The Quiet and Strong Podcast, Especially for Introverts
The Quiet and Strong Podcast, Especially for Introverts
Ep 209 - Unlock the Power of Purposeful Stories with Dr. Simon Raybould
Have you ever wondered what makes a story truly impactful in a presentation? In this episode of The Quiet And Strong Podcast, host David Hall sits down with Dr. Simon Raybould to explore the art and science of purposeful storytelling. Dr. Raybould, a research scientist and presentation trainer, shares his unique insights into how stories can be powerful tools for introverts and extroverts alike.
Listeners will learn about the different types of stories—whether for building rapport, establishing authority, or simply entertaining—and how to strategically deploy them to make a lasting impact.
Why should you listen? This episode offers practical advice on mastering storytelling to elevate your presentations, making them not just informative but transformative. It's a must-listen for anyone wanting to harness the power of stories to influence, educate, and inspire.
Tune in, learn, and be strong.
Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/209
Dr. Simon Raybould started life as a research scientist, with a PhD looking at the causes of childhood cancers. It's this intellectually rigorous approach that differentiates him from most presentation trainers...but he's also been a lighting designer for dance companies, a playwright, an author, a teacher, a trainer, professional speaker, and a fire-eater.
Connect with Dr. Raybould
Website: Storymaking.Business/
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Simon Raybould [00:00:00]:
Do you want your story to give you more authenticity and authority and all of that kind of jazz? Or do you is it a a story for building rapport with the audience? Or is the story just for entertainment and that kind of thing? It almost doesn't matter which story you tell. I don't mind that people use different kinds of stories, so long as they have thought about those different types of different types of story and the distant reason for for telling them. So for example, if my story is intended to give me authority, great. I would tell the story about something I have done. If my story is intended to teach people, it's better to tell the story about something else that somebody else has done. Even if it's the same story, you just change the hero within that story, if that makes sense. There's a thin line between doing that and and making stuff up, of course. So you have to be, you know, careful with your integrity about it.
David Hall [00:00:58]:
Hello, and welcome to episode two zero nine of the Quiet and Strong podcast, especially for introverts. I'm your host, David Hall, and the creator of quietandstrong.com. This is a weekly podcast dedicated to understanding the strengths and needs of introverts along with strategies for success. Introversion is not something to fix, but to be embraced. Normally, we will have each episode on a Monday. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform. Leave a review or rating. That would mean a lot to me and also help others find the show.
David Hall [00:01:30]:
Tell a friend about the podcast and help get the word out there that introversion is a beautiful thing. Doctor Simon Raybould started life as a research scientist with a PhD looking at the causes of childhood cancers. It's this intellectually rigorous approach that differentiates him from most presentation trainers. But he's also been a lighting designer for dance companies, a playwright, an author, a teacher, a trainer, professional speaker, and fire eater. Well, welcome to the Quiet and Strong podcast, Simon. Simon, it's so good to have you on today.
Simon Raybould [00:02:07]:
I am so very, very much looking forward to this. I've been sort of drinking tea and getting nervous about it all day.
David Hall [00:02:14]:
Alright. Well, we're gonna get into your book story making. But first, let's just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to what you're doing now.
Simon Raybould [00:02:22]:
Well, I long time ago, I started out as a research scientist. I did a PhD in what they call geomedical demographics, which is a fancy way of saying statistical analysis looking at the causes of childhood leukemias. And then I spent twenty, twenty four, twenty five years as a research scientist and accidentally ended up getting promoted to be in charge of research scientists, and realized that I was getting or my research team was getting asked the same dumb questions by politicians over and over and over. And I figured that either scientists were very bad at explaining what they did, or politicians were really quite dumb. It turns out both of those things are true, by the way. But, you know but I couldn't do anything about the politicians. So I I shifted my substantive research. So I was no longer looking at life chances and cancers and things like that.
Simon Raybould [00:03:10]:
And I started to research how better to communicate and how better to make presentations. And from there, I realized that not only did my research teams needed it, but everybody needed it. So, eventually, I left the university and and founded my own presentations training company.
David Hall [00:03:26]:
Very cool. And and you still bring that research based approach to your teaching presentation skills and Yeah. Stories. Yeah. Yeah.
