Paul: 0:29

Good afternoon, welcome back to MarketPulse podcast. This week's guest needs no introduction. If you follow the show, you better be following the show. And if you're not following the show, you need to rewind back, I don't know, about five to 10 episodes and come find Adrian Fuller's first episode, because Adrian has a fantastic background in the Hollywood scene. You learn to be a producer of all things. You learn from the best, not only to be a producer, but learn from the best. And we shared a fantastic episode together. I've I love the conversation that flowed out of that. Welcome back to the show, Adrian, for a round two, ironically recording in the same week that your first episode has gone live to the public, right?

Adrian: 1:08

It's amazing. It's amazing. By the way, Paul, I do follow the show and I know exactly who this guest is. He's a wonderful man.

Paul: 1:16

so. Good. Yes. I had lots of positive

Adrian: 1:19

was great.

Paul: 1:20

say about

Adrian: 1:21

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I have to say, man, this is the only time, this is the only time I've ever done two episodes of the same podcast. and I'm only doing it because of how much fun we had the first time. And that, that really is a testament to your skills as an interviewer and a podcaster. So thanks for having me. This is amazing. And it's been a lot of fun. I think, if there's anyone out there, who's looking to start their own podccast,

Paul: 1:46

I think more than anything the beauty of having a podcast is that you get to meet a fantastic diverse range of people who have an amazing story to tell and if you open yourself to just letting friendship happen and have fun and connect with your guests, podcasting can be really rewarding. I love it. I love it. I don't ever want to stop. As people are watching along at home, your episode alone made me sit and think a little bit more about where MarketPulse is going to go, because I've been we've been doing really well, we launched last year we've had over where are we at now, 50 guests I think we're at, so we're really marching through the episodes now however, we've had over however, I felt like we were missing a trick. I don't feel like we were horned enough on particular areas. So I'm going to launch a season two in April of next year, because that's how far ahead we are. It's a good thing,

Adrian: 2:45

That's amazing.

Paul: 2:45

the ass to manage, right?

Adrian: 2:47

Yeah, I can imagine. Right

Paul: 3:00

less around the marketing side, but we're still going to, I'm going to. I'm going to move towards the marketing areas, but I want to help share because almost every guest we've had on the show has said to me I didn't set out to do what I'm doing now. I got there because X happened, Y happened, and I followed Z. And that for me is fascinating. I love understanding how the world connects with each other and how everything just finds its place and you find your place in the world if you let it. Which is nice to lead into this episode of MarketPulse. Because you learned your storytelling skills back in Hollywood, right? So just, for those that haven't yet seen the episode, and I'm really annoyed with them already for not having seen the episode, get it watched. Pause this right now, go watch it. But for those that

Adrian: 3:44

on.

Paul: 3:46

just give us the, 30,000 foot view of, your background so that they're, they understand why you are qualified to talk about storytelling of all things.

Adrian: 3:55

Yeah, first let me say the, model that you employed in your podcast series of I'm going to start and then I'm going to learn from some, learn from 50 episodes and then adjust for season two is perfect. It's how I live my life. So I think maybe that's why we get on so well. But, so yeah, for those who haven't seen the first season episode or the first episode of us talking together I'm my first career was in Hollywood as a Hollywood producer. I produced movies, TV, commercials, music videos. After about 20 years of doing that. I, just was tired of the feast or famine lifestyle. I was tired of the 24 7 Never being able to see my kid grow up and the whole thing. And you really have to be out there and be competitive. And it ends up being a younger man's game. As I got into my late thirties, early forties, I started to become the oldest person in the room, and that was a weird thing too. So the writing was on the wall, changed careers. That's what I did. And we, my wife and I, and our daughter moved to Denver, Colorado left Los Angeles where we had been for 20 years. And I changed careers and got into marketing. So that's my backstory in hopefully 30 seconds or less.

Paul: 5:05

it's a really powerful backstory. And, just to further qualify that,'cause there's, a lot of people that I talk to that are, yeah. I come outta Hollywood, right? Like you learned your trade from John Hughes, who, I have to say gone too soon. But one of the most amazing influential, directors and producers of my youth. If anybody out there is oh yeah, there's loads of people that have come out of Hollywood, right? Adrian learned from the best. So I have a lot of respect for your background. Definitely.

