Karen Eber:

You don't have to tell this heart, emotional, gut-wrenching story for people to connect with you. But these smaller stories, these more specific things are going to have your clients, your customers, seeing themselves in it. And they're going to be the things that people notice and pay attention. And you start to show yourself in those. So if anyone is an entrepreneur and they're thinking like, "Gosh, I don't have this really big origin story, or I don't have an origin story," you are absolved.

Chris Do:

Today's guest is going to talk about story. She's a storytelling expert. And you know me, I love a good yarn. Anybody that can speak to who is an expert at this, you know I'm going to have them on the show. So please help me welcome Karen. Karen, welcome to the show. Can you please introduce yourself? And in the spirit of the subject matter here, can you tell us a story about who you are and what you do?

Karen Eber:

I am Karen Eber. I own a company called Eber Leadership Group that helps companies build leaders, teams and culture one story at a time.

When I was about five years old, I got my start in storytelling. I have a brown eye and a green eye. In the right light, it's very noticeable. This is something I've always loved about myself, but I quickly realized that other people have no idea what to make sense of it. And I could tell the exact moment when people notice because their words slowly come to a stop and their eyes are going back and forth. Their brain is trying to decide, "Am I looking at her brown eye or her green eye?" It's just hilarious. But the moment they stop talking, I know it's coming because it's the same every time, and it is. "Ooh, did you know you have two different color eyes?" Like as if I wouldn't know.

So my response would usually be like, "Ooh, no!" And then we go on this script of, "Oh, I know a dog that has that." Like, "Thank you. What do I do with that?" And, "What color eyes do your parents have? Do you see the same colors out of each eye? Or do your eyes give you superpowers?" And this thing that I love about myself and I always felt was something special to me became this burden because these interactions just depleted me and just left me drained.

So I got tired of them and decided when I was rather young and I had had this question for the many of time to tell this story. I would tell them, "Well, I was actually born with brown eyes. And about the time I was four years old, I was in my room coloring and I had that big box of crayons. We have the perfect crayons and the broken ones and the peeled ones. I was coloring. Dinner wasn't going to be for a few more hours and I was hungry. So I dug into the box and I pulled out a green crayon and I sniffed it. It didn't really smell like anything, but I took a bite and it was kind of interesting. It was an interesting texture. So I ate it and I liked it so much. I ate every green crayon in the box. And the next day I woke up and my left eye was green."

And then I would be quiet and people would always look at me sideways like, "Is she for real? Do I believe her? What is that? What do I do?" And I would let them off the hook and let them know I didn't eat the crayon. But it created a different dynamic and a shift where we were both laughing and they would recognize that they had just asked me all these silly questions and it turned into a meaningful connection. So I realized, "Wow, stories can take this awkward thing and shift it into something that is more interesting and fun and is memorable." Because I have people tell me 30 years later, they still think of me when they see crayons.

Chris Do:

What a great story to start this conversation with. I have come to know two things. One is perhaps we're all natural-born storytellers and kids like to make up stuff. I don't want to say lie, but we like to fabricate things. And the third thing I know about you is I think you like to play games with people. Because if they made you feel uncomfortable, you would say something like, "Wait a minute, now you're messing with my mind," aren't you, Karen?

Karen Eber:

Playing games with me. I've never been called out quite like that. There's a lot of truth in that. Sure. I am playful, I would say. There's also a sincerity and authenticity of I play in the right spirit, not to be manipulative. But yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. I feel seen.

Chris Do:

There's a Picasso quote that I love and hopefully I don't butcher this too badly. It's something like, "All children are born artists. The trick is to remain one as an adult." And I think across the board, anytime you spend any time with kids, they make up stories about everything, about the parents, about where they're from, what they're eating, and they have wild active imaginations. Something happens to all of us. And between that period in which you have this very fertile imagination and you could see things that people can't see, you can tell stories and it becomes a very natural thing, somewhere along the way we lose our ability to tell stories. What is happening to us, what has happened to us in our mind and in the way that we're socialized from five years old to maybe when we're 22? Why do we lose the art and craft and the spirit and the passion of telling stories?

Karen Eber:

I actually don't think we lose it, but we repress it. We fear, "I'm going to be judged if I tell this." Or we will casually tell it with friends, we're out to dinner and we describe an event that just happened. You do that without a filter. You're not worried, "What will they think of me? And is my story resonating the way we want?" We're just in the moment when we're exchanging energy, which is what story is. But you move into settings that are maybe not friends and environments that feel as safe, but maybe it's a business setting or maybe it's something where you, I don't know, feel like there's some stakes and nerves set in. We start to feel like, "Oh, I'm going to be judged," right? On social media, "Oh, people are going to look at me and they're going to think something." And, "Well, gosh, do I have something to say here? Is it meaningful?"

Unfortunately, we see other people do something that looks like it's with ease and assume, "I can't do that. I'm not that good. They can just clearly do this." Not recognizing that this is a skill that anyone can do, but like anything, it's understanding the steps involved. And so I don't think that people lose their ability. It's that we keep telling ourselves, "This is not the right context. This is not the right place. I can't tell a story here." And there's some neuroscience behind it. There's a bit of the vulnerability of feeling exposed in front of people. But I think unfortunately we've socialized ourselves into thinking we're supposed to be specific people in different aspects of our lives, and really no.

Chris Do:

So I have a theory. I have a theory. With all your research and how you've been talking about this, I'd love to get your take on it. There is this, is that in school, especially here in America, in classrooms, when you're asked a question, you want to be brief and you want to be succinct. We're rewarded for giving short, precise, accurate answers. We've also seen people go and ramble on about something, we're like, "Ugh. What are they doing?" And so that's distasteful for us. And so we start to tell ourselves a new story that we only speak when we're spoken to and we try to be as brief as possible and only give correct answers. So we start to veer away from storytelling so much that we... When I say lose, I mean lose the skill, the practice, the passion and the energy and excitement. And we also only feel safe to tell stories in social circles where that's expected and everything else seems like it's kind of out of bounds. What's your take on that?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, I support your theory. I do think in school, especially the way it's taught, you're right, it is maybe calling on someone in the classroom or asking people to raise their hands. I don't want you to tell me a story, I just want you to respond. And so we're shaping these answers to be shorter, although sometimes there's the written story we want you to submit.

But we're all judges of that on social media. So think about you pull up whatever your preferred platform is, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, it doesn't matter. Your tolerance for what you will sit through is really small and it got smaller during the pandemic. And so, if you aren't telling something that is captivating, it's really hard to get that attention. And because we've been taught, "Just the facts. Let's be succinct here. Don't ramble. Johnny, what's the right answer?" That does definitely have an impact where there's three parts to storytelling. One is the story that I'm telling verbally or in writing. One is the story I'm telling to myself that allows for me to tell that story. And then the third is the story that's in the audience's brain that's going to be having their own thoughts and experiences as well too. And that's a lot to navigate. There's a lot of moments in that where it's so easy to say, "I'm just going to sit this one out."

Chris Do:

I love telling stories. Sometimes they're not always true. When I say not always true, meaning there's some embellishments, then there's a lot of editing. And so every time I'm telling a story about my kids or about my wife, something's happening in our lives, when they're there, they have a different reaction than what the audience has. They laugh when they're supposed to laugh and they're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe you said that, Chris." They're having all the reactions I want them to have. And later my son's like, "Dad, that's not how the story went." I'm like, "Well, that's your version of the story. I'm on stage and I have the mic. I'll tell it my way." Something a guy I talked to recently, he said, "Don't let facts get in the way of telling a good story." Can we talk about that a little bit? What's your take on that?

