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Transcript of “Robert Mckee: Master the Art of Storytelling -‐ #232” Transcript of “Robert McKee: Master the Art of Storytelling - #232” Bulletproof Radio podcast #232 Warning and Disclaimer © The Bulletproof Executive 2013 Bulletproof Toolbox Podcast #232, Robert McKee The statements in this report have not been evaluated by the FDA (U.S. Food & Drug Administration). Information provided here and products sold on bulletproofexec.com and/or upgradedself.com and/or betterbabybook.com are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information provided by these sites and/or by this report is not a substitute for a face-to-face consultation with your physician, and should not be construed as medical advice of any sort. It is a list of resources for further self-research and work with your physician. We certify that at least one statement on the above-mentioned web sites and/or in this report is wrong. By using any of this information, or reading it, you are accepting responsibility for your own health and health decisions and expressly release The Bulletproof Executive and its employees, partners, and vendors from from any and all liability whatsoever, including that arising from negligence. Do not run with scissors. Hot drinks may be hot and burn you. If you do not agree to the above conditions, please do not read further and delete this document. 2 Bulletproof Toolbox Podcast #232, Robert McKee Dave: Hey everyone, it's Dave Asprey with Bulletproof Radio. Today's cool fact of the day is that when a story is told, both the storyteller and the listener's brains are active in the same areas. It's called neuro-coupling and what it means it that your two brains are in sync with each other so that when you're telling a story, you're actually putting thoughts, ideas, and emotions into your listeners' brains. This is why storytelling is an important part of getting whatever it is you'd like done. When you can tell a story, you can get the idea across in a way that you might not with just words. Today's episode is going to be obviously about telling stories if I didn't sort of give you a hint with that cool fact of the day, but before we get into it, there's a couple of things that I want to share with you. Number one, I'm wearing my cool, new Irlen filters. If you've heard the episode with Heather Irlen talking about how different light affects your brain, these are some new shades, an update to my orange ones, because my brain has actually changed. It's getting healthier and this is a color that actually looks a little bit cooler than orange anyway. I'll wear these sometimes. Right now I'm just experimenting with them. Moldy has now been seen by sixty thousand people so if you haven't seen Moldy movie, go over to moldymovie.com, check it out, and while you're at it, check out Bulletproofconference.com, because it is now discounted for you to get there for the October conference. It's going to be amazing. Today's guest is someone who was introduced to us through the Bulletproof forums, and that's a great place for you to go and suggest guests for the show. It's Robert McKee. Robert's a Fulbright Scholar and one of the most sought after screenwriting lecturers around the globe. He runs the McKee Story Seminars and for twenty-five years, he's been the guy you go to when you want to learn about writing and storytelling. He's taught more than a hundred thousand screenwriters, novelists, and playwrights, including a few guys you might have heard of like Peter Jackson, Russell Brand, Jimmy Fallon, Julia Roberts, Kirk Douglas, David Bowie, and a whole bunch more. Basically famous guy whose been performing at the very top of his game for many, many years. 3 Bulletproof Toolbox Podcast #232, Robert McKee Welcome to the show Robert. Robert: Thank you, Dave. Dave: t's an honor to have you here. Robert: My pleasure. Dave: You created a seminar called Storynomics which is probably the most renowned. You talk about how people use story in that. Can you give our listeners an understanding of why you focus so heavily on story in that seminar particularly? Robert: Well, it's a seminar as the title suggests for business. Storynomics means the connect between story and money. What happened essentially is that over the years, a number of people who have no ambitions to write fiction or make documentaries or anything like that, simply business people were coming to my lectures to try to learn of the elements of story and how to compose a story as techniques for both marketing, talking outward into the world, and inward in leadership, strategizing, team-building, and so forth. So I was caught up in this and I talked to these people. I realized that there's a real need in the business community for some clear thinking on the nature of story and the use of story in both directions, inward and outward, from the company. So I put together Storynomics as a way to introduce people in business to the nature of story and the effective use of story in all of those directions. Dave: What has the biggest impact been when you see an organization or an entrepreneur, a CEO or chief marketing officer, who isn't good at storytelling, who comes to one of your seminars and learns the power of story? What shifts would they see in how they communicate? Robert: Well what shifts is that when they use it and use it well ... Of course, it's not just the matter of using any old story. The story has to be well told and effective. When they master it and learn to tell a story well, the 4 Bulletproof Toolbox Podcast #232, Robert McKee success of the company escalates. The net result is that they have a greater income, their business expands. One of my clients is a major construction company called Bolt Construction. They build power plants and hospitals and educational institutions of all kinds. They used to bid in order to get their work. They had to win a bid competitively and they used to big in the old fashioned way of pitting their numbers against the competitor's numbers in a rhetorical point, point, point, point, point, point, point. Therefore, higher bid. I taught them how to story-fy their bids, how to tell the story from the client's point of view, making the client the core character in the story. Use the same data, the numbers don't change, but the vehicle for conveying those numbers and the process of the bid to the dynamics of the bid to the client changed greatly. As a result, they went from winning one bid out of ten to winning one bid out of two. Dave: Wow. Robert: They doubled their gross. They jumped twenty places up the hundred top construction companies in America by simply learning how to take data and story-fy it. As you were saying in your introduction, the people making the bid and the people listening to the bid are in sync. So that's the result is the communication becomes enormously more effective. Dave: So if you're just getting started in your career, let's say early twenties, just finished school, and you're going in for a job interview, if you can tell a story it sounds like you have a much better chance of getting the job, right? Robert: You do, but that's a tricky terrain. You have to know what kind of story to tell. In those situations, I would not advise somebody to go into an interview and start telling the interviewer the story of their life. Dave: Yeah, that's bad. 5 Bulletproof Toolbox Podcast #232, Robert McKee Robert: They have to learn this in marketing as well. The thing that turns people off more than anything else is bragging. Dave: Yes. Robert: Bragging and promising. "I'm the best. I'm this. I'm that." Bragging and "I will do this for your company and I will do that." Bragging and promising really turns people off. The best story to tell, I would think, in the context of an interview is about someone else, maybe a teacher who really inspired you. I think you should avoid your parents, but somebody else other than yourself. Something about stories that would link you to the nature of the company and the kind of work you're being interviewed for but is not on the nose about you. So you get the same thing across, which is your enthusiasm, your knowledge of the job, your preparation for the job, your passion about doing this kind of work. All of that can get across, but in a story that stars the person that's interviewing you, that stars the company that you're going to go work for. If you told a really effective story demonstrating that you've done your research and you know this company inside and out, you know what they do, and you want to be a part of that enterprise, tell the story about the company about the company that you're trying to be hired by. Any of those ploys would be much more effective than simply telling your life story. Once you get that, putting it in story form rather than a list of facts.
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