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Online Courses Create Freedom By Teaching Your Gifts With Danny Iny

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

08.09.21

Online courses are becoming more common today. These courses have become a way to share your gifts with others. John Livesay is joined by Mirasee CEO and bestselling author Danny Iny as they discuss sharing your gift and the freedom provided by online courses. Danny talks about the art of telling a story and using it to engage people and committing to learning. Learn how to be known for that one thing with which you can give the most value to the world.

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Listen to the podcast here

Online Courses Create Freedom By Teaching Your Gifts With Danny Iny

Danny Iny is the guest on The Successful Pitch. He’s known for being an expert at online courses but as you’ll find out he’s an expert in many other things as well. He talks about what you want people to be able to do after they’ve taken your course. How well do you want them to do it and under what circumstances are they going to be able to perform? He says, “The other key is learning about something is different than living it.” Find out why he says that a quality course is like a fine piece of art. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Danny Iny, the Founder and CEO of Mirasee, which is a leading voice in the world of online courses. He’s been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur and contributes regularly to publications including Inc., Forbes and Business Insider. He’s spoken at institutions like Yale University and organizations like Google. His work on strategy training won special recognition from Fast Company as a world-changing idea. He’s also the author of Online Courses: How to Create Freedom by Teaching Your Gift. Welcome to the show, Danny.

[bctt tweet=”A quality course is like a piece of art.” username=”John_Livesay”]

John, thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here.

I love that enthusiasm and energy. One of my favorite questions for my guests is to tell us your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood, school or wherever you want but was this process something that your parents said or did. Have you always loved learning? I’m fascinated to hear how this journey began.

I only started thinking of myself as an entrepreneur in the mid-twenties, which is funny because I dropped out of school at fifteen to start my first business. I’ve been an entrepreneur for longer than my adult life. Here’s the first entrepreneurial experience that I can remember. I was in the seventh grade. I was twelve years old and there was a cafeteria at my school and they had different lunch options. My parents would give me $2 to get lunch for the day, which got you the typical option but I like the $3 option.

Online Courses: The only people who are perpetually starting a business are the ones who are not very good entrepreneurs.

It shows us how back in time this is because I don’t think kids can get anything for $3 now.

I’m sure it was subsidized but this was a little while ago. I wanted the $3 option and I noticed that my friend would get his lunch and he would get a soda, which was $1. He would get usually a Coke or Sprite but he was a good friend. I knew that he didn’t especially like Coke or Sprite. He liked cream soda, which they didn’t sell at the cafeteria. I figured out that I could get a rack of those cans of cream soda from Costco and it would cost me $0.15 or whatever and I could sell a soda to my friend for $1. He gets what he wants to drink for the same price and now I can afford my $3 lunch. At the time, people would be like, “You’re charging your friend for a drink?” I’m like, “He’s paying the money anyway. This way, he’s getting what he wants.” This is how I’ve always thought of entrepreneurship. I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur. I was looking for opportunities and solving problems.

[bctt tweet=”What do I want people to be able to do after working with me?” username=”John_Livesay”]

That word wasn’t anything I heard in school. Everyone I knew, even if they did have their own business, they owned a dry cleaner or an air conditioning company. It was nothing in tech or online because that wasn’t happening then. It was either you go work for a company or your family business. The entrepreneurial part of it was not solving a problem. It was a business that an individual owned. It’s a fascinating thing to think of.

It makes sense if you think about it. Let’s presume you’re good at this entrepreneurship thing. The starting of the business takes a small amount of time and the running of the business takes a long amount of time. The only people who are perpetually starting businesses are the ones who are not good at it. Any entrepreneur who’s any good that you know, you’re most likely to know them in the stage where they’re running the business because that’s most of the time that they spend in that interaction.

Teach and Grow Rich: Share Your Knowledge to Create Global Impact, Freedom and Wealth

Let’s go from that in your journey of Mirasee, which is about reimagining business in general. You have seven core values. Many people may have values. They don’t post them. They don’t think about them. They don’t put them into action. You and I were chatting before the show about how impressed I am that you do put your values into action. Openness, transparency, respect, appreciation, humility and empowering other people, I wanted to see if there was a story behind how these values came about. Do they all come at once? Was it something that continued to evolve?

There is a story. In the fairly early days of this business, we had a different name at the time because we rebranded a few years into it when we realized the original name sucked. We had a team of 7 or 13. We were small at the time. We were doing a company retreat. I was going to say people flew in. At the time, everyone’s local. This was a long time ago. We’re in the chalet up north and we’re codifying our values. The way we did that and this is learned from a gentleman named Patrick Lencioni. We start by asking everyone, “Take a piece of paper and write down the name of 1 or 2 people on the team who exemplify what it is to work here. This is private. You’re not sharing this with anyone. This is for you as a reference point.” You’re going to write down for yourself what are the things about these people that make them exemplify what it is to be here.

We took that list, put it up on the board and we have 111 things. You collapse the list because the same thing shows up seven times with different languages and you start sorting it. You cross off the aspirational things. It’s like, “It’s not so much that this is who we are. This is who we wish we were.” That’s not a core value. You cross off the things that are hygiene factors like, “Showering won’t make you happy but not showering will make you miserable.” There are things that don’t exemplify who you are. It’s a pay-to-play in the industry. We promptly respond to our customer service emails. Any decent company has to do that. That’s not a special unique thing so we cross off the hygiene factors.

[bctt tweet=”A quality course is like a piece of art. It’s only good in the eye of the beholder. There’s no such thing as an objectively good course. ” username=”John_Livesay”]

We cross off the accidental stuff. For example, at the time, almost everyone who worked at the company was into board games. That wasn’t a core value. That happened to be the case. It was a happy accident. We cross all those out and what’s left is a candidate for a core value and we haggle, negotiate and we’re like, “What is most important to us to codify?” We arrived at six core values. Those were our values for a long time and they are real and substantive. We talk about them all the time. We acknowledge each other for them. It’s not a poster on the wall, although it is a poster on the wall behind me.

Over several years, we started noticing that there were a few ways in which our values were being misunderstood by people who were newer to the organization because they didn’t have all the context to understand it. That’s when we looked at those values and we’re like, “Let’s clarify the language here. Let’s pick this up there. This one has to split in two.” That’s how we arrived at the seven values that we have now and this has been the case for a couple of years now. It’s ever-present in running our business.

Let’s go to what made you write this latest book. This is not your first book by any means. I’m always interested in the story of origin as a fellow author. I know that coming up with a title can be challenging. There are usually many versions of it before you land on it. Because you’ve written other books, there has to be a creative urge to express something that hasn’t been said before. The subtitle grabs it.

Online Courses: Reading a book about parenting is very different from sitting across from a three-year-old who’s screaming and throwing spaghetti all over the place.

In some ways, I don’t know that a lot of people think that an online course is a roadmap to creating freedom by teaching their gifts. Let’s break down those words, freedom, a gift and an online course. If you put those things together, I don’t know that a lot of people will go, “That’s a book title.” A lot of people will be like, “What does one have to do with the other?” A part of the way that you break through the clutter is giving people and bringing something new to look at going, “What?”

The title was pretty easy. The substance was hard. I’ve written several books about online courses. At some point, I’m searching for a reference to what’s out there. I noticed there is no book called Online Courses and yet that’s what people are going to be looking for. It was pretty clear that the next book is going to be called Online Courses and teaching your gift and creating freedom. This is what our business is all about. That was obvious so that’s what the subtitle is going to be. In terms of the content and style of the book, this was a different book than other books I’ve written. I’ve written several books about online courses. I wrote Teach and Grow Rich in 2015 and it came out with a second edition in 2017. Leverage Learning in 2018. Teach Your Gift in 2020. Effortless in 2021.

