The Power of Human Experience in Corporate Storytelling, with Steve Multer

Get ready to be captivated by our guest, Steve Multer, an expert in corporate storytelling. As a seasoned corporate spokesperson, Steve's journey from theatre to corporate theatre amidst crucial historical moments like the 9/11, the 2008 economic crisis, and even the ongoing pandemic is nothing short of intriguing. He reveals how these events shaped the market messaging and led to the evolution of business trends on a global scale.

Ever wondered why corporate storytelling is so powerful? We've got answers for you. Steve and I delve into the genesis of corporate storytelling, tracking its evolution over the past century. Notably, we discuss how companies like Apple are not merely selling products but experiences, carving a compelling vision of the future for their customers. Learn how you can infuse your personal experiences into your subject matter to spark passion in your audience and add value to your brand.

Lastly, we zoom in on the role of human experience in marketing. In our discussion, we unfold a three-step hierarchy to ensure your message hits home: prioritize the human experience, then the consumer, and finally the employee. We discuss how companies like Michael's have tweaked their messaging and how influencers like Terry O'Reilly manage to keep their audiences engrossed. We wrap up by underscoring the significance of corporate storytelling in setting small businesses apart and the crucial role of social media in customer outreach. So, buckle up for a fascinating conversation that could potentially revolutionize your marketing approach.

Get ahold of Steve:
https://stevemulter.com

Follow Steve on social media:
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemulter/
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_cVB16UndSaY7xoPPLru7g
Twitter (X)
https://twitter.com/stevemulter

Pick up a copy of Steve's book:
https://stevemulter.com/index.php/book/

Chapters

• 0:02 Corporate Storytelling and Public Speaking
• 6:53 The Power of Corporate Storytelling
• 19:20 Prioritizing Human Experience in Marketing
• 24:48 The Importance of Corporate Storytelling
• 35:25 Speaking for Credibility and Engagement

Transcript

Matt Soper: 0:02

It's time for Speaking of Speaking quick tips and tools to take you from stage fright to spotlight. This podcast gives you an inside look from the world of public speaking and speaking secrets. You need to be bold from the stage, no matter what business you're in. The host of Speaking of Speaking, carl Richards.

Carl Richards: 0:21

Thank you, Matt. Yes, it's another edition of the Speaking of Speaking podcast. We have so many great guests that come in and bring their ideas, their concepts and information to the surface. We have a great guest today, something I don't think we've talked about. We've talked a lot about storytelling. We've talked a lot about overcoming speaking anxiety, basic skills for getting on stage, even some advanced skills from the stories of some of the speakers that have jumped on our podcast over the last four or five years. Hard to believe. We've been doing this since 2019, fairly on. But today we're covering something very different, with Steve Multer, who is a veteran corporate spokesman and trainer for more than 100 global brands, including Cisco, Panasonic, Siemens, Fujifilm, HP, NTT Data and Bayer. As a chief storytelling officer of his own strategic brand consulting company, he's designed, developed and delivered thousands of live talks and broadcast presentations that connect multinational corporations to millions of customers, partners and media analysts. And it's great to have somebody on who shares a brain I don't know who has it today. And, Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Steve Multer: 1:28

Oh, Carl, you just said the magic word Friday morning. If we have any brains between the two of us at all, I think we can call that a victory right out of the gate.

Carl Richards: 1:35

Oh, totally, totally, At the recording of this episode. It is summer of 2023 and the livin' is easy. We've had a number of people, as I mentioned Steve talk about storytelling on this podcast, but nothing to the extent that we're going to be talking about today. But before I unveil that, I want to give you the opportunity to give a little bit of your back story, some of the wins that you've had along the way, some of your success. So go ahead and just share a little bit more.

