Ep#4: Demystifying Tech Storytelling: Bridging Complexity to Clarity - Cindy Skalicky

Welcome to Method, where we decode what it really takes to build and scale startups. I'm Andy Walsh, founder and strategist. Each week we'll bring you actionable insights and real stories. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back to Method Startups Decoded, the podcast to unlock the secrets to startup success. Today I'm really excited that we have another fascinating guest, Cindy Scalicki. Cindy is an expert in executive communications and storytelling. So welcome, Cindy. Thanks for joining us today.

Hey, Andy, it's great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure. And I'm excited about this one today because your day to day now is very much around storytelling and I think storytelling is more important than it's ever been, particularly for founders. And we'll cover some of those things today. So as far as your specialty, you're right now looking a lot at tech storytelling. So how you demystify and break down that story in a way that it's translatable to a lot of people. So we'll look at some of the strategies in that. We look at how you build out your narrative, how you actually think about context and the right people and then ultimately for you is elevating your leadership communication. Right. So how do you actually think about your role in the community, I guess the people that you're talking to and how to be the best version of yourself. Would that be a fair description?

That is a very fair spot on description, yes. Let's do it.

Okay, so kicking off a simple question, tell us a little bit about On Point Communications, your business today.

Sure. We are a consultancy now in our 10th year, which is mind blowing to me. But I'm based in Colorado and On Point Communications is centered around assisting leaders, particularly in tech science and innovation, to elevate to that level of like top 5% executive communication skills. So we're pretty full circle, 360 degree when it comes to an executive's communication style and ability to acquire, buy in, get influence, exude executive presence. So, I mean, you know, Andy, we do like, we do presentation skills for sure. That's, that's a major area of the work that we help leaders do, that kind of formal side of presentation skills. But we also do informal communications, which means, you know, can you run a good meeting, can you get out of the muck of your mindset when it's trying to sink you? How are you at networking conversations? So what I've learned over these years is how critical the informal communication is as well as the formal and that people haven't been trained well in either side.

Yeah, I love that. Because what you're thinking about is ultimately how you deliver a story in a way that translates, but also more importantly, in those little intimate moments that you have, it could be a one on one session in a group meeting, but being well rounded, like, you need to be able to consistent but actually connect with people in different ways. And not everyone is a natural storyteller.

Most people aren't. I mean, they don't think of themselves as that way. They have the ability and they have the stories. They don't think that they have stories. That's sort of an ironic question I get like, well, Cindy, wait, I don't have any stories. And I'm like, all right, let's go back to the beginning. Yes, you do. So sometimes it's going way in reverse to find out what they consider a story. They might not think of that as a story. And it is.

So, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. When you live within your own brain for such a long period of time, you assume that your life is pretty vanilla, that there's nothing exciting that you've done, but the reason that they're talking to you is because they're doing something interesting already. Right. So it's been able to put a mirror in front of them and let them be humble, but be confident in what they're doing. I want to be able to like rewind a little bit as far as your background, Cindy, and how you ended up here, because I think we have very similar paths as far as advertising backgrounds now into startups. So. Yeah. Can you talk us through a little bit about where you came from and what sort of work you were doing?

