Running the Bases with Small Businesses
Running the Bases with Small Businesses
Mark Carpenter - Master Storytelling
Running the Bases today with Mark Carpenter, Chief Storyteller: Helping people teach, lead, sell, and inspire through intentional storytelling for business
Today’s guest is a serial storyteller. Growing up he loved humor, telling stories, and exaggerating his real-life experiences as a middle child trying to stand out. He grew up in a home surrounded by books from his English Teacher Mom, which only increased his love of stories. He leveraged his abilities into a marketing communications and public relations career, then later as a college professor and corporate facilitator. Now, he teaches people how to more intentionally tell stories that teach, lead, sell, and inspire to accomplish business and personal goals.
He is the co-author of the best-selling book “Master Storytelling: How to Turn Your Experiences Into Stories that Teach, Lead, and Inspire” and co-creator of the Master Storytelling Workshop. Leveraging a 20-year career in corporate communication and a subsequent 15 years of Corporate facilitating training.
When he’s not training, speaking, coaching, or creating new content, he is likely hiking or snowshoeing in the mountains, playing the piano, bragging about his grandchildren, or writing children’s books
Key Lessons
- Storytelling can be used to connect and build relationships, as well as to inspire teams, remember information, and pass values and traditions.
- Platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok can be used to leverage storytelling in a business setting.
- Mark encourages listeners to take risks and make their dreams a reality, offering a free ebook download to those interested.
To learn more about Mark and Storytelling visit: www.master-storytelling.com
Get the FREE eBook HERE
The Science Behind Good Storytelling
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I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs and small business owners. Plus, I love baseball. Every show I sit down with a small business owner and we discuss their running the bases of entrepreneurship. We throw the ball around on strategy, management, execution and innovation. Plus, a little fun baseball tug. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Settelaine, grab your cracker jacks and you know what they Okay, it's a great day for a ball game. Hey, this is Randy Rodi with running the bases with small businesses. Glad to have you on. Hey, today's guest is a serial storyteller. I don't think we've had anybody quite like this before. Growing up, he loved humor, telling stories and exaggerating his real life experiences as a middle child trying to stand out. He grew up in a home surrounded by books from his English teacher mom, which only increased his love of stories and he leveraged his abilities into a marketing communications and public relations career, then later as a college professor and corporate facilitator. Now he teaches people how to more intentionally tell stories that teach, lead, sell and inspire to accomplish business and personal goals. He is the co-author of the best selling book, Master Storytelling, how to turn your experiences into stories that teach, lead and inspire and he's the co-creator of the Master Storytelling workshop. Leveraging a 20 year career in corporate communication and a subsequent 15 years of corporate facilitating training, he has a lively engaging style and packs it with purposeful, impactful learning. That's mouthful of peas right there. When he's not training, speaking, coaching or creating new content is likely hiking or snowshoeing in the mountains, playing the piano, bragging about his grandchildren or another version of Storytelling, writing children's books. Please welcome to the show from the great state of Utah, Mark Carpenter. Mark, welcome. Thank Randy. Boy, that's a long intro to get to who I am. That's a pretty complete background I am. That's too. I'm telling my staff, they do a great job of cooking this stuff up. I'm like Utah again. If I had to, aside from, so we're based in Ohio and we have a lot of local businesses and entrepreneurs from Ohio on the show, but if we probably went through, I would swear Utah is probably solidly second. We've had more guests from Utah than I bet I could rattle off eight of them that I know about the top of my head. It's There's quite a bit of entrepreneurship in this area. I think it stems from some of the tech layovers or crossovers that we get from Silicon Valley and associated companies with those and then people get their own ideas and want to go out on their own. There's quite a bit of here. You're right. I'm telling you, we've had some fascinating terrific guests. I hope anime may be expecting that you'll love up to the legacy here of Utah. Now the pressure's on, right? So listen, I'm really intrigued by this whole thing of storytelling and I'm going to hit you up first. I'm going to put you on the spot. Can you give us a story of your exaggerated real life experience growing up as a middle shot? Red that. I'm like, what, Sir, let's hear that. That sounds kind of Now the pressure's on, you, some of the stories that I used to tell to my kids, I was just having a conversation with my daughter who's 29 years old now about stories that we used to tell around the campfire and when we were out hiking and just in family situations. And the stories she always remembers are the stories that I would tell about my brother who's a year older than me. And my brother claims that I exaggerate them more. In fact, I was telling one of those stories. My brother says, no, I think you're exaggerating that. My mom happened to be in the room too. And she said, you kind of lived your life in exaggeration. So I don't know if it is that sometimes about my brother and I remember on a snowy day, they actually canceled school because it snowed so much. I was in junior high. My brother was a year old, he was in high school. And I was sitting in our living room and I was watching the snow fall. My brother didn't know that it was going to snow that day. So he'd ridden his And he played the trombone in the marching band. And he's, so he's got his trombone strapped as a bungee cord in the back of his bike. And he's coming down the hill, becomes to our house. And then I'm watching him and he's frantically pumping the brakes with his hands, trying to get that bike loaded down, but he's got no friction because of the snow that's on the ground. And I'm just watching him come fly it into our front yard. He goes one way, the bike goes another way, the trombone goes a third direction. He gets up, all covered with snow, stands up, kicks the bike three times. And the average guy that does everything up and comes in. And I'm sitting there just laughing at him because I know that he didn't know that I was watching it. Now, the point that I like to make with this story is that years later I confessed to him that I tell that story to my He looks at me recollection of that ever happening. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got this clear picture of this happening. And he says, I making it all up. And I thought about that more. And the point that came out to me was, you know, that's a great indication of his That he had this big crash, he gets up, gets his frustrations out, kicks in the bike, and And he And I think that's a great business lesson in there. But when we have those crash and burn moments, they're painful in the moment. Like from it, and that. I was wondering, there's a good moral. It's coming in here. This is great. No, I think you're absolutely right. It's kind of funny that you mentioned about the visualization. I was literally just having this conversation last night with my wife. And we were talking about memory. And she's like, do you remember we had this conversation? And that's not a baited question, like, oh my god, here it comes. I'm like, I don't. And then she goes on, like, you know, I was thinking about how do you remember things? And she's like, I remember things mentioned something. And I visualize having this conversation. She goes, I didn't see the picture of it. I'm like, I don't do that. I just kind of recall. It's like, oh, that's, you know, two plus two is five, right? And this comes up. That was my attempt to be funny. And so I don't like you were just saying, like, I have this visual memory. And I just find that interesting. You use that phrase because we were just talking about that and about how people, you know, are different about how they pull back memories and how they hold on to things. And that's another great lesson that comes from that story that I just shared. Yeah. Is that I had this clear memory of it. He And he's convinced it didn't happen. I'm convinced it did. We do. We remember things differently. And we remember things in different ways. This happens with my wife and I all the time too. And by the way, you're right. Do you remember when we talked about is like, right there next to, does this dress like making look bad? You know, in terms of the terrible questions that you want to hear from your life partner. Yeah, look bad? You know, in terms of the terrible questions that you want to hear from your life partner. Yeah, there's no good answer But my wife and I go to someplace and she'll mention somebody's name and I'll say, now who is that? Well, she was wearing this and this and this and this. I'm like, no, you do what Tell me what this person looks like. How tall is she? How long is your hair? What color is her hair? That's going to give me the better visual image. Right. But for her, it's always what they were wearing. So it's just always one of those funny things that we look at things differently. Right. And I think that's important to remember, particularly in businesses, you're as you're building a team. Right. In fact, if I can throw in a little baseball story here, oh, love it. Yeah. Makes this point as well. Warmest up. Yeah. When my oldest son was six years old, I think it was five or six years old. We got him into a tea ball team. Okay. Tea ball, of course, is your lead into baseball. They hit the ball off the little tea. There's Warmest up. And the outfield is basically the edge of the infield because that's as far as the ball will ever go. Right. So you have this cluster of nine kids in all in the infield, basically, to field the ball. Well, my team is in the field. Our team is out came up. The bases were loaded. And this little girl named Kayley was standing next to the pitcher's man. And I said, Kayley, Kayley, if the ball play, touch home play, and we'll She nods, she nods. Okay, okay, okay. And I knew that this was going to happen because that's She so great. She ran right to home plate, stepped on home plate, looked up at me so up the ball. And I couldn't get mad this her for her. I just told her to run to home plate and touch on plate. I assumed she knew she had to pick up the ball. in business? Sure. We give people instructions because it's clear in our mind what all those steps are between the vague instructions that we give. Right. And then we get frustrated when they didn't follow our instructions exactly. We about how they think about things. How does their memory work like we were just talking about? What do they actually have in their background and experience? So we're trying to explain something to them. We need to explain it from their perspective, not ours. Right. you just did there. By the way. You lead us into this great story. I'm really like affectionate, right? I mean, just like, oh, little kids playing T-Vall and my little girl. And she's right. And then boom. And then you tie it in with a great kind of business lesson. That's perfect. That's good storytelling right there. So you were like leading by example on this whole Well, and that's one of the reasons that wrote this book is. I told me one thing you need to write a book about how you just turn everyday experiences into real life lessons. And my initial response was, it's not a book. That's just what you do. Right. And she's not. People don't know how to do this. And that was really the genesis of the book. But my contention is, and this is what we say in the book is your everyday experiences. Have some of the best lessons embedded in them. We love stories because we live stories. Right. That's what our lives are, just a collection of little stories that are together. And the key thing is to think about, so what do I learn from that Tell people who say to me, I don't have anything important enough happening to me to tell a story about it. I tell them, think of anytime you have any kind of an emotional reaction to be frustration. It could be joy. It could be anger. It could be annoyance. It could be happiness. Whatever it happens to be, when you have an emotional reaction to something, there's some kind of lesson embedded in that. those moments because those are going to be the stories or the experiences you can turn into stories that can teach an important principle or make an important point. I that. That I love how you're just tying that in all about the emotional response. And I completely agree because through my conversation with my wife, and by the way, we didn't even mention that, oh, I got this storyteller guy coming on here. We didn't even talk about that. But through that conversation and through this discussion now, it's just reinforces, I guess, as well kind of my thought around the idea that, you know, if you've got a, you know, this visual imagery that you're creating. And you're like the example that you just gave, which was fabulous, the T-Ball experience. You're creating this visual imagery. I'm sitting here listening to it like, oh, you have a, because my daughter played T-Ball my kids play, right? And so I'm like, I remember that was great. You laid it. I was there with you on meaning then of the story and then when you get to it, when you're talking about and relating it to practical kind of business experience and the lesson there, it actually is going to stick, I think, with the listener, with your intended audience, much better. And I think they'll be able to recall that purpose in that intent at a much higher level than