Adrian: 5:32

John. John was, before he was a director or before, when I say before, I mean the most important thing to him in his life, when it came to his work, was his writing. That's what he did. He was a prolific writer. He had hundreds and hundreds of screenplays written that no one's ever heard of. They were on a shelf in the in the warehouse where he kept all the props from the movies, which I got to, one of my first jobs was to organize the warehouse, and I just went through those scripts with his permission, and on my lunch breaks, got to read these amazing scripts that, all of his movies have been great, but these are even, some of them were even better, so that to me was a huge lesson, and that's what launched my career. I, I decided to go into writing more than anything else first, and that's where he became my mentor. I was able to sit with John Hughes, I can't believe I'm still saying this. And have lunch and ask questions about writing movies. Nobody gets the opportunity, like in their careers. So it was pretty exciting.

Paul: 6:23

no, that, and that is a phenomenal grounding in, in storytelling above anything else, right? Forget the movies, forget everything else. It's, storytelling and I'm a big believer that. In this day and age, we've lost the ability to tell stories, whether it's for your business case, for your project that you're trying to get the senior management to buy into and give you budget for and fund your idea, or whether it's, As a salesperson trying to encourage another entity, another business to buy your products and services and to help them understand why they should care about what you do or whether it's just sitting around the dinner table talking to each other we've just lost the ability to tell stories. And for those of us who can still tell stories, I love stories. I, I sit and read every night with my son. I, he's got such an imagination already and I just, I think that is something that is a skill that, going forward when you've got things like AI and large language models about it's that ability that I don't think that will ever be replaced by AI. You might come close sometimes, but I think that is what keeps us human. And it's how we pass knowledge from one generation to the next, and from one community to the next, it's so important to us. It, like,

Adrian: 7:45

It's funny you say that, Paul. I'm sorry to cut you off, but it is the most important thing to humankind. It's the way we do everything. It's the way we communicate. It's the way we learn. It's the way we plan. It just, it's amazingly important for business. And for all the departments in business and we can get into that later if you want, but it's extremely important. In fact, it's innate. Human beings just naturally get together and tell stories. And they do them in different ways, but they're still telling stories. I think about the oldest cave painting known to man is 80, 000 years old or some crazy, I think it's 85, 000 years old, that they discovered in the Mediterranean somewhere. And it's just, it's called the Red Hand Cave. And it's just. Prince of Red Hands. And they didn't, they just thought it was artwork or something at the time. And then some archaeologists discovered, maybe about five years ago that it's actually a story being told about a hunt and some other things that happened in that area. And so the human beings, think about this, back 85, 000 years ago, felt the need to communicate In some permanent form on a wall to whoever's going to come along. Maybe they weren't thinking about the future, but that's what ended up happening to communicate a story. It's pretty amazing.

Paul: 8:59

And more, than that, I think, as business owners, we forget the power of our own story. I talk a lot about marketing, and you can dress marketing up however you want, but ultimately, it's the ability to tell the story of you. Your business and your people within your business, if you have them. I don't, intentionally, but but I've learned to articulate my story and I enjoy telling my story because I know it entertains people in the way that I tell it. It's not because I feel self important, or, I, and that's what a lot of people worry about in this day and age, is they worry that they sound as though they're bragging, or they're not humble, or they're trying to show off and I think that comes from, correct me if I'm wrong I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Adrian, but I think that comes from having the wrong mindset when you're telling the story in the first place.

Adrian: 9:52

Yeah, I think it could also come, I've been thinking a lot about this. For those who watched the first episode, you probably get that. I'm the guy who goes as deep as I go down these rabbit holes. And I've been thinking a lot about the power of story, but more importantly, the value of story when it comes to business and marketing. And I noticed that some companies I worked at. Where if you go all the way back to the genesis of the company, they started the company because they had a passion for something, or they had a need to go out and do this thing was a purpose in life. Those stories Then continue on through the company's through line of their, the linear life of the company. And they become easier and easier to tell because they're authentic and they're real. And the companies that get started because I want to make money. That's the only reason I'm starting this company. I don't care what I'm selling. I'm just going to sell something. Those stories tend to fall flat. In fact, the customer tends to get immediately. Oh, you're just selling something. You don't really, there's no passion. There's no reason. There's just money and that's all it is. And they get turned off by that. I think I really do believe that's true. I sense it as a customer myself. You can just see it in the advertising. And it's because the marketing team that goes to create those messages doesn't really have any base to come from. And so they have no, so they have to create something out of thin air. And sometimes there's an amazing campaign, but in general, they'll fall flat.

