Karen Eber:
Thank you for having me. Let’s tell some stories.

A.J. Lawrence:
That would be a lot of fun. I mean, first, before we get in, I like that you were at Deloitte GE and then you went off to create your own leadership group called the Eber Leadership Group. And it was very interesting. The type of work, having gone through your site, that you’re doing with different leadership groups and helping them develop sort of corporate culture, training and different things. How did that happen and where did you get into that? Before we get too much into stories.

Karen Eber:
Yeah. I like to say I’ve sat on both sides of the desk, both working in Fortune 500 companies and operating my own. I studied psychology and looked at it and thought, how do I apply this towards business and bringing out the best of people and work, helping create workplaces and leaders and teams that are healthy and don’t leave you feeling depleted and allow for you to do work that you enjoy. And so I studied psychology and studied how you apply that towards adult and adult learning and then moved into roles in Hewlett-Packard and then in Deloitte and GE, where I was doing exactly that and eventually stepped into these roles where I was ahead of culture in a business of 90,000 employees in 150 countries, and found the way you shape culture is through stories. Like being able to share a story helped people across this business start to recognize moments and think about what they might do when they encounter them. And so it was always core in what I did. And as I decided to open my own company, I wanted to focus on how to build leaders, teams and culture one story at a time.

A.J. Lawrence:
So you’ve been doing this for four years. Where did the book come from?

Karen Eber:
I gave a talk at Purdue University. There was a TEDx. I had been guest lecturing there, and they invited me to give a TEDx talk. TED saw that and put that on TED.com and it took off. And I had literary agents come knock on my door and say, let’s turn this into a book. Which I was like, thanks for calling. I have some ideas. And we put together a proposal, shopped it and ended up with a book deal with HarperCollins. I wanted to write something different and I felt like while there’s so much out there on storytelling, there is a space that is untapped which is helping people understand the science of storytelling in a relatable way. But more importantly, how do you take what’s happening in the brain and factor that into your stories? Like, what do you put in your stories to make sure that someone’s going to be captivated? And so the book does that. It’s really trying to evolve the conversation on storytelling by sharing new science in a completely relatable way. You won’t need a lab coat or beakers, but it helps you start to think differently so that as you’re building your stories, you can be making choices about how you’re engaging the person. And it takes you step by step through finding ideas and tailoring them to your audience, all the way through telling a story with your body and voice and making sure that you’re not manipulating and navigating vulnerability.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, let’s maybe take a step back because I think with any stories, a lot of times with entrepreneurs, if you catch us on the fly, we can talk forever. And this is—every entrepreneur is very different. I’m being way, way over and overly general here, but alright, I’ll use myself. I know I can talk a good many ways to tomorrow, but when I try and do a specific type of, oh, I need this type of content or this type of story. And I think we were talking before we started recording that one of the things I realized there’s so much out there about “you need to have a why, you need to have your mission statement,” and all this, and yet what I’m learning—and I would love to dive even deeper into it—is a lot of times it’s not that important to have it all worked out. It’s just more that you’re directionally working and following up on it. So I’d love to learn where do we start to craft a story? Do you break it out to the types of stories people are telling? Like, where do we start?

Karen Eber:
Yeah, let me start by challenging, I think, some of the myths that we think entrepreneurs have to have for stories. I think the first is that where you started of what is your why—you must have your who you are, what you stand for, what your company is, or your origin story. And I don’t feel like that’s as critical as we think it is for a couple reasons. One, there’s not one story that is gonna sum up everything that you do. If it did, it would be too diluted and it wouldn’t address really the pain points and solutions that you’re providing for your customers and clients. Two, there’s often this pressure where people have this romanticized notion about entrepreneurs of, like, “When was the moment where you decided to open your company and to go off and do this?” And like what happened that was so profound. And, you know, I opened my company because I chose none of the above. I didn’t want to continue in a corporate path. There wasn’t this defined moment with the spotlight and singing and wind chimes. It was like, none of the above. Let’s go.

