00:00 Welcome to âSteal the Showâ with Michael Port. From speeches, to job interviews, to deal-closing pitches, how to guarantee a standing ovation for all the performances in your life. Iâm Michael Port and this is a show-stopper episode. Normally, a show-stopper is good, but in this case itâs not. These are the things that will stop your performances, speeches, pitches, negotiations, presentations dead in their tracks. Here are three story-telling show stoppers, these are three things that, if you do when you tell stories, could in fact stop your stories dead in their tracks. Number one: You donât need to say, âIâm gonna tell you a story,â or, âCan I tell you a story?â Just tell the story. Because if you say, âCan I tell you a story,â somebody might say, âNah, Iâd rather not. Could you just get to the point youâre gonna make?â You donât want that and certainly Iâm gonna tell you a story sets it up so that they can sit back and go, âHmm, all right. Is this gonna be a good story?â Sometimes the best stories are the ones that youâre in, even before you realize youâre being told a story, and then youâre in the conflict and youâre excited and you donât even think about it as a story. You just think about it as an experience and thatâs what you want. Number two: Donât be vague in the details in your story, donât be vague in the details of your story, and at the same time, donât give too many details that arenât necessary.
01:42 Weâre trying to find a balance. A woman was in one of my master classes and she was telling a story about her grandfather and she said, âMy grandfather was in the Army, he was a colonel or a general,â or I donât know something like that and then she went on and it⊠It suggested to us that she really wasnât ready to tell the story, she didnât have the details that she needed to have in order to tell the story. So I asked her, I said, âIs this⊠Is the rank of your grandfather important? Do we have to know his rank?â She said âNo, but I think itâs important that we know heâs a high ranking official,â so I said, âThere you go. Thatâs all you need to say,â So I said, âMy grandfather was a high-ranking official in the Army and then move on.â And now we know his status, that helps with the story, itâs some the exposition, itâs some of the given circumstances that we need to know in order to get into the story. And we donât need too many details, we donât need to know the color of the uniform that he wore because we probably can picture that considering we know what most Army uniforms look like. But maybe we donât need to know the color of his hair, whether he had a mustache, the color of his eyes, those details may not be important for the story at hand.
02:54 However, they may be. So what youâre doing is youâre trying to decide which details are important and which details are not and get it as lean and mean as you possibly can. And then finally, number three: Donât use the storyteller voice. Very often, some of us start telling a story and they go into this voice. Itâs like one of those voices where they say, âThere was a time long, long ago, where many people⊠â And then you feel like youâre in this sort of pretend land that isnât real. So youâre gonna tell a story, you tell a story the exact same way you would if you were speaking to somebody. You donât change your style necessarily or put on some phony voice that you think tells the audience that youâre telling a story. You just actually tell the story. So number one: Donât say, âIâm gonna tell you a story,â just tell the story. Donât be vague in the details in your story, and at the same time, donât give too many details that arenât necessary. And number three: Donât use the storyteller voice, just actually speak to them in a way that you would speak to them. If you like the sound of my voice, buy the audio book of âSteal the Showâ or buy the hard cover anywhere books are sold. But if you go to StealtheShow.com, Iâve got lots of free bonuses for you, giveaways that will encourage you to buy the book that will give you so much value that youâll think Iâve gone way too far, and then Iâll give you more value.
04:27 So StealtheShow.com. This is Michael Port, encouraging you to think bigger about who you are and what you offer the world. And remember, you donât have to be an entertainer to be a performer, you just have to care deeply about the people in the room in helping them think differently, feel differently, or act differently. This is Michael Port, signing off. Bye for now.
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