How To Tell A Great Story with Kindra Hall

i've been tracking you down on social media for i feel like years now and i'm so glad i'm so happy that we're actually here today doing this conversation because i have gone through your first book i think so many times and i've been quoting it referencing it recommending it to people and then i see you going on this journey about writing your your follow-up book to it which is in my hands or choose your story change your life and i was just super impressed at how focused you were everywhere you went you were like writing and you were documenting this it was so cool you know i think as any creative knows that there can it's a great mystery right trying to figure out how you can best be your creative self and what those environments look like and what it means and i think i figured out what mine is and so when you say i was so focused it really is because i learned that if i do not have a full runway to only focus on that i i am zero focused so so it was so for that i think it was a total of six weeks that is all i did i i had no conference calls i had no podcasts i had i was responsible to no one even the kids knew like my husband knew like just leave her alone um and that is how i've learned i write the best hmm wow okay there's a lot of super impressive things to talk about and i i need to introduce you to our audience so for people who don't know who you are can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of a story yeah oh no pressure right from the storyteller i got you but i'm kendra hall and i also have to say not that i've been tracking you down but i will never forget the first day we met and just knowing in an instant what an incredible person you are and it's been it's been so rewarding for me when i hear from others like oh i heard about you from chris or you know chris sent me your book and so hey i'm so grateful for all your support and b you are you have earned your way to the reputation you have so thank you for serving your audience so well i'm kendra hall my i suppose you could say in a nutshell my expertise is storytelling i am an author a keynote speaker i get to do a little bit more research these days and essentially i told my first story when i was 11 years old it was an assignment for fifth grade and i i remember walking into the classroom we were supposed to choose a children's book and then go read it to a third grade classroom you know two grades below us so they're just peons right and i remember getting into the classroom and those third graders it was the end of the day it was the end of the school year the kids were bouncing off the walls there was no hope for me for them to listen to anything that i was about to read and not to mention than the girl who went right before me because we went in pairs she read the book um i'll like you forever i'll love you for always as long as i'm living my baby you'll be which is like the that's not the whole title the title's shorter than that but it's this very emotional book about a baby that grows up and the mom loves this baby and eventually the baby grows into a full man and then the mother dies and he's saying this to i mean anyway the point being the third graders were having none of it and that was the act that i had to follow and i decided just to put the book that i was supposed to read to them which would have been good enough i'm sure put it down and tell the story and fifth grade was a transformational year i have a fifth grade son now i can already tell like it is the year when you really start figuring out who you are independent of your family independent but also a little co-dependent on your friends and to have this huge realization at that very um vulnerable time i definitely got the sense at 11 years old standing in that classroom that wait maybe all i need to do when there's chaos all around me and i want my voice to be heard is tell a story so that's really and it was such a it was such a pivotal moment it was it's very vivid to me in my memory and ever since that time i've either been telling stories i did a lot of storytelling i started studying stories once i got into college that was my thesis for my master's degree was the role of storytelling in organizations um i worked as a director of marketing vp of sales found myself constantly frustrated that they were missing the story or there wasn't time for this story or here's a story but it wasn't a story and eventually decided that i think that's probably what i'm here to do is to if nothing else remind people how important storytelling is and if i can help them figure out what a story actually is and so here we are today here we are okay before we get into the there's a whole bunch of things i want to talk to you about but i want to take us a little bit back to search love you're on stage i i knew you from just from the internet but then i saw you just take that stage and tell your story and you shared a couple of stories can i ask you to repeat some of those stories perhaps maybe gosh i don't even can we do that no if i can remember what they were uh i'll prompt you here okay i i if i remember correctly uh it was about a high school assignment oh yeah yep can you tell that story please yeah so there was another um i'm not going to tell it the way i really i'm going to tell it i'm going to tell the podcast version all right because we got to save the good stuff for the stage chris all right but it was um it was a long that same journey so i went from 5th grade through school then i'm at my senior year of high school and remember i had figured out that stories were a really important force and i continued to try to test it to see in what situations could stories save me right or get me what i wanted i tried using storytelling on my parents with different dating situations uh those you know they were stories those bordered on there was some truth and some expansion of truth in those stories but but there was again another critical moment where it was physics class my grade in physics was terrible and we had to write a paper at the end of the year and it really was my only hope for getting my grade to be somewhat representative of who i saw myself as a person um and so we had to write a paper i chose my topic was gravity i went to the library got everything i could find about gravity came home wrote the paper on my little you know where the the the cursor do you remember the insert button where you would like push it and it would delete it was kind of like a copy paste before copy paste was a thing i had a lot i fought with that a lot i had my floppy disk in there and it all was said and done the paper was doing just you know the next morning and i was finished and i had four pages and it was supposed to be five and and that's the only thing that matters at least at my high school was you needed five pieces of paper and all five of them had to have words printed on them um and so i there was much more to say about the fact that things go up in the air and then after a while they come back down like they're like that was it that was all there was to say um and so being someone who was testing the power of story i decided to test it here and i wrote a story about roller coasters and how i love roller coasters and there was this one particular roller coaster at valley fair which was the amusement park where i grew up in minneapolis and i wrote you know it was very detailed about how you get on the roller coaster and you feel the bars come over your shoulders and you go in the air and then there's that sensation in your stomach as you take the first descent it's a very story um because the feeling in your stomach when you're on a roller coaster is the direct result of gravity so i put that story at the front of the paper all the information