Simon Raybould [00:03:36]:
It's one of the things that makes me different from most presentations trainings because I very, very rarely do opinion. I almost never do this is what works for me. I almost always do this is what the research says works for 85% of the population. Let's do that. If it doesn't work, I've got another trick for the remaining 15% of the population, but let's let's let's start with the, you know, the 85% that we we know this thing is going to work from. So I'm I'm less warm and fluffy than some presentation trainers and much more forensic, I think, is the phrase that springing that springs to mind. I mean, my style is is relaxed and friendly, but my content is much more hardcore.
David Hall [00:04:15]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And, of course, you're on the Quiet and Strong podcast, and you are a fellow introvert. So what's the strength that you have because you're an introvert?
Simon Raybould [00:04:24]:
Oh, my wife would say it's not a strength, it's a habit.
David Hall [00:04:27]:
Okay.
Simon Raybould [00:04:28]:
It's the it's what I call the assassin question. It's when you you listen and you listen and you listen and you listen, and then you ask the question that cuts through all the BS that has gone before from either of the introverts or more likely extroverts that are just filling the air and thinking out loud, speaking out loud, and you just ask the one question that everybody goes, oh, yeah. That. And it's it's the ability to to to synthesize and to pull everything together. And it makes it really it's a really powerful tool when you're making presentations because it means you can distill what everybody is talking about for twenty minutes into a two minute slide and then move on to the move on to the next thing. And I think bigger than that also, it gives me an opportunity to what's the phrase they use? Respond, not react. So if something something is not going well or something is not going as it should, or even if it's going better than I expect, I don't get carried away and react in the moment. There's just that half second delay where I think and I process before I commit myself.
Simon Raybould [00:05:36]:
And the number of times that has proven to be incredibly useful is is just off the scale.
David Hall [00:05:43]:
Brilliant. Yeah. There is some definite strengths to introversion. That's brilliant.
Simon Raybould [00:05:48]:
Yeah. I mean, it's it's no better than extroversion. It's just different.
David Hall [00:05:53]:
Yeah. Well well said there. And then, of course, we bust myths on this show. Is there a myth about introversion you wanna bust today?
Simon Raybould [00:06:01]:
The obvious one that introverts can't be professional speakers or public speakers. I reckon the ones that I really like working with are the introverts because they care about the message more than the audience, generally. So the generalization. Whereas extroverts tend to care about the audience and the performance and the love and the adoration and the feedback and the people in the room. Whereas introverts are much more, this is the message. Let's get it over. Let's get to our call to action. Let's make something happen.
Simon Raybould [00:06:33]:
And for me, that's what presentations are about. So I really, really wanna just nail this myth that introverts can't do presentations. I reckon that a good two thirds of my professional colleagues, again, of a of a certain level, so at a certain standard. A good two thirds of us here in The UK would self identify as as introverts. Partially, I think, because it's easier to control the room when you're delivering the presentation. And when you're in the audience, you're at the beck and call of the of the presenter, and that's a little bit uncomfortable for introverts sometimes. I honestly find it easier to be on a stage than in an audience sometimes.
David Hall [00:07:12]:
Yeah. And and I've heard that from others like yourself. It's like some of the best well known speakers are introverts. And another myth that I'll bust is that sometimes people say that introverts don't have a lot to say, but that's not true because we are always thinking. So we have a lot to say. And a lot of times, the stage is a great place for us to be able to share all those thoughts.
Simon Raybould [00:07:36]:
Absolutely. I I I know this is a podcast, so people can't see it. But my head is going up and down. I wouldn't believe in terms of how much you agree with that. And it it it it's great because it means that with this introvert tendency, we have to think first and speak later. By the time we get up to make our presentation, all our ducks in a in a row, and we've got lined up exactly what it is we wanna say and how we want to say it. So there is an awful lot less fluff and padding in an introvert's presentation.
David Hall [00:08:07]:
Yeah. So, Simon, I've been enjoying your book, Storymaking, How to Use Stories and Not Just Tell Them. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Simon Raybould [00:08:16]:
About the book? Yeah. It came it it came about because I I saw an awful lot of social media adverts just going, tell stories, tell stories, tell stories, tell stories, tell That's the silver bullet. Tell stories. And it just sounded like some kind of demented parrot on acid or or whatever. And I began to realize with my scientist head that it wasn't just about telling stories because there is no silver bullet for anything. It was about knowing what kind of stories to tell when and why and how and what for. So there's a very significant difference, for example, between the story which is designed to entertain and the story which is designed to educate. And if you're just going tell stories, tell stories, tell stories without thinking about it, all you're doing is being maybe popular and interesting in the room at the moment, but you're not changing the world.
