Grow a thriving business through storytelling with Gareth Dimelow

In this episode of Delivered, you can learn how to unlock your brand’s full potential with business storytelling. 

We sat down with Gareth Dimelow, chief storyteller and co-founder of Inside Stories. Gareth’s unique approach was born out of frustration with the marketing industry’s over-reliance on content over story. He’s now on a mission to help business owners authentically engage with their target audience through storytelling.

Key learnings: 

• Find out what business storytelling is and the science behind its effectiveness
• Understand the difference between storytelling and content creation
• Learn Gareth’s three M’s of compelling storytelling: meaningful, memorable & moving
• Get inspired by real-life examples of impactful business storytelling

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About Infinum
Delivered is brought to you by a leading digital product agency, Infinum. We've been consulting, workshopping, and delivering advanced digital solutions since 2005.

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Transcript

Hello. Welcome to Delivered. It's great to have you.

Hi Chris, thanks for having me.

It's a very good day today.

I'm excited to get into the power of story and narrative. I know how important it is in the world for many reasons, but I won't talk about it.

Let's go to the expert. First of all, Gareth, let's just talk about the importance of story and how you link to that world and where you come into the whole premise of storytelling. Okay, so it's really great to be here. Thanks for having me on today.

Storytelling is, I think, ultimately we're all into stories. Stories are part of all of our lives. And I think what's been really interesting on this journey is realizing how much we take for granted our understanding of the role that stories play in our lives and  how we've forgotten the skill of storytelling.

So my background was I worked in agencies where my experience was all rooted in first creative and then strategic roles. And I was used to bridging the gap between a complex understanding of clients' issues and needs with the requirements of a creative team who needed to understand how to read between the lines. What the client was really asking them to do.

And storytelling was really the space where that came to life. And I didn't call it storytelling at the time That was just something that came a little bit later But ultimately it came down to translating raw, dry, unprocessed information into something that could be engaging and compelling and resonant for audiences.

Yeah, and I definitely feel for me, storytelling is it's definitely an art form and I feel like it's something that people necessarily always think of. But it's like our oldest skill in the history of humankind, right?

And I think what we do at Infinum, we don't necessarily position ourselves as official storytellers, but we work a lot in the product space where we're basically telling stories  to the right users at the right time for our clients and their products.

And I think that's something that is really important to master. And for me, I think I'd just love to hear like how Inside Stories really starts that process because I can imagine it's quite a rich, deep search with clients to figure out where they even start and why they need to craft a story for their business.

Yeah, and it's a great question because I think a lot of clients that we encounter come to this again, like I said earlier, thinking that they know what storytelling is because it's part of our vernacular. It's part of how we understand what communication is for all of us as human beings.

But I think there's something about the creative process of finding a story and being able to share it in a way that will engage the people. But that's the skill that I feel that we've lost because the word has become synonymous with content, it's become synonymous with marketing, it's become synonymous with comms.

And consequently, we lose what the storytelling is. And so our opportunity in Inside Stories is to work with businesses, not at the point where they're thinking, right, we need to go out to market. How do we come up with an interesting social media campaign, or how do we create some ads that are going to have some stoppability and wow factor. 

Instead, it's almost the bit that comes before that, where they start thinking about what they are as a business, who they are, what they stand for, and how to find that sweet spot where people connect to what they're bringing to the world, not what they're selling to the world. And I think there's something really interesting that happens, when you put people in a headspace, where they're telling a story.

What happens is they come to life. We all instinctively like storytelling.There's no blockage or barrier to that. Whereas I've always found that if you ask someone to make a presentation, many of them will instantly clam up. You know, there's 85% of people who suffer from glossophobia, which is the fear of public speaking.

And what that actually means is there's a fear of being put on the spot and told to present. But telling a story is something we all do instinctively when we're with our friends, when we're with our colleagues, reflecting on a weekend that we've had or when someone says, how was your holiday? It's like, well, here's three stories I want to tell you.

So, there is something about activating the beta state in people's brains when they're telling a story, they come alive more and consequently they communicate in a more effective and engaging way. I think the other thing that's really interesting, as well, the stories are fundamentally crafted for and embraced by an audience.

So business storytelling, for me, has always been a situation where a business looks at the things that they feel. They need to talk about what their priorities are, and then they roll something out that gives them all of those talking points. And I think storytelling as a discipline is about creating something that matters beyond the walls of your organization. And I think, you know, without wanting to preempt anything, I really have a sense that that's where our conversation is going to go today, because it's about switching off. The prioritization process in your brain goes, these are the things that matter to us. And switching it around to focus on the things that matter to all the folks out there because they're the people we're doing this for.

Yeah, and I love that concept as well, which I think is it's so easy to jump into the functional and the logical and, like you say, the things that have to be done for a company or for a business or for whatever product. But you're right, It's like without the people engaging and resonating with whatever they're doing. It kind of doesn't matter.