Steve Multer: 2:01

Oh, thank you so much, carl, really appreciate it. I appreciate the warm welcome and hello to all of your listeners here. So I actually came out of a theater background almost exclusively until I was 30 years old. I grew up in Southern California and graduated from university with a degree in theater and trekked across the United States working in a combination of off-Broadway and regional and ended up in the Chicago area. And then in the mid 1990s, right when the dot-com boom was hitting its headiest and most powerful time, I made this accidental transition into what at the time was called corporate theater, and it really was a stumble. I didn't plan on doing it, it just happened. Somebody made an offer.

Steve Multer: 2:41

I was either smart enough or dumb enough, depending on your perspective, to say, yeah, sure, I'll give that a go and started working for corporations. My first client was Tibley Systems. It was right after they'd been purchased by IBM and for those of us old enough like me and you and maybe one or two of your listeners back then, the money couldn't be spent fast enough. Everybody was an overnight gazillionaire and all of a sudden I found myself in this strange new world of speaking on behalf of corporations. But it was very theatrical, it was script in hand, it was playing a role to a certain degree. It was standing on stage and communicating a story to an audience and from that point I just started to develop and develop and develop the nature of my business into serving more and more corporations.

Steve Multer: 3:23

And because I started in the fortune world, I sort of ended up here in the fortune world 30 or 27 or 28 years later, whatever it happens to be so, learning so much along the way. A lot of it has to do with the changing nature of business. Certainly, post 9-11, we saw a gigantic shift in the events in the conference space and in the way corporations were operating in terms of telling their story and crafting their market message to the industry. That happened again with the market crash in 2008, 2009. We saw it again in 2015, 16.

Steve Multer: 3:53

Then there's this little thing called COVID-19. And the pandemic brings us into an entirely different era and here we are in 2023. And I feel like we've written and learned from so many of these shifts and my guess is, if I asked you what you have written out and learned along the way, you and I could spend hours talking just about that through each of those changes in market messaging. So that's really where the whole thing started and that's how I've ended up in this very interesting and challenging and fun and delightful spot.

Carl Richards: 4:23

Wow, phenomenal. You had me at Broadway and off Broadway. Quite often I find myself down in my spouse and I will be in New York City and we've seen some off Broadway shows. We've seen some on Broadway shows too and we love it. So you had me at theater in general. So that's very cool.

Carl Richards: 4:39

And then when you said Tivoli, I grew up in Hamilton, just west of Toronto, and there was an old Tivoli theater there. It's not there anymore, but it was, you know, back in the day it was. You would go to a movie house right to watch a movie and this was like an 1100 or 1200 seat theater, which now has been. You know, a lot of those have been redeveloped into live stages and stuff, but at the time that was still a live movie house and I remember that. So when you said Tivoli systems, I'm like, ah, I had to bring that in there because I'm sure there's somewhere. Brought you back to your youth, somewhere in the historic Rolodex.

Carl Richards: 5:14

The Tivoli theater in Hamilton will be somewhere down that chain. But interesting how you mentioned the changes in the conference space, the messaging, how we're putting the word out there, and I don't think it really matters what level of business you're at whether you're in the corporate headspace as the CEO of the company or if you're an entrepreneur starting out. The messaging has evolved and you've probably seen, as you said, a lot of that along the way. A way, rather than you, hit some interesting checkpoints in history. It's hard to believe 2015 is history.

Steve Multer: 5:48

That's eight years ago, but how much has happened in eight years?

Carl Richards: 5:52

Oh, my goodness, we've had so many things that like, yeah, that have really changed all of that. But I wanted to dive into this, this concept that you have, as I said, off the top. We've covered storytelling to the nth degree. I know a lot about it. I've brought in experts that know a lot about it. But what we're going to talk about is, as this conversation evolves, is the power of corporate storytelling and how that all plays into messaging as well. And I'm going to play dumb. Some will say it's not playing, it's really how he is sometimes. But I'm going to play a little bit dumb here and say what's the difference between just what we hear in the storytelling space, what most coaches and trainers or even people who are looking at storytelling they figured out? I need to add more stories to my presentations. What's the difference between that? And say the corporate storytelling model that you're experienced with.