Simon Raybould [00:09:07]:
And if you're not changing the world, what the hell are you doing it for? Right. If your presentation isn't intended to make the world a different place by the end of it, then it's just twenty minutes of very expensive c suite time that's been chewed up for for no benefit for anybody. It's either people need to understand something or they need to do something or they need to sync something that is different from how they started. Otherwise, it's just what we call it here over here in The UK, it's just Jackanori time. I don't know if you have that that phrase in The UK. It it it comes from a a children's TV program many years ago where somebody would just sit and tell a story on a rocking chair in a a very nice it it was just a TV program when there were only four channels here in The UK designed to get children to go to sleep. It was the the bedtime story before their parents put them to bed.
David Hall [00:09:59]:
Yeah. I think we had something similar. Yeah. So you were talking about the different type of stories. And in your book, you lay out there's three types of stories. What what are those?
Simon Raybould [00:10:09]:
Well, in terms of function, you mean? Because I can Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of do you want do you want your story to give you more authenticity and authority and all of that kind of jazz? Or do you is it a a story for building rapport with the audience? Or is the story just entertainment and that kind of thing? It almost doesn't matter which story you tell. I don't mind that people use different kinds of stories so long as they have thought about those different types of different types of story and a distant reason for telling them. So for example, if my story is intended to give me authority, great. I would tell the story about something I have done. If my story is intended to teach people, it's better to tell a story about something else that somebody else has done.
Simon Raybould [00:10:53]:
Even if it's the same story, you just change the hero within that story, if that makes sense. There's a thin line between doing that and and making stuff up, of course. So you have to be, you know, careful with your integrity about it. But if I just want to go to the pub and be entertaining, that's just an entertainment story. If I want people to do something different, I might use a case study as an example story. So Google does this, Apple does that. That's that's kind of what I would call a teaching story, you know. Apple does it this way, Google does it that way.
Simon Raybould [00:11:22]:
Why don't you do it the same sort of way? Now, of course, you're you're gonna be careful with that because if you use an example that your audience doesn't resonate with, you know, I have one occasion sort of the Apple does this and it backfired because my entire entire audience were dedicated hard nosed Windows people that thought Apple was overpriced crap. Yeah. So you have to be quite you have to be quite careful with it. Although interestingly, I have also done some training for a bit of careful not to identify them here, but a company that makes Windows machines. And when I sat down in the room with them, so I've got the top half dozen people in Europe sitting in the room with me, Only one of them had a Windows machine, and it wasn't one of their own. Everybody else was using Apple products. Oh, no. And there was their own company way made Windows machines, which is quite eye opening for me.
Simon Raybould [00:12:16]:
But the the other kind of differentiator I I want to make about the different types of stories is the kind of hero there is there. So we talk about something called the we we jokingly talk about a SOAP ladder, s o a p as an acronym. There are stories about self. That's things that I have done. There are stories about other people, that's stories about what Apple has done, or Google has done, or whoever. There are stories, audience stories. So these are stories about people like the people in your audience. And as you go along these steps of the ladder, the credibility increases in your audience's mind.
Simon Raybould [00:12:54]:
And then there are what we call p at the end planted stories, which I'll I'll come to in a second. But the the audience stories is a tricky bit, because you want it to be sufficiently like the people in your audience for them to go, oh, yeah. I get it now. I understand. This is people like me. But if it is people exactly like the people in your audience, you risk kind of triggering something called reactance, which is a psychologist's term for you know how when you got a teenager and you tell it to do something and its immediate response is to go, no. No. We shan't.
Simon Raybould [00:13:25]:
That's that's reactance. So if your story is too much like the people in your audience, you trigger reactance and they they they back away from what it is you are trying to get them to do. But the ultimate ones are planted stories, which is when you I call them the shadows of stories. You don't tell the story itself. You hint at the story, and the audience makes up the story for themselves inside their own heads. And by definition, therefore, they are going to believe that story. They can't not because it's something they have told them themselves, and it's a technique that some politicians are great at. They don't actually say what they are promising.
Simon Raybould [00:14:08]:
They hint at what they are promising, and the voters decide for themselves that they are being given whatever it is that they, the voter wants to get. So they vote for the person telling this hinted story rather than an explicit story. And I think on both sides of the Atlantic, yours and mine, we've seen that, we've seen that happen on both sides of the spectrum a little bit. But those planted stories are incredibly powerful, unbelievably powerful. And the the silliest the silliest example I can give of for you is, oh, Hemingway. Hemingway is a he didn't write a six word short story, but he's famous for it. His publicists made it up. And and the short story is just six words, for sale, baby shoes, never used.