So, that thread between action and interest is story. And I guess from where we come in from our world is we'll always run a discovery phase of a client upfront and sometimes, during their projects and process to figure out where they are, what they're doing. But most importantly, like who's it for? Who actually cares, and do they care?

I think validation is such a big part of our work as well. At Infinum, it's like, it's making sure people care about what it is we're doing. But to do that right, like you're saying, it's like the story has to be crafted to make it interesting in the first place.

You used that word resonate.

I think that's the key. We often talk about a so what factor. You can have a bunch of interesting stuff to say, but if the world's response is so what, well, you know, we are all fundamentally selfish human beings. And as much as we might like to pretend that we're kind of benevolent and generous and all of those good things, we all still have a little voice in our head that says, what about me?

Yeah, how does this relate to me? And I think that's the bit that we have to be able to counter and accommodate, and it doesn't come naturally to us.

Yeah, it's so true.

I know, from a kind of a marketing standpoint, it's like I think people instinctively want to say, this is what I offer the world, this is my credentials, this is what I feel I can give you. Like, say, most people don't really care about that.

They're just like, I have my own problems going on. How do you help temper and solve my problems?

So, for me, the story component is that part that really picks a kind of like reptilian brainfirst, a peak interest, and then logically process the neocortex and go, okay, yeah, this guy does have something to offer me.

So yeah, I prescribe to that hugely.

And I suppose, could you talk us through that? Maybe how a brand itself, like with story at the core of it, like what kind of process or approach?

You know, if I have a company that has history, it has a story, but it hasn't been externalized. You know, where would you start with that kind of process to help a company express what it offers the world?

It's funny because the story is kind of like this ethereal thing that floats around everyone. It's it's embedded in everything. It's fuzed into everything. But sometimes, the act of almost putting a ring fence around it going, we're going to do the story now, sort of kills the organic nature of the story. You know, the fact is you could have a whole company that's full of people who are excited and empowered by a chance to talk about what they do. That's what drives them, and that's what gets them excited.

They're excited about who they do it for, and they know why it matters. That's where the story lives. So it's everywhere, and it's in everything. It's kind of like the Force. It unites us and binds us together. I use a lot of film references when we’re talking, as you well know.

But I think I think where people go wrong is because storytelling is sort of the buzzword of the last decade. It's the thing that everyone's kind of latched onto.

Some people seem to think that the story then becomes like words that are etched into a stone tablet. So they'll hear a story, and they think it's mission statement, or stories are just a nice alternative phrase for talking about a marketing campaign.

But actually, the story, as I said, is embedded in everything. So, you find in the organizational values, you find it in a manifesto that a business puts out to the world, the elevator pitch, and the strap line that sits under the logo.

It runs through the social media campaign. It informs the marketing strategy. It's in everything. And I think the job that we do, we can definitely talk about the process because that's quite a prescriptive 1 to 6 stage.

But I think what we also do is, if you think about it, the metaphor is like coming for gold. You know, you've got one of those pants  on, you get in a bunch of sludge and somewhere in there are the gold nuggets, and you've just got to be able to filter the noise and the chaos out of it until you're left with the bits that really matter.

But I think the one thing that I think surprises people when we talk about the story is, as I said, that it's not one sacrosanct block of text that has to go into that. Again, I think it shows a lack of imagination or the unwillingness to embrace the ongoing creative process. People are like,  we've got a story now, you know, I can have that laminated. I can stick it in my laptop bag, and every time I'm talking to someone,

I'll just whip it out. That's that's not what a story is. And that's not how a story works.

If you think about any time you've heard a story that you've loved and then you've had an opportunity to share that with someone else, you don't repeat it verbatim unless you've got a photographic memory.

What you do is you internalize and personalize it. You tell it the way you remembered it. You amplify the bits that sat well with you, or if there was a part of the story that you thought was particularly funny or ironic, then you impart that bit because that's the bit that means something to you. So, when we talk about helping brands find their story, it's all of those things together. It's panning for the gold, and it's empowering people with the freedom to tell the story their way.

So the story isn't one thing, it's all of the things.

I'm a huge, huge fan of your metaphor reference.

I love the Force metaphor. I'm a huge fan of that.

And funny enough, I use something similar. So if we're doing what's called a discovery phase, a workshop, whatever, and yeah, you can start the process with a client to say, okay, we've got exercises today, we've got things to be done.

But I love starting, my team, actually, the strategy team, is probably sick of hearing this. I always like to start with that kind of like Lord of the Rings metaphor, say, look, there's a fellowship that's all of us together.