Paul: 11:15

And it links with the company vision as well, right? So you can tell that they have an engaging story to tell because they understand that they want to make an impact that's bigger than making revenue in the business. And I think that's so powerful to help with your marketing because it's I've said for a long time, I love to talk to purpose driven businesses because a purpose driven business, a purpose centric business can shout from the rooftops about what they do all day long.

Adrian: 11:43

Mm hmm.

Paul: 11:43

want, because nobody's going to accuse them of spamming people, or pit slapping people, or being boring or monotonous. Because there's an ultimate greater good behind what they do. But there are businesses, other than purpose driven businesses, that find the ability to do that because they've tied their origin story, traced it all the way through to the company vision, and they live by that and breathe it. Is that fair?

Adrian: 12:06

Yeah, that's totally fair. And I think it all stems from having or having for the purpose driven business, there is a backstory. There's a reason they're purpose driven, right? There's that thing. There's the purpose. If you don't have that backstory, Then it all falls flat. And to your point about AI, I think where we are right now is that AI doesn't create a backstory. It just creates the story in the moment. And that's why a lot of times they fall flat. I've done this many times where, you have someone say, Hey, put together a purpose statement for our website. But the company has no real purpose. And so you can read in that statement that it doesn't feel real. And then you use AI to make it better. And maybe it's crafted better as a written piece, a paragraph, but it, there's still no backstory. And that comes through, it falls flat. Paul, I wanted to, this backstory thing has been on my mind so much lately because I'm realizing how important it is for all of the things we just talked about. And I went back to my, prior to this recording, I wanted to go back and look at some of the things I'd done in the past. And, we talked about John Hughes and I started my career as a writer. One of the things that John did and taught me, and I think what makes the difference between a good film or a good piece of entertainment or content versus, versus a great piece, the difference there is that back story. John didn't just sit down and write, 16 Candles or whatever the movie was. And tell that story of just that moment. He took months and months and mapped out the backstories of those characters. So that when he finally told the story that we went to see in the movie theater, It felt like these characters were fuller, they were more developed, but you didn't know why. You might not even have known the backstories. It's only for John on his wall, on his, written on his papers. You go to the theater and you experience this and it feels deeper, it feels more real, authentic, you can identify with the characters, it feels relevant. And that's what he taught me was that's due to taking that time to create real backstories for these fictional characters. And so I started diving into that and started realizing, oh, wait a second. That's also the difference in business and marketing, right? You sit down and you, write out a, character that's an, you have all these archetypes for characters and, good writers can just figure out, okay, I'll, I need an anti-hero, I need a, a wise old blah, blah, blah. And then you put'em together and you make a movie. But if you take that extra time and write all those backstories of those characters, that when you sit, when you actually go to write that movie, it's going to even be a greater experience for you as the writer. So there is more value in the movie. The movies do better. They perform better at the box office. They get more awards. They potentially could create, a historic filmmaker status for someone like John or Tarantino or some of these guys who really know how to do it. And if you take that and push that into the world of business, it's the same thing. And so I started diving down at the value of story recently. And I started looking at, okay, these brands have great backstories. It's Coca Cola or whatever. Nike, whatever that backstory is. We all know those backstories. We know The, sort of linear arc of Nike and, how, where different celebrities came in along the way, like Michael Jordan and how that changed the company. And we know all those great backstories. So I found online, and this isn't, this was really amazing. It was like a light bulb moment for me. There is this study that was done in 2009 called the significant objects study where these researchers and it, forgive me, I don't remember their names, but if you look up, if you Google significant objects study, they've got their own website. And they went, these researchers wanted to prove there was actual monetary value in story for brands. They went to yard sales and flea markets and they bought about 200 little trinkets. These little, whatever it was, a keychain from Florida, a little plastic horse that some girl played with, whatever. They bought 200 of these trinkets. And the trinkets were all value between a dollar and two dollars. There was nothing more than two dollars. They spent three, four hundred dollars on these trinkets. They then hired writers to write a backstory for those trinkets. Each one of them. And they put them on eBay for sale along with the backstory. And you know what happened? That 1. 25 little plastic horse sold for 65 because it had that backstory. And that study has been corroborated 10 or 11 times since, so it's not just a one off kind of thing. And here's the craziest part of it all, Paul. They told the buyer that the story wasn't real. Here's a fake story that a writer wrote for this little tchotchke. And the tchotchke cost us 1. 25. We're selling it to you for 65. And they, were all purchased. They made a 3, 000 percent increase in, ROI or revenue. And so it really dawned on me. Oh my gosh, if that's strong, if you have a strong backstory. And it's weird to say, even if it's fake, but if you have something that can anchor your, product, your brand, your service, you are actually going to increase the value of those things. You will generate more revenue if that's what you care about. But you have to have that really strong creative backstory.

