Batman Saved by a Cincinnati Love Story?

Batman Saved by a Cincinnati Love Story?

By Steve Kayser

When you were a little boy or girl you had this dream, you were going to change the world, restore honor, restore dignity. Remember? Did you follow your dream?

Michael Uslan did – and earned $2.6 billion dollars along the way. I had the wonderful opportunity (and great fun) of interviewing Michael. For those of you that don’t know the name, Michael Uslan, he was the executive producer of films such as Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Constantine, The Spirit, Batman Begins, and the second highest grossing film of all time, The Dark Knight. As a producer, he is one of the highest-grossing movie producers of all time, with The Dark Knight alone having already passed the $1 billion mark.

The Boy That Loved Batman

But the real story behind the rise of Batman and the Dark Knight is a Horatio Alger-type tale. And it all started when an 8-year-old boy got mad at the dissing of Batman and vowed to avenge his honor.  Michael tells the story in his book “The Boy Who Loved Batman,” a true story of how a comic-obsessed kid conquered Hollywood to bring The Dark Knight to the silver screen. And along the way, a Cincinnati love story places a critical part, without which, the Dark Knight may have never risen.

Steve Kayser: Michael, your book is exceptional. It’s an inspirational tale of how one person (you) armed only with a burning desire to restore dignity to your childhood hero, Batman, conquered Hollywood. Can you talk about the moment – the Bruce Wayne moment – that changed your life forever? 


Michael Uslan: Yes, you know it’s funny when those moments strike. I guess I have to explain what a “Bruce Wayne” moment is. For those of you out there who might be Batman fanatics or comic book nerds as I was, young Bruce Wayne, at about age 12, saw his parents murdered before his own eyes. At that moment, he sacrificed his childhood and swore that he would get the guy who did it. Swore he’d also get all bad guys. He made a commitment that he would honor for the rest of his life, even though he had to walk through hell for the rest of his life to do so.

The Dissing of Batman

Well, my Bruce Wayne moment came on a cold night in January 1966. My parents were safe upstairs in the kitchen, and I was downstairs in the den watching the debut of the Batman TV show. I was simultaneously thrilled and horrified by what I saw on TV. I mean I was thrilled that it was the first TV series since George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman, about a superhero. It was in color, the car was cool, but I was horrified that the whole world was laughing at Batman.

POW, ZAP, WHAM

That just killed me. I made my little vow that somehow, someday, someway, I would show the world what the true Batman, the 1939 creature of the night, stalking criminals in the shadows, was really like.

And that somehow I would erase from the collective consciousness of the world culture those three little words: pow, zap, and wham.

Steve Kayser: Uh-Oh. I love those words. I knew that when I heard those words, someone was going to get a butt-whipping. Robin was going to get in trouble. Then he’d say, “Holy crap.” Then Batman would save him.

And the world would be alright.

Michael Uslan: It was a superhero version of Tourette Syndrome that Robin had.

Steve Kayser: Haha, funny. What I liked about that is, down deep you realize that Batman has one thing that none of the other superheroes had. He was a normal guy in extraordinary circumstances, very much like Joseph Campbell’s archetypal monomyth described in the book, “The Hero’s Journey.” His parents were killed, was thrown into a life journey to avenge a mighty wrong. You were like that too, but you started that night in 1966. What got you through all those years until you got to college before you started on your grand journey?

Michael Uslan: Well, I was the ultimate comic book fan boy. I collected, read and devoured comics. My mom said I learned to read from comics before I was 4. By the time I graduated high school, I had a collection of over 30,000 comic books dating back to 1936.

My poor dad, when we moved into our house, never once got his car in the garage. But he supported my interest in reading and built wall-to-wall-to-floor-to-ceiling shelves for my comic book collection. And as soon as I filled the shelves up, we sold the entire floor of the garage. So that defined me.

And I was lucky. I grew up in the ’50s and ‘60s. In the mid-‘50s, there was an attack on comic books. A psychiatrist claimed that comic books were the reason for the post-World War II rise in juvenile delinquency and that any kid who read a comic book would become a juvenile delinquent if not worse. Many of my friends’ parents burned their collections, would not allow them to bring comics into the house.

So I was lucky because my mom said if I promised to read books, newspapers, and magazines as well as my comics and kept them neat, I could keep them. That was the best deal I ever had in my life.

So really, in going forward with a goal in life, to have supportive parents,  great teachers,  and to have ultimately a supportive wife is incredible.

Steve Kayser: You weren’t the product of a billionaire’s son – you worked your way up,  knocked down doors and along the way you even got bloody knuckles from pursuing your passion. It was a long road. Years of rejection. You even had one Hollywood producer say that it was the ‘worst idea they ever heard of in their life, creating a movie out of Batman.’

What was your worst rejection, how did you overcome it, and what sustained you?

First – Quit Your “Job”

Michael Uslan: Well, to set the stage, I actually acquired the rights to Batman in 1979 with my partner. I quit my job and went to Hollywood, even though I didn’t come from money and I couldn’t buy my way into Hollywood. I didn’t know anyone in Hollywood. I had no relatives in Hollywood. I thought with Batman in my back pocket I could convince them that dark and serious Batman movies, the way he was originally created, would be something that the world had never seen before and would be tremendously successful.

Batman as a Movie – HaHa – Are You Crazy?

I was shocked when every single studio in Hollywood turned me down.

I was repeatedly told I was crazy. It was the worst idea they ever heard, and the rejections just piled up. It was,

“Michael you are nuts. You can’t do serious comic book movies.” 

“Michael, you are out of your mind. You can’t do dark superheroes.” 

“Michael for God’s sake, nobody has ever made a movie based on some old television series.”

I had a closet full of rejection slips. One of my favorite rejections was from Columbia Pictures, when after pitching my heart out for the dark and serious Batman, the head of production said,

“Michael, come on, you are crazy. Batman will never succeed as a movie because our movie “Annie” didn’t do well.

“Are you talking about that little red-headed girl who sings Tomorrow?

“Yes.

 “Well, what does that have to do with Batman?

“Oh come on Michael, they are both out of the funny pages.”

And that was my rejection from Columbia.

Steve Kayser: What was it about Batman that drew you in so much that it turned into your life’s pursuit?

The Greatest Super-Power … Humanity

Michael Uslan:  At age 8, when you are consuming every comic book you can get your hands, it’s magical. These comic books truly are today’s modern day mythology. It carries on from the ancient gods of Greece, Rome and Egypt except for today they are all in spandex and capes. And when you find a superhero who has no superpowers, his greatest superpower is his humanity. Somebody who is not a guy who slugs his way out of a fight with a pow, zap, and a wham, but it’s a guy who typically out thinks his opponent.

 At age 8, I did believe in my heart of hearts that if I worked out really hard if I studied real hard, if my dad bought me a cool car, I could become this guy.

In addition to that, you had the primal origin story of Batman that cuts across borders, demographics, and even cultures. You also have the other important elements that give any superhero his popularity and longevity, and that is great super villains. Batman simply had the best.

Steve Kayser: In retrospect, it all sounds easy. A great idea. Great story. A no-brainer. But it wasn’t, was it?

Michael Uslan: No. Let me go back a bit. I was eight years old when I decided my goal in life would be to write Batman comics. That came true for me when I was in college at Indiana University in Bloomington. And you know what? I panicked because then my dream as a little kid had come true. I needed a new dream, what was it going to be? And it took me 10 minutes to think back on that day in 1966 and say, okay my next dream in life is going to bring a dark and serious Batman to the big screen.

But then comes the real challenge … how do you do that? Remember – I was in Indiana.