There's going to be a decider. That's probably like the CEO of someone of significant importance in that company. Then it's a guide, which is someone like myself or whoever, you know, trying to play Gandalf in that equation. And I find that doing these things at the start only like helps the approach because they understand that immediately they get it. I guess you could use those as well, Yoda, etc. I think it sets a precedent to let people know. I understand now what we're doing much faster than just being told what to do or being just shoved into a corner to do something.

So yeah, I think story has many, many benefits, and I suppose you touch on a good point there with strategy. I do love the idea that it's not everything, but it's in everything, It's kind of a big thing I promote to a degree.

Maybe take it from one of your previous podcasts, you know, subconsciously, but for strategy as well because I cannot express enough to people that you need to have a strategy because otherwise, you're just circling and hoping, when actually if you have that guiding light throughout the whole thing. And if you layer that with the story on top of, to talk to your team, to your external audience, I think that sets up the magic between the two. So, you know, I'd love to kind of maybe delve into that a little bit more about, you know, how could story or storytelling really help supercharge like a product strategy or a business strategy?

That’s really interesting. First, before we answer that question, I just want to quickly touch upon what you were describing there by talking about Lord of the Rings.

And we paralleled it with Star Wars. What we're both talking about there is the hero's journey, which is one part of the process that we use with clients because what it does is it dimensionalizes storytelling in a way that feels familiar and recognizable, and by casting key aspects of the story in a recognizable story structure, it helps people understand the creative imperative behind storytelling.

But the one thing I always like to say about the hero's journey that a lot of people get wrong is, they fixate on the word hero and they think it's all about this celebratory, triumphant moment. And that's to miss the point of the hero's journey.

The reason the hero's journey has resonated through endless cultures and eras of storytelling. Right back to, you know, the Bible all the way through, you know, Greek and Roman mythology, right up to the latest Star Wars movie.

Excuse me.

The reason it resonates is because the hero's journey at its heart is a coming-of-age story. It's about the fulfillment of the self. And so, from a business standpoint, from a brand-building standpoint or even from a product development standpoint, it's about becoming the ultimate mature version of the thing that you aspire to be.

And that's why it's such a useful tool. That's why it's such a great way of reframing how we think about what we're talking about.

But to come specifically to your question about product strategies, I talk a lot about, you know, redefining or rediscovering. There's something about marketing that I think we've lost as a society in the, you know, the growth here of marketing and advertising.

The fifties and sixties, as we've seen, manifested in shows like Mad Men. What they talked about at the time was marketing was a very specific business function and its role was to understand consumer insights. Market needs, pressure points, and what they did was they brought those insights into whether it was within an agency or within a, you know, a big FMCG business. And they said this is a gap. This is a space where there is opportunity to transform our consumers' lives.

And so marketing was actually the engine that drove the innovation because they had the consumer need that led to the development of new products. And then, once the product was delivered, they said, right, we know exactly how to take this out to market because we know who needs it, we know where we are, and we know what the pressure points are. So, the campaign was almost pre-built. What's happened now is marketinghas become, we've got some stuff, we just need to figure out how to sell it to people.

And that, I think, not only underserves what marketing is, but I think it misserves the consumers, where the consumer doesn't get what they need. And I think the storytelling process, certainly as we understand it, is a way of getting back to that what old marketing was. In that, the storytelling process gives us an opportunity to ensure that products are developed with a sense of purpose and meaning that underpins them so that there's a user or consumer in mind. And then that way, the marketing bit, the telling people about it, is easy because we already know which bits of it matter rather than, you know if you think about where a product arrives in the world fully formed, and then people like, right, how are we going to get someone to buy it? How are we going to get someone to want this? Because it's not been developed with a consumer need or a pain point in mind. It's not been developed as a solution, it's been developed as a thing.

So I think if we can embrace some of those principles of storytelling, and that's another point I wanted to pick up on. You talked about strategy. Strategy is a word, just like storytelling, that I think has been misused and misappropriated so much that people have lost sight of what it's for and how it can serve us. And I think really strategy is storytelling, isn't it?

Strategy is making sense out of data in a way that facilitates comprehension, understanding and engagement. What is that, if not storytelling?

That's like a huge kind of lightbulb moment where actually, I'm thinking, am I a strategist now, or am I a storyteller?

Maybe I'm both, you know, and I really like your connection there. I did have a question about innovation and storytelling, but I think you just really answered it in a really eloquent way. And again, this is a little bit of a moment to be, well, I'm just trying to piece together the journey. And you're right, it's almost like if the world wants something out there, there is a narrative that they'll be projecting, which is what marketing traditionally would pick up on and say, okay, the market wants this, we should be marketing this way to gain that interest. And that will then inform innovation essentially to say, this is what we're trying to build. Why, let's create something then. Well, I think you're right. I think in terms of some of the innovation points now, maybe people are like, I have just seen whatever, Uber, Tinder, pick your favorite big app. I'm going to build one of those because that's the secret to success as opposed to just going actually what the people want in the world, and how does that come back. So I think, yeah, you're right. And maybe that's an idea of storytelling.

