Before today, you might have not realized the importance of storytelling. How can storytelling relate to building wealth and leadership skills? Today, WTR discusses the importance of storytelling with Paul Smith, an author and speaker who has an expertise in storytelling. This podcast will uncover the steps that are necessary to help engage your audience while you are communicating your story, along with the most important stories that any leader needs to be able to tell.

Ingenious tactics to accumulate wealth, for people who see things differently.

Paul Smith

Website: http://www.leadwithastory.com

Website 2: http://www.kennytedford.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeadWithAStory/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeadWithAStory

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LeadwithaStory

NOTES:

• [00:25] Kevin: Today, we're joined by guest Paul Smith, whose expertise is storytelling. Specifically, storytelling that has to do with you in your life and your profession and relationships. Stories are great ways to convey ideas and get messages across clearly to people in ways that people can relate to you and understand you
• [01:38] If you wouldn't mind, could you tell our listeners a little bit about where you came from and what inspired you to do what you do today?
• [01:57] Paul: I studied economics in undergrad, got an MBA, and spend a couple of years as a consultant. But along the way, I just got fascinated with this concept of storytelling and I just recognized that the leaders that I admired the most were really good at it[2:36] I set out to learn about it myself by interviewing a bunch of leaders (about 300) and this has allowed me to reverse engineer my way into what works and what doesn't with storytelling (this lead to books I've written)
• [02:57] I research and write about storytelling at home and at work and I spend my time teaching people how to do that
• [03:20] Kevin: Let's go into the storytelling part of this and why storytelling? What's really in it? What is it do for our listeners and why should they care about this?
• [03:30] Paul: There are a lot of reasons, but the most important to me are:[03:34] Human being don't make the rational, logical decisions that we'd like to think that we do[03:43] Human beings often times make subconscious, emotional decisions in one place in their brain, and they rationalize those decisions a few nanoseconds later in a more conscious, rational thinking part of the brain

1. [04:18] Storytelling allows you to talk to both parts of the brain and you need both. So if you want to influence what people think, feel, and do (leadership), you need to speak to both parts of the brain
2. [04:38] Stories are a lot more memorable and people tend to remember what you say more

• [05:13] Kevin: I remember some expert said that the brain thinks in pictures, and when you tell a story, a person gets a picture of what's happening in their mind and maybe that's one of the reasons why it sticks with people
• [05:39] Paul: When you're just telling people what to do or what to think or just bossing them around, there's no movie to watch in their mind's eye
• [05:52] Kevin: