Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dr. AJ Minai: Supercharge Your Storytelling | E20
Episode Date: March 6, 2019Sell it with a story! We ‘ve told stories for as long as we’ve been human, since ancient times people have used stories to communicate, learn, and connect with one other. Today, storytelling has b...ecome a prominent trend in the business as organizations look to enhance brand awareness and loyalty by telling compelling stories about their products and services. Helping us uncover the value of storytelling is Dr. AJ Minai, a professional storyteller from Malaysia who has made his rounds as the chief marketing, innovation, and executive officer at several companies Now AJ is taking everything he knows about storytelling and sharing his knowledge at various conferences, as a TED speaker, and now here on YAP. Tune into the episode to understand why storytelling has become so popular in business, learn how to tell more effective stories, and hear real examples of businesses who do it right. Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting
podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit.
I'm Halle Taha, and today we're
yapping about storytelling in business.
We've told stories for as long as we've been human.
Since ancient times, people have used stories
to communicate, learn, and connect with one another.
In modern days, storytelling has become a prominent trend
in business, as organizations look to enhance brand awareness
and loyalty by telling compelling stories about their products
and services.
Helping us uncover the value of storytelling
is Dr. AJ Manai.
AJ is a professional storyteller who has
made his rounds as a chief marketing,
innovation, and executive officer at several companies, often managing many jobs at once.
Now AJ is taking everything he knows about storytelling and sharing his knowledge
at various conferences as a TED speaker and now here on YAK.
Hey AJ, thanks for joining Young and Profiting Podcasts.
Likewise, it's an amazing privilege to be here.
I've heard so many good things about halataha and Young and Profiting on LinkedIn that it's
really an honor being here, so thank you very much.
Aw, thanks, that's sweet.
Okay, so you describe yourself as a storyteller and a futurist you've spoken at over 170 events since 2013.
According to your LinkedIn profile, you're a CMO, a CEO, a CIO, innovation officer.
Right.
And for many startups, so how did you get here?
Tell us about your journey and what you spend your time doing today.
Okay, let's start off with the easy part, which is my journey, as opposed to my day jobs.
I started out as a kid that was bullied.
I remember growing up in school from middle school all the way to high school was a pretty
tough time for me.
I think as a result of being outcasted and being bullied, I think what happens is as a
kid you get to spend a lot more time with
yourself because if you're not and you happen to be the jock or you happen to be the popular
kid school, the opposite happens. You've got a lot of distractions. You know what I mean?
It's one after another, you're in spotlight. There's just so many things that distract you.
But if you're like me and you just grew up in between the ages of 9, 16 as a kid that
was just going through repeated
bullying.
As a kid who spent a lot of time on his own, I started building up a lot of my observational
skills.
And I think that led to building up a certain amount of self-awareness much earlier on
in my life than typically people would do normally, right?
And I think I'd spend a lot more time dabbling in emotional intelligence, without even knowing
what emotional intelligence was actually at that point.
I didn't have a word for it, but that's what happened, right?
And that's when I kicked off an entrepreneurial streak in me.
So back in the day when I was a kid, I used to love collecting comics, and I grew up in
a lot of these heroes paying in my childhood.
And because I was so much into comics and stuff, I used to collect these cards, and
I used to sell them on the street and roll a profit out of them.
So I'd buy a hologram of Wolverine for like 40 bucks, and I'd sell it for like 200,
and sometimes get in trouble.
But therein began my journey of understanding profit and loss and being an entrepreneur,
just finding opportunities to survive to better my own lifestyle.
So that's how my journey began as a kid.
And there's a lot of stuff that happened after that.
But I'm just going to fast forward to now, the present
and what I do now.
So the reason that I became a venture builder, you described it
well, CMO, CIO, and these are all just titles.
For me, the titles don't really matter.
It's just being able to follow a passion in life
that I've had since I was a kid, which is I realized that at first
I misconstrued it for being a very effective salesperson.
So I think I made a huge mistake in the beginning of my career.
I kind of thought my ability to sell ice to an Eskimo and I'm not saying that from a boastful
way.
I'm not showing off about it.
It's just that as a kid, when I started doing the MCU cards and I started selling them
and then one thing led to another and I started getting into other small little ventures
as a kid, as a teenager, and then even when I started working on my first job, I had
these little side hustles.