I’ve written about this a lot and based on the reviews that are out there, people seem to like it. In aggregate, they have close to 1,000 five-star reviews. I found that despite people liking the book, often there was a disconnect between what they’re learning in the book and being able to go and do stuff with it. That disconnect is about the fact that there’s a difference between learning about something and the lived experience of doing it. Hearing someone telling you about their ski journey is different from being at the top of the hill looking down and it’s terrifying. Reading a book about parenting is different from sitting across from a three-year-old who’s screaming and throwing spaghetti all over the place. They’re different experiences.

I wrote this book as a business parable. It tells the story of this fictional character. She is modeled after the thousands of people that we’ve trained in this process to show what are the steps in the journey of figuring out what you want to do. What are the demons that you have to struggle with? What are the places where people stumble and need to overcome? What are the challenges that get in their way? It’s meant to be an opportunity for getting the information and learn about all the steps. It’s also an opportunity to ride shotgun on that journey and see what it feels like experientially. That’s what I was trying to do with the book.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it’s going to be as successful as Who Moved My Cheese? back in the day because it’s a parable. Parables are what I’m all about, which is storytelling. When you craft a story that people see themselves in as opposed to listing, “Here are the pain points you might be suffering,” and it goes to, “Here’s a story of Amy.” Suddenly you’re seeing yourself in the book and you’re like, “My name is not Amy but I feel the frustrations that she feels. I went and did something that was a big waste of time as opposed to spending time with my family and feeling guilty for trying to be in two places at once.”

Suddenly the neck gets wider and wider and it’s not even gender-specific but entrepreneur-specific. That’s where you go, “I know ten people that would love this. What a great gift.” That’s where the magic happens in a story as well. When you tell a great story, people remember it and share it. That’s where your brand ambassadors start happening and that’s what makes you memorable. Instead of creating yet another manual on how to launch and create an online course, which you’re certainly an expert at that. If you have a roadmap, you’ve done it.

Part of the reason people join your courses, masterminds and hire you for private coaching. I’m glad that you said it was a little bit harder than even the title because anything that breaks through the clutter is a little bit harder. Do we need another manual? Maybe not. You’re not doing that. You’re giving us the experience of living it as opposed to learning about, “Here are the six steps to figure out what your gift is. You might get frustrated,” whatever the journey is. It’s the classic hero’s journey that there are going to be days that you think, “Why did I even try this?” It’s the trough of despair that entrepreneurs go through so often. If you wanted people to think of this book, what would be one of the main things you would hope they would get out of reading it besides realizing that they have a gift that if they figure out how to monetize it, it’ll give them some freedom?

The number one thing that I’d want people to take away from that, beyond the subject matter and the opportunity of online courses is that if this book does well, it will be because people feel seen when they read it. They’ll be like, “Someone gets it. It’s not just me.” That is something that is so important and necessary for all of us as human beings to not feel isolated and yet it’s such a disconnect for a lot of entrepreneurs.

The reality is that most of the people in our lives, as supportive as they might want to be, don’t understand. They don’t have any frame of reference for what it is that we’re undertaking for the ambiguity, uncertainty, unpredictability and the amount of our identity that we’ve put into what we’re trying to do for the hopes, dreams, ups and downs and the highs and lows. Everything else will be a byproduct. If this book does well, it’ll be because people feel seen and able to relate when they read.

What good parents do is make their children feel seen, heard and acknowledged. What a lot of entrepreneurs or people in big companies forget is their employees have the same needs. It doesn’t go away, “Watch me jump in the pool.” Mom or dad doesn’t go away because you get into Corporate America and the recognition program of all of that. For me, I’ve helped companies make their employees feel seen by asking them what their story of origin is. What made you get into healthcare, for example? Whatever it is that people go, “No one’s ever asked me that before.” It bonds people together.

One of the things that I like about your writing, Danny, is the specificity, how specific you are. For example, there’s one line here, “Amy noticed a milk-colored stain on his left shoulder, the sort that a baby would make spitting up on you.” If you are the person that notices those details and you, as a writer, can get that specific because you probably know that people put their baby on that left shoulder, there are 101 details that go into that then we’re in the story. Part of the secret to becoming a good storyteller and a good writer is the exposition, the who, what, where, when. You have such a gift of pulling us into this parable that we’re no longer feeling we’re learning something but we’re in a story. We would be in a movie theater or Netflix. That taps into a different side of our brain, doesn’t it?

It does and it’s gratifying to hear you say that. This is my 11th or 12th book. As I sat down to write this, my first thought was, “I have no idea how to do this.” It’s like I’m completely starting from scratch. What I kept in mind a lot because I’ve been listening to a lot of audio content and audiobooks is I thought a lot about what this is going to sound like. We’re getting it produced. That content isn’t ready yet but we’re getting it produced. I’ve got a team of actors. It’s going to be amazing. I say that while knocking on wood. It’s the famous last words, “I hope it will be amazing.”.

There are people who love this whether it’s a podcast or an audiobook especially if it’s a story and you hear the sound effects like the knocking at the door and you start imagining it coming to life. The other thing that you did that is going to make that Audible so successful and I always teach people that when you tell a story, tell it as if it’s in the present tense that the dialogue is happening now. For example, when I give a keynote talk to sales teams, I talk about the time I got to meet Michael Phelps. I went up to him and I said, “You’re so successful because your physique is crazy, fins and lung capacity. I’m guessing there’s something else.” He said, “Yes, John. When I was young, my coach said to me, ‘Michael, are you willing to work out on Sundays?’ ‘Yes, coach.’ ‘Great. We got 52 more workouts than the competitors.’” I then say to the audience, “What can you do? What are you willing to do?”

That story is connected to an outcome that people can see themselves in but I tell the audience, “If I told you that story in the past tense, I met Michael Phelps. I asked him what his secret is. He told me he worked out on Sundays.” It’s not nearly as interesting. You don’t feel like you’re in the story. You probably wouldn’t remember it as much. I act out with the coach’s voice, what his young voice is. You feel like you’re eavesdropping in on the coach and Michael having a conversation, which is eavesdropping in on the conversation that I had with Michael.

That’s the sophisticated level of storytelling. I’m telling you a story about somebody who then told me a story. The way to keep that all relevant that you do so well in this book is I feel like I’m in the story and listening to the dialogue. That is not something that a lot of authors or storytellers know how to do. We always need some details of interstates left. It’s half an hour later now. We need to know where we are. You also do a great job of expressing internal thoughts and feelings that then get expressed into dialogue. That’s the other thing I wanted to ask you about. When you work with people on helping them create a course, how important is it that they’re identifying the challenges, the pain points that they’re solving in the course by having some specific empathy and ability to describe it?

It’s critical. Here’s the thing, a quality course is like a piece of art. It’s only good in the eye of the beholder. There’s no such thing as an objectively good course or an objectively beautiful piece of art. There is an art that is liked by people. There are courses that are valuable to people. Creating any good course starts with, “Who is this for?” A technique borrowed from the world of instructional design is called Backward Integrated Design. You ask yourself at the end of the day when they’re through with the course, “What do I want them to be able to do?”

