51 - The Neuroscience of Storytelling: Unlocking the Ultimate Communication Superpower with Mark Baker

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Report Podcast, where you discover how to connect, influence and inspire in the digital age. Which is quite surprising really because storytelling has been the backbone of human society for 30,000 years. So it's been the most powerful way we can possibly communicate. But the thing is that what's happened is in the last decade, I think that's brought storytelling to the forefront,

[00:00:30] is that neuroscience has actually started studying it and to why it works so well. So one of the things I'll, or if we get a chance to ask the question, is that I'd like to share with you why neuroscience has actually discovered that this is actually, as you quite rightly state, a communication superpower.

[00:00:53] Welcome, welcome everybody. Today I am super excited because I wanted to pick the brains of Mark Baker, who's an amazing author, public speaker, storyteller. And one of the things that comes up quite a lot is basically the power of story and how relevant storytelling is in business and in life generally. So Mark, welcome. Hi, Jatinder. Good morning.

[00:01:21] Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. I basically wanted to ask you a few questions around, you know, this communication, how a superpower of storytelling. And I know it's something that people are talking about a lot these days. It's always been powerful, but you came across this whole idea of storytelling 30 years ago, right?

[00:01:47] Tell me a bit more about that so that we can share with the audience that how powerful storytelling really is. Well, I mean, I personally came across, as you say, storytelling 30 years ago. I mean, a long time before it became popular. It's only really in the last several years that storytelling has become an actual thing in business, which is quite surprising, really, because it's been storytelling has been the backbone of human society for 30,000 years. So it's been the most powerful way we can possibly communicate.

[00:02:15] But the thing is that what's happened is in the last decade, I think there's brought storytelling to the forefront, is that neuroscience has actually started studying it and why it works so well. So one of the things I'll get a chance to ask the question is that I'd like to share with you why neuroscience has actually discovered that this is actually, as you quite rightly state, a communication superpower. Yeah, I mean, go for it, go for it. You've opened the can of worms here. Let's just, let's just go with that. Tell me a bit more about the neuro.

[00:02:42] Okay. Well, probably the best place for me to start is how I discovered it, because I was a struggling life insurance salesman. I was actually a starving life insurance salesman. I don't say that as a metaphor. We were so poor that we were having bags of food left on the door of our house to feed my family, which I had a young child at the time. So it was incredibly difficult. I was a commission only life insurance salesman then. And the average salesman was making 16,000 pounds a year with one sale a week, which is exactly where I was.

[00:03:12] But by the time you've covered all your costs and petrol and your suits and everything else, 16,000 means you're actually more or less working for free. And my wife gave me an ultimatum one morning. She says, look, she says, we cannot go on like this. Either you've got to make this work or she said, you're going to have to go and get yourself a proper job, which was something I had from my family for many years. Apparently being a life insurance salesman wasn't a proper job at the time. So I decided to do to test my data and go through the sales I'd made in the way of sales that I hadn't made.

[00:03:41] And I discovered that I had a 90 percent failure rate, which was absolutely massive. And I was only making one sale a week. And when I looked at it, I realized that the reason I wasn't selling to people was I was just data dumping on them because I've been and this relates back to abuse that I'd endured as a child. And as a teenager, I had terrible imposter syndrome. And the way you deal with imposter syndrome is trying to be overly technical to try and prove that how smart you are to make this so to stop yourself being found out and embarrassed, basically.

[00:04:12] And people don't want to be dumped on technically. And this is one of the big problems in PowerPoint presentations. We hit people with data. The brain can't absorb it and they fall flat, which is what I was doing. But on the other side of the coin, I was making a sale a week. So I decided to examine what it was about that sale that I was causing me to sell. And I realized that the one person a week I was selling to was somebody that I was actually comfortable with.

