Results by Design: UX Insights for Business Leaders

Description: In this episode, Craig Nishizaki and Chris Hare, founder of The Storied Future, talk about the power of storytelling, and how stories—particularly atomic stories—can help businesses establish a brand and grow. Learn the difference between stories and narratives, and how you can create your own brand narrative through different storytelling techniques.

What You’ll Learn:

• The difference between stories and narratives
• What are atomic stories?
• How to tell a story effectively
• How to use atomic stories to build a brand narrative

Interview Participants:

• Chris Hare, founder of The Storied Future
• Craig Nishizaki, Head of Business @ UpTop

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Results by Design UX Insights for business leaders, the podcast that dives deep into the world of UX design, strategy and insights. Tune in, take action, and design your way to success. Hi

Craig Nishizaki:
Everyone. I’m Craig, your host for the Results by Design podcast. Joining me today is Chris Hare, founder of the Storied feature narrative executive coach host of the story feature podcast, and creator of the Atomic Storytelling Framework. Welcome to the show, Chris. How are you doing?

Chris Hare:
Great. Thanks for having me, Craig. I’m excited to dive in with you.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, I’m excited to have you with us, especially excited to have you share with our audience about the impactful work that you do, and then also I think you just by nature are such a great storyteller that it’s going to be really entertaining to have this conversation. So let’s go ahead and dive right in. To get started, could you tell us about The Storied Future, the origin story, as well as what you focus on?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, absolutely. So my background is big tech, so I did tours of duty at Amazon and then Microsoft and also before that worked in ad agency working on pretty much every audience from Microsoft, from developer up to c-Suite, started the company in 2016, the storied future really with a focus on creating a future that’s really defined even more so by stories and then also leaders who are known for that. So initially started out with a focus on content marketing, and that’s what I’ve done for most of the nearly eight years that I’ve been in business, but really started in 2020 and you’re actually to blame in a good way for this, where you actually referred a client to me, applicant commerce, and worked with them on their narrative, their strategic narrative. They’re going through disrupted by big e-commerce. The whole industry was a lot of channel conflict and came in and built a narrative to help them align everyone from board to buyer around the same future as they moved into their new business strategy.

And that was the first time with these big companies, a lot of times you’re building stuff that doesn’t seem to have an impact or you’re just filling the pipes. And so that was the first time of like, wow, you can actually, that work is actually transformed and is transforming the company still. I’m like, oh, that’s what I want to do. I want to actually have an impact. And then last year, our two years ago launched my podcast there. That’s really where I pushed into where I am now. So I still do corporate narrative work, working with Microsoft and mid-market, family owned companies, but the thing I’m most passionate about is really how helping leaders tell their story as they navigate transitions in ways that, yes, help them earn trust with others, increase awareness, confidence and trust in them, but also transform them as leaders. And that’s the piece that I’m most lit up about.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s exciting. I feel like storytelling, the word itself has been overused in the past five years, similar to how UX or strategic X, Y, Z, fill in the blank has been overused, but love to have you tell us your perspective on how learning to tell a story effectively and maybe more importantly how helping someone else tell their story can be impactful, transformational, and even life changing.

Chris Hare:
To be honest, I avoided the plague using the word storytelling storyteller for the longest time, and so I have it in the name of the company, but in hopefully a more clever way. But ultimately that’s that is what I do and that’s what I help leaders do. I think what’s been helpful for me is really separating story and narrative, and there are many cases where you can use them interchangeably. The way I think about it is stories are really the inputs into a narrative. And so I can tell a story in a meeting and that’s the story that can grab everyone’s attention, that can convince them to buy or whatever it is that I’m trying to achieve. But it’s, for me, oftentimes stories are much less structured and the stories that I’m most interested in are what I call atomic stories, which are the moments of surprise, of delight, of shift in some way that you can gather from your customers, from your sellers, from your partners, from your own experience that has the power to change everything.