And so there’s this almost pressure that you have to have this amazing story about some tragedy in your life or some obstacle you’ve overcome to have this profound story of who you are as an entrepreneur and why it’s so meaningful—and it’s just not true. So the origin story, the reason I say it’s not important, is that from wherever you started, your business changes. No matter what your strategy is, no matter what you’re doing. I find every quarter, I am like tightening the aperture of the lens on my business. Because you get smarter, you are moving further down the path towards your ideal clients and work, and you shed some of the things that are no longer serving you.

If you keep telling the origin story—like if I keep telling you the origin story from four years ago, that wouldn’t be as focused on the work that I’m doing now. And it’s not as meaningful. I mean, a really simplistic example is if Amazon was telling their origin story, they would be talking to you about shipping books all around the world. And they still have the greatest hold on books and that is a big part of their business, but there’s so much more than that. So don’t hold on to this idea that there’s one story or there’s a perfect origin story or there’s this “why” that’s gonna sum up everything you do because what’s more important are the really specific moments.

And this is where you start—when you think of your customers and clients, what are their pain points? What are those things that they know they should be resolving, but they aren’t. You know, one of my friends calls this the punch-them-in-the-bruise. Like if you think about when you knock a bruise and you’re like, ugh, yes, that bruise is there. You want to do that because we all have these. So you want to talk about those or you want to talk about things that would make their life easier, or maybe there’s aspirations of, you know, we’re not buying a car, we’re buying a lifestyle. And so you start to think about what are those different moments that you’re interacting with your customers or clients? What are those things that you’re addressing? And you have specific stories in there because that’s where someone is going to see themselves in that message, in that story, and be drawn to you and the work that you do and be willing to expand with it. If you focus on this overarching origin story, the odds of it hitting those specific people in moments, it’s too much chance.

A.J. Lawrence:
So it’s sort of playing on that whole value—you know, a lot of times you see it too, and it becomes so easy because you were living it. But too often people are selling the value prop around—

Karen Eber:
Yeah, yeah. The pain point, the specific problem. Right? We’re too busy. Like, let me tell you about my 12-step program for whatever. That’s great, but you haven’t made me see myself in that. And that’s what storytelling is so key for as an entrepreneur. You have these opportunities to just connect to all of these thoughts, fears, hopes, aspirations, and that’s where you are grabbing people. And you know you’re doing it well when people say, “I feel like you wrote that just for me,” because you’ve dialed in on if I was going to create a persona for my audience, what does that look like? What are the demographics? What are the things they like to do? What is their profession, their education? Where are they at in their life in terms of their family or surroundings or relationships? You start to zero in on those and you write these or you tell these as though you’re sitting across the table from someone. And that is what’s always going to resonate. And that could be whether you’re doing a sales pitch or you’re putting a post on social media.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, you said something interesting in getting to that. So like, okay, great, I’m looking at my avatar. Oh, you know, I talk to seven-figure entrepreneurs on their journey to kind of go beyond looking at. But what I liked what you said early because this is—you know, it’s not a one and done. It’s an ongoing way of refining it. You know, hopefully not going too far down the sequel levels and jumping a shark, but playing with—you dial in. You said, you know, you consistently come back on a regular basis. How do you do that and how do you suggest people come to continuously dial in? I love that phrase.

