Avoid Making This Pitching Mistake With Glenn Hemanes

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

05.08.20

The wow factor is what you want to have not only from what you’re saying but from the images you are showing. But what does it take to wow your audience? In this episode, John Livesay is joined by Glenn Hemanes, the Creative Director and Founder of Glenn’s Designs, who shares some tips and secrets that can create that wow factor without overwhelming, emphasizing a usual pitching mistake that you should try to avoid. They also tackle why consistency is essential and how it should be across all of your platforms, as well as how you can get that perfect angle and the best mindset for your Zoom calls and deliver your successful pitch.

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Avoid Making This Pitching Mistake With Glenn Hemanes

Our guest is Glenn Hemanes, who is one of the best graphic designers I’ve ever worked with in my career. He has this ability to take your concepts and turn it into visual images that give you that wow factor. He did my slides for my TEDx Talk and designed the visuals for my website. We talked here about what it takes to get people to say, “Wow,” when they listen to you present anything. He shares his secrets and insights so that you can start to imagine yourself giving a presentation where people are wowed by the visuals, but not overwhelmed by them.

Glenn has an amazing career from his days at Apple computer working with big brands like Coca-Cola and creating not just visual images, but visual images that give our clients the wow factor. The wow factor is what you want to have not only from what you’re saying, but what images you are showing. Much like in the fashion industry, which is where I had come from, you would see sometimes celebrities on the red carpet and somebody would say, “Jennifer Aniston, looks great in that dress.” Sometimes you’d see a comment like, “I think the dress is wearing the celebrity.”

That similar analogy in how your visual images, your slides that you’re using when you present anything, they either complement what you’re saying and enhanced it, if you’re using Glen or they take away from you. People are so into your slides, that they’re distracted by what you say. One of the biggest mistakes we’re going to cover that you see time and again is too many words on a slide and the real kiss of death is reading the words on your slide. We all know how to read, but the last thing we want is someone reading to us when we’re giving a presentation. If you’ve made these mistakes or are currently making these mistakes, please stop. There’s no need to do that anymore.

In the first five minutes, look at all the value you have gotten. A free sneak peek of my book and two of the big mistakes that people are making, too many words on the slide and reading. Let’s get right through it as far as what other things we’re going to share and show you. If you want a free sneak at Better Selling Through Storytelling, text this number, 66866 to the word Pitch and you’ll get that. You can see right off the bat a visual image. It’s the book cover like the slides that Glenn creates all take in a lot of different visual images. A book cover has to pull people in and you’ll notice how the ladder looks three-dimensional based on the shadowing. Also, colors are a big part of your brand. Glenn, I would love you to comment on what goes into creating a logo, creating colors for someone’s brand. What mistakes you might see that people don’t think about?

First of all, for the introductions and for the opportunity. I’m looking forward to having this conversation with you of something that we talk about all the time. It’s nice to have a little bit of an audience. There are many facets to having a brand and then communicating that brand in various different ways like book covers or slides. There are things that take into consideration. You have your color palette and you have three colors that are the primary colors of this. By having a limited color palette, you create a theme. Your theme are the gray, black, green, and blue green.

Having a book cover that has dimension to it is one of those elements that keep people engaged. When I talk about doing presentation decks and crafting it, it’s all about keeping people engaged on several different levels. As far as incorporating the branding with your book cover, having a visual image that keeps people engaged, color and font style are the three primary things that are going to be reflected in your book. It is also reflected in any other marketing material that people are going to see.

If anybody goes to my website, which is my name, JohnLivesay.com, you will see the design that Glenn created that completely ties in with the colors and the fonts that match the book. That’s an important thing to take away. Your brand must be consistent across all platforms, whether it’s a book, a website, LinkedIn profile, anything you put out into the world. People instantly recognize the Coca-Cola brand for reasons. We know that font and color red, all of that continues.

Let’s talk about another thing that you helped me with, which is my TEDx Talk. I have a story that I opened my TEDx talk with as well as my book, where I talk about being eighteen years old and being a lifeguard. That photo did not exist of me, that I could find. My mom was able to tell us whether this is what I look like when I was eighteen. I thought it sure came close. I literally describe in my talk a picture that I’m eighteen years old and sitting on my lifeguard perch. I’ve got mirror sunglasses on my face, the zinc oxide on my nose, and a whistle in my mouth. You can see how Glenn created this image of someone who had a face structure similar to mine. Tell us the secret of what you did for the zinc oxide.