Well, I had been mentored into DC Comics through a man who became the President there, a wonderful man named Sol Harrison. He brought me into DC when I was in college at Indiana. And when he heard what I wanted to do, he put his arm around me, very fatherly, and said,

“Michael, please save your money, don’t do this. Since Batman went off the air on television, he is as dead as a dodo. Nobody is interested in Batman anymore.”

And I said, “Yes, but Sol if we do it in this new dark and serious way like nobody has ever seen before, we can do it.” He said, “Is there any way I can talk you out of this?” I said, “No.” And he said, “All right, come on in.”

Do You Believe?

It took us six months of negotiation before my partner, and I were able to buy the rights, scrounge up money from people we knew, from dentists, doctors, lawyers, relatives, whatever we could find and get the rights to Batman.

Steve Kayser: So for the next TEN YEARS you busted your butt. Against staggering odds.  I would say almost overwhelming odds. Did you ever just say, “Ahh, I might not make it?”

Michael Uslan: Not really. I just kept on plugging. You know, at the bottom of it all it tests your mettle. When life turns into a 10-year long human endurance contest and everyone is telling you,“you are crazy,”  “you stink, your ideas are terrible,” you really have to look deep inside and say, ‘Okay, am I just being stubborn or do I really absolutely believe in myself and my work?’

The key thing is you have to have support behind you. I married a girl I met the first day of my freshman year at college. She wasn’t even unpacked when we went out for the first time. And she knew what she was dealing with right up front with a kid who at that point was 18 years old, still reading and collecting comic books, that wanted to make comic books his livelihood Batman. And,  by the way, she was a Cincinnati girl.

Steve Kayser: There you have it folks — The Dark Knight Rises because of Cincinnati girls. Wait a minute. That’ didn’t sound quite right.

Cincinnati Saves the Dark Knight!

Michael Uslan: I think I know what you mean.  But, as a result, we have spent just so much time over the years in Cincinnati. Her whole family is based in Cincinnati. Her dad founded the Cincinnati Eye Institute, and he became my guardian angel. If I have a minute, I’d like to tell that story.

Steve Kayser: Of course, take more than a minute. It has to be an amazing story because I don’t think any girl I dated in Cincinnati would ever protect me if I told her Batman was going to be my livelihood. Their first response would typically be a knock upside the head.

Michael Uslan: Well, it was at a time where my back was against the wall, the years were going by, I still couldn’t get the dark and serious Batman movie up and running, Finally, I ran out of money, didn’t know where to turn next, or what was going to be. And my father-in-law, Dr. Morris Osher from Cincinnati flew out. Wisest man I’ve ever known. He sat me down and here’s our conversation,

“Okay, you went to law school so you would have something to fall back on. You now have a new house and a mortgage. You now have a baby. You have got to support your family and you can’t think of yourself as having failed. It was a great struggle and trying is really worth everything.”

“Yes, but I am so frustrated, I am so close.”

“Well, how close are you?”Don’t tell me, to getting a signed contract or deal, but to having a check in your hand for six figures.”

“Five months.”

“You are sure?”

 “I think in five months I will have a check like that.”

“All right, I am going to pay all your bills for the next five months and at 6 o’clock p.m. from this day, five months from now, if you don’t have that in your hands, you will then accept the fact that you need to go back, be a lawyer and support your family?”

Steve Kayser: Can I have his phone number?

Michael Uslan: Ha-ha. Well, I couldn’t thank him enough. I spent the next five months working probably 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Everyone in Hollywood knew about the deadline I was facing and then they took advantage of it, because the last day, sometime between noon and 3 o’clock, a FedEx truck pulled up with signed contracts and a check for six figures.

I was able to pay back my father-in-law and have enough money to get us to the start of Batman.

Steve Kayser: If Joseph Campbell were still alive he’d use your story as an additional monomyth for the “Hero With A Thousand Faces.” The part where the wise sage steps in and helps the struggling hero. I suspect Mr. Campbell would find true symbolic meaning in the fact that the wise man was also a man of vision  — an eye doctor. And I’m pretty sure it would be unique – I know of no other myths memorialized in Cincinnati. Well, except maybe the 1975 Big Red Machine.

But all of this still boiled down to you and your passion.

Michael Uslan: That’s so true. What it all comes down to, if you have a burning passion in your life, whatever it is – you have to pursue it. Make it come alive. Make it real.  I learned this from my dad. My dad was a Mason. He worked six days a week his entire life, from age 16 into his 80s. No matter what the weather was, he got up before dawn, a big smile on his face, couldn’t wait to get to work because he was an old world artist, a craftsman who loved what he did with brick, stone and marble. He loved building beautiful fireplaces, homes, and walls. When you grow up in a house with someone like that, how can you not want that for yourself? How can you not want to wake up on a rainy Monday morning and say I can’t wait to get to work?

Well, my brother and I went to work for my dad in the summers, and it was awful.

But this was our foundation. It was still awful. I realized I had to figure out what my “bricks and stones” were. For me it was comic books, Batman and movies gave me my passion. Then my mother taught my brother and I an important lesson in growing up and it was very simple in our house. Once you make a commitment, you stick to it, period, end of story, no excuses, you stick to it. If I didn’t like Little League, too bad, I had made a commitment to my teammates, and I would see it through, and that’s just the way it was.

So to have that degree where you will commit, where you will stick to it, where you will knock on those doors, and I am telling you, I never had so many doors slam in my face. And I realized early on when that happens; I only had two choices: I could go home and cry about it, or I could pick myself up, dust myself off, go back and knock again and knock again and not get frustrated. And when I speak of colleges today, the students say to me, “well, what about timing and what about luck?”

And I say, “well, the magic of this whole thing is there is no such thing because it’s all about knocking on doors. That’s how you eventually make your timing. That’s how you eventually make your luck. And I don’t think there is any other way around it. It’s not an easy process. It’s not a short process, but I have proven you can make your dreams come true if you are willing to do this.

Steve Kayser:  When you realized that you had finally done it, cut the deal, and you were assembling a team, what was it like?

Michael Uslan: Humbling. Can you imagine how lucky a person can be in a career spanning 35 years where in you can say I have been involved in projects with three geniuses. And,  in the 1989 Batman, there were two of them: Tim Burton is a genius; Anton Furst, our production designer and my dear friend who designed the whole look of Gotham City and the Batmobile. His work and Tim’s work still have an influence on every comic book and genre movie done even today. You can still feel it. You can still sense it.

It was revolutionary in 1989 because there had never been a dark and serious comic book superhero movie before. And, it was Tim’s genius that said a few things.

Number one: To get an audience to suspend its disbelief for a serious superhero, they had to from the opening frames of the film, believe in Gotham City. It had to be a place they could believe was real, had its own rules, and it’s own universe. They were very successful in creating that.

Number two: To me back then, the only actor who could play the Joker was Jack Nicolson. The day he was hired, it was one of the greatest days of my career because to me, at that time, in the comic book world of black versus white, good versus evil, this was the real clown prince of crime as had been portrayed in those comic books.

Another Bruce Wayne Moment

The other thing that Tim Burton realized that no one else did was that the audiences had to believe in Bruce Wayne. This was more about Bruce Wayne than Batman, and that’s why he felt he needed Michael Keaton to play the role, somebody so that an audience would not unintentionally laugh when they see an actor getting dressed up in a bat costume in a serious movie, but someone they could say,

“Oh my god, there is a guy so obsessed, so driven to the point of being psychotic that he would get dressed up in a costume like that and do it.”

And Tim was absolutely right. That’s one of the main reasons that movie worked and it set the stage for what was to come with all different kinds of comic book based films.