You go a level or two deeper. You say, “Not what do I want them to be able to.” You want to ask yourself, “How well do I want them to be able to do it and under what circumstances?” It’s like an active listening course. I’m teaching active listening. It’s like, “Do I want them to be able to go through the motions with their partner in this little exercise? Do I want them to be able to do it in the heat of the moment during an argument with their spouse?” That’s a different level of skill in adopting the techniques. Do you start with who is this for? What will they value? What is the end goal? You work backward in terms of what you’re looking to build. Otherwise, it’s all pointless.

It’s reverse engineering in a clever way. Who do I want this to be for? What do I want them to be able to do after they take the course? What do I want them to be doing in specific circumstances? Was there something else? Was that the gist of it?

What do I want them to be able to do, how well and under what circumstances?

The how well is fascinating because my online course, The Sale is in the Tale, is all about teaching people how to become better storytellers as a sales tool. I will say sometimes that even if you think you’re a good storyteller, this is going to get you to the black belt level. People go, “Oh.” I’ll have students who go, “I always thought I was a pretty good storyteller but now I realized that there is a lot more I can learn to become a great one. Asking these kinds of questions is valuable.” I’m glad you shared it.

When I hired a coach who was a specialist in helping people give a TEDx Talk, we did a similar series of questions where he said, “Let’s pretend it’s at the end of your talk. What do you want the audience to feel, think and do?” That will determine the end of your talk. We’re starting to work on what’s your ending going to be with those three outcomes. That process whether you’re creating a piece of art that’s known as an online course or a piece of art that hopefully is your talk or whatever story you’re telling and whatever format, Audible in your case, we’re coming up next. It’s all about having an emotional impact.

Emotional and tangible. Whatever we do is meant to accomplish an objective so let’s not leave it to happenstance. Let’s not do this and hope it leads to that outcome. Let’s be strategic about making sure that’s where it goes.

You offer such a wide range of ways to interact with you. You’re also a speaker and you get called in major places. Are companies like Google interested in learning how to create an online course for their employees? This is one of my favorite topics that you’re talking about, not just how to get to be the best but how to stay the best. If you look at certain actors, they stay at the top of their game. The other ones, you’ll never hear of again or like a Blockbuster or Kodak. This ability to get to the top and stay at the top, my first question around that is what’s harder, staying at the top or getting to the top?

Staying at the top. I don’t know if you remember the movie Dangerous Minds in the ‘90s with Michelle Pfeiffer. She does this exercise with the kids. She says, “Everyone has an A as of now. You just have to work to keep it.” In the end, she’s got all these kids with A’s and they’re like, “It doesn’t count because you gave us the A to start.” She’s like, “Anyone can earn an A once. You kept the A for the whole year.” That’s the hard part.

The other part of what you do is very niched, which is the unspoken problem that a lot of companies don’t like to talk about, the cost of turnover. You’ve got to spend time interviewing, training, onboarding. Are they going to fit and become family? Meanwhile, there’s this gap of talent and productivity that’s not happening because you’ve got a gap that somebody left. The joke is nobody leaves a job, they leave a bad boss. You’ve been able to figure out how to take your skills and training. Is it because part of the problem is people aren’t onboarding properly and that’s why people aren’t able to attract and keep the best talent?

There’s a flywheel that goes in either direction. It can be a vicious spiral of not onboarding people well and you don’t have good support or infrastructure. You don’t have a good culture. You don’t have good values as an organization. It’s not a good place to work so you don’t attract customers. You don’t make much money so you can’t support people well. It’s a downward spiral. They can also go the other way. You invest all of your relationships. You invest in relationships with your customers and the people that you work with. You constantly look to get a little bit better. You have values that both attract and repel. Clear and articulated values should attract the right people and repel the wrong people. Does that mean you never make a bad hire? No, but the frequency goes down. You catch it sooner and you keep getting better. That’s what it is.

It’s almost testing ads online. You get to test. You iterate and let’s change that headline or image so now it gets better. Is it always giving us the best potential buyers? No, but the leads and the frequency get better. It’s the same thing with the hiring process using your structure and your insights on how to attract the best and repel. That’s the old concept that a lot of people have forgotten. If you try to be everything to everybody, you’re nothing. A big mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs are making and I would love your insight on this because it keeps coming up, “What I do is complicated. I do ten things.” Even Amazon sold books first and got proof of concept. Trying to do more than one thing before you get some traction is a mistake that I see a lot. Do you see that? If you do, what advice do you have for people that make that mistake?

I do see that a lot and I made that mistake earlier. What I’ve come to understand is there is a difference between all the things you could do, all the things you should do but even beyond that, what you are known for. I am the online courses guy. That is what I do. I teach people how to take their expertise and turn it into online courses. Do I know other things? Can I do other things? Do I even help my students with some other things? Yes but that’s not ever what I lead with. I teach people how to build and sell online courses. Once they know, like and trust me and they’re in my world, we can talk about other things if appropriate. To the world, to the people who are not yet my customers, I teach people how to build and sell online courses.

It’s hard to top that. That’s brilliant. “Be known for one thing,” that’s going to be a tweet for sure. Amazon was known for selling online books for a long time. Imagine if they tried to launch selling everything they sell now and have TV shows. People are like, “What?” That ability to enter your world is my favorite description of that. What else have you got and what else can you help me with becomes a natural journey that you take us all on. Any last thoughts or quotes you want to leave us with?

In the spirit of the story, something that I tell my students often is the journey of online courses, the journey of business will involve ups and downs and setbacks and challenges along the way. What I often tell my students is that failure is only failure if it happens in the last chapter. Otherwise, it’s a plot twist and the spirit of the story.

That’s a great description. That’s a plot twist. The story’s not over yet. I love it. Thanks, Danny.

Thank you so much.

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Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

01.09.21

Have you ever seen an ad campaign that just grips you right from the start and won’t let go? It touches on your emotions and it makes you feel special and you relate to the product. It’s almost as if the product isn’t trying to sell to you but instead it’s telling a story. This is what the CEO of Visual Storytelling Institute and author of the book Total Acuity, Shlomi Ron does for a living. Join your host, John Livesay, as he sits down with Shlomi Ron to talk about how he takes full advantage of visual storytelling in order to market a product. Learn how Shlomi’s clients make more sales by making the customer the main character of the story.

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Listen to the podcast here

Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

Our guest is Shlomi Ron who’s the Founder of the Visual Storytelling Institute and the author of Total Acuity. We talk about how important it is to place your customer at the heart of a story and that when you hit people’s emotions, it allows them to see themselves in the story. When your brand story becomes a customer story then you’ve hit the secret sauce. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Shlomi Ron who’s the CEO of the Visual Storytelling Institute that’s based in Miami, Florida. He helps brands connect better with their audiences through visual storytelling, consulting, training, production and thought leadership. He’s also the author of Total Acuity. Over the years, he’s worked in various digital marketing roles on the agency and brand side with Fortune 100 and 500 companies like IBM, Nokia and American Express.

He was also nourishing his side passion for visual stories because he has a huge interest that we both share in classic Italian cinema and video art. He kept wondering, “How can businesses rise above this growing information overload and break through the clutter?” He has created the Visual Storytelling Institute, which is primarily a think tank that brings the gospel of visual storytelling from the world of art into marketing. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, John, for a nice introduction.

I am such a fan of your work and some of these great quotes about the magic that happens the moment your brand story mirrors your customer’s personal story. The alliteration of the three M’s, Magic, Moment and Mirror. I’m always talking about how important it is to tell a story that people see themselves in and then they want to go on the journey with you so you’re not a pushy salesperson. Before we get into all your expertise with storytelling, visuals and the combination of them, can you take us back to your own story of origin? You can go back to childhood. Did someone give you a camera and you were hooked? Did you say, “This is for me.” How did you start your journey? Was it your parents?