I looked up several images to try to find as close as possible to the way you described yourself. He didn’t have any sunscreen on his nose. I use a lot of Photoshop. It was a matter of applying it. I don’t know if I’d put it on my own nose. I wanted to make sure it looked like it was applied and not just like a white watch. There was some translucency and it may or may not be able to see it here, but when it’s blown up on stage, those details are important to make sure that it comes across that sale. It sells and doesn’t distract.

The other element is when you’re giving a talk, especially if it’s virtual, you need to have some animation going on so that the people’s eyes keep looking at it and they’re not going to get distracted. During this particular story, I talk about a girl jumping off the high dive, which I think was her first time doing it. She suddenly goes under water and I start counting 5, 6 seconds and that’s two seconds too long. The fact that you were able to have this pop up, it enhances the drama of the story because we see how fast a second goes. This animation is something I don’t see any other speaker is using. It’s a big part of why Coca-Cola, who has all the access to all the resources possible decided to hire you for this expertise because they had seen this in action. They said, “That’s great. That enhances your story. Who did that for you?” Tell us where you learn how to do this.

That was quite an opportunity. That was fantastic. Without tracking too far back, as an artist and as a designer, I’ve always tried to make the world make sense to myself. I’m in a process of always translating things for myself. What I discovered is that as I make things make sense to myself, it helps other people understand. I use my imagination. When you’re telling a story, my head gets filled with images. I think like this is something that I’m thinking of and the hopes that other people are thinking of the same thing. Having something that immediately goes right to somebody’s imagination is the key. The shorter that distance, the better between them thinking of it and scan it.

[bctt tweet=”Animation and timing can give your presentations the WOW factor.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I engaged to your work again because I had a virtual keynote coming up from $1 billion high-tech healthcare company. I wanted something customized that would relate to everybody feeling like they were in quarantine. I picked the clip from Tom Hanks’ Cast Away movie. I was able to open my talk after my initial story saying, “How many of you feel like this. You’re on this isolated island and you’re trying to get your technology or something else to work. God forbid, your Apple computer goes down. The Apple stores are closed. We get frustrated like Tom Hanks. We just want to throw it all away.” Sometimes out of this disruption, innovation happens. This is where your real magic comes in. We all can relate to what it feels like to be that frustrated. You have the Wilson ball animate onto the movie clip. People were blown away. That’s unexpected and it pulls them in even more. Speak to how you came up with that.

It’s interesting you touched on the unexpected part. That’s the other part that’s fun to play with. I try to make every slide not like the last. I like to mix it up. There is a balance between having continuity to make sure that it looks like it’s following the same brand, thought, theme, but also I try to mix in as much unexpected things. Having the ball come in at the end was a fun like I thought of it and the challenge is whether or not I can pull it off. Ninety percent of the time, the graphics and the effects that I create, I try to keep them within a keynote to PowerPoint. It was a PowerPoint effect. I was able to use this animation in putting the ball and having it roll in. It’s a matter of timing in trying to figure all that out.

The timing is everything because we saw him put the bloody hand on the ball. I as the speaker have the control of when as I’m speaking that disruption becomes innovation. That’s not just a movie clip. That brings it to life. The other thing I talk about and that people remember from my talk are this concept of we have a choice. Do we want to be an ostrich and bury our head in the sand? Try to forget what’s going on and let me know when it’s all over. You can see in the animation how that ostrich was actually moving or do we want to be like the peacock? The peacock makes itself bigger when a predator comes and steps up to the plate. This choice of do I want to be an ostrich or a peacock? It’s not just a photo of the peacock fully open. We’re watching it open as I speak to that combination and I speak to the timing of the animation. That’s what makes it all work. What are your thoughts when you hear my thought process around how I time my speaking to your animation?

I love that you did that because I didn’t see out after we’ve gone back and forth and putting it together that you’re delivering a part of it. It was an unexpected thing that the ostrich was one. It’s a still graphic, but it moved its head out of the way. It was fun how you incorporated that. To go a little backstory, I started when slides were like this. I’m dating myself, but there was a revolution that happened when the digital projector came in and when people were able to show things directly from the computer instead of having it be a static slide. I try to take advantage of the opportunity that we’re working with multimedia platforms. We’re working with something that has motion, animation, music and sound effects at our disposal. The art is in how it’s used and helps enhance the story and the message.

