John Jantsch: I’ve been writing about storytelling in business for at least 15 years. Now if you start to use these tiny things, over the course of a full story, you’ll have a story. John Jantsch: And you think about it, there’s lots of places to tell stories but you think about the public speaker, I mean they’re essentially up there, telling a narrative of some sort and you’re right, that narrative can either be a statement of facts which a lot of speakers do. Ron Ploof: Yeah, Robert McKee who wrote a great book called “Story”. So since I like breaking story down into little tiny pieces, I came up with 60 ideas that I wanted people to be able to use in all different ways. And so what that means is that there are people roles, there are events, the things that happened to those people and then what they want? I’ve been losing decks because I kept loaning them to people and they wouldn’t come back and so what I wanted to do was, is there a way to present story and storytelling into this format and that’s how I came up with the deck. Maybe there is a story behind that. And one of the things that I like to have people do is if they do come up with the story. Ron Ploof: So Ron tell us where people can get the Pitch Deck and find out more about you?
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Transcript
John Jantsch: Can a little deck of cards help you tell better stories? I think it can. We’re going to talk to Ron Ploof, creator of “StoryHow Pitch Deck”. Check it out.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Ron Ploof. He is author, speaker, consultant and I suspect he will also want me to say storyteller. He is a creator of the StoryHow Pitch Deck, a deck of playing cards that helps business people convert their ideas, messages and presentations into memorable narratives. So Ron thanks for joining.
Ron Ploof: You’re welcome, thank you for having me on.
John Jantsch: I’ve been writing about storytelling in business for at least 15 years. But man, is it hot all of a sudden. What you suppose it is?
Ron Ploof: I think there are a lot of subjects that become hot and as we’re starting to see more and more information, more and more say content marketing that people are trying to figure out a way to get their messages to stick and that I think that they’re starting to turn away from all of these new tools and all of these new digital mediums, if you will. And maybe getting back to some basics, how do humans communicate? Humans communicate through story.
John Jantsch: Yeah, I think the human word is, as you said, with the tools and the digital experience. I think people are craving the human experience maybe more than ever. There’s a great book called “Sapiens” that is pretty popular. Maybe you’ve heard of it but essentially kind of follows the whole your path of how human beings as we know them came to be and one of things I found really interesting was that you know that we were always the highest on the food chain, meaning humans. I mean, a lot of animals out there that hunted and ate us and our ability to tell stories and to craft a story that made people dream about a shared vision that I couldn’t see was really the difference. I think that that probably goes as much to kind of the anthropologic nature of storytelling.
Ron Ploof: Absolutely. It’s really popular for people to say that hey, storytelling is wired into our DNA and things like that. I’ve been real interested in digging into and finding out how? One of my favorite writers and friend is I Kendall Haven and if you’ve read any of candles stuff. But he actually has done brain research work he’s put leads on people’s heads and did EEG ratings of people as they were listening to stories. And some great research but what’s really interesting in there is he said that one of its conclusions, the only way that we learn is through story structure. The only way that people is through story structure. So if there was a big bad wolf or monster that was hunting us down, the best way for us to learn how to avoid him, would be to tell stories.
John Jantsch: And tell stories about how we can gang up on the big bad wolf. I think that that was kind of led to it. So let’s go to businesses. If we are accepting this idea that businesses need to tell more stories and get better storytelling, can you routinely say, yeah, here are the 4 core stories that every business needs to have, that structure?
Ron Ploof: No, I hate that. That’s why I think a lot of people when they’re talking about storytelling or they’re trying to understand storytelling that they get all wrapped up around. The concept of story that’s like big. It’s really big and it’s epic and you need to know all of these things. What I’ve tried to do, as a storyteller, is just break down into. Look there are some little tiny things that you can do, little tiny things that will help when you say something help people remember it. Help them apply it. And to me it’s those little tiny things. Now if you start to use these tiny things, over the course of a full story, you’ll have a story. But to meet there are little little tiny things. Let me give you an example, because I don’t think a story needs to be huge. I think that the story is about delivering a piece of information that makes somebody wants to learn more. Example I like use is “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”. Okay that’s a fact. And the fact stands on its own. That’s a piece of narrative. No one really cares about just the fact. However, if I change it around just a little bit. And I said, “Quick brown fox wanted to jump over the lazy dog.” I’ve not used what I call a story statement. I’ve given you a piece of information but it also probably places a couple questions in your mind that you want to know more. What questions popped into your mind when I said the quick brown fox wanted to jump over the lazy dog?
John Jantsch: why did he want to? What was stopping him from doing it?
Ron Ploof: Exactly. Did he make it? So just by changing and putting that like that one word that he wanted to jump over the lazy dog. There is a biological response. There is nothing you can do about it. I put those questions into your head and so it’s a little tiny things like that that story tellers use by leaving a piece of information but you want to know more. That to me is the essence of storytelling.
John Jantsch: And you think about it, there’s lots of places to tell stories but you think about the public speaker, I mean they’re essentially up there, telling a narrative of some sort and you’re right, that narrative can either be a statement of facts which a lot of speakers do. Or it can be something that that moves you to want to know more. I think which is probably the perfect definition of what a great speech is.
Ron Ploof: Yeah, Robert McKee who wrote a great book called “Story”. I like there’s something that he says, is that all stories are narratives but not all narratives are stories. And that we can’t really interchange narrative and story very easily. Because a narrative is just a collection of facts and like you said, if you just put a collection of facts there’s nothing for people to really do if there’s no reason for them to apply those facts to what they need to do in their lives, they don’t mean anything. However, if you put them into the context of I want to learn more, I need to learn more; now you’re starting to get into the story zone.
John Jantsch: So as I mentioned in your introduction, you have created something called the “StoryHow Pitch Deck”, so just explain what that is and it’s kind of ironic I had somebody on a couple weeks ago that had created also a deck of cards and called, I’ll look it up eventually. But it’s kind of a poker type of approach for working with sale stream. So first off, just explain, I have a deck of cards like a playing deck of cards, explain the concept of the deck.
Ron Ploof: Sure. So since I like breaking story down into little tiny pieces, I came up with 60 ideas that I wanted people to be able to use in all different ways. I break a story down to a very simple statement. A story is the result of people pursuing what they want. And so what that means is that there are people roles, there are events, the things that happened to those people and then what they want? The things that are driving their actions. Well, those are the first 3 suits in the “StoryHow Pitch Deck”. There are 15 roles, 15 events and 15 influences. And then there is the last suit which are 15 techniques. Little tiny techniques like the quick brown fox technique. That’s the way I’ve broken down the deck. There’s also some instructions on how to use the deck. The first time you might look at 60 cards and think that they are a little overwhelming. And so there’s some instruction says look just take out these top 8 cards and just go through those. But it’s a way to get you thinking and so the…
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