If one of the items on your To Do List is, “Consolidate To Do Lists”, you may be avoiding something.

We all like to start the new year off on the right foot. Some people make resolutions. Some finally address their “pile of denial” and clean it up. Others paint the living room. And others empty their email inbox.

To help people get a fresh perspective and an energetic start to 2012, I am teaching my popular “Make an Impression” elevator pitch workshop twice this month, and then following those up with “Business Storytelling for Fun and Profit”.

Make An Impression

The first workshop – Make an Impression – is focused on developing your introduction. Whether you are at a dinner party, a networking event, or meeting a potential client for the first time, it is important to have a good introduction. Business owners, salespeople, job seekers, artists, teachers… no matter who you are, making a good first impression is critically important.

At some point some clever person started calling this initial introduction an “elevator pitch” because your intro should be short enough to engage the other person in the duration of an elevator ride: say, 30 to 60 seconds.

In this workshop I teach you several tricks and tips to help structure your elevator pitch, and then we spend the rest of the time practicing / refining / tweaking until it really embodies YOU.

The coolest part of a great elevator pitch is that it is easily memorable. So when you meet someone and tell them you are a “business storyteller” for example, they can easily remember your pitch and refer other people to you. And we all know referrals are the best leads we can have in our businesses!

But an elevator pitch is a short, quick, memorable introduction. What happens when you see someone you already know? Or how do you write a great blog post? Or how do you craft a great client story into something that people want to spread virally?

Business Storytelling for Fun and Profit

That’s the focus of my second workshop, Business Storytelling for Fun and Profit.

This is a much more intense workshop where we use the raw facts from one of your stories, and weave it into a compelling and engaging story that will make people want to do business with you.

You will learn the techniques necessary to do this on your own through practicing with a key story from your business. Those techniques you can then take away to improve your social media interactions, blog posts, article writing, and greatly improve your videos as well!

Nobody Leaves Unchanged

I have taught these workshops to literally hundreds of people, and one of the most amazing parts for me is seeing the boiling power and bubbling enthusiasm people have when they leave the room. If you are in a flat spot in your business, if you are unsure about what you should be doing or focusing on, or if you just need a shot in the arm in the dark of winter, take either one of these classes. You will come out transformed and feeling powerful about who you are and what you are supposed to be doing right now.

Three Consecutive Mondays in January

Due to the popularity of the Make an Impression workshop, I will be teaching it twice on consecutive Mondays (Jan 16th and 23rd), and then the advanced Business Storytelling for Fun and Profit workshop on January 30th, the last Monday of the month.

I personally see the MAI class as a precursor to the Storytelling class, but that is not a requirement. Feel free to sign up for either one or both, by RSVPing to the Facebook event, or sending me an email at Christian@BoombaChicken.com.

Make An Impression
January 16th – 7:30-9:00 PM – $15
January 23rd – 7:30-9:00 PM – $15

Business Storytelling for Fun and Profit
January 30th – 7:00-9:00 PM – $20

The Fine Print

• All workshops will be held at the Georgetown Arts and Cultural Center in Seattle, WA (in the vintage ballroom above Stellar Pizza in the Georgetown neighborhood)
• There is ample off-street parking available.
• Payment can me made any time before the workshop, cash, check, and credit cards accepted. (If you would like to pay the day of the workshop, please let me know and show up 15 minutes early.)
• Class sizes are limited to 12 people for the Make an Impression workshop, and 10 for Business Storytelling. Please reserve your space ahead of time, so I can be sure we have room for you.
• If you need to cancel, please let me know ASAP so I can give someone on the waiting list your space.
• Light snacks, tea, and water will be provided. The facility does have a full kitchen as well.
• Please bring something to write with and something to write on. You will be taking notes. (Digital note-taking devices – iPads, smartphones, etc – are welcome.)
• Thank You for reading this and adhering to these simple rules!

I look forward to seeing you there!

To anyone with eyeballs in their head, the music industry is doing it wrong. It doesn’t matter what part of the industry you look at – new artists, radio, music sales, video, distribution, marketing, etc – there is no aspect of the music industry that actually works.

And I thank them for that!

All the factors are there: Pervasive networks (audio, video, and online), a product that irrationally affects people’s hearts, a constant stream of new and old content, and a demographic map that spans literally every single person on the planet.