Yes, it's a very winding path and rather random, but I'm originally from outside of Chicago and so after, as I lived there all the way through, I was about 25 years old and I went and did an undergraduate degree in something called rhetoric, which is under the speech communications umbrella of your typical academic college or school. And I'll get back to rhetoric in a second. But after graduation from college, I went and worked on Michigan Avenue at BBDO Chicago, which is now Energy bbdo. And I had the sincere and great privilege of working in the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue in the ninth floor and learned how to brand stories. And so a lot of my work there was around learning how to tighten a message to that 30 second spot. We, you know, we did a lot of TV spots and radio spots and pulling the juice out of the orange you know, just so was a really critical lesson for me and a lot of fun. So I observed, also observed a lot of formal communication in that role and a lot of informal communication in that role. And I actually lean more heavily on that experience than I thought that I would. You know, in terms of observing how executives operate as a young startup, you know, early stage person, I've. I gleaned a lot just by being around other people in higher roles and working cross functionally because I was in the account service department there, so great experience there, amazing leaders I'm still in touch with. And after that I went back to graduate school at the University of Georgia to continue my studies in rhetoric. So rhetoric is a huge piece of me and who I am and what I bring to founders, fund managers, corporate teams and the like. Rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion. And what it means is that I am really dialed in and really good at looking inside of a message and a messenger and finding the gears that are stuck. I'm like a message engineer. I work with a lot of engineers and I'm a message engineer. And so I look at those gears and figure out where are they stuck and where are they running smoothly? And then we figure out, okay, well, how can we unstick the stuck gears so the whole persuasive engine is running on all cylinders so that we get the best impact possible for the audience because they're our number one priority. And so most people have stuck gears in story, in confidence, in filler words, in flow, knowing when to stop going into the weeds and things like that. So I went to graduate school thinking I was going to run off and stay and get a PhD and teach in academia. And I bailed off that ship after learning how insular it was and how much I was pretty social person. So then I did a stint in public relations in Washington D.C. and I did that with a science only PR firm, healthcare only clients. Fascinating work, really enjoyed that. Sharpened my scientific storytelling sword there. Then I took 10 years off, and I mean off. But I stopped working. We have four children, ages 15 and up. Never intended to do anything to go back to the work world. I just never considered it. My mom stayed home. I was going to stay home. Done deal. Ten years ago, OnPointe was born through a series of bizarre events that were a massive blessing to me. And we are now running a firm that's continuing to grow every single year. We have a team of coaches. We are working with some of the biggest hitters in tech like Google and dupont and big Pharma and it's been the wildest, most fun ride of my life. So yeah, it's, it's a little bit. That's my journey so far.

Yeah. And I always find there's a common theme with people that I speak to here and just generally from a work capacity, is to end up in the startup space. Most people seem to have this very sort of, I'd say almost chaotic career journey as far as it's not a linear path, it's not traditional. The breadth of experience allows you to have context and a point of view on things from different ways. And seeing the world through a different lens is really important to be able to be nimble. And I'm going to go back to the advertising side of things and my experience in that was what you're doing is a way to engage a brand with an audience is ultimately what advertising is and it can manifest in different ways. But the internal stakeholders, even through the client itself, if you're in an agency, more often than not you're dealing with multiple agencies that each have their own objectives, their own agreement with the client. You have the client in the mix quite often. You have talent, there's hierarchy within the company itself. So it's a very three dimensional sort of experience to think about. How do I manage stakeholder expectations, how do I stick to my job? How do you make sure that it's not death by committee? Everyone gets a say in things. So I would imagine that a lot of that sort of dynamic, being at the heart of that from an account service perspective is you're learning so much about how to be effective and be the best at your job. Because notoriously, advertising is a lot of hours as well. So not only do you need to be conscious of that, but you need to move through things quickly as well. So I love that that's a foundation to help sort of like then step change into what you're doing now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was, you know, I think about even just the term stakeholder. Honestly Andy, like in those years when I was like, I didn't even, I would never use that word when I was those ages, you know, I mean, these are words I use now and I know now, but I hardly knew a darn thing about the startup community at all until the last year I was at bbdo and this is just something that's coming to my mind right now. But I ended up on the new business pitch team for the agency and I presented to a new client and it was a startup, you know, this was be this was literally the year 2000. So turn of the century as I date myself. But we were. I was on the new business pitch team that won the agency's first ever.com client. Okay, so there I was behind the big oak doors pitching. And I had rehearsed, you know, maniacally before that moment with my superior above me. So tons of presentation experience that came in really handy for me as a young adult. But yeah, observing those dynamics was unbelievably helpful to me in the coaching that I now do, because some things don't change. You know, the world's changed with a lot of technology, but. But some things don't change. And that's usually people's behaviors. In an executive setting, we're pretty robotic when it comes that. And it takes a lot of effort to get out of those. Those places. I would say one small thing and throw it back to you, andy. But within OnPoint Communications in the last 10 years, there's also been a little bit of a ladder. Spent first five years hardcore with founders, like really in the deep with them, learning the investor pitch, right. And how they needed to sell those ideas. Then the next kind of rung up was getting calls from like, fund managers, VC funds, trying to get those LPs right to come in and fund those. And then some government labs. And then kind of within the last three years or so was sort of that next step, change up into corporate. But we love our founders. We still work with a lot of innovation labs and get to meet with and teach those founders a little more like classroom style, if you will, in the cohorts and the accelerators. And it's such a vibrant place. And I'll never tire of watching people light up with their ideas about how they can change the world and helping them figure out how to communicate it.

And within that, I think that connection going Back to.com clients, that was such a fascinating time where businesses were growing at such a fast rate.