So, you know, let's address that specifically in terms of storytelling as an engine to drive innovation, because that's that's your space, that's your specialism.

Yeah. If we take away all of the fuss and the fancy words, storytelling at its heart is about forging human connection. It was how information was passed on before the written word, before someone said, hey, what if we start writing stuff down?

That's how humans communicated, how they shared knowledge, how they shared understanding. And so if it's about forging human connection, it has empathy and understanding at its heart.

So, to the point on innovation, and I know you and I have talked about this before in the past, there's a big difference to me between innovation and invention.

So, invention is a blank sheet. Innovation is different because innovation is about a new perspective. And exactly like you said, someone looking at Lyft or Uber and going, I'm going to make one of those. That's trying to be an inventor going, I'm going to make another one of those.

But there's no idea driving this. There's no human understanding motivating that.  Innovation is the next step, which is how do I look at this problem from a new perspective and originate something that's going to help? So, it's all about looking at something from another angle. A point of view. And storytelling is the process by which we try to live that experience. Obviously, to be a storyteller, you have to be empathetic. You have to be able to step into your user or consumer's shoes and see the world from their point of view or their perspective because then what you've got is a meaningful context. And you know that word again, resonance, that you can bring to the problem that you're trying to solve. But ultimately, that's the key, is it has to be about solving a problem, not just making another me too product.

So it has to be motivated by a sense that what currently exists in that space is insufficient. But you learn about that insufficiency, and you learn about the opportunity gap by seeing it. That's why I think user experience is such an interesting space and a space that probably doesn't get storytelling nearly as much as it should.

Yeah, because to tell the story is to almost be able to articulate the journey through that experience. It's not about putting it out to trial. Once it's done and testing it, it's actually being able to understand. You tell yourself the story of the user or the consumer, and you bring that to life based on your understanding, based on your your ability to get under their skin and see the world from that point of view.

And then that way, you know what the innovation looks and feels like because you feel like you're this growth, but like you're wearing the skin of that person.
That went a little bit Silence of the Lambs, I didn’t mean to. 

Love the metaphor always.

You're right.

I mean, what I love, and it's obviously a passion point for you because it clearly comes out in your, it's like infectious, the excitement you have around it.

And it's really interesting because I always think, you know, if the innovation has this lane where people think it's about, you know, software, technology, you know, bits, it's like just like tech stuff. But really, at the core of it all, it's just about people, isn't it?

About empathy, people, understanding people. I know when we always do a workshop or discovery phase or anything, essentially before we build anything at Infinum, it's always just about the people.

First of all, like who are the clients? What's their needs? Who is the audience? The customer? What do they need? How can you meet in the middle? How you connect the two in a way that actually tells the right story, that has something that really solves their problem, that empathizes with their situation as well. So it's it's quite a lot of deep searching to kind of instill that in a technology product. But it's almost like about doing that work upfront. Like we said at the start of this conversation, there's a huge risk that that like no one's going to care about what you build. You might have the best, better app than Lyft and Uber, but actually they won't actually care.

So you're right. Empathy.

Yeah, it's love.

I'm thinking, man, it should be about empathy, and people, forget this technology game, this is the way. 

And I think that's, you know, it's important to also reflect on on why storytelling works, on how the you know, you talked earlier about the brain and how the brain responds to the kind of keys and messages.

And I always talk about the fact that there are three things, you know, when we created Inside Stories, we knew that we had to have a point of view on what story is that was kind of ownable in the space. And to that end, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about how we are quantifying what a story is, what does that mean? And the first thing I did was I looked at the science and the research into what happens to the human brain because there is something instinctive that we do when we encounter a story that we do subconsciously. It's not an active choice, but it's something that our brains go on picking up on the cues that this is a story.

And there were three key things that happened. The first one is, and you said it earlier, it all comes from empathy because the listener connects their own experience to the story that they're experiencing, whether they're hearing it, reading it, watching it, or whatever. And then the emotionally charged component of any story is what facilitates recall. We remember how we were made to feel in a moment. See, that's what enables someone to take something away from the story. And then finally, the act of storytelling itself is the point where we as the audience and the teller of the story are experiencing mirrored brain behavior, which is so there's three really there's loads of research out there. There's all sorts of diagrams that show which parts of the brain respond in which way. And then the cortex activity is kind of the back of the brain where we process information.

And I think particularly in a B2B space, particularly in technology,  we're all about that cortex activity, we're all about that detail, we're about the bullet points, we're about, you know, getting into the minutiae of how something works. And what we do is, we disregard those three key components of storytelling because we're all focused on that bit at the back of the brain.