So when it was one of the challenges with big tech companies that I saw and then I set out to impact was this idea of like, Hey, you’re so far away from the customer and you create with content or messaging or whatever, it really becomes a factory model and a supply chain model, and it’s all about stripping out inefficiency and you inevitably get further and further away from the customer. And the reality is the brand isn’t the source of the big idea. Generally the agency isn’t. It’s really the customer. The same thing when I’m working with a leader. The thing that they’re thinking when we start working together generally is not where we end up heading, but it’s really diving into those hidden stories from their past or that other people tell them that can unlock that. So for better or for worse, yes, I think it’s been very cliche a lot of times, but I think people are starting to see that it can mean something more than, Hey, just plug into this specific framework, like the hero’s journey, for example, and this formula is going to work every time. It doesn’t always work. So yeah, I have mixed feelings on that one.

Craig Nishizaki:
And so you separate the stories from the narrative just for folks that may still be confused. When you think about the stories as the inputs and then the narrative as the overarching direction or vision or message, how do the atomic stories or the stories fit into that?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, so I think what’s is, because it gets confusing when they’re so often used interchangeably everywhere. You look on your LinkedIn timeline or in webinars or whatever, but I think if you step out of the business context and listen to the news, for example, they’re always using narrative in the way that I use it, which is here’s what’s happened. Here’s the narrative that X, Y, Z political party is trying to set, and oftentimes that spin. So that’s not the goal with the work that I’m doing, but I think a great example, one of my favorite examples is of what I would call an atomic story is there’s a local company that makes defibrillators. And so if you go and look at their marketing, there’ll be a lot of stories, really compelling stories there, but there might also be messaging around speed to save people’s lives, maybe pricing, warranty, all those kinds of things.

So all those facts and information are necessary as part of the process. But an example of an amazing atomic story is a buddy of mine had, I think a family member who had in school high school had had a cardiac event and there was no defibrillator there. And so he started a campaign to raise money to put defibrillators in all the school and the community. He did that, and years later he’s at a restaurant and he sees this guy with a tattoo, I think it was like a bolt or it was electricity or a lightning bolt or something like that. He asked him like, Hey, tell me about your tattoo. And this guy told him a story. He is like, well, when I was in high school, my heart stopped. I fell on the floor and there was a defibrillator there and it saved my life.

Well, that was a defibrillator that my friend had placed. And so that full circle moment there, it’s the difference between all these facts that you’re trying to communicate and that story that just gives you chills, that kind of thing. So that’s an atomic story, but that wouldn’t be a narrative if I’m coming in to try and convince you to invest in that company as a defibrillator trying to sell you something. If I tell you that story and then stop, you’re like, well, what next? That’s great. You moved me emotionally, you communicated the value. But now, so the narrative is really, the way I think about it and find it helpful is I call it future gravity, but what’s that differentiated future that your company is creating with your customers that only you can create or position that you can really own and creating that, and then what’s the path to get there?

And so the path to get there is essentially the manifestation of your business strategy. And I think just as an aside, I think that’s where companies often get in trouble is the CMO says that they own the narrative. The CO is also trying to own the narrative. Other teams are trying to set other narratives and they all collide. And it’s often just a manifestation of what’s going on in reality is every person is carrying around a narrative tape that they’re playing in their head about different things. So my narrative around you, for example, is I haven’t spent time fully forming this, but my narrative around you would speak to, I know the type of company you’re creating. I know the type of company I’m creating, I know how we’ve interacted, and I have a vision in my mind around how we’re going to interact in the future. And if I spent time, I could put that to words and I can talk about your values, I can talk about your business strategy and how together we could get there that can lead to a narrative. Whereas a story is, Hey, Craig and I had lunch a few weeks back and we talked about this podcast and here’s what happened at that lunch. That’s the story, the other’s, the narrative.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s great. Yeah, that’s really helpful to break it down in that way because I think there is a lot of confusion around the definitions because you see ’em, as you said on LinkedIn and in different scenarios where people are interchanging the language or interchanging the words. Could you tell us about the atomic storytelling framework that you created at a high level? You talked about it, but what is it and why did you create it?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, I mean, it was really accidental. So I think probably back in 2011 or 12, I built this ebook for developers for Microsoft. So Apple was killing them in their mobile app store, and they were trying to build more credibility with developers, and so they wanted a guide to help developers market their apps. And so I had no clue what content strategy was, but I just kind of started playing around with it and thinking about, okay, what if we brought people along on a journey? But then when thinking about the audience, I knew nothing about developers, and you get what you get in the brief from the strategist, but I’m like, Hey, how about I actually go talk to some developers who have been really successful. So I found these two guys at Microsoft who had one of the most successful games in the Microsoft store and just asked them like, Hey, what would you do?