Oh, my goodness.

Investors were throwing money at companies. It felt like it was some surreal party experience for young founders who were finding their way but had this huge opportunity.

Well, think about these founders that I. That we won the business for, right? This, the name of the business is not. Doesn't exist anymore. It was a great idea. A little too early for its time. It was called EthnicGrocer.com and you could order ethnic foods from other parts of the world and have them delivered to your home. Right? Well, founders out there who are listening, would you ever go and look for help in your advertising and messaging right now to a company like bbdo Chicago. Hell no. Think of the money that they spent. But there was no other way in 2000 to do that. And so it's fascinating to see the ways in which startup support has grown through small businesses like us, right, and other consultancies. So that now there are ample ways for new and early stage startups to get the kind of advertising brand support that they need without going to the big hitters like, you know, BBDO or other huge firms, because that's ridiculous. And we lost that client so quickly because they ran out of money and their investors weren't gonna back them anymore because they spent it all on our ideas. So literally right before we were about to go to production on EthnicGrocer.com's TV, print and radio, we worked our tails up. Hundreds of hours, presentations, they ran out of money, never got to do a damn thing. So, you know, it's just interesting to have that perspective as I work with clients now who have so much more freedom and reasonable access to this type of help. And so it's, it's just an interesting growth in the industry.

I'd love to go into that a little bit later, but I think as far as that sort of shift in technology, in distribution, in service based companies that can do things for you now are the independent contractors companies. In number two, we had Lucy Woofenden and she was talking a lot about that, that shift where you go from the growth to a scale phase within a startup and how she's got a fractional CMO business and she's now building out not just a CMO but also a team that can plug in and help scale. And it's a much more cost effective way versus an advertising agency to be able to come up with ways to hack, to create content, engage audiences, et cetera. And a lot of that obviously is communication about how you build an audience. Let's go into a little bit around your process now. So the breadth of experience that you had speaks volumes, I think, as far as why you do what you do. So if you're talking to a client, I guess even a step before that, what type of people you mentioned before, there's VCs and there's startups on the startup side, what typical stage are they at? Is it a mix or is it a bit of a pattern about how evolved they are before they start thinking about their story from a personal and business perspective?

I. We help a wide range of startup founders when again usually we're doing this now kind of in the cohort style, where the organization will hire us in and we'll kind of teach the course or the masterclass. So I'd say, for example, CU Boulder is an organization that brings us in to help with their accelerators and there's two different ones that we help with. One is the early stage researchers who are still kind of in the lab noodling their idea and they need help learning how to message it from like, what is my value proposition? I'm still in the stage of doing customer discovery. And so in those cases, sometimes, Andy, we're helping them learn to ask good questions in the customer service or sorry, customer discovery process. Because question asking is a skill and it's one that if you're listening, you really want to get good at. How can you ask one question instead of two or one question instead of three if you've thought through kind of what really you need to learn and glean from the person across the table from you? So sometimes we're working with those early, early stage folks who are like their PhDs, they're academics and they've found a great idea and landed upon some awesome innovation and they're considering commercializing it and what that might mean. So they might be in line for grant funding or a contest of some sort with a pitch. Then the next rung up is your traditional startup founders who are, you know, they've got a company, they've got a product, they've got either a prototype or a, they're beta testing something. They might even have some customers and they maybe already won some grant money from a state or federal agency. They might have a co founder and they're in the first like five years and they're looking for more money by now with either angel investors or Series A. And they've had some success with their pitch, but it's time to either brush it off and elevate it, you know, grow it up a little bit from the toddler version, if you will, and make it into like the teenager version of the P. And because they're going after some heavier hitters in terms of who could invest in them with more money. And so they're feeling usually more nervous because these are people they really want to impress. These are people with a lot of money. These are people who could beta test their idea internally, for example, inside their organization. And they know their pitch is not solid yet to meet that need. You know, often we're seeing people who have slide decks that are highly academic looking or haven't got a lot of Design elements that it kind of needs by now. Right. They don't have a way to tell their storyline succinctly or clearly. And they're almost always way too in the weeds of the detail of their tech and they're nervous and that creates.

A few problems, right?

A lot of problems, yeah.