Karen Eber:

I hate that. So let's categorize. Let's categorize.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Karen Eber:

I do think that if you're on stage and you're doing a standup routine, yeah, you take elements from your life and you do embellish because in a comedy set, you're trying to time it and have the right cadence and work in something unexpected. And it's the unexpected element, unexpected phrase that is what's going to get the laugh. And so sometimes you are going to take his story, you're going to exaggerate different pieces or work in something. The core is there, but you're being playful. Okay, that's fine. We're being entertained. No one's feeling manipulated because we know why we're coming. We know why we're there. And it's your job, you better make me laugh, right? That's one setting.

In a setting where you're telling a story maybe in business, you should not make it up because think of a time when you have heard someone tell something that feels manipulated or made up. So sometimes people say that about politicians or a journalists or a cause, like insert whatever. When you hear someone say something that feels not true, your radar goes off and you're like, "No, I don't believe them." And all trust is gone. And then every experience you have is like, "I don't believe them."

We sniff out when we make up things. And so when you're not performing and having fun, it's not good to make it up because people sniff out that lie, that mistruth, that manipulation or they feel like they're being manipulated and then you lose trust. There are certain things you change, right? Sometimes I tell stories and I change company names. I change people names. I maybe change the day of the week. Not the core plot points, but things to anonymize or something like that. But I hate that. Don't let data get in the way of a good story. Your audience is going to know. Don't do that.

Chris Do:

If you don't mind, I'd like to stay here a little bit longer to find the more nuanced discussion here because I agree. And then I think maybe we both agree, but we're talking about this slightly differently. I think if you're on trial, you probably shouldn't make up anything. You should try to tell the truth as best as you recall. And when I said my son's like, "That's not what happened," here's where I think he has his perception of what happened. I have my take on what's happened and I'm going to tell the story the way I experience it that's true and authentic to myself.

But as a instructor, I want to make sure that the lesson that I want to communicate to people resonates and hits really hard. So in order to do that, I might change sequence. I might edit out the parts that this part isn't really driving the story or it doesn't heighten the contrast of the conflict. And when I teach storyboarding and storytelling from a director's point of view, and this could be fiction or nonfiction, I always tell them, "You have to make me feel it. So you have to dramatize the moments and you have to heighten. You have to slow time down. Tell me the senses that you're experiencing. Otherwise, it's just facts and just reading across a bunch of facts and it's not interesting to anybody." So I'll pause there and just have you respond to that please.

Karen Eber:

I love this. I love that it's like you're lobbying the [inaudible 00:13:23] where we're having our own legal deposition here. I fully support what you say. A story is not a listing of facts, it's not any of that. I totally agree that you are going to tell your experience of the story and that's going to be different than my experience of the story. And that's why storytelling is personal, because you are telling the story only you can tell. Even if you're telling someone else's story, we're getting your perspective and that is key. There are going to be things that you leave out because they are not earning its place in the story where it's not moving it forward, it's not contributing to the characters in some way. It's just going to slow down the pacing of it and you may switch the sequence. Absolutely. Movies do this, entertainers do this. I do this in stories because it works better to build the tension across it because this is part of why it's not enough to tell a story the way you do is important.

So all of these are lovers you can play with to make the brain be more engaged. But what I don't recommend people do is they just start manipulating a narrative that the audience is like, "No." But if you take the movie The Sixth Sense, right? The M. Night Shyamalan movie that, spoiler alert, he's dead in it. Say you knew in the beginning that he died and you watch the whole movie, there's no conflict. There's nothing in there that is holding your attention. What happens in the movie that's so compelling is you watch this whole experience and you think it's one narrative and then you get to the end and you find out Bruce Willis has been dead all of this time. He's a ghost, and oh my God. It's such a surprise and a building and releasing of tension that if you told it in a different order and you reveal those things earlier, it would be a completely different movie and probably not a very good one. So all of those are not only, "Okay, they're important to play with."

Chris Do:

I think we're in 100% agreement about manipulation. Whether it's manipulating data that's truthful or making up random things to manipulate the audience, that is not something that I'm a proponent for. So we want to put that aside. So because people will recognize it, we have pretty good radar of when people are just making up stuff and then you get called out later. When you find someone lying one time, then you assume like, "Okay, is any of this true?" and it just starts to unravel pretty quickly. But there's the experience of it, how you feel about it and how you want to play up certain emotions and act out scenes in your mind so that the audience can feel what you feel and re-experience that. Now in your TED Talk, you talk about this where if you tell the story, it activates multiple parts of your brain. Maybe it uses the whole brain. Can you talk about the science of this?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, there's so many different pieces to the science, but the first is that just from a real estate perspective, a story is going to more dynamically engage your brain than just information or data. When you're listening to information or data, there's a small walnut size thing right above almost your ear that's called Wernicke's area. This is as you are reading or listening to take in words, it is comprehending them. It is looking at them and saying, "Yes, we know what this is. No, we don't know what this is." And it's truly just language processing and that is it. But when you are more dynamically talking about walking outside the beach and you feel the warm sand between your toes and the wind is blowing and you hear the waves crashing on shore almost like a symbol and you can taste the salt air on your lips, you start more dynamically engaging the brain and using much more surface area.

What's really fascinating about stories is that they become artificial reality. So as the listener or the reader, your brain activity mimics the storytellers, meaning it will light up in the same patterns of neural activity as the person telling the story. So this is why you sit in the movies and you are watching Jaws and you know that that shark is going to pop up and you know what's going to happen, but your heart starts gracing in anticipation because you almost feel like you're the swimmer in the water. Your brain allows for you to feel like you are there in that experience, which is so cool because we get to then think about what might I do in these situations, which is great when you're teaching.

It's also connecting you to emotions. So if you think about as you're taking information through your senses, they are stamped with emotions. These experiences are stamped with emotions. And it's just like if you take a photo on your phone and you swipe up, you can see the location, the aperture of the f-stop, the date, the size. Everything about that photo is immediately stamped on it. So if you wanted to recreate it, you could. Something similar happens where as we're taking information through our senses, as we have these experiences, they get stamped with these emotions and put in our long-term memory. So when we're going to make decisions, our brain goes through this file of long-term memory experiences to say, "Have we done this before? Is it related to something we have done before?" And it uses those to predict what we should do and how we should decide.

So we are making decisions subconsciously at an emotional level. At the point we're becoming aware of the decision that's already been made is when we apply rationalization and logic. And so there's been a whole bunch of different experiments where they've been able to see neural activity happening subconsciously in the direction of the decision before the people even verbalize what their decision was because this happened subconsciously based on our experiences.

The reason that makes storytelling so powerful, if we're listening to data and we connect to the emotion of the data that's going to help us make decisions about it, stories are connecting us to these emotions and these experiences, even if we've never had them, that are going to be impacting not only how we think about it but how we decide. And so that's just the science piece of it, of how are we impacted by thoughts and decisions. You could then get into all of the different things to look at in terms of how do you pull different levers to tell a story because it is not enough to tell and the way you do it makes a difference. And so there's a whole variety of things you could look at to really harness the brain and make sure it is captivated by the story.