But in all regards, the music industry fails.

Watching those failures is a very educational way to avoid doing it wrong. No matter what business you are in, there is a Bad Example from somewhere in the music industry.

And the guy dissecting the zombified body of the music industry is Bob Lefsetz of the Lefsetz Letter.

The best part about reading Bob’s posts is that he illuminates the people who are Doing It Right, and then goes into the details of why their method works. For example, his post about Louis C.K.’s new concert video is full of gems.

And that is my two-fold Christmas gift to you: The Lefsetz Letter and Louis CK, “Live at the Beacon Theater“. I hope they both entertain and enlighten you.

Right now I am under a tight deadline for a really cool client with a really groovy product. And my head is empty. The inspiration that I got last night was gone upon waking. The usual reinvigorators – walking the dog, getting a coffee, making a social call – have not proved fruitful. My muse refuses to darken my door.

I think of ancient sailing ships, sitting unmoving in the middle of the still Pacific Ocean, sun bearing down on them, sails hanging limply without a breath of wind to stir them…

Becalmed.

There are a variety of techniques people use to get the juices flowing again, and one of the techniques I enjoy the most is free writing.

I simply open my favorite text editor (Writer by iA) and start writing words. Any words. Just write that I am typing words and I don’t know why and what the heck I am gonna be all ee cummings and not use any punctuation at all and simply write in a stream of consciousness that will drain the blockage from the tubes in my head and allow ideas to flow freely like a mighty river…

You get the idea.

I was about to do exactly that when the word “becalmed” occurred to me. The urgent listlessness one feels when becalmed is intriguing. I imagine a “Pirates of the Caribbean” style pirate after being becalmed for a week, leaning on the railing, head hanging over the side, watching the still waters. He lives and thrives on the sea because he likes the action, the travel, the movement from place to place. But here he sits, utterly trapped, unable to move due to forces that are simply beyond his control.

Then the word split in two, right in front of my eyes, and became Be Calmed.

It sounded like an order. The imperative.

BE CALMED.

Grasping for ideas, for inspiration, for the perfect tag line for this client, is not just unproductive. It is pushing me further from achieving a productive working state.

Until I calm myself, move past the state of anxiety that I am in, I can’t be productive. It’s like that sailor trying to fill his lungs with air and blow into the sails of his ship… he’ll eventually fall over and pass out from making himself light-headed. And even after all that effort, his ship will not have moved an inch.

Knowing that I am becalmed, I will now move on to something else (probably laundry) after resetting the client’s expectations with an honest email.

That’s a good way to start.

Now to pray for wind…

On November 12th I had the top of my head opened and magical fairy dust sprinkled inside.

Yes, I went to my first TED event!

TED-ward Bound

If you unfamiliar with the Technology, Education, and Design events – TED for short – they started as a day-long series of talks on a wide range of subjects by the most fascinating people in each discipline. Physicians talked of amazing breakthroughs in understanding the body; technologists demonstrated prototypes of spellbinding new technologies; and artists, musicians, comedians, magicians, and other performers used their skills to tell a wide range of stories.

The audience was an invite-only group of the best, brightest, and powerful. They attended the event, learned things, made connections, and left the event inspired to do great things.

TEDxRainier

The model of TED proved so successful that the organizers allowed people to start local TED events, and called them TEDx. These have become a bit like the semi-finals in pro sports. The best and brightest of the local TEDx events are sometimes invited to present at what is commonly known as “The Big TED”, which happens once a year in Long Beach, California.

TEDxRainier was the TEDx event in Seattle this year, held on November 12th at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. (Videos from the event should be up on the site after December 1, 2011. I’m in the front row, left of center, wearing the hat and vest!)

The speakers this year ranged from innovators to philanthropists, from technology geeks to religious leaders, from musicians to photographers, and from a fledgling auto manufacturer to a librarian. And pretty much everything in between, too.

Being an “x” event, all the presentations did not match the quality of the Big TED, but there was still plenty of fairy dust sprinkled on my brain by the 27 different presentations.

The Importance of Story Telling

The essence of any TED event is exquisite story telling. If you watch a few of the TED talks online you will notice a pattern to how the stories are presented, how the presenter speaks, the simple body motions, etc. The majority of these people – if not natural story tellers to begin with – have developed their ability with time and practice.