[00:04:39] And instead of data dumping on them, I was telling them a story, which is absolutely fascinating for me because I felt much more comfortable when I was telling a story and dumping data anyway on people. But I realized that when I went back over the year, every single person nearly that I told a story to as opposed to using data. I'm not saying no data, but there's a way of expanding on data in a presentation, which I'll tell you a little bit more about later. But I just decided to change everything.

[00:05:05] I just started telling people relevant stories about how life insurance helped people, how it how it saved saved me and countless others through illness and be able to look after their families. And I went from a 90 percent failure rate to a 90 percent success rate. And the rest, as they say, is history. OK, that's that's that's fascinating. And what are what are some of the things that neurosciences are saying?

[00:05:31] Like, is it what's the depth of that in terms of like emotionally connecting with people? Well, the neuroscience of storytelling is fantastic and it's absolutely mind blowing. And when you understand that, you'll realize that you just simply cannot communicate without the power of storytelling in your presentations in whatever area of expertise you're in, whatever industry that you're in.

[00:05:56] And what happens? One of the first things that happens when we tell a story and somebody's engaged as a listener, we like have a neural coupling. So our brain waves are mirroring each other's. So it's like we're so we're activating these mirror neurons. And what actually happens, we're actually experiencing a mind melt. We've got this deep and profound connection with the other person.

[00:06:15] Now, this makes a fantastic difference because bearing in mind how difficult it is to get your message through in this current day and age with the amount of information being thrown at everybody, there's got to be a differentiating factor that allows you to get through. And the power of neuroscience within storytelling is what allows us to do that. So it creates a neural coupling.

[00:06:37] So we have this mind melt going on, but there's other things going on as well, because when we have this mind melt, it actually releases chemicals into our brain, which actually change the way we feel, act and think. So one of the main ones is something called oxytocin. Now, oxytocin, as you as you probably know, is called the love hormone or the hugging chemical. And when we tell a story and people are engaged, it releases oxytocin in the listener. So when it releases oxytocin, they get a feeling of trust. They feel a trust of empathy.

[00:07:05] They're engaged in your story and they're connecting with you at a significantly deeper level than if you were just using data to put your point across. And it actually releases a whole raft of chemicals that releases dopamine, which, as you know, is the feel good chemical. Interestingly enough, heroin addicts, when they take heroin, what they're trying to achieve is this massive dopamine release.

[00:07:29] And when the heroin addict try, well, they try heroin for the very first time, they get this massive shot of dopamine, which they spend their lives trying to catch again. But they never managed to do it. But the interesting thing is that when you release dopamine within your body, it actually gives you a feel good hormone release, which actually activates your feel good senses and what have you. So you actually when you're listening to a story, you start feeling good, you've got oxytocin making you feel trust and empathy towards towards the person telling the story.

[00:07:59] And you also release serotonin as well. And cortisol. Now, cortisol normally gets a bad rap because we normally associate that with stress. But if you release a little bit of stress when you're telling a story, it causes you to listen at a much deeper level. It causes you to focus because this is what happens when you release cortisol, your focusing attributes are significantly highlighted.

[00:08:22] So when you release a little bit of cortisol in a story where there's a challenge or an obstacle or protagonist or an antagonist, then all of a sudden a little bit of stress is released, just like when you're watching any good movie. And that causes the listener to engage more with you and hang on your every single word. So, I mean, that's just a very small view on the neuroscience elements of it.

[00:08:43] But as you can see, with all of these chemicals being released and our focus enhanced and our feeling of trust and empathy and having a neural coupling where you're literally having a mind melt with the person that you're listening to. There just really isn't anything else that you can achieve this with other than telling a relevant and emotional story. Oh, wow. That's so fascinating because it's like just listening to what you're saying, helping the person engage.

[00:09:11] But the person in the head is trying to obviously understand your story. So they're creating the visuals. They're creating the kind of sound, the kind of atmosphere that might be going on based on the information that you're giving them. So they end up creating their own picture, don't they, to some degree, based off what you just told them. All that happens, they get immersed in the story. So they actually feel like they're in it. And the more relevant the story you tell is, because the key to all of this is telling a relevant story, because you don't just tell a story for the sake of it, because that has no impact.