and then came back to the story at the end with something cheesy about you know the next time i'm on a roller coaster i will look to the sky and thank sir newton um for his discovery of gravity uh and so i handed the paper in i was pretty sure i was gonna get in trouble because clearly i was cheating by just inserting a bunch of fluff um and instead i got the paper back it was the first a i had gotten and on the back my teacher wrote excellent application of information to real life stories and again that was another one of those moments that really stood out to me it was you know we often think we often think that stories aren't as important like if you're supposed to write a science paper it's supposed to be filled with science and story is the opposite of science and so by putting story in there you actually are just like trying to fill the page so you don't get in trouble and and i think even now if there's if there is like a problem among story in business it's that whenever we think that we really need to get to the point it's we we rely we share the information even if we had stories in there we cut them out because oh we need to get to the point um not realizing that stories actually are the most important piece to keep in and yet so many of us when we're on stage in front of a boardroom we forget that we we lean into too much facts and figures and we lose the audience why do you think that's the case you know i and i am guilty of the same thing i and i'm the storyteller like this is what i do um i remember i had this was years after we were together at search love which i have a whole different story there's a there's a behind the scenes story there that maybe maybe i could share with you some day i loved it but years after search love where i was well on my keynote speaking career this is definitely what i was doing as my job i had a big keynote i was hired for a big keynote and when you speak you present and this is true for sales presentations too it may not be as explicit but you have a time limit you only get so much time um and for this particular event i had 45 minutes and so i started preparing my slides and getting everything ready and then they wrote me back and said oh we have um we have a an announcement coming out so now it's 30 minutes and then it went to 20 minutes and then two days before the event it was 18 minutes was how much time i had well you know you prep for these things you you get it already not to mention it was in front of 15 000 people so this was a really big deal and i wanted to do a great job and so even i in that frantic um feeling of oh my gosh how do i take 45 minutes and make it 18. i just cut all the stories out of the deck i'm like i don't have time for this story i don't have time for this story and when i looked at it all that was left were the slides with the bullet points on it and i was just i was so because i wanted to make sure that they understood they understood the things i wanted to teach them and i think that you know when we talk about that as a as a standard problem it comes from a good place like we want to do the thing we are there to do justice we want them to understand whatever it is whether it's the features and benefits of a product or you as a candidate for a position or me as i really want these people to understand the importance of their story and how to tell it and so we revert to that information because the information has value it's important that they know certain things but it's so easy to forget that knowing is only part of it we need to feel it and if you really want somebody to to if you want it to stick which i hesitate saying because it sounds so cheesy because it's the title of my book but if you want it to be like yep stories that stick there it is hey you even have the advanced copy see see i knew to send you send you the cindy the original um but you know we talk about things being bioavailable it's that it's that same thing if you want your information to be bio available you need to wrap it in a story so in that particular instance with that particular keynote i woke up in the middle of the night and again i'm slightly ashamed to say it i should have known better but i woke up and and was like wait all i need is the story and so then i was very discerning about which story or stories i told but that 18 minutes was six minutes of a story it was six minutes uh probably like eight minutes of content with a little mini story told in there and then one last story at the end and to this day i still have people that can recite back details of that story to me okay stories and storytelling it's never been hotter as far as i can tell whenever i host a room and i talk about storytelling if it's title story storytelling brand story things like that people get all crazy they're like foaming at the mouth what is happening right now are you noticing the same thing you know here's what's funny i it was like four years ago and someone like a speaking agent said to me storytelling is definitely having a moment right now i was like what what are you talking that was four years ago i remember when i and i will say that something has changed there started to be a a bit of a buzz about it gary vaynerchuk mentioned it i think like back in 2011 or something i think uh he had a quote about that um sir richard branson had mentioned something about storytelling so it was building a little bit but it was just a whisper people are maybe waking up to the fact that and and i don't think it's been happening just super recently i think it started yeah about four or five years ago um and then we just i like to think that i'm partially responsible for it i'm just gonna say that out loud i'm gonna be like i kind of think because i will say when i was pitching this message before it became like a thing i was getting turned down left and right like the sales pitching i had to do to have somebody want to hear about storytelling it was exhausting and now yeah it just it seems very obvious i think what's happening is we know now more than ever if it's having an even bigger moment now it's it's the pathway to human connection uh which is something that we've been desperate for uh people are starting to see the value of that however i would argue that even though more people are talking about it it people aren't getting any better at it i mean look at the super bowl commercials this year if storytelling is at that peak of interest those were the worst ones that that we've seen in years right so anytime it's similar to i mean think about the words authenticity vulnerability any time a word is like always talked about and people are foaming at the mouth to get to it um it means that the meaning of that word is even more watered down so yeah i would say that people are recognizing the need for connection and um and that's they're seeing stories as an easy pathway but i don't think it's leading to better stories being told or stories being told at all honestly i i think maybe just in the very rational mind we think we want to tell stories when we're around friends it's how we relate and connect to people i think i read this in your book we tell stories to remember to cooperate to teach to share and to survive it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals and we think of that as supernatural and it's how we've learned learn from our elders and how we pass on knowledge to our children but then when we get into the business space when it comes to sales and marketing in teaching for some reason part of our brain switches off and says this is not what we're supposed to do this seems to be the problem are you feeling that sentiment at all yeah that's exactly so anytime i'm working with someone and we were talking about what a story really is and what it looks like and what it