The reason why so many of the presentations – regardless of topic – are so good, is because of the story telling. The fascinating tapestry being woven together from numerous interesting threads.

It has been my dream to one day give a talk at TED. And being there on November 12th I saw some amazing presentations and some amazingly bad ones as well. But even the “bad” ones were only “bad” in the rarefied air of TED. Any of these presentations would have blown away the typical conference or tradeshow presentation.

Watch and Learn

To see the brilliance of good story telling and to learn what makes a good story, watch TED talks. Here are a couple to get you started:

Majora Carter – Greening The Ghetto

Jill Bolte-Taylor – Stroke of Insight

As Steve Jobs so eloquently put it, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

My friend Cannonball and I had a long and fascinating talk about story telling the other night. She has caught the story telling bug via exposure to the art at open mic nights, and in a new community she has recently joined. After posting a comment about how she is going to pursue this “story telling impulse”, I immediately invited her out to dinner.

Maybe even more than story telling itself, I love the process of crafting stories and all the thinking that goes in to them.

So we met at a local Irish pub that has good cider on tap, and got into a deep discussion about the craft of story telling.

Somewhere along the line we unearthed some interesting thoughts we shared about stories and the act of telling them. Actors memorize and read a prepared script. In the case of Shakespeare the words you say are critically important to the structure of the phrasing itself. Shakespeare without iambic pentameter is just wrong!

But story telling, on the other hand, is not about remembering a pre-written script. A good story is crafted on the spot from a little leather bag full of facts or elements. Each time the story teller embarks on a story, it is a new story. Even if the facts are the same, the story may be a different shape this time.

Guiding the Story

This is the art and craft of story telling, and one of the things that I loved so much about being a tour guide. The stories I told were all created from a batch of facts. I would find a good way to tell the story, and tell it that way for a while. But eventually it would feel stale, or some part of the story that I thought was just a detail would emerge to be a more significant fact.

Eventually I got good enough that I would intentionally mess with myself to see if I can dig my way out of the hole I had created! I would play with the stories and see how good of a story teller I could be. For example, I would take the big revelation – the big astounding fact at the end that made the story amazing – and would start the story there! Then I would have to re-craft the story, on the spot, so it would still work for the audience. (And – with rare exceptions – it worked.)

This also provided the audience with a great experience because they were hearing the story fresh, and I was clearly excited about what I was telling them. So they would get more involved with it, too.

If I told the same story for too long, it became obvious that the story had become rote to me, and I wasn’t putting any fire into it.

But playing these games with myself I honed my story telling skills, and also gave the audience a good show.

The Venn Diagram

In my head I see a Venn Diagram that has three intersecting circles: Acting, Improv, and Story Telling. Each of these are a performance. Each involve a core set of facts or keystone ideas. But while acting is memorization of lines and performing them, and Improv is making up content on the spot, Story Telling occupies an interesting bit of territory between the two. It is a performance, and there are facts or keystone elements to the story, but the form of the story is largely undefined until it comes out of the story teller’s mouth.

The problem with my diagram was that the elements of a good performance for an actor or an improv artist are fairly well established. Lines, dialogue, marks, lighting, vocal dynamics, interaction with other performers, etc, are all well known and defined.

But what do you call the elements that a story teller juggles? Facts? Elements? Keystones? Lines? Concepts? There are clearly acting skills involved in telling a good story – voice, physical presence, vocal dynamics, eye contact, etc – but the lines are unwritten. The story may morph and change depending on how the crowd reacts to it. Tell the same story three times in a row and each instance may contain the same facts, but arranged or presented differently to suit the audience, location, time, mood, etc.

With Class

In the business story telling classes that I teach I help people get a grip on this fluid nature of stories. I may help them with a turn of phrase or a specific word, but once they internalize the idea of my phrasing, I encourage them to then reword it in their own voice.

If the speaker doesn’t connect with the words and intent of a story, it is apparent to the listener, and walls go up. Skepticism creeps in. So it is important for each individual to find their own voice and their own connection to any story.

These kinds of skills can be taught. In fact, I think everyone has the ability to tell a good story.

They just need to find the keys to their own voice.

Something has been nagging at the back of my head for quite some time now, and with the recent purchase of a flame-retardant suit, I think I am ready to come out and say it in public:

Why does everyone want to rank #1 in Google?