We talked about some of the big mistakes people make when they present too many words on a slide and reading from the slide. The big problem that I’m solving for people who have to sell themselves or sell a product or service is this old way of thinking about yourself. This concept of when people get to know, like, and trust you, then they want to work with you and hire you. When Glenn and I were discussing this concept and the problem, I said, “Glenn, I’ve come up with this premise that the order is completely wrong.”

I watch what Glenn did. It’s not about getting people to know, like, and trust you because what that does is if people think, “You have to know me first, then let me vomit a bunch of information on you and dump a bunch of stats. You know me and my company.” That’s not at all how people want to relate to you or buy from you. I said, “The order is wrong. We need to flip it.” He literally flipped it for me. I said, “We start at the gut level.”  The trust factor that the handshake came about to show we didn’t have a weapon in our hands. We need to build trust through social proof, eye contact, all that good stuff and then it goes to the heart, “Do I like you?” That’s where empathy comes in. Finally, it goes to the head where people are thinking, “Will this work for me?”

If you’re going to tell a story, which is my whole premise. The better you tell stories, the better success you have in your career. The people need to see themselves in your story. That’s the question they’re asking themselves, “Will this work for me?” If you’ve described a story of someone you’ve helped through your product, your service, then they see themselves in the story and they have that answered. Glenn, speak to us about how you came up with these icons and the colors as you can see, because you never heard me give the talk using your graphics. I described what I was going to say and then you created this. You can see what a collaborative process it is to create visuals that match your speaking, topic and message.

I love the way your mind works. You’re always thinking of these things and how to read message and explain things. That’s why I love working with you. This particular side was one that I pulled from the investor decks that I create. A lot of investor decks need to be short and to the point. People need to see things and use a lot of iconography. Some people get it and understand it right away. That was the inspiration for this slide. I came up with icons that I felt will match and were appropriate for the particular words that we were using to describe this process.

Obviously, red for the heart. It’s all subliminal but it all works and registers. This particular visual is something that I talk about and you’ll see it in the sneak PDF. Where do people see you on this ladder? A lot of salespeople are always worried about, “This person is 90% likely to buy from me, maybe 50% or 20%,” but nobody thinks of themselves as a percentage. Flipping the script, we need to start showing empathy. Where do people see us on this ladder? Are we invisible? They’ve never heard of us? Are we insignificant, which is even worse? Are we stuck at this interesting rung of the ladder? How many of you had conversations with clients?

They go, “I’m interested, send me the information.” You then have this endless loop of people saying they’re interested and they never take any action. I describe this as being stuck at the friend zone at work with people. People are interested and yet that’s only halfway up the ladder. We need to say or do something that intrigues them enough to want to know more, even in a good elevator pitch. Finally, when you’re at the top of this, this is where you become irresistible and these are your best clients. They share information. They talk about you to people. Here’s the secret, the better you tell a story, the better other people will share your story and that’s where you have them at your irresistible rung of the ladder.

The next up is this concept of what happens when you bore people? You have no emotional connection and I tell people they need to stack their moments of certainty. The best way to do that is through a story. If you think of Lady Gaga, she certainly resonates confidence. Here’s an exercise for everybody to do. Write down two times in your life when you knew you nailed something. You got a job offer, a sale, or you got somebody to go out with you a second time. Those are the moments you want to stack in your head before you get nerves up. The goal is not to get rid of those butterflies in your stomach, but to get the butterflies to fly information. The best way to do that is to stack your moments of certainty. You’re in control of what you’re putting in your head, not the fear thoughts of it. Do you have any comments on that, Glenn, about confidence and things I’ve worked with you on?

Pitching Mistake: Having something that immediately goes right to somebody’s imagination is the key, and the shorter that distance, the better between them thinking of it and actually scanning it.

You want to know about hand gestures.

Especially if you’re on a camera. Make your hand gesture is here and not down here.

Is it a sign of confidence when you’re using hand gestures?

