Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to season one of stethoscopes cost series for med tech and sports innovators, which we hear from founders, investors, and advisors. Been there, done it, learn from their stories, including their successes.[inaudible] if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow us, visit our website. Hello, welcome. I'm delighted to have with me here today. Gareth demo of inside stories, talking Gareth.

Speaker 2: 0:48

I'm great. Thank you. It's lovely to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Um, so I guess we all know that, um, building a business is a, a rollercoaster ride, um, and you, and I think also know that, um, and as do some of the businesses we work with that having the right experts on board, um, can help avoid those kinds of heart in the mouth moments you get, where that roller coaster plunges from a height. Um, so what we're going to try and get into today is, um, a bit of your story, I guess, your background, um, and in particular delve into how you help startups and small businesses, um, tell their story in a way that helps them get attract investment and build their business in the way they want to build it. Um, but before we get into that, um, perhaps you could just start with a brief introduction for our listeners. Tell them a bit about who you are and what it is the inside stories does.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Right? We'll tell you. Thank you. Um, yeah, my, my background, I spent around 20 years in a number of quite large marketing branding agencies, um, working in a combination of, uh, creative and strategic roles where my job was often trying to piece together, the information that clients might provide and turn it into something tangible and creative that then the design team could work with. And what I quickly realized was there's no shortage of expertise and knowledge in the world, but knowing how to turn that into something emotionally engaging and resonant is the missing skill set. So about six years ago, I decided to leave the agency well behind and started looking for businesses that I felt needed my help, because I felt I was encountering particularly SMEs and particularly in the tech space, um, a lot of expertise and a lot of know how, but a real lack of experience of working with marketing professionals. So what I was detecting was there were a lot of people out there who needed help from marketing experts, but having never really used those services before, they sort of didn't know what good looks like. And they didn't really know how to work with those kinds of skillsets. So cons consequently, everyone was slightly frustrated with the outcomes. The marketing professionals would be frustrated that they weren't getting what they felt they needed from the clients. And the clients were feeling frustrated because they got very small finite marketing budgets that they felt were being spent on stuff where they couldn't see practical outcomes. So what I tried to do was find a way of becoming an intermediary between those, those two poles. And when I teamed up with my business partner, Terry, and we created inside stories, it was really predicated on the idea that particularly in and around the Brighton south coast area, where there's a huge amount of startups, there's a lot of dynamism and a lot of excitement around, uh, particularly the tech sector. We felt there was a real hub of businesses that needed that kind of support, uh, that we could work with to help, um, formulate and formalize how they talk about what they do. And we call the business inside stories because fundamentally it all comes down to the notion of knowing your story. And I think one of the things that's probably worth saying upfront here is how we try and quantify what we mean by a story, because I think some people have almost a knee-jerk reaction to the word story and they think fairytales. And once upon a time in a land far, far away, and it isn't that. And I think a story also isn't a novel, it isn't something that has to take six weeks to get through. I think a story is something that resonates with the person who hears it or reads it in a way that it feels authentic and relevant to them. So one of the first things we did was we looked to create a mnemonic that defined what we mean by story. And it's quite simple. Story has to be meaningful, memorable, and moving. It's got to be meaningful. It's got to feel like there's a, there's a point of authenticity and appropriateness, uh, something that people can connect to their own life and experience. It's got to be memorable. There's got to be some sort of a hook that facilitates recall. And ultimately it's got to be moving. You've got to remember that even in the driest professional context, we're still people, businesses, we're still working with other people. We've got to find ways of forging those human connections and you do that by triggering emotional responses. So when we define a story it's less about, well, it's this long and it has this many parts in it, and it's more it's whatever you say, as long as it's meaningful, memorable and moving. I think once you shift people away from this kind of, um, preconceived notion of what a story has to be, it's, it can be quite liberating because suddenly what you could be doing a presentation at a conference, you could be meeting someone in a speed networking thing where you've only got 30 seconds to introduce yourself. There's still an opportunity to tell a story by just remembering three M's. And so that's ultimately what we've been doing, particularly with SMEs around, um, Sussex and the south coast is finding those businesses that need help with that.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Okay. And so it's about finding what makes them tick, and I know what, and, and finding the right language to connect with their audience. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:19

It's a combination. It's a combination of all of those things actually. Um, and again, one of the reasons why we were so delighted to be invited to speak to you on this podcast today was this notion that there are a lot of concepts that exist in the world that different people give different names to. And I think IP is one of them from a legal perspective. We know what IP means. It's that protectable almost sometimes intangible asset that is uniquely yours. And to us, that is the heart of the story inside every business. Um, one of the, one of the things that we talk to clients a lot about is explaining the history of the concept of uniqueness in business. Because of course the premise of IP is it's something that's uniquely ownable. It's something that can only be yours and can be defended, uh, from a legal perspective. And I think for a lot of businesses, the bit that they can't necessarily automatically quantify is their uniqueness. So we'll often meet businesses in a networking environments and they'll say, oh, I'm an X business, but I'm different. And we'll always challenge them on that, not in an aggressive way, but just to get them thinking what different really means, because oftentimes when you ask them to quantify difference, they end up saying things that I would expect from a business. You know, I'm a legal professional. And I really look after my clients. Well, I would hope so. I'm an accountancy firm and I, I really kind of scrutinize the minutia and the detail. Well, I would hope so. And, and what you