This may seem like a silly question at first, but there is meat on them thar bones…

For many of the businesses I work with, appearing in the first place on Google’s result pages – for a general term like “debt collector” or “business loans” or “massage therapist” – would simply crush their business. Their web sites would be shut down for excessive bandwidth usage, their phone bills would skyrocket, their email inbox would flood, and they would be entirely incapable of even responding to 98% of the people who contacted them! The spike in costs (bandwidth, storage, phone bills) would most likely kill their business before they could even respond to most of the influx of inquiries, much less ramp up their operations to support the new business.

Last I checked, creating and running a successful business does NOT include upsetting 98% of the people who try to get in touch with you!

And yet people continually are focused on ranking highly in Google’s search results.

An acquaintance of mine, Gerald Grinter, wrote an article for Biznik that took the same stance as mine. Reading his article helped codify some of my thoughts, and also helped me get up the courage to swim against this particular stream of thought and speak my mind, as well.

Where Customers Come From

Ask any business owner what the most valuable business lead is, and the vast majority of them will say “personal referrals”. When Person A has a good experience with your business and they tell Person B about it, Person B is going to be an easy sell. They already know your product/service, they know someone who has had a good experience with you, and that person has recommended they contact you. That sale is pretty much in the bag.

Now compare that to when someone finds you via a random search on Google. My first thought when I see a site at the top of the list that I don’t recognize is “this is a scammer who has managed to game Google’s system and show up first in results”. So the first thing you have to do is get over this Berlin Wall of skepticism people can mentally erect outside your front door.

Once they actually click on your link, you are now one of literally 1,000 viable options. (Google my catchphrase – “business story teller” – and you get over ten million results.) So while they are looking at your web site with their skeptical goggles on, if they see a single word or phrase that seems “off” to them, a single spelling error, a graphic that doesn’t load… they close your window and choose the next link in the Google search results.

Bam. Gone. Never to return.

Rank <> Quality

I believe that this drive to rank on the first page of Google’s results is one that comes from a place where we subconsciously equate “high quality” with “first page of Google”.

Although, in fact, this is rarely proven out in our daily use of this search tool.

The first few links are not the highest quality hits. I can name 50 bookstores across 10 different countries that are superior to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc, in every regard except the number of books immediately available.

Although if you tell Google to search for book stores, not one of these high quality stores will show up anywhere in the first X pages of results.

I have found this to be true for most searches actually, and so I believe that equating a high ranking in Google with quality is, therefore, flawed.

I don’t know about you, but if I am renovating my kitchen and I want some exquisite cabinetry and a unique counter top, I am not going to go first to Google.

I am going to ask my friends for recommendations.

After gathering suggestions and stories from my friends, I will turn to Google to see if others have had similar experiences with these particular contractors, and if my friends represented these people properly. In this case, I am using Google to research something I already have some information about. (And when typing in an exact company name, I am of course going to click on one of the first links that comes up because Google is so good at finding exactly the business I am looking for.)

Be The Best – Not First

We like to think that a huge influx of customers is exactly what we are looking for, and that it is a gift that will finally send our business into the stratosphere… but that just isn’t the case. Growing a business is a series of steps (or quantum leaps!) that cannot be undertaken lightly or – in most cases – quickly.

So when working with my clients I focus on their message, their integrity, their passion. I help them find a way to express that to their clients, friends, and fans, so that those people can spread the message. Because, after all, a personal referral is the most likely place to find a new client.

It’s not hard to understand why we remember so few names. So few people make an effort to tell you their name in a way you can understand!

For example, I have attended a number of BNI meetings recently. If you haven’t been to one of these, then you need to know they have a rule that any time you stand to speak or sit down after speaking, you say your name and company name. As a businessperson I support that. After all, more than anything, don’t you want the person you are speaking with to know and remember your name and company name?!?

Rushing Does Nobody Any Good

Since the majority of people in the room know each other and see each other every week, the name-and-company thing at BNI meetings gets pretty muddled. Most people start speaking before they stand up, before they have the room’s attention, and before their mouth is even facing their audience. So generally their intro sounds something like this, “heyi’mchristianjacobsenfromboombachicken and I am here today to talk about…”

I have literally heard people introduce themselves 4 or 5 times, and I still had no idea what their name was, even with a list of names sitting in front of me!