Steve Multer: 6:50

All right. So that's a perfect place to start this off, carl. When we think storytelling, what we always think is getting personal. How do we dig below what everybody can see on the exterior and really reveal the nature of our humanity, what it is that makes us tick, what we believe in, what is important to us on a personal level, and share that a little bit more than strictly being informational, factual, descriptive and so forth? So typically that's what we mean when we talk about storytelling.

Steve Multer: 7:17

When we go to corporate storytelling, it's actually a concept that's about 125, 130 years old. So the first known corporate storytelling big success came from John Deere. For those of you who don't know John Deere I don't know if you've been living under a rock maybe international, but a North American manufacturer of primarily farming equipment that's been around for a long time. Long after Deere, the founder, had passed away, the company developed a newsletter called the Furrow and in the Furrow, back in 1895, they started what was known there as a concept of concept marketing, the idea of being, rather than just pitch, a tractor at farmers. How can we start to tell stories of life on the farm in a way that engages those farmers at the particular time to start to look at Deere as an organization that understood who they were, that got what their daily life looked like, what their natural struggles were, that was right there alongside them and trying to overcome their challenges and create success and poof.

Steve Multer: 8:18

The concept of corporate storytelling was born. It just wasn't called corporate storytelling at the time, flash forward to the 1970s. Now we start to actually develop it into what corporate storytelling is today and, very simply put, corporate storytelling means combining the details of your topic, whatever that topic may be and whoever your audience may be, combining the details of that topic with your own personal experiences in a way that your audience can now relate to, find value in and become passionate about themselves. So if you can combine what's going on within your company, what you're trying to sell, deliver, provide to the marketplace, with the human elements of why you want to provide it to the marketplace, why you believe deeply in it, why you care enough to bring this product forward for more than just a sale, for more than just money, when you put those two pieces together, you create more value for your audience. You demonstrate passion that inspires passion in them and that establishes a connection with that audience. That makes your corporate storytelling come alive and pay off for both you and your listener.

Carl Richards: 9:26

So is this why we're seeing more, especially larger companies not selling a product, but selling an experience, or selling a memory, or selling a relationship between, for example, a grandfather and a grandson at the ice rink and something like that. Is that why? Because it's not so much about the product, it's about the experience.

Steve Multer: 9:48

That is absolutely right, carl. So a couple of things that I'll mention. There's a fabulous quote that's always misaligned to Maya Angelou, because Maya Angelou said it. She's a very public name, was actually quoted by a man named Carl W Buehner, and that is. You probably heard this before. They may not remember what you tell them, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Steve Multer: 10:09

The good trick of corporate storytelling is make your audience feel something, and when I talk about an audience, that can be one person sitting across the desk or, in this case, through the camera. You and I are chatting with one another. You are my audience. Now, a moment ago, while you were speaking, I was your audience. Or you can be standing on a keynote stage in an arena in front of 10,000 people. An audience is just whoever your listener is and whoever you're trying to connect with. But if you can make that audience feel something, you are far more likely to get your concept, your idea, your topic to land with them and to stick and to become internalized than you are by simply pitching something at them.

Steve Multer: 10:47

So when we think of the greatest corporate storytelling companies in the world, the one that I always go to is Apple. That may sound kind of trite, but they are the most valuable brand on the planet for a good reason. But you'll notice that Apple never sells you a product. Like you said before, apple sells you an experience. They sell you a vision. So when we talk about great corporate storytelling, the idea is I want to paint a picture, a beautiful picture of a future, of some level of success, of doing something different and better than we're able to do it right now. And then, in the middle of that beautiful picture that I paint, I want to paint you so that you start to imagine yourself living in that more beautiful, wonderful space. And the minute I do that and you start to imagine yourself living there, you want it.