Paul: 17:25

I think that's a beautiful way of describing the real value that, that, that story can have on things. I know if I think, if I think of any brand that I align with, I know their backstory, the ones that I don't align with, the ones that I don't just don't care about. I don't know their backstory. You might have them, but don't care about them enough to, understand it. So there's definitely something in that, when somebody asks me, Paul, what services do you provide in Javelin Content? I don't dive into the services. I intentionally don't dive into the services. I dive into why I offer the services, how I got there, and why I'm different. And I explain all that first before I even talk to them about the services. And if they look bored when I'm telling them that, it's a really good indicator to me that we shouldn't work together.

Adrian: 18:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul: 18:14

cause I'm going to do this all the time. I'm going to tell you stories whether you like it or not.

Adrian: 18:18

Yeah,

Paul: 18:18

handle the stories, we shouldn't work together. Okay,

Adrian: 18:21

Yeah,

Paul: 18:22

and then the really crazy people make it to Whatsapp. And then the real stories

Adrian: 18:26

Oh, man.

Paul: 18:26

through. But

Adrian: 18:27

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. exactly. When you're anonymous. yeah,

Paul: 18:31

yeah,

Adrian: 18:32

about this, man, if someone bought that tchotchke, I just realized now, sorry to cut you off, but they bought that little horse tchotchke I mentioned, and they put it on, they bought it because they want to put it on the mantle at their house so that when their friends and family come over, they have something to talk about and they can tell that story. And I think that's what we want. I think that's what, it's weird to say this because the customer wants the product or they want the service, right? They need that thing. So that's important. But I think they also want the story. It's weird. I don't know that they go around telling their friends I bought these new shoes, but let me tell you the story behind the shoes. I don't think that happens, but I think inherently we want that story? I don't know. It feels natural to me to want it.

Paul: 19:14

I think, imagine a situation where it's you versus somebody, like a competitor. Versus you in the marketplace, and there's a customer kind of sat there, they've shortlisted both of you, you both provide the services that customer needs, you your messaging all kind of aligns, the price points roughly about right, and you're probably maybe slightly bit more expensive than your competition, but then you lead with a story, and you tell them why you do what you do, and that transforms the customer's opinion of you, And they start to see you as way more of an authority. They differentiate you from everybody else. They can see that you've been in their shoes perhaps, or you, understand them on an emotional level. People will pay more for that all day long. They'll pay more for that service because they know that you get them. Therefore, you're not going to let them down. Whereas competitor A over here. They might provide all the same services, they might do a really good job, they might do a better job than you do, but because they're a gamble, you always go for safe. we always choose what's safe and what's credible. And, much the same as if you look on Amazon and you try and buy something on Amazon I don't look for the positive reviews first. Nobody does. If I come across a product that's 5 star reviews I ain't buying it because it's not genuine. If it's 4. 5, 4. 5 stars, brilliant. What's wrong with it? And can I live with that? Cause if I can live with that, otherwise it's got a pretty perfect rating. I like it. I'll buy that.

Adrian: 20:45

Yeah. Yeah,

Paul: 20:52

like, Oh, I'm, you know what's coming, right? I'm like, oh, here's a, pram that, that's my seven year old's grown out of it now three years ago, but it's, been left in the garage. We've looked after it, but it's been left in the garage. It's really lonely. It's had a good innings. We've, got lots of memories attached to this. We've had our first football game in there. We've, done this, that, the other. Please put it to a good home. I'm looking for respectable parents to come along and buy this and put it to some good use cause we really care about this pram. And you get people messaging you like, that message is brilliant, I'm gonna tell all my friends about it. not hard we all have stories, and yet I still come across people who claim that they don't have a story. My story's boring, you don't wanna know. Do you think that's true of anyone? Cause, I have to, I doubt it. I just think

Adrian: 22:16

no, we talked

Paul: 22:16

out your story.