probably if you just went to the people and said, listen, this is what you have to do. We are a storytelling species. Yeah. This is, this is how we have evolved as community over time. You know, you think of some species of animals on this planet. I'll go to a giraffe is born. First thing that their mom does is get up on your feet and get moving, dude. Yeah. You know, and we as a human species, we don't have that capacity with our young ones. We rely on community to survive as a species. And story is the way that we build that community. I loved how you said you could, you could picture your own experiences with kids and T-Ball as I was telling that story. That story was my experience, but it became a vicarious experience for you. All of a sudden you were there with me standing by my side in that story. And because it connects to your life to it. And Right, Mandy, you're going to remember it better because of that connection that it made into your life experience. And that's the power of story that I think that we don't often realize in a business setting. We think, no, as a business person, I need to share my facts and figures and the numbers out here. And I need to give features and benefits of my products or services. I don't have time to tell a story, but the story is actually gonna give you a shortcut to connect to that people. Well, why do people buy from somebody else? They buy from people that they know trust in life. Well, let's storytelling going to do. It's gonna help people know you trust you and like you more. And so there's great power in story and in a business Yeah, that is terrific. Good stuff. This is a good point in here, because you're just dropping all kinds of great bombs here that high value. You so graciously have offered up for listeners, they can get your ebook that you put together, the master storytelling book that I mentioned in the intro. They can go to your website master-storytelling.com, forward slash podcast gift. I'll have that link case you're memory is that's it. I didn't tell a great story around it. Well, I'll have that link in there, but you're offering a free ebook, your master storytelling ebook to the listeners. I thank you so much for that. That is very generous. I just think because you're telling great stories and you're like relating great content there. I'm like, oh my gosh, people gotta go grab this thing. So go there, I'll have it info in the show notes. So be sure to go check that out. So you were in the corporate world. I'm gonna kind of dance through time a little bit because I wanna hear your story about how you came to be where you are right now. You were in the corporate world for a number of years, I think 20, and then doing various kinds of marketing, public relations, kinds of things. And at some point you said, hey, I'm gonna step out. I'm gonna do my own thing. I'm gonna do, you went into your taught at college, you started doing some of those facilitated training kinds of events, I'm sure I'm probably doing, working with companies. This is what you do now. How did you make that leap? What was it that you said, you know, I wanna do something different or I wanna do what I'm doing in a different way, still the same thing, maybe, I don't know, when I hear your story. But how did you come to that point? How did you know now is the time to do that? To see how does this podcast run? That's a lot, that could be a very long story, Randy. And there's a lot of components involved in that. So I'll give you this short version because I don't want your audience to check out on this. But yeah, I spent 20 years in corporate marketing and communications, public relations, 10 years with the bank, 10 years with some high tech companies, with some software developers. And from all the way from like a 20% company to 12,000 people companies that I work with in. I always had a little bit of this entrepreneurial bent. I also had a little bit of this teaching bent embedded in me. In the intro, you mentioned my mom was a school teacher. And I always had a little bit of that teacher in me, I think genetically, both my sisters or school teachers, my brother who wrecked on the bike, he's a computer engineer, but now he does math tutoring on the side as well. Oh nice. I have nieces and nephews, I have two children who are school teachers, so kind of all around me. So I always had that desire. The way that I transitioned into what I'm doing now is I'm here to a neighbor. I didn't know I'm super well at the time, but he came to me, he's had some content that he wanted to bring into the company that I was currently with. And so I helped him get the right connections and I set into his, in his first pilot class that he did with our company. And as I stepped there and I watched him, I said, this is such great stuff and I would love to be able to give this to people too. I would love to be able to do what could be a very long story, Randy. And so that was kind of the opening of the door for me to say, this is a different path that I could go on. And to make this longer story about a two year period transpired there where I kept bugging them that I wanted to get into what he was doing and the transition came about. And here I am, transition from teaching other people's content, which I still do some to creating my own content and teaching that with master storytelling. But I realized that through the course of that, through by marketing communications career. And teaching is an adjunct at a course What did I do to stand out? What did I do to try to get my point across? It was telling If you think about the teachers that you had, particularly in subjects that like history, I used to hate history, because I had history teachers who would teach me in terms of here are the dates and the names and the facts and the figures you need to memorize. That was boring and repetitive to me and not fun. But when I had somebody start introducing to me, here is the story of why this piece of history came about. I would have affected those people. It had the same impact as me telling the story about T-Ball to you. I could put myself into their lives and go, yeah, I would have a struggle with that too. And all of a sudden history became a And so that's how I developed into this teacher and advocate for intentional storytelling. Not storytelling just to share an experience or just to entertain, but storytelling with that purpose to teach, lead, sell, and inspire. So I'm thinking then as well and what you do. You work with companies as well or small businesses or whoever individuals even and help them relate storytelling to their business, maybe managing their employees. I'm thinking as well and maybe you do this, I don't know. Help people craft their story so as they're going out. So when you were talking about the individual that came to your company that you were working with at that point and you participating in his class, I would, in my mind, I was thinking, oh, and he was going to say, I could help him repackage and be much more effective by, you know, I could teach him this skill. That's what I thought But I'm wondering is that