Yeah, but interestingly, that happens anyway. But the brain uses it to rationalize the emotional stuff that I just talked about, you know, the connecting of the experience, the emotionally charged moments and the, the mirroring, the experience.

And so one of the ways I try and turn that into a mnemonic that's much easier for people to recall is, the three M's, and that's meaningful, memorable, and moving. And that means that it doesn't matter how long or how short story is, it doesn't matter what format it's presented in, what medium you use. Ultimately, you just need to ask yourself, is what I'm saying meaningful, memorable, moving. And it's just another thing that I think is important as well. 

There's a great TED talk out there by Andrew Stanton of Pixar Studios, and he did a famous TED talk seven or eight years ago about storytelling. And his final thought about the power storytelling was don't give audiences four, give them two plus two. And it took me a long time to work out what that meant. Yeah, I realized that what he was really saying is the story doesn't have to cover every detail.

You can leave gaps. 

You can leave spaces because it's in this space that the audience is able to almost subconsciously participate in the act of storytelling because they understand how the pieces fit together and they don't necessarily understand that straight away.

They come to it after a while, once they've understood a little bit more about the context or a little bit more about the background, but they realize how all of the pieces fit together.

And I honestly think that that's why whodunits are still like one of the most popular forms of storytelling 200 years after they first kind of emerged. You know, those those early detective novels. Yeah, they're still popular now because there is something that invites us to play along with the storyteller and recognize the cues and clues that come along the way.

And we get to configure the pieces to figure out what they mean. And I think all of those principles in all good communication, not just product development and innovation, but in all effective communication, is having the confidence to not say everything and to let people do some of the work.  Piecing that critical information together.

Yeah, yeah, that makes complete sense.

And really, I suppose just to get context for the listeners and everyone watching is, and this is a bit of a question from me, it's not from the audience yet.

Is there a particular brand, and I'm going to cross off Apple and cross off Tesla, the obvious ones. Is there a brand where you feel like the storytelling mechanic has been successfully deployed to help them resonate with our audience?

And actually bonus points, if you can maybe link that to some kind of digital campaign thing, just to give you an on the spot question because there must be loads. But yeah, it's a company that maybe has harnessed the power of story to kind of get just where they are today in a successful sense.

It's actually a tricky question. That's not me trying to flub an answer. It's a tricky question because I think there are two different ways of answering it. There are the brands that have engaged storytelling as a principle in how they build their presence and the role that they play in the world. There are brands that talk about themselves and tell stories about their origins, their history, their culture as a campaign theme, and then there are brands that have embraced storytelling because they recognize that in an advertising and marketing-savvy world, we know when we're seeing an ad and we're not going to fall for it.

And so that it's a bit like product placement, you know, the moment a character sort of picks up a can of coke and turns it to the camera and drinks it, yeah, we know what's going on that we know we're being sold a product online. I think we're all cynical enough to switch off a little bit. So there is something in using storytelling for, let's call it content marketing, that is really effective because it's kind of a this story brought to you by rather than a story about something.

So, one example I want to use that it's just really powerful and fully enough. I saw it mentioned again and someone had shared a story on Facebook this morning, and I was like, I know that because it's about Michelin. And it's really fascinating because most people have never given themselves a moment to think about why is the famous restaurant guide called the Michelin Guide? We know there's a business called Michelin Tires. Yeah, we know there's the Michelin Guide. And a lot of people don't even recognize that they're one in the same company because it's really hard to connect, you know, vulcanized rubber wheel solutions to fine dining.

And the interesting thing about the origin of the Michelin guide is that way back before, there was really much in the way of advertising beyond billboards and things in newspapers. Michelin understood that in order to grow their business, they simply had to sell more tires. But, you know, let's be honest, cars have a finite number of wheels on them.

So you sell four tires, and you're done. And if you make good quality tires, they last forever. Well, they last a long time. And so Michelin's business model was really smart. They said, if we want to sell more tires, we have to encourage the people who bought our tires to drive more.  They drive more, they wear down the tires, they come back, and they buy more tires. And so the Michelin guide was born out of that simple consumer insight.

Well, that's consumer insight number one, is we need to get people using our product because it's a consumable as in it wears down over time, and then they replace them. But they also knew that no one in their right mind wanted to have a conversation about tires. So what they did was they thought, we need to give people reasons to travel. Let's find all of that interesting, engaging, exciting things that they can go and do that will encourage them to get into the automobiles as they were back then, and go places and see things and do stuff. And they came up with the rest because it was France. And let's face it, France has lots of great restaurants and the Michelin guide, the origin of the three stars. So one was, it's good food. Two is, it's really great food and it's highly recommended. And three, it's worth getting in the car and traveling some distance to get to. That's where the star system was born.