I grew up in Tel Aviv by the beach, fun Mediterranean climate and great food. I’ve been interested in advertising and marketing. I’ve worked for a few publications, newspapers, agencies in Israel and then the internet started. I needed to get the proper training. I started grad school at the University of Florida in the communications department. I got myself into my first startup and helping the largest Israeli newspaper get their paper online, which was a novelty back then. Since then, I have spent many years of digital marketing experience in Corporate America with major brands like Nokia, American Express and others.

Throughout my journey, I was always fascinated by visual stories. I’m a great believer that in this day and age, sometimes you need to put different cultural lenses and see the world differently. I chose to do it by taking the town language classes for fun every Saturday. It happened when I lived in New York then in San Diego and back in New York. It was my fun experience on Saturday. I did this for a few years.

[bctt tweet=”Place your customer at the heart of the story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

As I moved up the levels with digital textbooks and start watching these black and white films in the ‘40s and ‘50s, that pushed me to Italian classic cinema. I started my own, CafePellicola.com. I would write film reviews around festivals. That was a lot of fun. The other aspect of my interest in digital stories was video art. My father-in-law is Buky Schwartz, one of the early pioneers of video art. He started in the mid-‘70s. His video installations are collected in major museums like Guggenheim, Whitney and the Smithsonian. Since then, we’ve been managing his estate working with different galleries and museums to preserve his legacy.

What a story that is. It’s in your genes and now you’re continuing the legacy, which is the ultimate impact of a story in your life.

When you think about it, classic Italian cinema and video arts are two different ways of telling a story visually in different artistic expressions. That’s what got me interested. I had another experience working on a serious decision, it’s a research advisory firm that got acquired by Forrester. Every year, they have this annual summit. I was responsible for the digital strategy. We did something peculiar there. We mounted this giant interactive social media wall that I was curating and the effect it had on people, almost like a digital altar experience, made me realize there’s something going on with visuals that you need to pay attention to. That is another trigger. It’s what we call an inciting incident in my story. That spiked it a little bit. Years ago, when I moved to Miami, I felt like I paid my corporate dues and I wanted to do something on my own. I connected my interest in visual stories with marketing and started the Visual Storytelling Institute.

You have a wonderful little formula that the story with the visuals leads to the emotion which leads to the experience that creates those wow moments that people see themselves mirrored in it. Do you have a story of a client you did with this whole journey from story to visual to the emotion and the experience that you could share with us?

Yes. To preface what I do is I operate in three areas and one is training. I developed my Visual Storytelling training framework. I also teach in the business school at the University of Miami Brand Storytelling course. I do consulting, which could be on the brand strategy side or clients looking for the high polish visual storytelling experience like a presentation or animated video and so forth. The last part is thought leadership like yourself, spreading the gospel of visual storytelling to the audience through my podcast, book, webinars, blog and other formats.

To answer your question, I had a client, Cable & Wireless, for example. It’s a major telecom carrier like Verizon that operates in the Caribbean and South America. The VP of customers and the CEO of the company along with the customer experience leadership wanted to bring to life their business strategy vision for the following year. They needed our help in creating a wow effect presentation. I had a collaboration with a production studio in Colombia for many years. We created this visual storytelling presentation that positions their CEO as a captain of a cruise ship that’s hopping from island to island, conquering different challenges and their plans on how to remedy that in the following year.

Visual Storytelling: One reason that 70% of startups fail is because they don’t have a vetted story.

We used a group of amazingly talented illustrators that could create this original work from scratch including characters that looks like the presenters on the stage. It was another emotional affinity with the audience. It was super successful. That’s an example of one client that was focused on the consulting part. There are other clients that are looking to train their teams and get them to the next level. In this case, I used my visual story framework, which is a three-phase framework that I go through them.

The problem you’re solving is huge. Statistics and researches show that 70% of startups are failing because there’s no need in the marketplace and they don’t have a vetted story. First of all, let’s describe for people how do you decide or define what a vetted story is so that you can break through the clutter, which is what stories are doing. It’s bypassing all the logical analytical stuff and going to the emotional center. You probably agree with me that people buy emotionally and then back it up with logic.

Exactly. People get all the galore of startups. I don’t think everybody has an exit strategy the next day. Thirty percent of them, according to CB Insights, are failing. The reason for that is they got maybe a bunch of engineers, a founding team that fell in love with their widget. They went to market without varying and making sure that the solution to bring it to the market is a must-have and not a nice to have. What I do in my training especially in the first phase which is story making, the goal is to create your brand narrative statement. We go through a thorough validation process that can dig deeper into what your customer wants or the hero of your story because the customer is positioned as the hero of your story. You need to get into this character deeply. Pick any product, John, that we can use for this example.

Let’s pick lawyers that defend people who have been arrested for drunk driving. That’s a product. They have to figure out a way to stand out against all that clutter.

If I had a client base who’s a lawyer that needs to sell the products and services, they have to realize that what happens here is an interesting dance. Your client or potential prospect comes already with a brand narrative about a story they tell themselves about lawyers. This narrative is comprised of a whole bag of past experiences they carry. Those past experiences are individual stories that either they experience directly or they inherit through a third-party through the news or a friend.

Over time, all these little stories accumulated into a narrative and that narrative about their stand about that law firm services could be either good, neutral or bad. Your job as the law firm’s marketing director is to rewrite that narrative to align with the narrative that the law firm is trying to communicate. The magic happens when you are able to tell a story that can address both what the law firm wants and what your customer wants. That sweet spot that overlaps, I call it the total eclipse area.

[bctt tweet=”Get the brand story to become the customer’s story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

The customer can see themselves mirrored in the message of the brand and that’s where the magic happens. At that point, when your customer can see themselves in your story, your story starts becoming a brand story and becomes their story. That’s the genius of it. If you present a customer story that shows the drinking problem that a lawyer was able to solve and you tell it in a storytelling format, it doesn’t feel salesy. The most important thing is to get rid of all the patterns of the advertising component. You need to tell it as if you’re telling a Netflix short film. It’s neat to feel like you’re tailoring it to your best-trusted friend. That’s the level of communication it needs to be.

Once you communicate a well-thought-out story, in it are meaningful details. That goes back to the title of my book, Total Acuity, the importance of the meaningful details in your story. They’re going to trigger that emotional effects and empathy with your audience because they already lived that experience. Those details you’re talking about happened in their lives or means a lot to them. You can elevate all this to them and then they can say, “You’re talking about my life. This is me you’re talking about.” It then becomes powerful.

What I get you saying is the details paint the picture and the exposition and then you dig deep into the emotions. In the case of being arrested for drunk driving, there’s a lot of stress, shame and guilt. The more you can describe those details then it’s no longer, “We’re pitching you why our law firm is better than another one.” It’s more about, “We understand your pain. We know you.” As opposed to pushing out a bunch of facts and figures about how long you’ve been in business or something like that, that people may not connect to or even realize why that matters to them. “What makes us unique is we understand you better than anyone else,” as opposed to, “We’ve been in business longer than anyone else.” That’s a big shift for most people when they’re thinking of what makes us unique.

You also talked about an origin story, a point of view story and a higher purpose story. Let’s stay in the same genre of an example. There’s an origin story of the founder of the firm and what made them get into this specific niche. The point of view story is what I call the case story, which is where you’re showing that you understand someone’s experience. What I love about what you have here is the higher-purpose story. This is when we tug at the heartstrings and say, “You’re not just another client to us. We want to help you with more than a transactional experience.”

