Transcript: Business Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Your Remote or Hybrid Team

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Mitch Simon 0:10
Welcome to another episode of team anywhere where CEOs, leaders and experts at building teams, companies, organizations and amazing cultures

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 0:22
share how to lead from anywhere in the world. I’m your co host on the east coast. Jim Bianco Mathis,

Mitch Simon 0:28
and I’m your co host on the West Coast. Mitch Simon. And we invite you to join us team anywhere.

Today we interview Yamini Naidu economist turn master business storyteller, the new hybrid and virtual workplace will be new, challenging and definitely a more emotional game. The greatest leaders and managers will engage their workforce through connecting the new future, the new culture and the new way that we will form relationships through masterful storytelling. This is an essential podcast as every leader, now further away from their employees will use storytelling to bring their employees together. Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of team anywhere. I Mitch Simon, your co host on the West Coast. And we’ve got Ginny Bianca maphis on the east coast. In his studio today. We’re so excited having the podcast Yemeni nine I do leadership expert, best selling author and perhaps the world’s foremost authority on business storytelling. Now I’ve I’ve had a connection with Yamani because over a decade ago, I looked to her work to design a course for a national laboratory in the United States. And this team of PhDs just nailed their presentation in front of the Department of Energy. So everything that you teach works wonderful, yummy. Yeah, so yummy. Welcome to the podcast.

Unknown Speaker 2:08
Welcome. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Mitch and Ginny are really happy to be here. Really excited to be here.

Mitch Simon 2:16
Could you tell us this is a question we always start off with, like, just tell us how has your last year been?

Unknown Speaker 2:24
I think it’s been a roller coaster. All over the world. It’s been a roller coaster. I’m reminded of one of the last concerts the motley crew did in the Staples Center, nearly Tommy Lee the drama he had this his drum kit rigged up on a roller coaster track. So he was playing and the roller coaster was looping around stage. Phenomenal. And then suddenly it reached its midpoint and it got stuck. So he was suspended me there. And I feel that’s what happened. Can you imagine being suspended midair upside down? That I think that’s what happened to all of us last year. I

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 3:03
hope that it was knology.

Unknown Speaker 3:04
Yeah. Tommy Lee was such a professional. He kept on playing Can you believe it? Because he wanted to give the fans what they came for. And luckily, they got him down safely. But so I think that sort of would, you know, for all of us professionally mentioned Jeannie, I was in one sense, a bit of I feel grateful that March of last year just before you know the whole world locked down. We were all at the professional speakers convention professional speakers of Australia, we have a convention every year. And after it was the last gig we’ve done with like 150 people, it just seems so mind boggling. at the convention that’s been the early you know, I feel sometimes speakers have an interesting entertainment where all the Canaries in the mine, all our phones, started pinging with cancellation cancellation reschedule reschedule. And the speakers were, you know, presenting across the three days was so phenomenal. They immediately regrouped and started addressing the pandemic even before it started to unfold. And in that sense, that sort of we had a support group, we had some level like a set up a virtual studio so much came out of that. But personally, it’s also you know, being really up and down Melbourne, you know, we have the extended 111 and I, we had a really extended hard hard lockdown, but it and the very first day when masks were mandatory, and I stepped out, you could cut to the atmosphere with a knife. Like there was just shut the whole depress like we’re all just so very post apocalyptic. But luckily we’ve you know, we’ve all sort of Melba we’ve come out of that way and fingers crossed for every country around the world, but it also made us realize some of our values, you know, our fundamental systems perhaps around equality around caring for the environment, caring for each other. across the globe, so does matter what the health care that are simple peasant living, you know, somewhere distant from us gets. So I think it’s also such an opportunity for us not to go back fully. And I think Barry does this so well in his future of work PDF in your previous podcasts, I wouldn’t want to go back. Exactly everything we had before know what

Mitch Simon 5:22
I love about the way you express as you express so visually like I can see, I can see the roller coaster, you know, and I you know, I could just start see the images of you at the conference. And so it’s obvious you are a master master storyteller. Yeah. And, and I want to know, tell us like, why you’re so passionate about storytelling? Why did you dedicate your life and your books and your reading and your presentations to to storytelling, and why in the business world?