Yes. It gets the nervous energy out of your stomach and into the room. Make gestures that make sense, that tell a story, not just gesturing for gesturing purposes, where you want to emphasize something. You have to have the right mindset before you tell a story. You want to stack your moments of confidence and make sure that you remember another time you told a story where it landed and people remember it, especially when you’re trying out a new story. Everyone does have a story. The problem is a lot of people panic and think they don’t.

I encourage people to think about this, what happened to you in your life where you learned a lesson? What’s a big mistake you made and you learned a lesson? That’s two huge sources of telling your story. This is one of Glenn’s masterpieces in my humble opinion. This concept of a case study has been around for decades where salespeople will go in and present, “Here’s another client we helped and here’s the facts and the figures.” I again tell people, “That’s not enough anymore. You need to turn a boring case study full of facts and figures into a compelling case story.”

When I’m giving a presentation and the visuals do that, what do you think happens to people’s mind? They go, “Wizard of Oz.” I don’t want to be the black and white Kansas speaker or salesperson. I want to be all that excitement of something new. We’re on this yellow brick road journey together of telling you an amazing case story. Glenn, share with us what inspired you to do this? I said, “Give me some visuals on turning a case study into a case story,” and look what he created.

There was a reference that you had to the Wizard of Oz earlier in the presentation. I took a segment out. It was the resolution part of telling a story. Dorothy was back home and telling everybody else, “You were here,” and. “You were there.” That was the inspiration I thought. That’s a story. It starts out with black and white. You mentioned about the importance of lots of the things that we both do. It is subliminal. People aren’t necessarily aware of it. Even things turning from color to black and white, you have an emotional reaction to that, even if you may not be conscious of it.

Moments of certainty, marquee. You write down 2 or 3 times when you knew you nailed it. Hopefully, I gave you enough examples of what those moments of certainty are. You put that in your head before you go present. That’s what you want to be stacking. Your moments of certainty. It’s almost like an air traffic controller when all the planes are flying, has to stack airplanes. You’re stacking your moments of certainty with a feeling, “I felt confident, inspired, exhilarated.” Put all those feelings together. The next time you have to do something outside of your comfort zone.

Sony, wants to know when you hear stories, how can we make our stories more trustworthy? First of all, make them authentic. I tell the story of meeting Michael Phelps. I’m happy to share that story as an example. When I tell that story, I show a picture of me with Michael Phelps. I don’t make people want to go, “You didn’t really meet him.” There’s a picture of it. The story about Michael Phelps is I was selling advertising for a high fashion magazine and Speedo was in my territory. They were coming out with a line of sportswear. I said to them, “Would you consider advertising?” They go, “No, we’re going to run in a fitness magazine.” I said, “What if?” It taps people into their right brain where the imagination lives.

I said, “What if we treated your sportswear like it was high fashion? We could have a fashion show around a hotel pool. You could invite Michael Phelps because he’s on your payroll as a spokesperson. We get all the press for it.” They go, “We liked that idea.” They were intrigued enough to do it. I got to meet Michael Phelps and as a former lifeguard, you can imagine what a thrill that was. I went up to him and I said, “Michael, everyone says, you’re such a successful swimmer because you’ve got these big feet, fins and your lung capacity. I’m guessing, is there something else?”

He said, “Yes, John, my coach said to me, when I was young, ‘Michael, are you willing to work out on Sundays?’ ‘Yes, coach,’ ‘We just got 52 more workouts a year than the competition.’” What’s the takeaway for you? What are you willing to do to be an Olympic level expert in your business that your competition is not willing to do? That’s a story, hopefully that resonates with you. That’s an example of a good story that has some value and keeps it going.

[bctt tweet=”Stand up and dress up when on a Zoom call to pitch.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I’d like to add on the what if part. That is critical when it comes to the creative process. That’s a lot of what I do is in that area, I would say, “What if?” The next half of that is, “Can I produce it and make it?”

What’s interesting about all of the quarantine situation is there’s a lot of impact that is not positive, but if you constantly look for opportunities, even when something seems negative, you can find them. My client said to me, “In addition to your talk on helping us become better storyteller so we win more new business because we’re of coming in second place. We’d love it if you could train our people who only make sales calls in person how to be more effective on a Zoom call.”