[00:09:41] But when you tell a relevant story, the actual person listening actually immerses themselves in it as if they're part of the story. So they become part of it. So they really get involved in it. You know, this is part of all the mind melt process that takes place. So it's just quite remarkable. As I said, you just can't do it any other way. There's nothing other than the storytelling that can release this in a business presentation scenario. That's amazing.

[00:10:08] So what would you say is the impact on communication because of storytelling? I would say at the very least that it will double your effectiveness as a communicator. And I'm saying that I'm really downplaying that because that's significantly much more than that. But if we say double, it gives you an idea. Because, you know, everybody you coming at, everybody that you come across your path is trying to pitch to you or promote something to you. And it's pretty much exactly the same way.

[00:10:38] So they become unmemorable. It's like when you read a book. When you read a book, you only remember one or two or three items from the book. You know, even the most fascinating business book. But the trouble is your brain isn't wired like that. It's not wired to remember everything. If you remembered every single thing you read out of a book, your brain would just overload. You'd have too much information within you. So when you tell a story, it actually fires up the amygdala. And the amygdala likes novelty.

[00:11:05] So when we say something that's novel or different, like a story, it actually hooks on to the information you're giving. And it's like it puts a post-it note on it to actually recalls it so that it's actually confined to memory so that you can bring it up again. Whereas every other person that's doing a presentation in the same old way, you actually can't remember who said what because there was nothing memorable about the presentation that you've just heard. I see what you're saying there.

[00:11:31] So would you say that or basically in your opinion, what would you say is a good way to go about beginning a story? Like you're doing a presentation, you're about to do something, you're about to begin. What's the best way to, you know, hook them, get them? What would you say? Well, that's a really good question. And it's really significant because since the advent of social media going back to around 2007 or slightly before that, we actually used to have a decent attention span. And it's coming down every single year.

[00:12:01] It's down to about seven seconds you have to get your point across with somebody. Some even say it's less than that. So you've got five to seven seconds to actually hook someone into what you're saying. So they want to carry on listening to you. And if you don't achieve that within the first several seconds, they're going to tune out and they're not going to hear anything else that you say. So one of the best ways to start off a presentation is with an emotional hook. You know, something that engages them and captures their attention immediately, either the way in the form of a challenge or a bold statement or whatever.

[00:12:31] When I do my mindset talks, because I'm, as you know, I'm a motivational speaker. One thing I say pretty much every time is what one great thing would you dare to attempt if you knew you couldn't fail? Now, that gets everybody's attention because everybody's got things they'd like to attempt, but they don't attempt them because they've got limiting beliefs about their potential. But when you say to people, what one great thing would you dare to attempt if you knew you couldn't fail?

[00:12:57] Then they're looking at the obstacle or they're looking at the goal as if there's a clear blue sky in front of them and there's nothing to stop them. And when they look at it that way, all of a sudden, the mind becomes open to what they really want to achieve in life. So they're enraptured. They're not going to go anywhere. You have and they're connecting with you. Chemicals are being released because now you've got their attention. They're getting immersed in the story. They're getting immersed in the question. And you've got them and they're with you. And that's what you have to do.

[00:13:26] If you start off, you know, presentations with, oh, it's a lovely day. It's what nice weather we're having at the moment. Everybody says that. You're done and dusted in the water. No one's going to listen to you when you come into a presentation and start talking about generalizations, about everyday things that everybody else talks about. It's just not going to happen. It's fascinating. As you're sharing that, I was just thinking when you say, you know, what would you dare to do if there's nothing to stop you?

[00:13:55] And usually from what you're saying, this is quite funny because internally there's a story going on as well, right? Absolutely. That stops them from doing that thing. So if you're reframing and changing the story and you open up just to even just experience the possibility of it, it just means you've created a doorway for people to basically move beyond that, right? Yeah. It's exactly that.