Steve Multer: 11:31

So if you look at what Apple does, they paint this beautiful picture of a world of seamless connectivity, of being able to share information content across any device to anyone in the world, with no proprietary concepts, the power that massive corporations used to only have for themselves. And now, all of a sudden, you get it as well, and it's in this beautiful sleek package with no buttons on it, and it's exactly where you want to be and where you want to live. Doesn't that sound cool? If you want to get there. Go buy one of these right. The go buy one of these part is secondary.

Steve Multer: 12:07

When we look at Apple billboards and we look at the photographs that you see on Apple billboards, it never tells you about the camera, it's not going to talk about the size of the lenses, it's not going to talk about the speed, it's not going to talk about the number of pixels. What does it say? Photo taken on iPhone camera by Carl Richards. And they highlight the consumer, they highlight the person who took the photo, not Apple themselves, but the experience, the emotion is what sticks and that's what drives you to the successful pitch or marketing or sales of that particular product.

Carl Richards: 12:41

Wow, Okay. So at what point then? Because I'm hearing this and recognizing that. Okay, now I get the difference between corporate storytelling and just general, what an individual would do on a stage, for example. Do the two ever intersect? Does corporate storytelling and what you might be sharing on a stage, as even the CEO of that company, does that ever intersect?

Steve Multer: 13:03

Absolutely so great TED Talk back in 2016 that I'll recommend to anybody who hasn't seen it by a man named Yuri Hassan and Yuri Hassan runs the Hassan Laboratory at Princeton University, and the title of his TED Talk was this is your Brain on Communication, and it's the idea that we can synchronize. Whoever the speaker is in any given moment and whoever the listener is in any given moment can synchronize with one another, not based on information, but based on shared experience. So long before you and I met one another, we already had shared experiences in common. We didn't know what they were, because you and I haven't sat down to talk, but we chatted for about I don't know nine seconds before I think we came up with our first shared experience with one another. As a speaker, you can trust your audience enough to know that you already share things with them long before you get to your topic, before you step on stage or they walk into the room and sit down in front of you. It's the idea that we can get others to experience something that we ourselves haven't experienced, and then we can share information around that commonality that we have between the two of us.

Steve Multer: 14:09

So frequently, that's where a good corporate story comes from is looking at your audience, understanding them enough to know. Where can we find commonality? What do we share with one another? How can I tap into that emotion or into that psychology in a way that makes the audience say I know you, I know you, you and I, we speak the same language. We understand one another. You're not just looking at me as a wallet, as somebody to sign a contract or buy something from you. You're looking at me as a fellow human being and you're speaking to me as a fellow human being. The corporations that know how to do that best are the corporations that we tend to find are the most successful at what they do. They know what business they're in. They know what story they need to tell to their marketplace in order to create success, but not just for themselves, not just to build up their own finance, but also to create benefit and success for the person doing the purchasing. When both things are on the table, clearly wrapped inside a great corporate story, everybody wins.

Carl Richards: 15:10

How much personality or founder information, for example maybe that's a good way to explain it is built into this? I asked this question because I worked for a corporation several years in the broadcasting space that was started by an individual. His name is synonymous with the company still to this very day. There's a lot of family history and family value that still spills over. But how much of that is in your experience you find is built into the corporate messaging as well, or do you find that at some point it gets watered down?

Steve Multer: 15:49

Oh, carl, that is such a great question. A lot of times people will ask me all right, who is the toughest client that you have to work for and why have to work for, get to work for? Everything is in the nomenclature. I always find that the most difficult clients initially to work with are the clients with the most longstanding success. The more success they've had, the longer they've been around, the more they have really established themselves as a leader in the marketplace, the harder it is to turn that battleship.

Steve Multer: 16:17

When it comes to market messaging, usually the time that I'm brought in is when a new CMO is brought on board, the organization, and they take a look and they say, okay, we've been doing very, very well, but we've hit a stagnation point. We've got a new hill in front of us. We need to climb that hill. We don't know how to do it because we are so locked in our ways Initially. What I always try to do is go back to the mattresses. Go to the mattresses. We'll do a Godfather reference here on this point, which is let's think back to why this particular company was built in the first place. What was the point? What were you trying to do when the initial spark occurred that said, ah, there's a gap in the industry and we need to fill that gap and we're really excited about doing it because we are going to move things forward with what it is that we create and produce.

