Narrative Branding: Stories That Sell

Why should we care about story? People never buy the product; they buy the story that's attached to it. Not just the story that you're telling, but rather the story that people are telling themselves about what that thing means to them. Talk to me about positioning, differentiation, and X Factor, and how we can apply that in our business. Those are three really big words: positioning, X Factor, and differentiation. What do you mean? Tell me more about this. If you're worried about that race to the bottom of commodification, the only way forward for all of us

is to seek and find higher ground — that's positioning, differentiation, and X Factor. The most powerful way to unlock X Factor — the only thing that nobody can compete against — is your story. As you all know, I'm super fascinated by story. I have this theory, and I don't think it's a uniquely original theory, that all memory is tied to a strong emotion, and that emotion is also tied to a story. So I dare you right now: try to think of a memory without telling me a story and an emotion. Probably not possible. That's why

I'm super excited to have Michael on the show today. He and I chatted briefly before this on a different call, and he was telling me about these different ideas and things he's been doing over the last 10 to 20 years of his life. So I'm really excited to have Michael. Michael, welcome to the show! Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are and what you do. I'm Michael Margolis. I'm the founder of Stored, and I believe that narrative is the number one superpower of humanity. For the last 20 years, I’ve been

helping visionaries, leaders, and creatives tell a bigger story about the future. These days, we have courses, coaching, and community, which are basically helping anybody take charge of their story. I'm already a big fan of the concept; I'm learning about who you are. But there are people who are like, "Story, story, schstory! Why should we even care?" Let's start there. Let's make sure people are on the same train as us before it takes off. Why should we care about story? Yeah, so a few things. I think the first one is: people never buy the product; they

buy the story that's attached to it. And not just the story that you're telling, but rather the story that people are telling themselves about what that thing means to them. A great example of this, one of my favorite TV guilty pleasures, is Pawn Stars! If you ever watch the show, it's a 24-hour pawn shop in Las Vegas, Nevada, run by three generations of a family who own the business. People bring different curios and items they'll find at a garage sale or from the attic, and we find out their story. In the process, they’re either going

to pawn it or sell it. Well, imagine for a moment if I had this imaginary Zippo lighter. How much is it worth? Well, if it’s a Circa 2022 Zippo lighter, it’s maybe 15 or 20 bucks. But what if it’s a World War II Zippo lighter? Okay, now it’s maybe worth a couple hundred bucks. Well, what if it’s actually my great-great-uncle General George Marshall’s Zippo lighter, and I have a photo — black and white — of him smoking a celebratory cigar on D-Day with that lighter? Now it might be worth a couple thousand bucks, right? Or

priceless! It’s the same hunk of metal, right? With a wick and butane — the object’s the same. But in each of the three examples, there’s a different story that’s attached to it. We might call an expert before you go spend a few thousand bucks on this thing, and the expert says it’s worth $5,000. But if we took a poll of an audience and said, "Okay, how many of you want to buy this for $5,000 right here on the spot?” most people won’t take the deal. Why? Well, maybe you don’t smoke. Maybe you’re not into war

or World War II. Maybe you have no idea where to find someone to sell it to, to kind of do arbitrage on it, right? There are all these reasons why you would exit out of the story. But for a certain person, they would identify and want to be a part of the story. And this is true of everything in life. It’s something we almost take for granted; we’re sort of invisible to it. But again, nobody's buying the product; they're buying the story that's attached to it — and not just what you're telling, but the story

they’re telling themselves of what that means to them. I think you raised a few really good points. It’s not just your story, but the story that exists in the mind of the other person. So, it might be a family heirloom that’s deeply connected. It’s like in Pulp Fiction, when Butch’s father dies in the Vietnam War and he’s given the watch that he had to carry through extraordinary means. In the middle of all this danger, he argues with his girlfriend; it’s like, “Where’s my watch?” He goes, “It was right there! I put it...” “Where’s my watch?”