Once again, I called up Glenn, I need some new content. You’re the person to help me create the visuals to go with it. I thought I would give not only an example of Glenn’s work, but also some amazing takeaways for your Zoom video calls or whatever platform you’re using. Anytime you tell the story, paint the picture, who what, where, when. Get us in the story in this particular case. For years, this has been the traditional way we make sales presentations and have meetings with people. You’re calling on the doctor, you’re with the vendor, but now that’s reduced to being on a screen. It’s going to pause there and have Glenn describe how he made that so transitional.

I had to find an image that had the people separated enough and ideally look like they could still be on screen and in person. This was one of those times where I thought, “What if?” I tried to figure out, “Can I do this?” It’s fairly straight forward. There’s a single transition and there are two layers. This image is an overlay that has the screen cutout. I was able to transition from one slide to the next, with one of the images the same and without getting too granular. It worse an existing image into the shape of the following image. This one shrunk down a little bit and there was an overlay of the screen on top of it.

As a speaker, these visuals helped me be more effective and look how the details. There’s an iPhone and a coffee cup next to it that matches the whole color scheme of the black and white. Everything is well designed, which then rubs off on my brand as a speaker. The visuals must support you as a professional and not something you just try to throw together.

I’m not used to doing this. I don’t think about all those things, but that’s a good point. I have to be conscious of all the elements that I bring into an image.

This is the sound bite that they loved. For casual conversations, you don’t have to do this, but if you’re presenting to someone to hire you in any capacity or to buy from you, stand up and dress up. I put on a button shirt and I’m standing up because it changes my energy. This was the huge a-ha for this company that said, “Not one of us, including the management, is standing up when we have calls with clients about hiring us or buying our product. We do it when we meet them. They sit around a conference table. We get up and we present and yet we aren’t doing it on these calls.”

Stand up and dress up. That’s another example of something memorable with a sound bite. That’s what you want to do. Framing yourself. Everybody can do this exercise. Put three fingers on the top your head and you can see that’s the right distance from the top of your head to the top of the frame. Then you literally want to hold your arms up like this and say, “That’s the right frame.” Cross your arms underneath your chest and that’s how you know the camera’s at the right spot. Not below it, not above it, because here’s what happens when you don’t frame yourself.

You have these images of people looking down at you and you want to be eye level. If you have to put books on your computer or you have a standup desk, whatever you need to do to be eye level with the camera. Glenn, let’s go back on those last two images. Frame yourself. We looked at all kinds of different frames. I want everybody to get a sense of the thought, the effort and the creativity that goes into. What’s the best way to tell that story with a visual?

Showing people is challenging because I try to be sensitive and not focus on any one particular person or body type, and be sensitive to that, but also to illustrate the point. I tried to find images that were probably more exaggerated than others, but it gets the point across. Even the frame image they had before was we probably had 3 or 4 different frames. I believe you told me that one of the frames I had was too fancy so I had to pick out a few different ones. This seemed to be the right one and the right tone without it being too distracting.

I took a screenshot of somebody doing the wrong thing. You then found out other people are doing it. It’s sad to see what a common problem it is. The next problem is lighting. Do not sit in front of a window, you’ll be in the dark, don’t sit like you’re in the witness protection program. We are in the shadows. We can see you. I have a sidelight here next to me and I believe Glenn does as well.

Pitching Mistake: A lot of people see presentation slides as something unnecessary, but they’re there to enhance the speaker and the message.

I use ring lights and I’m always experimenting, but I have one right in front of it or right behind the camera. I’ve got a couple over here using some for shading. It adds depth. This is all real when I’m standing.

You can’t make gestures if you’re in front of the fake backgrounds without your hands disappearing. It’s important to make sure you have that. What about the body language? Body language in person is important, but even more so in a Zoom call because our eyes want to see something moving. If it’s not that stopwatch that Glenn did at the beginning, then it has to be your hands making a gesture to get people to be pulled in. Ironically, this whole concept of getting in this Zen moment and being 100% present. If you’re not 100% present, there’s no way the clients are going to be. Write down one thing you’ve gotten from this so far that you might have question of or that we can talk about. Imagine if, what if or imagine. I also start sentences with, “Picture this.” It taps into the right side of our brain. Without saying, “I’m going to tell you a story,” say, “Picture this” or, “Imagine,” or, “What if.” Camera on eye-level and standing. Stacking your moments of certainty. Continuing the visual and the verbal story that there’s some continuity that they’re working together and enhancing each other, and it’s a consistent with your brand and your story.