Steve Kayser: What did you think about the pick of Michael Keaton as Batman?

Michael Uslan: I was apoplectic when he first said, “Michael Keaton is Batman.” I said, “Oh my God.” Eight years of my life trying to bring a dark and serious Batman to the screen and now I had in my mind, I was picturing the posters,

“Mr. Mom is Batman.”

I almost fell apart.

But it was all under this vision that Tim had and his ability to execute.

Steve Kayser: When you saw the first couple of cuts, was there any trepidation? Were you worried or nervous?

Michael Uslan: No, I believed in this from day one.

When everyone was telling me no; when everyone told me it was the worst idea they ever heard, I never faltered in my belief.

I always knew it would be tremendously successful. And I guess my big epiphany in life came when the movie debuted and broke almost every box office record and started to impact culture worldwide. It was so huge in 1989.

Steve Kayser: Did you do a shimmy-shimmy-shake victory dance when you realized you had shown all the naysayers wrong?

Michael Uslan: Well, it was a great feeling. I got a call from the guy ten years ago who was one of the studio heads who had just virtually thrown me out of his office; he thought it was such a terrible idea. And the phone rings, and he says,

“Michael, I am just calling to congratulate you on the success of Batman. I always said you were a visionary.”

And then it was clear to me. If you don’t believe them when they tell you how bad you are and how awful your work is and if you don’t believe them when they start telling you how wonderful you are and how great all your ideas are and just believing in yourself and your work, you will do fine in this life.

### 

Steve Kayser is the author of “The Greatest Words You’ve Never Heard: True Stories of Triumph,” an award-winning writer, former radio host, public speaker and the Founder of Kayser Media – which specializes in PR, Marketing & Media Relations. His eclectic (some say bizarre) approach to PR, Marketing and Media Relations has been documented in a marketing best practices case study by MarketingSherpa, profiled as a “Purple Cow,” by author Seth Godin, and featured in the best-selling books, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and “Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs” by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott.

In addition, Steve is the co-author of “Margins and Missions… Not Moonshots: Pathways to a Better U.S. Higher Education,” and was editor, designer, and producer of “The Surgeon and the Spirit: A Panoramic View of a Journey in Academic Medicine.”

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Thinking is Hard Work

Thinking is Hard Work

“Thinking is probably the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it.” – Henry Ford

When was the last time you stopped, turned off everything around you— your mobile phone, iPad, computer, TV, radio and everything else in this hyper-connected, hyper-distracted world—and took the time to just … think? Can you remember? I can’t. I’m always on – 25 x 7.

HOW MUCH THOROUGH THINKING IS THOUGHT?

Last year 107 trillion emails were sent. Each day two-billion tweets are twooted (I know that’s not a word, but I like the neologism connotation) and one-billion pieces of content are posted on Facebook. Not to mention that 7,000 comments per second are posted on Facebook. That’s a lot of “doing” but most of it is “reactive.” Responding to the thoughts of others, who are probably reacting to the thoughts of others reacting to the thoughts of others.

How much thorough thinking do you think was thought in all that doing?

WEIRD SOUND IDENTIFIED

So, I decided to try it. Think that is. The first thing I noticed was weird. Really weird. It was a strange sound that I later identified as …

SILENCE

It was unnerving. To get past the unnerving weirdness, I decided to do some deep, thorough thinking on a problem I was having with a book I was writing.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. – Edward Gibbon

I quickly arrived at a conclusion. It’s much easier to do a lot of stuff than think. But that wasn’t the solution to the problem I was looking for. So I stopped to think again … and immediately ran into another conundrum. Thinking is hard work. I just couldn’t get started again with that deafening silence distracting me.

So, to help the process I decided to track down one of the nation’s foremost visionaries and leading authorities on thinking and marketing, Joey Reiman, and talk to him about the future of thinking, the business of thinking … or the lack thereof.

SLOW DOWN TO SPEED UP

Joey Reiman is the bestselling author of several books, including Thinking for a Living, Success: The Original Handbook, and The Best Year of Your Life … Make It Happen Now! A world-renowned speaker, he provides listeners with the inspiration and foresight needed to become leaders of the future. Next year, Random House will publish Joey’s latest book, Business at the Speed of Molasses, which promises to speed up the ideas revolution by slowing business down so that it may be more purposeful, passionate and profitable.

Joey Reiman has it nailed. He’s won over 500 creative awards in national and international competitions, including the Cannes Film Festival. Joey also teaches a course on “Ideation” as an adjunct professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

CREATE BIG IDEAS—GET PAID WELL

And … Joey Reiman and his company, BrightHouse, charge between $500,000 and $1,000,000 per idea.

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE

In 1994, Joey Reiman did something most would think unthinkable. He walked into a meeting with his Board of Directors and announced that he was shutting down his award-winning $100 million a year ad agency, to create an ideas company—to think for a living. His only product would be “ideas.”

“The world was ad rich and ideas poor.” – Joey Reiman

Joey Reiman was convinced that the marketing and advertising world had it all wrong. Their business model—built on the primacy of ideas, but only being paid for the execution of those ideas—was flawed. You see advertising and creative agencies get clients by pitching ideas and giving them away for free. They make their money in the execution of volume production, media spots aired, print ads sold, etc. They don’t get paid for where they create value—the idea. They get paid for the execution of those ideas.

A BETTER IDEA

Joey Reiman had a better idea. He shut down the advertising company, walked away from a $100-million-a-year advertising agency and started a new company he named BrightHouse. It’s considered the world’s first Ideation Corporation.

I wanted to talk to Joey not only about “Thinking for a Living” but also about walking away from a successful $100 million-dollar company. Think about that? It took a real conviction, commitment and some serious …

COURAGE

Steve Kayser (SK): What was going through your mind when you shut down your successful advertising company to start a new company selling ideas? That took a lot of guts.

Joey Reiman (JR): I think everyone has a Joseph Campbell moment at some point in their lives. You’re living what would be called an “ordinary existence” or what I would call doing the “day-to-day job,” and you’re somewhere in your career, and out of the blue, you get a call, just like Luke Skywalker got a call. His was a little more dramatic because he leaves his uncle and aunt to go out and save an evil empire; he got a call to go save a princess and the universe. We all get calls to save ourselves, our families, our companies and even save the world in our own way, but we don’t take the call because we’re sort of set in our ways.

We’ve become routinized, codified and structured and live out a fairly dull existence. But we don’t have to. Those of us who do get a call to do something bigger, better … some higher calling—it’s often to leave your job, to leave your career and follow your calling.

SK: Joseph Campbell called it “Follow Your Bliss.”

ANSWERING THE CALL

JR: Yes, he did. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m keen on teaching my students at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School on not going after a job or a career but a calling.

In 1994, after having a meteoric rise in the advertising industry, winning every possible award (over 500 of them), and really gathering all of the stuff that is supposed to make you happy, I recognized that when you got to the top of the mountain, what you find up there was what you brought with you. And those gold statues actually weighed me down on the hike up. Worse … having the gold statues up there really means nothing.

SELLING YOU WHAT YOU DON’T NEED

That’s when I had a “spear in the chest” moment. I recognized that all of the work I was doing on behalf of the advertising agency was really nothing else than selling people what they didn’t need. Then I started thinking about advertising as the grandest, social experiment in civilization that had failed.

SK: Why?

JR: Because we can’t get enough of what we don’t need. If you have any industry that’s a trillion-dollar industry focused on getting people what they don’t need, then to what end or benefit is that?