He’s being hunted by everybody, but he’s going to risk his personal welfare because the watch means something to him. Now you and I might say, “No, it’s been through a lot; I don’t want that watch. I wouldn’t even take it for free.” But for Butch, it meant everything. Yeah, so the story is the meaning. That we attach to things, uh, and to everything that's in our lives. What's another example of a story that we've all agreed to that has meaning to us but has actually no value at all? I mean, look, it plays out in

all sorts of ways, you know? Like, I mean, here's my wedding band, right? This is just a hunk of metal. You know, if I were to sell it, it would only be sold for scrap gold, right? Even though it's priceless to me personally. Um, you know, or, um, you know, some people collect wine; I collect chocolate. I think I was telling you about this, right? Rare, exotic, single-origin craft chocolate. I used to traffic in kilos of it! Okay? Like, I geek out on chocolate. I'm the kind of person who'll spend $20, $50—I’ve spent $250 on

one bar of chocolate! Wow! Right? Most people think that's freaking nuts, but for me, like the provenance, the rarity, like there was a story behind it that meant something to me, and it also delivered on the price-value equation. But most people would never spend $250 or $50, but you might spend 20 or 10. But that's a pretty bougie bar of chocolate. It is. You're a little nuts about chocolate, for sure. Before we lose anybody, yeah, what does "provenance" mean? It's an important word for us to understand because it's connected to story. Yeah, so provenance is

basically the story of place, where something comes from. Um, and in the world of food, provenance literally goes into the taste of a place. So when it comes to, um, like in Italy, they have these um, like AOCs, which, um, or I think that may be the French label for it, but it's the way that different regions around the world have branded that specific place, like Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's like cheese that can only be called that if it comes from that region, right? Um, and the same is true for, um, different kinds of wines, right? So

different wines have labels on them and so on. Um, and it's literally the taste of a place and the belief that it's in the terroir; it's in the soil; it's in the water. It's that ineffable thing. Um, just in the same way that, like, pizza—only in New York—like you cannot replace or copy New York City pizza, right? Because of the taste of the place. Um, you know, I don't know if it's the water; I don't know what it is, but you can't beat a New York City slice of pizza. I'm gonna get in trouble for

this, but is that just a story or is that real? You know? I mean, look, I lived in New York for about six years, and it's real, my friend. Um, you have to say that as a former New Yorker; I mean, they'll throw you out! They'll take your New Yorker card back. But it's the truth. I mean, there's some good pizza here in LA. There's some respectable pizza here in LA, but there’s just something about New York pizza. I don't know what it is. Okay, so blind taste tests: are you willing to bet a million

dollars that two really good slices of pizza, you can say this one's definitely from New York? Yes. Now, mind you, I have an advantage: my father is a mad scientist and inventor in the food tech industry. He worked for Nestlé for many decades. It's, you know, part of my story behind chocolate. I grew up in Switzerland as a kid, all this and that, so I have that sixth sense taste where, you know, I'm able to taste things that other people don't taste, and I'm sort of pretty obnoxious about it. You don't want to go to

a restaurant with me, let's just say that! I'm that guy, you know, that's asking the questions, and like, “Oh, this is so amazing!” and I'll start telling stories and whatever else. And so either you're into it, or you're not, right? Okay, you've opened up a can of worms, and this is how we're going to begin this conversation. Lots for me to pick apart here. So when it comes to the origin of where something comes from, like, champagne only comes from Champagne because that’s a place in France. Kobe beef comes from a place called Kobe in

Japan, and they will sue you if you try to call it Kobe beef, right? And that's why they invented something else, but won't go there. But to the point of your wedding band, okay? There's a lot of sentimental value; there's a story about how you guys came together, about the strength of your relationship, about the promises you've made. Then there's the gold part, which is like when you said it will be melted down for scrap, and it'll be sold for whatever gold is sold for. Now, the real question is: why is gold valuable? Now what

I understand about value is there's two parts, and maybe I might have missed one of these things. There's utility value, which water has high utility value, and then there's exchange value. Water's not worth much, even though it's a necessary part of life, and if you're really thirsty, you'll give anything to have some water, but it has fairly low exchange value. Whereas gold—the story we've all told ourselves—does happen to be one of the rarest elements on Earth. I learned that through the History Channel, I believe, so it has some... Utility—it's a good conductor, but not the

best. You know, it has certain properties to it, but really, it's just because we all have collectively, as humanity, said gold is worth a lot. But if you abstract that, when the U.S. left the gold standard many, many years ago, now we all carry around these pieces of paper that have low utility but high exchange value, because as long as we agree to it, then it has value. But the minute our faith and confidence in the U.S. currency wanes (which it may be in that state today), then all of a sudden, that's just now a

piece of paper. So, the story matters a lot. Here's what you're tapping into, and this is, you know, we've taken the red pill, so to speak, because we're literally looking at the matrix of life: every experience, every object, every relationship is stored in the mind with a story that's attached to it. And what you're starting to tap into—this is something that I really geek out on—99% of most books and trainings on storytelling overlook, which is actually the difference between story versus narrative. All right? So, what you're actually talking about is a narrative, like the narrative

that, for instance, you know, I'm going to open up my wallet here, and okay, I literally only have one bill in my wallet, right? Because we don't even deal with paper currency anymore. But I've got a $5 bill, right? But like the narrative that this thing is a currency of exchange of value—we have many different narratives that run our lives. Most of the time, we tend to focus on story. Story is a single event—it's got a beginning, middle, and end; it's a closed loop; it's something that happened. Whereas a narrative is a more abstract, shared

belief. And when you start to understand this, it's like the narrative is a Christmas tree, and the stories are the ornaments that go on the Christmas tree. My favorite example of this is the American Dream. The American Dream is a narrative, right? And as an abstract concept or belief, it means a land of opportunity; it means you can reinvent yourself; you know it means there are a lot of different concepts related to the American Dream, right? But then, each of us has our own individual stories about the American Dream. Like, for instance, my father—you know,

he was born and raised in the bush of Africa, right? He got a Fulbright to the States, came in the late '60s, you know, and became naturalized as a U.S. citizen in the early 1970s. First-generation immigrant. You know, he still gets misty-eyed when the national anthem comes on; he's more patriotic than my mother, who was actually born and raised in the States. So, this difference between story versus narrative—we are drowning in a sea of infinite stories, yet we have very few shared collective narratives, especially for the changes that we're going through in the world right

now. So, a lot of the work we do is helping people to think in narrative and then create a unifying shared narrative that transcends the differences or the conflict of where people basically are opting out or exiting out of whatever message that you might be communicating. You're making a pretty important distinction here, so let me make sure I understand: story is individual, it's concrete, and there's a certain specificity to it; narrative is shared, broader, and abstract. Yes, is that the key difference here? Exactly. A story has a beginning, middle, and end; it's an event; it's

an anecdote; it's this thing that happened, right? It's a closed loop. A narrative is a more abstract concept; it doesn't necessarily have a beginning or an end. Like, when did the American Dream start? Does it start in 1776? I don't think so, right? It's a little funny. And there are concepts within the American Dream that go all the way back to ancient Egypt, and one could argue like in Greece and all these kinds of things, right? It's an open loop. I'd love to connect this to your passion around the future, right? Which is the following:

we live in a society that's obsessed with data. I work with a lot of technical-driven organizations, like the biggest tech companies on the planet, where data is king. Okay, data is a story of the past, right? Whereas disruption is a story about the future. So, we have to start with the future first, and then we use the past, the data, to legitimize and validate the future we're trying to create. Most of us have that order or sequence wrong, turned upside down: we're constantly looking backwards instead of looking forwards. And this is where we trap ourselves

within a past story or within even an existing narrative that may not be the right story for the future we're trying to create. It's a paradigm shift, but once people get that, they realize, "Holy crap! This is why the narrative—like, this, you know, it's kind of like that old saying: the thing that got you to here isn't the thing that gets you to next." So, like, the story that got you to here isn't the story that gets you to next. I fully, 100% align with that. You just described it in a very different way, but