All of that kind of gave me this impression that sales is the way to go and I should be
a sales professional.
And I found out almost seven, eight years later that I had picked the wrong profession
altogether.
I had completely misconstrued what my body and my mind was telling me
about my own skill sets. What I really wanted to do was
storytelling. What I really wanted to do was
empower others and inspire people with my voice,
with my ability to so-called sell ice to ask them
was not about getting a check or a commission
out of someone, but it was about empowering people
to see the best versions of themselves.
And then from there understanding how to achieve that in their own lives, right?
So when we talk about the titles, the CIO, and the CEO, and the CMO, those are just titles
and we put them aside for one second, Hala, and if you think about it, I essentially do
the same thing in all of these capacities.
So whether I'm the CEO of a Fintech company,
or I'm the CMO of a branding agency,
I've got asked this a lot of times,
AJ, you've got a lot of different ventures you're involved in,
and you're the C suite in all of them,
in different capacities, innovation, marketing, and everything.
How do you manage doing all of that at the same time?
And what I've realized is that it comes back to being able
to understand that it's not about learning how to play
very disparate roles in your capacity in all these ventures.
It's about knowing that you have a particular skill set
that you do fairly well, and you're very confident doing,
and being able to deliver the impact of that skill set across all these ventures.
So whether it's a CEO or a CMO, the title doesn't really matter.
It's the skill set of being able to evangelize and storytell to build a brand and to build the business is what I do
irrespective of the title, right? So it doesn't matter whether it's a fintech or it's a branding agency or if it's an augmented reality venture that we're also involved in right now, all of that stuff really doesn't
matter.
It's just about understanding what are my strengths and my weaknesses.
It all just began as a kid being bullied and having no choice but to build an emotional
intelligence.
Yeah, that's very inspiring and I can't wait to unpack storytelling with you and get all your tips and tricks on how to be a good storyteller.
But first let's pay attention to you because you have a very inspiring journey.
You are a multi-tasker. You work at four different companies right now.
All C-suite positions like we mentioned earlier.
And I had a time management expert on the show. Her name is Laura Vandercam.
And she talked about how she tracks her time very closely in order to become more conscious
of it and manage it better. And so we were wondering, what are your time management secrets
balancing all of these workloads?
I think the first secret is that I'm awful at it. No, all jokes aside, I'm totally
of the view that there's no such thing as a work-life balance. If you're an
entrepreneur and I think sacrifices have to be made and I think there are
prices that you have to pay. And if anybody says that there is a utopia to that
aspect and like no, there is a secret formula to that. You can have everything. I
think they're probably pulling a fast
one. I personally feel that time management comes down to just understanding yourself
really well. And I'm just going to use an example that's very relevant to my own life.
So put it this way, if you've got to do four different things at four different companies,
a lot, right, four different skill sets at four different companies, it's logical for
someone to know that, okay, if I'm doing four different skill sets,
maybe I'm really good at one, but the other three, I'm kind of just mediocre. You know what I mean?
So people can't be good at all four things. If you talk about mastery levels and you talk about
multitasking, it's a known fact that I can probably get a little bit sexist and sorry guys, but it's
a known fact that women are generally better multitaskers than men, right?
And me understanding myself, I can tell you that in my case is definitely true.
I don't think I multitask.
What I think I do is I just do the same skill set over and over again fairly well because
I've trained myself to do it.
But if I were to go to four different ventures and take on four completely different skill sets,
I think my time and everything else would just go out
the window.
You know what I mean?
So if you're doing four different skill sets every day,
it's going to bog you down.
And your time management, quite frankly,
pardon my friend, just going to be shit, right?
But if you know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are,
and you know what you're good at,
and you know that you want to bring that same value proposition to each of those four things.
So if someone goes, hey, dude, you want to do my finance as the CIO, and you're like, no,
finance isn't really my gateway.
You know, you should talk to my buddy Ryan, you should talk to you, my buddy Cage, they
would know this better because that's their strength.
But I'm the storyteller.
If you want me to build the brand through storytelling,
through inbound strategy, through understanding
how to humanize the business, I'm your man, right?