Adrian: 22:19

you and I talked about before the show, some, first off, I want to say, there's a lot of things I want to say, but first off, you said you don't have any employees, but the people in your business are us, the people you interview, and I think that's brilliant, because I would love to do that, by the way, as a living, it'd be great to just keep meeting new people, but yeah, no, I think they're, Look, when you're in a business that has no differentiator compared to your competitors, that really sets you apart. I was in that business. It was a property restoration. We were all the same, right? It was a, it wasn't a commodity necessarily, but it was, every company basically did the exact same thing. The only differentiator you have in that business That is your story. That's it. And so you have to have a better story. And like you just said, if you can just, I think everyone has a story. Some people don't want to tell it. Some people are afraid to tell it, like we, you and I talked about before the podcast, some of your guests, you have to really pull out the story from them. And why is that? what's, and obviously that goes into a whole, psychological trauma, a childhood kind of thing that I'm not qualified to talk about, but I do have friends that are like that. He just, and it gets hard because you want I tell a story, you respond, you tell a story, I respond. That's the natural course of things. In the market, it's the same natural course of things. You tell a story, a customer responds, so it's, it's definitely It can be definitely tough if they don't want to tell their story.

Paul: 23:40

show a couple of weeks back, Andrew Wood. And Andrew has a fantastic backstory. So he grew up with dyslexia, potentially ADHD. We're not sure, dyslexia was the only thing that was diagnosed for him. So he, hangs his hat on that and it wasn't diagnosed until he was in his mid teens, by which point he was already in trouble. He ended up in the prison system. He had a conscious choice to get out of that. And now runs a 10 million pound a year business and growing rapidly, right? A complete transformation, a brilliant story. And we recorded this story twice, cause we had a tech failure the first time, we lost the first episode. But I, I remember recording it with him a few weeks before and he was really anxious and halfway through he's telling me like, I don't do marketing, I'm not a marketing person. I just came on to help share my story and X, Y and Z and and then we re recorded and he'd had time to think about some of the things that I'd said to him about, you know what, I think that's a really powerful story and you should share it and, work on it. And it, and he came back on the show as a completely different person. And the episode that you'll see released into the public was so much more. It flowed so much nicer. It was, you could see there was passion behind what he was saying. He wasn't deflecting and making himself sound as though he didn't know what he was doing. Cause he absolutely does know what he's doing. It's just not a conscious choice. But the story's in there. The story was there and he knew that the story had real power for his business. But he's also conscious. He doesn't want to come across as, using that story for revenue, right? Like it's not, and that's not what he's about. He's about, I want to impact young people who might end up in that same situation. That is a powerful story. It's not why you should buy from me, but it does help you remember me if that makes sense.

Adrian: 25:16

yeah, I can't even ima I don't No, I don't know Andrew, but I would say that I would hazard to guess that the past still, pun pump punches him in the face every day. In other words I would imagine that even with his success now and growing success, that he still feels that, like the guy who went to prison, do you know what I mean? He feels, feel, still feels like that young thug or whatever, or whatever the term is. We all have that. And then that in that initial round with you. That came up and that blocked him and that made him insecure and nervous. And then maybe because of the initial round, he felt comfortable, had some stories with you and felt, okay, I can talk to this person. He's, like minded and I can connect. And that opened up on the second round. I don't know, but I would imagine it's gotta be tough. It's gotta be tough for people who are highly successful that came from nothing because they must always have the nothing creeping up in their ear, telling them that they don't know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we all go through that to some degree. ahem, we talked about brands earlier and my god, think about Apple. What a great, I think that's the one legacy of Steve Jobs people don't talk enough about. is The You The stories that he created. he and or the people at Apple under him. And the company is, I think, faltering a little bit lately. I've been hearing some bad things about the new phone, and there's not a lot of good design behind the new update, etc, Who knows? I'm not a tech person. But I would just say that if they get back to any company that falters after many years of success, you've got to get back to that story. What was that original story that was being told? It's highly valuable, and I can't. I can't express that enough for any business leader. It just got to know your story and it's got to be, an impactful story.