Nerves bring out, unfortunately for most people, the worst side as far as how fast they talk, the kind of things that they talk about, messaging, even active listening and being able to read a person's body language and all the things that you do quite often instinctively, all that just goes out the window. Right. Because you're not focused on the right thing. So I can understand why that's stressful. So within that process, she would start with the brand strategy, going back to their core mission, their values, et cetera. And how do they define that in a way that gives them a stake in the ground to be able to build upon and then test and learn actively as they go because that feels like the place that you then build off everything else.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that, Andy, because the first five years of on point, I did brand strategy for small and medium sized businesses. I had a whole five part brand program from my advertising work. Right. So I would do work with the founders about that to like solidify them and I would also provide this help with the presentation skills. Kind of like second room of the house in an interesting move. And this is probably, this is a good lesson maybe for those listening who are trying to straddle to pools, if you will. I kind of, I cut that arm off of my business in 2020 and I don't do formal brand strategy anymore. Anymore, unless it's, you know, unless it's a special case, let's put it that way. And there's a good reason to do that. But I decided instead to stop doing that and to focus on the messaging and presentation skills growth for our business, which lent to many other services that we now provide, like executive presence, coaching and programming, mindset management programs. But sometimes in a startup journey, you have to make a decision like that about cutting off a product arm or some service area that you've thought about. And the key here is that you need to be in your zone of brilliance when you're choosing where you want to put your mind, your energy, your heart and your soul. And we do a whole exercise on what the zone of brilliance is and how it's different from the zone of excellence. And that is a tricky thing to figure out. But I was not in my zone of Brilliance with the branding stuff the same way I am with the message messaging stuff. And so that's kind of a sidebar conversation. But I think it's worthwhile for people to know that like everybody goes through that and it isn't easy to. I mean, I cut a whole arm off my business at a very risky move and it paid off in spades for me, thankfully. But it takes guts to get to glory, right? I guess. So we're working toward the glory. We're not there yet, but yeah, it's.

Not for the faint hearted, right?

No, no.

The separation between brilliance and excellence. Like how would you define those two as far as for people to think about in their own minds? Are they spending too much time on one or the other? And how do they separate the two?

Yes, great question. And we'll use my example that we just had for a second. So we have four zones. Zone of incompetence. Zone of competence. Zone of excellence. Zone of brilliance. If we're going bottom to top and we're right now talking about the top two, Zone of brilliance. Zone of excellence. Zone of excellence is what you can do better than most people and that you get a lot of amazing feedback about and that you're excellent at. So you are excellent at this. But you don't love it so much that you could do it all day for no pay and it just doesn't make your heart soar. Your zone of brill. And that was branding for me. So I was a, I got, I made good money from that line of business. I was very good at it. I still, still am, right? It's, it's an excellence place for me. But it wasn't brilliance. So for brilliance, that's the place where you could sit all day long and do this task, this type of work, this type of thinking. Maybe it's strategic thinking, maybe it's technology, product development, whatever it is for you. For me it's messaging, analysis and decoding. Right. And formulating a pathway for people through story to bring them to excellence. And so for me, that's what makes my heart sing. It's what I am born to do. And so there's a difference between those two. And it's thin and difficult to get to without some help from a coach or a second person who can guide you. But the value of doing it is enormous because you really want to work in your life as you get older and learn more about yourself and you want to be the best version of yourself. You really want to be in your zone of brilliance. 70% or more of your working hours.

It makes practical sense. And my brain, I can visualize the chart that you just described. And I think that self awareness is really important in that. And I know for myself there's things that I'm great at that I could do 100 times a week, but I wouldn't feel that I had purpose and reward. And it's sort of like it's enjoyable. But then there's a handful of things that I'll just probably over invest time on. And that would be my brilliance lane as far as not only can I do it well, it gives me a greater reward is that sort of dopamine hit that comes something with purpose. Right. So within that, do you ever look at. And it's probably outside of what you do day to day, because I go into a practical application of that. If you're thinking about how you spend your time as a founder, like the brilliance versus excellence, the reality is it's probably you're running in the excellence lane more often than not, but you probably spend way too much time on the brilliance because it's the stuff you love the most. So being able to help manage your day and separating those two feels like it would be a challenge that most founders would have.