I have a perfect example of this. If you think about the Dove Sketches commercial from 2013, it was the police illustrator that took the profiles of the women. The genius of this commercial or visual story I call it is because there was no product mentioned or anything. The Ogilvy Toronto team did an amazing job researching before they did it. They found that 98% of the target audience for this product had low self-esteem. Meaning, only 2% thought they’re looking great. They came up with this whole story but the big message out of it was that you’re much more beautiful than you think you are. This is a high-purpose message to bring in this context and a lot of people were able to relate to it, “Maybe I’m too hard on me.”

There was no brand mentioned. It’s all only focusing on that high-end, high-purpose message. Before they did their research with focus groups, they found out that this is the most dominant pattern they came across and they use that in that story and that’s why it worked not only in terms of exposure but also in terms of doubling their sales in the following year. This is a classic example I always use in my programs.

Visual Storytelling: Sometimes you’re sitting on a gold mine by just the fact that you are creating original content.

I’ve seen that amazing campaign where the women are looking in the mirror and they’re not pushing the product of Dove at all but more about self-esteem, love yourself at any size and age. You emotionally connect to the brand in that way. Let’s take a little deep dive in here about Total Acuity. It’s filled with tales of marketing morals to help you create richer visual brand stories. You talked a little bit about how important it is to have meaningful details and get people to see themselves in there. The thing I want to ask you about is you have actionable lessons from the stories. Can you pick one of the lessons from a story that we could learn about and get us incentivized to want to do a deeper dive into the book?

A little background about this book, I chose a different approach from the typical business book that has interviews with the experts and tons of stats. What I tried to do is walk the walk of the original storytelling. The format of this book is a collection of short stories and personal stories that happened to me in real life. Anybody can relate to them. Every short story had a clear visual storytelling principle. It was supported by a photo and a visual. It’s digestible and easy to read. If you look at the book cover, it’s following the tradition of the medieval illuminated scripts that are known and famed for their attention to detail. That’s another aspect to complete the theme of the Total Acuity, the importance of details.

You got the foreword written by the head of Brand Studio at Microsoft. That’s great social proof. A big company like Microsoft using and endorsing this mindset certainly says a lot about the importance of what you’re doing.

I appreciate that. The origin of this book came from my weekly newsletter where I would share stories and things that happened to me with the connecting the principal. Over time, I accumulated lots of stories like that. I figured, “Why not create a book out of it?” That’s how it came about. Also, the lesson here for the readers is sometimes you’re sitting on a goldmine by the fact that you are creating original content. If you can repackage it in a new format, you can create a whole different audience for it.

The takeaway here is repurposing your content allows you to reach a different audience who prefers to consume content in a different format. Within the book, you have these actionable things that people can do. Is crafting the story one of the takeaways?

It’s a variety of things, things that you want to pay attention to, dialogues with different characters on mundane things. “I had to replicate my key for my house.” I’m telling that story. It’s mundane and ordinary stories that anybody can relate to but each one has this trigger that you can apply to the marketing company.

[bctt tweet=”In marketing, your customer is the hero of the story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

One of your latest blogs that is important to take a look at is the importance of regional marketing and dialing into the local nuances. For example, even within the state of California, different lifestyles, types of personalities, even attire between Northern and Southern California. Your company may not have a huge budget to adapt a campaign and be running the same radio campaign across the whole state. Is there anything you would recommend that they maybe do tweak?

In this particular podcast with the Regional Marketing Director of Alshaya Group based in Dubai, they are bringing major brands into different markets in the Middle East. They needed to adapt the brand positioning at each market because each market has its own sensibilities. It makes sense if you’re a global company with multiple markets that are completely different from each other. The golden rule still stands here. You got to do your own research about that particular community and understand what is going to surface up to the top as the main dominant trends.

In terms of concerns, doubts and culture, there’s more you need to take into account. Once you have that screening done, you can take your brand that has a global message and then find how you can adapt it to the new market while factoring in all the different things that you’ve heard from your research. It then becomes easier to comprehend. Sometimes you could have conflicting messages. In one market, you’re not allowed to say this or the other. You need to do your research and find out the differences so you’re not going to burn any brand equity by not considering these aspects.

A quick recap of all the different ways people can work with you, you’ve got your wonderful book, Total Acuity. You’ve got a course on visual storytelling. They can listen to your podcast, which is Visual Storytelling Today. The website is VisualStoryTell.com. The consulting is where you come in and do a deep dive with companies on how do we get your visuals to tell a story that matches the overall brand and make those visuals unique.

The speaking engagement is another fun part of my practice. I enjoy speaking about these and educating a new generation of marketers and mentoring them.

Especially when you’re speaking, you have all those fun visuals to show.

Visual Storytelling: The magic happens when you are able to tell a story that can address both what the client wants and what your customer wants. It’s called sweet spot the total eclipse.

I also show my original visuals that I had created. Now, we have such friendly visualization tools that anybody can pick up like Canva and others. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t try things yourself. There’s more authenticity value if you create your original work versus outsourcing it to something that looks super polished and impersonal. Here’s a simple example. I started using the Notes app on my iPad to do some simple sketching, colors, text, all with the stylists. I use that sometimes as real content to communicate principles. It’s me creating this. It’s not a graphic designer. It’s not high-end artists. Sometimes the personal voice that you can communicate through your creations has a much more powerful authenticity and humanity to it.

Going back to the law firm example, oftentimes we see sketches of people in a courtroom because they can’t take their picture. Giving people a sense of an illustration of what the experience might be if they’ve never been to court before can also pull them in a little bit going, “I’ve seen some of this on TV. Here’s their version of it.” Even maybe positioning yourself as the Sherpa for the clients.

It’s personalizing the experience. It also has an artistic value. To me, it looks like original work.

Any last thoughts you want to leave us with Shlomi?

When you think about your visual storytelling strategy, always do your homework first and the proper research. You’re a storytelling curator so you need to know how to craft your characters especially your hero, your customer. Get to know them and live in their world. Once you have that, start using a strong brand narrative that you vetted with the audience. There is confusion a lot in the market between the narrative and the story. The narrative is a short statement that spells out your brand promise and why people should care in the first place. It works like a GPS to guide all your supporting stories that you are going to communicate and to bring to life your brand narrative in essence.

Focus on stories that make sense to the specific platform you’re publishing, Facebook versus the webinar. Also, to your buyer persona but also the stage in the buyer’s journey. There are different stories at the top of the funnel on the first touch versus the mid-funnel. These are few basic tips that you might want to think about when you’re creating your visual storytelling strategy. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. I’m also on LinkedIn. I’ll be more than happy to chat.

You’ve got many gems here and it generates one last question, which is different stories depending on where you are in the funnel. If you’re starting your story with some humor, let’s say a commercial or an ad to pull people in, I would think that person would expect that to be part of the culture, the conversation and the visuals so that it’s all one cohesive vibe. Otherwise, it seems like a big disconnect if you don’t have consistency across all of the messaging.

Part of the exercise is when you are reaching what I call the second phase in my framework story visualizing where you are developing your content strategy. You also want to think about what are the themes. What is the brand voice that you want to communicate to the outside world? That goes back to your comment about humor and about this type of vibe that people should feel. When you think about Nike or GoPro, for example, these are brands that no matter where you see their stories, you know this is them. It’s a recognizable experience. That type of overall content theme, you want to also instigate into your strategy.

Thanks. The book is Total Acuity. Visual Storytelling Institute, be sure to check it out and learn how to enhance your stories with visuals.

Thank you, John. It’s been great.