[00:14:18] But you've got to hook them in the first place, you know, and the way that one of the best belief changes there is available to you is the power of a story, a good story. Stories actually change internal beliefs that we hold about ourselves, about life and about possibilities. So when you're talking to a client or prospective client and you're telling a story, you're opening them up to a possibility that they may not have ever considered before. And that's, you know, the power of utilizing a good story in a business presentation.

[00:14:47] So would you say that there are any, are there any certain tools that people can use to enhance the story? You know, there's a whole repertoire of rhetorical devices out there, but there's three that are particularly powerful. One's analogy. You know, sometimes you can spend three hours trying to explain something, but one good analogy will just cut through all of the complications and allow people to see what you're trying to put across. So it's just like comparing something that's not complicated with something that is complicated.

[00:15:16] And all of a sudden it becomes clear by the comparison. So that's a very simple overview of analogy, but it's a very powerful rhetorical device. Metaphors is also another great way of getting people to think and it cuts through information. I mean, just for example, Shakespeare said Juliet was the son. Now, he doesn't mean she's the son because a metaphor basically isn't true, but it gives you an idea.

[00:15:39] So when you say Juliet is the son, you start, you know, she's not the son, but you're thinking, well, obviously, Juliet is a bright personality and she's walking, wing and worm and loving, you know. And all of a sudden you build this picture about somebody just from the use of a metaphor. But one of the rhetorical devices that I love most of all to use in storytelling is anaphora. Now, if I say anaphora, an awful lot of people out there won't have actually heard of that, but they would have experienced it to some degree.

[00:16:07] I mean, if you think of Winston Churchill during his great speeches during the war, he said, we will fight them on the beaches. We will fight them on the landing grounds. We will fight them on the street. Well, that's anaphora. It's the repetition of a phrase over and over again. And if I say that to you, you're probably going to be able to name one of the great people that use anaphora to great effect. And who would that be in your mind? A load to come to mind. A load to come to mind.

[00:16:36] I thought the person that would come to you would be Martin Luther King, because his I have a dream speech was exactly right. That was one of the best uses of anaphora, as was Churchill's. You know, I have a dream. I have a dream. I have a dream. The repetition. And with every statement, every time that's repeated, the adrenaline is going up in the mind of the listener because they're getting more and more compelled, more and more drawn into story and more and more excited by it. I have a dream. I have a dream.

[00:17:03] It's literally screwing and driving the point home. And you can actually use that in a prison temptation. If you do this, you can. You can. You can. And you just bring it in to exactly the same way. And it has the same effect because this is how we're driven. It's just an emotionally charged statement repeated. It just draws people in over and over again. So there are so many things that you can actually use within storytelling. And it makes it a fantastic experience because people actually enjoy listening to you.

[00:17:33] They're not being bored out of their brains by just the same old, same old stick that everybody approaches us with. And they're actually getting a breath of fresh air with your presentation. As we said before with the amygdala, it's like a post-it note. What is memorable or novel, it puts a post-it note on it so that it's easily retrievable. And when they're going back to assess all the people they've spoken to and who they want to do business with, who do you think they're going to think of? It's going to be the storyteller.

[00:18:01] You'll always come second to someone that tells a good story. Always, every single time. There's no question about that. No, definitely. It was just when you were sharing that, it just reminded me of there's a scene in that film, 300, where – is it 300? It was 300, wasn't it? The one with that big battlefield.

[00:18:24] And the general said to one of his soldiers, one of the guys he was sending back, I can't remember 100%, but I remember the kind of context of it where he said, I want you to go back. And he said, why me? Why are you going to send me – he said, because you're the best storyteller I know. He said, you're the best storyteller. You go tell them what we did here today. Along the lines of that, paraphrasing it, right? Yeah.

[00:18:49] And then the story that your film is like a narration of this guy telling the whole battle. It's exactly that. And that's how we're wired to learn. You know, that's how we're wired to learn since the beginning of history. This is how we made sense of the world. And then when the invention of fire, we'd sit around the fires at night and we'd share stories. We'd share our history. And this is how this stuff – this is the only reason we know about this stuff today is because stories were told about it in the beginning.