Paul: 27:02

I think there's an interesting thing in that as well around storytellers who Create stories within their business community as well. And that's what Steve Jobs was really good at. Like you said, it wasn't just about Steve Jobs story or a Wozniak story, the story of Apple, that's fine. But there was a proliferation of stories that came afterwards that people will quote until the end of time about how to do business or how not to do business. And you've got to think that whilst they might not have been intentional at the time, they were captured. Somebody captured them. and retold them and they built a business and a culture within that business where storytelling was part of the culture. And, I've got friends who work in Nike and they get trained on storytelling, right? They have to go away. You get to a certain level of leadership, they have to go away and learn to tell stories, right? And I think that's brilliant. that

Adrian: 27:57

fantastic.

Paul: 27:59

wow. Because can you imagine the difference between, your team leader meetings and it doesn't matter what part of the business you're from, whether you're customer services, loss prevention, retail, they all go away and learn to tell stories so that they can relay information properly to their business.

Adrian: 28:14

That's super important because the company has to be aligned across all verticals on the story. that was something that I wanted to bring up as well. So you're a hundred percent right. I think they're brilliant. Send everybody off to learn how to tell stories, then tell them the story we're telling. And everyone, whether it's customer service, receiving a call or it's product design or yeah, they all are aligned with the, same story.

Paul: 28:34

Or whatever. You just tell the story and let people tell

Adrian: 28:36

Yeah.

Paul: 28:37

Amazing. Guys, let's just go sit around the campfire. I've got a story to tell you.

Adrian: 28:41

Yeah,

Paul: 28:41

it? Oh, it's a business update, but you're going to like this one.

Adrian: 28:44

Yeah.

Paul: 28:44

this one. So many years ago.

Adrian: 28:46

Yeah.

Paul: 28:49

Wow. Y'all, I want to, get the newsletter. I want to get the update this week. What is it? What's the update? There was this guy in marketing and he thought it would be amazing.

Adrian: 29:00

That would be amazing. Those team meetings where you just tell them the stories. Yeah. Oh, it'd be fantastic.

Paul: 29:06

I just. For those businesses out there then, that are think, sat there thinking, we don't really have a back story. What sort of processes would you encourage them to go through to help them find their back story? Cause I know what my advice would be, I'm keen to see what yours is.

Adrian: 29:22

Yeah it's not gonna be a business thing. It's gonna be a improvisational comedy thing, if you can believe it. In my early life before I became a producer, I was on the creative side. I was writing, as and before I was writing, I was in film school. And then after Film school. I went to the second city improvisational comedy in Chicago where I grew up, and I took classes there and I took close those classes to become a better writer. And I learned two or three sort of tricks of the trade when it comes to storytelling. And the first most important thing in my opinion is discovery. So we talked about the backstory of the characters of a John Hughes movie, or the backstory of your, brand. What discovery is the, reason there's that there's the reason for that backstory. Imagine you're, just, you're walking down the street in your neighborhood, or let's just say a fictional character, walking down the street in a neighborhood, and he sees a, Some trash on the ground. However, he reacts to that in that moment, tells you, the audience, something about him. So his discovery of the trash is our discovery of him. He might be angry that there's people throwing trash on the ground and he may be Kicks the trash, ah, he gets all upset, or, maybe he's the nice guy who picks it up and puts it into the bin. Whoever he is, we learn in that one moment. And then the movie is basically, or the story you're telling, is basically a series of discoveries. I, he's gonna do this now, okay, now we've got five discoveries, I get it. He's the angry guy who hates, litter bugs. And I know how he's gonna react in this next moment coming up, because I know who he is now. So that discovery is a process that has to happen, I believe, within the team. And I've done this a million times with marketing teams, where we discover that the story we're telling really isn't the character that is that brand. It's a story that made sense maybe two years ago when someone who else was leading marketing wanted to create something that would get customers attention, but it's not authentic to the brand. So you have to go back. Who, is the brand? What is it? Is it male? Is it female? Is it both? What is, What do they do when they see trash? What does the brand character do when it sees trash on the ground? that's where I would start. And then, the practicality of writing the story. Oh, I can see you're trying to jump in.

Paul: 31:38

No, I'm just my, I'm, yeah. Brain's farting at a million miles an hour. I love what you're saying. I'm just excited. I love listening to you talking about storytelling. It's fine. Carry on.