Unknown Speaker 5:54
I know, oh, rich. Dad, please don’t stop the interview here. Please don’t stop listening to our podcast listeners, our audience. I’m actually an economist by training. We’ll edit that out. But as an economist, and as a senior leader in corporate Australia, I was always frustrated by how come data doesn’t work. Like I had case studies. I had stacks of, you know, PowerPoint slide decks, I had return on investment. And we still couldn’t connect, engage and inspire people, we couldn’t get that shift in behavior. And on a longer flight, someone gave me a book added as the leaders guide to storytelling, and even seeing the word leader, which meant business and storytelling is like my brain got fried, you know, is it an oxymoron? It was one of the it was one of the first books written by Steven Denny. And I was so desperate for answers because you get so frustrated and stuck as a leader because you’re pushing so hard. You’re doing you know everything you can. I devoured the book on this long old flash. And as soon as I got off, I rang a few leaders I knew. And they also two things. They said, We know good leaders tell stories. But we don’t know how to. And I was stupidly bewitched. And I started Googling. There wasn’t much there was just that HBr article by Steven Denning and the one year, yeah, and the best way to learn something is to teach it. So that’s when Yeah, I thought there was a, you know, an opportunity where I could serve my business audience, because that’s my background, I’ve got a corporate background. But give them the skill that would help them get the results after you know, the hard work that they’ve been pushing. So that’s how I got into storytelling. It’s been 15 years, I can’t believe it. When we started people would go business storytelling, how can you even storytelling business, and they were all these objections? You know, and now I think we’ve come to the wonderfully the wonderful journey has been now we can How can you know, storytelling business?

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 7:51
Exactly.

Mitch Simon 7:53
I think that’s, you know, I tell I tell my clients these days, if you go to the bookstore, if you can find one, you know, on the bookshelves are, you know, your books, and other books on leader as storyteller? Great. Yeah. So tell us what’s the difference? If there is one, what’s the difference between storytelling and what you spend a lot of your time on, which is business storytelling.

Unknown Speaker 8:19
You always I think of them as a continuum. So like storytelling, personal storytelling is what you might do in the pub, in the pub. Like is that the universe or is very Australian, with friends and family. This is storytelling is like the, it’s similar. It’s across the storytelling spectrum. But what makes it different is in business, you always have to have a purpose, you have to have a message.

Unknown Speaker 8:43
I have to know your audience. And your stories have to be true. That’s really important. In our personal life, we can you know, make up stuff and our friends often challenge I was like, Oh, is that a true story?

Unknown Speaker 8:58
I just give you an example. So where it’s quite different, I did some work with Bernadette Skanda. And she was leading a team in an insurance company in Australia. And insurance is very, like Matter of fact, very, you know, black and white, punchy, very efficient, you punched through stuff. But he wanted a team to sometimes take a step back and pause. So sometimes we’ve got to give the customers a second chance. Now you can just see that there’s words and they adjust like Teflon nonstick, nothing, you know, one state so she decided to share this story. So she said a few weeks ago, my little five year old niece Maya keep tearing into the house holding an apple in each hand. And I thought this is a good time. I’m going to teach my how to share and they said Maya, can I please have one of your apples? She quickly took a bite out of the apple in her right hand. And quick as a flash. She took a bite out of the apple in her left hand. I was shocked. But before I could say she reached out with the apple in her left hand and she said Auntie yeah This one is sweeter. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 10:06
because everyone will remember that story,

Unknown Speaker 10:08
right. And then she has a little tag, which is where, you know, you try to end on purpose. But she goes, I’m sharing this with you. Because everyday we have that same opportunity with our customers, we can jump to conclusions. But every time we give our customers a second chance, imagine, imagine the difference we can make. So that just literally action everyone in the room as well. The most powerful thing you can do in business storytelling. So this is again, that, you know, almost like a paradox, is to use personal stories to land a business message. Yeah, we’re over like boring business stories. You know, they just talk about the business and what we do, and we just over that we really want to see even if it’s a large corporation, definitely if you’re an entrepreneur who work for yourself as a startup across the board. So that’s sort of where the power nests.