I thought the advertising industry had the smartest, most creative people on the planet, and I asked myself, can’t we do better? Can marketing move from marketing to seller to marketing to serve as a healer? This concept was very exciting to me.

MASTER IDEAS

I combed through history; I looked throughout civilization for the biggest ideas that served humankind and I found what I call “master ideas.” Ideas like:

We shall overcome

God is law

For better or for worse

All men are created equal

Very big ideas that were not necessarily factual, but that I recognized as truths.

FINDING THE WHY

The hypothesis was:

Can a company—a marketing company—actually look into other companies as we look through civilization, searching for the instructive sparks of fire that actually gave birth to the company, that gave the company a reason for being alive? To find the”why?”

If you found the DNA of the why, that instructive spark of fire, then you could actually rebuild a culture, wrap genuine value around it, be a more purposeful company and have that purpose drive strategy and tactics.

IDEATION

That notion was big enough for me to recognize a space that nobody had ever gone to in marketing. What I called it was from a word I borrowed from the psychiatric community—”ideation.” Now in the medical community, that’s not a very good word. It means to ruminate about suicide. But the second meaning of the word is the thought process—the thinking process. I combined that in with the notion of a marketing company that would call itself an ideation company that would deliver larger ideas for organizations with the hope that those ideas could help improve public life. And not just in the public perception of the brands, but the company whose advertising we’re supporting. To deliver real results for our clients.

BRIGHTHOUSE—THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THINKING

And I thought “that’s pretty grand,” that should be in the executive branch of thinking. That, of course, would be in the White House. The White House turned into our company BrightHouse with the idea that I would attract the very best thinkers from around the globe in service of the globe and the people living on it.

“Ideals are like stars: You will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.” – Carl Schurz

That was the vision to me years ago. Frankly, it was big enough of a vision. It’s kind of you to call it courageous, but the vision was more enlightening than courageous. It just wouldn’t let go of me. In all callings and in all purposes, when they’re given to you, they’re gifts. Once you acknowledge and hear it, it’s hard not to keep hearing it. Actually, it might take more courage to live a life that has not been lived than to fully recognize the power of the life you have inside you to be lived.

With that enlightenment, I put the word out and some exceptionally smart people came in. I fired all of my advertising clients except for Children’s Hospital, which I didn’t think was the right thing to do. That was 15 years ago, and BrightHouse has enjoyed a great journey helping other companies, other leaders, and other marketers hear their call and take their journey.

SK: By that you mean helping them find their bliss? Find their meaning? Viktor Frankl’s book The Search for Meaning spoke to this journey, but I think Joseph Campbell might have had a little better interpretation of it. Campbell said, “People don’t want to search for meaning—they want to experience meaning.”

JR: Yes. It’s a real search for the rapture of life. People are not necessarily searching for the meaning, but like you just mentioned, Joseph Campbell said they’re in search of the experience of meaning in life.

THE PRIVILEGE OF LIFE?

The privilege of a lifetime is to be who we are. In this society, we are not allowed to be who we are. The freedom to be who we are is often taken away from us at work. We are accountable not to our family, but to the company, and we don’t get to define successes in our terms.

Be who you are; it’s a privilege that’s exclusively yours.

So, what the power of purpose and the power of living our story is, autobiographically or with authority (the power of being the author), is that we get to write our own scripts, and that’s a cool place to be. I mean, I really love my work. I help people to make their lives work, and their companies work better than they do.

SK: So many people give into resistance. “‘I will do it some day. I will, I really will.” But then someday never comes. Resistance beats you. You came to a point in your life—a jumping-off point—where you just said you were going to do it. Was that because you were so comfortable already due to previous successes, or because you were so convinced that it was the right thing for you to do personally?

IT TAKES COURAGE TO BE WHO YOU ARE

JR: It was the right thing for me to do personally. I could not have turned my back on it. In that sense, it was the courage to be who you are in the face of adversity which, at that time, everyone in the world was saying to me;

  • You can’t have a company based on ideas.
  • Why would you turn your back on the advertising industry that’s been so good to you?
  • Why would you give up the accolades, financial rewards and the comfort and security of an industry that’s been proven?

I believed marketing and advertising could do better. Since then, I think I’ve proven that it can.

THE THINKING MODEL—THE FOUR I’S

SK: You created a thinking-process framework for BrightHouse by melding the experiences, processes and thoughts of many great thinkers; from Herman von Helmholtz and Csikszentmihalyi (I’ll never say that one on the radio) to Marshall McLuhan to produce your trademark Four I’s thinking methodology.

THE FOUR I’S:

  • Investigate – Gather and analyze quantitative and qualitative data.
  • Incubate – Three or more weeks of thinking, daydreaming.
  • Illuminate – Big ideas don’t appear. They evolve. Look for the flash, the “AHA” spark of a BIG IDEA that will make a dent in the universe.
  • Illustrate – Visually portray and personalize the Big Idea.

How did the Four I’s concept evolve?

JR: I looked through all of the thinking frameworks throughout history. In the Anatomy of Thinking by Herman Von Helmholtz, a Berlin physicist, his framework is designed to suggest that there was an incubation period. He was a 19th-century physicist, so this guy was way-way ahead of his time.

PANDER AND WANDER

When I looked further at the frameworks, especially in American business, there is no narrative time, no incubation time, no pondering or wandering time, so we actually put it into our model.

Albert Einstein was keen on thinking like a child and taking the time to daydream. I think the notion of daydreaming is critical, not only for thinking but critical thinking.

YOU HAVE TO TAKE TIME

To think great thoughts, you have to create them. In order to create an environment for an unconditioned response, you need to schedule time to think, and this sounds like daydreaming to me—space-time or freebie time. That time is when we do our best thinking. It’s where intelligence has thought. The bottom line is that creativity is intelligence having thought. In order to do that, you have to make time.

HERE’S THE FORMULA YOU NEED TO KNOW: 4 I’S > C2

“Four I’s see greater than two eyes. It’s my equation not only for marketing, but living, loving and life.” – Joey Reiman

THE FIVE LAST BASTIONS OF GREAT THINKING ARE?

SK: Most companies would probably look askew at scheduled daydreaming time at work.

JR: Yes. That’s a problem isn’t it. Where to think? I wrote a paper about the last five bastions of great thinking. It’s certainly not the office; it’s the:

  1. Car
  2. John (aka toilet)
  3. Shower
  4. Church
  5. Park

Turn off the noise. Listen to your mind. Get out of your cubic-hell. People who work in cubicles have jobs too small for the spirit, and that’s an American tragedy. They’re really cubic-hells.

“Face it, most of us have jobs too small for our spirits. “- Joey Reiman

SK: And that’s still the model you use, the four “I”s?

JR: It’s the methodology we use in order to identify a company’s purpose. What BrightHouse is known for is helping Fortune 100 companies:

  • Discover and articulate their purpose
  • Tell their story— and by doing so
  • Attract relationships and not necessarily customers

BUYER VS. BUY-IN FOCUSED

That’s very different from typical marketing that is focused on getting people to buy things. We’re focused on one thing, and that’s to buy into—not to buy things but to buy into things.

“You don’t buy an iPod, you buy into the Apple philosophy.”- Joey Reiman

This is all predicated on the notion that human beings crave meaning. If you’re not creating meaning, then why should people seek you out? But if you create meaning in a genuine, moral and ethical sense, then people will not just want to break down your door, they’ll want to live with you. I think this is really the most important thing as marketing moves from product-focused to customer-focused and gets into the power of relationships.

OVERCOMING ADVERSITY

SK: Just a wild guess here, but I think you probably ran into some resistance and adversity when you tried to create BrightHouse. What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome?