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David Stewart: Looking Towards Success And Beyond Age

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

25.08.21

Both success and challenges will come to you regardless if you are a young student or a businessman on the verge of retirement. In that case, there’s no excuse for one not to look beyond age and embrace a learner’s mindset. Business consultant David Stewart joins John Livesay to share his inspiring journey of working with different companies for improvement and growth. He talks about his most interesting stories and takeaways when helping others build their teams, create a diverse community, and embrace stress as a springboard toward the next level. David also explains how his engineering education and career as a professional photographer allowed him to connect well with people in a precise way. By understanding others no matter their generation, he eventually found himself starting the publication Ageist.

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Listen to the podcast here

David Stewart: Looking Towards Success And Beyond Age

David Stewart is our guest. He is all about breaking down boundaries. After a certain age, a lot of people think, “I’m too old to learn something new.” He said, “Hard is not impossible,” and his whole philosophy is, “I want a bigger box.” Find out what he means. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is David Stewart, who is the Founder and face of AGEIST. He is a passionate champion of the modern 50-plus lifestyle and the leading authority on the mindset and aspirations that drive this influential demographic. As the go-to reference on people in our age group, he frequently shares his expertise and insights with major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, CNN and more. He has consulted for a wide range of Fortune 500 brands and businesses. He was the keynote speaker at The Global Wellness Summit in Singapore in October 2019. Before he launched AGEIST, David was an award-winning photographer specializing in portraits of people that combined his engineer’s precision with a refined design and visual aesthetic. David, welcome to the show.

It’s great to be here, John.

There is so much there. I want to ask you questions about how did you come up with the name of this online publication and how did you get into photography. I’m going to let you take us back to your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood when you got your first camera. You can start the story wherever you want, but I’m always looking for how a passion that became a profession happened, as well as maybe some lessons that your parents passed on to you that have influenced your story.

The thread that goes through my life story is I want a bigger box essentially. The box was always too small. When I was a kid, my grandfather was into photography and I was given a camera, those polaroid Swinger cameras. Before that had a Brownie camera. I was young like five or something. My entire life, I love cameras and photography. I grew up in this small town in upstate New York, a lovely, idyllic place, and I never fit in. I felt like a one of one. I felt like I was from Mars or something. My parents love them to death, but my dad would say like, “You are not very smart essentially.” I was super curious. I was always into discovery. It often involved disassembling things that often he did not want to be disassembled. I was labeled as being not very smart.

My mom is all about being average. Mom loves average because she came out of depression. It was all about to keep it even, be like the neighbors, don’t stand out. A few years ago, John, I was going through some stuff and I saw standardized tests of mine when I was a kid. They are all like 99 percentile. If you had a kid like that now, you would do something different than what has handled me. In high school, I learned to be quiet because I realized anything I said, I was going to be ridiculed and teased for the kind of clothes I wore, the music I listened to. It’s this farm town in upstate New York. They are nice people but I was out of the box.

What happens is I don’t do that. I do great on standardized tests but in high school, my grades are not that good because I shut down. Anytime I opened my mouth and share anything, I’m going to get beat up so I don’t do that. The guidance counselor said to me, “We think you should go to technical school. Go to a two-year college because we don’t think you can handle it.“ I was like, “Let me show you.” I did the hardest thing I can. I went to engineering school for two years. I was on the Dean’s List. Going to engineering school, for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s like joining the Marines. It’s still the hardest thing I have ever done. It’s so demanding. They are not like the PC kind. They are always yelling at you like, “Sir, you should re-evaluate your career alternatives because this is not for you.” It was intense but after a couple of years, I realized the box was too small. I didn’t want to be an engineer because it was too focused. I wanted to learn more. I get a degree in Political Science from Boston University. Because I had a background in Engineering, which was full-on intense. Liberal arts school was nothing.

[bctt tweet=”I want a bigger box.” username=”John_Livesay”]

At the same time, I got a job. I worked at Fiorucci. At night, I went to photography school. I started studying photography. When I was 22, I graduated from school. I have a little temp job. As only a 22-year-old can do, I declared myself a photographer. I say it, therefore, I am. It worked out. My first ad in Vogue was at 24 and then by 26, I was living in Paris. I was working for the magazines. I moved back to New York, which was hard. All these other places you have lived, but if it’s New York, you have to start again. I was doing that thing and then I started doing advertising. I was doing pretty well. Then I moved back to Paris when I was about 40. I was commuting to Paris, New York, LA, Tokyo doing a lot of advertising, then I got sick.

What happened was when I was 49, I developed this weird auto-immune thing. I spent the better part of a year in a hospital as a science experiment. That caused some re-evaluation of the lifestyle I was living. There were consequences to that. I dialed that back a lot. I moved to Los Angeles and kept doing advertising. The way it works in advertising photography, your job is to carry out a vision that someone has created for you. I would go in and say, “This is great. We can do the light. We could do casting like this. This is the vibe but are we targeting the right people here? Is this the right message that we want to put out?” They would look at me and they would say, “You are thinking too much.”

It would be like asking the model in a fashion shoot if she likes the clothes. It’s like, “That is not your job. Stay in your lane.”

It was like, “You are here to take the picture.” I needed a bigger box so I started AGEIST when I was 56. AGEIST began as everything in my life begins, as a curiosity. It was an investigation. I thought people like you and I were living in this vital, vivid, forward-leaning way. Everything I see about myself and my age cohort out in the media is this medicalized and infantilized like, “Grab your bag of meds. You are not going to make it out the door.” I didn’t know anybody like that.

All the pharma and the ARP and I thought, “This is bananas. I’m not scared. I feel strong. What all is this about?” We did a lot of investigation on that and then we started publishing this little newsletter to 50 of our friends, with the grand global ambition of them remaining our friends. We started this thing and what we are is a branding consultancy with a media arm. The media arm is what everybody sees. We love our community. We love our social. We publish like demons. We have a super high bar with who we profile, the visuals and how it looks. We keep it smart and challenging. Because we have the social and this publishing, we are a consultancy. We are best in class because we have a minute-to-minute interaction with this cohort that everybody wants to know about and they are not very good at speaking.

In the consultancy, we do some large research like quant analysis and qual stuff. We produce content for a big sneaker company and a big car company. We help them with their messaging. We help them to understand our people and then connect the dots to whatever their brand values are. Because we are of the age that we are and a lot of their creatives are awesome people, they are so smart and clever, but they can’t time travel twenty years into the future. It’s impossible and asking them to do it is unfair.

Beyond Age: It would take 10 years to really learn how to use a camera and learn the technology and another 10 years to develop a point of view.

When we were twenty and somebody said they were 40, I can’t even fathom what that is. Let alone 60. I don’t know what your psychographics are in any way, shape or form, and that 60 now is different than it was even many years ago. What you are doing is allowing brands to realize that there is a lot of disposable income in 50-plus people. If they don’t see themselves in the stories that are being created by the brands, they tune out, whether it’s a luxury car, a cruise ship line or whatever else you might be trying to sell. You bridge that gap between what today’s affluent, healthy, 50-plus people are doing and figure out a way for brands to connect with them emotionally where they are. The people who are working for those brands are not that age for the most part.

It’s almost impossible for them to get inside that person’s head. Focus groups aren’t going to do it. Because you’re doing AGEIST, you are hearing firsthand what people’s motivations are, challenges, what lights them up now, why they want to make a difference, whatever is going on. That is unprecedented in a lot of ways because if the old way of doing it is to get a corporate job, stay there for 30-plus years, get the gold watch, retire and then maybe golf and travel. That is about as detailed as it ever got. Nobody had a model of people staying relevant. Every once in a while, you’ll read about David Gary is 92 and too old to retire. There are a few outliers like you were as a child, the Picassos of the world. I feel that people who are creative are the ones that stay curious and still produce content that keeps them young, relevant and vibrant.