Mitch Simon 11:05
I love that story.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 11:06
Yes, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 11:10
really touched everybody in the room, they could immediately see how automated a team, you know,

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 11:16
it’s the emotional response. Right? That’s what you’re trying to get? Correct. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 11:23
So why is I’m, I’m gonna go out there. Why is business storytelling more important than ever, especially? Now,

Unknown Speaker 11:33
I think, you know, when we talk about a meta modern world, I think storytelling is that silken thread that just weaves all the to really help us reach this meta modern world. And it’ll also help us stay connected with each other. Just in our presence, I think, you know, Barry was talking about this as well. It’s about designing a human experience. So finding the heart in our organization, much more important. Now we’re all looking for authenticity, we’re looking for provenance, we’re looking for personal connection. We’ve all felt really grounded in community, we’ve started to value these things in a way that perhaps they haven’t been valued before. And for me, I just think data and we know this data is can I swear, data can be if you’re from Australia,

Unknown Speaker 12:21
you can swear,

Unknown Speaker 12:26
I’m a very, I’m a very avid to very modest, non Swearer kind of person. So it can be just really boring. Just data is really hard for your audience to understand. Remember, retail, those are our three challenges. We recently get people who understand what we’re saying, whether you’re dealing in product, you’re dealing in a service, you’re dealing with your teams, you’re talking to stakeholders, you’re pitching your work, people have to remember, and stories are the Velcro on people’s brains, nothing else will stick. And finally, they got to retell it. So if they come out of meeting, are they talking to their partner at home? And they say, what was that huge strategy meeting about? They’ve got nothing. But a story, they have something. And my final thing was, I think we live in a world this is bloated with information bloated, but there’s an inspiration famine. And traditionally, we’ve used to influence the storytelling is like the contemporary tool for influence. We’ve used hard power, which is command and control yell and tell you know, Mitch, have you have you ever had a boss pull rank on you, we’ve shattered did your kids clean up your room, you’ve experienced high power within the 90s discovered soft power through the work of Professor Joseph nee of Howard, so far is about connecting, consulting, collaborating. And then we have story power. So hard power informs soft power invites. That story power inspires. Yeah, so you definitely need both soft bar and story. Very occasionally hard power, like if it’s an emergency, people have to follow the process. stuff is urgent, very, very sparingly. Like, you know, most of the time you want to live in a world with soft power, where we’re connecting, consulting, collaborating, and then to have that other layer to really lift your game to quantum leap your influence, you’ve got to have story power.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 14:25
Share with me. I dealt with this. How would you deal with this? I had a CEO. And I wanted him to start using storytelling, just from the energy that he had about what he wanted to do in the organization. And when I recommended it, he said, Well, I don’t tell stories. We have an in the second thing he said is and I have no stories to tell

Unknown Speaker 15:00
How would I do? I have to write this down. It’s powerful stuff. It’s worth a blog. So thank you, Jimmy.

Unknown Speaker 15:06
Yes.

Mitch Simon 15:08
Blog ideas from anywhere.

Unknown Speaker 15:11
Yeah, I have no stories, okay. This is when that careful definition of business storytelling is really important. It’s helped a lot of my clients because they think otherwise storytelling, long winded war stories, you know, all of that business storytelling knotch I would never be binary. So they always worry that we’re saying abandon everything, just tell stories like even I don’t do that. So I would always say in addition to the data, can you share some stories and it’s the word stories is not landing I will take Can you share some personal or business experiences? So we start off with a wide palette, I would say never quite says the French were never color people with the word because they something about storytelling, people think it has to be epic. Because we’ve grown up genie in this perhaps you grew up watching motivational speakers. They always like you know, abseiling down Mount Everest sailing around the world, you know, doing one of those and you think, Oh, my God, I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing like is good point. Yeah. And God frees us to know that personal stories, like the child with the apple, is what is highly relatable. So these epic stories, put your audience in a watching a performance mode. So I’m like, Oh, my God, I’m like a men’s but the person stories puts the audience in the story with you.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 16:39
Yes.