But to me, what that actually is, is the best case study for content marketing, which is telling stories about things that people love because nobody wants to talk about the business, nobody cares about your brand the way you care about your brand, nor should they. They care about their stuff. They care about what they're into. And the Michelin guide said, Yeah, we're not going to try and get people talking about tread depth on tires because that's not a conversation that anyone wants to have, they want to talk about restaurants. So let's give them that. Yeah, And you know, it's interesting.

Now, there are lots of brands. You know, Nike has a great Instagram campaign where they tell inspiring athletic stories. And, you know, Nike's whole proposition is around that their belief is if you have a body, you can be an athlete, which is a real pivot from the early nineties, where it was all about the brand

that was associated with the highest possible human performance in sport.

Now it's about the just do it. It doesn't matter who you are or what your capability level is if you're out there doing it, that's enough. And so they share compelling and inspiring athletic stories. P&G during the Olympics, I think, for a few Olympic programs, now have run campaigns dedicated to the Mothers of Olympians, which again is a really interesting alternative perspective on storytelling. We're not telling you about the athletes. We're telling you the stories of the, in fact, it's a Mother's Day campaign. But actually, of course, it goes so much wider than just mothers, it's that whole familial support system that enables people to put in the hours and train. All of that is telling compelling stories that make people think differently.

And at no point did they go, right, now if we can just stop and talk to you about toothpaste for a minute, because that's the bit that people aren't interested in.

So broadly, the answer to the question is any brand that recognizes an opportunity to engage and inspire with good storytelling learning is worth holding up as a great example. You know, there is Jack Daniel's has always been a great example for me of storytelling because on its basic level, all of those tube ads, anyone who's ever lived or worked in London will have seen the distinctive Jack Daniel's tube ads. That's because they have a full sheet of copy, which is very unusual these days.

And when you're waiting 3 minutes for a train, you've just enough time to read the whole story. Yeah, So thanks for that, Jack Daniels. But those are always really interesting, quirky, amusing stories about not just Jack himself, but the people who made that business, in the towns around Lynchburg, Tennessee, where it was made, the process of aging, the wood, and smoking. So, each time you see one of those, you understand a little bit more about this rich, storied brand.

And I think they understand in a really effective way, because there is a note of caution here, which is every biography is not a story. Sometimes it's simply a sequence of events. And I think people mistake biography with origin story. Origin story is fine if you want to talk about how you came about, but it has to connect to something relevant and contemporary, and now you have to be able to join the dots.

Think about, you know, another movie example. If you think about superhero movies, the superhero movies that tend to perform the least well are the ones that are dismissed usually as an origin story. It's like, here's another conventional narrative about a person who has this problem, who encounters this magical doohickey, which gives them this special skill, and then they find the villain and there's no sense of greater narrative stakes other than this is how they got the power.

And we kind of disengaged with that because that's about you. That's not about me. Whereas the story goes wider and connects to our other interests, then it becomes something more compelling. And I think a lot of businesses think that the origin story and the biography are the same thing. So when asked to tell a story, they talk about what year they were founded, how many people, what investment they got. And actually, that's not telling a story, that's just talking about yourself.

Yeah. And that's not as engaging. Yeah, makes complete sense. I know from a place of work with lots of companies over my career, I think it's very easy for people to kind of just default to that because people want to talk about themselves. Right. And I think if you're in service or which you should be anyway, right?

If you're in service to a customer, you're in the service industry and you're building a thing that services any kind of needs of human beings.

You're right. 

It's about can you just identify what it is that helps them with like what makes their lives a little bit easier just because you've come and use this product or service or whatever. 

And that's such a good comparison. And I suppose, just kind of lean on that a little bit. Like do you have a story from your world, essentially, where maybe a brand you've helped in that sense just to give them that extra bit of guidance to kind of make a meaningful, memorable, and moving story for their audience?

Yes, but I think I would caveat it with weirdly, it's not about what we do, our role is to empower, not to create.

And it's really interesting, you know, a lot of the clients we work with are small businesses. They're startups. So you know that the SMEs that are at the beginning of their business journey. But you know, we work with an accountancy firm called the Number Studio. Not only were they just a delight to work with, they also just brought so much curiosity and interest in the storytelling process and what we did, because they came so open to the process and engaged in what we were doing with them. Well, as we peel back the layers of not just what the business was, but what the business aspired to be, we ended up crafting a story. The story was both a how did we get to here, but also where do we go from here? And so in the, you know, 12 months, or so, since we worked with them, we're still in regular contact. And, you know, they've shared with us that their whole meeting process, their whole meeting protocols have changed based on what they now understand about their trajectory as a business. And they've said that they've completely refocused how they target prospective customers, they've changed the way they brief the designers to create their new office space, and their entire offering has been rebuilt from the ground up. So now they've even got three, five, and ten-year plans. Based on all the story work we did together, I think that that was just interesting to me.