JR: I ran into a lot of people that said “No. Won’t work. Who’ll pay for an idea? “

SK: (That’s what I was thinking— boy was I wrong. But then again, refer to the opening cartoon.)

JR: And … “Really , who would pay for an idea? It’s not the way the world works.” That’s when the Coca-Cola Company and Coty Cosmetics stepped forward and tried it. We’ve never looked back. But, even to this day, fifteen years later, I still have to teach people a whole new way of thinking and sell the concept.

Our business is really Thinkonomics, and the work we do at BrightHouse is for visionary leadership. Though I’d like to think that every leader is visionary, you and I both know that’s not the case.

QUARTER CENTURY VS NEXT QUARTER

I search for people who are thinking forward into the next quarter century—not just the next quarter—for their shareholders. I think that stereoscopic vision where you’re focused on both the next quarter and the next quarter century is the kind of leader that hires BrightHouse.

“I paid Joey Reiman $1 million just to think!” – CEO Jim Adamson of the Advantica Restaurant Group

SK: Selling value. Selling the value of an idea. You actually charge $500,000 to $1,000,000 per idea?

JR: Yes. I think if you were to ask any of those CEOs “was it worth it?” they’d say yes. Many have been asked. There is a real sense of great value delivered. And value, in return, should be received for great ideas.

QUESTIONS CAN BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANSWERS

It’s something I feel strongly about and stand for. It’s just like grammar school. You don’t get credit for the answers; you get credit for solving the question. The questions could be a lot more important than the answers. These questions lead you to deeper thinking toward thoughtful solutions. We don’t need quick solutions. A quick solution often doesn’t work. Thinking more deeply, thinking more thoughtfully, thinking more long-term, takes a longer period of time, but it has greater generative effects.

STOP DOING—START THINKING

We need to stop the doing and start thinking.

SK: Yes. Agreed. But it’s a little difficult for some managers and leaders to think you’re working when you’re at your desk thinking. For example, I tried that once.


And the boss caught me deep in thought, which I re-positioned as “I was hard at work.” My reward? A retro-pay adjustment. That belies the flawed notion of seemingly “doing something” means your working.

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway

Was there a point when you were creating BrightHouse and the “Thinking for a Living” concept that you questioned whether you could really pull it off?

JR: I’ve had times at BrightHouse where we took a step backward. I remember working with Delta Airlines and they wanted us to go back to doing their advertising. There was a lot of money on the table—a very lucrative opportunity. I did it, took the money, and it was a big mistake. So yes, I did question myself.

SK: How do you sell ideas? I know you can sell ideas with volume production and execution, but just the idea itself? It sounds to me like the epitome of the definition of a “Complex Sale.”

JR: I couldn’t sell something unless I believed in it—passionately. It’s very similar to consultants. There are two kinds of consultants: the experts and the advisors. The experts I can get in the phonebook. But the advisor is different. In past times, the king would rely on his advisor, not the expert. The advisor was always stacked above everyone else next to the king.

That’s what we sell at BrightHouse. I’m not selling expertise. Those in advertising, they’re experts at communicating. We’re advisors. I do think people will pay for a point of view because anyone can have a point of view.

IMPORTANT

But to have a:

  • Point of view
  • Noble purpose
  • Live that purpose
  • Look at the world through a prism of purpose that magnifies everything

… that people will pay well for … very well; millions of dollars.

SK: What do you look for in a person when BrightHouse hires a thinker?

JR: Well I used to put out a “For Hire” sign, but it was spelled “higher;” the notion being that we were looking for people with a higher form of thinking. Beginning at BrightHouse is pretty hard. There are some interviews, a number of case studies, a number of cases, and I don’t look for anything close until I look into the eyes of the person.

I look for passion because I can teach anyone just about anything, but I can’t teach will. I need will much more than I need skill. If I see will in your eyes, I don’t care what your skills are like; that can be taught. But the will is a gift. That’s what I look for.

“Will is more important than skill. Thinking can be taught. But will is a gift.” – Joey Reiman

SK: Who are some of the luminary thinkers you’ve attracted to BrightHouse?

JR: We’ve created the largest and most distinguished Luminary Network on the planet. We engage these top scholars and expert advisors on all of our projects to provide divergent, unprecedented thinking and insights. It’d be easier if people just went to our website and clicked on “Luminaries” to check them out. But they include:

  • Dr. Philip Kotler, Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management
  • Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth astronaut to walk on the moon and the pilot of Apollo 14
  • Robert Watson, former CEO of the Salvation Army
  • Horst Schulze, founding president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company
  • Dr. Kary Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
  • Dr. Allison Druin, Director of the human-computer interaction lab at the University of Maryland
  • Sam Keen, noted philosopher and author. Bill Moyers profiled him in the 60 Minutes PBS special “Your Mythic Journey.”

Among many others.

SK: Back to thinking for a living. What do you think of a genius-type like Nikola Tesla who got the call to change the world through his inventions? He did change the world but died alone and penniless, mainly because his call didn’t include business smarts. He believed himself to be a “Planter of Seeds,” of great ideas for the benefit of our world. Thomas Edison on the other hand invented for one purpose: to sell a product. If he couldn’t sell it, it wasn’t worth inventing. The businesses he created still exist today, and he died fabulously wealthy.

JR: When so many artists and great inventors get the calling, there is not a checkbook. Larry Barkin said, “Infinite patience produces immediate results.” What he meant by that is that if you have a calling of something great, you need to heed it. Edison beat Tesla in sales. Plain and simple. It was his call. Not Tesla’s. But I think if people follow their dreams, try to live them every day, then their dreams will come true. Those of us who have them every day get to live a better life than those who are living without the dream, which is, I think, a nightmare.

Aspirations are different.

What do you aspire to? Is it money? Will you be happy with money? I don’t think most are. Life isn’t printed or lived on dollar bills even though a lot of people think it is. I know a lot of unhappy rich people. I know more happy people without a lot of money but have great hearts, and the dream in their heart is what sustains them.

I wish for everyone to be a Tesla and not an Edison.

SK: If Tesla were alive today, would it be any different?

JR: Yes. Because he’d be working with BrightHouse. His soulful passion would be nurtured and rewarded.

Passion + Purpose = Profit

###

About Joey Reiman

As founder of BrightHouse, the world’s first Ideation Corporation™, Joey Reiman decided to offer companies a revolutionary way of thinking that promised to change the way they did business forever. Over the past 25 years, Joey has emerged as one of the nation’s foremost visionaries and leading authorities on thinking and marketing. He is the bestselling author of several books, including Thinking for a Living, Success: The Original Handbook, and The Best Year of Your Life … Make It Happen Now! A world-renowned speaker, he provides listeners with the inspiration and foresight needed to become leaders of the future.

Contact:

[email protected] Atlanta 790 Marietta Street P: 404-240-2500 Atlanta, GA 30318 F: 404-240-2501

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Storytelling Story-Selling Super Sources

Storytelling Story-Selling Super Sources

By Steve Kayser

Storytelling story-selling content is the new advertising, marketing & PR.

It’s a harsh new reality all businesses and employees have to face. You can still shell out tons of dough for advertising, marketing and PR campaigns and get retro-returns on your dollar, or you can do what people resonate with – story-selling by storytelling.

SERIOUSLY …  NO STORY?

Have you ever heard this?

“We have great products with amazing features – but no story.

We rock. We smoke. We’re the greatest. Features, functions, speeds and feeds. That’s us. Rock on Dude and Dudettes!

But no story.

NO STORY –  NO GAME

You got no story. You got no game. You got no game – you got no business. (One of the best things about publishing your own stuff is you can riff horridly constructed anti-prose with non-grammatical grammar and get away with it.)