Steve Multer: 17:05

The problem is, the longer a company has been around first of all, a, that founder, or that Michael Brand or whoever it is that I think you're talking about has been gone too long. They either don't remember back to what it was like at the very beginning, when they were building this up from scratch, or they're no longer with the organization and it's moved on to different leadership since. So often it's getting back to the core values, the core morals and tenets of that organization and figuring out. That is the story that we need to tell, not that we need to go back to 30 year old technology. We need to go back to 30 year old enthusiasm and excitement about our product, a desire to serve the marketplace from a personal standpoint as opposed to simply trying to serve our board of directors and our shareholders. So it's very hard to do that, to go and tap into that authority.

Steve Multer: 17:54

So, as entrepreneurs for any entrepreneurs that are listening to your show right now it's so easy to have a great head of steam when you're building something up, odds are it's all you, or maybe you and a partner, or maybe there are four of you that are creating this thing from whole cloth that you're incredibly excited about. So not only do you have to develop fantastic storytelling within your marketing, you've got to go out and find your investors, you've got to drive into the marketplace all the way to your launch, and then you're probably going to sit on that head of steam for the first one to two years post launch as you build this product into something public and create public demand. And what happens? After the two year point? The enthusiasm starts to drop off, the head of steam, the heart, the humanity begins to go away, because all you're doing now is chasing profits, all you're doing is telling a finance story, and unfortunately, a finance story will never connect with a fellow human being, even a fellow finance human being. So if you're interested, I don't want to ramble on too long with this, but there's a really interesting path that we can take with information delivery. Do you want to kind of talk about the? I call this the three hierarchies of information on board? Should we chat about this super quickly? Absolutely Go Go.

Steve Multer: 19:09

I don't want to totally ramble, but we are all inundated on a daily basis with 10,000 or more bits of stimuli. They just bombard us from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we go to bed at night. It's constant People talking to us advertising what we hear, what we see. It's just perpetual, which means we have to make a lot of snap second judgments. They happen to happen in a fraction of a second. They call it binning. Everything that rolls in the door goes into a bin. It's either a high value bin, medium value bin, low value bin or no value bin, and most everything we ever see in here immediately goes to low value or no value and it's ejected. But when it comes to high value, which is where every marketer, every messaging strategist, every advertiser wants to, every speaker wants to get into the high value bin, well, how do you do it?

Steve Multer: 19:55

There's a hierarchy of three steps of getting your message into the ears, the eyes, the heads, the hearts of your listener. Number one we all first process information and data on a human level. So do we like what we hear? Does it align with who we believe and feel that we are? Does it affect our morals. Is it something that, ethically, we believe has enough value for us to prioritize it above all of those other bits of stimuli rolling in the door? If we get past that hierarchy, we go to the second level of hierarchy, which is now as a consumer.

Steve Multer: 20:34

When I buy this and buy doesn't just mean with money, buy also means with my time, with my emotional investment do I see that bit of stimuli or information or data or, in the case of the speaker, spoken content?

Steve Multer: 20:46

Do I see it as being valuable enough to want to invest something into it, to give it priority over other things? Would I buy that message? And then number three, third level of the hierarchy, is we view that data from our perspective as an employee of our company, and whether that is us leading our own company, our own brand, or being an employee of another company Meaning, does it have value on a business level in a way that makes me want to be a part of it, to onboard it, to go to bat for it in front of my leadership. So human first, consumer second, employee third and most marketing and most messaging. Guess what it does? Flips that upside down. We talked to the employee first, the consumer second, the human third, and that's why 98% of marketing fails. We save the human for last, when the human has to be first, because the employee is never going to hear that information if the human and the consumer haven't allowed that information to get through first.