And then created this illustrated guide, this a really fun illustrated guide. The client ended up taking the project away from us after we were done and needed some things to be finalized. So it went away. It was 20 11, 20 12, and I never saw it again. Fast forward to 2015, I’m on a call at Microsoft and this woman says, is this Chris Hare? Are you the one that did that developer ebook way back in the day? That was the most successful piece of content I’ve ever, ever created at Microsoft. Then went from there, went to Amazon, built their entrepreneur storytelling program and really saw the value of just sitting down and talking to people and not even in the context, let’s not even talk about our product or our solution. Let’s learn about the person and who they are and what lights them up and what keeps them awake at night and those kinds of things.

And just having that regular drumbeat, yes, you can call it research, you can call it customer conversations, et cetera, but really what you’re looking for is in energy that you see on someone’s face or in their posture, something that happens in the story where there’s this really transformative moment. So the way I think about atomic stories, it really comes from this idea of Gartner, I think around 2015 said, going back to what I said before, is that in order to delight audiences at scale, B2B companies need to fill the pipes with volume and velocity of content. And what ends up getting squeezed out inevitably is the quality, right? So I’d have these clients calling me and saying, Hey, the quality that we’re getting from our agencies is not up to par. And then the agencies were calling me and saying, Hey, can you work with us?

Because struggling, but no one was willing to pay the money or do the work, which was okay, yes, you’ve done your research. Oftentimes, especially with the really big tech companies, the research is highly biased. There’s a company you and I worked together on in the past, and they wanted to sell their whole suite of solutions because obviously they make more money. And so they went and asked their audience, Hey, do you want a suite versus this? And the research might say, sure, we want these things. Or they give a coupon to get people to get the second and third for free if they get the first, and then they have to create a downstream campaign to convince people to start using those products that they didn’t actually need. So the idea is really like, let’s flip it around and let’s create content and messaging narratives with the audience and the people who influence the audience.

So it’s not rocket science, it’s really having a discipline that you build into everything you do, where even before you build the strategy, you’re going and talking to two customers and other folks and validating that, but also unlocking those stories that can really, really shape things. I’ll give you great example. Did this project for Microsoft 365, the messaging was the messaging that has been there for a very long time. So communication, collaboration, security, et cetera, productivity. And what was interesting is it was very milk toast. And so we did our atomic storytelling interviews and we weren’t getting very far. And then we had a Microsoft partner connect us to this business in New York. And right off the bat, it was like, okay, there’s some serious magic here, but they were about a 50 60 person firm. Their mission was to train combat wounded veterans who had never worked on Wall Street and had no degree in finance to start working on Wall Street.

And they had used this server. I mean, I could show you the photo. It’s the most, I mean, it looks like it’s from the 1970s, it’s crazy tall wires sticking out everywhere, and their IT guy for 50 people was charging him like 16 grand a month for services, plus he was telling ’em they need to buy a new server for 75 grand. So the managing director says, this doesn’t, right, I’m going to call my buddy from the Army. So he calls him up and the guy’s like, you’ve got Microsoft already, get rid of that guy. He is a shyster and just start using Microsoft. So he starts working with a partner and with managed services, it’s like 5,000 a month. So this huge savings, and then they switch to well, COVID hits, and the week that they decide to send everyone home is when they switched to teams, Microsoft teams.

And culturally, there were a lot of people, the way he described it, a lot of old timers who love to slam down a physical phone. So it’s like, yeah, we don’t want this digital thing. We want to slam down a phone. And he is like Microsoft, we were able to get actual phones for Microsoft teams, so the phone slammers could keep doing that. And so they’d have these deals that would come through. And one of the things was a learning for me, but he said, it’s crazy around the world with these type of deals. So Goldman Sachs or someone else will have a deal, and then they’ll give them a percentage or a few percentage points to go and sell, but he’s like trillions of dollars change hands around the world every day where there’s no contract signed just on a handshake where it can take a couple days for this money to switch hands.