And if I do that across all four ventures,
I'll do it faster and quicker than the guy
who's trying to do four different things
at four different ventures.
You go what I mean.
Yeah, that's really good advice.
If you've optimized yourself and you know how to do that job
very well, very efficiently,
and now you're able to apply it across different ventures.
Right.
And therefore, at the end of the day,
from a time management point of view,
the bottom line is, I do it quickly and efficiently.
And therefore, I have more time to spend on things
that I might otherwise enjoy.
All right, so let's get into your expertise is let's share some of your insight that you've
learned over the years.
Something you talk about is storytelling.
And this is what mankind has been doing since ancient times.
You give talks about so many different subjects from digital DNA, generational
gaps, HR education, but your unifying theme is always storytelling. So when did you realize
you were a storyteller? And why is storytelling so important in everyday life?
You're going to laugh, right? I realized that I was a storyteller when I was about to be
beat by a 16-year-old kid in the park nearby house. Long story short, I told you earlier
about how I used to roll MCU cards,
among the comic universe cards.
They weren't playing cards.
They were just collector cards.
And it actually was a true story.
This is way before Hugh Jackman added any sex appeal
to Wolverine.
This is back when you were in used to wear yellow spandex
with these really weird funky horns on his calcium.
There was a Wolverine hologram
and it cost me like 40 bucks
and I went to the park that day and there was this kid
and I'm not gonna take his name because I,
I'm gonna feed, if he hears this,
he's gonna say, dude, why'd you talk about this story?
So, it logs through, there's an Argentinian kid
who was probably about eight, nine years old and I was
and he saw the card and he was like, hey, I wanna buy that card. And I said, yeah, sure, there's an Argentinian kid, who was probably about eight, nine years old, and I was, and he saw the card,
and he was like, hey, I want to buy that card.
And I said, yeah, sure, it's 200.
And he was like, what?
And I was like, yeah.
And I came up with this very elaborate story
around how it's 200.
I said, oh, I went to the shop, and I saw this in the window,
and I was like, hey, how much is this third?
And he was like, oh, it's actually originally 300,
but I haggled him, I talked about,
and I traded some of my other, but I haggled them. I talked about them.
I traded some of my other cards.
I made this elaborate story.
With this completely false, it was a completely false story.
At that time, I didn't even know the value of authentic storytelling.
I was a kid.
I mean, I was barely about eight, nine years old, right?
You can't blame me.
Give me a break.
So it was a complete lie.
But it was nonetheless a story.
It was a fable that I made up.
And he bought it.
He bought it because I was so passionate while I was telling him this story.
I'll be the fake one, but I was so passionate about it.
Subconsciously, I think, I started to realize that I could make up stories to capture people's
imaginations.
I could make up stories for people to become part of me for a few seconds, to feel what
I feel in that moment, right?
And that's fundamentally why storytelling
has become so important in branding and marketing today,
because the old marketing playbook is just dead, right?
Brands have moved away from function to feeling,
and then that's when I kind of started doing it more often.
And in time, just for as a disclaimer for myself,
and so your audience doesn't think
that I'm one of those
fake storytellers, at one point when I got older,
I realized the value of the story itself being authentic,
and the value of humanizing it with very real examples,
with very real people and real characters, right?
And if you really think about it, influencers today,
and influencer marketing is built around authenticity.
People truly feel that they can believe someone
that they follow online.
And that's why an emotional buying decision
comes into the picture.
If someone who's crazy about Kim Kardashian
sees her buy these shoes, they want to buy those same shoes.
Not because it's just Kim Kardashian,
but also because she bought them, and she's advocating them.
She's endorsing them, right?
It's not even about Kim herself.
It's also about the fact that it's Kim saying that you should do this because it's a great
product.
So people automatically trust her and they buy it as well, right?
And whether it's a fentiker or not, that's another thing altogether.
But that's really the pivot on influencer marketing at the end of the day, too.
Yeah.
So like I mentioned before, it's a really old art form.
It says old as human language.
But what is the evolution of it?
Why is it so popular today in marketing and sales?
I think we just got really, really materialistic, really, really fast.
I know that sounds like the politically incorrect answer.
But I think we became materialistic way too fast.
And I'll tell you why.
