? What amused you? What moved you? And what did I learn? And before you know it, you have more stories than you know, more powerful stories than you know, more unforgettable stories than you know. And. And you can use them just as Darren used his in his speech contest. And you can look at episode 40, hear about that four and five as I use them in episode three. And even our first guest, Mike Rayburn, episode two, what he went through when he was younger, playing guitar in the smoky bars. We use our experiences and we share them with our audiences. We connect with our audiences and our presentations can and will be unforgettable.

And Mark, I think one important point that you talk about, that we learned from David Brooks, is that when we connect on that emotion that you just mentioned, he said, David Brooks, 1990 world champion, says, we all have different stories, but we all share the same six emotions.

That's correct. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. I'll say it again. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. We all share those emotions. And in our stories, as Michael Haig says, we want to elicit emotion. And when we have the common emotion, that's when our story becomes memorable, and that's when our speech or presentation becomes unforgettable.

And Mark, I was in NSA speaking to NSA chapter yesterday, nsa, Wisconsin, and I show the video, video intro, you know, you're familiar with it, you've seen it. We show it at our events, and it's my video intro. And I do it, and it's about me and my acceptance speech. I'm crying, my mom hugs me, she won't let go of me after I won the championship. And then I stop and I ask the audience, I raise it, I say, raise your hand if you feel a closer connection to me than you did 90 seconds prior to watching the video. And everybody's hand went up and I said, okay, here's the question.

Why?

What was it in the video? They immediately will say, well, you cried, your mom hugging you and not letting go. Well, it's going back to these emotions that you're talking about. It's the embarrassment of my mom not letting go while 2000 people are waiting for me to go up on stage. It's the humility of me crying. It's all, all what you're talking about, those same six emotions. And that goes back to exactly what we're saying, that stories connect us. And if you truly want to influence, if you want to be unforgettable, you've got to use these stories. One last example, Mark, and we'll wrap it up here. The, the time that I was speaking for Wells Fargo executives, their treasury division, I was in Nashville and I'm at this event and I, I flew across the country all day. It was kind of, you know, had to have a connection. And I get there and it' o' clock at night, and I go into my room and it's freezing and I hate to be cold, so I go and I jack up the heat to 90 degrees and it blows cold air. So I'm exhausted. It's freezing. Do I call down to the front desk or do I put in a knit hat and go under my covers and suck it up? Buttercup. So that's what I chose to do. Do. And so first thing in the morning, I called down to the front desk. I'm like, look, you know, my room is freezing. Is there some way we could have somebody come take a look at that? Because I didn't want to wait for maintenance the night before. So that morning, boom. Within two minutes, this guy named Gerald shows up and he opens the, you know, knocks on the door, opens the door, and he's standing there with a plunger. And before I can say a word, he goes, I'll get right on it, Mr. Lacroix. And goes right into my bathroom with a plunger in his hand. Gerald, Gerald, Gerald. Excuse me, Gerald. And he goes, no problem, Mr. Croy. I'm right on it. And he goes in there. I'm like, gerald, the problem is not my toilet. It's my AC unit. It's blowing. My heater is blowing cold air. And he just looks surprised, cocks his head a little bit and says, oh, oh, excuse me, I'll be right back. And he goes back down to his office, gets his other toolbox, comes back and opens up the. The wall, fixes it within two and a half minutes. What's my point? Are you trying to influence, you know, just like Gerald, Gerald was trying to fix the AC unit with a plunger. That doesn't work. Are you trying to influence your audience with data and case studies alone? Use stories. Use stories to deliver your data and make them unforgettable. Mark.

Darren, I could not have said that better myself. I've always maintained everyone has a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it. We have given you the tools today to find, to mine your life, some really great stories. I encourage you take these instructions seriously. Find those stories using these simple techniques and begin to apply them. You'll be surprised to know how many people would love to hear your story. That need not be sensational. It just has to be sincere to connect with us on a common level, to elicit some emotion and to give us a sense of relationship. You do that and you do that well. You tell your story and tell it well. Trust me, your presentation and you will both be unforgettable.

Hey, thanks, Mark. And Mark, by the way, as a reminder for if you're listening to this Mark, next week we're getting Unforgettable presenter. His name is Willie Jolly and he. We had so much fun with him and we recorded that interview already. Mark, what's your thoughts on that Willie interview?

Oh, bad Willy Jolly. Is a good buddy of mine and he just really brings a depth of knowledge and experience to the table. You don't want to miss the next episode with Dr. Willie Jolly on Unforgettable Presentations Podcast.

One of the things I love Mark is his opening and closing. We talk about that on the podcast are incredible and literally it became his opening is like his signature idea or concept. I don't want to give it away but but I remember when I started in nsa he was one of my heroes and it was one of my very first conventions. I heard him do a breakout session, how to go from Unknown to Known in a year and I still remember it. I was so thrilled to be able to have him on. So join us next week as we dive in and I also love the story, Mark of how he went out of the nightclub industry. How he was it was technology, his career. It's a funny story as to how he ended up becoming a speaker. So join us next week for that more tips, more stories and strategies to help you become unforgettable.

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