Why Storytelling is the Most Powerful Business Skill (and How to Master It)

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John Jantsch (00:00.855)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Mike Ganino. He’s a creative force behind some of the world’s most compelling speakers and thought leaders. As a keynote director, he’s helped shape viral TEDx talks, launch bestselling books, and transform leaders at Disney, Netflix, and Adobe into magnetic performers.

He’s the author of the number one international bestseller we’re going to talk about today, Make a Scene, storytelling stage presence and the art of being unforgettable in every spotlight. So Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Ganino (00:35.234)

Thanks, thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (00:37.175)

So do magnetic people like stick to stuff?

Mike Ganino (00:39.852)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they just walk around and like they attach themselves to like warehouses and cars and it’s a good life.

John Jantsch (00:45.015)

I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. That was terrible. All right. So storytelling hot topic. I bet you now we’re only one month into the year, but I know I’ve done at least one other show on storytelling. So two things. Why do you think so? And it’s such a hot topic. And, and I suppose the follow-up to that is like, what are you bringing that’s different?

Mike Ganino (01:08.686)

It’s such a hot topic because like it fundamentally makes sense. We get it. see, you know, storytellers, whether we’re watching someone on stage or we’re watching a movie, we’re watching a play, we’re reading fiction, we get that storytelling does something to us. And I think that there’s an element of it that the reason why it’s this kind of like, it’s coming up and it’s coming up again and it’s coming up again is because so much of the education around it out there focuses on the fact that like storytelling is important.

you should be storytelling, everyone has a story, but not very many people are actually saying, how do you make a story interesting? Where do you actually start? And for me, that’s what I hope I’m bringing that’s not new, but is definitely different than, know, and I have so many of the books on like the psychology of it, the neuroscience of it, the history of it, but like, how do you actually, what’s the first thing out of your mouth? There’s not a lot of great resources on that.

John Jantsch (01:43.233)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:55.212)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:01.781)

Yeah. You know what I’m always fascinated with? I read a lot of stuff, probably verges on anthropology. And you know, that storytelling was it. Like that’s where it started. Right? I mean, that was the only way to communicate necessarily. And you, you told stories to stay out of being eaten. You told stories, you know, where the food was, you told stories about, know, who not to trust on the road. you know, is, is that sort of in our DNA kind of why you think storytelling, you know,

part of what makes storytelling so natural.

Mike Ganino (02:34.49)

I so. mean, I think, and I think there’s probably plenty of books out there that talk about that exact thing of like, is by, but, we are like wired. Like in a make a scene, wrote about how so much that we could be learning about how to tell more effective stories is about how to trigger a dopamine response from the audience in that anticipation of reward in your story. And so I don’t know our, our, you know, body chemicals respond to wanting to know what happens next and needing a solution. It’s like,

when you sit down and you watch an episode of Law and Order SVU and your brain, even though you’ve maybe seen it 27 times, you’re just like, ooh, I’ve got to watch this episode again, because we want to know what happens next. We want to understand and feel that. And so, yeah, I think it’s somewhere in there.

John Jantsch (03:17.879)

And then six hours later, you’re like, I better go do something else. So it’s in the title, Make a Scene. So, you know, what do you mean by that? Other than it, you know, cleverly works with the basis of storytelling as a scene, right? But there’s also you can also interpret that as, you know, somebody is making a scene, you know, in a maybe not altogether positive way. So where are you trying to what line are you trying to strap?

Mike Ganino (03:47.73)

I think both, you the idea was that it had that double meaning that often my storytelling advice for people is start in a scene. A lot of times what we hear, we hear this bad advice again of like, start at the beginning. And it’s like, well, maybe not, maybe we don’t need to start at the beginning or we’ll hear that we need lots of exposition or a great story, you know, has X, Y, Z in it. And most of the time, my advice to people is, can you just make a scene for me? Like if I’m the director of this film that you’re creating,

What would I put in front of the camera? And if the first thing out of your mouth doesn’t help me decide what I would film, then we’re probably in summary and not in story yet. So make a scene is literally my storytelling advice. And then secondarily, I just think there’s so many people that have read so many books about all the things they shouldn’t do when public speaking or going on video, get rid of your isms and change the way you sound and try to sound deeper, try to sound less shrill. Don’t move your hands too much.

get rid of all of your ums, that I thought, what if we just had a book that was like, all of that can actually be quite effective. And when we see someone do it who is effective, we don’t worry about how many times they said at all.