It’s the people who, “If I’m not doing this, if I’m an accountant or whatever it is, and that stops, I don’t know who I am anymore,” where they lose a sense of self. Yet you are able to say there is a whole group of people that are creative, staying creative and connecting all those dots. You mentioned being young in your twenties and breaking into all these competitive industries, advertising, Paris. What was it you had? Was it your tech skills as an engineer that made you be able to shoot? Back in those days, because I remember taking a photojournalism class, it was still in the dark light room with a lab. Nobody was shooting in raw back then. There was no digital and yet you always need some technical expertise for the right lighting. Do you think you had an eye that other people didn’t, that your pictures popped? It’s like a model, you show your portfolio and you either get the gig or you don’t. You are competing against the Bruce Webers of the world and Michael Croft. There are a lot of well-known fashion photographers. What do you think it is that you brought to the table at such a young age that made people give you a shot?

Back then, it was transparency films. It wasn’t even negative films. The table stake is you have to be able to come out of whatever the assignment is with something usable. That required a certain level of technical expertise. As you said, nobody was shooting in raw. There wasn’t even an autofocus camera. The exposure, the color and all of that stuff, you have to be able to do that. There was a certain moat around that, which was good for us back then, which evaporated with digital. That was the beginning. I’m pretty good with that stuff like chemistry, optical camera stuff. I was able to have some points of view. It’s very difficult to have a developed point of view at 24.

Certain photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Bruce Weber, those people are known for a look. You probably didn’t have a look developed, but you were able to capture ads. You are working under pressure because if the things are out of film or something is out of focus, it’s a lot of do-overs.

Because of my engineering background, I have a good understanding of light refraction, light reflection, how things happen on people’s skin, how shadows fall, what kind of light. Those were easy for me. It was layered on top of that point of view. Back then we used to say, “It would take ten years to learn how to use a camera and learn the technology and another ten years to develop a point of view.” There weren’t any top-level photographers under 40 back then because the technical stuff took a while to get good at that. Maybe they thought I was cute or something. I got to say in that world, it counts.

[bctt tweet=”Keep learning at every age.” username=”John_Livesay”]

If you are an architect, an interior designer, a photographer, a stylist, you have to look like you stepped out of the pages of the magazine. Even as a salesperson selling advertising for Condé Nast, there was a certain level of expectation that your appearance would match the brand in some way. The line when I was selling advertising for W was “Everybody puts on clothes, but not everybody gets dressed. The people who read W get dressed.” Even if it’s the same look every day, whether it’s the black sweater of Steve Jobs, the hoodie with the startups, it’s an intentional statement. That people realize your talents alone is not enough. This is true in everything. People want to work with people that they like, trust, get along with, aren’t divas and dependable.

All of that at a young age is sometimes difficult, but if you are hungry enough, then you stand up. Here is where I think your story has an interesting twist. Many people would think, “I’ve made it, I’m in Paris and I’m this. Now I moved to New York and I got to start over? Forget it.” Ego would kick in so much. Yet you get in with the ultimate in-crowd that Andy Warhol interview days. That is the ultimate pinnacle of creativity. I have taken a tour of the museum in Pittsburgh. It’s so prolific like a Picasso of creativity and everybody wanting to be in that Studio-54 vibe. Even people who were born way after that still want to hear about what is that lifelike. You from a small town were able to figure out a way to get behind that line of not the red curtain, but they have those things where you can’t get past the VIP ropes. They opened the rope for you and said, ”You are one of us.”

As you said, I was from this little farm town. I had a very high level of naivete. Going into interviews and meeting these people was like, “Okay, whatever.” It’s like, “You there with funny white hair.” “Okay, what do you want me to do?” I remember I had a meeting with the art director of French Vogue and we were talking. I have no idea what the consequences of that could be. He was like, “I just liked him. He was a cool guy.” We were talking about pictures, whatever.

You are comfortable in your own skin. I would say that would be the big takeaway because a lot of people, especially when the stakes get high, they get uncomfortable. They get all in their head worrying about if they are likable or enough. I don’t think you’ve had any of that going on. You weren’t attached to the outcomes is what I’m hearing.

Pretty much. These people were highly sophisticated. They were at the pinnacle of defining style and fashion at that point. I’m a kid from a farm town in upstate New York. There is so much that I don’t know. People would set up these meetings with me, “We need to meet this person.” I would come in as my normal bouncy self and be like, “How are you? Let’s do this thing. This will be fun.” There was no filter. I don’t care.

You were speaking at The Global Wellness Summit. That topic is very important. You had your own health challenges but people just assume that as we get older, it’s like a car, you got to replace some parts. It’s a lot of maintenance and things you took for granted that you now can’t. What was your talk about? What was your insight?

Beyond Age: Through a diverse ecosystem of different ideas and points of view, a more cultural breakdown is possible.

A lot of my appeal on stage is my physicality. I’m a spunky guy. I’m 62. I come in bouncing up on stage and it’s the same naivete. It’s like, “How’s everybody?” It’s 700 C-level people and government officials and stuff there. I’ll start talking and I say, “I’m 62.” The whole crowd is like, “You are 62? How did that happen?” I tell them, “This is how you do this.” I think that your analogy of the car is correct. There is more that we have to do to maintain ourselves. We have to be more conscious and direct. I don’t eat anything like I did when I was 25. I don’t exercise that way. That doesn’t mean that everything comes to a crashing halt at 50. Do you see the Twyla Tharp thing on PBS? Twyla is 82. She is totally, single-minded, creatively obsessed. This is what someone 82 can look like and do if they take care of themselves all the time.

Dancers constantly moving and keeping everything well-oiled. It completely gives you the car analogy there. Who has been some of your favorites that you have photographed? Do you have a story or two of some people that you photographed that were like, “That was an incredible shoot or I’m so proud of that picture?”

I used to do a lot of work for the New York Times magazine. They would hire me to do portraits. I love doing portraits because I find portraits to have much greater longevity than fashion. Fashion is, to an extent, disposable of the moment.

Bill Cunningham was in the street now, and then the next he will be somewhere else.

I love doing fashion because of the team. It’s super creative and collaborative. Doing that in Paris is like I will probably never be around that tight group of super-focused creative people again. Portraits, you have to quickly understand, John, that the whole mythology in the media that this is a bad, good, great, less good person is not the case. That bad people aren’t that bad. The good people are not that good. A lot of this is a story that is told out there to sell. Partially, in the media business, we do that but I get that.

One of my more memorable stories is with Mr. Mike Tyson. This starts when I’m in Northern California. I’m photographing David Blaine who became my friend. He is an interesting guy. I’m photographing him for the New York Times. My phone rings and it’s The Times. They said, “Can you go to Maui next week to photograph Mike Tyson?” I was like, “Didn’t he eat Evander Holyfield’s ear? Didn’t he just get out of prison?” I was like, “Can’t you give me some nice pretty movie star or something. Why do you always give me the psychopaths?” I talked to Blaine. I said, “Blaine, this thing is going on.” He’s like, “Don’t worry about it. Mike’s cool.”