Carl Richards: 21:47

Wow, that's phenomenal the way you just painted that picture, because with a 25-year experience in broadcasting rolling through in my dusty memory banks of commercials that I've voiced or even heard over the years, and the emphasis for a lot of them was the employee or the company first, versus the human experience, shall we say it was more about by this product here's why or buy into this service or product and here's why. So I'm glad we're talking about this because it's are we at a place in your experience where, if that human experience isn't put front and center more, that we're going to see a disconnect between consumer and company, that the consumer or the client will not invest or not buy into companies or organizations, regardless of how long they've been around, because there's not that human connection first.

Steve Multer: 22:46

I think it's a fantastic question. If I were to look into my crystal ball, I would say that it's not that people are going to lose faith in corporations or drift away from corporations. It's that the corporations and, by the way, within corporation, allow me to include a one-man band company that's been serving its market for quite some time. I'll use companies instead of corporations. Corporations sound like behemoths. I think it really does come down to the fact that the company that is able to connect with its customer the most will always be the one that lasts. So, as a Canadian, I'm going to bring up one of your fellow Canadians and fellow. In fact, you and Terry O'Reilly I'm sure have worked together in the past. If you're a voiceover, I'm sure you've worked with Terry. He's a genius. He's one of my absolute mentors and one of the most amazing people in the world. I've probably learned more from Terry than anybody else over the course of my career, but he always talks about.

Steve Multer: 23:40

What they did with Pirate Radio was always try to figure out how to get from the product to the connection point with that audience. You've got 30 seconds to do it in a very, very few amount of words, not only to hook their interests, but also to make them again going back to the concept of feel something, but bring that idea alive for the consumer. And then, once a year, in his podcast series under the influence, he does a Brands Eye Envy episode where he talks about brands that have been around for huge amounts of time 50, 75, 100 years, more than 100 years and he says how have they survived? Well, they haven't survived on product alone. Yes, they've been able to adapt. So let's go back to that Michael company you mentioned a few moments ago, right when he was ousted from his own company and when that particular company decided you know what? We're not going to go digital, we're not going to go virtual. We've been selling laptops for years. We're going to just stick with laptops. Well, guess what happened? They didn't follow their own marketplace. They were telling the wrong story. They brought Michael back and all of a sudden now we're selling a whole lot more than laptops and we're keeping up and we're doing beautifully. Well, the same thing has happened with so many companies.

Steve Multer: 24:48

The most recent podcast episode for Terry O'Reilly on the brands I admire, Dairy Queen he mentioned. Well, what has Dairy Queen done differently since their founder first came up with this concept of freezing ice cream at a higher temperature in order to create what became known as soft serve. What have they done differently? Nothing. They're still serving the same soft serve ice cream, but they've continued to speak to their marketplace on a human, personal level and therefore they've stuck around.

Steve Multer: 25:17

So anybody who has a company who's listening in to our conversation right now, the key is not to reinvent the wheel. The key is to remember who is sitting behind that wheel and speak from their perspective, their point of view, about what matters most to them. Most companies have a massive disconnect between what they sell and what their customer wants to buy. When those two things align, we have a successful, long lasting organization. When the company goes off on its own path and forgets about what the customer wants to buy or the story the customer wants to hear, that company begins to decline and ultimately will disappear. So that's my very long answer to your very short question. Do we think in the future, consumers will abandon companies, not the ones that are telling the best corporate stories?

Carl Richards: 26:05

And I'm glad you shared that. And Terrio Riley, I'm a big fan as well. It's ironically I haven't listened to the podcast because I'm usually catching him on the radio listening to the show on our national broadcaster here, CBC. But I love the show and I know the podcast is out there, so I'll make sure I actually put a link to Terrio Riley's show podcast.

Steve Multer: 26:25

He is genius. He's the one that I would never miss under any circumstances. And, by the way, his book this, I Know is like a Bible for me. I've read it four times. It's highlighted dog ear, marked up beyond recognition Even at this point. There is so much gold from page one to the very end and I highly recommend it to everybody. Go grab this, I Know, by Terrio Riley.