So they would have these multi-billion dollar deals that would come in first thing in the morning, and then it would take till eight o’clock at night to close these deals and all kinds of things would break. And so this one day they had this monster deal come in and they had just switched to remote, not used to it at all. By four 30, he gets a call and he’s thinking, something’s not right, because they’re like, yeah, everything’s perfect. There was one hiccup and everything closed. No problem at all. So that’s a really cool story. But then he goes on to say that they actually have a guy who was wounded in combat who’s working from the hospital remotely in Maryland using Microsoft teams. He’s working on Wall Street. So then what we ended up doing, and it was for a consideration piece, which is so normally in a consideration piece, it’s like, this is why you should buy us. And we had a phenomenal client and they’re like, no, we’re going to lead with the atomic story. And so we did it in kind of young adult type literature. So the opening line was, we’ll say the guy’s name was Derek. It was Derek stared at the server, the server blinked back at him. So that’s the opening line, and they really became the hero, and that’s the story that pulls you in, and there’s this narrative arc in terms of how they switched and all of that, and then Microsoft supports that along the way.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I can see where you had to tease it all out to understand the deeper part of the story, but that story grabs you, grabs your attention and your emotion oftentimes we’re brought in, and I’m sure you’re brought in when there’s change happening at a company, so an acquisition or a transition in leadership. And I’d love to hear how you apply atomic storytelling in either of those scenarios, integrating an acquired company’s products into the acquiring company’s portfolio, or even the transition to ownership where you talk about multi-generational family owned businesses that are transitioning leadership to the next generation or an employee takes over ownership. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how atomic storytelling could be applied in those scenarios.

Chris Hare:
Yeah, I think I’ll speak more to the cultural piece because a big part, probably 50% of, in my opinion, 50% of the work of narrative is at least is internal. And how do we even get this thing out into the world? And so I’m working with a company right now that recently acquired five different companies, and then with that growth, you then have managers that are elevated, and so then there’s less connection with the people below them. Maybe they’re not getting what they need or want. Had a meeting yesterday with a nonprofit that has all these independent nonprofits underneath it, and they’re the central funding body. And it’s not just, oftentimes we think, Hey, if we just have a campaign or we just communicate something or have a video that moves everyone, we’ll all get along. And the reality, Greg Satel has done a lot of writing and work on this in his book, cascades talks about it, but there’s a lot of, it’s not just resistance.

It can be downright subterfuge and sabotage at times. So it’s more about how do you align the right people that you can build momentum with? But the way that I typically do that is and would advise people to do it, is really obviously starting with all the normal things. So one, lemme back up. It always needs to be owned by the CEO or president should not be owned by the CMO because essentially there’s only one strategy for the company and it’s the business strategy and everything else derives from that. And if the CEO is not bought in and is not leading it, it’s likely not going to happen. But then it’s saying, okay, let’s look at all of the goals, all of your financials, all of your communications across all of your channels, et cetera, and then let’s go start to interview key leaders, employees, partners, and going from board to the front lines and not just talking to people, getting into the data when you can, also going and walking in their shoes.

So with the paint distributor that you and I have both worked with, it’s going out to the warehouse and seeing how they break cases and stack ’em on the shelves and seeing how that’s connected to their business strategy and why they do that and seeing how that’s connected to their values. Or here’s an example when they would ship a pallet, I don’t know about you if you ever worked way back in the day in high school or college, I worked in a bookstore and every time an order comes in, you have to manually check everything against the packing list, right? Well, that takes a lot of time and a lot of money. And so what they said is, Hey, here’s the average amount of mistakes that are made per year. We actually are now going to guarantee that we’re going to fall under that percentage or under a much smaller percentage, and that guarantee, we’re going to show that by wrapping a seal on each pallet, so then the hardware stores that they’re delivering to can compare the cost of labor to that tiny percentage and just say, yeah, it’s not worth our time to even check because of this guarantee.