Speaker 1: 7:56

Said, I'm smiling as you say that

Speaker 2: 7:59

This cutting to the quick,

Speaker 1: 8:01

It reminds me of, you know, in my, in my previous life, when I was, um, you know, a partner at a law firm and it just, you could almost be describing conversations that I've had with, with the marketing experts. So

Speaker 2: 8:14

These are hard working experiences that are unrelated. I'm not creating hypotheticals, I've sat in these conversations with myself. But as I said, this isn't about challenging people to make them feel uncomfortable. I think where we're actually trying to go when we have these conversations is getting people to realize that if you look at the history of advertising, if you're a fan of the TV show, mad men, like I was when that was on. One of the amazing things about that period in time was advertising was a relatively new industry. And what the phrase that was coined at the time was the unique selling point. And anyone in the last 60 years, who's gone into branding, marketing, advertising. Who's done any study at all. The first thing they learn about the next selling point. And the problem is a lot of people, it's a little bit like learning those, those grammatical rules. When you first start writing in primary school, you have to learn rules in order to be able to break them. And so the unique selling point is a great starting off point for understanding how branding works, where it gets more complicated is in the 1960s, it was quite easy to have a unique selling point because you were probably the only X on the market, or you were the newest X on the market. When you look at, uh, you know, convoluted, complicated overlapping world. Now that's saturated with media. We get ads beamed into our faces everywhere we go, whatever we're doing, we're online or offline. Um, there are messages all the time. There are thousands of variants of every conceivable product. Um, I was in the supermarket the other day, and I saw there were about 10 different flavors of Fanta. When I was a kid, Fanta was orange. That was what Phantom was. Now. It's anything with a color and a fruit flavor. And so consequently, this, this increasing differentiation between everything means that the point of view uniqueness has been lost. And I think what gets really interesting is when you talk to people and find something unique, it's not a uniqueness that speaks to the thing that they do, or even the way that they do it. But it's more of a fundamental mantra, a guiding principle, a mission that sits right here at the heart of them that drives what they do. And the interesting thing with regards to a conversation around IP is it's the quote that Mariah Carey song, they can't take that away from me. It's something that simply can't be replicated because it's like, it's, it's almost your DNA. And we often talk about the story of a business being the DNA of the business. So you could say, we make a widget, or we make an app that does X, Y, Z, and there could be 10 other people. Who'll do the same thing. You know, at the moment that the growth sector, as I see it are all of these delivery services where, you know, if it's two in the morning and you've got the munchies and you need a packet of chocolate digestives and a two liter bottle of grape flavored Fanta, someone will bring it to you on a bike. No questions asked, but there are about 20 of those brands that have sprung up in the last 12 months. Now, then all going to survive, they'll probably be two or three of them, but what they're going to need to do is work out what differentiates them, because the IP for them is going to be less about we've got delivery drivers who are available on an app who bring your grocery, shopping to your dog. They all do that, but there's going to be something that guides the way they do it. That drives their mission statement as a business that will become quantifiable as the thing that only they do. And so working with people to figure that out is really what we do, because I'll be honest, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do because as human beings, we particularly in the UK as human beings, we're a little bit private, we're a little bit shy, and we sometimes have to give ourselves permission to go a little bit deeper and find that mission. That's ticking insiders.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Uh, I think that's very right. We're not, yeah. As you say, I think particularly in this country, we're not very good at opening up

Speaker 2: 12:25

And we're not judge people who do.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, but where somehow, but, but yeah, but again, looking thinking about my past experience, when, when you get in a room with someone who's going to be sorting out your marketing strategy for you, you all of a sudden expected to do that. You're expected to be able to, to, to tell them what makes you tick. And, and as you say, why you're different. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:48

And I th I think for a lot of people, it feels like being put on the spot. It's I haven't prepared myself for that question. And so much of what we do and the way we do it, uh, you know, our client facing work is delivered through workshops. And what we do is we tend to run it in a single day, and it's a real intensive, deep dive. And it's kind of like each successive exercise gets people thinking a little more deeply about what they do until there's like a breakthrough moment. There's a Eureka. I found it moment where they suddenly they've said a bunch of things about how they felt about what was driving them on a, on a personal level or something that spoke to them from the wider world that they wanted to incorporate into their, you know, personal life ambitions, what might be related to their family. And what happens is, as we're reframing, what they're telling us, we're shaping, we're not inventing anything new that they haven't said, but our storytelling capabilities mean we're reframing it in terms of something that really resonates what it does is it, it, it gives them that permission to step away from the core tenant of their business, which is the thing that they're most comfortable talking about and allows them to articulate a mission. What's important about having a mission as a business, is it not only shows that the direction of travel. So for instance, if you're talking to an investor you're going, this is where I want to be. You know, that terrible question that people used to ask in job interviews all the time, where do you see yourself in five years time? It's a little bit like that, but it's not as simple as well. I've got 10 employees now. And in five years' time, I want to have 250 employees because that again is it's too tangible. It's too, matter of fact, it's more,