Chris Do:

There's a lot there for me to unpack and to try to summarize and process. So let's see if I understand this. If you give people data and if you're a communicator, let's say you're interested in having a conversation or communicating ideas whether you're an executive or a partner in a relationship, whatever it is that you're trying to do, recording a video for YouTube, you're trying to get the person engaged with whatever it is that you're saying to help with understanding, with retention, recall, all those kinds of things. And if you don't tell powerful stories, you're only using a small part of the possible whole of the brain. And we as the listener or the reader of the story, if we're engrossed in the content whether it's a movie, a novel, a video or workshop or a lecture that you're giving, then we experience or re-experience some part of what you're telling. I think you used this term before, not today, but is it the mirror neurons or something that's happening reexperiencing with the person? Is that the term?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, it's neuro coupling where your neurons mirror the same activity.

Chris Do:

Neuro coupling.

Karen Eber:

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Do:

Yes, which is fascinating. And anecdotally speaking, my wife and I, we love to watch TV shows together. She can't help herself. So when there's a science fiction kind of chase tense moment, somebody's leaving something on the table, she's like, "Put that away." I'm like, "Honey, that's not relevant to the story. It's okay if they don't clean up right there." But she can't help it. She's experiencing it as if it's happening to her. Whereas I'm always pulling back, like I feel it, I'm watching myself watching what's happening. And so it's a very powerful thing that we can actually re-experience the emotions, the anxiety, the stress, the sense of loss when we're engrossed a really great story.

Karen Eber:

Yeah. There's probably one other thing that's happening. To use your example of your wife, when we are watching a story, listening to a story, we actually do have a release of neurochemicals that impact what we feel. So there are, at our most simplest level, we seek pleasure and avoid pain. The pain neurochemicals are your adrenaline and cortisol, and these are released when your body says something isn't right and you need to focus. Their whole purpose is to allow for you to focus on what's needed to respond. So what probably happened in the situation with your wife is she started to feel really uncomfortable and her body was like, "We're going to release some cortisol here so you can focus because we think you're in this setting."

The flip side is true, where we can also experience the pleasure chemicals, which are your dopamine, your serotonin, your oxytocin. These are released in moments of connection and bonding. And so when I'm telling you a story, you actually have an increase in empathy toward me, but also an increase in oxytocin, which can't be manufactured. It can't be commanded. It's a true, genuine response to, "There's something here. I like her. I am feeling empathy towards what she's saying, and the fact that she's being vulnerable and sharing a story." And the brain will send the signal when it starts to have an increase in oxytocin, that is, "This person feels safe to be around." And it leads to an increase in trust.

So the very act of someone telling a story can create this strengthening trust circle that has us feeling like this is why you feel a bond when you meet someone maybe or spend time with them. There's a chemical reaction to it, just like there's also a chemical reaction to when we're feeling uncomfortable. And stories elicit that. So we watch the movie and we feel uncomfortable because our brain is saying we're in this and we are uncomfortable, or we get goosebumps in a moment because our brain is experiencing those. We get to go on these fun chemical waves.

Chris Do:

Okay. So here's the thing. If you're a content creator, if you are a thought leader, if you're creating any form of content, naturally the desires to build a real bond or connection with your audience, with your community so they get a sense of who you are, your reluctance to actually tell your story is the very thing that's keeping them away from you. You're building an unnatural barrier and subconsciously you're doing this. When you talk about this, I think you say there's three parts to every story. There's the context, the conflict, and then, I believe, the outcome.

Karen Eber:

Yeah. There's a fourth. There's a takeaway.

Chris Do:

Is that right?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, there's the-

Chris Do:

Oh, there's a fourth?

Karen Eber:

... the takeaway.

Chris Do:

The takeaway, okay. The fourth is takeaway. That's important that we remember that. I would love to set you up. I believe Robert McKee wrote in his book story, No Conflict, No story. So I really like to help people find the conflict in the story. So I'm going to tee you up. I'm going to ask you this question. And I would love for you to comb through your mind and tell us a story where we haven't heard from you before. Here's the prompt. Tell me about a time when you almost failed.

Karen Eber:

Before I do that, I want to think on it for a second.

Chris Do:

Of course.

Karen Eber:

But before I do that, I want to make sure we come back to the stories for entrepreneurs because there's an important thing there to share. A time I almost failed.

Chris Do:

Do you want to tell the story for entrepreneurs first, then we can come back to this? We can...

Karen Eber:

Sure. It's really a point around entrepreneurs.

Chris Do:

Okay, go ahead.

Karen Eber:

There is often this reluctance of, "I don't know the right story to share for my clients or my customers," or "I don't have this story about an amazing tragedy or profound moment." That's often something that comes up of, we'll hear a keynote speaker tell this amazing story about losing a limb and summoning Everest and we're all wiping our tears like, "That's amazing. I don't have any story like that." You don't have to.

You do not need an origin story as an entrepreneur. And I realize this is a confusing thing because we're always told like, "What's your origin story?" But there's rarely one story that sums up everything that you are as an entrepreneur and what you serve. What you do need are the pain points of your customers, the "punch them in the bruise" moments, the challenges they're facing, the aspirations that they want to be a part of. The smaller more specific stories are what really connect with people.

If you think of Amazon, if Amazon was telling their origin story, they would be talking about, "Well, we got started selling books." Like, "Okay, but that's irrelevant to who you are now. That's not important. What's important is what you're doing now." And as an entrepreneur, your business evolves so much. And even if the services don't change, the way your clients and customers talk about their problems and challenges do. So if anyone is an entrepreneur and they're thinking like, "Gosh, I don't have this really big origin story, or I don't have an origin story," you are absolved. You don't have to tell this heart, emotional, gut-wrenching story for people to connect with you. But these smaller stories, these more specific things are going to have your clients, your customers seeing themselves in it, and they're going to be the things that people notice and pay attention, and you start to show yourself in those.

Chris Do:

Okay. Now before we get back to this question about you sharing a moment of vulnerability, a time in which you almost failed, I just want to remind our audience I'm talking to Karen Eber. She wrote the book, The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inform, Influence and Inspire. It's out in Amazon on October 3rd. So make sure if you're enjoying this conversation to go look it up and pre-order your copy of her book. Is that enough time for you to think about a time in which you almost failed?

Karen Eber:

I was hoping. I was hoping. I do have a talk on ted.com. I gave it at Purdue University. It was a TEDx and it got moved to ted.com. However, I did another talk before this talk. It was actually at TED headquarters. They were piloting a app for businesses and masterclass app that taught corporations how to learn how to build a TED Talk. And as a part of that experience, they invited a few people to come to their headquarters to give feedback on the app and have a whole experience. One week beforehand, I was invited to give a talk on the TED stage, which I was like, "Yeah, at TED headquarters? Sign me up."

The problem is, I had one week. Most people spend six months working on their idea. I worked so hard at it and I give keynote speeches, it's something I regularly do. I thought, "This is going to be great." The moments are just ticking by and I'm counting down to get on the stage. And finally my name is called and I get up there and I stand on the red circle. The opening story that I told the audience, which was about 200 people, laughs. And so I immediately relax and I settle into this talk of like, "This is going to be good. I'm on the TED stage, this is amazing."

I'm going through the talk and it's going fine, and I round the corner to the last part and my mind just goes blank. I didn't panic. No big deal. So in TED Talks, there's no monitor. You see the same thing as the audiences as the speaker sees. There's no hidden notes or anything like that. So it wasn't like I could just go read a prompter or anything. I thought in my head as mind's blank and the clock is ticking, I thought, "You know, in improv they tell you when you lose your place, you should look someone in the eye."