In other cases, I worked with a healthcare company and I went and did a secret chopper, MRI and meeting the people on the front lines to see what they’re doing aligns to what the C-suite is saying and things like that. So it’s going and collecting all of those insights as well as atomic stories. But again, those stories on their own don’t do anything for you. They’re inputs. So then you take those inputs and then look at all of the different audiences you have and what’s the ven between them, what is it? What’s the shared outcome that all of them want? And then from there, develop it into narrative territories like, Hey, these are potential directions we should go, could go. And then working with leadership to hone in, find the right one, and then build out that narrative in a way that everyone can understand.

One piece that I forgot to mention that it’s really important in bringing everyone along is we’re doing exactly that, having meetings along the way with the key stakeholders. And what I always do is whether it’s a deck or a doc show, these are the key insights and stories that we got from each person so that they all feel heard and loved, but they can also see the tension points between them because sometimes it’s wildly divergent, right? This person over here wants to be crazy aggressive. This person wants to be really conservative, but you need and want them to see all of that and also see what their competitors are doing and what all their customers are saying and all of that so that you have those rich inputs to be able to get to that narrative.

Craig Nishizaki:
Your approach to your process really maps to our approach to building out or innovating on the user experience as well. And so that’s why I think that when we have worked together, there’s been such great overlap and where you’re finding the narrative and the atomic stories, we’re actually using those same types of touch points to identify opportunities for innovation change, reducing friction and things like that. So it’s really interesting.

Chris Hare:
Well, I think that’s really key too, is if you go in, I mean talk about a narrative. If my internal narrative is this is a marketing exercise, and that’s why I tell people it’s not, I’m like, it will impact marketing, but if you go in with that, you’re only thinking about the realm of marketing, but it really is oftentimes is all at business consulting, innovation, et cetera. One of the clients that we’re working with right now, we found this really rich source of data that spans all across the entire company, and they actually call it stories and individuals enter this data, but how could we actually take that data and then connect it to their customer experience and their sales and all of these kinds of things, and then where ways that we could then up level that that’s not something likely that you would be thinking if you went in from a marketing perspective versus, Hey, this is what our revenue and profit goals are over the next X quarters years, et cetera. That’s a very different mindset going on.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that’s great. Reflecting on your experience and thinking about the future, what advice could you give to emerging leaders in business marketing product and UX roles regarding storytelling, executive positioning and narratives?

Chris Hare:
What I tell companies with their narrative is that it’s not something that’s created out of whole cloth, right? We’re going to go externally or we’re just going to make something up. It should be and is embedded in your DNA, your customer’s, DNA, et cetera. And I think the same thing with you with your executive positioning and narrative and who you are as a leader. And so it’s really about discovering your own atomic stories and using frameworks and methodologies to do that. So when I’m working with clients, I do future envisioning. Then I also have them do storytelling across their lifespan, both the positive and the negative stories of things, where to really uncover those atomic stories. And then also I do 360 storytelling across their lifespan. So if you do a 360, you work for a big company, you’re just going to have people that don’t know you well and maybe don’t like you or maybe are there’s lots of politics or whatever, but finding people who care about you and want you to succeed across decades.

In some instances, the people that I’m working with generally are 20, 30 years into their career, highly successful, and they’re at an inflection point of they’ve exited a company or they’re trying to figure out what’s next or they’re looking for a new role or succession or whatever. And so that input of having people tell you stories about you that you may have forgotten is really remarkable. I go and interview people and capture them for clients. I also have clients go and do it because they need to sit and soak in that and hear that it can be incredibly transformative. Then I’m also working on building out an AI tool, so that can be done at scale. So you imagine having 50 people across your career being able to tell stories about you, to evaluate you across different criteria and see what your internal narrative is lines up with theirs.