Simon Raybould [00:14:53]:
Now that's not a story. That's an advert. But it's also a planted story because if I say that for sale, baby shoes never used, people's heads go, well, why are they selling baby shoes that have never been Oh, lord. How sad. And when you do that to an audience, you you can see the moment the penny drops inside their head. Now that's a very crude example of a planted story, but the idea is that it gets the audience to to think for themselves what the story must what the story must be. So the SOAP thing is really, really quite powerful, I think.
David Hall [00:15:28]:
Yeah. And another thing about this is some people probably just think it's just, you know, just get up and tell stories like you're talking about. But you really lay out a system of telling stories and preparing for, you know, the right story. Tell us about your your system.
Simon Raybould [00:15:49]:
Well, I I there are some people who think they can tell stories instinctively, and and a lot of them are wrong. But there are a lot of people who think I can't tell stories. So what the book does is provide a structure and a framework for people to get from the beginning of, I don't know how to do this, to be able to use stories to and I use the word deploy stories deliberately because it's it's a much more mechanical way of doing things. So we talk about mining at the beginning, which is how you find the stories. And then we talk about collating, which is how you decide which stories you are going to tell and how you store those stories and which stories are appropriate for which circumstances. And then finally, there is the the deployment. So it it's a three step process of mining, curating, deploying. The book goes into probably more detail than it needs to, to be honest.
Simon Raybould [00:16:40]:
But I I I'm I'm hoping I I do it in such a lighthearted way that people can just plow through the bits that are a little bit self indulgent and get to this. I even if they take nothing away from the book other than the idea that you you gather these everyday stories in the mining process and you deploy them at will when you when you need them, then that's that's an improvement. That's an improvement. And the big thing that's really, really, really I think I don't explicitly say it so much in the book, but really runs through it is this idea that big hero stories just don't work. You know? Stories about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro backwards with your teeth pulling out in the rain with your hair falling out and whilst being eaten alive by giant ants or or whatever. They're great in the moment, but they don't change everybody's life in the audience. They they, you know, the the moment passes. People are inspired by them in the moment, but not motivated in long term.
Simon Raybould [00:17:37]:
So in the in in in the bit we're talking about mining stories, I talk very much about mining stories from the everyday, from the edges of your everyday existence. Things that illustrate what it is that you are talking about in the everyday that everybody has got. And sometimes people have more interesting stories than others. So it's easier for me because I've got two daughters who travel the world a lot and come home with stories that make me gray. I'm only I'm only 22 and the the the gray hair is because of my daughters. So it's it's quite easy to find stories if you're living that kind of that kind of life. But the trick is to find the stories in the everyday. And there's a a a technique in the book, which a friend of mine called Kennedy told me, which is, don't ask yourself, has anything interesting happened today? Because most of us go, no, it's boring.
Simon Raybould [00:18:27]:
I'm just, you know, it's just a boring life. I'm just getting on with it. He says to ask yourself, what is the least boring thing that has happened today? And by definition, there must be something today that has happened that is less boring than every everything else. You might not think it's interesting, but it's less boring than everything else. So city example, today, as I was driving back from the gym, there were the there were two cars blocking the road, and I I couldn't get past. It turned out that one of those two cars was was completely empty, but it was in the outside lane. How do you get an empty car in the outside lane of of of of a of a of a road? Somebody must have stopped the car in the middle of the traffic, got out, and walked off. I have no idea how that came about, but you can start going there's there's something interesting that's gone on here.
Simon Raybould [00:19:25]:
It's it's like being on the fast way lane of the freeway and just parking your car and and and abandoning it. Now that's not a desperately good example, but it is an example of something that's happened today, which is less uninteresting than everything else. Certainly, it's less uninteresting than my forty five minute slog at the gym, which no one wants to hear about. The, you know, the journey home is is just that little bit more interesting than the gym. Is that making sense? I'm
David Hall [00:19:50]:
more Absolutely. Absolutely. And how do you collect them? How how do you document the stories that you're you're mining?