Speaker 1: 14:44

If my mind that might be the resource you have to put in place to,

Speaker 2: 14:48

But it's not the mession, it's, it's almost an outcome of mission. So it's great to think about missions in terms of, um, an evil that you want to eradicate from the world or something about the way people think that you want to change, because suddenly that becomes uniquely ownable and intrinsically tied to the way you do things. And I think particularly for SMEs, which are generally founded by one or two people, it's a way of making sure that the thing that drove them to create this business in the first place isn't lost sight of as the business grows from strength to strength, because that's the other problem is, you know, let's not lie to ourselves SMEs when they start up. They're not just hitting the ground running. It's like they've hit the ground from a 35,000 foot drop on fire, rolling through brown balls, and they've still got to deliver. And so they don't often have time to go right now. Let me think strategically about how I'm going to plan out the next 18 months, because you're constantly firefighting. You're constantly running from one crisis to the next. And then when the only office toilet breaks, you're probably the one putting on the marigolds trying to fix that as well. That's the nature of, of being a business owner when you're an SME. And I think what we're trying to encourage people to do, and funnily enough, it's probably the biggest blockage for us as a business is encouraging people to afford themselves the time to invest in this process. Because it's one of those things where if I could convince anyone of anything, it would be a couple of days invested upfront to plan where this is going to go and to create a roadmap for the story of your, not the story of your business in terms of we're going to do this, then we're going to do that. Then we're going to do that. But literally about where the business is going to go as an idea and what success will look like when you're fit. And again, not cashing out, not selling to an investor, where are you going to go? What change you're going to make in the world. If you invest a little bit of that time at front, it will save you so much heartache further down the road. But what you've got to do is convince people that they can afford to put down the fire blanket for a day.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Yeah, no, that all makes good sense. And actually really resonates with me personally. And in the context of the number of businesses I've, I've worked with. Um, and w one thing you said in particular, I kind of picked up on, which is this idea of, um, yeah, as a business, if a business is successful and it grows, and it grows beyond, you know, the founding team and then the small team they brought in around them, you see so many businesses that then kind of lose that. They lose the thing that made them special in the first place. And I guess, I guess that, I guess that happens because they haven't articulated what that special thing is. They don't know what it is, so they can't keep hold of it. Or

Speaker 2: 17:47

Even if they did articulate, they've lost sight of it in the flurry of everything else is going on. And this is almost like, um, when you, when you figured out what the, the DNA at the heart of the story of your businesses is kind of like etching it in stone. It's like one of those commandments. And it means it's a, it's a token or a totem that you can keep going back to. And, you know, as your business, let's imagine you increase your head, count 10 fold over the next three years, that totem becomes almost something in the village square. And everyone who moves to the village sees that thing. And they see that that's the guiding principle for everyone in the village. It's a really great way of, you know, without investing a bunch of money in, um, an employee engagement protocol and a bunch of expensive HR specialists who will come in and advise you on how to do that, this is a way of going, look, this is a, I'm using a lot of metaphors here, but that's how stories work, right? It's all subtext and metaphor, but this metaphor we've kind of got a north star that everyone's pointing towards. It's a really easy way of helping people sense, check whether this is going to be the right environment for that. Because if you're pulling in this direction and you get someone going, well, I like what you're doing, but I'm actually pulling in this direction. It's a great way of saying, look, we haven't yet articulated what our cultural fit is, but this isn't it. And so then that way you're saving yourself the expense and the heartache, where every head count has a financial impact on the bottom line, on the viability of the business. This allows you to go look, our mission is taking us in this direction. If you want to come on this journey, we would love to have you. This doesn't feel like somewhere. You want to go pull the rip cord now, because it's where we're going. I think that's one of the things, again, that in the past, I've applied some of these processes that we're using inside stories on more established businesses, where exactly like you said, these businesses have been around three or four years, and they've actually got a sizeable headcount. They've got the big offices on an industrial park and what they never did was quantify what their brand stood for. So suddenly they're trying to rect retroactively build that framework a to guide the next three years, but also to, to sort of make sure that everything they've done in the last three years looked like it was an active strategy. Uh, not just chaos, so they can go look, we did, we did start out here. And we, you know, we might've taken a more circuitous route. We might have gone around the houses a little bit on some of this stuff, cause we didn't have all of it clear, but we've arrived at a point where there is clearly success in our immediate future. But now as a point to be more strategic about what the next iteration of growth looks like for us,

Speaker 1: 20:40

Can you always, I guess kind of was gonna use the word rescue, but here at rescue a business like that, which, which has grown and maybe lost sight of, of, of what the story was at the outset. Uh, And you get to a point where it's too late and they're thinking of them, the leaders is too diverse and you can't pull it together into a story or is there always something, some story there that you can pull out?