[00:19:18] You know, if it was a data presentation, we wouldn't know anything about it. You know, we wouldn't remember it because people don't remember facts and figures without an emotional connection and without the power of a story attached to it. So it really is as simple as that. Very much so. Very much so. So, Mark, what other ways would you say that stories are beneficial in business? Well, it's not just business. I mean, it's everything. It's in teaching.

[00:19:44] If you remember back when you were at school, it's when the teacher told you a story. And I worked this out for myself as a child because I hated being told things all the time. I just didn't enjoy it. I didn't learn that way. But I noticed I watched what they call an epic movie. I think they're three or four hours long. One of the biblical ones. I can't remember the names of them off the top of my head. But I remembered all about the religious text that was covered within the movie.

[00:20:12] And I was fascinated by it because I'd actually seen it visually and it had touched me emotionally. So I just discovered as a child, when I asked myself, why can't they teach us this way? Because I remember everything when I learned something through the power of a story. Although I didn't relate to myself that way, but that's exactly what was happening. But when I was given facts and figures about things that happened in biblical times, what have you, I just couldn't tell you what happened tomorrow. I just wouldn't retain the information. But it's in everything. It's in teaching.

[00:20:41] It's whether you're a business presenter, whether you're a motivational speaker. If you're a leader, it's important. I mean, you know, people need to be inspired to follow a leader. Especially these days, you have to be inspired. You just can't order people to follow you. But people are inspired by inspired leaders and inspired leaders tell great stories. It's probably one of the best leadership tools out there. So there's, in answer to your question, there's not an area or profession that cannot benefit from the power of storytelling.

[00:21:10] It's the key to everything that you want to achieve for you and the client. Because remember, we're not doing this for ourselves. We're trying to help somebody make a decision to engage with something that's going to enhance their lives. So everybody benefits from the power of a good story. And in that kind of context, it could probably pretty much be used in any type of business situation. Any type of business situation. Absolutely. There's nothing. Simply nothing. It's advertising.

[00:21:39] It's been happening in advertising for years. And I'll give you one fantastic example. There was this marketing psychologist who studied 180 Super Bowl adverts. Now, if you know anything about Super Bowl adverts, they cost $5 million to actually place an advert in the Super Bowl. It works out about £100,000 a second. So you've got to make everything count. And he analysed 108 Super Bowl adverts.

[00:22:02] And the one he said that was going to have the biggest impact in the areas that they measured in was actually an advert that hadn't been played at the Super Bowl yet. And it was played a week later. And it was a Budweiser advert. And the reason why it went on to become the most viewed advert, Super Bowl advert ever, is because it told an entire story in 60 seconds. From start to finish. And that doesn't even sound possible. But a story doesn't have to be very long.

[00:22:28] I mean, if you're telling a story in a business presentation, or let's say you're presented for an hour, you could say tell two or three stories. But you wouldn't want to tell them for more than three minutes. Five minutes at the very most. But five is a little bit long. You know, so two to three minutes, you can tell a really powerful story that gets the point across and engages the people that you're talking to. I get that. I get that.

[00:22:53] What about storytelling with, like, PowerPoint presentations? What can be done to enhance those, you know? Well, I know why you're laughing, because we've all experienced death by PowerPoint. And most of us are, we really are brought to death and we're sick to death of PowerPoint presentations. But it's not PowerPoint that's the problem. It's the way that PowerPoint is used that's the problem. And we use it as a way to dump large amounts of data on people.

[00:23:21] But the problem is, is that when you present with a lot of data and nothing else, only 5% is retained within 24 hours. 5%. So if you consider that you're going to go to a presentation now for an hour, and you're only going to retain 5% of that information within 24 hours, then the presentation was a waste of time for the presenter. And it was a waste of time for the listener also. So very little good has come from that. But I'll give you an interesting statistic.