I think why storytelling so hot now, because emotional intelligence, self awareness, and
all these other aspects that come from articulate storytelling have become so hot, right?
Because we're in a world where people are fed up of superficial.
Like superficial is super passe. Nobody wants to just deal with the surface anymore.
People want to feel something. Like it doesn't even matter whether it's a branding message
or it's a relationship with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your wife or your husband.
Anything, if you talk about it, we're so connected, we're so digital now.
We're so attached to devices,
that when we finally do get to experience something that's raw, that's actually feeling centric,
as opposed to just rational, or our eyeballs on it, we just lap it up, we just go crazy about it, right?
It's like receiving a handwritten letter to you now,
because you feel so ecstatic about the fact that someone wrote a letter to you now,
because you feel so ecstatic about the fact
that someone wrote a letter to you
when you're so used to your head wiring you for emails
and for WhatsApp messages or for any emails.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, that's so eye-opening.
You're basically saying the human-ness element of it.
The fact that we've been doing this since ancient times
makes us feel like we're more human
and we're just constantly bombarded by digital mathematics, preciseness.
Yeah, and we've got such access to information all the time, right?
If you think about it, like right now, you're probably looking at a screen right now.
When you get up and you leave your office or wherever you're at, Hulla,
you're probably going to see a digital billboard of signage. That's another screen.
And you're walking, you're in the lift, you're probably going to turn around, thereboard of signage. That's another screen. When you're walking, you're in the lift.
You're probably going to turn down.
There's probably an advertising banner in the lift.
If you think about it all times and there's a message of beeps up, you pick up your phone,
you're on a screen again.
So if you think about it, we're just being bombarded.
We're consumers of data.
We are data-centric beings now that are being consumed by so much of outside noise that
the intrinsic noise or the intrinsic or the internal has become so much more valuable now
It's so much more unknown, but it's also intriguing
So things like self awareness, emotional intelligence, storytelling, all of a sudden have made a huge comeback.
I take Gillette for an example. Gillette, five, ten years ago, was doing ads where there were still on traditional advertising gingles. Like, you know, I don't know if you remember watching the old Gillette ad,
but like, you know, the best demand can get from Gillette, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
And that was a dude with the washboard ad standing in front of a mirror.
And like half the ad was just a 3D rendition of the shaver itself,
with how many blades, with all these features.
And they were selling the shaver so hard, you know what I mean?
It was complete outbound strategy. And then now 10 years later, you see Gillette ads and their stories.
They hardly show the shaver. They show things like a young man
growing up watching a father that he really admired and all of a sudden how time changes that.
And the father becomes a lot more frail and how that young man has turned into
his guardian in many which ways, right?
And how he's taken care of his dad.
And that whole thing is just pivoted because the ad is so much more longer, but still people
will stay glued to it because they're so in love with that connection that that father
and son have.
And like for one second in that five minute story, for one or two seconds. They show this grown man shaving his old father
who can't shave anymore.
And three quarters into the ad,
there's this really subtle Gillette,
the best a man can get.
By that time it reaches that point
where it shows that line,
you're already cheering up thinking about your dad.
You see what I mean?
Yeah.
Everything is chained. I see what I mean? Yeah. Everything is changed.
I'm touched and you really explained it.
My point is, that's the power of storytelling.
I can talk to you about it and you can connect with me.
You can feel what I'm feeling, just for a moment.
But in that moment, if you can inspire someone with hope to do more, to be more, then
dude, you've done your job.
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Yeah. So storytelling is not only for marketing professionals, we can all apply in our daily
lives. In fact, a study from the scientific American reveal that personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations.
We do storytelling to make friends, convey ideas, seek empathy. So how do you suggest we
improve our storytelling capabilities and what are the elements that make up a good story?
Storytelling isn't just a tool to persuade for me, and it shouldn't be just a tool to persuade
for anyone.
Storytelling has an actual science behind it.
It has finesse to it.
It has a prowess to it.
You need to train yourself, just like people train themselves to pitch better, but they
need to train themselves to be more eloquent storytellers.
And I always say that it comes down to a authenticity.
You need to understand that if you tell a story
from the bottom of your heart, and it's really authentic,
and you really, really love that story,
when you tell it, whether it's your story
or someone else's, but when you tell that story,
and you really love telling that story,
the other people will feel it.