Carl Richards: 26:47

So you're heavily under his influence, basically.

Steve Multer: 26:49

I am so under his influence. Yeah, absolutely. I think the man's a genius, and he's also a damn fine storyteller.

Carl Richards: 26:56

Oh, a stellar. And again, if you haven't heard either the show on CBC or if you haven't heard the podcast, I mean, as I said, I'll put the link there. I did want to go back to or, in moving the conversation forward, maybe not go back, but we mentioned that it's not just the big corporations, it's not just the big brands, the big names that have become synonymous with a lot of the things we do and see in the marketplace. You did make reference to the smaller, the one person band or the solopreneur or the smaller company as well. Is this a critical component to master this corporate storytelling if you're a small business owner as well?

Steve Multer: 27:40

I believe it is. There are a couple of different types in our current era of social media, for example which who knows what social media will look like five years from now, let alone 20 years from now. But there are going to be certain brands, certain companies that are niche. So you look at an organization like Etsy. Etsy started out very much as the solopreneur, as one small company creating one small product to sell on a shared platform. Well, even in a short period of time, Etsy became enormously corporate. That has now managed to push a lot of those small solopreneurs out the door because the fee structure is too high for them to succeed. But there will always be a way for a small company to be able to market a small product over a short period of time online.

Steve Multer: 28:26

These are sort of like end cap offers in a grocery store. You're scrolling through your Facebook feed or your LinkedIn feed or whatever it happens to be, and up pops a cool looking pair of shoes that are being offered by some company you've never heard of. Odds are they are some conglomerate organization out of Asia or Africa or whatever it happens to be who are going to get in the door, sell their product and get out the door. They're not in it for longevity. They're in it to move a specific product. Maybe it's a clearance product from another company. Whatever it happens to be, it's a get rich quick scheme. Usually the quality is fairly low. They'll be here today, gone tomorrow, but that's fine. That's their business model, it's their structure. For anybody who wants to stick around and succeed, that's not going to work. You've got to be able to establish that value, passion and connection, those three pillars that I talked about earlier of winning communication. In order to get a customer to stick around, to have a long-term relationship with them. As a solopreneur or as a small company perhaps 10 people, 50 people, 100 people that connection point with your audience becomes vital. But the trick then is how to maintain that connection with them over time, as your product and service changes or as the market changes around you and you want to continue selling or providing that same product, solution, service that you've been providing.

Steve Multer: 29:48

I'll give you three great things to think about in every outbound marketing message that you create, whether this is a speaker standing on stage in front of an audience or in front of a client, or you are a medical equipment sales representative chasing a doctor down a hallway and you've got 90 seconds to make your pitch before they walk in the next door, or you're creating a brochure or a new website. You always want to make sure that your marketing messaging does three things, one of three things. If you can get all three, you're great, but one of three things. Number one create differentiation. What are you talking about or offering or selling that makes something different from the way the consumer is dealing with it today? How do you alter their status quo in some positive way that makes them think, ooh, I've been doing it this way up until this point, but now you're telling me I can do it differently, moving forward, and I'm excited about that differentiation.

Steve Multer: 30:45

So, step one try to create differentiation. Number two clear an obstacle out of their path. Now, we always think of obstacles as a gigantic wall in front of us, an insurmountable wall. Sometimes it's a small boulder that we can walk around. Sometimes it's a pebble in our shoe that's annoying the hell out of us. But if you can be the corporate storyteller that takes that pebble out of their shoe or helps them navigate around the boulder or over the wall, you now will become vital for them. They will trust you. You will earn credibility because you're saying I can take that obstacle away for you. Let's work together to make that happen.