[00:23:49] And if you involve a story, you can tell a story with data. You can tell data with a story wrapped around it. And what happens in that instant is the data steals the impact of the story because it affects the neural pathways of the brain in the same way. So then your retention arises to 65% over 24 hours. So you've got this massive amount of extra retention because you've involved a story in the data. And it's become interesting for the person that's listening.

[00:24:20] And another thing I'll add there with the PowerPoint presentation is you want to use relevant pitches, thought-provoking pitches about what you're actually talking about. Because when you're speaking, it's actually a linear function. So it's a very left-brain function. So if I'm just talking to you and I'm showing you text on a screen in a presentation, what's happening is that you're only engaged in the left brain. But if you use a picture, you get something called picture superiority.

[00:24:49] And this will blow you away because it blew me away when I found out about it. But when you use a picture in a presentation, it's processed 60,000 times faster than words alone because the visual impact stimulates the brain in so many different ways. It actually is processed so fast and it makes a difference in the presentation. So if you're doing a presentation and you're wrapping a story around it and using a relevant picture on your slides, which you shouldn't overuse slides anyway. You don't need as many as you think.

[00:25:18] But if you're using relevant pictures with them and also not too many words, you shouldn't be using more than 20 words on a slide ever. And don't use bullet points. Bullet points are a big no-no. You don't use bullet points at all. So a phrase, a sentence, a picture and presenting your data with a story around the data, you'll have massive more attention and you'll have a great deal of more buy-in from the people watching it.

[00:25:46] So like in about 30 seconds there, I've just told you four or five things that will, for anybody who's listening, that will dramatically increase your effectiveness when you're doing a PowerPoint presentation. Because the way they're used, you get like these templates and people use the templates and it comes up and put three bullet points in here. You don't want bullet points. You just don't want that. I went to a presentation about a year ago, which was the best presentation I've ever been to for all the wrong reasons.

[00:26:13] Because this woman was doing, she was trying to sell sales support. And it was, first of all, she spoke too fast. Everything she was reading was an autocue. When you speak on an autocue, your tone of voice changes so that it doesn't come across as authentic and it doesn't connect as much. And she was using, and I counted them. I know you're going to think I'm a really boring person now, but I counted the number of words on each slide. And she was averaging 90 to 95 words on a slide.

[00:26:42] Everywhere where there was a space, she put something in it. Like it's like there's a bit of wasted white space here. So let's see what we can fill it up with. So there'd be a QR code in that corner. There'd be a logo in that corner. And the background picture was always a picture of her. So it was a picture of her drinking a cup of cocoa or walking the dogs or hugging her cat. Absolutely irrelevant. So if you're going to use pictures, like I said, picture superiority, you lose that when it's a picture that's not relevant.

[00:27:11] And no one wants to see pictures of your eye endlessly all the way through a slide deck. And you can use a picture of yourself, but you want to use it at the beginning to introduce yourself. And you want to use a picture of yourself at the end. Here are my details. Here's how you can contact me. This is the name of my contact me. Here's a QR code. Click on here. And so that we can stay connected. So, you know, but that's the only time you should use them at the beginning, at the end. With the exception being, you know, if you're talking about you've scaled Mount Everest and you're showing pictures, that's different.

[00:27:40] But in a day-to-day presentation where we're not talking about things like that, just at the beginning and at the end. So, you know, it's storytelling even has a role in PowerPoint presentations. It actually makes it enjoyable as opposed to being painful. And we've all sat throughout many, many of those over the years. That's funny when you're sharing that about all you seem to remember about the presentation of the pictures of a living cat, for example. What was the actual presentation about?

[00:28:11] But, you know, you can actually say so much with a picture. You remember the old analogy, a picture paints a thousand words. It sounds really inspirational and what have you, but it's actually true. It's the truth. The picture really does paint a thousand words. But because we've heard it so many times, it's so well-worn, it just goes straight over our head and we don't appreciate the significance of that. What it's talking about, a picture paints a thousand words, is really about picture superiority and the massive impact that it has on the brain.