It might not get into the nuance of the minutia of what the story is, but what's more important to me is the empowerment that came from engaging in the storytelling process, that it gave them a different way of thinking about their business and what their business brings to the world. 

We worked with another company that was really interesting. They are a debt collection business, which sounds tremendously unglamorous. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that was a really fascinating, eye-opening process. The fact that this company was that it was a female-owned, female-managed business and their perspective on all of the things that they didn't like about their industry opened up these amazing storytelling opportunities to completely reconfigure how they talk about their industry. So not only are they doing great work and winning lots of new clients all the time because they've got a different way of talking about what they do, but they're actually also changing the way the local business community where they're based think about revenue retention and what that means and, you know, the psychological impacts, not just from the person who's owed revenue. Yeah, from the person who owes as well. So, they're changing relationships through the stories that they're telling.

And I think that's one of the things that I love is, you know, it's not opportunities to craft a story for the next big digital software solution. It's these are human businesses that struggle with engagement, because nobody knows how to unlock the storytelling opportunities in what those businesses are. Yeah, and I think just taking the time to go through that process and empower them, with the power of storytelling, it's you see this moment where it's like you can hear their brain has almost unlocked, a different way of thinking. Yeah. And the stuff that comes out of it is super inspiring.

So I have a question about the hero's journey, and I can't take any credit for this. I'm going to pass this over to Q&A because we have some interesting questions coming through. And one I actually picked out, that I would love an expert in  storytelling to give us an answer to.

So, I excuse my pronunciation. If this is not correct, but from Mihaela. Look at the hero's journey. How honest should a business be in its challenges and temptations, i.e. the dark parts of the journey? So this is like your metaphor of Star Wars, it sounds like. How do you manage the dark side of this? So it's a great it's a great question. It gets right to the heart of how the hero's journey can help you unlock a narrative for talking about what it is that you bring to the world. 

I think there's two things.

Firstly, stories don't work withouy that tension. So that darkness, those challenges that negative part of the story is actually what makes the story work. There's nothing more tedious than a story where there's no conflict.

So, as humans, as audiences, we instinctively look for the conflict. We look for the challenge, because that's where the drama lives. And so, you know, that's one of the one of the things I find powerful about the hero's journey in a business context is, for instance, giving a name to your nemesis rather than, you know, a lot of a lot of businesses fall back on that. There's two really prosaic things that we can deliver for the world. We can save our clients money or we can save our clients time. Great. What else have you got? There's something else that you can do where you can actually dimensionalize and humanize an existential threat, a villain. And the hero's journey enables you to talk about that in a way that says, this is the thing I want to vanquish from the world.

And so that you need, you need the dark, you need the sticky, you need the bad in the story. The second thing is the meat of most stories lives in the challenges that the hero faces as they go through.

You know, it's the 12 tasks of Hercules. It's the trials of Odysseus. All of those all of those classic mythological structures were all about the turmoil and challenge.

And I think the thing to reflect on the businesses and brands now about the power of those story formats is, we're so used to when talking about brand, business, sugarcoating everything, everything's positive, don't address the negatives, don't talk about failure. Everything's got to be up up up because someone on a higher pay grade than me is going to look and go, oh, that sounds negative.

We don't want to say that. But what we do is we drain all of the humility out of it and everything just sounds boastful and arrogant. I think if you can acknowledge failure but reflect on the learning that came out of that failure, you know, what you end up doing is emulating the most powerful part of the hero's journey, which is the death and resurrection moment.

There is always a moment in the hero's journey where it looks like the hero was failed has died. You know, it's the Luke Skywalker. Looks like the Emperor's blasted him with all that electric power and he's finished. Rocky is out for the count on the boxing ring and the umpire, referee, I don't know boxing. He's counting. He's getting up to nine. It's all over for Rocky. Yeah. Lord of the Rings is, Frodo can't go on anymore. It looks like it's all over for the hero until it isn't.

And they find this internal resolve and they bounce back. Yeah, that death, resurrection moment doesn't have to be literal. Like, we failed. We went bust, and we clawed our way back. But it is about recognizing that stories thrive when there is a moment of failure, a chance to reflect on what caused the failure and an opportunity to learn from what went wrong. That then empowers you to be a bigger, better, and more effective business.

So that's why in answer to that question, I would say you absolutely need the dark, sticky, tension-filled moments, because that's what makes the story work. I love that it's embrace the darkness, don't be afraid of it. Embrace the sticky. Yes.

So, I have another question here from the audience. I love this name. Jörg Winterhoff. And it's quite a technical one, actually. So thank you, Jörg.  Have you tinkered with generative AI to start the creative process when crafting a business story? So, I suppose, have you tinkered with AI products as a whole to help with your narrative?

Absolutely not.