what you do some of that as well? I'm curious on how you're working with companies because so intrigued. And I'm a big fan of the storytelling. I think it is incredibly meaningful and impactful and sticks with people. So a dig that you're doing, man. And it's stickiness really is the power in story. And we've talked about that about how much that sticks in your resume, a little brainworm that just holds on to you. And the people we work with, there's several different audiences that we work with. One of them we work with a lot is sales. Because sales people are always trying to make connections with their customers. And so I'm not talking about the person that loads the vending machine. I guess essentially they're in sales. But anytime you have to talk to people, it's those kind of sales professionals that we're working with. And to get them beyond, here are the facts and figures, the pricing, the features, the benefits of our product. You should But if you can instead say, here's the product. Here's what it's about. But let me tell you how it can help you. I worked with my customer Randy. And he used our product because he was running into this problem. And by getting our product or implementing our service into his business, he was able to achieve this result. That's what I want to be able to help you with. Because as I'm telling that story, my customer sitting there listening and going, yeah, I'm kind of And so I could get the same benefits that Randy's getting. So if we can tell that in the form of a story, it's going to be much more impactful and memorable for And let them make the case to get the budget for it. It's interesting. Heard this recently, people buy on a motion and they justify on And so if you can get people into the story, they'll get that emotional connection that they want to buy on. And then they'll make the justification with the facts and figures that you give them to But that's one of the key audiences we work with. Another one is leaders and particularly emerging leaders. Somebody's first put into a leadership position and they're taught how to run their budget and how to do their annual performance reviews and things like that. But they don't know how to lead an inspire a team and stories are the way to lead an inspire a team. The lesson I shared with you from the T-Ball experience that I had, that's a great lesson for and thinking in terms of what do my people actually know, not what do I know and they should know that too. And so those kinds of stories can teach lead an inspire your team as a I love it. Take it is completely fascinating. And completely agree on the emotional aspect about the lever, so to speak, what people buy an emotion. and then justify it with the logic. I've had this conversation with a few other guests and kind of similar vein, but we talk about a cell the dream because it is emotional. Don't get stuck into the weeds about, this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like you want this, is what we will do. Because if we do this, this will be your life, right? That we're selling, selling, we're gonna kind of make that Then once you have that, then you're, I think you're, then it's your sale to lose at that point, is what I kind of believe. But of one of the most common sales transactions there are for a lot of, at least here in North America, buying a car. Yeah. And when you go, when you go to buy a car, hate No, we all do, but this is why. Because sales people that auto dealers haven't learned No, They need? How big a car do you need? What kind of car do you want? They go to that instead of what is this car gonna do for Do you want a car that's gonna just get a point A and point B? Well, let's get you something really economical, you might gonna save money on. But what are your desires? Because that might be, I want a car that I can feel super comfortable in, that helps me feel confident, hey, now you're selling the dream. You're selling the emotional aspect of that car. To a lot of people don't buy cars just for the functionality. They buy it for the image, for the prestige, for wanting to, and even needing to drive in a long commute. And so if you can get to that need, that sales gonna be a lot easier. And you're gonna stand out from other people who are doing the same thing, because they're back there doing features and benefits and So fascinating. I'm fascinated by this, and I know you've touched on the emotional, the logic, but I think in the notes that I have in front, you also kind of roll through some aspects, kind of around the scientific data that supports storytelling and why it's important. We have some time here before we get into the 17th inning stretch. I'd love to hear it, bring this to life, right? The science and data behind storytelling. we've talked a little bit about how storytelling connects us as people, and how it draws us in. And that is now very science-based. I mean, we can feel it. We sense it intuitively. It's a great researcher, Dr. Paul Zach, at Claremont Graduate University, and he has done research around the chemical changes that happened within us was we're And there's three chemical reactions or brain reactions that go on, as you hear a well told story. Now, I'm going to go back to that T-Ball story that I told to connect this with you. Is that the first one is we get an increase of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a trust hormone. It makes me feel like I can trust you. It makes me feel like I can relate to you. And you got an increase of oxytocin as I was telling that story about T-Ball because you could relate to it. That's where you can stand there beside me and you're seeing the T-Ball game from your perspective and your life's experience. All of a sudden, we're the same person. We're not the same person necessarily, but we can relate to each other. That builds The second thing that happens is there's an increase in cortisol as you get some conflict in the story or some surprise that comes out of that story. When I related to you, she ran to home plate. She's touched home plate. She stopped on home plate. And you were building up there and then I said, and she never picked up the ball. Also, and you go, oh my gosh. How did they, yeah. And it's bringing that little spark of cortisol that's now gonna heighten your attention because you want to know, how did I as a coach react to Did I yell at this And then you get the third thing, which is an increase in dopamine. When you come to that satisfactory resolution of my realization that I didn't tell her what to do, that's on me. That's not on her. And you of satisfaction from the lesson that comes from that. Right. And so you see how it happened now, but you didn't know that, oh, I can feel this different chemical change going on in my brain. It just happens very naturally, but it's a very, very research base now that storytelling has a powerful impact on us because of those reactions that happened within our It makes sense because as you were going through all of those phases, I'm thinking, yes, exactly. I felt Not just emotionally, but certainly motions are chemical, they're