Karen Eber:
Yeah. So how I do it—I sit down and I build personas. So part of my business is with Fortune 500 and sometimes that person that is the buyer is the head of HR, sometimes that person is the head of Learning and Development and sometimes it’s a business unit leader. And there’s some slight nuances to each of them. And so I think about if I’m talking to them, what are each of those? Like, where are they at? Where are they at in their career? You know, what are the types of problems they’re dealing with? And so I build these personas at a high level for those three. I also have this whole other piece that is really the wide population for a book. And so what I do is I start to look at like, who am I trying to talk to and what is it that I want to help them experience, what do I want them to think or feel? What is it that I want them to know or do? So you start working through those pieces and you really do paint a picture almost of who is sitting across from you. I mean, this is, you know, marketing 101. I would even give it a name. And I think about when I look at those personas and I look at my ideal clients and who I want to attract and the type of work I want to do more of—what is that? Because if I find that they get a latte at, you know, 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, then I might work that in. And you know, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But when you start thinking about those different groups, the major audiences that you have, and you start looking at what is a day in the life, what are the things that they’re struggling with, what is one thing they want to change—you can start to understand a whole bunch of ideas and go on social media, start a search for whatever your—so I said one of my buyers is a CHRO, so I could go on to Google and say, what do CHROs think about? And you get all of these different prompts and ideas. You go on Pinterest and you do different searches and you see what pops up. You go on Amazon and you look at books, YouTube. So you can use social media to help shed different thinking and insights. Of course, search engine optimization is amazing. ChatGPT is great for “give me 47 different ideas of pain points that a CHRO is facing today.” And it’s all just meant to prompt thinking and help you start to see, this is me, this isn’t me, this is helpful, this isn’t helpful.

A.J. Lawrence:
So it sounds like you follow that sort of like, go broad at first and then, you know, start finding things that resonate with how you see that audience. Like, you gather everything you can, the different conversations. I like that because back in the day we used to even pull in search behavior. Well, back when you could actually get search behavior, you could actually get like education, sex level, sex, income level. Different things. Sure, let’s move past.

Karen Eber:
There’s endless stuff.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, right.

Karen Eber:
No, there’s endless things that you could be gathering.

A.J. Lawrence:
And then when you kind of have that broad understanding, you’re talking about using it just to get that feel for the person, just like you would, hey, my friend Kevin who lives across the street. Yeah, really great guy. Let me learn more about him so that next time I see him at the barbecue around the way, I know what they’re saying, I know more to talk to them. That’s how you initially approach it.

Karen Eber:
It’s two part, though. It’s part to get a feel for them, but it’s also part for you to gain a lot of clarity on who you are for that. So let’s use the ChatGPT example. Let’s say that I put in: give me 47 examples of what a CHRO is facing today. And so it’s going to talk about talent acquisition and performance management and crisis management and whatever. And I’m going to look at that and say, you know, I don’t really do a lot with talent acquisition. That’s not me. But these three things—these are me. And so now I can really think about how is that pain point showing up for them and how am I helping address it. And so it’s part getting to know the person, but it’s also part getting really clear on how you are positioning yourself in the noise of what they are facing.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I like that a lot. Yeah, because there are some great prompt structures and even, you know, people who are pulling and putting together you know what basically looks like just pretty advanced prompt structures on top of an API for avatar development. There are some interesting ones out there. You can give it types of businesses, and it will give you pretty interesting stories. I don’t want to just keep pulling it back, but I think you’re—this is such a cool thing that you said. I want to—so now that you have this and you’re finding out, okay, where they are, where you are to resonate with them, how do you continue dialing it in? Because I think a lot of us jump into that, like, oh, let’s create it and we’ll keep it in our head. But it’s so much work to make it live over time. Yeah, we may be stuck. Or as I tell the old joke, I once dated this woman and I still feel horrible about it. I met first week of freshman year. She was blonde, whatever. And then like a year later, we were at some party and I was telling a story about her, and she’s like, what? I hear behind me, like, what? You know, what color is my hair? I said, blonde. She’s like, no. And I turn around and I’m like, she’s brunette. And I’m like, wait, what? And she’s like, I dyed my hair three days after I met you. It was just like, it stuck, you know, it was just like, she’s blonde. Okay, done. I don’t have to do this ever again. You know, Check. I think we approach—it’s for us, when we have these tools, like an avatar, customer avatar and stuff, it’s like, oh, this is what they are. How do you then, as you said, dial it in and help it grow more over time?