it's something I've talked to people about before, about how when we set goals, most people do it in a forensic way. They look backwards and say, "Well, if this has happened the last five years, then the next five years will look just like this." You and I, and any historian, know that that's absolutely not true; otherwise, there would be no disruption, there would be no innovation. So instead, we look to the future about the kind of goals we want to set, and then we look at what can support that, and we invent whatever we need

to in order to get to that place. They sound the same, but they're radically different. They're so different. What you're speaking to is what I've come to discover as one of the first principles—it's one of the fundamental universal principles of innovation, disruption, and transformation. It's sort of like one of the secrets hiding in plain sight for any of us who are leading change or doing something that's new and different. You're being hired for your possibility mindset—the ability to see and name the possibilities and the opportunities amidst change, amidst constraints. But we often are leading with

the data, trying to prove and validate something and trying to posture, instead of widening the aperture and really unlocking the creative mojo and the generativist in any situation. So while we're on this, I have to ask this question: what is the role of research as it relates to innovation? How do we balance that? Because it seems like the more mired we are in research, the less likely we are to innovate. I might get myself into trouble here. You will? Okay, I have an inherent bias, and for better and for worse, I find that the majority

of research is garbage and a distraction. Just to kind of give everyone listening some context, I've been doing this for 20 years. Much of my work has been inside the biggest tech companies on the planet. We're talking Google, Facebook, Uber, Shopify—and helping those executives and teams literally sell the future and how they do it internally. So building those kinds of presentations, translating the strategy. But in the meantime, I've also worked with every kind of creative—independent consultant, coach—you know, the whole creator economy and all of that. So like, you know, I'm cut from the same cloth

as you and many in your community, Chris. Here's what I've learned about working with narrative: when you're looking to work and change the narrative, you have to index to power, permission, and authority. There's an old saying that Plato has, which is also attributed to the Hy Indians: "Those who tell the stories rule the world." The thing about story and narrative is that very few of us think we have permission to tell the bigger story. That's the biggest obstacle to this. And so if you are going to go and change the narrative—whether it's for a product,

an organization, or a team—I always focus on working with the most senior authorized leader of the organizational system. I'm indexing for conviction; conviction actually is the currency. Conviction is the way that basically belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? And you start from that place: where's the inherent conviction in the system, the conviction about the future? Once we have that, we can formulate a thesis about that and go test and validate that thesis with research. Too often, people lead with research, which is basically outsourcing, saying, "Well, I don’t know." It's great to come from a place

of like not knowing or, "I don’t know what I don’t know." Fair and valid. But when it comes to actual leadership or driving change or repositioning a brand, those kinds of things, you've got to start with conviction. Because if the conviction doesn't exist in the organizational system, the world's best research is going to rot on the vine. I know a lot of researchers have experienced this, right? You do this amazing work, and then people won't buy into it because they don't see it, they don't feel it, they don't believe it. So that's the piece—it goes

back to belief. We have to start with where's the existing belief and the people who have the power to promulgate those beliefs, to reinforce the beliefs, and to And they'll come up with these beautiful frameworks that are like 12 different ways we could think about the product, right? And the heads of product are like, "Dude, just give me a P. What's your stance? Cut through this noise for me." So that's the piece that I'm speaking to. We can do a lot of research; we tend to get overly obsessed with the clinical side of it, right,

while we overlook the fact that there's always inherent bias. So let's actually just name our bias based on where we have conviction, and then let's go and test and validate that. There's great humility that comes from the things we can learn through that reality check. So, just kind of walking things back a little bit: research has a really important role; it's just that I often find people use it as a crutch. "Well, we really don't know who we are, and we really don't know where to go." Well, research isn't usually going to be the thing

that reveals that for you, but again, that's my own, you know, bombastic sort of bias toward it. Okay, now it would seem to make logical sense that you do your research first, and then from the research, you extrapolate data points and you say, "Well, here's the thesis." But from the way it sounds to me, it's like, come up with your big idea based on your hunch, your vision of the future, and then use research to validate and test this to see if it's actually true. So it's kind of an inversion of sequence. Yes, is that