feels like and what it sounds like you can see them say in there they'll either say it out loud or you can see it going off in their heads like wait i have all these stories but i don't tell them and and the truth is uh when you're using stories strategically when you're using it with a specific goal in mind whether that is to influence behavior persuade or maybe it is just to stick with somebody longer because chris can i just point out that book about the physics class or that story is not in my book i only tell that story on stage and we were together either in 2014 or 2015 and it is 2022 right now so so even if that is your goal is to have somebody remember a message that you delivered six seven years ago but again we we get in there and we think that we get really caught up in our role and so much of our professional roles require us to know so much and to um have all of that knowledge and so we think that that is what we need to pass on and actually the point that i was making there was that using stories strategically it does require extra effort like you i mean when we're when we're telling stories to friends you can tell whatever story comes up or you know maybe there was like a a moment recently that just happened to you and you're like oh my gosh i've gotta i just had a friend text me the other day remind me to tell you the story about this email that i got right away i called her i wanted to hear the story of the email right and she can just tell it offhand because it's in a conversation but when you're trying to use stories strategically it does require extra effort energy work you need to find a story that illustrates the message you need to include the components that are not only compelling but that are relevant and there are some people who can do that on the fly but even the best of the best aren't going to nail it i mean i've been i've been on a stage and a story comes to me that's just perfect for that audience and perfect for that moment and even i stumble my way through it and i get to the end of it right there in front of you know however many people i mean like oh i'm thinking in the back of my mind shoot i wish i had thought of that story when i was prepping for this moment so that it was really ready to hit to land um so really i mean ultimately i think we're lazy a lot of us do do the things at the last minute where you know so having some stories ready that additional prep is also part of the reason that i think it doesn't happen as often well there's a phenomena that happens at least sometimes with me we're talking there's something i think there's a point to be made and i think there's a story i need to tell here i tell the story and then i get lost in the story and i forget what was the point i wanted to make with this and then the panic starts to set in because i'm i'm landing the plane on the story and i'm like what the fudge was like oh right it has to be this so how do you prevent that from happening well and that that's what i'm that's what i'm talking about right there it's the prep yep it's the prep and i would say that if you here's here's the good news is when you're using stories in sales or marketing or your role and you're and you're tasked with delivering a set of messages right you need you need the message either that's about this particular topic or a message that is tailored to this particular group of people and you talk to this particular kind you know maybe you're like oh i'm going i i have to pitch to government offices hospitals and hospitality and so you have your set of stories that you use that hit that land that make the points for hospitality and you have the but that is that's where it comes in is i would say have your set of stories because once you put that effort once you put that effort in you could have three stories that you just tell over and over and over again and through the repetition you don't even have to think i mean i can't think how many i can't count how many times i've told that physics story i could tell it in my sleep i probably do my poor husband probably wakes up to me mumbling that story um but yeah just having a set of three stories for a particular product or pitch or audience the repetition will automatically make it so that you're not trying to figure out how to land the plane in the middle of a story i'm going to ask this question on behalf of my friend she has she's european she struggles with telling stories and i keep telling her every time you tell me a story it feels like you're a reporter talking about something objectively about some other person i never feel your inner pain you might talk about something and then you you jump right over all those parts and i think culturally for her the way she was socialized you generally don't share these kinds of things i've noticed also with some european countries not all obviously people aren't that open with revealing who they are or emotions and how does one person overcome that that's a great that's a great question so first let's start with um you know and as you know as you know but in stories that stick i outline the four key components that are what make a story compelling are what what make them influential that draw people into what i call the co-creative process which is exactly what you want and where you want them and emotion is a key component and just as you said it's not just your european friend but this is one of the as i see people on a storytelling journey one of the first steps before they get all the way there is they do a good job of reporting as you said what happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened which isn't wrong but without the emotion you're you're really leaving a lot on the table here's here's the thing that i think is kind of a misconception when people think about storytelling and the need to be authentic and genuine and share pieces of themselves um that does not mean like emotion doesn't mean like being a contestant on the bachelor right like you do not have to emotionally the emotions that you're sharing do not have to be the deepest darkest private pieces of yourself um emotion is simply it can be one of the most basic feelings that people have an emotion could be that that's valuable in businesses frustration is um like desire for you know if you're a salesperson it can be that you know that agitation that comes with like solving the problem it can be wonder and and curiosity it doesn't have to be revealing your broken childhood that has created the person you are today those stories are not required for you to be able to use storytelling as a strategy and develop it as a skill you get full permission to if you are not comfortable with sharing those with hardships or or things that you haven't worked all the way through yet or things that you just don't want to be known for by all means don't tell those stories like you get to choose which stories you tell and chris you know like let's go back to a few of the stories that i told you here today i told you a story about a fifth grade class assignment told you a story about physics class now it's not that i don't want you to know who i am on my deepest level but it's just not relevant for what we're doing right here right now and so i think there is a lot of pressure when it comes to storytelling that these stories are like i can't even put it into words that have that thing and that's just not the case a story needs to have emotion yes but it can be just annoyance that a system is inefficient because we've all had those emotions before so you're saying that you don't have to have a lifetime story hallmark moment in every story that you share no and that's the biggest problem like that is what keeps people from telling stories is they really they say i don't have a story to tell because they haven't climbed mount everest or suffered from a an overcome a terrible illness or experienced great loss in their life like those are not requirements um to effectively use story so can we nerd out and potentially be somewhat academic and possibly debate on this because it's okay i want to share some things i think about and i give you full permission to disagree and tear me apart okay okay you can tell i'm a terrible tear you're a part kind of person chris potentially all right here's the thing i used to teach sequential design storyboarding and i have to then do research like what is stories and stories about conflict and in even though the moments don't necessarily our life and death they need to feel like life and death and so when i teach it i tell people like you know when when that person that you have a crush on in school is going to call you and your little brother or sister answers the phone that feels like life and death to you or when your parents drop you off at a fancy restaurant and something embarrassing happens like the car door falls down and everybody in the restaurant looks at you that can feel like life and death and i like to encourage people to feel the feels and then to transmit that to people because then we start to relate to you as a human being so what are your thoughts on that no i so if you were to have just said no stories need conflict um which yes and again i think it reminds me of when people say a story has to have a hero there is so that those are both such heavy words and again we think that conflict is like it's conflict where where conflict is oh shoot i only have four pages and i need five like it just like so so the way that you described it there um that life and death is is you actually it was a different approach but you're saying the same thing i am is that like recognize the everyday conflict that we that we experience and i think that so often when we say okay story needs conflict people are like okay so there were the the jets and the the sharks and the jets and they're snapping their fingers and they're gonna do some dance fighting and and that's just not i mean there's there's conflict there's friction all of these things are happening all the time it's um so i'm not a i'm opposed to saying a story needs conflict and leaving it at that because i think the word conflict uh translates in becomes a barrier in people's minds and keeps them from telling stories but you didn't do that you said conflict is oh my gosh they're not calling me back or my brother or sister answer the phone and i'm freaking out right but people wouldn't necessarily think that they're thinking jets sharks luke skywalker and darth vader right yeah yes forces of good and evil exactly all civilizations and nations depend on somebody making the right decision well and that's when they say uh you know a story needs to have conflict and it needs to have a hero well you're thinking somebody in a cape you're thinking someone with special powers or maybe they were a fool and they became which then kind of omits you from the story it can't be because you're not a how many people walk around seeing themselves as heroes right and so we we an entire cross section of the population would never tell a story about themselves if it's required to have a hero because they don't see themselves as heroes so you're doing something a little bit different than how other people try and teach storytelling because you're trying to make this like super accessible right yeah and so things that become barriers or challenges mental roadblocks to us telling stories so you want to soften the language but between like say two academics do stories need conflict um i guess the conflict could just come from it i think that a story doesn't need conflict that looks like conflict from the outside there could just be confliction within the character of the story right so so i kind of i guess it kind of depends on the definition so yeah if i'm conflicted oh see this is really right you can see my brain now i want to like look up the different um what are those whether it's a noun or a verb or an adjective of conflict i think that's what we're really getting into here because even like i think back to the simple story that i told at the beginning about telling that story in fifth grade and that's what i was thinking through is what is what would have been the conflict there and i suppose the conflict was that there were kids without that weren't paying attention and i had to figure out how to get them to pay attention but again to me that doesn't feel like how i see conflict right right so it's kind of what the you know the definition of conflict is okay let's take it to your physics story then you want to get a possible grade yep you have to fulfill five pages yeah and you're at four so now we have two things that are staked right yeah because have you written that draft and you somehow magically hit the five page number the story is over yeah yeah it would have been there's no story then yeah right yeah unless i wanted something i did it and it happened yeah exactly exactly so you're right like if it hadn't had that conflict of uh coming up a page short it still would have been a story but it maybe would have been a story if it had been a story about something else yeah maybe you can think of another story that that you've delivered that goes really well that as far as you can tell doesn't have any obvious conflict in it i think that there is always conflict sometimes internal environmentally yeah exactly like so i'm even thinking about walking you know so a super mundane thing walking to school this morning right walking my kids to school this morning and like okay was there was there any conflict like i walked to school um and that could be a story i guess it wouldn't be like a great story but yeah so maybe for it to be an interesting well and i suppose the so the other aspect of how i teach stories is normal explosion new normal that's the framework it has to take and i suppose innately in there is the explosion which is the moment of change which is the time it goes from being one thing to another and anytime there is a change of state there's conflict in that change and so while it isn't something that i um categorize in the like the four components it is a part of like then how these components fit into a framework that makes it a story and so the word then that i use is the explosion which is the point yeah where we go from one thing to another which could also be called the conflict there yeah i figured it out i figured it out oh man maybe for you it's a soft sea in the conflict and not a hard c yep exactly exactly like that yep well you've been mentioning these four components can you tell us what the four components are just so that we have it ready yeah and and i and what you said was absolutely right when it comes to my mission ultimately is i do want storytelling it to be accessible it is it is such an incredible tool and for people to think that they can't use it because they don't have the talent or the natural charisma uh that is just um it's just wrong as far as i see um so that was part of the reason for having a framework and having those four components so even the most analytical person could say okay i have to give a presentation about this data that we've collected and it's really important that the people i'm giving this presentation to understand the true magnitude of this data but they're not data people how do i communicate the numbers that they can have as a list this four component checklist of what a story needs in order to be a great story so in no particular order the four components are number one an identifiable character we need a person a character that we can a identify like we can see them as an individual one way that people especially in brand storytelling go wrong as they talk about the brand and we're not doing business with brands we want to when it really comes down to decision makers and and who's selling and what we're buying we like doing business with the characters of the brand um and by using identifiable character that also takes the pressure off instead of saying hero uh number two this is the we talked about this a bit more but authentic emotion and again the word authentic in there uh to say like it doesn't have to be tragic emotion or big emotion or over-the-top emotion it just has to be real emotion um the third component is a moment we need a specific moment in time and a lot of people will say that this is like setting place um but ultimately and the reason i call it a moment is when you're telling a story or you've written a story or you're sharing a story you want that moment when the person listening to it is sitting with you in the room they're they're there in the car with you as you're racing to whatever it is you're trying to do like to so to be able to create a moment where the listener can be in the story with you is essential for them to then carry that story forward chris you probably remember and i left it out of this version that i told on the podcast but sitting in that physics classroom with me do you remember sitting in there with me like there was no yes i don't remember it but tell the time no but just just as we as i was telling the story um having people picture as i tell it i'm talking about sitting at the desk i'm talking about seeing my teacher in front of the room and and then at the end of the presentation i'm like how many of you were sitting in the room with me and they were all like i pictured my science classroom right so that's really important for that co-creative process and drawing people in and have when when we talk about getting lost in the story it's that moment component that makes that possible and then the fourth uh component is specific details now this isn't to say that you have to talk about the smell of the coffee and the sound of the air conditioner and you know you don't have to go through all five senses but just a few specific details so that the audience um can can picture that our brains love picturing at these details and again it drives that co-creative process even further and specific details are also um a really subtle way especially when you're using strategic storytelling to show your audience that you understand who they really are if you're telling a story about a product let's say it's um let's say it's a product for new moms uh and you're you tell a story and it's about getting a stroller in and out of the trunk of a car and you mention like struggling with it and trying to collapse it in the and the um the hinges that get stuck and any new mom knows exactly what that feels like and so you get to use those details to your advantage you're not only you know exciting that that creative part of their brains but you're also saying hey i really i know you i think those specific details allow me to say you are speaking from a place of authenticity because you're talking about certain details that only someone who's going through that yep would know exactly and then then i'm open i'm like okay you're the real deal yep tell me more yep and the fact that you and the fact that you respect them enough to keep them in for their own enjoyment i see a lot of stories or when i used to work with organizations and they would have me like write their stories for them and you know god bless those of you who do agency work it is just a brutal brutal world you know to put your heart and soul into something and they would send it back to me and you know oh we need it we need it we need the video to only be 30 seconds so we're cutting and they just go through and cut the details right like oh there's we don't we don't need to spend time on the werther's candy that was sitting on the desk at the bank and i'm like but everybody knows what it looks like to have a small bowl of werther's candy sitting on the desk at a bank right it's those uh yeah it leads into that genuineness um and the details are often the first thing to go so to see it as an essential component is it's important to keep them there even just one or two okay so the four parts uh because i have notes on your book here identifiable character there's a real person that has a personality that you can connect with having a genuine authentic emotion there's a significant moment in specific details those are the four parts question for you because i try to study performers comics actors people who do public speaking and at the highest levels there seems to be a component of dialogue either in inner or outer dialogue what is your take on that because i i like to see people like playing the characters in their story on stage as they perform and it makes me literally laugh out loud yeah yeah i mean and that's all that starts getting into technique right so so i think that if you can do that and nail that then by by all means but that starts moving into technique versus necessary components required for uh an effective story but yeah i i see yep because typically when i guide people through this process myself i say it needs to be rich in dialogue there needs to be sensory detail and there has to be um this part where there's some struggle like we want to know that you're trying that you're struggling to get through something and i will jump into your story when i start to feel like i relate to you yeah people often edit their stories because they want to present themselves in a good light and then they skip over these parts and i feel like i see what you're trying to do this is a propaganda piece and i'm not really buying into it yeah so on that uh what kind of advice or opinions or thoughts do you have on that again i i think that we can i think that we can easily see through and it's not a great story when it's just a story about how awesome you are and there there is no variation in that level like that you know when people are monotone if it's just a story about how great you are and how great you've always been and there's no discovery or yeah inner inner dialogue of trying to figure it out yeah that those are the stories where people are going to be like there they go talking about themselves again however i will also say that i feel like we've moved into with that in mind and you know we we want to be authentic we want to be our true selves we don't we we don't want to hide our flaws or our mistakes there has also been kind of a distortion where there is strategic authenticity where where it becomes like i'm gonna tell you about how stupid i really am and look at this thing that i messed up and and you can almost tell that that's fake too like they they're you know it's kind of like what what are your strengths and weaknesses well one of my weaknesses is that i'm just so committed and like it has that same kind of it has the same kind of feel exactly it has that same kind of feel like i this is where i went or or where they um you know the temptation to to be like okay i need my story goes back to the emotion thing i need the story to be super emotional and so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm going to tell my deepest darkest or saddest thing but it isn't actually serving the purpose you're there to serve you just want to make someone emotional for no good reason except to make them emotional you know to experience the emotion so so that would be that would be the other side of um authenticity i see it a lot in social selling actually where it's like oh i was so down and out and every story is about how down and out and how this was wrong and this was bad uh there could be too much of that