Speaker 2: 21:04

That's a, that's a really smart question. It's a two-part question. So I'll try and answer it and won't go. So the short answer is yes, you can always save it, but you automatically in asking the question, recognize what the biggest challenge is. And again, thankfully my background in, as one of the key aspects of my role was often facilitating senior decision-makers facilitating conversations between them and coordinating some kind of consensus among wildly divergent opinions and agendas. It's interesting because in those scenarios, yes, it can be done. The story can be salvaged, but what it calls upon is less of my storytelling capabilities or more of my ability to MC a heated debate between a lot of very influential and very opinionated people who are pulling in different directions. So what it calls upon there is the, um, the capability to lead a constructive conversation where everyone feels heard everyone's contribution is respected and valued, but the, ultimately what I'm pulling people towards is a consensus that isn't like the old adage that, um, a good compromise leaves, everyone frustrated. I'm not trying to get to that point. I'm trying to get to a point where, um, it's more like facets on a diamond where the diamond is the, is the thing that we're all doing. And each person has a different facet on it. So they feel part of the whole story. They know one person gets to own the story, but they at least feel that their contribution is reflected in the finished product. Um, so then that way, because where you ultimately end up, if you don't do that is you can have a lot of, uh, very powerful, um, contagion agents who are actively pulling things apart from within. And once you've got that problem, you're, you're sort of doomed to fail

Speaker 1: 23:08

Because they've been told they have to play a part in someone else's story they want to be part of.

Speaker 2: 23:12

And what I love about this process, whenever we do it is there's, it's a bit like a light bulb moment, but it's a moment where everyone realizes that they're all kind of pulling in the same direction. They're not all racing in opposite divergent directions. They're kind of all just bringing a slightly different tactic or a slightly different agenda Tibet, but they're ultimately rooting for the same thing. And I think irrespective of group size that we've worked with over the years, and I, you know, a lot of this process is stuff that I was doing years ago, even before we decided to create insight stories. And it's really fascinating seeing that sometimes you can have, you know, quite dissatisfied or disengaged employees involved in a process involved in a workshop and they're simply, they feel respected. They, they feel valued. What are the, one of the interesting things about communication? I spent a lot of time working in the internal communications field around employee engagement and recruitment branding. One of the things where people often used to go wrong was, you know, these big organizations, they'll send out an organizational survey for all their employees to gauge satisfaction. And they'll say, you know, one of the key topics that they'll talk about is communication and they'll often get report back. They'll say, well, the two things that the employees are unhappy with our salary OBS and communication, and what happens then is the leadership team sits around a table and they go, we've got a very bad score in communication. They don't want to talk about the bad score on salary because that's just not solvable. So they go, let's talk about this problem with communication, we've scored a 45% on communications. So what we need to do is get better at communication. And what usually happens is more town hall meetings, more face-to-face briefings from the leadership team more. Here's how we're doing financially. Every quarter, here's an investor's update. You know, here's a desk drop or something goes up on a notice board. What the employees are really saying when they say communication. Isn't great is we forget that communication is two way, right? You know, the thing about you've got one math for two years and you should use them in, in those measures. When companies here, we need better communication. What they, what they actually think they hear is we need more telling. So they just tell people more stuff. What better communication really means is we want to be heard. We want to be involved in the conversation we want to be listened to. We want our opinions to count for something, not just once a year, when you send out this survey, so you can get on the times, top 100 employers list, we want to feel a part of the journey of this business. And so the great thing about the process that we deliver with any business, whether it's one employee or 200 employees, is it involves everybody in the conversation. And the reason we once had, um, we once had a client work with us and, and w we, we did the preamble and we talked about how the process was going to work. And they were very excited. And they said, look, when you present back the thing that you're going to make out of all of this, the kind of story Bible as we call it, what if we don't like it? Thank you for[inaudible].

Speaker 3: 26:45

I've been your host, Stephen Carter, if you want to connect with me, rings guest constantly. And on our website, the words show, but there's a way to do it better to think they might be struggling till next time say articulate.

Speaker 2: 27:03

He suddenly there it's concrete, it's inspiring, it's authentic, it's believable and it's meaningful, memorable moving. So it's doing all of those things that they've always tried to do, but they've always got caught up in the detail of what they feel. They need to tell everyone every time they get an opportunity to speak. So whenever we go back and we go, here's what we've made of it. You know, they're the ones going, oh, I've got goosebumps on my arm because it's their own words, not ours. And I think that's the most powerful aspect of what we do.

Speaker 1: 27:34

Yeah. Let's see. That's kind of a neat segue into the question I had on the tip of my tongue, which was, we sorta talked quite a lot about your well, I've listened.

Speaker 2: 27:43

You've sorry.

Speaker 1: 27:45

That's, that's, that's the whole purpose of this, that this process. But, um, and, and, and it's fascinating, and I could listen to it for hours.

Speaker 2: 27:53

We,

Speaker 1: 27:53

We, we took, we, we talked about, I guess a bit about now that you've heard a bit about the process, um, and, and kind of the, I guess the theater near the theory in some stem behind it. Um, but we haven't talked so much about the, like the output, I guess, on the, you know, the, what, what, what does come out of tangible at the end of this process and what you do, the businesses or the clients that you work with, make of it. And I guess we at why, why, why should businesses thinking about doing this in terms of what, what benefit is, is it to a small business or how's it going to help them help them progressing?