Unknown Speaker 16:40
So that that would help him. So don’t even just talk about can you share? How can we make this come alive? Can you share? So if he’s saying I don’t do stories? I would say okay, in addition to the data, we’re definitely doing the data. What is an example you can share? What’s a business experience you can share? What’s a personal experience? I’m scaling up the degree of difficulty here in even an analogy can be put in that? What’s an analogy? what’s an example? It’s first business experience, and I do personal experience last that’s hardest to do. The other thing, I have no stories, my God, we all bump up against this, which I don’t know if this is appropriate, I got to go to a PDF that I can provide, which is 101 story

Unknown Speaker 17:21
ideas. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 17:25
Just as soon as you start to read all of those, you could make a recurring story. Like even if you went through all the firsts in your life. My first day of school, my first date, my first marriage proposal, my first child, my first job, can you see how that’s like a Russian dolls? And if you weren’t one of the first in my life, and you start to build all your stories, you’ll never run out? Yeah, you’ll never run out. So then definitely 100 a month story ideas. That’s nice. Yeah, level of skill. We just a different way about thinking about the world, you know, so once you start to spot stories, you start to stop them everywhere.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 18:04
Yeah, collecting them.

Unknown Speaker 18:06
You’ve got to recollect you got to write them down. Very important, because I do that in two ways. It’s a really important point, Jeannie, but just coming back to being able to see stories, like once you start, it’s like you open your third eye. You got Oh my god. Like every meeting is a story. I have a story in every meeting, every encounter with my barista, or even my little dog is in the room. is like could be a story. Do you need to be seeing how we should capture our stories, we should record our stories. That’s really important. you’ve either got to do it. I do it in two ways. I’ve got like I do analog. But I also got Evernote or OneNote. So whenever I see something in the media, something happens. I capture it because you don’t record you’re going to forget. Yeah. Yeah. A few years ago, I was invited in by Accenture in Melbourne. And we took all their consultants through storytelling training. Because you know, every time they go up and they shortlisted for a pitch, they wanted that to be a differentiator. Six months after we did the work with Accenture. JACK Dorsey was in the MD of Accenture. He featured in sorry, there’s going to be lots of name dropping coming but I love the Lord alert. I know. He featured with me in boss magazine, which is Financial Review boss magazine, with three with three of my clients, Ericsson NAB and Accenture and jack Percy’s quoted in the article is saying storytelling doubled our revenue. Storytelling doubled our revenue. That’s when you just want to fall to the ground and gratitude. Yes, thank you so much for just putting it in black and white putting it in this premier magazine, not just telling me in a corridor chat because we would be the credibility of that. So that’s the end. But Mitch and Jeannie like of course getting some skills doing a master class with me or anyone who is good at it. Very, very important. But what’s really important is what happens after? How are they embedding the skill. And this is, you know, for all our learning and development and for all our people who are doing workshops and trading, this is our biggest challenge and our biggest frustration. In Accenture, they’ve made a small shift, they will always every meeting, every pitch, every proposal, every cop, coffee shop and gown, and they would ask each other what is the story we’re going to share? What is the story we’re going to share? So in addition to everything else, we’ve talked about the data, the PowerPoint slides, though, business result, policy story, so that simple behavioral change, create a part of their culture? Correct? Correct. You can add that start languages storyteller. Yeah, but don’t Yeah, perfect, very good. That spot on spot on. So you’re literally thinking about it all the time and becomes who you are. Right? It also didn’t you meet, it also takes huge permission from the top. So the CEO, and that C suite, if you’re trying to, you know, embed anything in as you know, particularly with storytelling, the teams have to give have to see that in action with their leaders. And they, it has to be role model. And that’s how you continually give people permission, especially if you’re trying to shift that mindset of I don’t tell stories, I don’t have any story. They go to see me done well. And I always suggest don’t throw people in the deep end and just say, let’s start sharing stories. We had a new GM join in one of my organization’s A long time ago. And as soon as he goes into the lift with some money says, so what’s your story? And the person who just

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 21:34
like phrase, you know, like a deer in headlights?