[bctt tweet=”There’s more that we have to do to maintain ourselves. We have to be more conscious and more directive.” username=”John_Livesay”]

We have this conversation about Mike. He is friends with Michael Jackson and all these funny people. I said, “I will do it.” We go there. It’s Mike’s training. Before the training, he has an interview with FOX Sports. FOX being FOX, what they do is they send a female sportscaster and everybody had been warned. I’m not the interview media. I’m just the photographer so I’m watching all this. She gets right up in his face and she says, “The first question, why do you hate women?” He’s like, “Huh?” It doesn’t stop. She’s inches away from him. “Why did you rape that woman? Why do you hate women?” Mike handles this for few minutes then he snaps.

Mike has two very large, strong guys who pick him up by the arms and hold him because he would have killed her like she would have been dead. Mike is out of his mind. The next two days, I have watched this and I’m like, “Please, God help me.” I’m in my hotel room and you wait until you are summoned to the secret training facility. I get the call and I go to this secret training facility in the front lobby of this outdoor thing. It was filled with very large bleeding men in a state of semi-consciousness. There are about a dozen of them moaning and blood coming out. I look at a conference room where Mike has set up a ring and they’ve got a DJ in there. I watched Mike hit this huge guy with an uppercut so strong, it picks him up and shoots him across the ring, then the guy is out.

Mike continues to train and throws up in the ring. The trainer comes out and says, “Mike’s in a bad mood. I’ve never seen him do this.” I’m thinking, “Please.” Mike comes out. He got a phalanx of guys behind. Mike’s not that big like 5’10. He has a fairly high voice. He comes up to me so I go up. I showed him a Polaroid of what we’re doing. I said, “Mike, we’re doing cover for New York Times magazine. I’m here to photograph you. He’s like, “I got to get a haircut. Come on down to my condo.” I’m thinking, “Okay, let’s do that.” We go down and I met him in his condo. Mike still got his trunks on. Now it’s a big old film camera that I’ve got. I’m an arm’s length away from Mike. He starts running this line of shit on me. He starts with this like, “I’m so bad. I would eat babies. I’m like horrible. You can’t believe the horrible things that go on in my mind.”

This is going on for a while. I realized I have to do something. I need to radically change the dynamic here or I’m not going to get the picture I need. I remember David Blaine so I had this moment. I reached out and I slapped Mike Tyson and I say, “Mike, you aren’t so bad.” I know there are two outcomes here. I will be dead. Mike would kill me. I slapped him right across the arm. I whack him and I say, “You aren’t so bad, Mike.” He looks at me and smiles. He’s like, “You’re okay.” What he was doing was like, “I’m going to mess with the honky journalists.” We got along great and we had this wonderful conversation. Mike is a very unusual human being but I like him. It was memorable.

It also shows how much more is there to take a great portrait than just pushing a click on a camera. There is rapport, finding the right moment, shifting the tone if you have an image of what you want in your head, building trust, all of the things that good entrepreneurs have to do to build their business.

It’s very similar. You need a point of view and the point of view needs to be yours. It needs to be distinctive. This is something that I tell all the companies I work with. I say, “When I’m in your world, I cannot be confused. I’m in anyone else’s world. It needs to be exclusively your world.” If I’m in Nike world, if I drive under their site or some of their stuff, I know exactly where I am. For so many people, that’s hard for them, especially the founders and the CEOs. You want to attract those super fans. You want them to love you more and then they will attract other people.

Beyond Age: Let your good stresses help you adapt and grow.

The other thing that I hear so often around age is all companies aren’t interested in reaching to them, whether it’s through advertising or even having them work there. Yet, there is this growing awareness for the need for diversity, which to me includes people of different ages. Are you seeing people starting to open that up and broadening the definition of what diversity is beyond gender and color to include age or no?

It’s a very loaded difficult thing to do. Let’s talk workforce versus advertising marketing because they are different things. The thing about age is we all age. If we feel negative about older people. What we are doing is we’re feeling negative about ourselves in the future.

We are looking at our own mortality. We don’t want to look at that.

You’re tied up with reproduction and illness, death. That is part of it. We talk to HR people about, where’s the fail here? We interviewed some HR people for big companies. We said, “Listen, talk to me about this. What’s going on? Are you trying to hire older people? Do you want age diversity?” They are like, “Yes because we realized if you have a bunch of twenty-year-olds in a room, they can drive the car fast, but it’s going to end up in the ditch. We need this diverse ecosystem of different ideas and points of view.” What happens is the breakdown is cultural. Generally, the younger people will be the boss. The older person is coming in probably 50, 60, and maybe their boss is 35 or 40. It’s bridging that cultural gap where there’s relatability. It’s something that I tell people who are out there looking for jobs. I say that you need to be in touch with popular culture because that’s how people communicate.

I was calling on Lexus’s ad agency. There were a lot of young girls, 20s, 30s in the media department. I would purposely watch The Bachelor because when I took them to lunch, I could have a conversation about, “Can you believe that?” It’s the willingness to speak that language to be in that currency. Now, it’s video games and Fortnite. It’s an ongoing thing. You have to decide whether you want to embrace it or not. The analogy I had from a friend was some actors made it from silence to talkies and some didn’t. It’s a choice we always face as we embrace new technology and conversations. If you don’t understand the difference between Bitcoin and blockchain, you may not be able to have a conversation with a lot of people. It’s an ongoing thing. I love that a lot. Is there any one myth that you think people have about people over 50 that you’ve been able to bust through your AGEIST publication?

There is a couple. The one is that people can’t learn. People can learn. There is a thing called neuroplasticity. It doesn’t go away. You can learn. I’d never use PowerPoint. I’d heard of it but I’d never seen it. I’d never written anything. All those Microsoft programs, Excel, Word, none of that, Google analytics, nothing. You just learn it. People can learn and I think this is on both sides of the age equation. The people our age have been, “No, I can’t learn that. The old dog, new tricks. I can’t do that.” That’s a cop-out. You can do that. It’s hard. The people on the other side are like, “They will never be able to learn.”

[bctt tweet=”Total comfort leads to total decay.” username=”John_Livesay”]

One of the ways to pop that bubble is exactly what you did. You immediately say, “I get what’s going on in the culture. These things are going on. Let’s have a conversation about The Bachelor or whatever.” They are like, “That is interesting. This guy’s cool.” That is one of the big things. What we do is we provide aspirational, inspirational and attainable role models where we say, “This is possible.” You may not want to live like us. That is okay. That’s fine. You can do whatever you want to do, but if you do want to, hear somebody and look at what they are doing. This is how they did it. It’s possible.

It breaks up the need. If there is no role model, then you have a belief possibly that it’s impossible. If someone has broken that mold, you say, “There is a precedent that’s been set that I can still do X at this age.” It opens up your own possibilities. Even if you don’t have to become Twyla Tharp, they can still say, “Maybe I can take a dance class, even if I have never danced” or whatever it is that keeps them moving. I love both of those so much. Any last thoughts or a favorite quote you want to leave us with?

Hard is not impossible. It’s just hard. The other side of that is total comfort leads to total decay. Adaptation requires stress and challenge. What I like to say is we looked at our parents and our grandparents. They got those La-Z-Boy chairs. They sat in front of the TV and ate donuts, look what happened. That didn’t turn out so well. As we get older, we get used to this idea of what we should be seeking as constant comfort. Stress has a bad name but stress is how we adapt. Learning is stressful. Meeting new people is stressful. Going to the gym is stressful. These are all good stresses that will help you adapt and you can.

The website is WeAreAGEIST.com. David, thanks for sharing your passion for life and all of your wonderful insights on how this demographic will continue to stay relevant and ways that everyone can not fear if they are not there yet.

It’s been so great to be here. Thank you.

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