But I think it’s not starting with to the point of going back to the factory model. I think so much of what we see istic LinkedIn as an example, and I think executive brand goes far beyond the veneer that we often see because the goal of executive brand or brand all up is awareness, building awareness, confidence and trust in the company or you as a leader, but so much of it is just copycatting others. So the way you try and differentiate yourself is like, oh, is a McKinsey consultant, I got my MBA at Harvard, type in those terms on LinkedIn and there’s a million of you. You don’t stand out. The thing that makes you stand out is you and your stories, and more than likely the stories that some of ’em you recall, but other ones haven’t, you don’t even recall. And then other ones that other people can speak in. So I think that’s the best place to start is gathering same way with a business, gathering all those stories about yourself and then turning those into a narrative that’s authentic to where you want to head.

Craig Nishizaki:
And then if you feel like you aren’t wired to be a good storyteller, if that’s the tape that’s playing in your head, do you have any suggestions for people that struggle with that?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, so I don’t think people in my profession help with that. I think I had a meeting once with a senior leader who’s highly successful in this space, and he said, yeah, I don’t buy, I love your podcast. I don’t buy your perspective. I think there’s very few people who are good storytellers and it’s a craft, et cetera, et cetera. And yes, there is a craft to storytelling, the type of storytelling I’m talking about, those pretty much anyone can do. There’s some small exceptions that research shows with certain medical conditions, but by and large, almost everyone, if you go to a bar, you go for a walk with your family, et cetera, you don’t sit and think like, well, I do. But most normal people don’t sit and think about how am I going to structure this story that I’m going to tell, right? It’s you just tell the story, here’s what happened to me today, this crazy thing happened, et cetera.

And so I think the first thing that I would say is don’t start with telling your own story. I would start with asking other people and listening. So work on active listening and work on being more present when other people are talking and telling a story or asking them simple questions, how was your day? What was the highlight of your weekend? Things like that. And just listen and start to see what other people do. And I think also then actually actively lean in and engage with your face and with your body and things like that. Interesting is you’re very engaged with what I’m saying right now, but if you were leaned back in your chair and frowning, that’s a whole different energy, and I’m going to tell my story in a different way based on how you’re responding. So we’re writing or rewriting our stories in real time.

So I would start with listening, and then the next piece is, I would actually have a friend interview you. And so don’t put the pressure on yourself to come up with it on your own. If this is something you want to practice, say, give them five questions of like, Hey, what do you think my number one value is? Can you tell a story about a time I demonstrated that value as a leader? And then can you recall a time that we went through some extreme turbulence together? What stood out about me? Those kinds of things. Or if you had to tell someone in 30 seconds, what sets me apart? What would you say? And start to get that input and start there. And so I think storytelling is oftentimes a lot messier. This kind of storytelling is a lot messier than a lot of people would have you believe, and I think can be a lot less structured.

And yes, there’s a discipline and a craft, and you can work on it over time, but a lot of it is just reps. And when you have, Hey, I have one story, then use it in the places where it makes sense over and over again and refine it and then add another one to the mix of, Hey, I’m going into a job interview, and I think I have these three stories that I can tell if they ask these types of questions to hook them or to grab them emotionally or whatever. So yeah, that’s what I would recommend.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s great advice. As you’re starting this kind of practice, do you have two or three questions that you typically ask that you find help open up the conversation with people to dive a little deeper, or is it all situational based on who they are and what they’ve been through?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, so what I find, so I’ll tell you the exercise that I do when I start my workshops, the first exercise that I do, but what I would say is it’s the normal discovery and finding out what their goals are and that sort of thing. But generally, more and more, I assume that what they say their goals are not where they truly want to end up or where we are going to end up. So I actually tell clients, this may even be in my contract, but I tell them that I can’t guarantee you that we’re going to get to your narrative within this first engagement. A lot of that is dependent on them and how much work they’ve done on themselves and other things like that. But I can tell them what are the things that we’re going to go through and the outcomes that we’ll definitely get.

But where I start is, and this is really powerful with a group or individually, but essentially have people envision the first day of retirement, or some people are like, I’m never going to retire. So I’m like, okay, the last week you’re alive, but let’s say the first week, the first day of retirement, and you had the big party yesterday, there’s no more title, no more position, power, paycheck, email, et cetera. You go to the movie theater, relax, you’re all alone, you got your Coke, you got your popcorn, and you sit down expecting this blockbuster to play, and the camera, the film starts rolling, and it’s actually a movie of your life and your career. And so then I have people close their eyes and visualize the movie playing through and thinking about who are they seeing that they knew was there that they brought with ’em, who did they leave behind?