Yes. Well, when you do what you just said, it's like X plus Y equals burnout. Right. That was kind of where I was thinking. If you're spending a lot of time in excellence because you have to, because you don't have a lot of staff yet, and because somebody's got to do this work, then you're spending a lot of hours there. If you're spending a lot of time in the brilliance because that's what charges you up and it's the reason you built the startup in the first place, then you've got. Yeah. Two wrongs don't make a right. Right. So we've got to figure out. Yeah. What's the next step to do? Are you going to hire a virtual assistant? I mean, I just brought on a fractional COO to help free up my time because we have three team members, three team members kind of behind the scenes and two ancillary coaches who come in to help with clients as well. So. But I've grown real slow, you know, slowly, methodically, intentionally. I've made some mistakes, you know, costly ones, both money and time. And so it's a learning curve. But, you know, I'll do those brand programs or things that are similar to that. As long this is where I gave myself permission and this is a key piece of, of startup process and mindset, like giving yourself permission to say yes or to say no. So I'll give myself permission to do the branding types of, of projects so long as they are attached to something that's going to be in the zone of brilliance. Right. So if it's a gateway to that, I'm okay with that. And so you want to give yourself permission to say yes to things and to say no. Like giving yourself perfect permission is a piece that we kind of work on a lot with our private coaching clients.

That for me resonates. I was talking to a founder yesterday who I'm an advisor for and I was sort of pushing her deliberately. It was maybe a little unfair in the sense of like in three years time, if her business was flying like we think it can, then what does her normal day look like? What are the things that she's focused on? And when she talked about it like what she described was literally that brilliance zone.

Yes.

And it's amazing to be able to have someone who was so focused and aware of what they love to do, where they added value. And for me it created a really great sort of step program. So to get from now to that point by building the right team, the right expertise and allowing her to focus on what's most important to her. And it doesn't mean that she neglects the parts of her business that don't work, but she's self aware enough to get the best version of her, which has a positive impact on her team, on culture, on effectiveness and building around yourself a little bit. And I feel like if. And again, like this is probably a great way to step into the next question. When you're thinking about the personal side of the work you do versus the company side, some of those activities I'd assume would come up in that process to be able to understand all of those things.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. So if you think of a triangle for those who are listening and can't see me, but like I started when I cut that branding arm off, we had like formal presentation skills and message mastery. Then we added informal communication skills, which is like executive presence and influence skills. Right. And the bottom of the triangle, mindset mastery, I would, I would say a hell yeah to that comment, Andy, because mindset is all the junk in between our ears that gets in the way of excellence on the two sides of the triangle. And it's pervasive, it's everywhere. And the more I did private coaching with higher and higher level leaders, the more I realized how the gremlins are just everywhere for all of us. But even as you go higher and deeper into a startup, for example as well, there's just none of us can escape it and it just doesn't matter. It's always going to be part of taming the beast. And we use a rhyming tool here called, excuse me, name it so you can tame it. Name fear so you can tame it. Name the anxiety, and then let's tame it together. So having a partner to get through those mindset pieces is from what my clients say. And I can say this for myself with my coach too, it's gold. You know, it's how you get rid of those blocks that are keeping you from success.

Yeah. And it's one thing to give someone the right tools, framework, messaging, etc. It's another thing for someone to be able to not just learn that, but actually embrace it and deliver it with confidence and trust in themselves. So within that you touched on it, then it's almost like you need a therapist or someone who can give you the confidence to be able to deliver that narrative in a way that it demonstrates that you believe in it. And for everyone that's doing that, of course they believe in it, it's their business. But quite often their articulation of that lets them down because they don't have that self belief. So you need to be able to lift those people up as well as give them the right message.

Right. And just last week in newsletter that we wrote, I highlighted two high level executives who had started. Both struggled with telling their story in a setting that we had worked on together. And it was like a literally this is a two minute story that each leader was saying to a team of theirs. In one case it was a lot of people, like a hundred people on her team. Another case it was like 12. But in both cases they were struggling with finding the courage to tell this personal story that was going to lead to some growth. So it's like we start with a personal, often we start with something personal or interesting about ourselves that also has meaning in the business sense of wherever their meeting is going or for founders, wherever your pitch is going story is, calms people down. And so what I said to these leaders was, I said they're like, these are questions like Cindy, are you sure I should do this? Are you sure this is going to work? Are you sure this is the right story? I don't know. I don't know if I can do it. And I'm thinking to myself, we're 90% of the way through the storyline, training by this point, and we're about 48 hours from them getting up to do it, and suddenly, Andy, all this doubt crept in. And I'll be honest, it just surprised me. I'm like, guys, we've been working. Like, you're going to be fine. Like, trust me, this is going to work. And for the one leader with the big crowd, she already brings a lot of skills with. You know, she's confident in her delivery and stuff. Nailed it. Absolute, like, long ball, you know, Hail Mary pass. Kind of a feeling for her in the room. But all this to say, when it comes to founders figuring out their storyline for their innovation or telling their stories in a setting that's either formal or informal, it's scary for, you know, it's not scary for me anymore because I live this every day. It's like I'm in my brain. And other people, People aren't. Kind of what you said at the beginning of the episode. But I've learned as a coach and a mentor to really, like, slow down and meet people where they are, where their assessment of storytelling is, because I could tell them it's easy and this is how to do it, but if they don't agree or feel that way yet, we have to go slower, and we do. And then when they see small results and wins, they're more confident in the next time that they tell the story. And it's really gratifying to see someone come back and say, like, oh, my gosh, I crushed it. And it just makes my week, you know, that's why I do this. That's what makes me keep going.