too self-deprecation so it comes down to this thing where does it pass the smell test are you engineering something that does that feels manufactured and disingenuous and if it is your audience is going to smell it a mile away yeah right yep and i think too that you you know a key thing um because there is a key thing is you start incorporating stories into the work you do and especially if you are telling the same story over and over again um it's important i think this is kind of one of those x factors to always for you as the storyteller to tap into your enthusiasm and your purpose and your true desire of what is possible for the person who is hearing this story i think about um actors on broadway a lot where their job is literally every day to take this thing the creativity the you know the gift of performance and they are supposed to walk to the exact same spots at the exact same time sing the exact same notes and they do it sometimes twice a day sometimes eight shows a week like how do you do that without just going crazy you feel like a little broadway robot and it's because they're thinking about the audience and who could be sitting in that audience right now that is experiencing this and so there is that aspect of um discipline and and kind of the x factor of enthusiasm to have excitement of what this story that you're sharing what it can do for someone on that note i'm curious about something because i think you hinted at it earlier which is when you go and tell the story over and over again and if you feel like the audience was they saw you in one venue and they see you in another venue do you get self-conscious like uh they're gonna know that i've learned this story really well and i'm giving it again and i'm curious about that yeah so this actually goes back to my very early years as a storyteller and i grew up after telling that story in fifth grade then going to storytelling festivals and listening to storytelling tapes where really all they do they bring there was this huge storytelling festival it's called the national storytelling festival in jonesboro tennessee where every year says it's this it's not even a one-stop-like town there isn't even a stoplight but they put up these huge circus tents 15 000 people flood the town and they bring in storytellers who stand on the stage and just tell stories about life and people from all ages all backgrounds are there to hear these stories and if you go year after year and you see the same tellers time after time you hear the same stories now you know they are good with having some variety however when you start to hear someone tell a story that you've heard before um a few things happen and and you love the story right like you the story was you start saying to yourself oh yes i get to hear the story again right it's like reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie um and so if you've done a good job with your story which let's assume that you are they will look forward to when they start to hear they'll be like oh right i loved this story and we don't remember everything right so it's good to be reminded of a story second and this is true for all of us but unless they heard it earlier that day which you should prepare for that if you know you're going to have a repeat audience you should have several different stories that illustrate different points um or even different stories that illustrate the same point but when we come back to hear a story and we end up hearing the same story we come back as different people uh we've learned something we've grown as listeners we've learned something different or maybe we've taken in what you taught us in that story and just that moment to reflect back on who you were when you heard it the first time um is a is a really it's a really cool marker for your progress so i would say yes there are times where you know if i will have been invited to an event and then i get invited back the next year um and you know year over year does the content change drastically not unless i've written another book not unless there's a new right um so i always ask what is the crossover going to be and if 100 of the audience heard the exact same presentation the year before then yeah i've gotta i've got to give them something more that's my responsibility but if you've done a good job with your stories and you're telling them for a sec they're hearing them for a second time trust in those two things okay so if you are on stage and they film the event and they release it on the internet now that story's being played over and over again does that impact or change your answer they're not allowed to watch it they're not allowed to record it and put it up on me yeah right that's why i'm like chris i can't tell you my story that's one of my stage time stories right i can't take that from you no that is uh that that's i mean it sounds funny but that's a contractual thing yeah because that is my content however even that being said um you can read a story in a book and then hear an author talk about it on a stage and it's thrilling um you know you go to a concert to hear the artist sing the songs that you know right um so yep exactly so there is a difference and again and this is an important distinction to make we are not talking about memorizing stories um though i've told to some of my stories hundreds of times hundreds of times storytelling and i've said it a few times as a co-creative process which means it is being created there in the room it is a living breathing contract between the storyteller and the story listener and so so the words may be different the sides could be different there's going to be things that they give you that that you're that you then share in a different it changes the course of the story you are telling just slightly um and so yeah it's a big mistake i would actually it's a big mistake to make to go in and tell a memorized story where it's word for word because you're missing a big part of storytelling which is letting the audience help you create it so it's never the same so from the audience point of view here's something that's happened i'm just i'll just lay it out there and get your reaction yeah i'm watching simon sinek he does his talk it's beautiful it's amazing and then i watch him do the same talk somewhere else and here's the part that's shocking to me the same awkward pauses the phrasing the jokes they're literally the same beat for beat and i'm having so many different conflicting thoughts first it's impressive that simon has memorized this talk and can deliver it this way but i feel like the magic has been kind of like somebody showed me the magic trick and it's not magical anymore because what felt like a genuine i'm just going to pull it from the ether it was actually highly scripted rehearsed memorized and then performed and so i get all self-conscious about this because i do a talk and someone literally tells me oh i'll be at your next talk in two weeks just one person said that to me yeah that's all so then when i went there and it was already contractually booked to do the same talk i changed it and it was not as good i took out the joke because if they heard that joke before they're gonna think the same thing about me what's your reaction so here's so here's the reaction like there is when you speak as often as simon sinek does um you like they're just it like there's you you get into the there's a flow of how it works and and again when you are sitting in the it isn't rehearsed scripted it's just well honed i mean you're not mad when you go to broadway and they're singing the song the same way that you heard it on the soundtrack before you got there or when you go to the show and you hear the soundtrack afterwards like this is part so this is where like that kind of thing becomes that