Adrian: 31:51

so it's perfect. On the practicality side, this is something we do, that I did in screenwriting, and in any kind of writing where there's a story with characters, and those characters have to interact. But this could be transferred to the business realm and I'll talk in a second about how that works. but simply, the old adage it's called get in early, sorry, get in late and get out early. If you have a scene, two characters meet in a room and they talk and they come to some conclusion and then they leave, oftentimes in filmmaking or regular storytelling in books or theater you don't have the characters enter the room. And start to talk unless that entrance and is super important to the plot of the movie for some reason you they're already in the room so and oftentimes The best storytelling is when you as the audience come into the room and they're already in conversation. They don't start the conversation. They've already started a minute ago. They've gone through all the surface stuff that we go through when we have conversations and now they're at the meat of the conversation and that's what we care about. So why not just jump to that? The other thing is when your lead character, when it's obvious to the audience or to your character that she or he is going to obtain their goal for that scene. I've come to this room to get the money that person owes me. And once they realize that once that person either hands over the money or they realize that person's never going to hand over the money, in other words, there's a resolution in the character's mind, the scene's over. Anything after that is a waste of time and so you get out. In other words, you get in late, you get out early, you're focused on the meat of it. You see where I'm going with this? So from a practical standpoint, when you're working on a story for your brand, you don't need to tell every last detail of the history of your brand to get to the point that the customer really cares about. You can give a little Short, brief intro, but then get to the point. And so that, and then get out early so that they're wanting more. They want to read the next story and they want to click to the next page. And, a, they're just tricks of the trade, so to speak, but they, work across business as well. And that's why there's a robust business around improvisational comedy training for business executives, because all of these things are brought up in that training.

Paul: 34:15

I think that's some really powerful advice Adrian I'd loved it if so if you're watching along and, you're taking notes and you want to if you're doing this, you put this into practice, send me a message and let me know. I want to know, cause I want to pass it on to Adrian. We're not fishing for business here. I want to know who's putting this into practice and discovering things about themselves and about the business from what we're talking about here. And my two cents on the end of that, I'm going all American here, my two cents on the end of that.

Adrian: 34:42

Yeah.

Paul: 34:42

Is tell your story every chance you get. don't, tell it for the sake of telling it, but do it for the sake of teaching yourself your story. And, watch for the reactions as you tell your story. And if you come to say something and it gets a reaction from the other person, put that in the next time. If it doesn't get a reaction, change what you said. Change how you see it. Go down a different path slightly. And wait for the reaction. And if you're getting reactions, then you're telling an engaging story. And, you might need to do a little bit of lead up to get the reaction, right? You might need to give a bit of boring information in order to be able to talk about this bit over here, that is actually really interesting and exciting for people to hear about. But I've found that, I don't know, I've reinvented myself for four industries now. And I love networking, I love building new, it's tough to build a whole new network in a whole new industry. But the one thing that kept me going through it was, I'd start with a really short story about why I'm in that industry. And then I'd build on it, step by step, and have lots of conversations, repeat that story, and gradually make it longer, until it's long enough. Doesn't need to be a long story, but it needs to be long enough. That when you then dive into your services or products or whatever it is that you're then going to talk to them about, they're open to it because you've shared something about yourself. You've shared your journey and they get why you're doing what you're doing now. They align or don't align with you. And it becomes very easy also when you do that. If you build that step by step. To find the people who you shouldn't work with. We talked about this before, before the show, right? A couple of times I've told my story, and I can see people are like, I'm going to type it on my emails, all that. If you're not going to listen to my story, we shouldn't work together. Because I'm going to have to tell your story. You're not going to give me the respect of me, you listening to my story, then we shouldn't work together. Because you clearly don't care about the story enough. And that's a big red flag for me and my business. I hope that's useful for folks out there who feel like they don't have a story. Now you've got Adrian's input there on how you can start to shape that story behind the scenes. How you can start to figure yourself out and discover what your story is. Don't try and tell that whole story at once all on day one. Build on it so that you get a feel for what resonates and what doesn't. And, you can create the story that you want to create, as long as it's true.

Adrian: 37:16

Yeah, let me double click on that for you really quick, which, I 100 percent agree. You have to go out and tell your story a thousand times. Whatever that, remember that, what's that thing? you learn something after 10, 000 times. It's like the same thing. You, tell the story. And by the way, during that process, the story is going to evolve. Now, this is a big question for you, Paul. I wonder what your thoughts are on this, because it seems like in some parts of our societies, we hate when stories evolve. You, Mr. Politician, said two years ago, you believed in this, but now you believe in that? I don't trust you. But is it okay for those stories to evolve? They tend to evolve naturally for all of us and what you're talking about as you go out and tell that same story, it's going to evolve. It's going to become sharper. That'll be for sure. Maybe the core story doesn't change, but the sharpness of it changes. But is it okay for a brand to evolve its story over time? I tend to think it's okay. I can't think of any real examples in the moment right now of a brand that did that, but. I know brands rebrand, they change their stories, people change their stories, but from a place of making them better? I don't know. What are your thoughts about that? Is the evolution of a story okay?