[00:28:42] Now, it's fascinating that you're sharing that because I'm just speaking to people who, you know, deal with like a memory pegging, a memory kind of recall and things like that. They always somehow create a story connected to pictures and the words. And that's how they're able to remember so many sequences of things. So it brings that whole neuroscience element back into it again is to a better way. The brain encodes the information, isn't it? It's exactly that.

[00:29:09] And the tagging aspect that you're talking about is only really possible through the telling of a story because you've got various timelines within the story where there's points where your brain tags them. So you put all the data in and all the things you want to learn within the story. So you only have to remember the story to remember all the points. Yeah, yeah. But it's a story. It's a story. You just can't get away from storytelling. And you know what?

[00:29:34] In spite of this, you know, and it's like so many things, you know, like Aristotle gave us so much wisdom. I mean, he's got a whole template for effective communication. And one of those aspects is storytelling. And he was around 2,352 years ago. But 2,352 years later, most people still haven't grasped the power of storytelling.

[00:29:57] And it's quite sad, really, in respect because you're making your life so much harder if you're not using stories within your business presentations, within your leadership, within your teaching, or in any context that you want to use it. Because it just, you're just not going to be remembered. And the information you're sharing, which you've spent so long putting together, isn't going to be recalled with ease.

[00:30:20] So it's the, as I said, you know, Mr. Broken Record says, it's the only way that you can get this information into people's heads and keep it there. You know, and I think it's actually at this stage, I actually say it's the most underrated business technique in the world at the moment. Now, the people that are using it are really, really successful with it.

[00:30:42] But, I mean, from what I've seen in, I teach seminars, the amount of people that come into seminars that I conduct and they haven't heard, when you asked in the beginning, are you familiar with storytelling? At that best, they've got a very loose, vague view of what it is. But no one's actually using it. Well, not nobody, but just a very small percentage of people are using it. But the ones that are using it, I mean, all the big companies out there, Amazon, Google, they've got CSOs that work for them. They're a part of the company culture.

[00:31:11] And those are chief storytelling officers. And their goal is to teach storytelling to everybody in the companies that they tell the story of the company together in a uniformed way. And every major company is utilizing the power of story. Unfortunately, smaller companies don't seem to have copped onto that yet, copped onto that. And also, shockingly, a lot of marketing agencies don't seem to be telling the client's story in their marketing.

[00:31:40] So, a lot of marketing agencies don't even seem to have really tapped onto storytelling. And the ones that have are really, really successful because that's all people want to hear about. They just want to hear stories. It's how we're wired to learn. It's what we need. It's wired into our DNA to respond to stories. Absolutely. I was going to say, shh, you're telling all the secrets now.

[00:32:04] Well, I just want to get people involved in storytelling as soon as possible for their sake and for their client's sake. And I don't say it because I want them to sell more, be better at their jobs, whatever, alone. Because whatever we're doing, if you're doing it with integrity, we're doing this because we have something that somebody else should have. So, we're doing a service. If we're becoming great storytellers, we're doing a service to the people that otherwise would not have come across what we do.

[00:32:32] And maybe let us go because we haven't managed to grab their attention. Okay, okay. So, Mark, what's your thoughts on this whole AI thing, right? There's kind of general thoughts around there. People thinking that around 47% of jobs could potentially be lost to AI over the next 10 years kind of thing, right? So, how does storytelling have relevancy there? And what are your thoughts around that?

[00:32:56] Well, the 47% that's been bandied around is being widely, widely spoken about now. I mean, that seems to be the number that everybody's saying within a decade, as you quite rightly say, 47% of jobs are going to disappear to AI. And it seems that that's the case because there's an awful lot of jobs that are going to disappear that you would not believe that would be affected by AI. But in relevance to storytelling, this is the age of the super communicator.