And so a friend of mine was in the second row and I looked her in the eye, and nothing. So I look a stranger in the eye in the second row and I'm like, nothing. And so at this moment, I remember the second rule of improv that is when you blank, you should fall on the floor. And I started looking at the red carpet under my feet trying to decide like, "Do I need to fall on the floor here?" Because at this point, an uncomfortable amount of time has passed. It's not a little bit of time, it's an uncomfortable. I'm still not panicking, but my mind is blank and I'm trying to think like, "What do I do?"

And then there's another piece of my mind, the inner dialogue piece, it's like, "This is not how this talk was supposed to go." The audience at TED events are very supportive and they started applauding. The inner dialogue part of my voice said, "Oh, they're giving you pity applause." And that kicked my mind into gear and it said, "No, no, we're not done here." And I just went and picked back up and I finished the talk and it was fine and I thought like, "Okay, I was counting the minutes to get on the stage and now I cannot wait to get off it and just go hide because this is not what I wanted."

I got off the stage and one of the TED employees came up to me and she said, "I really liked your talk" and I was like, "Okay, thanks. You're just saying that." And she said, "No, I did. You recovered better than most people do." And I didn't really hear what she said, but in my head I felt that was not what I wanted to have happen. I saw this experience going differently. I was so frustrated and was being unnecessarily hard on myself. I really thought I was going to be able to go build an idea, and I felt like I hadn't.

A week later, I was scrolling LinkedIn and I saw a quote from my talk. There was someone who had been there that I hadn't met at all, but a week later he's putting a quote from my talk in there that he remembered, and I thought, "That's really interesting because we didn't meet and he's remembering," that like, "Maybe I didn't fail."

And then I got invited back to give feedback on something else. And as a part of the experience, they toured the office for us. In one of the sections, they said, "And this is where we edit the talks." And I said, "What? You edit talks?" And they said, "Yeah, of course. People make mistakes all the time. They blank on stage, they lose their place. They need to get [inaudible 00:31:58] all the time, so yeah." And that's when I realized what that woman had said to me of, "I really liked your talk. You recovered better than people thought."

And so this thing that I thought was this failure and incredibly painfully embarrassing to me, which by the way, all this was in my head, turned out to be such a gift because I realized this is all in my head. I did build an idea and I had this amazing experience. So when I gave my talk at Purdue, it was a completely different experience because I wasn't afraid of blanking. And to this day, I'm not afraid at all because people didn't dislike me because I blanked. It made me more real and human because of it. How did I do?

Chris Do:

You did great. So I have to ask you, what are the lessons that you learned?

Karen Eber:

That so much of the story in your head isn't the one that people experience, that what you think is the worst thing possible is not at all. I was mortified that I blanked. What's funny is when I went back to TED a couple weeks later or a couple month later, someone who is in that session had seen my talk and when I first... You're doing your greetings and shaking hands, she quoted a line back to me, and I had not met her that day either, and she said, "I have been telling all my teams about this and how helpful I found it." And I was like, "Yeah, but I blanked." She's like, "I didn't remember that." And so the things that we fixate on that we think everyone is pointing at and laughing at, usually they are not. And all of that stuff just makes you more human. Perfection is this illusion, not that I thought it was going to be perfect, but the things that we get hung up on usually just aren't true. No one isn't looking. No one's looking at you as much as you think.

Chris Do:

There is a pretty common fear, I think, about public speaking of that very thing happening. When you freeze in front of 200, 2,000 people, it doesn't really matter. And then you can't recover. You just can't.

Karen Eber:

You can. So here's the trick, right? Because it's the fear. The fear-

Chris Do:

No, that's the fear. That's the fear of [inaudible 00:34:07].

Karen Eber:

... is inside in our mind of like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?" Here's what you're going to do. You're going to ask someone in the audience, "Remind me, what was my last sentence?" Or you're going to pause and you're going to get a drink. Or you're going to make a joke and be like, "I am living everyone's worst fear. I just lost my place." No one is going to be upset because you lost your place. They're going to feel bad if you quit and you don't continue, but they're there to help you. No one's wanting to throw eggs at you. And those moments are so real. So try not to let it amplify in your mind and instead lean into it of like, "Oh my gosh, I am living everyone's worst fear. I lost my place, but fortunately I am still clothed." Because I think the second one is we have these dreams that we show up without clothes on. Be real and just ask for help. "Oh, that's right. Okay. Yeah, that's where we were. Okay." Humanity wins.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Karen Eber:

We respond to the vulnerability. And when you're real and you own it, it's fine.

Chris Do:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Before we get back to this week's episode, I want to check in to see if you are an established creative service provider, coach, or consultant looking to take your business to the next level. If so, I want to personally invite you to join The Futur Pro membership. With instant access to over 600 hours of exclusive content, live calls with myself and guest experts and a community of peers to support you every step of the way, we hold nothing back when it comes to scaling your business. Go to thefutur.com/pro to learn more and join us inside.

Welcome back to our conversation.

I have been witness to two dumpster fire talks where there was no recovery. So I'm saying it's a real fear. It can happen, and it's happened. I've witnessed it.

Karen Eber:

No recovery? Like they walked off the stage? What happened?

Chris Do:

Yeah, I want to tell you what happened. Yeah, I want to tell you what happened. And it's two times. I want to do this to scare people first, so then you'll give them all the tools that they need in order to not have this happen to them.

Karen Eber:

Go ahead.

Chris Do:

The first time, I'm pretty early on in my speaking career. I'm in the green room. It's an outdoor venue somewhere in LA. I'm just like a year into public speaking, I'm scared to death. I'm pacing like a nervous person like my wife's giving birth or something in the hospital. So I'm sitting there and there's this woman and she was super confident and I was like, "Don't mind me. I'm just going to pace the rent and trying to figure out what the heck I need to say." And she goes, "Oh, I don't get nervous about these kinds of things." That is an omen maybe.

Karen Eber:

Yep, yep. Jinx. Jinx.

Chris Do:

It's almost like you're invoking Murphy's Law.

Karen Eber:

Exactly, yeah. Don't say that.

Chris Do:

All right. So she comes out. They play a little music. She walks out and it's an intimate venue. I mean, we're talking about 50, 60 people and somewhere in LA, it's outdoors. She comes out, she's super confident, starts telling her story, it's full of personality, and then she freezes. She goes, "Wait a minute." And she starts it again, and stops. She does it three times. I think the first time we're like, "Whoo! You got this." Second time, it's like, "Oh. Oh, it's getting really awkward." And by the third time it's painful. We're rooting, it's painful, and I'm thinking, "I'm going to speak next, and I can't have this happen to me either, so I'm going through my own psychosis right here."

Karen Eber:

Sure.

Chris Do:

I don't know how she ends it. It's a busted talk. She talks about something else and is never able to fully recover. That's one. I have even a worse one than this, okay?

Karen Eber:

Okay.

Chris Do:

I was at a design conference. Designers are not public speakers. We like to just make things visual, you know?

Karen Eber:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

This person came on stage super, super nervous. They were literally reading their entire keynote, which we know you're not supposed to do, okay?

Karen Eber:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

And so as she's reading it, there's a technical problem. It's her keynote, but she's blaming the tech team. This is all happening in real time on the stage. It's horrific. And we're going through this. And the whole time I'm sitting there thinking, "Just wing it. Who cares? Just move on. It will be okay." So she tries it once, tries it twice, I think three times, and then it just stopped and that was the end of her talk. Tech problems.