Karen Eber:
Yeah. First, I’m not sure it is ever “this is who they are.” Because if you look over the past three years, we’ve all just experienced so many different changes. And so whatever cadence you stop and reflect on your business, part of it should be, are there shifts to who my customers are, my clients are? Are there shifts to how their problems are presenting? Because, you know, and we’ll take that CHRO example—there were some new problems that showed up. Right now they’re coming out of the working in different ways, and many are grappling with where will people work, how will they work. And so it’s important to recognize that just like you continue to evolve, some of the main themes may be there and some new ones may pop in.

My first suggestion is: don’t keep it in your head. The problem with when you don’t have a system is that you spend all this energy trying to remember it, instead of energy thinking about what could happen or what could be next. And so developing systems for—and this is true for stories too—for ideas. All of it. Have a place. And if that’s Post-its, great. If it’s a notebook, fantastic. If it’s a spreadsheet or an app—like, whatever works for you—have a place. Because you don’t want to waste the energy on trying to remember these things. You want to be able to have this energy to come up with different ideas.

I think that, to take the example of how do you dial in and keep going—the first part is getting clear on that avatar, that persona. The next part is at some regular cadence. Maybe it’s once a year, maybe it’s twice a year. You want to come up with: what are the problems they’re facing? What are those things that—you know, do it through search engine optimization, because that’s what’s going to catch attention—but start to come up with that list of what are the different ways that that’s showing up, what are the questions that they have, what are the fears that they have? How do you get a massive list? Because that then gives you criteria. That gives you a rich sandbox that you can look at to then think, wow, I’ve got these 17 things, and they’re really specific. And each one of them could lead to so many different stories, demonstrating how I’ve worked with clients on this or how I keep seeing this or things you should be thinking about in these situations. Like, it just serves as ingredients that you can turn into a wonderful story. So drilling down into specificity of what does that look like? And then using them to feed: okay, what could be a story here? How am I trying to achieve some different outcome with my audience?

A.J. Lawrence:
I really like that, because in marketing/sales I talk a lot of times about—it’s great to say what you want to achieve or what you want to do, but if you’re not finding that type of cadence to review and look at what has happened—and not just look at it, but like, what can we learn from that? In a sense, you’re saying the same thing. Like an agile storytelling approach.

Karen Eber:
Yeah. And you asked me how I do it, so let me share that. Because I actually do sit down for a year and I look at: where is my priority? So this past year, I knew I was launching this book on storytelling, and I knew I was going to really focus a lot of my message on storytelling and maybe a little less on some of the leadership things that I do. So knowing that, I started to look at who are my personas and what are the different questions that they have. And I mapped out a year of: what is a year of content for social media, for my newsletters, for articles? That you have your main pillar, thought leadership pieces, and then you have different things you spin off it. So I use that as a starting point of what do I think I want to do. And then as I go through the year and have conversations—for me, it’s always in a workshop or a client interaction—you hear a question, you realize, okay, if you have this, other people have this. And I need to be talking about it this way because I hadn’t realized that. And so then I go in and I refine of, yeah, I don’t really want to do that thing that I said seven months ago. I want to do this. And that agility is there, as it should be, because there’s an organic piece of it that I want to be able to address. And then that also helps with different articles and stuff. And so for me, that works of: have a big picture, have a plan, but know that you want to come into it. Because there’s some times that what I said I was going to do in January, I’m not feeling now. I’ve moved past that. So let’s think about something different.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, I—I find a lot of times I will say something in response to something. I’m like, oh, that’s so great. And then when you build it out, you’re like, it’s kind of a nice support piece, but it’s not a standalone. But you built all material up and you’re like, oh. But I think that’s how a lot of companies end up in that lovely—just like, cardboard content.

Karen Eber:
Right.

A.J. Lawrence:
Yeah, the cardboard content, you know, and it’s so frustrating because it’s like, who cares? You know, And I always hated, you know, clients who you would sit there and be like, oh, you’ve had—you know, how much did you spend on this content? And you have 10 people who looked at this.

Karen Eber:
Right.