Simon Raybould [00:19:56]:
Well, I go over the top. I use Notion to capture mine. And sometimes just the pros I the pros I found that the process of writing them down fixes them in my head so that I I almost don't need to refer to my Notion app at all for the stories. But when I put them in Notion, the advantage of that is I can I can tag them with keywords? So that if I need a story about, for example, good leadership, I now just do a a quick search within Notion and boom, there are a dozen stories about good leadership or or whatever he wants to to know about. The only thing I have to do to do then to be careful is make sure that I've checked where the story came from. Because the last thing you want to do is take a story back to the organization from whence it came. Because at that point, you will get this reactance thing that I was talking about earlier on. What you want is to take it from an organization that everybody recognizes as being like them, but it's not them.
Simon Raybould [00:20:56]:
And in in twenty years of doing this, it's only gone wrong once. Because normally what happens is they go, oh, yeah. That's exact same sort of thing happened to us only last week. And the your story has instant credibility at that point. But on this occasion, somebody said, yep. That exact thing happened last month at the place I used to work at. That exact and it turns out that in the month between me collecting this story and me using this story, this person has moved from one organization
David Hall [00:21:30]:
Oh, yeah.
Simon Raybould [00:21:31]:
To the other. I mean, like, you know, the odds against that are are are ridiculous. Only once in twenty years has it has it gone wrong. But other people use different systems. You could just use index cards. The one thing you can't do is rely upon your memory because everybody's memory is so fallible that you just end up with what is effectively fiction. It might be interesting. It might be useful.
Simon Raybould [00:21:55]:
But if it's not true, there is a question about whether you can use it or not. And there's a a shared load of research about how our memory plays tricks on us and what we think happened, didn't, and all of that kind of all of that kind of jazz. I think that the the jargon term for it there is the Mandela effect after a lady whose name I've forgotten who she very clearly has memories of Nelson Mandela dying in prison. She she remembers it happening, except that he didn't die in prison. He was released and became a successful politician and run the country and all of that kind of jazz. But she has a very clear memory of him dying in prison Because I think what's happened is that she's collated two different stories in her head, and they've got confused in her memory. So the one thing we can't do is rely upon our own memories. As my you know, that was just an example in the book, my wife points out.
Simon Raybould [00:22:46]:
I I told the story about one of my children, and my wife politely pointed out that the child I was talking about in that story wasn't even in the country at the time when this thing was supposed to ever happen. But in my head, I had got my two daughters and a friend of theirs confused. I put those three things together, and I I wasn't lying because I believed what I was saying. It's just that what I was saying was a mismatch of of my two daughters and somebody else. You know, it was a bit of a bit embarrassment, really.
David Hall [00:23:19]:
Yeah. And I think this is also part of a point that a lot of people aren't actually making the effort to capture their stories. But just like anything, you wanna be successful in presentations and speeches, There's some effort that you have to put behind it.
Simon Raybould [00:23:34]:
Yeah. It's it's for me, the capturing of the stories is the thing that takes most time because you start you get into a habit of looking for the stories in the everyday all day. So for example, I I will when I finish working today in a, you know, an hour or two, I what I will do is I'll just stop, have a cup of tea, think back over the day, and go, you know, what things have happened today that would be quite interesting to put down. So there's that thing I mentioned about a parked car in the outside lane with nobody in it. There's that we we could even use that thing of of I, you know, I entered the Zoom room and then because I was early, I I went next door and came back and and you'd been looking at an empty camera for for five minutes. There's there's all of that kind of all those little things that happen during the day, which can be used in a presentation or in your marketing or even down the pub telling a story to the mates. You know? One of the things to talk about is pub sized stories, really small stories that just work in the pub. And that embarrassing thing of me putting my camera on and then leaving the room, that could be used as a story in a presentation later on when you're talking about even professionals make mistakes.
Simon Raybould [00:24:46]:
You know, maybe maybe I'm wanting to teach people that it is okay to make mistakes. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You don't wanna make too many. But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. You roll with it. You learn from it.
Simon Raybould [00:24:57]:
You move on. And I could then go on with, for example, I had a big interview coming up and I and then I would go into a a ten second version of the the story where you're, you know, you were looking at my empty office for five minutes. So even even the little things can be used to to make points.
David Hall [00:25:19]:
Yeah. And then what's your second step after after you mine? You say you also then curate your stories.
Simon Raybould [00:25:25]:
Curate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's that's when you store them, and that's when you decide which stories to keep and how you're going to use them and putting them into Notion. I put them into the the Notion app. Other people put them in different places so that you know what stories are appropriate for what circumstances. Honestly, that takes an awful lot less time than I make it sound like it does because you just literally just jot down enough of the story so that you don't forget the details.