[00:33:23] So, you know, as brilliant as artificial intelligence is, and pretty much all of us, that's one thing we are all using on a day-to-day basis. The one thing that AI can't do is connect with human beings on an emotional level. You know, it can't do that. Only humans can do that. So, you know, as much as people put together presentations using AI and everything else, as much as AI is taking over a lot of jobs, there's going to be a massive, massive demand for people who are technically super communicators.

[00:33:53] Now, I've been doing this for 30 years. I've been talking about mindset and communication skills for all of that time. And the big bugbear for me is that when you speak to companies about communication and mindset is they deem it as a soft skill. So they want something where there's credits that they can use to put up for continued education. And there was never for communication or mindset. But mindset and communication, communication is a baseline skill that you have to have.

[00:34:22] And companies are recognizing this now. So people that were just previously hired for technical ability are going to lose out to someone who has technical ability, but is also a brilliant communicator because you need to be able to communicate the information. So in many instances now, there's people that are getting jobs in a technical field that have less technical skills than someone else, but they're being hired because their communication is fantastic.

[00:34:49] And this is the way the world is going now because, as you can see, with this ever-increasing sea of noise that we're all subjected to on a day-to-day basis, we need to be able to communicate to cuts through the noise. You know, so I'm part of that, a massive part of that is your ability to tell a relevant story to the person that you're presenting to or speaking with or leading or teaching. Yeah, no, I agree.

[00:35:15] Because a lot of, they say that people who utilize AI in the right way are going to be great. The way you can prompt is going to be great. The way you could communicate to AI is going to be a beneficial factor because it's true, even if you try it now, if you're able to convey your message in the right context, in the right method and tone and, you know, in a good style, the AI actually gives you better output.

[00:35:41] But that can only be done if you know how to frame it in that particular way. So you're right. And I don't think AI is going to get there quite yet with that side, even though it's quite powerful. But it's like you said, you know, stories is a very powerful thing. Yeah, I mean, you shared some great bombshells there with some of the stuff that I was thinking. Oh, OK, that's that's great as well.

[00:36:09] So I know we're coming to the end of this conversation as well. Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to share? Well, you know, if you're a company, I'd strongly suggest that you get involved in storytelling with your teams or even as an individual. If you make your life presenting to other people, you need to understand how to tell a story. And it's not just a case of telling a story. You need to you need to understand the structure. There's a three part structure to creating a good presentation.

[00:36:39] There's the use of analogies, how to use metaphors, how to use an emotional hook, how to use humor within a presentation and not jokes, by the way, because never tell jokes in a presentation. But saying something humorous works every time. So there's a whole raft of things that go with this that can help you tell a fantastic story that will get you business, that will connect you with people on an emotional level and will make you stand out head and shoulders above every single other person that you're going to come across out there.

[00:37:07] That isn't using the power of story in their presentations because you really are missing out. You know, if you think about what I said, that the power of storytelling doubles your effectiveness in communication, which is the very least. OK, it's a lot more than that. But let's just say that it's double. You're talking about spending half of the rest of your life getting the same results that you're going to take otherwise without the power of storytelling behind you. And that's an awful waste because, you know, life is short.

[00:37:36] Life is passing us by in the blink of an eye. And there's things that we'd also like to be doing with our families and friends that if we're not effective as communicators, we're having to do much more work and it's eating into our time. So there's so many reasons to get involved in storytelling. Yeah. And on that note, you know, if anybody wants to reach out to you, what's the best thing for them to do? There's all links that they can book a chat with me. I'm happy to have a chat with anybody for 20 minutes about this, how it can be worked, how it can apply to them personally.

[00:38:06] That would be a great way to start off a conversation or otherwise to send me a message on LinkedIn. On that note, I mean, really appreciate it. Thank you very much. You know, I hope people have enjoyed it. Again, like Mark said, if you've got any questions, feel free to reach out. And on that note, thank you very much, Mark. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for listening to the Digital Rapport Podcast.

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