Yeah. And storytelling as an art, it's been something that is part of our history. Right. So for tens of thousands of years, humans have told stories to retain history and let generations to come understand what happened before them and the path that they traveled. And it's really important. And it's part of our DNA is storytelling. And it connects with people. And I think people would find it really hard to understand the genetics that go behind, why it translates and why it's so powerful. But they're the things that just naturally, we're seeking out. It comes in with podcasts, it comes through TV shows and movies, someone who's a friend, who's just a naturally storyteller, and they seem to be like the center of attention in a room. So we know that the strength of that. So for you, in an execution, if you've crafted something you're working on, that person is There a little bit of to get it perfect or as best it can be. I hate the word perfect actually. But to get it as best it can be, they need to have enough confidence to be a little bit vulnerable as well. To be able to know that what they share is going to be received well and not to be nervous about the consequences and that the outcome of what they're doing is maybe not going to be as severe or as terrible as they anticipate. So it's sort of that fine line of what's the right message? But then how does that person deliver a message in a way that they feel comfortable with, that they can adopt? So they're not rope learning, they're actually speaking from the heart, but it's coached and crafted in a way that allows it to have greater impact.

Absolutely. Do you want me to expand on that a little bit?

Yeah, that would be good. In the sense of like when you get to the point and you touched on it a little bit there. As far as when they're having self doubt right at the end of the process, what are some sort of tips and tricks? If someone was thinking about, okay, I've got this great narrative, I feel like I've got it, but it doesn't feel like me. Like how do you start to locally adapt that to each individual? Because you may have three co founders with different personality types. Is there a localization per person to give them that confidence?

Well, you know what I was doing while you were talking was I'm writing down kind of like the first five things that came to my mind and I thought maybe it would be good to do a quick tip session, like quick tip segment right now that I think is going to address your thing. The first five things I wrote down about tips to telling stories that most leaders don't really do enough of are going to come right out right now. Number one, most leaders don't rehearse their stories out loud at all. In some cases or enough. And we have an entire program. It's free. At my website there's a place you can go. It says get the free training now on the homepage it's really rich webinar called the Rehearsal trifecta website is onpoint communications.com go there, get that, learn that, Rehearse out loud. And then when people are like, oh my gosh, I can't listen back to myself, that's creepy and scary and I just can't do it. Well, get over it and do it and here's why. And this usually helps people it calms them down a little bit. I say record your story into your phone, like the three or five minute version. Read it right from the script, Read it into your phone so you have the recorded file and then hit play. But when you listen back to it, don't be. You pretend that you're someone in the back row of your audience and evaluate your message, pretending that you're them so that you're kind of critiquing whether it would be interesting. Where does it start to get boring? These kinds of. And, you know, use your analytical mind to try to improve the heart part of your message, right? So rehearsing is critical. Number two in the delivery. Slow story is slower. When you tell a story, usually this is going to be at the beginning of a talk. You got to slow it down. The pacing invites imaginative play in your audience's minds. And if you tell a story too fast, you miss that opportunity and you kind of rob your audience. So I often say, you know, story has incredible power. You can also do it wrong. If you go out and do that story that I told you to do, and you're like, cindy, it didn't work. That's because you told it too fast. You were too. You know, there's reasons, right? So slow it down. Okay, number three, loop. Loop your audience in to your story by throwing at them within the first, like, three sentences or so, some kind of reflective rhetorical question. Something simple like, have you ever experienced something kind of like this? So anyway, when I was lost in Venice, here's what happened next, right? Something that makes them light up their brain about their life and their story. It invites them into yours. And there is extreme power in your audience, finding a way to participate in the first feelings you are describing in your story. Hugely powerful. That's probably the zinger. Moment of excellence in storytelling. Number four is relax. And this is like, deep breaths. Have confidence. Doesn't need to be perfect. Like you said, Andy, doesn't need to be perfect. So relax. We've got lots of techniques about that. And number five, this is another mark of excellence in storytelling. Headquartes. Headquartes are things like. So I'm standing there and I'm looking at the stoplight, and I'm wondering, I swear, this is broken. There is no way that this light is this long. Now, it's a kind of a crummy example, but, you know, it's the head quote of what you're thinking about, what's going through your mind. And then you kind of open up the wizard of Oz curtain for your audience when you do that, and they love that. I mean, think about what you love when you're in the audience, when you hear kind of those secret passageways of the speaker's brain. So rehearse slower, loop it into your audience, relax and add some headquartes, and you've got the start of a really powerful sticky story.