Karen Eber:

Sometimes people get so regimented that they don't have the flexibility. And I think the first thing is have a mindset that anything could go wrong. So whenever I get up to speak, I always think like, "What happens if my slides go?" Which my slides are just images, but sometimes in the course of an hour, they serve as a cue to me of what's coming next. And so it's like, "Can I do this? How would I handle this?" Sometimes you have a outline of your talk in the wings that if you do blank, you can go back as a reference. And hopefully you never need it, but it's there to allow you to regroup in the case of the first woman that just was restarting and she had a mental block. Which that can happen, right?

You are in the seek pleasure, avoid pain. Your body is in a little bit of pain. You have some adrenaline and cortisol going on when you are on stage. No matter how seasoned you are, that is a moment where your body is saying, "Focus. Pay attention." And sometimes the way things are happening, depending how much you've slept, all of that, your brain takes a moment to go offline as unfortunate as it is.

And so if you can't use a cue from the audience and say, "Gosh, I blanked, or whatever," have something that you can refer to off-stage that can allow you to regroup. Or choose to move on. Because in your first one, the first, second, third time, the reason it was so uncomfortable for the audience is you were like, "You don't have to have this terrible experience. You can move forward. Let's talk about something else." And in both cases, they just were so stuck on where they were, they just ended it. Which is, here's the reason never to do that, because that trauma is going to live in your mind and you're going to beat yourself up for it over and over and over.

Chris Do:

Oh, my gosh.

Karen Eber:

In 20 years, I don't want to lie awake at 1:00 AM thinking about, "I'm so embarrassed." Instead, be human, admit it. So I've seen TED Talks... I've been to TED conferences where people are like, "Excuse me, I need to go off-stage and get a drink of water. I've got to check my notes." All of that is fine. There's humanness there. But when you get so regimented, that's when you lose your audience of you're just so stuck. And so I'm a big fan of the "what if?" Okay, night before, "What if my slides go out? What if my mic goes out? What if I bring people on stage? What if they go off into a crazy direction? What if I blank? What if I have a coughing fit?" This happened to me in the middle of a talk. I had a big coughing fit and had to stop and get water.

These moments feel amplified when we are doing presentations and everyone's looking at us, right? Your body, for some reason, when your midsection is exposed, we feel even more vulnerable. It's why we love the fetal position because we're protecting our midsection. And so when you're on stage and there's nothing in front of you, that's even more amplified. And that is inherently not not normal no matter how often you do this. And so recognizing and being open to, there's so many different ways this can go, and knowing that in advance is key. The reason that talk was such a gift for me is none of that had occurred to me, and now I realize it is totally fine. It is totally fine to lose your place and pick back up. Just have a strategy and support to be able to make sure you are moving forward because you do not want to lie awake 20 years from now thinking about that embarrassing time on stage.

Chris Do:

So you've done something. You just raised the stakes, because I thought I was going to scare our audience by saying, "Oh my gosh, you can have a pretty bad experience. It's possible." And you're like, "Well, that's not even the end of it." 20 years later, you'll still be thinking about it. So we need to be prepared.

There's a couple of things I want to highlight that you said, which is, when things go wrong, first of all, you should probably not have the expectations that it's going to be perfect. It doesn't need to be perfect, and that's not even real to begin with. But if and when things go wrong, for you just to kind of be transparent, embrace the moment, do what you got to do, and just let the audience know, "Hey, I forgot what I'm talking about everybody. I've lost myself in my own story. Remind me again. Where was I going with this? That's a better story than the one I'm going to tell. Why don't you come up and we'll tell the story together?" You just have fun. You just move on. It'll be okay. Because the worst possible outcome is for it to scar you psychologically that you cannot heal from this and you'll deprive the world of your story, your insight, your wisdom, and your wit. And we don't want to do that clearly.

Karen Eber:

There's two things that are success. One is connection. You want to have connection with the audience. Connection isn't you delivering the most perfect set of words so eloquently. It is that you are real and they're responding to you and what they feel is real about you.

The second though is audiences really care how you make them feel, and that's what feeds the connection. So if you make an audience feel really engaged in what your story or caring about you or reflecting on something that's important to them, it's far more enjoyable than the speakers where you don't feel anything. And we've all sat through them. We've all sat through like, "Who picked this person? This is awful." Or sometimes it'd say, "Okay, this isn't for me, but other people are liking it." But success is that, where you can focus on this connection and how you're trying to help them feel. The rest, slides can go out, lights can blow.

I had to do a keynote where I had been up all night with a stomach virus. I am doing my best to keep it together. I'm in a room in a city that is 90 degrees and the air conditioning in the room is broken. It is early in the morning where sunlight is just pouring into the room, making it hotter, and there are six industrial-sized fans going. And because the sunlight is coming in and the slides were backlit, you couldn't see them. And so here I am fresh off a stomach virus in a 90 degree room with industrial-sized fans going, and you can't see any of my slides and I have to figure out how to project with the microphone to make sure we are still having this intimate experience. And you know what? They loved it. It was not my most enjoyable experience, but they loved it because none of that stuff matters when you do it right.

And so, focus on your audience, focus on connection, focus on how you make them feel. Whether you're on stage, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a leader, whether you're telling a story in a setting, those are the pieces that are going to make the difference.

Chris Do:

Okay, I have to ask you something. It might be a little controversial. I'm going to ask it. Feel free to navigate this any which way you want. You say that the purpose of a talk is to build a connection. Do you find that the construct of how we give these talks is very artificial to begin with that it fights against our ability to be real? What I mean is we want to be great. We want to be able to organize our thoughts and write an outline and even write the stories and practice. And I know in TED Talk you memorize your talk, you give it, and then you forget your talk so that you can tell it in a way that doesn't sound memorized. But as we've seen many people do before, they tell the exact same story, the exact same awkward pause, the exact same laugh, that's not real.

And on top of that, in your story that you shared earlier, for the 200 people that was somewhat real. And for everyone else, the vast majority of people see it. It's edited, so that's not even real. So we're feeding into this weird loop of what it's supposed to be like and it's hurting us. So we're like we have to nail every single beat. There's no water, there's no coughing. You can't clear your throat. How do you feel about that?

Karen Eber:

First of all, my talk wasn't edited. The one that sounds head was in pure forum.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Karen Eber:

You'll see my stumbles, which were totally fine. I agree and I don't agree. Think of your favorite band. Who's your favorite band? Your favorite musician?

Chris Do:

Right now I like Twenty One Pilots.

Karen Eber:

Okay. Have you ever seen them in concert?

Chris Do:

No. Oh, yes, I have. Yes, I'm sorry.

Karen Eber:

Okay. So what is the song you want them to play when you hear them in concert?

Chris Do:

There are so many great songs. Let's just say the most popular song is Blurryface. And sometimes Tyler will sing it and sometimes he won't.

Karen Eber:

Okay. Everyone though wants to hear Blurryface because it's a popular song. He's probably played it however many thousand times, but you want to hear it. You want to hear that live version. You want to have that experience. You've listened to the digital version 100 times, but like, "No, I'm seeing it." And every time you see them, you want to hear it. Every time people see Billy Joel, they want to hear him sing Piano Man, and he's probably on his millionth performance. Now, you don't want to hear him sing, "Sing us a song, I'm a piano man." You want to hear him sing it like it's the first time he's ever played it. And so there's something true with stories that we sometimes want to hear these greatest hits and we want to hear the live version of it because there's something really real and authentic about it, but we want it to feel live and true.