John Jantsch (04:52.595)

F

John Jantsch (04:59.511)

Yeah, I saw somebody that I think was one of the most impactful talks I’ve heard. And he leaned against the podium most of the time. But there was something about it worked for him. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Ganino (05:14.872)

breaks all the rules. In the book I wrote about Monica Lewinsky when she did her TED talk several years ago, she’s one of the only people ever in the history of that to have a podium in front of her on the red dot. But it was a device. And at the end, she stepped out from behind it as like taking back her identity. And so that even is don’t stand behind a podium. No one at TED is allowed to stand behind a podium, except you can sometimes if you know how to break the rule.

John Jantsch (05:27.084)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (05:39.223)

Yeah. So this is dangerous. Is there a definition of great story or great storytelling? Is there a framework? there rules? is there, you got to have this and this and this. mean, that was about eight questions. So take it anywhere you want, but.

Mike Ganino (05:55.654)

I think the ultimate measurement of a story, and this is why even in the book, I don’t go through all of these, like, here’s the one framework you need, because you could find 20 examples of that not working. And I think so many people have lost themselves trying to do the like, I need to tell a hero’s journey. And then all of a sudden you’re like lost in the dark soul of your night and you don’t know where you are or what side, and you’re like, I just wanted to tell them. But Yoda’s there, I think.

John Jantsch (06:18.113)

But Yoda shows up at least. mean so…

Mike Ganino (06:21.058)

goodness, know, Dios y machina, he’s gonna save us. But I think that, again, all of the, can the frameworks work? Sure. But I’ve got 30 books on screenplay writing over here. And if all of the frameworks worked, every single movie would be a runaway hit. It’s not. I think the measurement of story is, is the pacing correct? That the audience is kind of like, wants to know what happens next, that they’re never saying, maybe they’re saying to themselves,

I can’t wait to see where this is going versus where is this going? You want the first version not the second. Does it cause an emotional response? Do they hate things? Do they love things? Do they feel things? I think those are ultimately the measurements. And when we start to look at storytelling and measure, did you have five acts? Did you have seven beats? Did you have this? We’re measuring the wrong thing instead of measuring what was the audience’s feeling from what they had. Did it do its job?

John Jantsch (06:53.047)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:11.777)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:18.561)

So I’m not sure if you work with these people, but there are certainly people out there probably listening who say, I’m just not good at story or I’m not as natural born story. Cause you, we’ve all met somebody you’re like that could talk all day long, you know, tell stories from their youth, you know, all day long. But a lot of people just, just really hesitate. I mean, it’s the same with getting on stage period, but you know, when you, when, somebody says I’m not a good storyteller, what do you do with that person?

Mike Ganino (07:30.422)

Yeah

Mike Ganino (07:46.402)

I generally ask them questions. Like when I have a client who says, I’m not a good storyteller. Like when I work with a lot of executives who are going to have to go out and speak to their company or speak at a convention or conference. And they’ve been sent to me usually by their like chief communications officer to say, help them be less boring. And I say, great, tell me some stories. I’m not a good storyteller. I just stick to the facts. My general thing is great. So the thing that you just told me, you just told me that AI is a great solution for small businesses. How do you know that to be true?

Where have you seen that to be true? I ask questions like that that are like, show me some of your personal experience with it. And that almost always gets them to be able to tell a story. Now, we need to shape it. We need to kind of clean it up a little bit, but it gets them to realize that they actually can tell stories. The issue is that they’re measuring themselves against like Steven Spielberg or Mel Robbins or something like that. And it’s like, we don’t have to all have the story of an astronaut who was in space. We can have just a, happened on a Tuesday story.

John Jantsch (08:24.171)

Yeah,

John Jantsch (08:30.806)

Yeah.