They will feel it.
But if you just want to cookie cutter their stories out and you
want to turn them out merely just for the sake of persuasion, if you want to impress the
person, what do you want to do? It's not going to have the impact that it would have in
the latter. So let's talk about the elements. For me, I've actually studied this for the
last three, four years. I've studied storytelling from an actual actionable point of view where
organizations that could coached and trained by me
and see level particularly can understand
how to be building more humanized, authentic stories
to inspire their teams to perform better.
And I'm not talking from a manipulative point of view.
I'm not saying become an awesome auretor
or an awesome speaker to do people into doing
what you want them to do, no,age them so that they actually feel something so strongly
and so vehemently that they themselves willingly
want to come back to you.
They want to be on your side.
They want to be there.
They don't show up to work because you've tricked them
into it.
They show up there because they love working there.
You know what I mean?
So let's talk about the elements.
I feel like any effective storytelling technique has to have these key elements. Obviously a
story has to have a narrative. So you've got to have a strong narrative. Two, I'm
going to go back and re-itrate this, but I'm only re-itering is so important. It
has to be authentic. Three, you have to have a little bit of detail. It can't be
so superficial that people don't get a chance to really sink in with it or
connect with it momentarily.
It has to be a little bit more detailed than just a peripheral story, you know what I mean?
And there has to be meaningful challenge in it.
If you watch a movie in a cinema and then three years later I'm like, hey, remember that
movie and you've forgotten the actor's name, you've forgotten everything.
But for some reason when I say the name and I talk about the storyline, you're like, oh,
yeah, you mean that one in which that happens and that happens?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that one.
And you're like, yeah, I love that movie, right?
But you've forgotten everything else.
You've forgotten the actor's name.
You've forgotten everything.
But you don't forget the story.
Why?
Because it made you feel something.
And every story that's worth remembering, typically, usually, in 90% of the cases has
meaningful challenges in it.
It has like a story arc to it where there's an abruptness to the character development,
where things are good, then they go bad, then they go bad from worse.
And then from worse, it becomes really good.
At the typical hero villain formula.
But at the end of the day, I'm not talking about
just a movie formula.
I'm talking about how real life is all about the ups and downs.
You know what I mean?
A lot.
So a story also needs to be about it up and down.
If it's a story that's perpetually good or perpetually
negative, then that's a fable.
That's not authentic and doesn't have any meaning
to the challenges that are put forth in that story.
And then finally, the last two areas
that I think really need consideration
to be an effective storyteller is your story
has to have a practical output to it.
Let me explain this by example.
My recent post on LinkedIn was about Optimus Prime.
And I talked about how as a kid
growing up Optimus was just a bunch of red and blue blocks, right? And it was really bad
graphics, really corny soundtracks, really bad punchlines and all that stuff. But despite
the lack of CGI and before Michael Bay gave him stripes and stuff, as a kid Optimus Prime
had this huge impact on me
because of his voice, because of his purpose.
Like he just was this dude that you knew
had a purpose bigger than himself.
And even though he was a fictional character,
what he stood for was very real in our lives.
It's the ability of not giving up, not giving up on hope.
Like having hope despite the circumstances.
So there has to be a practicality to every story, no matter what the angle.
And finally, there needs to be a dialogue.
The best stories are ones that just keep continuing.
They turn into a conversation, they grow.
They're not just about a four or five line, you know, happily ever after.
In my opinion, the best stories are one that have dialogue, that, that evolve. So yeah, those are the elements. That's very helpful.
And thanks for giving examples. How about storytelling for sales professionals? How do we apply
storytelling when we're trying to make a sale or when we're trying to build a brand? What's your
suggestion there? To keep it as brief as possible because this is actually a two-day workshop that I do.
So storytelling for sales professionals is an actual two-day workshop that I do
and to cram two days into who, it's a couple of lines or a paradox, it's difficult,
but I'm just going to condense it to as much like, yeah.
It's down to understanding that all the elements that I talked about earlier it to as much like hand. Yeah. It's just down to understanding that all the elements
that I talked about earlier apply just as much in sales
as they do in anything else in life.