It’s true to have that the continuity and the slides aren’t a crutch and they shouldn’t be read. A lot of people see presentation slides as being something that is unnecessary to read. They’re there to enhance the speaker and your message.

I’ve been following both of your work for a long time. I’ve seen you speak and I’ve had the pleasure of working with both of you professionally. You guys always deliver such gold in terms of the information. Once people work with you on a specific message and it’s customized, that’s when you see all this come together. That’s an important point to make. You can watch all the books and read all the material and do this, but once you have your message and your own story to deliver, that’s where everything you’re teaching is important. That’s what I mean by making sure that the verbal and physical presentation like the TED Talks and the visuals that you do, Glenn, getting all of that into your brand is extremely valuable. Thank you both for what you’re doing.

Somebody wrote that people need to see themselves in your story is a big takeaway. Neil went on to say that that’s what he does in his own webinars. When you are a great storyteller, people see themselves in that story, they want to go on the journey with you. You then have a new tool in your toolbox. You’re not trying to hammer and force people to buy. You simply say, “Does that sound like the journey you’d like to go on?” It’s customized to all of that.

I want to transition into some of the problems that get solved by telling a good story. I’ve come up with this method from speaking to thousands of salespeople at different companies about, there’s got to be a way to get off this self-esteem rollercoaster. We only feel good about ourselves if our numbers are up and feel bad about ourselves if our numbers are down. How can we improve our closing ratio and not get burnt out? This has worked for me and it’s worked for many other people. We all have to sell ourselves in one capacity or another. When you learn this storytelling method, you’re going to stop coming in second place. I had an architecture firm say to me, “We get in the final three and we are tired of coming in second place. Can you help us?” I said, “What are you doing in your chance to present? Are you telling stories?” “No, we’re giving out information and hoping that’s what causes us to win.”

Once they started this one step of turning these boring case studies, as we saw the visual black and white, into a compelling case story where people saw themselves in that story, they said, “I want to go on that journey with you.” I’m going to tell you the story now that caused Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm to win $1 billion project. The biggest amount I’ve ever worked on an event to renovate the Pittsburgh Airport. It was between Gensler and two other firms.

The client said, “We’re going to hire the people we liked the most because we’re going to work with you for six years.” They said, “Get John in here. We don’t know how do we make ourselves likable? We showed designs and hope that does it.” They had some great pictures for the case study of what they’d done for another airport, but there was no story and certainly no emotional connection. Here’s the story. Imagine I’m Gensler telling the story to the Pittsburgh Airport people. Two years ago, JetBlue brought us in to renovate the terminal at JFK. During that three-year process, one of the challenges we had was we had to rip off all the floors in the middle of the night from 9:00 PM until 9:00 AM so that we would not disturb the retail revenue.

We had all our vendors on call all night because we knew all the things that could go wrong in previous projects and we were ready for them. Sure enough, at 2:00 AM, a fuse blew. We got a vendor we had on call got there in twenty minutes and we fixed the problem. At 8:59 AM, the last tile went down and all the stores opened on time. A year later, sales are up 15% because we’ve designed a place that attracts people and keeps them shopping longer. The people at Pittsburgh said, “That’s exactly what we want. We want to have that kind of an outcome.” The elements to that story of exposition as I described them in the picture, it’s JFK, JetBlue, and the problem.

Gensler got up there and said, “We use critical thinking to anticipate problems.” They didn’t have to say that, they showed they did it by having the vendors on call. Your point earlier about gestures, hopefully, you saw this. I said, “At 8:59 AM, the last tile went down.” See how the gesture contributes to the story? The gesture is here, not blocking my face. All those are subtle things to being a good storyteller. The resolution to that story is that sales are up 15% a year later because of the design. A lot of people don’t connect those dots, that design, whether it’s Glenn’s expertise on the slide or the design of a space impacts storytelling, which impacts revenue and impacts people’s experience.