Speaker 2: 28:31

Yeah. Um, and, and it's a, it's a really solid question because it does go to the heart of, like I said earlier, where I think sometimes that slightly contentious relationship can exist between small businesses and the sort of marketing professionals that are supposed to be servicing them is we almost see our outputs. The thing that we deliver at the end of it as a story Bible, which is, it is not a, how to guide on social media. It's not a list of SEO words that they need to be fixating on, and it's not an ad campaign, but what it is is it's a bunch of guiding principles for telling stories around the business. So the, the six core exercises that we run through, we think about how to prioritize audience need. We look at the, um, the golden circle. So we get under the skin of the why, how, what everybody's seeing the Simon Sinek video, they all know that thing. But the challenge with Simon Sinek, when he talks about why, how, what, and how important it is, because he doesn't tell you how to come up with a why he just tells you that you need one. So everyone goes, oh yeah. How, what? And it's become a shorthand of, yeah, we've seen the video, but very few people have either the time, the ability or the inclination to work out a meaningful why, and often we'll encounter people that go, you've done this already. We've got a why statement. And they'll tell us proudly that why statement and it's a watt. So we invest the time and energy in terms of working that out in terms of something that nobody else is saying about that. And that's why this comes back to this earlier conversation about IP and whether that is the unique selling point or the emotional selling point. It's something that feels like a, a statement of intent, a mission or purpose that drives the business. So then we also look at the behaviors of the business and we, we use, um, archetypes for looking at how we can codify the behavior of the business. Because again, what a bigger agency might try and do for these kinds of client types would be selling them on a whole, a whole culture process. And again, you're paying for weeks of work for professionals to come in and do a bunch of culture work. Whereas what we're trying to do is go let the behaviors of the business, the guiding principles of the business, determine what the culture is going to be. So we write that in terms of character archetypes, we look at the manifestor of the business, which again, is setting out the direction of travel for the business in a way that can work for recruitment. It can work for induction. It can work for guiding existing staff. It can even work for investor presentations saying, this is the journey that we're on. And the purpose of a manifesto is to get people to go. I want to come on that journey with you. We also develop the elevator pitch so that in two sentences, someone can distill all of this stuff that we've been talking about today into two simple sentences. Because again, one of the things that people seem to be underserved by of people who can help you write a meaningful elevator pitch, because the problem with conciseness for everybody is when you're told, you've only got two sentences, you see how long you can make the sentences. It's like, you know, when a SMEs are working in those startup hubs for, um, for small businesses that are looking to get investor support, they're given a one pager and they're typing like four point, like how smart could I actually this on the head of a pen? Cause if I can, I can write, I can write the whole king James Bible on that of a pen, as long as I've got that sort of engineering. Know-how our point is,

Speaker 1: 32:21

And I'm just, I'm smiling again. Sorry to butt in, but I'm smiling again because speaking to a patent attorney, he got speaking to one of the masters of long sentences. Okay. Convention convention says that a patent claim has to be one sentence. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:34

How many clauses?

Speaker 1: 32:36

Yeah. You literally see, um, you know, patent claims, not lot generally in the technology space I'm working in, in, in some technology spaces where the patent claim is longer than a page. Yes.

Speaker 2: 32:47

One sentence. Yeah. You try reading the out. That's the that's the challenge is if it's going to work as a sentence, you have to read it out in one breath. And if you're blue at the end of it, it is too long. So joking aside, that really is the fascinating challenge with elevator pitches where, you know, someone will go, right, you've got 30 seconds to pitch your business. And they're speaking like this, like they've just ingested a bunch of class. They substances and probably three liters of Coca-Cola with full sugar. And they're talking this through, it's like, I've got 30 seconds. And I'm saying, because what, what tends to drive those conversations is a fear of leaving something out. And so they just say everything they can in as little time as possible. And what's happening is the person receiving that information is able to follow it for four or five seconds. And then it's like, actually, it's like, if you've ever asked someone for directions and they go, well, a second round about up here, take a right, you'll go past the school on the left. Then you take two lefts. So you w you listened for about the first three instructions, and then it just goes, and that's because that's how the human brain retains information, which taking us back to the whole point of the story. If it's meaningful, memorable, and moving, the bit that you want to remember is the important bit, the emotion that you make them feel is how you facilitate that recall. And because it's relevant, it's meaningful. There's a reason for them to want to remember it. So that's how you tick all those boxes. And so the elevator pitch is not just, well, we can say all this stuff, and we'll just write a really long sentence. It's we can clear away all of the distraction and stick to the stuff that matters. Because the other thing about an elevator pitch that everyone forgets is it's not the only time you say something to someone, the point of an elevator pitch and its origins as a term is I've only got to say enough to you for you to want to have the next conversation. You said something to me in the elevator. And it was really interesting. And I really want to pick up with you in that. So we don't have to tell you everything. It's kind of like the old Shaharazad and the thousand and one tales thousand one nights. I've just got to leave you on a cliffhanger where you go, and then what, what happens next? That's how great storytelling works. If you want to find out more. And so we work with people in the elevator pitch to go, here's an elevator pitch that will make someone go, I'm going to pick up the phone. I want to follow up this conversation. And then the final thing that we do is more of, um, it's almost like a creative writing exercise. What we do is we look at classic[inaudible] classic mythological story structure, and what's called the hero's journey. And we look at how we can emulate the principles of dramatic storytelling using people's favorite books and movies. So on those pop culture touch points that everyone feels comfortable discussing. But then what we do is we extrapolate the rules of that and apply it to talking about a business. So ultimately the thing that we deliver back the storytelling Bible is all of the outputs, all of the things that we arrived at as consensus conclusions from all of those exercises in a thing that means that when client X goes away at the end of that process, if they need a social media campaign, they can say to the social media agency, look, we can have an hour's conversation. I can brief you on what I need, but for you to really understand what makes us tick, what we're about, how we see the world, how we talk about ourselves, things that make us excited, the things that we're afraid of, it's all here in this Bible. So the Bible becomes a one size fits all briefing pack for any kind of subsequent marketing activity from social media, SEO, web building, ad campaigns, PR campaigns, because ultimately all anyone else is looking for from that kind of material is right. What story have I got to work with? And if it's presented as a story rather than, well, here's a four page history of how we founded the business, or here's 23 bullet points, sales pitches about what our product or services. There's nothing to work with there from a story. So what tends to happen is you'll see a social media campaign. It's like, here's a sales pitch. And in an hour, I'm going to give you another sales pitch. And if that doesn't work in an hour, there'll be another sales pitch here. And that's because nobody's ever invested in a story. Whereas if you understand what the story of the business is, you can say to the social media manager, all right, our principle is we talk about these things. So here are all of the topics that we could run social media activity around where we're not going, oh, and let's remember to use our slogan at the end of it. We're engaging people in a conversation because that's what they want from their socials. They're not looking for advertising. What they're looking for is conversation. So they're looking for interesting things that speak to the things that connect with them emotionally. And again, all of this means that these businesses that we work with are in a far better position to be able to brief those specialist marketing services and ultimately get value on their investment.