A.J. Lawrence:
All right, so you, you know, you suggest building systems, creating on sort of the cadence around it. It’s funny because I’ve been kind of diving more into EOS and comparing it to Scaling Up and all that. And it’s like, do you have a rock? Do you—I like, because these are things that could fit very easily along with a lot of sort of those operating systems that people—yeah—that really do help when you get to a certain size in your business.

Karen Eber:
100%. Because I feel like success as an entrepreneur requires your systems, because you need to—it’s all about freeing up your time and spending your time where it’s best served, and then finding different ways to handle the other pieces. And so you don’t want to waste energy thinking about things that could be automated or handed off or stuck in a system and replicated easier.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, maybe to kind of bring this in, because I’m getting you into very tactical as I ramble on and ask you different questions about how you’re doing this—what ways you’ve seen that work on a story has sort of been transformative, that helped businesses. I know you work a lot of times with very large businesses, but still working through those transition points that almost every business—from your first couple of dollars all the way to billions of dollars. It’s usually not the consistent, ongoing work of the business that’s the problem. It’s those transition points where it’s like complexity increases or, you know, your revenue doesn’t, or your free cash flow doesn’t match your expense ratio and all those fun things. Maybe walk through sort of some of the stories you’ve seen or how people have worked on stories to actually help get through those transition points.

Karen Eber:
Yeah. The beauty of this approach is that it can be used in any setting, because what you’re trying to do when you’re telling a story is first—stories actually start with your audience. Like, who are you telling this to? And what is it that you’re trying to help them realize? Is it something you want them to feel or think different? Is it some action you want them to take or information that you want to build for them? You’ve got to get really clear on: why do you want to tell a story in the first place? Otherwise, you’re just telling a story you love to tell and it may not land.

So that could be a moment of transformation, or it could be a sales call, or it could be any special—it doesn’t matter. But getting clear on that with the audience of: what do I want them to know, think, feel, do? Where are they at today? Where’s their mindset today? And what might be an obstacle in getting to that outcome? That grounds you. Because now you’ve got a good idea of this audience and where you’re trying to create a shift and what might be a block. Because then you take your story and you are going to build it through that lens. You know, you’re gathering—part of the system is gathering different ideas without worrying about where they’re going to be used. Because the best time to come up with an idea for a story is when you don’t need one—when you have creative thinking. So when it is time to tell a story, you scan this list and you ask yourself, like, okay, I need to tell a story about transformation. Which one of these would help me build an idea around transformation? And maybe it’s a story about transformation, and maybe it’s a story that it’s not even obvious that it is. It’s about something completely different.

Then you can take that story and start to work it through your basic story structure. And that structure is: what is the context? So what’s the setting for the story? Why should the audience even care? What is the conflict—the fuel for the story? What happens where something changes, something needs to be resolved? Which could be between people. It could be between organizations. It could be between a person and themselves and their own values. So: context, conflict, outcome—what action is taken and what’s the impact of that? And takeaway—which is what is the overall idea of this story? What is it that you want the audience to come away with?

And it’s that takeaway that lets you connect it back to what you defined for your audience of what you said you wanted them to know, think, feel, or do. Because if there’s no connection, then the story is not going to land. So you start doing this, and you can shape a story for whatever context. The context really doesn’t matter because you’re defining that through the steps, but you are working to build a story to make sure it’s helping you achieve the outcome that you want.

A.J. Lawrence:
No, I like that. And I do think combining that structure then with the feedback loop you’ve talked about—the capturing, the kind of doing—because I do think it’s very easy sometimes for entrepreneurs to tell a story and tell it because we’re responding and wanting to please someone. We could—you know, a lot of times you get good at reading signals. But to take it to that next level—not just, yes, obviously, the bigger stories, the one you need to practice them and reiterate and reiterate and reiterate. Or as the *River Runs Through It* dad used to say is, “less, less.” You know, always say—I always use that in my head whenever I’m editing something. That scene from—do you remember that movie, *The River Runs Through It*?