So those tips actually apply to sales professionals as well,
that I just talked about earlier, the elements.
But I think one more focal point that people need to keep
their eye on in sales is understanding
that you're not telling stories to sell.
You're telling stories to make them buy, right?
So I'm just gonna say that again,
you're not telling stories to sell
because that's basically just you pitching
or you hard selling in your own career.
You know what I mean?
Whether it's a product or a service that you're selling,
if you're gonna hard sell, you're gonna pick something
and don't get me wrong, pitching in certain contexts is still very valuable. If you're going to go to
an investor and you're going to use certain storytelling techniques and you're not going to
pitch it, that can be very harmful. So don't get me wrong. Storytelling can't be used in every single
facet of the organization. There are some things that you don't want to be using storytelling for,
and you just want to have a very blunt direct,, non-inbound sort of a conversation, right?
That is a reality, too.
But coming back to sales professionals, storytelling is their key from being good to great.
Like, that's my opinion, okay?
There are probably a lot of technically-oriented salespeople out there
who are probably sitting there going, that's bullshit, AJ.
You know, like, I don't agree with that.
You know, you just got gotta get straight to the point
and tell people what you're selling.
And pitch it if they say no to it,
you're quick and quick out,
move on to the next opportunity.
Don't get me wrong, there are probably a lot of people out there too.
But I personally feel that what differentiates an average
good salesperson to someone who is absolutely epic,
like Steve Jobs, yeah, he's known primarily as being
one of the best marketers in the world that ever lived,
but I kind of feel like he was an amazing salesperson as well.
Because he has the ability to get up on stage and captivate a crowd, not by selling a
product or a feature, but by selling them an idea, by showing them a better way to function
and how that solves problems.
So Steve actually technically never sold anything to anyone.
He just made them buy Apple.
You get what I mean?
And that's what the power of storytelling is.
Can you give an example of selling something technically versus selling something with
a storytelling approach?
Okay, this is a case study that I presented a couple of months ago at a conference here.
I think the name of the brand was Redwing Shoes.
Basically what happened was these guys are a company that's been around for like 30
years and they're based in the US and they're very much so like a very state-centric sort
of company.
A company that was home-bred, it's been its own state there, it's when it first started out, the town wasn't as enriched by its presence, but it's become a household name
in that town and stuff, right? In a nutshell, this brand sells really rugged construction boot type of stuff,
right? So it sells boots for the rugged man, who's involved in the rail yards and at construction sites and architects and all these guys who are doing all this heavy stuff right women and men both so
Here we have this rugged boot selling company and
Logically what you think they would do is they would have for example their marketing and their collaterals and their videos,
all about pushing how awesome the shoes are and how tough they are,
or doing a video around a toughness test, or doing a video about this guy who's ripped,
who's walking without a shirt, with a pair of boots on, and shirts open a bit,
he's walking around, typical malbrow man type of feel. You know what I mean?
So logically, you think about a shoe company that sells man type of field. You know what I mean? So logically you think about a shoe company
that sells these type of intense boots to be doing that. But what did they do instead? What they
did instead was they created a video about a gentleman who had been working in their repair
department for the last 10 years. So get this, there are a company that sells brand new boots,
okay? They sell brand new boots as a business. That's their main revenue stream. But instead
of pushing that and making that into, okay, you know what, we've got this new model,
this stuff, this, the typical shoe in your face by these sort of ads and videos, or getting
like an influencer running in them and standing around
in them.
Instead of that, why on earth would they not do that and do almost like an info-merschel
about a guy who works in their repair department for the last 10 years?
And this guy is an average Joe type of dude who is talking, talking out, coming into the repair side of the business
and getting old boots. It's not even their newest boots. It's not their latest models.
It's these old boots that I've been torn apart because they've been worn and torn
and he's getting them in this video and all they're doing throughout the video is showcasing
how this guy does his day job, how he goes in the morning, what his opinion is of the company,
what his job is, how he loves fixing these things, how he gets it up and everything,
and how he makes sure he's up early in the morning there,
he's getting things done, he's leaving late night because he really loves it.
And it's just about his story as an employee.
He doesn't even try to sell the shoes.
And even if it did, it's positioning old shoes,
old boots that are broken that are being repaired.