Speaker 1: 38:04

Interesting. And, uh, yeah, my head's kind of buzzing all the thoughts about, you know, the difference this must make to, to a number of years.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Yeah. I mean, we, one of the first clients we've ever worked with when we, when we founded, uh, inside stories, but two and a half years ago, they literally sat at the end of it. And they look spent, like they just had a three hour Turkish massage. We don't offer that service by the way, but they've kind of sat like just kind of stunned and almost like too tired to move. Cause it's, it's an intensive process. Um, but they got to the end of it. And they said, you've given us a lifetime of marketing materials. We didn't give them a bunch of campaigns. We gave them things that they could use for, um, investor pitchers. We gave them things that they could use for one, one of the guys was actually going off to, uh, an exhibit to conference and he'd got a speaker slot as one of the keynotes. And part of what we did in the workshop was we just brainstormed how he might start that presentation. And what he suddenly had was something that would have everyone in the audience going like I'm on the etiquette because I wasn't expecting the story to start. I thought you were going to stand up and go, well, we founded the company in this year and we've got this many people that we do this. And you know, our main clients are this because that's how everybody does it. And I think ultimately the, the thing that brings me joy every day in what we do is the revelation for everyone that talking about business can be just as exciting as the stuff we do in our free time. It doesn't have to be, oh, this is a professional context. So this has to be dull. And I have to sound like a professional and I have to use myself and yourself when I'm talking to me, we can do away with all of that. Because the reason we all get excited is because we, we all as human beings, we love telling stories because it's how we know we're really being understood. I'm not just boring you with a bunch of statistics or details. I'm telling you a story. And I know I can see the body language reciprocation that you're going on that journey with me. So we all fundamentally love being the storyteller. And once we can connect to that mindset that any, any chance to pitch, to network, to do a keynote, to stand on an exhibition, stand and talk about what we do. If we think of it, in terms of telling stories, it transforms our mindset and the mindset of everyone that we engage with.

Speaker 1: 40:41

Yeah. I guess as long as you're telling the right story, I guess as well. I mean, so people love stories, and I've seen the I've seen presentations where clearly someone has been told, you've got to tell a story. You know, stories are the way to engage the audience, but the story you're left thinking why they just told that story.

Speaker 2: 40:59

That's clearly,

Speaker 1: 41:00

Clearly, clearly your skill and that the service you deliver is about

Speaker 2: 41:04

Finding the right

Speaker 1: 41:05

Enabling people.

Speaker 2: 41:08

That's a, that's a really astute point actually. And I I've seen that done very badly myself, where somebody had training on, you know, telling a story and creating an emotional connection. But what they haven't done is told a story about what they need to be talking about. So there's this really clumsy segue from them talking about something personal that they get super excited about and then their pitch, their delivery, their speed, their body language changes. And now I'm going to talk about business and the audience. You can hear them all switch off in the room because they haven't found the story in the business narrative. They've just gone. Well, if I tell a personal story, they're like me, and then I can talk about business and you, if you choose to separate the two out, you'll have them as long as you're being yourself. And then when you go into business mode, everyone switches off. And that's the exact opposite of the point.