Simon Raybould [00:25:54]:
You don't have to write the entire story, just a series of bullet points to to remind yourself what's going on. And then tag them for where it comes from, whether it happened to you or it happened to somebody else, whether you've got permission to tell that story, because I've got quite a lot of stories in my bank where people have said to me, yes, you can use that story, but you must never use my name, or you must never use the organization I was working for at the time because and that kind of that kind of thing. It's not onerous. It's it's not difficult to do. You just have to be aware to, you know, about doing it. And then at the end, there's the deploying thing, which is the the third the third stage, which is actually telling the story. And that looks very very much like traditional storytelling.
David Hall [00:26:37]:
How'd you come up with the term deploy? I like it. It's like a it's a stronger term than telling the story.
Simon Raybould [00:26:43]:
I spent a long time sitting around thinking about it because I wanted to get away from the fluffy idea that this is storytelling is a nice warm funny thing to do to help our children sleep at night. I'm using it almost as as an industrial tool in the same way as somebody might use a slide in their presentation. Stories are more effective than slides, statistically speaking, but or a prop in their presentation or whatever. Or as they might choose to wear a certain outfit, they might use a spreadsheet. Stories are tools just like everything else. And I wanted to get over this idea that it was a a system. So just going, right, and then you tell the story at the end, it's just a bit wet. Whereas if you go and then you deploy the story like some kind of drone or, you know, driverless car or or or something so that people go, okay.
Simon Raybould [00:27:39]:
I get it. You put it out into the world in a very specific, carefully chosen way.
David Hall [00:27:45]:
Yeah. We we talk a lot about personal brand and brands on this show. And in your book, I like how you put that your stories really make up your brand. Tell us about that.
Simon Raybould [00:27:56]:
So if I'm going to be a little bit facetious about it and oversimplify it just for the sake of a sound bite, it goes like this. Your brand is the stories that other people tell about you when you're not there. That's it. If people are talking about you, the the stories that they are telling, that's your brand. You might want it to be different. You might think that it is your logo, but actually the thing that people are spreading, the peep the the the the the viral element of it, those are the stories that people tell about you. So for example, Virgin Media over here in The UK has a reasonably poor brand because the stories we all tell each other about Virgin Media are about poor customer service. The brand they are pushing out is fast broadband, fiber optics, speed, yada yada yada yada.
Simon Raybould [00:28:50]:
And it's all very, very exciting. But that's not the brand that is being shared. The brand that is being shared is things like when my mother-in-law died and I tried to send the the Tivo box back to Virgin, they still charged me for having this for six months after blah. You know, that you know that kind of that kind of thing. So brand is the stories that people tell about you when you are not there. You might think it's the stories you tell. It would be nice if it was the stories you told. It's the stories that other people tell about you.
David Hall [00:29:24]:
Right. Right.
Simon Raybould [00:29:25]:
So I'm I push hard this idea that I'm a research scientist. I like to think that my brand is friendly, but no nonsense in terms of doesn't put up with random statistics and BS. The brand that other people talk about me might be something like I I I know it is like that, but the brand that other people talk about me is much more brutal in many ways. People will say to each other, Simon can be very rude. And then they'll go, but he's usually right. And now that's that's almost the brand that I want. So I have to, you know, I have to be quite careful now to be nicer to people so they don't go around telling prospective clients that I can be quite rude. Yeah.
Simon Raybould [00:30:15]:
I'm failing badly. Failing badly. I am just rude. If someone's stupid, just rude.
David Hall [00:30:23]:
So, Simon, the other day, I was talking to someone, brilliant brilliant guy, and he was telling me that he struggles in presentations and speeches. He really likes to keep things concise. And we started talking about storytelling, and he just said, I'm just really bad at telling stories. What would you say to him?
Simon Raybould [00:30:43]:
Start with children's stories. There's an exercise I always give always give people who say that, which is to to pick up a book or some I don't know. It could be Let's Go Home Little Bear. You know, it's a it's a story designed for very young toddlers. It's great, but I should probably I should be on commission the number of times I have mentioned this book. And just start telling that story to the cat, to the dog, to the television, to whoever until you are comfortable with that, and then put the book away and turn on your camera, your Zoom camera or your Teams camera, and forget about it. Leave the camera on, let it run and run and run until it's subconsciously in the background. And then at some point during the you know, go about your normal day.