Unknown Speaker 21:37
So we never want to we never want to do that to people. And to just find stories. It’s so natural. It’s so not because our business like, you know, you want to make trivial. Yeah, the body but so many. Sorry, Jenny, we

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 21:52
don’t want to meet. You want to raise it up? I mean, it is an art form. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:58
yeah. You don’t want to make a trip to the spot on. Thank you for recognizing it’s a craft and an art form. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 22:05
What are what are the keys to, to craft an engaging story? So if I define my listener hearing, you know, I guess something happened, or Yeah, my first date or my first job? Or how would I craft it such that its people would resonate? Like the apple stories? I’m sure if you told the apple story backwards, it would be like, What? Who cares? How do you craft it? How do you craft it so that it’s engaging?

Unknown Speaker 22:34
Yeah, so too. So do? What happens behind the scenes before you even start to craft stories? Don’t these things begin with the end in mind to quote Dr. Steven Covey? What’s the purpose? What’s the message of the story? And then think about your audience? Who is the story going to serve? So it always really grounds us as storytellers when you go? Well, my story, so this room was really grounds us, then I’d say that there’s a craft and so you’ve got an idea in your head, you’re thinking, you know, my first date or whatever, I would say three things help you. The first is understanding sequence. So not the shiny stuff, but actual sequence, beginning middle end. And that it’s just that simple structure, you’d be surprised how many people think, Oh, well, beginning middle end, we never thought you’ve got to really break it down, you’ve got to do some work on your beginning. So you hook people in middles can be like the valley of death for a story. So you’ve got to make sure you continue to engage your audience. And of course, the end is both the resolution. And in business storytelling, you then do a very subtle, elegant landing on message. So we don’t go something without message. So sequence all of that in sequence is very layered and detail. The second thing that really helps is being very specific with your stories. This is where I find that business people really, really struggle. Because all of businesses abstract, conceptual, big picture. And the stories that we’re talking about is the opposite of that. Create detailed, small picture. So we really struggle with so we’ve got to turn on a different part of our brain. Yes. We often think we’re being specific. Like I might say, you know, last year, two years ago, I traveled to Europe, I had a great time. It’s not specific enough. But if I go in 2019, I woke up, I was traveling to Paris, and I woke up one Monday morning, and I found my passport had been stolen. Can you see how that just is so specific. Like the minute I said, Paris? What did your brain imagine?

Mitch Simon 24:49
Oh, I imagined being in one of those small, tiny brightly colored hotels like outside the loop and being on one of those very uncomfortable thin beds.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Haha, the Eiffel Tower, the croissants, they love Centralia and so only if you’re specific. So the first point was make sure you have a sequence, second base preserved, like for God’s sake, like, you know, name people locations. And if you think of all the narratives we consume on a daily basis, you know, on TV, and cinema and media are very, very specific. And the third thing is, then it’s when you are specific, you do two most powerful things in storytelling, you create emotion, you make your audience feel something, which is what you felt with the apple story. And you paint a picture. So I call that sensory data, you paint a picture. And Miss you just did it. When you talked about being in the small, brightly colored cafes outside the Louvre. You’re painting a picture. But you can only do that if you’re specific. So tips to help people get going.

Mitch Simon 25:55
Yeah, I love that when we do improv, the more specific the funnier it is.

Unknown Speaker 26:00
So to even comedy is very specific. Yeah. And it’s such a slippery thing for people to get, you know, yeah. So and the thing that challenges us is we worry about oversharing. So do you need to be very, when you tell the story, putting something of yourself? I would say, yes, you have, you have that little bit of vulnerability, it’s utterly important to differentiate between a personal story like the Apple was, you know, I can share that, and a private story. So even as a storyteller, I’m very careful about what I won’t share. I do not as private, but I’m happy to share personal stuff, you know, like my family, my daughter, where I live where I work. So as long as we have that clarity, and you decide what’s private for you, and you know, put a boundary around it. And the rest is can be because they’re so relatable talk about taking a bus to school or being bullied as a kid going on your first day. These are universal human experiences. There’s so much power in them.

Unknown Speaker 26:58
Definitely eautiful. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 27:01
So the reason one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the podcast is one because I just been following you for so long. Another is, it just so happens, we had a few months ago, you might already married man, you already mentioned Barry linkless, who’s the head of future work Institute in Dublin. He calls himself I went on his on his website, he calls himself a strategic storyteller. I love it.