What are they proud of? What are they ashamed of? That sort of thing. And then have them start thinking about, okay, what are the themes that you see there? What’s the narrative arc, right? So I think when we don’t examine our life, there is a narrative arc internally, even if we don’t know it, that it’s going to carry us to that place. And so then that starts to make ’em aware of those components of that narrative, and then, okay, what would you call this film? And then if we know that, then we rewind the past, then we start to explore the atomic stories that shape their present narrative, and then we can create a new narrative that gets ’em to that future that they want. But I would start with that experience.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s digital therapy, if you will, in a lot of ways. Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you’d like to share from your experience or insights that you think could help someone become a more effective communicator or influential leader?

Chris Hare:
I think what often the way I close every one of my podcasts is I say I encourage people to tell their story. And I say, because when you tell your story, it has the power to change you change others and change the world. And I think so often, especially, I mean, I have all kinds of hesitation or anxiety about telling my story often in certain environments and channels and things like that. And so I think what we often think about is storytelling is to help me get something. And the way that I talk about storytelling is really mapped to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So we tell stories to get to build and to become. So get in the room, get the meeting, get the deal, et cetera, and then to build something, whether it’s build a relationship, build a business, et cetera, and then to become, and so a part of that journey is really starting to think about, I’m not just going to tell stories.

It’s not just for me and for my benefit. It’s when I tell my story, there’s actually someone out there who needs to hear that. And it’s not just like, Hey, Craig’s having a bummer day. He needs to be encouraged. Like, yes, that’s great, but it’s also from a business standpoint, I had a coach once that said, Chris, you’re hesitant or fearful of telling your story out there, but there are people out there who are in pain and their businesses are suffering because you’re unwilling to get out there and do this. And so I think that’s why it’s so critical to keep telling your story and by telling your story, I also don’t mean every time we sit down or anytime you walk into a room, Craig, can I tell you my life story? It’s not that. It’s understanding all of your stories and having this library of these stories and then having a clear narrative and then being able to pull from that grab bag in the moment when you need it.

There was a founder that I reviewed her pitch deck recently, and if you looked at the first slide, it was very much what you would expect from most startups. It was data is in silos. There’s hidden risk, hidden value, hidden opportunity within it. We bring that together that could apply to tons of solutions. So that was the first approach. And then what my recommended one is, hey, you walk into the room with a banker’s box and set it down on the table, and the opening line is Harvey Weinstein looked me in the eye and said, from now on, you’re reporting to me on data every single week. Like pause.

That’s the atomic story. I mean, the difference between those is night and day. But what was fascinating, this is actually my next podcast episode that’s coming out is her story, Sienna Jackson, and by the time she was 20, she was a director of music for TV and film at Weinstein Company. And when she came in, all of their contracts were stuffed in cardboard boxes and on zip drives and paper, and she dug through ’em all, digitized, all of them, and found all this hidden risk and opportunity. And yet when things blew up at the company, no one other than the people who were directly affected, they knew he was a terrible person, but no one knew all the things that was going on with Harvey and the risk that was there. So now her startup is actually seeing risks in the data of discrimination, bias and abuse long before it hits. So that connection is so powerful, and it’s not her whole life story, it’s just, here’s this one atomic story. But again, it comes back to you’ve got to tell that story to make an impact.

Craig Nishizaki:
Yeah, that’s great. Great way to wrap up. So if people want to know more about you, follow your podcast or any of that, we’ll have it in the link, but where could they find you?

Chris Hare:
Yeah, the best place is my website, thestoriedfuture.com, T-H-E-S-T-O-R-I-E-D future.com. And or on LinkedIn, I’m at @hareforce1 H-A-R-E-F-O-R-C-E numeral one.

Craig Nishizaki:
That’s great. Well, alright. Join us again next time as we explore innovative approaches to enhance your products and services, optimize customer interactions, and ultimately drive success for your organization. Tune in, take action and design your way to success. We’ll see you next time.

Outro:
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