correct? First of all, yes, it is. And I know a lot of researchers; I piss them off. It's sacrilegious to, you know, how people think about the so-called scientific method of research. But what I'm speaking to is the inherent, fundamental nature of the way that we actually build narratives and the way that we go about then testing and validating them. But we always have these filters and biases, so we might as well just actually embrace it. Yeah, I just want to hang there for half a second before we move on to the next point, which

is I have a certain amount of disdain for research too. It's why I'm just not going to let you walk away from this. But yeah, I think the problem is very few people actually do it correctly for the right reasons. It's usually to justify an expense, and because a lot of people's jobs are on the line here, they tend to do over-research built on flawed bias thinking, only to produce the results that the researchers themselves sometimes subconsciously or unconsciously are looking for. So it's like you shape the data because you ask the question in a

certain way, and then when you go to interpret the data, it reinforces something you already believe to be true. So that's usually where innovation goes to die. Very seldomly do I get research from professional corporations who then hand me, "This is the research, Chris." I'm like, "There’s nothing in here! There are 277 pages of nothingness, of marketing speak—nothing of real value that is an insight. Give me one, like you said, give me one or two insights. Give me a point of view, give me a voice, a direction, or something!" And research says, "That's not my

thing; it's not my thing." So, do you want to add to that? We're digging our own graves here. So, I’m trained as a cultural anthropologist, and the thing I'm most fascinated with when it comes to culture is: what are fundamental, timeless, universal truths? Right? And by the way, great researchers know this, and they bring those forward. I'll give you an example. Some years ago, one of the things that I kind of made my name in my career was, I got a call one day out of the blue from a head of product at Facebook. It

was the shortest sales conversation I ever had. It’s called the French Tech Mafia. This person saw one of their friends, you know, headshots on my website as a former client, and they called up their friend and was like, "Hey, what do you know about this guy? Your photo's on the website." And you know, it ends up that they had worked together. So he called me; he’s like, "Hey, I heard you did great things for my buddy. You know, here’s the situation." So we ended up building the narrative for Facebook Groups back in 2016. And in

2016, Facebook Groups was a red-haired stepchild within the Facebook core app. It really wasn't understood by the company or the world, but they had a new head of product and a new head of design who did some brilliant work. They did the ethnography; they did the foundational research of really understanding the product in people's lives, and they had a new roadmap, this and that. Well, anyway, they were then struggling because they were drowning in millions of stories of how people's lives had been changed through groups, but they didn't know how to build the narrative. So

we built a narrative on the structure of belonging in the digital age, right? That's a universal truth, that belonging is this timeless thing. And how is that changing or evolving in this new digital environment? What role does Facebook have to play as the biggest community platform on the planet? Well, that narrative had such an oversized influence and impact; it shifted the mission and the strategy of the company for more than five years, right, where literally community building became woven into the company's mission—it even became woven into their... Northstar metric of meaningful social interaction, so on

and so on, but it came from talking with the leaders who were running that group, understanding where they had conviction, helping to crystallize that into the truth, and then building the rest of the narrative, including the data that supported the vision of the future that we had to convey. If that's a helpful example, I think that it's our job as leaders, and, or if you're, you know, an agency or creative designer, where you're, you know, working with clients, right, you're a midwife to that universal truth. It's about drawing that forward, but ultimately, it's making choices

around that, right? You get muddled with universal truth when you give people an all-you-can-eat buffet of like 12 different truths of what it could be, right? There's not conviction in that; there's not a point of view. And that's ultimately, I think, what most people who are in professional services are being hired for: our story, and our ability to midwife or steward someone else's story. The hardest part of storytelling is it's an exercise in choice-making, deciding what matters most and what belongs on the cutting room floor. Okay, this is some pretty heady stuff that you're talking

about at scales in which many of us will never see in our lives. Let's pull it back down to the individual. I'm a human, or I run a small five-person agency of some sort in the creative space. How do I take any one of the concepts that you've talked about, or you're about to talk about, and apply that? Help me ground this conversation and bring me back to earth, because I'm not thinking about the world's largest social network. I appreciate that. One of the things that I see a lot—and I've, you know, I struggled with