Mike Ganino (08:44.61)

that is a metaphor or just an example, if you know how to tell it. And usually that’s my way in with people who say, I’m not a storyteller. say, cool, no problem. That’s certainly a strange job to have anyway. Like there’s not a lot of people who get paid well being a storyteller. So don’t worry about that. But can you tell me how you know the thing that you just said is true? When did you see that? How’d you learn it? And we started locking stories out.

John Jantsch (09:05.929)

a little Byron Katie. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her work, but, but it the essence of that. Can you know that that’s true? Yeah, that’s so, so, you know, a lot of people naturally think, especially you work with speakers who are on stages, but storytelling is a part of life, right? It’s a story of, it’s certainly a part of a lot of elements of business. So, you know, how do you get somebody to start realizing that?

Mike Ganino (09:08.278)

Yes. Yeah, the questions, right? Like, how do you know that to be true? I’ve read that book.

John Jantsch (09:34.251)

They don’t have to want to be a paid speaker to be better at storytelling.

Mike Ganino (09:38.862)

It’s really that idea of if you’re, I think there’s very few people whose job is not to communicate with others and very few people whose job is not to get others to see something the way they want them to see it. And that doesn’t mean it has to be some persuasive, like you’ll change your mind, but like, I just want you to understand the situation the way that I do. And a story is often a very effective way to help them see it or say, oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I didn’t think of it in that situation or scenario in a way that the data or facts alone couldn’t do. And so,

When I’ve worked with organizations like Disney or Adobe and Netflix, Caesars Entertainment, it’s helping them see that like, helping the audience understand the situation they’re in. If they’re in a sales meeting, if they’re a leadership at an all hands trying to convince the team that we have to like, know, buckle the purse straps a little bit, cause things are going to get tough. The most effective way to help them understand the situation is to put it into a narrative that they can say, I get that. I kind of, I don’t like it, but I see where you’re coming from. That makes sense now. Or.

I understand how the analogy you used about, you know, your grandma growing up is exactly like the situation we face. Okay, cool. I’m with you now. And so it’s helping them realize that all of those instances are times where a story could do a lot of the heavy lifting that a whole bunch of facts would have to do.

John Jantsch (10:54.293)

Yeah. And I think sometimes like in a sales environment, right? Stories are kind of disarming, right? We’re all of a sudden, we’re listening to the story. We’re building rapport. We’re building trust rather than being sold to. Do you think that, and you know, we’re 10 minutes in, I’m going to mention AI for the first time. Although I think you did earlier. I feel like, do you feel like I should ask you that storytelling is actually going to be a differentiator?

Mike Ganino (11:13.974)

I did, yeah.

John Jantsch (11:23.957)

You know, because AI doesn’t know my story. It never will. I mean, it might make up some stuff, but you know, my true authentic story that somebody might relate to is probably all I’ve got left, isn’t it?

Mike Ganino (11:35.928)

Yeah, and your takeaway from the things you experienced. So even if it’s not like your origin story, because sometimes people get lost with that of like, need my story. And I think, I don’t even know what my story is, but I got a whole bunch of them that helped me do my job every day. And I think that that’s the thing that AI can’t get. It could probably at some point learn something. We can shove enough blockbuster screenplays in there to work, but also we’re dealing with human feelings on the other side. So as soon as it starts to work, it’s going to start to not work anymore.

John Jantsch (11:48.519)

You

John Jantsch (12:05.473)

Yeah.

Mike Ganino (12:05.75)

And so those little stories of something you saw yesterday when you went to drop your kid off at school that made you think about something, AI will never know that because it’s always going to be lagging. It’s always going to be behind. And so I think that our ability to communicate in a way that actually makes people feel something, if we go back to like, how do you measure a story? Well, did it elicit a feeling in the person that is going to be such a differentiator because

We have all of the news of the day, all the history of the world, anything we want to find. You could even have AI. I’ve seen people do it like, know, pop in there and say like, here’s my goals for my business this year. What should I do? It can do all of that work, but it cannot do that storytelling piece of connecting something you experienced and almost holding it out. And I don’t remember who originally said this of like, hey, have you ever felt this way too? That is going to be such a differentiator, I think.