Simon Raybould [00:31:34]:
And at some point during the day, when you feel like it, just turn to the camera as though it is a person and go, little bear said to big bear. And it it it you don't make a big thing about it. You just do it whenever the hell you are ready as part of your everyday process. And if it falls apart, you laugh at yourself, you go have a drink, you carry on, you forget about it, and you have another go later when you are ready to do it. There's no point in pushing people pushing people into it if they are freaking out. Having said that, for the first time today, I'm going to step away from the research and give you my personal experience. So just skip this bit if you're not interested, dear reader. My experience has always been that people can tell stories an awful lot better than they think they can.
Simon Raybould [00:32:26]:
They've just got this idea that storytelling is something you do with children rather than something you do in business. And if I say to them, tell your business stories as though you were telling it to your child when you're putting it to the bed, the penny drops and they they suddenly free themselves up to go, blah blah blah. Our numbers are up 45% this quarter because so our sales agents are behaving differently. For example, so and so on the phones is now and that so and so on the phones becomes a story that illustrates the point about how the sales agents are behaving differently. For the record, I've just made that one up. That's that's that's a complete spurious story that I've just invented on the spur of the moment. And at that point, it becomes all about practice. But I do want to stress that there's a difference between practice and rehearsal.
Simon Raybould [00:33:22]:
Because you know that old adage of of practice makes perfect? It's Tosh. Practice makes permanent. So what I want people to do is get it right, and then start to practice it. So there's no point in this this hypothetical person who can't even read a children's story without falling in other words. There is no point in getting them to practice and practice and practice and practice and practice. What you need to do is get them comfortable with it first, and then when they can do it, then they practice. However, here's a challenging question. David, can you ride a bike? Pedal cycle.
Simon Raybould [00:34:01]:
Yeah. Okay. So when you got your first pedal cycle, your first bike, how did you learn to ride it? Did you lean it on the wall and go, that looks awesome. As soon as I feel confident, I will get on that bike and ride.
David Hall [00:34:18]:
Yeah. Didn't work that way. No.
Simon Raybould [00:34:20]:
No. You got on the bike with stabilizers, with somebody holding you up, and you gradually got confident, and then you took the training wheels off, and then you got more confident, and then you you see whether you see the analogy, I'm sure.
David Hall [00:34:34]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Simon Raybould [00:34:34]:
You just have to keep practicing, practicing, practicing. But the thing that people often get wrong at this point is they go, right, I'm going to practice storytelling in a safe home environment. Now it turns out that that's a really bad idea, because if you're telling stories in front of people you know, the stakes are higher. Because I have to see these people later on. So city example. Right? I'm talking to a national networking a, organization this morning, and people were wanting to practice their pitch stories in their home regions. Because the people in their home regions, their home group, their local network, they were all friendly and everybody knew them. My assertion is this, if I make a pitch to you and it sucks, I have just blown any chance of you buying from me.
Simon Raybould [00:35:30]:
On the other hand, if I make a pitch to somebody from, I don't know, Australia, who is never going to buy my bread ever in their lives because, hey, I'm a baker in the South Of England and they're in New South Wales. And if my pitch sucks at that point, I've not lost anything because this guy was never gonna buy from me in the first place. Physically couldn't buy from me. The idea therefore is that you practice your storytelling on audiences where it doesn't matter if it goes wrong, but what people think they should be doing is is practice their storytelling to friends. And friends are our highest stakes, because if I screw up in front of my wife, I have to live with her forever. Well, I don't, but you know what I mean. I live with her forever until the divorce comes through. But I have seen her life insurance policies, and I have seen her pensions.
Simon Raybould [00:36:27]:
I am not divorcing this lady. I am staying with her.
David Hall [00:36:30]:
Right. Right. So we're putting together all our stories. And and my last question for you, so then you're planning for your presentation. What are your tips on preparation? And does it look different for introverts and extroverts the way we prepare for presentations?
Simon Raybould [00:36:46]:
A hard yes. A hard yes. It looks a lot different. I so okay. And but I'll I'll give you an embarrassing story to illustrate it. About two years ago, I did a gig. It went incredibly well. It was a workshop of 50 people, and I got a standing ovation.