There's this great TED Talk by Drew Dudley. It's about lollipop moments. It's under five minutes, well worth watching. He talks about this idea of how leadership can happen in these unexpected moments. I won't do his top justice, but I'll give you the story of it best as I can.

There's a young woman who is at college for the first time. She's really nervous about leaving home. She's not sure she can do it. And she's in the hotel room with her parents the night before thinking like, "I don't know if I want to stay here. I don't know if I can do this." And her parents said like, "Just go. If it's not for you, we'll take you home. But let's just go tomorrow and see." And she's standing in line in this registration line with all the freshmen, and in her mind she's like, "I can't do this. I need to go."

And then this door flies open and this man comes out with this ridiculous hat. And he's like this bundle of energy, and it is Drew. He is walking around and talking to everybody there. And he is, I guess, trying to raise money for a charity or hand out things for a charity. He goes up to the person next to her and he says, "Give this lollipop to the beautiful woman next to you. "And the guy's very shy and embarrassed, he takes the lollipop, he hands it to her and she takes it. And he's like, "Look at that. Look at that. One day away from home and she's already taking candy from a stranger." Whole crowd busts out laughing and something in her shifts. And she goes from this place of, "I can't be here" to like, "Maybe this is going to be okay."

So he's telling this very adorable story and how the day he is leaving the university, this woman comes up to him and tells him this story from a few years before. He has no recollection of this event, but she's telling him that he made such a profound impact on her staying and having this whole experience and how amazing it was. And as she's turning to leave, she says, "By the way, you should know that I'm dating him now and we're engaged to get married" from this chance encounter that he has no recollection of. So he's telling this adorable story and you watch it and you're like, "It's so good." Every audience wants him to tell this story every time they hear him. Even though they've seen the video, they want that live version of it because there's something about being present and hearing the live version. It's like people saying, "I got to see Beyonce live." Yeah, you've seen all the songs, you've seen the videos, but there's something about the live thing.

So that's the part of the agree, disagree, but you don't want that live version to be so formulaic en route that it just is like, "Okay, I could have just press play on a recording." Finding what makes it true for that audience and feeding on the energy of that audience is what's going to make it so dynamic and interesting. It's okay to tell the same story, it's okay to take the same beats, but it can feel so formulaic that no one needs to be in the room for you to tell it.

Chris Do:

Okay. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. One of the things I love to talk about and encourage anybody who wants to make content be a public speaker is to lean into the vulnerability of who they are. I believe in Pixar 21 Rules of Storytelling, the rule number one is the audience admires you more for your struggle than for your success. And we know this, we feel it every time we hear someone talk about how they struggled and they say it in a genuine way not to manipulate you. You just feel a greater connection and bond to that person. Yet here we are on social media. Here we are on public stages not being ourselves, not telling our story. I have a couple of friends and they'll know as soon as they hear this episode, "He's talking about me, isn't he?" So I will leave your name out of this, but I'll say this, and I would love to pick your brain to see what kind of advice you would give, how you could help this person, okay?

Karen Eber:

Okay.

Chris Do:

So I think as we're conditioned not to tell stories and we want to keep things concise, we're also sometimes conditioned or afraid that if we reveal too much about what it is that we truly feel or think in that moment, that people will look at us a little bit disgusted, like we're a total loser, a failure. We have dark thoughts and it's not within our best interests, especially within a professional environment, to reveal these things.

So my friends will tell a story. And I know them so well, I'm like, "Why'd you edit all the other part out in written form or in spoken form? That's the part that I love." And then I talked to the person, she's European. There is a cultural difference for sure, depending on where you're in Europe and America, for sure. They were a lot more reserved. And I said, "Let me tell you your story back to you the way I know it. I'll just make up parts that I don't even know." And I tell it to her and she's like, "Oh, that's so good. Why can't I do this?" I'm like, "Why don't you do this? The whole point is for you to build connection and to be real and to show up as yourself." Help me understand why. And what are some tools that we can share with people who struggle with this, that they can overcome this?

Karen Eber:

The first is storytelling is always personal. It's personal even if you're telling someone else's story. So personal doesn't mean I'm revealing my innermost secrets and thoughts and feelings and emotions. It means I am telling the story, and only I can tell this story in this way. You're bringing your perspective to it. So every story is personal. But personal doesn't mean private. And each person has to decide what is private, and that's going to vary person to person. There's a discomfort that comes with private that we often are like, "No, no, I'm not doing that."

So I worked with someone who in a business setting was a only woman on a leadership team and was getting ready for a presentation, and she said, "But I do not want to tell a story about my kids. All of the people here have kids that are older. They weren't really active parents, and I just feel it's going to make them view me weak and I just don't want to do it." And for her, that was the private line. It would make her physically uncomfortable to do it.

So the first thing is figuring out for you what is personal and what is private. I don't tell stories about my family mostly because I just don't feel like it's right for me to try to represent them, and that's their privacy. But happily tell you a story about a mistake or a failure that's not uncomfortable or private and there's reasons for that. And so people have these differences. So first thing is figure out where's your privacy barrier and just accept that. It's going to be different for everyone and you shouldn't try to be someone else.

The second is that we will respond to vulnerability. So if we are telling a story about a mistake like blanking on a TED stage, people have a lot of empathy for vulnerable moments. If you look on social media, the people that share a hardship, a time, a true moment is when you get unfortunately the most views, the most responses because this is what we respond to. You often don't know though what people respond to the most until you test it.

And so my encouragement, whether it's social media or a presentation, is have a safe space to test it. So just like you did with your friend where you're like, "Let me tell your story back to you," sometimes there's pieces of our story that we have no idea land in a powerful way on someone because we're just living it. To us, it's every day. We don't realize that someone says, "That is so cool." So when you get the chance to test it, you get the chance to understand what's resonating for you, what is unique, what should I lean into. And those are going to give you the feedback. Because remember, our inner dialogue is not as kind and probably not pointing out those things to us. But someone outside of you can help you understand that and give you the chance to see. So the higher the stakes the presentation, build in time to test it. Understand how it's landing on others and what you can lean into to tell more of.

Chris Do:

I want to ask you this question, and I have many more questions to ask you, so if you can help me figure this part out. Can you be vulnerable and be comfortable? Because I feel like vulnerability is you have to step into the discomfort and to be uncomfortable to reveal something that you're afraid that people are going to have an opinion about you that might not be positive.

Karen Eber:

Yeah, I think you can, but I think it's a skill learned, right? So I've made storytelling a very big part of the work that I do and on stage. And so I will get like what you did. "Okay, I'm going to ask. Tell me a story you've never told before and think of it on the moment." Now, is it vulnerable? Yeah, it's a little uncomfortable only because I'm like, "What story am I going to tell? Let's get my brain going." But am I comfortable in the moment of, "Yeah, I'm happy to do this. Let's figure it out"? Okay, yeah, this is maybe awkward and hard and I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm down to try. Because I've developed this mindset of, "What's the worst that's going to happen?" Nothing.

So every keynote I give, there is anticipation. There is nerves. My goal is always I want to create connection and help the audience feel something. But also more importantly, I want to make sure they're coming away with certain things. I want it to be meaningful and valuable. And so that is always there. Yet I'm also comfortable on stage to do this and have fun because if I'm not, it would be really painful to listen to. It's possible to balance that of, "Yes, this is not natural and I am feeling nerves and we go do this. It's okay."