John Jantsch (12:59.671)

How big a part is the performance part? So the story or the words, the way you express the expression, but you know, how you act on stage, your body language, how you use your voice, your hands. I’m trying to gesture right now. But so how much of that is what really takes a good story over the top?

Mike Ganino (13:21.816)

I think a huge percentage of it, you know, in the book I talk about these five stage languages, which are the five ways that an audience interprets and understands our full meaning, right? The first one is verbal, the words you choose, the stories you tell, all those things. The second one is voice. Just the way that we sound signals to the audience how to feel. If, you know, I was working with someone recently, an executive, a chief marketing officer, and she was getting asked to go speak more frequently, and the feedback she’d gotten is that her voice was difficult to listen to.

And when we got on a call, we started working together. It’s that the whole time she was really up here this whole time speaking like this. And she thought, this is just how I sound. But she also was holding her chest. She wasn’t breathing. She was gasping for air. And all of those are defensive mechanisms. All of those are learned behaviors. And so we did some exercises just to have her kind of like drop her, her larynx a little bit, which is going to make your voice sound a little more grounded. And she was even shocked of like, is that me? And it’s like, yeah, you haven’t heard that voice in a long time because

John Jantsch (14:14.07)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Ganino (14:19.98)

You have been on guard probably for lots of valid reasons, your childhood, your I don’t know what, who told you what? But we show up in this world physically and vocally shaped by everything that’s happened to us. And then we think that all we need to do to be an effective communicator is put the words in the right order and stop saying But the sound of our voice is actually what the audience hears, not even fully the words, the pacing of our voice, the speed at which we do. If we’re on stage, I had this recently, I was reviewing someone’s video.

and the physical language is the third one. So verbal, voice, physical. And he was trying to have this moment where he was saying to his team, know, trust me, I’m with you, but he was moving backwards from them on stage. And I said, that is a signal to them of you’re hiding something, something isn’t right. And you’ve seen it before too, like, right? Like someone with a hand in their pocket. I think in the book, I use the example of Nixon and Kennedy. And when seen on TV, that debate that they had that was aired, Kennedy,

John Jantsch (15:01.662)

Right, right.

Mike Ganino (15:19.518)

overwhelmingly won because he looked calmer, he was tan from a resuscitation. Nixon had just had surgery and was sick and sweaty and pale and looked thin in his suit. But when people listened to it, they thought Nixon won because he had that more gravitas voice, that more distinguished voice. And so the way that we look, sound and move is not, we cannot separate it from the message we communicate to an audience. We simply can’t. It is a core part of what they take away from us.

John Jantsch (15:31.915)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.993)

So for somebody that just hasn’t done much of it wants to get started. mean, somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I’m, I’m in this new role or whatever it is, and I need to be doing a lot more. need a coach for this. mean, what are the free throws? Like what’s the, what’s the thing you have them do that is practice.

Mike Ganino (16:06.882)

The easy thing is to say, are all the low stakes places where you can try some of this on that like won’t matter? if you have a, I just did this with a chief finance officer. He was like, hey, I want to be a better communicator. I’m getting asked to speak at X, Y, and Z, go on podcasts. Their PR people are trying to get him onto like MSNBC to be, you know, a talking head in these places because it’s helpful to their business. And he said, so how do I practice? Do I get ready for that show? And I said, well, you don’t.

John Jantsch (16:09.9)

Yeah.

Mike Ganino (16:33.762)

get ready and the first time you deliver anything is in front of the real live audience where the stakes are super high and your nerves are going to take over. What kind of meetings do you have every week? Can you start off the meeting with some kind of story or metaphor that helps the team understand something? When are you going to go into a board meeting, which is relatively, you know, something a CFO does all the time, so not super high stakes, and how can you help them understand a situation that’s going on or

where some kind of money is being allocated using a story. How can you play with, for him, some of what we’re working on with his physicality and his ability to smile and soften his face on camera, because it all came across very harsh. So said, those are all things that you can, on your next Zoom call with your team, be more aware of how are you looking at the camera? How are you leveraging and playing with your voice? How are you using your physicality? And so,

All of those places are spots where we can test things. You know, even for me, so many ideas in the book are things that I’ve tested through group coaching calls with my clients, through live workshops with my clients, through being on podcasts like this and trying out different stories and seeing what resonates and saying, ooh, people seem to like that and mention it back to me. I ought to put that in a book, you know, which is the more high stakes version of doing a podcast or a group coaching Zoom call.