Karen Eber:
Yeah, yeah, it’s a great movie. Absolutely.

A.J. Lawrence:
I just always in my head have that—yeah, have him just sitting there with the red pen. I can’t remember right now. I have to go see it again. It’s been years. But I like that. You know, just even in practicing those off the cuff—that structure of doing that could help so much on the enterprise. In looking at, as an entrepreneur buying your book, creating the systems, creating the cadence to actually look and review and bring them in, are there other things that an entrepreneur should be paying attention to about how to continuously develop better stories?

Karen Eber:
Yeah. I wrote this to be really a masterclass in storytelling—from understanding the science of it, what’s happening, to what are the steps, from creating a toolkit of ideas, to figuring out that audience, to building out the structure, to really engaging the brain, storytelling with data, how to use your body, how to use pacing, pause, inflection—how to think through all of those things. So if you are new to storytelling, this gives you a really helpful foundation of where to start, why you’re doing what you do, what to start to put in place and figure out your style. If you already are storytelling, this is going to validate much of what you’re doing because you maybe haven’t learned. And so you’re doing stuff and you don’t know if it is right or if it’s helpful. But it’s going to give you some things to lean into and really refine your style and think about where do you want to take it and how do you get better at some of these things in the moment.

And so it is intentionally meant to be that guide that is helping you through different steps, through building stories—even down to there’s checklists in the back so that when you’re telling a story, you can pull it out and work through like, have I done this? Have I done this? Have I done this? As a safe check to think about.

A.J. Lawrence:
Very cool. No, I mean, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy. The book will be coming out soon from when we’re talking, but when the episode comes out, it would have had just come out. So we’ll make sure. Karen, this has been fascinating and I cannot wait to dive deeper into this. I mean, where can people find out more about you and about Karen Eber Leadership Group and then the book?

Karen Eber:
Sure. The best way to find me is my website, which is my name, K-A-R-E-N-E-B-E-R dot com. There is information on the book in there and there’s one thing we didn’t touch on that I just think is super cool that I want to share. The end of chapters are these interview vignettes with people that tell stories in completely different roles. So you’ve got The Moth. If you’re familiar with The Moth podcast and storytelling series, we’ve got an executive producer, co-founder of Sundance Institute, TED Radio Hour, podcast host, a former creative director at Pixar, someone who writes stories for video games, improv comedian, neuroscientist. You have people that do this in completely different aspects of life, and you learn what you would if you were seated next to them at a dinner party. And so these are—you know, they’re vignettes. They’re not chapters, but you get this walk and appreciation for how each of these people learn to do this. And while you think like, well, gosh, you’re doing this for Pixar, you must be gifted in this. Like, sure. But that’s a talent that was developed. And so I think it’s a fascinating way, especially as entrepreneurs, to recognize there’s so many different ways to do this and so many different things to play with. So I just wanted to share that because I read them and every one I’m like, that’s my favorite one. That’s my favorite one. So yeah. But the book—information about all these interview vignettes—all that are there. The book is available everywhere that books are sold.

A.J. Lawrence:
We will have links, of course, to Karen’s site, to this, and of course, the book. We’ll probably throw up Amazon, but yeah, we’ll put it up there because, yeah, it is out there. And it will be publicly available by the time this episode gets out. And I’m looking really forward to it. Karen, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really do appreciate it.

Karen Eber:
Thank you for having me.

A.J. Lawrence:
Well, everyone, I think there’s a lot to improving the way we tell stories. As I know, I’m a little bit of editing in my life, but also just creating the systems around it. It’s such a simple, logical thing, but just hearing Karen say that, it’s like, okay, I think I’m going to put a little bit of time with my team to have systems around our storytelling—not just around the basic content we’re telling or the type of content, but actually how we evolve the stories. That’s one takeaway I’m going to keep right off the bat.

So everyone, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I can’t wait until we have other really cool entrepreneurs and experts like Karen on the show again. Talk with you soon. Goodbye everyone.