So if you really think about it, the case study
is doing the exact opposite of what
logic dictates a company would be doing.
Instead of trying to sell or hard sell
their product and merchandise, they're humanizing it
by talking about Mr.
Average Joe who works in their repair department, talking about the connection and
the value that this brand has brought into his life and how he never
leave working these guys. You never leave with them. You never leave the company,
you never leave the town because he loves his life and loves the fact that this company
cares about old things
too and repairs them for that guy who wants his boots.
He doesn't want to buy new boots and it sends a very subliminal message to the consumers
and the people watching that this is a brand that isn't about pushing new products to
me and building products that fail on purpose.
So I come back and buy more.
This is a brand that subliminally shows me
that if I take back my old boots
that I bought from them five years ago,
they aren't gonna hard sell me.
They're gonna repair them, make them brand new,
and keep servicing me, because they're here.
They're here no matter what.
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Yeah.
And the beauty of that from that storytelling pivot
is that they just built their revenue
threefold than doing the latter by heart selling it.
Wow.
So that's an example.
Yeah, storytelling is so powerful
because if I remember correctly,
you remember stories better than you remember logical facts.
Totally.
So I think science has proven that.
So that's such a great case study that we went over because I think that we'll always remember that story.
Red Wings all about maintenance and this and that, whereas if we were just given facts about
Red Wings, I don't think we would remember them, you know, five years later.
Totally. I don't think we would remember them, you know, five years later. Cool. So, we are just about out of time.
My last question for you on storytelling before we go is how to use storytelling with our
personal brands.
This is something that's really popular right now.
And you know, many people call it humble bragging, basically telling a story as an excuse
to kind of brag about yourself.
So can you give us some tips on how to use storytelling without coming off as
conceited and what are some best practices when it comes to using storytelling to
enhance our personal brands?
Sure, absolutely.
We probably need to start off by saying that being any form of a storyteller is not
about self-promotion, at least in my opinion as an authentic storyteller.
I think at times, everyone's human,
and I think we all humble brag.
I think there's no use lying about it.
It really is the truth.
And I'm probably gonna be straight up about this.
Some of the listeners may not agree with me,
but I really feel like if someone says
that they really are trying to go out of their way,
not to humble brag, most of the times, I think they're lying to themselves and others. I think everyone at one point in
their life does intentionally or unintentionally humble brag. But what I'm saying is that storytelling
as a tool or as a lifestyle of being a storyteller and if you're really wanting to be authentic about
it, it's not about self-promotion. It can never be about self-promotion.
So it's not about the humble brag.
It's about inspiring other people through your own mistakes or through your own experiences,
whether they're successes or failures.
But it's about inspiring others to become the best versions of themselves, right?
And just to give you a relevant real lifelife example is maybe my recent post on LinkedIn
about Optimus Prime that I talked about earlier on the show here just now. If you really
think about it, it can be risky for me as someone who does the amount of being engagements
and assignments and consultancy work and all the stuff that I do in the market, not just in Malaysia,
but across the region here in Asia. If you really think about it, a post like that can be dangerous.
It can be very dangerous because picture this a baby boomer CEO or a Gen X CEO. A lot of them might
think like, wow, this guy's a big kid. It can have a very negative connotation to it. People can
think, wow, this guy's such a dork, he says's such a geek. But why did I put myself out there? Like, why did I
do it? There's a risk to any story that you tell, right? Yeah. You're going to
make a positive impact on some people. But people need to understand this. So a
couple of posts to go on LinkedIn, I also talked about this. People need to
understand that for your marketing to be awesome, you need to accept the fact
that it's going to be positive in some people's eyes, but at the cost of being negative in some people's eyes, you can't
please everyone.
There's just no way of doing it.
So it's just never going to happen that you'll become the perfect storyteller.
Because you're always going to have people who are going to call you out on stuff, they're
going to be, for lack of better words, dissing on you.
And there's nothing you can do about that.
So if you know that reality, a lot of people can subjectively say that it's dissing on you. And there's nothing you can do about that. So if you know that reality, a lot of people
can subjectively say that it's totally a humble brag.
If I objectively read my post on Optimus Prime,
there's absolutely nothing that I'm showing off about
in that post.
I'm not showing off about anything.