Chris Do:

Okay. The thing is I always check people. I live in a different world and realm than the one that you live in. I like that we can have a conversation to see where we overlap and where there may be some differences, whereas I work with mostly individuals and trying to help them lean into who they are. And this is me just kind of changing the tone here a little bit, which is I find that so many people, especially people that are in randomized circles, they're so afraid of other people's opinions that they're always hiding, they're always editing, they're always censoring things. And I tell them, "That's the best way for you to keep a distance from the audience you're trying so hard to build a connection with." And so I'm on the other side like, "Let's go for radical transparency. Speak your mind. Own your truth. And if people don't like you, so be it. Not everybody's meant to like you and you don't like everybody anyways, so it's okay."

I'm a content creator on YouTube, right? And so I noticed something that's pretty fascinating, that the videos that are highly produced appeal to a smaller segment than the videos that feel like it's just some cheap camera that they're using, the exposure's wrong and it's handheld and it's not perfect. That when we want perfect, we'll watch Netflix, we'll watch Disney, we'll watch HBO or Hulu. When we want real and we want authentic, we'll watch YouTube. And Mr. Beast deliberately tells his team, because he can afford anything, "I want you to shoot a certain way and it doesn't look great, but it looks real and we feel like there's a real connection there." And for me to be more attractive, you got to be willing to show some ugly stuff and then you're just going to own it. And if you can own it, no one can hurt you anymore. So that's the angle in which I take, I know you want to say something, so I'm going to shut up.

Karen Eber:

No, I am in agreement, but here's a question that will set you free. This is always the question I hear people and they're like, "Oh." Ask yourself, "Whom am I okay disappointing?" When you are telling a story, there is always an audience. There's always someone that you want to know, think, feel, or do something, right? You're trying to connect with them. Not everyone fits in that, to your point, right? There are people that fall outside of that. In the business world, sometimes there's a bell curve of people that we want to have here and then people that are outside of it that it just doesn't matter. On social media, there are your followers, the people that you want to connect with. And then there's maybe the trolls.

When you start to ask yourself, "Whom am I okay disappointing? Well, I don't care if the trolls are disappointed." Great. "That's no wasted energy for me. Their opinion doesn't matter. I'm okay if this target population doesn't like me. That's fine." Think of it this way. If I was going to your home for dinner, what would you cook for me? What would be your go-to signature dish?

Chris Do:

That's a real question for me?

Karen Eber:

For you, yeah.

Chris Do:

No, shoot.

Karen Eber:

Or ordering? You can order in. It's fine. Whatever.

Chris Do:

Yes. My signature dish would be to go to the restaurant to pick up something and share it with you because I don't cook and-

Karen Eber:

Okay, so what would you pick up? Let's just name a particular dish. What would you pick up?

Chris Do:

I'd probably pick up something really healthy. Some kind of salad with some protein that's prepared very simply with really fresh ingredients. And it's not fancy, but it's tasty and it's good for you.

Karen Eber:

Nice. I would love that. It sounds delicious. If we're in a room full of 100 people, not everyone would love that because someone would say, "Well, I'm a carnivore and I only eat meat and I don't want a salad. I haven't eaten a vegetable and whatever," right? And someone would say, "But I really want something salty." And another person would say, "But I want Italian. I had a salad for lunch." There would be a range of opinions. Would you take that personally?

Chris Do:

No.

Karen Eber:

Yeah, no, because people just have different preferences. And it's the same thing when we're connecting. You are not going to please everyone, nor should you try. So the sooner you can get more clear on "Who is it I'm okay disappointing because it doesn't matter?" then that's okay.

It doesn't have to be this villain. When I speak in different settings or when I am posting different thought leadership on social media, there's parts of the business world that I'm like, "It's okay if that doesn't resonate with you. That's not really who I'm talking to." Because what is important to me is who I'm talking to here. That's the one that I want to care about and make sure they get the message. If I focus on that, the rest doesn't matter. So anytime you're feeling that discomfort around like, "Oh, I don't want to share. I'm afraid it's got to be perfect." Just get really clear on who you're okay disappointing, because then if you hear anything, it's like, "Okay, that's fine." What do you think?

Chris Do:

I like that. Well, I'm at that place where I've stopped caring about what people think. I've gone through this pretty large arc myself in terms of caring only about what people think and not having any of my own identity and feelings and just being super intense and uptight, to this other thing. I'll share this with you. My friend was totally shocked.

So I'm on tour in Europe and I'm doing a series of full day workshops and I tell my crew, "Hey, I shouldn't have eaten this thing for breakfast. I usually don't eat breakfast. My stomach is just all acid right now and it's not good. I might have to do some damage in the bathroom." They're shocked that I'm even telling them this. I said, "In case something goes wrong, I'm going to point to you and you just need to come on stage and keep running the workshop. I hope that doesn't happen, but there's a probability that it will happen." And my friend nods, "I got you. I got you. Don't worry." And I said to her, "Should I tell the audience this?" And she's mortified. She's like, "Do not tell the audience you have potential problems with your stomach." And I'm like, "Okay."

I walk up and I said, "Hey everybody, welcome. I just need to let you know something. I ate something for breakfast" and I just told them exactly the same thing again, and then they laugh. But you know what? I got to tell you that put me really at ease. I won't share all the gory details, but it put me at ease. And so I wasn't thinking as I'm talking like you get that cold sweat and you're like, "I need to leave, but I can't because it's just really awkward. And how do I tell the audience?" I've already prepared them for it. And just by saying it and speaking it to the universe, I'm like, "Cool. It turns out I didn't have to go to the bathroom. It was totally okay."

And then later on my friend comes up to me, he's like, "Chris, I wish I had that bravery to say those crazy things. You do it and people love you for it, but I can't do that. There's this kind of rule of exception. You're the exception to the rule." I'm like, "No, I'm not. You could do this too." What are your thoughts on that?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, it's all relatability, right? People were like, "Oh, he's having a real moment. Okay, oh gosh, that would suck to be him," right? Because this is what happens when you share stuff like that, people imagine like, "What would that be like? Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah, you do what you need." Not everyone's going to have the same comfort level. There's nothing wrong with being real in those moments. We all have bodies and we all have life and have circumstances. And the reality happens and it worked really well for you.

Chris Do:

Okay. I've been speaking to Karen Eber. She's written the book, The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire. It's out on Amazon October 3rd. It's like less than a month away. Be sure you go check it out.

Karen Eber:

You can actually get it now. You can pre-order it now-

Chris Do:

Pre-order it right not.

Karen Eber:

... and it'll show up on your door October 3rd, yeah.

Chris Do:

And you won't have to sweat it at all. Unlike in my story, I'll sweat in a storm. I want to ask you this question and highlight from the book. People think they don't have stories. I have nothing interesting to say. No one will care about my stories. You write, "You could build a toolkit to create endless story ideas. "So if I'm a person, I have no stories, I want to tell, but I don't know what to talk about right now." Karen, how can you have endless story ideas?"

Karen Eber:

Okay, so let me put you on the spot again.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Karen Eber:

I'm going to ask you two questions. One is intentionally vague and hard. Just answer the best you can. First question is, tell us about your childhood.

Chris Do:

I've had a really rough childhood. As an immigrant to this country, as a refugee fleeing Vietnam, I've always felt out of place. It's like the eternal a stranger comes to town. We didn't speak the language, we didn't understand the culture, and I was the subject of a lot of ridicule. And I felt it and I internalized this negative external talk into negative internal talk. So for a period of time, up until about 17 or 18, I was ashamed to be who I was. I had a lot of identity conflicts and I've worked really hard to overcome those things.

