During a recent MarketingProfs webinar, Secrets to Enchanting your Customers Through Story, Bobby Lehew gave us 45 minutes of amazing advice on how to be better storytellers.
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Unfortunately, we ran out of time during the Q&A, so he offered to join us on the Marketing Smarts podcast to answer the remaining questions and dive into a whole host of other topics.
We kick off today's episode with a discussion on work-life balance (and how it's a mistaken idea), and we move on to talk about harmony and dissonance, about how much richer our stories need to become, and why and how our perspectives need to shift, and how to translate all of that into the marketing stories we're telling.
Bobby shares how he initially tried to separate his personal interests in reading, storytelling, and Native American oral traditions from his professional life in sales and marketing, but soon realized that there was a natural conjunction between those areas. He realized that he—that WE, as marketers—struggled to tell a compelling story and that only by allowing the personal and professional to bleed into one another do we truly have the ability to tell a remarkable story.
Unsurprisingly, he also came to the realization that a profound sense of empathy is necessary to be a good storyteller.
Going through the last year of Covid-19, most of us have developed a stronger sense of empathy, allowing us to tap into the emotion of story. So that we inspire. So that we create something that resonates. When we can truly do that, it makes our jobs much easier and more rewarding.
Storytelling, we've learned, is all about perspective. We spend some time on this episode discussing the stories that nonprofits are telling, the perspectives they use, and how powerful these stories often are.
Nonprofits have been doing storytelling well for a long time because they figured out that what they're doing is not raising funds (because raising funds isn't an emotional journey that people can get behind); instead, they're telling the stories and sharing the experiences of those they raise funds for. Those are the journeys that tug at the heartstrings, that people can get behind and rally around.
We also talk about books in this episode. A lot of books. We even talk about why you shouldn't be afraid to quit on bad books ("Be a quitter like me," says Bobby). Here's a list of most of the books we discussed:
- Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat
- Draft No. 4, John McPhee
- How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee
- Essays (One), Lydia Davis
- A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders
- Life Work, Donald Hall
- In the Distance, Hernan Diaz
- On a Day Like This, Peter Stamm
If you haven't yet, please take a moment to check out Bobby's most recent webinar, Secrets to Enchanting Your Customers Through Story.
Listen to the entire show now from the link above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode.
This episode brought to you by Leap Advisory by Demand Spring.
Our advisors are all experienced marketing executives who have walked in your shoes and can help with any marketing challenge. They listen first, and offer advice you can act on today. Meet our advisors at Leap by Demand Spring.
"Marketing Smarts" theme music composed by Juanito Pascual of Signature Tones.
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Published on June 10, 2021
Bobby Lehew, chief content officer at 