electrical, they're, yeah, I don't know, certainly, yes, it makes sense. All why- There's why- There's a bunch of other researches, not quite as deeply geeky on the chemicals that go on in us, but just about how stories help us to remember things better. Sure. There was a great research study where they put students in three groups, college students in three groups. One of them, they just got the information. So it was just, here's an information dump that we want you to remember. The second group got charts and graphs along with the information. And the third group was given the information in the form of a story. then they came back a couple of weeks later and they checked to see how much and how well they remembered. That was the thing they were really that those first two groups remembered roughly the same with roughly the amount of accuracy, which surprised me. I thought that the charts and graphs group would have it have a boost, but they were about the same. storytelling group remember more information and remember it more accurately, they actually found the information more credible than the first two groups. more another great business implication of the power of story. People are going to remember you more. They're going to remember it more accurately, but they're also going to trust you more when they get things in the form of a story. I make sense. Everything just like, I don't know. You're connecting with me on the emotional. I like, oh, yes, I get it. And you know, I always, when you're talking about that with the storytelling piece as well, I think the more that you tell a story. So it related the story about your brother and the snow on the bike and you know, I could visualize, you know, the trombone flying all over the story over again, you repeat it to other people, then it becomes like this legacy. And I think for you probably, probably, I don't know if your brother ever did, like, oh, yeah, I know I got it. But it probably just galvanizes even more important. why I kind of think it's important. My wife and I tell stories to our kids about when they were young, oh, when we did this, you know, because we're trying to engage, you know, some of those, whether it's traditions that we do as a family or things that we've done or things that they've done in their life, we want them to be able to remember I would include in that the values that we have as a family. Yeah. I actually did a presentation just this week with a new organization that's that's focusing around intentionally building values within your family. let society dictate for your family what your values are. You dictate for your family what they are and talked about what are the stories that we could tell within our families based on our own experiences, our own shared experiences, the family that show these are values to us because that's going to stick with children as they grow older. And even as they start out venture out on their own, they're going to remember those stories and experiences that taught them. These are the values that we have kind of harkened back to what you said really at the beginning of the show where you said we are a storytelling species. And that is fact right there because you think from the very early caveman ages, right? They're like telling stories on the cave walls with their high regular effects. I mean, traditions passed orally from generation to generation. Yes, we are a storytelling species. So fascinating. I love it. All right. Well, we're going to get back. I want to hear more about you as the businessman and the business of storytelling. But Mark, I know I asked you early before we hit the record button. If you like baseball of do. So where it is that time. It's time the seventh inning stretch. Seventh inning stretch, You can't see us, but I just did a stretch so that I, you know, I'm getting ready for I, you know, seventh inning stretch here. It's so fun. All right. So I do know though, as you shared, well, you had a history with baseball and then during the strike kind of periods of baseball history, which I am sure you're not the only you can't get dissolution and left baseball for a while. Hopefully you're coming back. But so baseball and I and I still follow it. I just don't watch it as don't watch it as much as I used to. All right. Well, that makes sense. do know you and as you shared, you have the salt lake bees. You're like, are they triple A, A winner? Yes, yes, the triple A Yeah, of the angels angels. The Los Angeles A affiliate of the. angels. All right, so here's the setup for you. We're gonna talk about because you're in storytelling, the business of storytelling. So we're gonna talk about baseball broadcasting, which is kind of the storytelling of baseball, right? See how I wove that in? Yep, and that then you're right on too. It wasn't me, but it was my So very So as you may know, listen and watch on TV or listen to radio though. Some baseball franchises have a regular color commentator while others teams may bring in guests and do some play-by-play and color. But you know, there's typically like this season team of a couple of men or women coming together and they're like the ones. I'm a huge Cubs fan and I think the Cubs have the best broadcast team, Pat Hughes, Ron Coomer. I mean, I can listen to these guys. Sometimes even when I always subscribe to MLB.com so I can stream games anytime, anywhere. But sometimes I just prefer listening to it on radio because they tell a great story. It's visual, right? I'm like, I am there. It's my happy place is to be at Riggly and just hanging out, watching the game. And so I hear these guys tell the story. Cleveland, couple of another great broadcast or Tom Hamilton, this guy's great. So the storytelling in baseball, I'm gonna ask you. So you usually have the play-by-play guy. He's like, okay, he's at the, you know, he's winding up, right? So the guy is doing, but then you have the real storyteller which is the color commentator, right? He's the guy who gives the background, the fluff, the meat of like, well, let me tell you this story about, you know, when I was at, when I was a player, a lot of times these guys were players. When I was a player, I was on the bus, and so you get it. So here's your question, Mr. When did the color commentator join the broadcasting booth? And I'll give you double points if you can tell me who was the first one, but just in general, maybe you can say, when do you think the color commentator first joined the broadcasting booth for baseball? So this is very baseball specific. I don't know in some of the other I'm thinking it's gotta be really early on, but I may be off on that before I, so before I give my answer, I'm gonna say this, that both the play by play broadcaster and the color commentator are storytellers. Oh, sure, yeah, yeah. Because that play by play person, you mentioned your happy places there at Wrigley Field. Well, that play by play person can paint that picture of Wrigley Field that day. You feel like you're there with their word pictures of what's going on in the game. So they're both great storytellers. So I have absolutely no idea what the answer to your question is. And so I'm just gonna take a wild guess. I'm gonna go question is. You know, really quite close. I mean, it was a very good logical guess. So let me give you a little thought. And I'll tell you why I went with 1932. thought. And I'll tell you why I went with 1932. 