Yeah. And great framework. And being able to implement that in test and learn, like, I'd assume you don't need to do it all at once. You can think about what's one small way that you can test one of those out. And. And I agree with you on the presentation. The ones that stand out to me are the ones who are able to tell a personal story. And once you have that story, the way that your brain recalls that is anchored to that moment that was very visual. So once you visualize that, then your brain will recall everything that happens after that. So you have this point of entry to be able to recall that information. So it allows you as a presenter to think about that way to sort of stick. And I think having the vulnerability to be able to go, I'm the same as you. We're sitting around together and we're sharing stories. I want you to be part of this and feel like you're on the same journey as me.

Yeah. A quick example for the audience to help. I was just on the phone this week helping a client with a storyline. He's got a longer Talk that's like 40 minutes. And the story is fantastic. It's about failure that he experienced in a team, and he just keeps getting pummeled with this. And I'm like, this is a great story, you know, so we. I said, I felt, listening to you, like you were giving me a right hook, a left hook, and then a gut punch, like a boxing story. And I'm like, we could use some Rocky, like, photos. And like, I was like, this is the generation that understands Rocky. So we started thinking about using some images in the slide deck of a left hook, a right hook, and a gut punch. And I said, when the audience. To your point, when the audience goes home and they remember Rocky 5 or Rocky Rocky 4, or whatever movie we picked. If they just remember Rocky and boxing, they're gonna remember all the things that came with that left hook, right hook. They're gonna remember the presentation just because they remember Rocky. And so that's where power in story comes from. It's the longevity and the ability to remember something through story that links it back to you. And the business case long after they've left the building. And you closed your zoom link for me.

I love listening to great storytellers. It's so inspiring in all ways, not just in the actual content itself, but in the delivery. Being able to separate the two when you're watching is a lot of fun.

Yeah. Andy, when you're sitting in an audience and you hear someone say to you, let me start with a quick story. What happens in your brain and heart? What do you do?

Yeah. You lean in and your senses are very open to what's coming at you.

Yeah. You're like, oh, a story. Awesome. It's like, story time. I'm gonna chill for a second because this is gonna be good.

Yeah.

So when you say those words, I'm gonna start with a quick story. Everyone in the room is happy. Okay. So take that, stick that in your pipe, and smoke it.

And I do it deliberately, and.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Yeah. I have a slight advantage in that I come from Tasmania, and people immediately have association with the Tasmanian devil.

Yes.

Association with Australia, and obviously my accent speaks for itself, but being able to own that at the start, from talking to strangers, immediately lands. And it humanizes me in a way that makes me relatable to everyone. So it's something that I'm thinking about. And. And to go further on that, I think I'd be very disappointed if we didn't talk about rhetoric.

Oh, yeah.

In the time that we've got, it's something for me that I'm fascinated by, and I love psychology. At university, I did exercise science, and we did a lot in biomedical science in psychology. And one of the ones that stuck out to me was the Hawthorne effect, which is the ability to seed an idea with someone and they run with it and then present it back as their own idea. It's a great way to get stakeholders on board in a way that's a little calculated. But, you know when people don't know.

Like, a Tasmanian devil.

Totally. And that's like, whenever they hear my voice, that's what they visualize is this crazy cartoon character from Warner Brothers. Okay, so back onto retreat, because I'm so curious, for us, if you're thinking about from a founder perspective, within that, what are some of the things that you learnt that people could start to explore a little bit with their own storytelling and how rhetoric plays a role.