Unknown Speaker 27:27
I think he’s a great.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
Sorry, you go. He’s great.

Mitch Simon 27:33
He’s wise. He’s, he’s a master storyteller. He’s just he’s so engaging again. So so in his paper, he states that not only will storytelling be one of the most important skill sets, if not the most important skill set for for leaders of the future. But leaders will have to take their story, and then turn them into an experience. And he didn’t tell us how to show. And I was wondering how you might work with a CEO or someone driving culture on how you might craft and then craft a story of the future of the company. Because, as you’ve pointed out, none of us are going back. And none of us know what the future is going to look like. All of my clients we’re working with is we have no idea what the future is going to look like. So how would you support a client and crafting the story and then turning that story into a living experience of the company?

Unknown Speaker 28:37
Like this wonderful, wonderful question. And jmeter really enjoyed. And if people haven’t already downloaded that future work PDF by Barry windlass, I’d highly recommend it. So thought provoking, and beautifully written beautifully, you know? Yes, it was very nice talking. We talked about the difference between micro storytelling, which is the personal oral storytelling, the examples which I was sharing, which leaders should do seamlessly all through the day. Yeah. And then he’s talking about macro storytelling. So macro storytelling is how do we do this across an organization? And one way then, is to think larger than just individual stories, or your brand promise or your employee value proposition. You lift them all up, and you think of them as a story experience. So I would just say What if you were writing a Netflix or Netflix show? What would episode one be? What would Episode Two be? So that’s how that’s one way of thinking about it also in the run events, and I think he touched on this. It’s such a wonderful hat to have or to say, what what is the story with crafting with this event? I don’t even want to use the word event. Because every time we bring customers or stakeholders or team members together, we want to create an experience. So how can we have an experiential moment, there’s nothing more experiential than storytelling, so don’t work with clients where we’ve provided a list of what I framing questions without even you know, doing too much skilling or anything having them in groups and circles getting them to share their experiences. And they’re all stories. It’s like really campfire, they’re all stories, and then done spotlights where we can then highlight what do we need to share across the organization. But it’s a wonderful way of really dropping into our bodies and saying, how is this an experience versus just like something intellectual in my head. And I think that’s where the challenge, but the opportunity also lies. So that’s powerful stuff. It’s hard to get your head around. But that’s how I’d seen a macro story is again, like a thread that weaves all the way through your organization. But what’s hanging of these threads? Is all those little little micro stories so you don’t get this boring, one big fat story designed by committee. That’s the death knell of any story. What are the little micro stories do is they find the human? So even when you’re creating your experience, I would always say find the human who’s experienced or is it the customer? What does that? You know, what kind of experience? Would they like? How can we storyteller craft? Something for them? That would work? Alone? The answer

Mitch Simon 31:18
to that was great. No, I expected a long answer. Because it’s a very difficult question. Yeah. So now, I’ve heard you have a new book out there, let it light. Lighter the point of the party, and tell us about your latest book. This is what your fifth book,

Unknown Speaker 31:38
my sixth book, yeah. Six.

Unknown Speaker 31:41
This is number six. Number six.

Unknown Speaker 31:46
I wrote this 20 when we were and we still possibly not feeling it was called life of the party alive. Nobody stopped. But I thought life of the party so even with an introvert with anybody can work this I’m on a quest to teach everyone in the world. Whether you’re a volunteer or you’re a stay at home homemaker, you’re a parent in your kids school teacher, you can learn storytelling, we if we’re all better storytellers. I think our ability to share stories and connect with each other in a way that’s profound, you know, but simple will really help us shift. The world will. Yeah, I just feel a real resonance with the minute you listen to someone’s story, you can’t hate them anymore. So I feel

Mitch Simon 32:38
you’re expected to sell what 7.7 billion copies that copy for everyone, right?