John Jantsch (17:49.675)

Yeah, you alluded to the Zoom call. I mean, we are on a lot of formats now, right? We’re on stages, but we’re also doing our own video. We are doing virtual presentations. We’re on podcasts. Do we need different stories, different approach, you know, for each of those?

Mike Ganino (18:08.482)

I think that the stories probably have some universalness to them. Maybe they’re told slightly differently because the context, you know, if you’re on a stage telling a story versus, and it’s part of a bigger insight in a keynote, that might be different than if you’re on a Zoom call with your team. But the medium definitely changes it. for folks, one of the big things that people get wrong with having the camera is they want to be looking at the audience, to see the audience on their little Zoom camera, on the little Zoom screens to connect with them.

But there’s a flaw in that for a couple of reasons. One is we have no idea what they’re looking at. And so someone makes a grimace. Well, they could be watching a TikTok that upset them, or they could have gotten a text message from someone. We have no idea. And then we respond to that thinking, I’m boring. Versus when we’re on camera, our job is to have a relationship with the piece of glass in front of us, to be able to look through the lens and to have enough energy that this thing that absorbs these cameras absorbs so much of our energy that we can still.

deliver what we want without being obsessed of having a live audience like we would on stage. So I think that the stories can have, you if you’ve got three or four good stories that work in your business to set it up, like you probably don’t need a whole bunch more, but understanding the difference of telling them in a, a stage, in a boardroom, sitting around a table, in an interview with someone or telling it to a camera and even here, right? The difference between doing it for

John Jantsch (19:17.483)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Ganino (19:31.98)

social media versus doing it in a group coaching call. All of those are different mediums. And so that’s where you can leverage, know, voice can be different. Physicality can be different.

John Jantsch (19:39.319)

Right, right, right. Yeah, wouldn’t use your big booming projection voice with five people in a boardroom, right? You’d freak them out. You know, one of the things I, my one little tip, and you probably tell this to people all the time, but when I do, especially group Zoom calls, I turn my view off, camera view off, because I find myself looking at myself and I may be way over there at the corner of the screen as opposed to, then once that’s off, all there’s left to look at is the camera.

Mike Ganino (19:46.956)

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Ganino (19:58.54)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Ganino (20:08.62)

Yeah, you know what I have? got this, I got an Elgato teleprompter and I have it on the front of my camera with the zoom screen of the person I’m talking to. So I actually am just seeing you right now through the glass and it’s quite helpful.

John Jantsch (20:09.047)

I

John Jantsch (20:20.277)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you have to look at the camera at the same time. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I also have, this little, Plexo glass, camera holder. And so what it does is it, can put my camera in it and then I can move the camera anywhere I want. you know, it’s just one of those little screen, you know, those cameras you’d put on a screen. but I can, I can move it around that way. So, it’s really nice for doing a lot of that as well.

Mike Ganino (20:39.622)

nice.

Mike Ganino (20:44.12)

Yeah.

Mike Ganino (20:49.24)

fun.

John Jantsch (20:50.379)

Well, Mike, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to find out more about your work and obviously find a copy of Make A Scene?

Mike Ganino (20:59.756)

Yeah, I’m easy. Once you figure out how to spell Ganino, I’m usually the one you’re going to find. So G-A-N-I-N-O, Mikeganino.com. The book and all the information about it is at Mikeganino.com slash book. And it’s wherever you like to get your books. We’ve got it everywhere for you.

John Jantsch (21:14.123)

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by. Hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days soon out there on the road.

Mike Ganino (21:19.224)

Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch (21:22.999)

Okay, you’re supposed to get a little…

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