I’ve created this online course to help people learn how to be a master storyteller who can’t hear me speak in front of the big crowd or want to do this at their own pace. The other big problem is people say, “Can you come in and teach our people how to be persuasive, not pushy because nobody wants to be pushy?” That’s the joy of what storytelling does. It allows you to tell stories that make you magnetic and pull you in instead of pushing out a bunch of information. I was fortunate enough through some mutual friend, Mark Wilson, who introduced me to Cal Fussman and Larry King. I was on Larry King’s Show with them talking about storytelling. You can be sure I did my homework and found out what Larry’s King story of origin is. He got his big break meeting Frank Sinatra. On the car ride from breakfast to the studio, I said to him, “I love that story of how you get to interview Frank Sinatra and you weren’t famous yet and that was your big break.” He was like, “That was a good night.”

[bctt tweet=”No matter what visuals you do, if the message isn’t there to begin with, it’s not going to be as effective.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I knew it was safe to bring that up on air. When he said, “John, what makes a good story?” He’s holding my book. I said, “Larry, would you mind sharing your story of how you got your big break with Frank Sinatra and then we can break it down?” Looking back on that it was unplanned. I don’t know where I got the guts to answer Larry King’s question with a question and ask him to tell the story, except I knew he liked telling that story. He said, “Down in Florida, I have a radio show. I was friends with Jackie Gleason and he asked me this question, ‘What’s impossible in your business?’” I think about that many years ago. What a great question for all of us to ask ourselves, what’s impossible in our business?

Larry King said, “Interviewing Frank Sinatra. His son just got kidnapped and he’s not doing any interviews. He’s mad at the media for insinuating that it was because of mob connections. Jackie Gleason said, ‘I filled into him one time. I’m doing my comedy act when he had laryngitis. He owes me a favor. ‘I’ll ask him to do this for you.’” Sure enough he did and they hit it off. During the interview, Frank Sinatra invited Larry King that night to bring a date, come and sing at the Copacabana for free at the dinner table right by the stage. Larry was like, “Whatever woman I bring, she’s going to be so impressed.” Sure enough, it was a wonderful evening.

This is before people had no credit cards or ATM. He didn’t have a lot of money. He came across like a big shot that night because everything was comped. They’re driving back to her place and she’s like, “Stop at this place and pick up some coffee for tomorrow morning.” He was embarrassed. He didn’t have any cash. He didn’t want to ruin the whole mood of the evening. He walks into the store, comes back out and she’s like, “They’re out of coffee?” “There is but they couldn’t break $100.”

What a great resolution to that story. We went through the exposition. We know what’s happening and the problem. He’s out of money and we know the solution. The resolution is what makes that successful. Gensler calls me their interview guru when they have to go in interview for new projects. It’s all because of the storytelling. This food company called Sugar Mountain. Once they started telling their story of origin and how much love and thought goes into creating their products, then it’s no longer pushing to get it on the shelf. This is the big problem. I was working with an executive search firm and they said, “When we go and present against our competitors, we walk out of the room and they forget what we said. It all sounds the same. We hope we can go last.”

That’s not a strategy. You can control the order you present. Whoever tells the best stories is going to be memorable. They’re like, “Light bulb moment. You’re hired. Teach us how to tell case stories so we don’t have to worry about what order we’re in.” Especially in healthcare, the salespeople are trying to talk to the doctors in between surgeries and they go, “I feel like an annoying pest.” I said, “Would you like to learn how to feel like a welcome guest?” “Yes, please. What do I do?” I said, “Bob was always trying to pitch something to the doctor between the surgeries and the doctor’s like, ‘Stop pestering me.’”

Meanwhile Sue said, “Doc, I’ve got this amazing story of another doctor I helped into their hospital. How he was able to keep his energy up between surgeries. Would you like to hear that story?” “Yes.” It turns out people always have time for a good story. This concept of, “I feel invisible to people and how do I develop rapport fast?” It’s a common problem. I work with Redfin, the tech real estate company. I’m helping those people figure out how to turn somebody who’s angry into somebody who feels heard through the empathy skills that you learn in this course. This whole concept of getting out of the friend zone at work as what this Phoenix Controls were doing.

This course has all these wonderful modules that are about 10 to 15 minutes each. It’s like watching a Netflix movie. The visuals and the cinematography that I have put into this makes it enjoyable. Rob Angel, the creator of Pictionary, he took the course to learn how to tell better stories for his talk and his interviews. Hasim who’s on this call has taken the course and I worked with him. If you want to share with people your experience of it, it would be great.