Okay, easy. Grab a pen and paper. Everybody draw another triangle. You can see why my brand is a triangle. So rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion, and it's rooted in our philosopher that we all know and love, Aristotle. Okay, so he's the father of persuasion. And if you draw a triangle at the top, you could put an square on the lower left, you can put an A on the right. M for message. So we have the name Sam, and it's speaker, audience, message. And so what Aristotle argued thousands of years ago and after much deep thought, is that if you are a founder looking to present your idea or share your idea, what we want to do as a speaker, and I mean that in a general sense, is balance the three parts of his triangle so that we get the most persuasive outcome or the best persuasive outcome that we can. So we have to balance all parts of the triangle. S for speaker is related to the Greek term ethos, for credibility. So the speaker needs credibility. I'm giving you the quick version, of course, but A for audience is linked to the Greek term pathos. Pathos, that's heart. We have to get our audiences to care, and we have to bring them in by heart because that's how people make decisions. The M for message is linked to the Greek term logos, which is logic or reason. And that's our brains that analyze and think about. Convince me that I should donate, you know, that I should give to your startup or donate to your cause or something like that. So we have speaker, audience, message. And Aristotle says we have to think about all three of those areas as we prepare a message so that we can get the most possible impact by the time we're finished speaking. Now, you can probably guess which area of the triangle is the weakest link. Any guesses, Andy?

I'm gonna say the heart is probably the one I would go to.

Yeah. The first letter, your first name. Audience, Andy. Audience. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes sense. You're the speaker. You know your stuff, you know your message. But people don't do nearly enough with audience and go deeply enough. And that's. That's really why I developed the model that I developed and that I wrote the book that is coming out soon about how to really walk through the methodology that I created. I mean, I have a little innovation of my own, Andy. It's called the how to Model, and it's trademarked, and it's in the book that I've written, and it's been taught to thousands of founders and fund managers and corporate folks all over the world. And it works because it's simple, and it puts the audience first in a very unique way.

So. Good. And you've elegantly set up there an end. So I was going to ask you, what are you doing right now and what are the things that people should know about you? When is the book out? I guess first question.

Yeah, we are looking at second quarter of 25, 2020. So looking at May of this year, we're in pre launch mode choosing covers and in the second round of edits almost for the manuscript. It's called Red Light Greenlight. How Smart leaders Present with Influence, Get Buy in and Inspire Action. There's lots of stories inside of it, but it highlights the model that I built. I built this model called the how to model during the five years that I was working so closely with founders. So it's really originally built for founders. And then what I discovered is that it has beautiful applicability to any leader. But. But ultimately, Andy, the model solves the problem of leaders pitching investors who aren't getting nearly into the heart part the way that they're supposed to. And most founders assume the audience understands the problem that they're trying to solve and feels the same pain that the customer feels. And they don't. They don't usually understand it the way that the founder does. And so they go way too fast and way too over the head of the investor audiences and they don't get the buy in. And they wonder like, why am I not getting this funding? This is such a great idea. So I see us as a safety net for innovation, truly. Like, we try to keep innovation from hitting the drawing room floor with this model. We try to catch them before they fall so that we can make sure that they can clearly and concisely deliver a confident message with command.

Perfect. So amazing. And today, if anyone wanted to reach out to you, I'll put details in show notes and in the content that we share. But what, what's the best way to get in touch with you and what should be people asking you for?

Yep, I would say LinkedIn's my place for, you know, it's my home base. Cindy Scalicki. Just send me an invitation to connect with you that, you know, you heard me on this podcast and I can, I can find you some free resources. We can talk about ways that we could work together. The book is coming out. We've got a podcast that we're launching also called Red Light, Green Light. It's coming out next week. So there's lots of ways that we can help people no matter what level they're at or where their resource levels are.

So good. Well, it's been a treat. We've run out of time as we thought we would.

Yes, I had a feeling that might happen, but this was really great, Andy. Thanks for having me and introducing me to your audience and hope everybody got at least one nugget from today's I got plenty.

I'm gonna listen to this back and do some little exercises of my own. So, yeah, I might cancel my afternoon.

Go find your zone of brilliance, Andy. I think you're pretty squarely in it, but you never know why.

Thank you. Well, thanks for joining. Today's you're on Method Startups decoded. Please subscribe. Five star ratings are always appreciated. Tell your friends and we'll be back next week with a new episode. So thank you for joining.

You're welcome. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.