Steve Multer: 31:20

So step two create differentiation. And step three is motivate and inspire them to take action. You and I were talking about this a little while ago. I want to make sure that anything that I offer to you as a corporate storyteller empowers you and lets you know you can do this. This is not something you have to seek out. This is something you can start doing today. You already have the knowledge, the skill set, the education, the position, the leverage to go start making these changes right now. So the only person stopping you from doing it is you Go, get it, go make it happen. So if every part of your market messaging does one or more of those three things right Create differentiation, clear an obstacle out of their path or motivate them to take action you will know that every single message you put out there into the field, whoever you're talking to, whether it's one or 5,000, in any venue, on any topic, will create value for them, and that is what is going to keep them connected to you as a small brand or as a large brand, over time.

Carl Richards: 32:22

Wow, I would love to talk to you for the next eight hours, steve. And we still probably have 86 hours of things we need to cover before we get too exhausted and have to pick it up the next day. But this has been a great discussion, steve. I'm glad we did take the time to speak and do a dive into this Because, like I said, it's above and beyond what typically storytelling and messaging messaging messaging.

Matt Soper: 32:47

Messaging is all about.

Carl Richards: 32:49

I just like saying the word messaging, I guess. And how many times did I just say messaging? And that messaging he's counting? Oh, my goodness, he's up to six. Good to know. Let me help you messaging, Messaging. There we go. Before I let you go, I do want to give you the opportunity to share with people, if they've. For folks who have heard this and said you know, I want to find out more, or I want to connect with Steve and maybe explore this for my business, my entrepreneurial journey or my corporation that I'm running, what do you want to offer to folks today?

Steve Multer: 33:22

Oh, I appreciate that, carl. Thank you so much. So I'm super easy to track down SteveMultercom or corporatestorytellingcom. Either one is going to get you directly to me. And I do have something for everybody who is listening who would like to grab it. If you go to corporatestorytellingcom slash guide and then put in the code soldtold23, all lowercase, all one word, soldtold23, that is going to lead you to a free downloadable e-guide that I've created, called five pads to passionate storytelling.

Steve Multer: 33:55

And what I love so much about this guide it's easily digestible. It's not so short that you can't get anything out of it and it's not so long that you're going to have to commit massive amounts of time to reading it. But it's five ways that anybody in any business, at any level of your career, any socioeconomic status, any title on your business card, whatever it is that you do, there are five ways that you can instantly become a better public speaker, in whatever form you want to speak in. It just is a fast path to putting really easy, simple capabilities that you already have in your hands right now into action, and you're going to see the results right out of the gate. So go pick that up. Five pads to passionate storytelling.

Carl Richards: 34:35

Wow, and I'll make sure, of course, steve, all of those links from the show notes that you just shared, and take Steve up on his offer. Steve, this conversation has been phenomenal. Like I said, we're going to have to pick up another conversation down the line I have loved this, Carl.

Steve Multer: 34:49

It's been such a pleasure.

Carl Richards: 34:50

I'm sure you're OK with that, but before I really turn you loose to the world final thought, all right.

Steve Multer: 34:56

Final thought I'm going to leave you with my mantra, and I'm going to urge you to make this into your mantra as well. I tell this to myself all the time, especially in my most challenging corporate storytelling moments. Here it is Don't tell them what you want to tell them. Tell them what they want to hear. If you can do that and that's both professional and personal you can apply this to your spouse, your kids, your friends, your family, every bit as much as you can to your professional career. But don't tell them what you want to tell them. Tell them what they want to hear. When you speak for the benefit of others and about things that others find most important and most interesting, you gain credibility, you gain trust and, all of a sudden, you create a much better engagement. Go, make that happen.

Carl Richards: 35:37

Wow, steve Malter, great place to leave it.

Steve Multer: 35:39

Thank you so much for being my guest today on the show Carl it has been such a pleasure, thanks to you, thanks to all of your listeners, really an honor and a delight, and remember, get out there and own the platform.

Matt Soper: 35:51

Thanks for listening to the Speaking of Speaking podcast. Fired up about something you heard today, want to learn more? Be sure to visit carlspeaksca, and don't forget to follow Carl on Twitter at CarlRichard72 or join the Facebook group Speaking of Speaking.