Karen Eber:

Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing that, and you gave a rich answer. Most people struggle to answer that. We're going to come back to this. Tell me about a sound or smell that reminds you of home.

Chris Do:

There's a smell that it's from green bean or mung bean and it comes from... It's usually served inside of a pastry and it's a little bit sweet and it is a thing that I connect to Lunar New Year. It's something you have once a year. So anytime I have this green mung bean, it takes me right back there to my culture to a very special time because as a child, Lunar New Year meant you get money, you get red envelopes. So it was like the best time ever.

Karen Eber:

Were you wearing new pajamas?

Chris Do:

No.

Karen Eber:

No? That wasn't part of your Lunar New Year? Okay.

Chris Do:

No.

Karen Eber:

So what we did there is I asked you a question that was really broad about tell us about your childhood. And you answered really well of you were talking about being an immigrant and what that felt like and being an outsider. What happens often when I ask this is most people struggle to answer. They will say usually the location they grew up in, maybe how many relatives were around in the type of housing. You were able to give a rich answer. It was still really broad though of "Broad brush, here's what that was like." We would have to dig in more to get stories because there's so many in there.

Because childhood spans so many years, what happens when I ask this is your brain says like, "Well, where do I go? Which file do I pull from to answer this?" When I say, "What sound or smell reminds you of home?", you immediately went to that mung bean and Lunar New Year and being a child and getting the red envelope and all the excitement. And so there's probably 10 different stories from Lunar New Year's, to eating them, all of that, right? So I use this example because an endless toolkit of stories comes from constraints. The more specific prompts you ask yourself, the more specific questions, the more constraints you put in place, the more ideas that come.

We think to come up with an idea, we need a blank slate in as much open space and time. What you really need are constraints because it's these constraints like the sound or smell, they're just going to help your brain say, "Oh, sure, I know what file to access and dig in and see." Just like the prompt you asked me was great, it was a constraint. "Tell a story about a time you almost failed.' Well, now my brain starts going through, "Well, what are some failures? What are some almost failures? Let's think about this" versus, "Tell me about work."

Chris Do:

Right?

Karen Eber:

The key to building a toolkit of endless stories is working through constraints around your professional experiences, your personal experiences around life adventures. Think about something you should have gotten rid of but you just can't part with.

What you want to do is build this list. Maybe it's a podcast you love or an article you read or a museum you love going to or a concert. You want to build a list of these things that you connect with that are ideas without worrying about where you will use them. You're not building a whole story, you're collecting these fragments. Because what happens when it's time to tell a story is you start reading this list of prompts and asking yourself, "Which one of these helps me build this outcome that I want for the audience?" And it's going to help trigger ideas. Sometimes it helps you prompt whole new story ideas. So the key is to put constraints in your path by asking specific questions about specific settings and you will be amazed how many stories emerge.

Chris Do:

Very good. I love that. Do you have a collection, like a book of stories that you've written? And how do you organize that if you do? And how can we start that process?

Karen Eber:

Yeah, I have a couple different lists. So I keep in Google Keep. I keep a running list of ideas because when I walk, I will often get a bunch of ideas. And by putting it there, I can access it on any device and I'm not having to transfer it. I have a master spreadsheet where I will then have a running list because Google Keep isn't good to have 200. And so I will then go through and transfer them into Excel and look through them and just keep adding to it. It's usually more prompts for me of fragments and stuff that I put together. And I just regularly go through every couple months and stuff just to keep it manageable from the different lists. But that works really well for me.

The key is you want to have a place to capture it. Because if you are on a walk and you get this idea and you think like, "Oh, I'm totally going to remember this by the end of the walk," no, you won't. You want to spend your energy on coming up with ideas, not thinking about where to put them. So have a place to capture it. It could be pen and paper. It could be a Post-it. It could be an app. It could be something online and use whatever works for you, but have a dedicated place.

Chris Do:

Having a book of stories or a bank of stories is your insurance policy against those blank out moments when you freeze on stage. Because talks, you have to memorize. Stories, you just have to remember. And just giving yourself a prompt, like, "Tell that time when Karen asks you this question." And that's all you really need because part of you, it's part of your life and you could retell that story. Sometimes you'll tell it better, sometimes you tell a little bit worse, but you don't have to memorize these things. And as one storyteller to another, what is your preferred format of telling stories? Do you like giving talks or do you like fireside AMA style where you can just be pretty loose about what kind of story you want to tell for how long?

Karen Eber:

I love all forms and it's different things for different ones. So I tend to think my stories through writing first. It's how I do my thought leadership, writing in paper. Writing, typing, helps magical moments where you see stuff come out and you're like, "Where did that come from?" And that is usually different than when I'm telling a story on the fly. I do a lot of work with C-suite teams and in different sessions and stories come up. I don't plan them. They come up and that's fun because it's very much in the moment you hear something, you know a story that can help that, I think, in stories because I've done this and so I can kind of almost visualize and see. And those are always great because you know you're hitting something right on for that person at the time.

And then I love keynotes because it is informing at scale and it's stories at scale. There's a really interesting energy shift that can happen in a room and create a moment that is really special that often doesn't replicate on video. This is one of the things about TED Talks that are hard. The feeling in the theater the day I gave that talk was really interesting and palpable. It's fine, the video's fine, but it's a different feeling in the room. And so that to me, there's always a lot of magic created there that's fun. So I get different things from each one and love all of them.

Chris Do:

Karen, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you for sharing some of these ideas and indulging some of my questions here. I know that we've only barely just touched the tip of the iceberg. If people are interested in your book, The Perfect Story, what can they look forward to? And they can pre-order the book right now available on Amazon. What are some of the big ideas? And then we'll wrap up there.

Karen Eber:

Yeah. So I am trying to evolve the conversation on storytelling to help people understand a little bit of the science. And so this is not, "Put on a lab coat and sit down for a science lecture." This is done very relatably, but I want people to recognize what's happening in the brain, and more importantly, what do you do with that when you're telling a story, which that isn't really out there. Because understanding certain things and the choices you can make and how it will impact the brain and the story is a lot of power that is going to make your stories more dynamic.

So the first part of the book talks through this, it's light, it's fun, there's some great stories that punctuate it, and then it takes you through the full process. This is a masterclass in storytelling for how do you find ideas, tailor your audience, put a structure in place, make sure you're engaging the brain, sequence the story. If you tell stories with data, it takes you through that. It goes through things like sequencing it, avoiding common mistakes, making sure you're not manipulating with your story and navigating the vulnerability, and even how are you using your body as a part of your storytelling.

And the end of each chapter has this fun interview vignette with people that tell stories in different ways. So there's a physician, there is a neuroscientist, there is a person that writes stories for video games, an improv comedian, the TED Radio Hour podcast host, a co-founder of Sundance. If you love The Moth, we have an executive producer of The Moth in there. So each of these people across so many different industries and realms and they give you a sneak peek into their world that just help you see there are so many different ways to do this and it's a fun little punctuation mark on each chapter.

Chris Do:

Thank you. My guess has been Karen Eber. Her book is called The Perfect Story. You can pre-order right now on Amazon, and go do that. I'm sure you're going to learn a ton of things. Thanks very much, Karen.

Karen Eber:

Thank you. I'm Karen Eber. You are listening to The Futur.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week.

The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do, and produced by me, Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. That will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better.

Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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