becomes their their art because when you were sitting in the audience and you were hearing it for the first time did it feel canned did it feel disingenuous it felt so real and that is that is the sign of a of a true professional that they can make you feel in the audience and and it's not make you feel like they have to be in a certain place while they're on the stage delivering the same content that they that they are contr that they're obligated to the people want the hits right the people who hired are like i want you to deliver this information in the way that you know is best like that is the expertise to be able to be so in the moment as you're telling the stories that the audience feels like it's the first time right and so that is to let go of like oh if they've heard it before no that is the mark of uh that's the that's the mark of a of a professional right like stand-up comics have to do the same thing yes yeah yes and and yes it changes and there are nuances but if you know what works in your message don't change it because one person might have heard it before if anything you said that joke and they'd be like god i loved that joke right like that's what or and they feel it coming they're like oh i'm gonna laugh right here like that's what they're thinking and only the people who are like wow that was the same they've got they've got a whole they've got a whole different agenda you're not speaking you're speaking for the people that are there for the first time that are there that need to hear what the stories that you're there to tell yes i like the way you're helping me to reframe this because um speaking rather objectively here would i rather have one person like oh my god he he's telling the same joke at the same point in time or do a worse job presenting to a whole audience who have not heard you before i would choose to you know i'll risk it next time but i this is very real i'm not making this up yeah i did change it yeah and it wasn't as good yeah it just wasn't i knew it well and chris this actually goes into the the second book that i wrote which is choose your story change your life which isn't about the outward stories we tell but it's about the stories we tell ourselves and that you you illustrated right there um one of the big challenges with just simply the way we're programmed is your you are as a human going to pay more attention to one negative and wasn't even it wasn't even a negative comment they just said i'm gonna be there next week like they were they did not say to you i'm gonna be there it better be different i'm not gonna laugh at any of your jokes if i've already heard them right so your brain took that information in and wanted to keep you safe from it's it recognized it as a threat so it started you on this whole journey and then it started reminding you of the time that well yeah you heard simon sinek do it twice and it was the same and and it gave you a whole bunch of stories so now i've given you a news story so should that come up again you can say actually no kendra told me the story about broadway actors kendra told me this story about this and then tell yourself those stories so that you take the action you know better serves you and better serves your audience don't give them a crummy presentation no yeah um i'm here for you okay thank you very much you got my back so i've been talking to kendra hall she's a much sought-after keynote speaker and she wrote this book stories that stick which is about telling your story externally and her latest book choose your story change your life is about the internal story is that right that's right it's beautiful now i'm gonna say this i don't do this that often i recommend certain books for people to read if you want to be a better storyteller and who here who doesn't if you're a parent you should be a better storyteller if you're an executive a manager if you're in sales if you do public speaking if you write i'm just going to tell you right now i've read a lot of different books on storytelling this is the book if you have to read one book and buy one book get stories that stick and i i can't wait to dive deeper into your your second book choose your story change your life i have a question for you i assume some assumptions dangerous that you're an extrovert are you oh oh chris this is this is a touchy subject because i just i just had a revolution as far as that is concerned but okay yes according to susan kane who is a friend of mine and wrote quiet i am i am an extrovert yes yeah so you bring with you certain kind of extroverted energy and comfort to comfortability or comfort with speaking with people so we are like yeah of course she's a great public speaker but my community people in the creative space predominantly are introverts i am an introvert myself and i aspire to be a better public speaker i aspire to overcome my natural tendencies can you give us some practical advice tips or tell us a story about how we can hone our craft because we don't want the extroverts have all the fun i know and and the answer is just it's going to sound so simple but i had a friend who uh she was a physician researcher she had to speak for you know at a industry conference um i don't i i can't say whether or not she's an extrovert or an introvert but she was uncomfortable with how giving presentations was not something she was comfortable doing and additionally it was a notoriously um critical audience it was it was not like a super welcoming everybody's so happy that she's here she could basically get up there and do whatever she wanted and people would love it so there was fear there was she was very concerned about this and my recommendation was to your is going to be a shocker to you to start with a story um and here's the reason that so if you are an introvert or someone who isn't a big like big stage energy kind of person but you do either it's part of your job or you know it's something that you need to get better at even more so than other extroverted people who really could i mean i've seen them i've seen the speakers who don't tell any stories they give very little concrete information and they kind of just jump around on stage i'm like what are you even doing but the audience loves it just because of the show right so so if that isn't you it's even more important than for you to find a key story a story that you can like let let's say you have a presentation coming up or or you have a communication event that's on your mind that you're like oh gosh i really want to do well but i'm not exactly sure how i i know who i am when i get up there to work on right now finding a story that illustrates the point that you want to make um and start honing that story right now because here's what happens when you tell a story and this is why i strongly encourage it for people who feel more introverted again remember you don't have to be super emotional the conflict doesn't have to be huge we just need those four components and for it to follow that normal explosion new normal arc even better if there's a little bit of self deprecation chris likes you to have some dialogue going back and forth um what happens when you start with a story is your audience likes hearing stories so when you signal to them that you this first part is going to be a story the dna within them says oh you get to hear a story and they are excited about that they look forward to that the audience i mean you think about anybody who gets up and starts with even just a short story and i've seen it so many times when i i'm going to speak at an event and the cfo has to go up either right before me or right after me and their team coaches them like hey the story you're going to be following the storyteller you need to have a story it's which is against their nature entirely but the audience