Simon Raybould [00:37:02]:
Now you can get an ovation for a keynote with a couple hundred people in the room, but to get a standing ovation from a workshop for 50 people, that really took me aback. And as an introvert, I wasn't equipped for that, and I went to the toilet and locked myself in the cubicle for ten minutes to catch my mental breath, if you like, whilst people were literally looking for me, trying to book me, and saying, we want to give you several thousand pounds to do this work with us. Yeah. I I lost about £10,000 worth of work because I went and hid in the toilet. And the reason I went and hid in the toilet was because as an introvert, I burnt out my mental energy by getting to the end of the presentation. Is that making any sense?
David Hall [00:37:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Simon Raybould [00:37:49]:
What I want introverts to think of is is don't be as dumb as me. Think of the presentation as maybe the highlight of a process, not the end point of a process. So you allow yourself time. You psychologically know that there is going to be mental energy required in the follow-up, in the photos, in the the shake and the meet and greet, and the exchange of business cards, and the can you give me a phone call on, and the what what's your link to get? All of those things that follow on from a good presentation, they require mental energy and you should be prepared for that, not assumes that when you go, thank you very much. Good night. That's that's not the end of it. That that is the end of the performance of it, but not the end of the process of it.
David Hall [00:38:40]:
Yeah. And that's a key to success as introverts. So we gotta prepare for the presentation. But I love how you said we also have to prepare for after the presentation. Yeah. And think of how we're gonna manage our energy around all of it.
Simon Raybould [00:38:52]:
And it it's it's not difficult when you remember to do it. But being an idiot, I forgot about it, put my heart and soul into the presentation, and literally, people were walking around the the the conference venue going, has anybody seen Simon? I wanted to book him. And I was I was literally hiding in the toilets because I had run out of mental energy. Yeah. It's pathetic.
David Hall [00:39:14]:
So, Simon, this has been a great conversation. Is there anything else that you wanna add today?
Simon Raybould [00:39:20]:
Yeah. I think just just one little thing. If you are going to tell stories about yourself or about people who are close to you, I I want you to take this mantra. Talk about stories that are scars, but not stories that are scabs. Only use the story when it has healed. You know, it's it's well and good to show people, look, I got this scar when I did something stupid, but it's a different kettle of fish to go, look, I got this cut because I've done something stupid, and it is still bleeding. That doesn't serve you well, and it really doesn't serve the audience if you are using them as unpaid therapists. That's a personal experience thing, not a research thing.
Simon Raybould [00:40:06]:
I'm not aware of any research in either direction about this, but it's it's something I've I've come to believe quite strongly. Scars not scabs. Let things heal so that you can talk about them much more objectively rather than reliving the trauma of them on stage.
David Hall [00:40:25]:
Yeah. Good advice. Well, Simon, of course, where can people find more about you and your book?
Simon Raybould [00:40:30]:
The easiest place is storymaking.business. That's the website, storymaking.business. And I've deliberately chosen the business domain, high level domain there because I won't be able to get the idea that story making can be a business. And the other place, of course, you can find me is LinkedIn. Simon hyphen raybould hyphen presentations. Raybould is r e y b o u l d. And the bit at the end where it says hyphen presentations is because there are only a few people on LinkedIn called Simon Raybould, but one of them is a a Canadian baker. And I accepted a a big 10 request from somebody.
Simon Raybould [00:41:08]:
We were having a conversation about bread making, and I'm okay with that because bread making is a hobby of mine. And it wasn't until they said, so how many hundred loaves a day do you bake? And I went, what? Sorry. What? You know, I maybe do a loaf or two at the weekend that I realized that they were talking to somebody completely different. So I changed my thing and it's now simon hyphen raybould hyphen presentations.
David Hall [00:41:31]:
Very good. And I'll put all that in the show notes. Thanks again, Simon.
Simon Raybould [00:41:36]:
My pleasure. Thank you. I enjoyed it.
David Hall [00:41:38]:
Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you. I hope you take the time to explore other episodes and learn from other amazing guests. Remember, if you're interested in getting to know yourself better, there is now a free Typefinder personality assessment on the Quiet and Strong website. This free assessment will give you a brief report, including the four letter Myers Briggs code. I'll add a link in the show notes. And I'd love to connect with you. Reach out at david@quietandstrong.com or check out the quietandstrong.com website, which includes blog posts and links to social media for Quiet and Strong and much more.
David Hall [00:42:15]:
Send me topics or guests you would like to see on the show. So many great things about being an introvert, and so we need those to be understood. Get to know your introverted strengths and needs, and be strong.