1932 was the year my mother was born. So I'm just taking a guess based on her on her birthday. All right. You're within 10 years. I'll say that. All right. So let me give you a little history here. So in 1921, first baseball game ever was broadcast on the radio. That was the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Philadelphia Phillies, August of 1921. That same year, well, season, was also the first world series on the radio, New York Giants and the New York Yankees. I always, every time I see the New York Giants, my father-in-law was a big New York Giants fan. And he's never forgiven baseball to allow them to move out of New York. But aside from that, now the funny thing about that when they first started broadcasting baseball in 1921, broadcasters were not actually present at the game. They simply gave the reports from the telegraph wire. And I'm from the camera. The kicker. Yes. So that's And then in 22, the broadcasts the entire World Series. they were broadcasting. But Deering, here's your answer. 1923 World Series, they had a main broadcast, or the play by play guy, I guess. But during the fourth inning of Game 3 of the 1923 World Series, the announcer turned the mic over to another person in a broadcast booth and became the first color And I'm from the camera. The kicker. How about about that? Awesome. And listening to that, I'm thinking, they evolved pretty fast on that then. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's only a couple of years after they started the radio broadcast. Right. I was gonna try to cheat with that question. I asked you when was the first radio broadcast, and then I was gonna try to calculate it from there. I still wouldn't get quite that that close. Yeah, and the first guy, so that 23 World Series, Game 3, Graham McNamey? Yeah, I never would have gotten that one. I'm not familiar with him, but that's really kind of popularized it. But here's the thing. So that was in 23, but it wasn't until, so just like in everything, you can imagine the conversation amongst baseball owners and teams like, well, if we do it on the radio, if we broadcast it for free, people aren't gonna come to the games, right? I mean, some more probably, some more conversations that have occurred now about streaming the stuff over live on the internet. But all of this kind of conversation, but it wasn't until 1938 that all teams began broadcasting baseball games live on the radio. So that was almost 15 years or more before everybody did. So it was like some teams began doing it, slow Yeah, I never would have gotten Some of the teams or cities that had multiple teams like Philadelphia and New York, Chicago, those cities rolled it out a little bit faster, but yeah, it still took a little of time. And so I'll connect this back into our storytelling topic. I'll be talking about here today. Think about the owners of some of those teams that were slower to get your point. They probably had their marketing people coming to them, saying telling this story of the future, saying if we put all these on the radio, nobody will ever come to the game because they'll sit at home and listen And they didn't realize the one of the great values of seeing a baseball game is being there. I mean, for me, those are the bad, I can watch a baseball game sitting in the stadium. Oh, I like it. I'd much rather watch a game sitting in the stadium than it would on TV. Yeah, And so there's great power in that story there, the stadium. Right, Yeah, I think, and probably at some point, Major League Baseball, still one of the, you know, very controlling leagues. And in my notes, I can't wherever it is in the paper here, but it was somewhere in that early 1930s, like 31 or 32 or something like that, they signed a contract with a sponsor for like $400,000 to be the sponsor for a World Series broadcast. And then, and I think it was in 38 that Gillette signed a 10 year,$14 million deal to be the World Series in all-star game sponsors for the next 10 years. So I think at that point, people finally began to like, wow, there's money to be made here. That's a huge amount of money in that time. Yeah, can you imagine that? Yes. Crazy. So anyway, that's all storytelling. Yes, I love it. Yep. All right, well, let's get back into it. that Play ball. I just a little phase. I love that one. All out on your own. You're doing this console. What kind of challenges? How long have you been doing this on your own now? Consulting, doing this storytelling consulting. What do you call yourself, aside from master story tell? Are you that like the CEO, the CMS, you know, of the chief master storytelling? see that, now you're getting close. The title I put on my business card is Chief Storyteller. Oh, see. And so that's where I've landed in terms of a title. But I've been doing this for working with this storytelling content since we launched the book about four years ago. OK. And so continuing to build and then doing some other consulting at the same So I can only imagine because so many of our listeners are entrepreneurs. And they're either folks that are kind of thinking like, ah, I want to take that jump. I want to do that leap in the others who just have even. And I'm always Like, you know, what was it with our guests that was that deciding factor if you can it at all think back or pin it down like, yes, I'm just going to do this. Yeah. There was that moment where it was a, okay, I'm just going to do this. And it was, it was a moment of clarity when I went, I can make this work. It may not be, I may not get rich, but I can make this work. keeping that in mind. And having the belief that, yeah, what I have is, is providing value to people. big focus that I went in with is how can I provide value to other people? It wasn't so much, how can I get money from people? It was, how can I provide value to people? Because if I'm providing value, the revenue will start coming. of clarity for me was that I had enough value that I could provide for people. That it would allow the revenue to come in eventually and that it would build from there. What do you do from a marketing standpoint? I'm kind of curious. Are you clearly, you do podcasts, so you put yourself out there to tell stories. Do you have other kind of content? You put the book out, but what other kinds of things are you doing? Yeah, and the book was really the foundation of it. And in terms of our marketing efforts of getting that message out there to lead people to the workshop. You know how this goes? You read a book and you think, yeah, this is great. But then you can't do what they're telling you in the book. It helps so much to get some hands-on activity and coaching. And like many entrepreneurs, I think it starts with the people that I know. And so it started with the people I know and the people, the people who I know, the people that they know and reaching out from there. And then you start building a list and I communicate regularly with my email list and with my followers on LinkedIn. love to have your audience join me on LinkedIn. I put stories out there about every week to teach some kind of lesson and to show that we have these happening all the time in our lives. And then it's just being consistent and letting people know that it's available. I've got some other marketing things in the work where I'm building through social media. But it's really just a stepwise process. And it's how much time and effort you want to put into doing that. I recognize I said this to somebody just yesterday. I am the greatest asset and the greatest liability to my company. I'm the one who's kind of doing everything. And so how much I'm willing to put into that determines whether I'm an asset or liability. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I understand that. It's interesting that you mentioned about social media and LinkedIn and such because that actually was kind of on my mind to ask you about social media and its part or play in storytelling. Because depending upon the platform that you decide to tell your story or as a vehicle, you may use video, you may be on YouTube or Instagram, Rails or TikTok. You've got Twitter, which is a limited number of characters to tell your story and kind of daisy chain segments of a story. You mentioned LinkedIn, so you've got bigger platform. But I'm curious. Do you find that it was social media? Is it helpful? Is it a strong aid help you get the message further across? Or does it do you think that it dilutes? And as well, is there a difference between kind of telling your story orally versus written content? Okay, so I got like three questions. I know. I really like Larry. And I can try to remember to get to a while. So if I don't call me back on that. But from broad standpoint, I think social media is a storytelling platform. People tell their stories on social media. And so I think it encourages more storytelling. Now, the downside of that is it limits, it encourages a limited kind of story. Because everybody thinks I have to put my very best face out there on social media. But that is, I have to make myself look good and maybe look better than I actually am. And I think that leads people to believe I can only tell these glowing, powerful, super success stories. I know. I really like Larry. And I can try to that's not the truth. reality is some of the most powerful stories we tell are the stories of our stumbles and our mistakes that we've made and what we've learned from them. We'll even go back to the lesson learned from the T-Ball story that we talked about early on. That's it. That was a mistake that I made. It wasn't a huge catastrophic mistake. But it's a good lesson learned type of story. so I think social media those kinds of stories sometimes, which is a mistake for businesses and business leaders. We need to be able to tell those stories. Okay. Now, if there was a third question in there and can't remember what it was, orally or through written content, what do you think is more I think the answer is yes. They're all impactful. The key is not the medium you're using. The key is that you're structuring your story well enough that it addresses your audience. That taps into your audience. So you've seen this. You've seen YouTube videos. You've seen posts on LinkedIn. You've seen Facebook posts or TikTok videos or whatever that are great and that are terrible. And so it's not the medium. It's how you're using the skill of storytelling to deliver on that medium. My daughter who I referenced earlier, I was having a conversation with her and she was talking about a conversation they had on Zoom with some remote family members in her husband's family And she turned to her husband and said, hey, share that experience about this. That really relates to what we're talking about here. And he started sharing his experience and she's sitting there with him on zoom and below the camera angle, she's doing one of these looping of her fingers kind of motions. Like get to the point, get to the point, get to the point. And she said to me, Dad, this is what you've done to me because I've read your book. I realized he wasn't telling the story the right way. He was taking too long to get to the point. And we do that on social media. Unless you're intentional, I use this word a lot about intentionally telling your story. Unless you're intentional about how you've crafted that, it doesn't matter what medium you use, it's not going to work well. And so it's that intentionality of knowing how to tap into that brain chemistry that we talked about. How to tell that story in a way that it does effectively make the point that you're trying to make. That's going to be more important than the meeting you choose to it on. It really kind of gets, and I'm going to ask you this question, but it probably actually probably just answered to a degree anyway. And I'll set this up and there's anything that you wanted to add to it. You're talking about intentionally telling your story. I was going to ask you the question as well. So any social media platform that you would like to use, mention LinkedIn, choose whichever one you like, are there some practical tips that you would give a business owner on how to use that platform social media to help tell their Yeah, I would start with, and thanks for calling back that word intentional because that's where I will start with that answer is what is your intention in Sometimes we say, okay, I've had this experience. I'm going to just share it out And we as the audience will read or listen to that experience ago. So what But if you start with, this is the message or this is the point that I want to make with this story. That's going to help you at the outset to filter out the less necessary components of that experience to get to the point that you're With a lot of the platforms, they do limit how much you can put out there. Twitter is the classic example of that. You can, within the camera, the character count is 127 or something like that. Whatever that character count is. If you're really Whatever that character count it, you can get your story into that limited amount. But if you're not clear on what your intent is in the to wander around a little bit with that story, like my son-in-law, who went to my daughter was trying to pull me back. He was wandering through his story because he wasn't clear on his intent when he started the social media, it's a good point that you get across there because often when we're either talking with clients or I'm just talking with business owners, they're asking me, I'm very involved in the Chamber among the board of our local Chamber of Commerce. But people are always like, hey, what do you think about social media? And I try to tell you, you have to tell a story, you have to tell your story, tell your brand story, provide value, provide information, tell the story. Don't get hung up about, I got to, here's my deal, here's my, you got to buy for me. This is like, no, no, no, no, that's