Unknown Speaker 32:44
Finally, I can remote that I want to but I can do my classes from Hawaii or from the Caribbean. So it’s actually called be that storyteller, who fascinates friends dazzles Bates. Wiles clients, wins promotions, and get kids to make their beds. Okay. I just happened to one of my clients, she came to my workshop Did you know storage engine when I went Oh, no. 10 year old a story. And he made his bed, the story to make his bed. So I hope it’s got at least two things in there that works for everybody. Really simple. It was the hardest book for me to write Ginny and Mitch because you’re trying to really make something simple. Yes. formula is my design has done a great job. I said a very flattering little cartoon of me on the back. I don’t know if you can see. Love it. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 33:39
When did you launch? When did that book come out?

Unknown Speaker 33:42
It’s going to come out at the end of the month and of April, but we can do as

Mitch Simon 33:47
April. Okay, yeah, special code would be great. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 33:50
We can do a special color we fantastic. So I mean, you can order it through my website at the moment is like a press release. But it doesn’t work out when people are overseas and stuff. It’s just too hard. Right? We’ll be releasing it on Amazon.

Mitch Simon 34:06
Okay, great. Yeah, that’s how we would get it here. Australia has not it’s not close to the 7.7 billion. I think it’s one of those smaller, populated countries.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 34:19
In India, so

Unknown Speaker 34:19
I’ll get India America,

Unknown Speaker 34:22
the 3 billion.

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 34:25
When you think of people, and I’ve done some storytelling, and I’m always concerned, you’re I’m sure you are far beyond this. And you’re such an expert. No, no. And I’m always surprised at how much they then want to because I have them do a little mini story following the step. They all want to tell their story. And of course, you don’t have all the time in one workshop. Taking this to our overall theme of teams anywhere. When you talk about story. In its energy and its humanity, and painting the picture and creating a vision in people’s head, you can see the power of this for leaders to cross that hybrid and virtual divide. so beautifully.

Unknown Speaker 35:19
So true. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 35:22
Is there something we should have asked you Yemeni that we have not asked you?

Unknown Speaker 35:27
From? Yes, sir. But my three you know, golden roses. Go personal don’t hide. This is for everyone in business. Don’t I be on business stories? Yeah. And please don’t do a story by committee. It’s the worst thing, it won’t be a story. But please don’t just call anything a story. story in several of the elements you’re talking about. And always find the human. That’s the heart of everyone, even if you’re many layers removed, the somebody who’s using your product or your service. So, you know, even if you’ve worked in the most automated AI influenced industry, you’ve got to find the human. That’s when you find the heart of your story. And you’ll start to find the human find the human find the human. That’s the heart of storytelling. Yeah.

Mitch Simon 36:14
Where can we find you? where can our listeners find you?

Unknown Speaker 36:18
Yeah, you can find me just on my website. But I tend to if you’re looking at any social media platforms, LinkedIn, so best place to find me and recently I’ve been making gentle forays into Instagram.

Mitch Simon 36:31
We said we see it, we see it above you at Yamani Naidu. Yeah, I mean, I do. Yeah. And that is for our listeners. It’s why am I NINA id you? Brilliant.

Unknown Speaker 36:43
Well done. Thank you, Mitch. That was my old Twitter handle. It’s a physical sign. It’s made out of lightwood. MIT to events, and now it’s up on my wall. So

Mitch Simon 36:56
guys, Yamini this has been, I’ve been looking forward to so much. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful session. I want to thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We look forward to staying in contact and maybe bringing you back. And thank you, Jenny, my lovely,

Ginny Bianco-Mathis 37:17
wonderful, great, don’t want to end get the word your use was wonderful. It is. It was a beautiful podcast.

Mitch Simon 37:26
It was a beautiful podcast.

Unknown Speaker 37:27
Thank you so much, Jimmy and Mitch, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for connecting from you know, Eastern West Coast. been a pleasure to speak with you.

Mitch Simon 37:36
Thank you. And well, thank you both. And thank you to all of our incredible listeners who are growing week after week after week. We should hit 2000 downloads with this podcast. I know we will. And we look forward to so please share this podcast with everyone you know because 7.7 billion people will be buying Yemenis book

Unknown Speaker 38:01
warranty warrantied Yeah. Witness guarantee you

Unknown Speaker 38:05
buy 1 million copies.

Mitch Simon 38:08
I’m there. Thank you and we’ll see you on next week’s edition of team anywhere

Transcribed by https://otter.ai