loves hearing it and you can feel that energy shift when you start with a story especially if it's a story that you've worked on like you have you know that this story's the story is going to do what you need it to do the energy of them the hostility drops and they're just more open you feel that which then in turn makes you feel more comfortable as a presenter and so there's this incredible reciprocity that your story and then we we like telling stories more than we like just standing up there and reciting information and making sure that we have it all and wondering if they're listening or if they're bored or if they so if that's something you struggle with starting with a story gets the energy in a place where you will become more comfortable they'll be more excited and the whole presentation gets better from there now of course that requires that you work on it in advance find some of your colleagues trusted friends community members um who you can tell the story to and see what they think about it for me before i put a story on stage i have to tell it out loud to myself in the shower in the in front of the mirror i tell it out loud to my husband like i'm i walk around town saying it out loud but i live in new york city so you're allowed to do that um but but you know talking to yourself while you're walking down the street is completely acceptable so you know what the formula the formula is there for creating a story you can create one uh you can test it out and then when you get on stage it will make you better you're a national champion storyteller this is what you studied you have a master's degree in this you're an extrovert you have a lot of reps in the game tell me what it's like for you the the five minutes when you're in the green room backstage prior to them announcing or introducing you and you kind of feel that what is going through your mind what is your physical and emotional state like i want to know what kendra hall is like backstage that is a great question um i used to be absolutely miserable uh that was actually one of the big stories that i had to i had to choose better stories to tell myself because there was a point at which i thought i cannot continue with this job because i am too miserable too rap racked with fear um in the time leading up to the presentation i just can't live like this anymore and so i had to get really strategic about the stories i told myself before going out on stage like before going to search love i mean i can't tell you how i remember sitting in my hotel room i stopped in the ballroom where other people were presenting it was like you were all speaking a different language i was like what i mean talk about imposter syndrome i'm like i and they interviewed me to like get on stage and they're like well let's just see how it goes was like the final like okay you get to speak we'll just see how it goes i mean the number of times i wanted to just run out and never come back um i can't believe that i ever even set foot on that stage in the end so i had to get really good about the stories that i told myself right beforehand um now having made that knowing what stories i need to tell myself making it a practice to do so backstage i'm a lot i'm i really what i am is um i mean there's there's the nerves but it comes from caring about what you do and i want to serve the audience well but now i'm just hopeful excited uh and really filled with gratitude uh in those moments however i will say now with the new book it means a new keynote all new content and i kind of feel like in some ways i'm starting all over again and i'm seeking out those stories that i can tell myself about you know why i belong here who needs to hear my story what i know to be true so yeah it was it was it was ugly for a long time and every once in a while so you know for two years i was delivering keynotes from my bedroom they were pre-recorded they were on zoom so the first event where i went back and i was live and on stage i had all of that inner storytelling you can't do this anymore nobody know you know no one's gonna learn anything and i was like oh wow we're back here again um luckily the recovery time was much shorter but yeah to think that it's without pain or agony is is not entirely true [Laughter] it's actually not a super optimistic picture of where you all can be because kendra studied this she's uh this is her lifeless work she's written two books on this she's a national champion storyteller she she goes to that town where everybody shares stories and that's her people and she still has moments where i got to tell myself a different story because i'm not feeling good right now well and i think that's what it if anything use that story for yourself because i think what we when we feel that way when we're really nervous we start saying oh it's because i'm an introvert oh it's because i'm not good enough or oh it's because and oh i there must be something wrong with me and it's just not it's not true i mean putting yourself there's a reason everybody says they're afraid of public speaking it puts you in an in an immediate fight or flight state you know you have a whole audience of people who may or may not like you um so it's normal i think that's the thing that i would want you to walk away with from that story you're not you're you're normal if you feel that way beforehand if this conversation has turned you on if you're interested in learning more about kendra i most definitely want to recommend you pick up both of her books stories that stick i'm reaching out to my right like people can see that and then choose your story change your life and probably to stalk you on social media because you're very active at storytelling practicing your craft all the time i see you're very busy on facebook i think that's usually where you post the most or not usually on i would say instagram and then i move it over to facebook too but yeah okay it starts on instagram yeah probably moves to facebook yeah okay we have you know certain content works better on one or the other so sometimes yeah there might be more on facebook sometimes more on instagram mm-hmm and and for people who want to find out more about you where can they go uh my website is kendra hall.com that's probably that's super easy dot com just like it sounds there's no weird spelling dot com kendra with an eye so that gets creative kendra hall instead of kendra i'm always getting oh i see okay i never thought of spelling it the other way i guess because you're a true friend well i hope that uh our paths cross soon and i'm a much better more confident speaker than i was back at search love that was a disaster i want to talk about right now however i hope that we're able to like see each other on the circuit now that it seems like things are opening up again i would love i would love that and please let me know anyway that i can help you i'd love to hear more about what you're teaching people these days and i'm sure there are there are audiences that i know that could hear more from you chris thank you very much kendra it's been a real pleasure pleasure's all mine hi my name is greg gunn and i'm the producer of the future podcast and yes we do have a podcast in fact we've been having one for years and that's exactly why i'm here talking with you you see it's really good and i think you should listen to it if you like what we do here on youtube then you're gonna love what we do on the podcast you'll get to hear intimate conversations and personal stories from some familiar faces and others you might not know about yet plus you can listen to it while doing something else and you won't miss a thing so if any of that sounds interesting to you go visit thefuture.com podcast or find it on your favorite podcast listening app i hope to see you there [Music]