My experience on it is it changed my whole perspective on how you enter a meeting and how I talk, and even how I write down my business plan. I redid my whole business planning because of this. It should be done soon. I have some friends to help me with certain parts too.

If I can jump in, John. I have to make sure I say this because this is super important. You and I we’re working together. I am grateful you’re offering this because as part of our process of what we do for designing presentations, we have three specific areas that we focus on. The first one is messaging, which is the storytelling, which is absolutely making sure that that is clear, concise, and compelling, which are the things that I’ve learned from you as my mentor. When I have a new client and they haven’t quite got that part, worked out, it’s almost required that they contact you and connect with you. The projects that we work on have a time set aside for them to meet with you. The fact that you’re offering the course is going to help enhance that so more people can have access to this because you are the master storyteller. It has absolutely been a huge bonus to our process and making what I do that much more effective. Without the story, without getting the messaging and all of that first phase of the project together, no matter what visuals I do, if the message isn’t there, to begin with, it’s not going to be as effective. Thank you.

I’ve created these bonuses where I have a private Facebook group for anybody who gets the course. You’ll be able to practice your stories, practice your pitches. We get real time feedback. In between the one-hour group call, you can post questions that I’ll answer. I’ll send you a signed copy of my book. We’re going to have a virtual contest to see who promotes the course the most we’ll be able to get on my show. I’ve created a guarantee. I so much believe in this. I’m going to take all the risk away from you. We would look at how many sales you’re currently closing. If you don’t close 10% more after 60 days, I’m willing to give you your money back. If you go to the course. I will work with you one-on-one for a whole hour, and you’ll still get access for ten weeks in the private Facebook group. Are there any other questions?

I have a question but I don’t know if it’s related. It’s about storytelling. I’m about to do a live on an EMF because I’ve been in the EMF space, electromagnetic radiation inspired by a post in our WhatsApp group on 5G. I shared on Facebook something in support of something that Trump did. I didn’t said, “I love Trump.” I said I’ve been supportive of something he’s done. It’s amazing how many people have come back and personally attack me. Being the storyteller, how would you discern between being in alignment with an action someone’s taken and not attaching that to a character?

Pitching Mistake: When storytelling, make sure that it’s clear, concise, and compelling.

I would use the example that in any good book or movie or TV show, the character always has some positive attributes and some negative attributes. Nobody’s perfect and nobody’s all evil for the most part. Any of those extreme examples are not terribly interesting. It’s just the cliché of don’t shoot the messenger and also the premise is it’s not all or nothing. It’s not black and white and get comfortable with shades of gray. I’ve talked about in the course to let go of needing to be a perfectionist. What that does is it puts so much pressure on us to be perfect all the time.

When we relax into being a progression is where we celebrate our progress. For example, the last story I’m going to leave you with. You’re climbing Mount Everest. You’re halfway up. You have a choice. You can look back down and go, “Look how much progress we’ve made. We were halfway up,” or you can look up and go, “Look how much further I have to go.” It’s your choice. If it’s not perfect, one little thing goes wrong in the presentation. You focus on that, as opposed to all the things that you did. You’re helping people with their nutrition, their eating and their mindset. It’s about progression. Be a progressionist and let go of being a perfectionist. Hopefully, that helps you.

As a speaker, you must relate to the idea of being in flow when you’re on stage.

Luckily, the flow still happens virtually.

If it’s preplanned too much, it can even come across as preplanned rather than maybe having a little outline in the head, but allowing it to come through.

Let me give you a tip on that. I’ve worked with a lot of people who are afraid of coming across robotic, which is what I heard you saying. If I preplan, every word I’m going to say is going to be too memorized. The key here is make sure you have a great opening, a great closing and three points you want to cover and trust that those three points you’ve practiced enough, that you can have a little bit of spontaneity in it. Make sure your opening and your closing are nailed. That’s the thing we’ll be working on in the private Facebook group for the people who enroll in the course. Tell us what your three things are. It’s a big part of design. If you want a free PDF, text the word “Pitch” to 66866. If you know anybody else that might benefit from this course and want to have a fifteen-minute chat with me, please reach out to me as well. Thank you.

Important Links

• Glenn Hemanes
• TEDx Talk – Be The Lifeguard of Your Own Life!
• Better Selling Through Storytelling
• JohnLivesay.com
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

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