In fact, it's pretty much the opposite.
I've actually gotten fairly vulnerable in that post.
And I've talked about myself. and I've talked about myself and
I've talked about myself as a kid and that journey and about how I really look up to the
ideals of this fictional character.
And I know they're fictional, but what they represent are they're so real and can be symbolized
in our real lives.
But if you talk about humble bragging, I don't see the humble brag in that post.
You know what I mean?
But you're right, you're right. It is a reality, we can't avoid it. It's true that there are going to be days where
you may, you, me or anybody might say things that comes across as a bit of a humble brag.
And that's not limited just to you and me. It's applicable to a lot of people. Let's call it
spade is spade. I've got friends who literally swear by Grant Cardone.
They swear by him, right?
They're like, this guy is sick.
He's seriously dope.
But I've got friends who cannot stand him.
I've got friends who say this guy is obnoxious.
See, it doesn't sit well with me.
If you wanna call a spade is spade,
some of the stuff that Grant puts out there
can be definitely construed as humble brag.
You know what I mean?
You look at his posts, you look at the way he talks about stuff, he can definitely Humble Bragg. But is it in his own eyes? Is he really doing it for the sake of
bragging? I'd argue you're probably not. I'm willing to say, and probably fairly confident to say,
that if you were to talk to him, he probably is doing it because he wants others to be inspired by
his example. The same thing goes for Gary Vee. So Gary's been in Asia a few times here too. And I personally am a huge fan of Gary.
I think Gary has this sense of self-awareness
that he's brought to entrepreneurship as a spectrum,
as a body of knowledge, where he just speaks,
not to demographics, but to psychographics, as he says.
And I think that's an amazing thing,
because I think that makes him an amazing storyteller.
That's why he gets up and he engages so many people, because he just speaks the truth
authentically about what he feels needs to be talked about.
Are there people who don't agree with Gary?
Are there people who think that he's too blunt and he rubs you the wrong way?
Yeah.
I'm sure you know some people who think that way too, right?
That doesn't mean that he's humble bragging.
No.
So I think it's so subjective that there is no answer to this particular question how long? Your personal
brand is what you make it. And do whatever you think you feel comes from the heart. I
think the only thing that I would give as cautionary piece of advice is if you're doing something
out there, don't fake it, just do what comes to you naturally. And that's going to be
a risk in itself. Like for example, that post on often is that I talked about.
That's a huge risk.
It's a possibility that some people will see that as
childishness, some people might see that as, wow,
this guy's kind of way out there.
What is he talking about, and LinkedIn about this, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
But for me, I still did it because it felt like I wanted to share
that story with people.
Yeah, and it's real, it's true.
It's authentic.
Back to your point on authenticity,
it's almost like if you are authentic,
you don't really have to worry about humble bragging.
It's the truth, it's who you are, you told the story.
Yeah, and if it happens to be something that people think
that you're showing off about,
then that probably is more so their fault than you are.
Agreed.
All right, so AJ, where can our listeners follow up with you, hear more about you, and find you
online?
I think at this point, LinkedIn is probably their best bet.
I actually think right now, LinkedIn is probably the most organically rewarding platform
out of the entire plethora of stuff going out there.
Agreed.
Without a doubt, I'm not even being biased or anything.
If you look at the stats, you'll see it. LinkedIn is organically the most accessible platform out there right now.
It compares into paying for stuff on other platforms. And I feel like if I need to connect with anybody,
the best place would be LinkedIn because that's where I really enjoy spending the discipline
amount of time that I do engage on digital aspects of my own life.
Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thank you. It was a pleasure, Hala.
Thanks for listening to Young & Profiting Podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to write us a review on Apple Podcasts or
wherever you listen to the show.
Follow YAHP on Instagram at Young & Profiting and check us out at Young & Profiting.com.
And now you can chat live with us every single day on YAHP's side on Slack.
Check out our show notes or Young & Profiting.com for the registration link.
You can find me on Instagram at YAHP with Hala or LinkedIn, just search for my name, Hala
Ta-Ha.
Big thanks to the YAHP team for another successful episode.
This week I'd like to give a special shout out to Stephanie and Shiv for their amazing amazing contributions in research and production. Until next time, this is Hala, signing off.
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