Paul: 38:28

I think to evolve a story is fine. It's when you try and wholesale change the story and tell a different story, or you change the end point of the story. You can't change your vision, right? If you're a brand, you can't change your vision, unless you've outgrown your vision, which is fine. I set out to help a thousand people, I've helped a thousand people, now I want to help ten thousand people. Alright, fine. But, Dr. Martens, as a prime example Dr. Martens will always be Dr. Martens. There is no getting away from their backstory, there is no getting away from what they stand for, and who they serve, and who they work with. And if they tried to do that, it would kill their brand and their identity. I think, evolution is the key word I think it has to evolve to an extent. There is always more to it. You've got to make it relevant to now. You can't tell the same story 30 years later and hope that it still resonates with the current audience because they're going to be looking for different things and you have to tell the story in a different way to resonate with them. much about that. It's just about you've got it. As long as you're staying true to your vision and your goals and your story, the story has to evolve. That's human nature, right?

Adrian: 39:36

yeah. think about this too. The bottom of the marketing funnel or just the sales funnel, the business funnel the bottom after conversion, after sale is the golden thing that everyone's going after, which is loyalty or it's advocate. We wanted to not just make a customer, we want to make an advocate. What does that mean? We want them to go tell our story. And that customer is going to tell the story that they've learned during their practice. They're learnings of your brand and purchase, et cetera, and using the products or service. And so they may, the customers may become part of the storytelling. They become part of the authorship of your brand. And you could wake up 10 years from now and realize your brand is not the story you've been telling. It's the story that the customers have been telling to the world, and it's become something else. So there's a natural evolution, I think, to successful business when the customers get involved in telling the story.

Paul: 40:28

and that's when you know you've nailed that, real power behind the

Adrian: 40:32

Right.

Paul: 40:32

believe in you so much, you've become a cause.

Adrian: 40:35

That's right. That's right. And you also probably feel like I've never been a part of that. So I don't know what that feels like from a, like a founder's standpoint or a leadership standpoint. It must feel weird because it's out of your control at that point. The story is in the hands of the public and, hopefully it'll be a positive one. That continues rather than one that shifts the other way. But yeah, it's just, it's a whole thing. It's, I just love it. I love telling stories. I love experiencing stories. And I love thinking about how all of that applies to everything that we do every day in our lives, not just business, but in our lives.

Paul: 41:11

Adrian, I could quite happily sit here for the next 4 hours and discuss storytelling, like it doesn't ever seem to get boring, right? like, you'd think a 40, minute conversation on storytelling would start to dry up. I've probably got more questions bouncing around in my head now than when we first started. But I can't possibly ask people to listen to more than what we've recorded in one go. I don't know, maybe we have to do a round three, I don't know. Maybe it becomes

Adrian: 41:35

I think so. Yeah,

Paul: 41:36

podcast, I don't know. Let's just start a new podcast, I don't know. The storytelling podcast.

Adrian: 41:41

Yeah. I'd be down for that if you want to do

Paul: 41:46

As ever, it was a genuine pleasure chatting with you today and I'd like to think that the people at home who've watched along take some great steps towards being able to tell their own story in a convincing way after listening to what I think of as a masterclass, right? I think that is brilliant.

Adrian: 42:04

Oh, thank you.

Paul: 42:05

thank you very much for being a fantastic guest once again.

Adrian: 42:08

this has been a great pleasure of mine. I can't thank you enough for asking me to come on twice. This has been, it feels so good to hear that it's something is successful that you're involved with. So tha and, that's because of you, Paul. So thanks to you and Mark Pauls and, the whole group. I, I really appreciate your time and giving me the time

Paul: 42:25

Thank you to the audience who are everything why we do this podcast in the first place, cause without sharing things that people will resonate with, there's no point to the podcast, so thank you as well. Listeners, viewers, for recording, watching along, following, subscribing, whatever you do, thank you because this is all for you. Brilliant. All right, that's enough back patting. I will see you all next week. Peace

Adrian: 42:49

Cheers. Bye.