And I think it's a very interesting question, and I'm glad it was asked because it's something that I was hoping we'd have the opportunity to discuss. There's a lot of talk at the moment, you know, if you've been following what's been happening in Los Angeles with the writers' strikes and now the actors' strikes, a lot of the concerns, particularly that were motivating the writers’ strikes in Hollywood were about rumors and murmurs that some of the studios were going to look to generate content using AI.

And the writers were worried that, you know, this was actually going to lead to layoffs and so on. And it's interesting because, AI can only reconfigure and reformat what's already what is put into it. And so far, I think until we, here's another film reference, but it until we get to Skynet and something becomes actually self-aware, the ability to create to originate new ideas based on empathy, based on mutual resonance. I don't really believe that there's anything… AI can cut out the legwork.

So, if you tell it what you want it to do, it can process some of the material for you. But what it can't do is come up with an idea. I've seen movies, I've watched TV shows where I thought, this is terrible. It could have been written by AI. It is not a compliment. It means that it's stuff, not story. Yeah, so I believe that AI could probably be programmed to configure components of a story and put the pieces in order.

But if it's not rooted in human understanding, if it's not based on some empathetic sense of what's going to be meaningful, memorable, and moving, I just don't think it's going to work. So, I honestly, I say this with some confidence. You can come back in six months' time when I'm destitute and living on the street, and I'll be like, AI took my job. But I honestly believe that being a storyteller, in whatever context that may be, is one job that, for now, has to be safe from AI. Because I don't believe AI has the instinct to create and to drive emotional engagement.

All it can do is repurpose preexisting content. And I believe that content and story are vastly different things.

Absolutely. It's a great question.

Thank you, Jörg, for that. 

I mean, it wouldn't be a conversation without AI slipping in somewhere, and it's great to hear some kind of like reality check on it that it's not going to take over the world yet.

Replace everyone's job yet. Yeah, yes, yes.

So we'll hold out for.

So, I'm going to put one more question into the mix.

I'm conscious of time, but we have one more from Ema. Stories hold immense power, especially in today's digital age, where everyone has a platform to share their narratives.

Okay.

What are your thoughts on the influence of stories in a rapidly changing world full of people having their opinion on really important things?

I'd rather avoid discussing politics. It's hard to ignore the constant stream of stories about wars that surround us these days. So this is quite a loaded question.

But you know how would you perceive that from a kind of storytelling sense?

So let's be similarly sensitive to the pressures and conflict that are going on in the world right now. And let's not root it in any specific space as we attempt to answer the question. I think what I would say is, you have policymakers who are over here who are trying to solve a problem, but at the same time they're trying to do whatever they can to ensure reelection at whatever point in the future where they face reelection or they face a question to their candidacy or their place in the firmament. I think storytelling, as we're seeing right now, is where the impacts of those policies manifest in real terms that we can all understand, that we can all embrace, that we can all empathize with because it and people are doing it from a calculated storytelling perspective. They're simply telling stories of things that have happened, and that resonates in a way that, you know, a news report or a politician standing up in whatever house of representatives they happen to be in and talking about policy decisions, stories resonate in a different way, and they make it that much more tangible and that much more meaningful.

However, the one other thing I would say, again, still deftly skirting around approaching any difficult territory, I think the one thing that we can all learn from storytelling is, as we said early on in our conversation today, storytelling is about reflecting the intent and the purpose of the narrator and the needs, states, and desires of the audience.

And so whenever we experience stories, be they dramatic, joyful, uplifting, horrifying, not just in times of war, but in any time where there is pressure and conflict and difficulty, we have to recognize that the agenda of the storyteller and the perspective or context in which the audience receives that story both have some bearing on how that story's received.

And so it's a great way of humanizing a traumatic or historical period in time. But as I said, we also need to have our story filters on in order to be able to understand sometimes the agenda behind the story. Did I tread very carefully? 

I commend you for that answer. Thank you for the question. I feel like Gareth, you should probably consider potentially political side hustle. Because I said something, but I said nothing.

That was beautifully answered.

And thank you so much for that.

So look, Gareth, I mean, look, I feel like we've treaded so many different areas of conversation from, like, say, the power of story even delved into AI, skirted around the political questions, and we just hopefully gave the listeners some more context as to why just good old fashioned storytelling is at the core of, like you say, everything really, it's in everything. Maybe it isn't everything, but it's in everything.

So yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And finally, where can the world find you? Gareth? Where can we connect with you online? You can find me on Twitter.

My handle is @gdimelow, but you can find us Inside Stories at insidestories.guru. And there's a little website there. You can find all of our contact details and everything.

If you'd like to get in touch.

That's great, Gareth.

Thank you so much.

That was a beautiful chat.

I've learned so much.

Thank you very much. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Have a great day, and thanks for the time again.

Thank you.