P4=PROBLEM-PATH-PAYOFF-PROFIT

Whatever business you’re in you have a story. If it’s a good story it informs, educates, entertains and helps people down a path to find a solution to the problem they have.

The trip down the path is your story.

Your story is littered with adversity, obstacles, problems, helpy-helpers, wise sages, pitfalls and pratfalls (always emphasize your own pratfalls; it’s an endearing quality – exposing yourself to ridicule and humiliation. Makes you human. Authentic. If you don’t win the business you still might make some new friends.) and eventually, when you get to the end of the path, you will successfully solve their problem and deliver a solution. That solution is their payoff, and your profit.

PRINT & DISTRIBUTE YOUR OWN CURRENCY … LEGALLY

Well, not so much print – but create. Print is so Gutenberg. The truth is that your business success, whatever business you’re in, hinges on your ability to create remarkable content. Remarkable problem-solving stories. But no matter how great or remarkable your story may be, it still has to be discovered or found first.

CHUNKS AND CHUNKS OF CONTENT CHUNKS

I’m throwing out another formula here.

1-10-1 (soon to, in a parallel universe, be inversely parallel to E=Mc2 famous-osity)

What the “H” does that mean? Pretty simple actually. No matter how great your story, your product, your Grandma’s peanut-butter jalapeno sardine & anchovy cupcakes are, people have to discover it before it receives rightful recognition. To do that you have to EARN the readers attention. And that’s hard now. There are over 1.5 trillion URLS being searched every day by Google and over one million new blog posts published every day. Content speeds by at supraluminal (yes, it’s a real word) speed. So, an Einsteinian luminosity of equational (probably not a real word) simplicity is called for. A new light-bending equation of content creation …

1-10-1

1 Second:

Your title or subject line must capture the reader’s attention in one second to EARN the right to …

10 Seconds 

… more of their time. In that 10 seconds, you have to intrigue, pique or totally discombobulate the reader into believing you are trying to share helpful, unique, specific information. If you do that you EARN the right to …

1 Minute

… of their precious mind-time. In that minute you have to share ideas, information, insights and information that might make a real difference in their life of business or business of life. If you do that you’re on the right path … the  P4 path. (that alliteration isn’t  path-etic is it?)

Think chunks of content. Easy-to-read,  easy-to-digest chunks of content … like Grandma’s peanut-butter jalapeno sardine & anchovy cupcakes. One second chunks. Ten second chunks. One minute chunks. Now, for more good stuff ahead.

DEATH, DESTRUCTION & A GOOD BOILING IN OIL

Now, here’s the part where I try to share information that will make a difference for you – no matter what business you’re in. When you start creating your own currency of content it can, inadvertently lead to a …

DEATH SENTENCE

If your company doesn’t have the ability to create and publish helpful, unique content, it won’t survive long. It’s a punishing reality. Losers get the death penalty. People are searching for answers to their problems, which your company may have the answer for, and people are willing to pay for won’t find you. The only way to fight that is to kill all…

DEATH SENTENCES

Corporate gobbledygook. Using “words drained of all meaning,” ( I heard Steve Wynn use that in a speech once – I cribbed it from him). Absolutus vomitus eruptus words … like seamlessly integrated, world’s leading provider, etc. For an in-depth list of torridly horrid, fatuously flatulent, superbly superfluous corporate gobbledygook check out my Bio.  I think I used all of them.

DESTRUCT AND DESTROY!

The kind of communications (written or spoken) that you’d rather be boiled in oil or burned alive before having to read, listen to or try to comprehend. Wherever possible, weed out as much dreck and anesthetic corporate gobbledygook as you can. Some will always slip by, like an invisible virus to infect your site. But do your best to fight the good fight.

HELP ME OUT?

It takes discipline, rigorous creativity (yes I said rigorous creativity) and is a demanding job to consistently create, write and publish quality content. I don’t care who you are. Write and re-write. Cut, destroy, destruct, boil in oil. I’m not particularly good at it. But I’ve written with, interviewed and know many that are.

FROM ANOTHER PLANET?

The list below is where I’d start if I were new, struggling, a grizzled veteran or had recently arrived from another planet and was trying to create my own storytelling story-selling currency. They’re the …

BEST OF THE BEST STORYTELLING STORY-SELLING SOURCES 

1. War of Art – by Steven Pressfield – (@spressfield on Twitter)

Read the book. Absorb it. Do it. Keep it by your side. Travel with it. It’s the Bible of attitude, style and grace – in writing and life. A true classic. Like the man himself. And check out“The Power of Resistance: Lessons Learned from Bestselling Author Pressfield,” to get a snapshot of what I’m talking about. Steven’s definition of “Resistance” with an “R” plays a big and attributed role in my next pick which is …..

2. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? – by Seth Godin (@thisissethsblog on Twitter)

Seth’s a bestselling author for a reason. Simplicity and clarity are hallmarks of his writing style. Great thinking is his art. I’ve read all his books. I’ve been waiting for him to write the “Purple Donkey” book, but I guess he hasn’t got around to it yet. When he does it’ll be his “Tour de Force.” Anyway, his book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable,” is the new employment reality. If you’re not a Linchpin person with a Linchpin mindset – you’re either unemployed or about to be. The “report to work and just be present to watch the clock” mentality is no longer the world we live in. You have to be remarkable. In any job you do.

3. The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, – by  David Meerman Scott  (@dmscott on Twitter)

Steven Pressfield & Seth Godin pave the path of attitude, gratitude, and force of spirit. David Meerman Scott walks down that path paving it with real-world case studies and examples of how to turn content into cash. This book is in its second edition and was a BusinessWeek bestseller for six months. I pull it out regularly, just to see where I screwed up.

4.  STORY – by Robert McKee

Why this book? Why Robert McKee? Well, he wrote the book on STORY … didn’t he? But it’s a book about screenwriting Steve? No, it’s about STORY. The eloquence, elegance and love of STORY. It’s timely – always. And timeless. For a quick-look read check out “A Simple Timeless Tale: Lessons Learned from Legendary Hollywood Guru Robert McKee.”

5. The Copywriter’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells – by Bob Bly

Sure Bob has a great testimonial from David Ogilvy,

“I don’t know a single writer whose work would not be improved by reading this book – including me,”

…but that’s not why this book is a must-have. Bob nails the formulas that help stretch and refresh your mind. He gets it. Writes simple. Sells big. And it’s all about work and process with him. I particularly like his 4 “U’s” for titles. All titles should be Useful, Unique, Urgent, and Ultra-specific. And his “38 Great Ideas for Your Next Headline,” is something you can pull out anytime your having a mental block. But let me share one really intriguing little-known fact about Bob. He has a flair for eclectic, high-value, high-fashion hat wear.

6. Reality Check – by Guy Kawasaki

The back cover of this book should be required reading for authors, writers, marketers, PR professionals and anyone that wants to understand how to draw people into your story with well–written, eloquent simplicity. Pick up the book and read the interview “A REAL Business REALITY CHECK with Bestselling Author Guy Kawasaki.”

Now  … fight the good fight. Explore the path.

Write.  Do it right.

Or try best you can.

There …  I’m done.

###

“Joy” image courtesy of H.Kopp Delaney from Germany. He’s awesome.

 

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What Does “Making a Difference” Really Mean… to You?

What Does “Making a Difference” Really Mean… to You?

Through the trials and travails of life, we rarely stop to think of what we are doing or have done that makes a difference. A real difference.  Something that makes the world a little bit better in any way – no matter how small.