(Note: While I use BNI as an example, we all have personal experience of this very thing happening at every networking event we have ever been to! So no disrespect to BNI or their members is intended. It’s just an example.)

Practice what you Teach

Over the last few months I have partnered up with Rebecca West of Rivalee Design to teach a class on how to develop your “elevator pitch”. Rebecca has been giving this class for a while now, but people want to take it more often than she wants to give it. So we have been teaming up, giving the class together, giving it individually, etc.

One thing that I stress in the class is that when someone turns their eyes to you, is quiet, and gives you their attention, this should be treated as a gift. They have just decided to give you their TIME and ATTENTION.

Be worthy of that gift. Be respectful of it.

Make eye contact with them. Take a breath, and speak your name and company name clearly.

I have been stressing this in the Elevator Speech classes we have been teaching, and also in other places in my life.

Comfort on Stage

Another part of my life that has been expanding recently is standing on stage in front of people and talking. I do this as a Master of Ceremonies for various events including fundraisers, memorials, and weddings.

So many people are panicked at the thought of standing on stage and speaking in front of an audience, but this kind of thing comes naturally to me. Why is that?

While on vacation last week, I realized that all those upturned faces, the quiet room, the attentiveness of the audience, is them giving me the gift of their attention. All these people have chosen to quiet their conversation and turn their attention to me.

Looking at an audience from that perspective empowers me. All these people have handed me the gift of their attention… so what am I going to do to be worthy of that gift?

I find that the stage fright, anxiety, and blank brain all simply vaporize, and I am left feeling confident that I will do my best to make the most of their attention.

And I think this can work for you, too!

Next time you are in front of people, take a breath. Look them in the eye. Then say your name and your company name clearly so they can understand you.

It is the finest way to respect the gift that audience has given you.

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In the last two weeks I have attended several business networking events. At each of these events time is given for the attendees to stand up, introduce themselves, say their company name, and give their 10-second, 30-second, 0r 1-minute commercial or elevator pitch.

In most cases, after giving their commercial, I still didn’t know the person’s name or company name because they had mumbled, slurred, raced through their name, started talking before they had the room’s attention, or otherwise did not make sure that everyone in the room knew and understood their name.

So here is my plea: If you have 20+ people’s attention for even a few moments, respect their time, respect yourself, and speak your name and company name clearly so everyone can hear you. To miss this opportunity is to fail at the most essential aspect of being a businessperson.

The Verbal

Before speaking a single syllable, look quickly around the room, make eye contact, and take a breath. Then, in a clear voice say your name slowly, and your company name. In my case, I repeat my company name because a lot of people short-circuit and second guess what they have just heard when I say “Boomba Chicken”. So I repeat it.

This simple act of looking around the room, making eye contact, and then speaking clearly is not only going to ensure you are heard, it will also draw the room’s attention, and make it possible for you to speak clearly without having to shout.

You don’t have to be loud to be heard. All you need is people’s attention. Remember that.

Keep It Fresh

The hardest part here is to keep it fresh for yourself. We rush because we don’t want to hear ourselves saying our name and company name again. Or we are embarrassed. Or we don’t like to talk about ourselves. People ask me, “How do I say the same thing every time, and keep it fresh, so it doesn’t sound boring, rote, or turn people off?”

There are linguistic tricks that are available to us (“us” in this case being speakers of the English language) that other languages simply do not have.

For example, the title of this post has seven different possible meanings. Depending on which word gets the emphasis, the sentence takes on completely different meanings. Try it now. Read the following sentence seven times. Each time, emphasize a different word in the sentence, and you will see what I mean:

I never said she stole the money.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Now try that with your whole elevator speech, and see how playing with the emphasis alone can breathe fresh air and vitality into something that had become habitual and rushed. You can play this game even with something as simple as “My name is Christian Jacobsen, and my company name is Boomba Chicken”. If I go to weekly meetings, I could use the exact same sentence 12 different times, and play a game with myself to emphasize a different word every single time I spoke.

Just coming at your introduction differently every week will make your intro memorable, and will keep it fresh for you.

And honestly, doing this one simple thing well is going to help you be more interesting, which will keep me interested, and then I can talk about you to other people.

And that’s a situation where we all win.