Speaker 1: 42:07

So one of the questions I've been thinking of as a green bean going along, um, and I guess it's kind of bringing it slightly back to my nerdy techie world I live in with, with patents and IP. And, but w when, when you're working with these businesses and you you're helping them identify their story, how often do you find, or do you ever find that it's, that it is kind of the, the nerdy techie, the innovation that sits at the heart of that story? Or is it, or is it generally around the people? You know, I guess just what, what tends to be at the heart of this,

Speaker 2: 42:39

What's always at the heart of it is the people that's, that's the easy answer to that question. And, you know, you, you use a really important word though, which is innovation. I, I talk a lot about the distinct, then this is for the record. This is my distinction. So people can feel free to disagree with me on this, but I think a lot of people use the word innovation and they mistake hit for invention, which is the creation of something. So as a patent attorney invention is the, I have invented this thing that no one else has made and I'm going to patent it because that's my IP innovation to me, is taking something that already exists and finding a better way of using it a better way of approaching it or modifying it, adapting it, updating it, to help it be bigger, better, faster, stronger, more, compelling, more, whatever it is. And I, I often use. And, you know, when you work in marketing branding communications, you're obligated to mention apple at least once a day, otherwise they withdraw your rights to practice. Um, so I'll mention apple here as apple are not an invention company, apple, aren't an innovation company. So I have a slide actually,

Speaker 1: 43:52

Let's get a champion and just say, but they also have lots of patents. Oh,

Speaker 2: 43:55

No, they absolutely absolutely they do. But in terms of, in terms of my very simple, in terms of my very simple worldview, the distinction between the invention and the innovation is apple is an innovator. So I have a picture of, uh, the apple ecosystem. And I say, apple didn't invent the laptop or the tablet or the smartphone or the app store, or the MP3, or the compression software that they use for movies and TV shows. They didn't invent the personal computer. They didn't invent the iPad. They invented none of those things. They let someone else do the hard bit of, you know, proof of concept. And then apple said, this thing exists. How can we make it better? How can we make it prettier? How can we make it easier to use? How can we make it more enjoyable? How can we make it an object of desire? That is their skill. And that's why back to Simon Sinek and his why, how, what golden circle principle, apple have a mission at the heart of their business, which is, um, challenging the status quo and that filters all the way through to what they do, which is making things that are beautifully designed and easy to use. That is the driving principle in everything that they do. And so it works as a mission, but it's not about technology. Apple Apple's mission is not technology. Apple's mission is about usability. It's about, um, attraction and aspiration. These are brands that were never associated with tech until apple changed the game. And so, you know, extrapolating from that to the, you know, the SME world of people who develop, you know, widgets and apps and little bits of technology that aren't intrinsically sexy, but what they do is the thing that motivated them to want to create that thing. The thing that drives the why that's the, you know, you could invent an algorithm that calculates tax amounts, but the thing that drives you to create that thing combined with your know-how and capability and you being the one to make this thing is where your uniqueness is, where your ESP lies, but it takes a bit of soul searching and permission giving to dive deep, to find what that thing is. But back to the question that you originally asked, it's always a human story. It's always a thing that drives you as a person and the way you see the world, something that you want to give to the world to make it a better place. And unfortunately, where a lot of people go and there's a, there's a great TV show that, that manifest this quite explicitly in its first season, if you've ever watched the show Silicon valley, it was a, an HBO comedy about Silicon valley, funnily enough, but there's a great scene at the end of the first season where all these tech companies are pitching their ideas. Uh, none of them have gone through this process. So it doesn't matter what their techie solution is. They talk about to make a better world, to make a better world and what not. And the joke is that they're all actually saying the exact same thing, no matter how divergent their solutions are, because they haven't actually thought about what a better world looks like because of the thing that they've done, they've just taken the shortcut and gone well, he needed a mission statement it's to deliver a better world. And one of the other things that people often encounter, if they haven't done this work is they'll say our mission is either to save our clients time or money. That's not wrong. That's why people want what you do. But the thing that will make them choose you over the 10 or 20 other competitors who are in the same broad space as you is the thing that drives you. It's the thing that they hear that goes, look, I already know, you can do the thing that I want you to do. You're the one I want to do it with me because I share your worldview. I share that vision of an improved world because you've articulated what that improved will looks like.

Speaker 1: 48:07

Yeah. Interesting. I've got, I'm conscious of time. I've got, and I've got two questions. I want to ask you at the end. I've got a third one that just follows on from what you said. I can't resist asking, which is around. So, I mean, I sort of, I totally agree. I think what you're saying that he, you know, by having the story, you, then you attract people that believe in that story and want to follow that same path. Um, but, but presumably that means you, you have to accept that there are going to be people out there that potentially could have been clients, but actually aren't turned on by that story. They don't want to follow that path.

Speaker 2: 48:47

Um, and that's okay. That's okay. I think, I think we all make the mistake of assuming that in business, as in life, we all have to appeal to everybody. But if you've ever been in a difficult relationship with a difficult client or a difficult agency, cause I'm not trying to advocate for one side versus the other. If you've been in a difficult relationship, you've questioned the value of that relationship versus the income it generates or the cost it manifests to you. And so if there is someone who doesn't gel with your story better, that they find that at the beginning of the process and go somewhere else, because your time is better, spent your work will be more fruitful and you'll feel like you've enjoyed what you've delivered. If you're doing it for people who share the way you see the world. And I think we have to be brave enough to go this isn't for everyone. Our job is not to appeal to everyone because you know, that's why there are a thousand aphorisms about you. Can't please all the people all the time. So why even try, because ultimately it's going to require some kind of compromise that we'll leave. One of you said earlier, good compromise, leaves everyone frustrated. So someone's going to be unhappy with this. Why even set out on that journey if you know, what the outcome's going to be.

Speaker 1: 50:14

Yeah. And I agree. Great advice. Great advice. So, um, so, okay. So penultimate question one I've been asking everyone is, so if you, you know, based on, on your experience tonight, um, and, and the types of clouds you're working with and the types of clients that you kind of expect to be working with in the future, if you were talking with one of those clients, so they're, they're a startup business, um, they've got some great innovation or invention, um, and they want it, you know, they want to change the world. Um, and you've got the opportunity to give them one piece of advice to kind of set them off. What, what would that one piece of advice be?

Speaker 2: 50:56

I think it would be to not assume that the story is everything because as we w what I'm doing here and sort of answering obliquely is I'm sort of trying to type a bunch of the things that we've talked about in today's conversation, which is that a story is great, but it should be part of a conversation. It's not a thing that you, you know, imagine you're networking, you're not running up to everyone, barking your story into someone's face. And then moving on to the next one, you're using the story as a way of initiating a relationship. And if it's a relationship that already exists, it's a way of sense checking or stabilizing that relationship. Here's our story. Is this still jelling with you? Is this still resonating with you? It's finding that point of connection. And it's recognizing to the point that I made about the elevator pitch, that the story doesn't have to contain everything, not everything has to be Lord of the rings. It can be a short story. I remember there's a, there's a great, um, apocryphal attribution to, um, oh, who was it? It was Hemingway. He was said to have written the saddest short story in six words. And it was, um, for sale baby shoes, never worn. And you know, if you go to my mantra about what is the story, it's got to be meaningful, memorable, and moving well, it's meaningful because everyone instantly understands the format of a for-sale ad. It's memorable because God, there's a gut punch in there and it's moving because there are all sorts of emotions, but what's fascinating about it. And this is a great rule, uh, that Andrew Stanton at Pixar talks about when he discussed the story, he did a great Ted talk that I really recommend people watch where he talks about the power of storytelling. And he said, don't give the audience four, give them two plus two. And what he meant by that was, he said, part of the reason we as humans respond well to storytelling is we like to be involved in the telling of the story. And what that means is we don't need to be given all of the information because we like the idea that we can put some of those pieces together ourselves. So when I say broadly, the story, isn't everything. I'm not devaluing what it is that we do. I'm saying this story actually leads on to so much more. It leads onto conversations. It leads on to those emotional connections that we forge. It leads new conversations. It's about sense checking and finding parity with people that are going to work with. And it's also inviting other people to find themselves in your story or find their role in the telling of your story.

Speaker 1: 53:40

Yeah. So, so it's not everything, but it's this very powerful thing that opens all of those doors.

Speaker 2: 53:45

It's in everything, but it's not everything. Yeah. Because if you go away and everyone, everyone treat, you know, we call our output, the storytelling Bible, but even the Bible is not supposed to be a rule book. It's supposed to be a bunch of guiding principles. And that's how we approach the act of storytelling is we haven't act this into stone. And you just say the same words to everyone. You know, one of the analogies I use about the power of storytelling, I talk about parents and children, and the reason parents love story time with their kids. Um, the reason they race home from work, if they're running late is because the storytelling is as important to them as it is to the child. The child sees it as a chance to put off bedtime for another fit go. And just one more story before we turn the lights out, but the parents enjoy it because it's, it's a chance to make a connection and they get to personalize the way they tell us. So if you've had to read a pepper pig story, like 50 times, you're going to start changing some of the details. And that's the power of stories. Each time you tell it can be slightly different because you know the direction of travel of the story, but you can tweak it, adjust it, modify it each time you tell it.

Speaker 1: 54:55

Yeah. Then I, some hair, it was a sad day when my children all became too old for me to sit and read them stories again,

Speaker 2: 55:02

Just doing it to people on the bus now.

Speaker 1: 55:07

Yeah. So, so listen, one last question. And then we've got a really alternate wrap it up as much as I could sit here and continue this for a long time, because it's, it's really enjoyable and informative. But anyway, one last question. So, which is, um, would you rather fly on a magic carpet or own an invisibility cloak?

Speaker 2: 55:30

So I I'll give you the short answer first, which is a magic carpet. And the reason I don't choose invisibility cloak is I started cycling about five months ago. And the number of times I go out and I ring my little bell to let people know I'm coming, because I want to keep everyone safe as well as myself. And I swear to God, I've already gotten invisibility cloak because people just cannot sit even as I'm cycling directly towards them ringing my bell because we're on the same path. They can't see me. So I figured that would be a wasted wish because I've already got one.

Speaker 1: 56:06

Brilliant. Well, listen, Gareth. Thanks. Thank you very much for joining me today, genuinely really, really enjoyed the conversation and, um, and look forward to future conversations.

Speaker 2: 56:16

Well, I hope so too. Thanks again for your time. And it's been an absolute pleasure

Speaker 1: 56:20

And thank

Speaker 2: 56:22

You.