Something that leaves our slice of a fleeting, vaporous life better than before our first baby breath.  We’re so enmeshed in doing, doing and more doing, that we lose sight of creating meaning– usually until it’s too late.

But what does a real difference mean? Many times it bares no resemblance to what we might have thought at the time. Or others think. 

This is one such story.

The Great Divide Beckons

The old man sat down to write. His time was short, and he knew it. The Great Divide beckoned. He thought back through the events of his life.

An Amazing Life

From any perspective, it was a life of turbulence, war, love, grief, joy, industry and 50 years of public service. He’d been a writer, horticulturist, lawyer, philosopher, architect, political leader and revolutionary – an amazing life.

For the Ages

Many world-altering moments and events which he’d been involved would be inked into the history books for the ages—but not into this document.

So Simple – So Hard

He began to write. Short. Concise. His criterion was simple. How had he made the world a better place? And his words had to be worthy of being inscribed in granite.

Have you ever tried that? Sat down and recount what you have done to make this world a better place?  I did. And I sucked. 

Just Two Things

When the old man was finished, he realized that there were only two things: He was an author and a father. He put the pen down. He was done. Those things had made the world a better place. He left explicit instructions of how and where to display the document.

On the face of the Obelisk the following inscription, & not a word more – because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.

“HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON, AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.”

What was remarkable was what he left off … that he had been the third President of the United States and served two terms. Thomas Jefferson wrote his own epitaph.

What About You?

What would you write for your epitaph if you had to do it right now? Testimonials that you have lived? How have you made the world a better place? What’s your difference?

Shooting Blanks

I tried it. It’s a humbling exercise. My computer screen is still blank.

How do you know if  your mission in life is finished?

If you’re still alive, it isn’t. – Richard Bach

I guess there’s still time to start.

###

Flickr photo courtesy of H. Kopp Delaney  under a  Creative Commons License

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STORY: A Simple Timeless Tale Lessons Learned from Hollywood STORY Guru Robert McKee

STORY: A Simple Timeless Tale
Lessons Learned from Hollywood STORY Guru Robert McKee

I’ve had the good fortune to interview and work with many great storytellers over the last few years. What follows is a series of articles with hard-earned and learned lessons from some exceptional writers, storytellers, and teachers.  One of those people was Robert McKee, the best-selling author of “STORY” and legendary guru of Hollywood storytelling, several years ago. The premise of the interview was simple – can the principles of his classic book “STORY” be used in the complex sales process?

SIMPLE CAN BE TIMELESS

Though the premise was simple, the lessons learned were timeless – and can be used in your life of business or the business of life.

WHO IS ROBERT MCKEE?

Robert McKee is the most widely known and respected screenwriting lecturer in the world today. His STORY Seminar has been taught to over 50,000 screenwriters, filmmakers, TV writers, novelists, industry executives, actors, producers, directors, and playwrights.

Teaching is easy. Results are hard.  Robert McKee’s STORY and the stories delivered by his students have garnered;

  • 32 Academy Awards – 106+ Nominations
  • 168 Emmy Awards – 500+ Nominations
  • 21 WGA Awards – 77+ Nominations
  • 17 DGA Awards – 48+ Nominations

His former students’ accomplishments are unparalleled. Stories written, directed, or produced by students of Robert McKee include:

“Iron Man,” “Angels & Demons,” “WALL•E,” “Lord of the Rings I, II, III,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Desperate Housewives”, “CSI, Law & Order,” “Cinderella Man”, “Gates of Fire” (novel), “The Daily Show,” Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Simpsons Movie,” “The DaVinci Code,” “Cars”,” Shrek.” “X-Men 3,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Ratatouille”,”Finding Nemo,” “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” “The Last Mimzy,” “Bobby,” “Quantum of Solace,” “The Color Purple,” “Crimson Tide,” “The Deer Hunter,” “The Elephant Man,” “ER,” “Forrest Gump,” “Gandhi,” “M*A*S*H,” “On Golden Pond,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “The X-Files,” “A Time to Kill,” “Toy Story I and II,” and more.

Robert McKee knows STORY. He wrote the book.

INTERVIEW

Steve (S): How can the principles of Story work in the Complex-Sales presentation? How can it be used to resonate and touch disparate groups with different agendas, goals, and prejudices, while at the same time, connecting the intellect – making good economic business sense?

R: First, why is it so complex?

S: Good question … the complexity of the products and services and the buying committees have forced salespeople to communicate with a lot of different types and groups of people – users, business types, programmers, etc. To accomplish this, it usually turns into a 58-slide PowerPoint presentation laden with meaningless corporate acronyms to address every aspect of the individual’s wants/needs on the buyer’s committee … too much info.

And, the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of products and services that can solve their problems. There’s not a lot of difference. The key should be the sales presentation … effectively communicating simply the economic business value and connecting on an emotional level with the people.

R: You know, I’ve been in situations where writers are pitching their stories, right? They’re trying to sell their screenplay. Most executives are so busy that they would rather have the writer come in and pitch the story in 10 minutes before they decide whether they want to spend two or three hours reading it. So the pitch has to go well. I’ve seen writers come in and they’re charming, they’re funny, they do this brilliant song and dance about their story that they have obviously rehearsed and polished and then tell their story virtually tap dancing on your desk. And I have also had writers come in that were not very good. Not good! They were scared to death. They were very shy. They weren’t comfortable around people. They couch and choke their story out and … you know it’s brilliant.

S: But, how, or why, do you know the story is brilliant?

R: Because you listen to the story and no matter how badly the guy performs it, you go “that’s a great story.” You’re fascinated by the sudden story surprises and revelations – although the delivery may not be there.

LESSON LEARNED ONE: SMOOTH AND SLICK DON’T ALWAYS STICK

There’s hope for us less-than-smooth-and-slick storytellers and presenters. Great story rules. But you still need to work on your delivery.

S: What about the charming, funny guy?

R: Mr. Charm? You listen to his story and you know he’d better be charming because his story is a piece of crap if you actually listen to what’s being said. In the great play and the film Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman talked about always having a shine on your shoes and a smile on your face … but he’s a terrible salesman and his family is starving.

LESSON LEARNED TWO:

If you’re out to describe the truth – leave elegance to the tailor. – Albert Einstein

R: But I do know, presuming that the people you’re trying to persuade are intelligent and are actually listening and not being influenced by the charm of the speaker, that there’s a powerful, compelling way to present effectively. Story.

S: Story? Can you explain what you mean when you say that? How would you incorporate Story principles into the Complex-Sales presentation?

R: There are two choices or methods of presentation. Rhetoric or Story. It’s all about persuasion, right? You’re trying to persuade someone to buy something. Or in the Complex-Sales setting, you’re trying to persuade some people at various levels involved in the hierarchy of some organization. Rhetoric is the PowerPoint method where you present evidence in a particular order … or what is known as an inductive argument, right?

S: The difference?

R: Rhetoric is statistics, facts, quotes from authorities, etc. Rhetoric recites this point, this fact, this industry-analyst quote, and then another point, ad infinitum, so, therefore, mine is the best, the greatest, the one, the only, product and service that can do what you need.

S: Yes … so what’s wrong with that?

R: They know you’re lying! You lie in a rhetorical PowerPoint presentation by presenting the information in the most favorable light possible. The buyer knows you’re lying because the buyer is a businessperson who knows that nothing is that rosy. You quote your industry analysts – they’ll refute your industry analysts with theirs.

LESSON LEARNED THREE:

“I didn’t fib! I made a fable, like Aesop and those other guys.” – Dennis the Menace (noted philosopher I quote often)

Don’t lie … fabricate a fabulous fable.