the wrong approach. And telling the story. That's why I'm like, yeah, what's the best, some great advice and the intentional storytelling I think is purposeful. How about this? Let me stretch this even further. It's just an everyday life, not even a business owner. How can people incorporate story to the story? telling in their everyday interactions. Because you talk about, hey, we are a storytelling species, telling the stories helps build the community. And so it really shouldn't be limited whether you're a business owner, whether you're a corporation or whatever, from that standpoint, really it should just be in the interactions that I'm gonna have with my kids, or I'm going out to dinner with some friends tomorrow night. And so how can I, what would be some practical, important storytelling tips that I can like begin to embrace in my daily You know, when I first got into, when we'd written a book and we got into teaching, storytelling and things like that, I kind of got caught up into every story I tell has to fit within the framework that I'm talking about here. It has to be this intentionality. And so I backed off of that, because sometimes, when I'm sharing experience, I'm just sharing it to share an experience, or I'm just sharing it to entertain and to have So just note the times when you need to be more intentional about it, but just in your day to day life, one of the great examples I can think of is, let's say that we're at a chamber event. You mentioned the Chamber of Commerce. So I go to a Chamber of Commerce event, somebody that I don't know comes up to me, we start to talk and they say, what do you Well, how do we answer that story? Or how to answer that question? We typically answer it with, well, I do this and this and this and this and this and this. And we talk about kind of what we do on a day to day basis. What if you just turned that into a super simple quick story you could tell? And you could I serve people who them this. And that in essence is a super short form But that tells people more of what they want to know than what you do on a day to And it's going to engage them more. When I've done this, the response that I get from people is, oh, tell me more about When I don't do that, people go, oh, and then they're like ready to move on to somebody else. And so if you want to make those connections with people, remembering that people buy from those that they know, like, and trust, start with that, formulate that little story that can be like two or three sentences that explains who you serve, how you serve them, and then stop and let the other person ask the questions that they want to ask, because now they're going to be intrigued. The brain chemistry is kicked in and they want to know more. And that's going to just try to regular day to day kind of basis help you make those connections that you want like ready to move on to somebody make. That's good. All right, Mark, here we are down to the bottom of the ninth. And this is where I ask all of our guests, what advice do you have for rookies in the game? Meaning those just starting out in business or maybe those who already have their business or maybe looking for some guidance. I mean, you've got some experience, right? You've been in the corporate world, you've jumped, you're doing your own thing right now, lovely. What kind of advice do you So I'm going to give one broad practical advice and then I'll give a couple that are related directly to storytelling. The first broad practical advice, I love this phrase that I picked up from somewhere else. You can do anything that you can't do Meaning you can do anything that you want in this moment, but you can't do everything in this moment. So choose, be deliberate and conscious about, okay, what am I going to spend my time on right now? Because it's really easy, particularly as you're starting out in business to say, oh, I've got to do this and this and this and this and this and this and you get so distracted about all the things that you need to do or want to do that you're not doing in the moment. So be clear on those things that you're going to do, but choose the one that you're going to do in the moment so that you're using your time more The other things that I would say tied to storytelling is look for your stories, look for those experiences that you can turn into stories that teach lead and inspire, look for those emotional interactions or those emotional responses that you have to something and start capturing those and thinking, what's that story? And then practice your stories with the intent that you have whether that intent is I want people just to get to know my business, my product, my service, whether it's I want people to be able to know how this benefits them or whether it's I just need them to get some background around what I do. that story down, refine it. And the first few times you tell it, it's not going to go well. It's going to be a stumble. It's going to feel like that didn't work. So refine it, think about it. It's like any other skill. You're not going to be perfect at it the first time you do it. I very often do this with podcast host. I'll go to you and say, Randy, the first podcast you did, how well did you feel you did as a podcast host? Oh, it's horrible. I felt so bad. It was one of my clients. I It was one of my clients. I talked to you, says that. It was one of my clients. I felt so bad. I'm like, oh my gosh, we should Yeah. And you know, we get in those moments. And sometimes when people start off with the skill of storytelling, and they go, oh, that was so bad. I'll never do that again. Well, that's from wrong with that story or why it didn't land well, and refine it from there and keep going. And then after a while, it becomes more smooth and more comfortable for you. So don't give up on storytelling as a key business skill, particularly as you're starting out with your Just good, good advice. Thank you so much, Mark. Now, I'm going to refer people again. I think if you're as intrigued as I am in the storytelling process, you'll want to go pick this thing up, Mark. Again, being so gracious to give a free copy of his ebook, the master storytelling. You can go to his website master-storytelling.com slash forward slash podcast gift. And you can go grab it there. I'll have the link in the show notes. You can go check that out. And Mark, I just, I loved it. I loved having the conversation. I loved hearing your stories. Good stuff. I love the visual that I was getting coming from it, all everything. It was just terrific having you on the show. you, Randy. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for putting your show out there and providing benefit to your audience. I appreciate that All right. OK, folks, that's the ball game. So thanks for joining us today. And if you like to show, please tell your friends, subscribe, and review. And we'll see you around the ballpark. Running the bases with small businesses is brought to you by 38 digital market, a digital marketing agency committed to client growth with lead generation, higher conversions, and increased sales. Connect