R: Why expose your weaknesses? Why not conceal it? Because if you only give the positive side, they instinctively know you’re lying. Because why? Again, nothing is that good. The deep difference between presenting something rhetorically and creating it in a story… is that in a story, it is a dynamic of positive and negative charges.

S: Example?

R: You start up a business and immediately you’ve got problems. You overcome those problems and take a step forward, but new problems arise. You find ingenious ways to solve those problems only to discover that you have a competitor who’s got another product that does it better. You improve your product to be better than your competitor. It goes on. So when you tell a story, you can’t just hit positive, positive, positive.

In Story, you cannot hide the negative. It’s overcoming the negative that makes you powerful. It makes the positive even more positive in the eyes of the person whose hearing the story. Therefore, when you tell a story, admit problems and then dramatize the solution of those problems. Then cause new problems to arise. Dramatize the solution of those problems until you finally get to that positive climax. Because you’re admitting your negatives in front of them, it takes a lot of guts.

LESSON LEARNED FOUR:

Admit the negative. Overcome. Give yourself the power.

R: They sit there saying: “That’s right. That’s true. That’s what it’s like to be in a business environment. It’s not all positive. But this person is showing me how his product or his service will overcome those problems and how I will benefit.” As a result, they feel that they’re being told the truth.

S: But couldn’t you be lying anyway?

R: Yes, you can lie in a story just as well. But when you tell stories, if you lie, the lies become evident quickly because of the interweaving of story and fact. When you tell it in PowerPoint, they know you’re lying. They just don’t know where. There’s a more important lesson here. You realize, well, that’s a lie! That’s crap. I wouldn’t buy that.

LESSONS LEARNED FIVE:

“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde

R: Preparing to tell your business case in a story forces you to confront the lie and search for the truth. You will catch yourself as you prepare for the presentation sloughing over certain problematic things. If you’ve got guts, you won’t slough over them. You will admit them.

S: Why? (Am I the master of the one-word question or what?)

R: Because then you will show how even these challenging problems are overcome. When you tell your story honestly, and you don’t hide the negative, you tell it well. People sit there with their mouths open going, “my God, what guts.” Put them in the position to see how the negative is overcome. You’ll gain their trust. And, you will have also impressed the heck out of them because you’re an honest human being who knows the reality. A person who deals in reality, but has honestly dramatized the way in which these problems, that we all, as business people, know exist.

LESSON LEARNED SIX:

Impress them with your honesty. Expose the negatives. Gain their trust.

S: In STORY, you say Paddy Chayefsky told you once that when he’d discovered his story’s meaning, he’d scratch it out on a scrap of paper and tape it to his typewriter so that nothing going through his typewriter would in one way or another express his central theme. A clear statement of Value and Cause. That seems like a logical first step in any story.

LESSON LEARNED SEVEN:

Discover your story’s meaning. Make it your clear statement of Value and Cause.

R: Yes. From there you’d take that same rhetorical presentation and dramatize it. Within the story there is rhetoric, there is information. The facts get woven into the story. Weave the information dramatically within a story. Leave them hanging. If you tell them a story that’s predictable, they’ll get ahead of you and lose interest. Tell a story that pits expectations vs. realities, and the struggles to overcome them. I believe great salespeople are by instinct, storytellers.

LESSON LEARNED EIGHT:

Pit expectations vs. realities. Tell the struggle to overcome. Leave them hanging.

S: And the foundation of a good storytelling Complex-Sales presentation is?

R: Research. The key to winning the war is research, taking time and effort to acquire knowledge. Understanding their problems …

S: Is that what you mean when you describe it as “storytelling from the inside out?”

R: Yes. You want them empathizing; you want them saying, “my God he’s telling my story. That’s me.” It’s got to be very personal for them.

LESSON LEARNED NINE:

Understand THEIR problems. Make it personal to them.

S: Could you talk a little about “The Principle of Creative Limitation?”

R: It’s exactly the subject we’re talking about. The PowerPoint presentation is easy, that’s why people do it. Creative limitation means instead of doing something the easy way; you do it the hard way. You take a method that is much more difficult to accomplish. As a result of your struggle as a salesman to accomplish the presentation in the form of a story, you are forcing yourself to be creative. The more difficult you make it for yourself, the more brilliant the solutions you will have to come up with, or you fail. And when you come up with brilliant creative solutions to the presentation, the results for the people, for the audience, are stunning.

LESSON LEARNED TEN:

Make it hard. Force yourself to be creative. It will stun your audience.

R: The principle of creative limitation forces you to do it the hard way. Story is more difficult than PowerPoint there is no question. You have to have a real talent for this, and you have to do it well, or you will look like a fool. That is why people avoid it because they don’t have the talent, they don’t do the research. They don’t know, they don’t know how to present it in a living way it’s difficult.

Why is whistling not a Beethoven symphony? Because whistling is easy. A Beethoven symphony is hard. But when you take on the challenge of writing a symphony, the creative solutions are amazing, overwhelming. Whistling is something you can do on the street.

The more difficult the technique, the more brilliant the solution. Another analogy … golf is more difficult than ping-pong. It’s not that ping-pong isn’t good, it’s a lot of fun and at the highest levels, it’s wonderful. But ping-pongers are not Tiger Woods, why? Because the golf swing is infinitely more difficult than hitting a ping-pong ball. Touch football is not tackle.

When you make things easy, the results are boring. When you make things difficult the creative solutions, the concentration, the practice, and the work that has to go into it, forces you to be creative. The results are all the more stunning. PowerPoints, of course, are the natural choice because people do not want to work and they don’t want to fail. And so they take what is easy and they think it will be successful. And then, they don’t get the sales.

LESSON LEARNED ELEVEN:

Challenge yourself.  Do you want to be a whistler … or a Beethoven?

R: And so, when they fail, they blame the product, they blame the buyer for whatever reasons they rationalize they’re crazy.

S: In your book, you talk about the “GAP” … what is it, and could this be an effective tool in a Complex-Sales presentation?

R: The world does not react the way you thought it would react. The GAP is between expectation and reality. What do you do? You’ve got to gather yourself and find another solution. When the gap opens up in life, it’s because the negative side of life that you could not anticipate suddenly erupted in the face of your action. Every day you walk into an office expecting cooperation and then one day you get antagonism. The deep difference between Story and PowerPoint is that Story admits to the negative. Admits to the fact that life does not react the way you expect and that is a fundamental difference. The gap is the essence of overcoming the chasm between expectations and reality. PowerPoints, pretend that gaps don’t exist. PowerPoints, pretend that the world will react exactly the way you predict.

But what guides you, of course, is that you’re ultimately trying to leave with the buyer one, clear, simple idea you want them to all understand. Not just understand intellectually, but also understand emotionally by the time you’re done.

LESSON LEARNED TWELVE:

A good story connects one simple idea – intellectually and emotionally. It exposes, then overcomes the chasm between expectation and reality.

S: In your book, you said from the ’20s to the ’50s storytelling was common knowledge. Now it’s a lost art. Is Story really a lost art or is it just not being taught anymore?

R: We went through a terrible cycle of very, very bad education of the writer. Education of the writer/storyteller was turned inside out from the ’60s on, but now finally, the light is dawning on people and they see that there’s a difference. The fundamental difference is between criticism and creativity. What’s been taught to writers for the last 40 years was not creativity but criticism. The methods of speech and literature and writing at universities may have been extremely valuable to people who want to be critics, but useless to the writer/storyteller, and in fact, detrimental to the writer.

END OF INTERVIEW

For more information on STORY and the art of storytelling, visit Robert McKee website.

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