this myself—in that for my whole career, I've been unemployable. Right? I've always had to create jobs for myself, and I've been, you know, self-employed my entire life. One of the challenges you have when you're an independent solopreneur or a small agency is impostor syndrome. Like, "Well, you know, I'm not the expert that some other people are; I don't have the level of experience yet,” and so on. The thing I tend to focus on, in this kind of full circle back to our opening conversation, is that character trumps credentials. The way that you reveal your character

is not only with a point of view, but by going back to your origin story, helping people understand what are the forces that have made you and shaped you, and how you see the world. Right? Because there's a million designers, there's a million creatives, there's a million web developers out there, right? There's a million of whatever trade or profession you're in, but there's only one that has your story. That becomes the place where you can literally reveal your own inner authority; the more you know who you are and can communicate that to others. You said

character trumps credentials? Yes, it's a nice phrase. Where's the evidence? What's the example? Give us something to support this statement, so that we can dig deeper into it. Character trumps credentials. Now, before you answer that, yeah, I was listening to this radio piece many, many years ago, and it said we used to live in the age of character. Like, who you were—the substance of who you were—mattered. Now we live in the age of charisma, where if you're charismatic, you can get away with being a horrible human being. It seems to be true, and I'm not

sure those are the exact words, but there was the age of character. We're talking about World War II, you know, the substance of who you are, what you say, what you do, your actions actually can get you to very high positions in companies and government. But now it seems it's the age of charisma. It's like these charismatic people who seem to have all the fun—let's just talk about, say, some social influencers today who haven't really done much with their lives but are already millionaires and billionaires because they have a certain amount of charisma, genes, whatever

it is that people are enamored with them. Help me understand that then. Yeah, the thing I've been sort of sitting on, because to me, the most interesting example—it's a political one that I know is going to poke the bear, but let's just go there because we're having that kind of conversation, right? So, I mean, take a look at what I literally said: character trumps credentials, right? And there's obviously a big symbolic word in the middle of that statement there with Trump. You're bringing up something I think that's really relevant, which is yes, in our popular

culture today, character and charisma have merged into the same cosmic slop. In the world of politics, we saw this ever since basically, you know, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon's first televised presidential election cycle in the U.S., which was, at the end of the day, what Americans were voting for was your personality—right? It was sort of "Who are you as a...?" So when I say character, I don't mean "Boy Scout character." I mean USA Network characters welcome. The notion of being an interesting character—being someone and something that we remember. Me is more of that blending

place of, you know, Charisma and then a character, which, you know, ultimately, character is simply the way that, um, you know, from a screenwriting perspective, the best way that one demonstrates or reveals a character is not by telling us who this person is, but by showing us through the choices and the actions that they take. Right? Um, so you think about it that way, and the reality is that we're drawn to characters like versus the credentials. Like, you know, there's a thousand people or a million people that have, you know, an MBA or have this

degree or whatever the things are that are the checkmarks on the list. What we want is someone to tell us a story, and a story that we identify with, that we relate to. And Trump did a brilliant job of that—of just, and people, you know, if you talk to people who love Trump, they'll tell you, you know what, he speaks his mind, and I like someone who speaks his mind. And he speaks truth to power, and he just keeps it real. Right? And I understand the appeal to that. I have a great respect for that,

right, along with, obviously, the chaos, you know, and the instability that comes with, you know, his style of management, um, and everything else. But we have to understand there’s a reason why his narrative has such an appeal, why he is such a character that people connect and relate to. Um, one of the biggest mistakes that people make, by way of things like story, is we tend to infuse our judgments as, um, as the corrupting force. Like, like, AI is a great example, right? Um, AI is not good or bad; it’s not right or wrong. AI,

by the way, doesn’t give a about your feelings or my feelings; it just is. It’s here, it’s not going to go away. The question is, what do we want to do with it? Right? But most of the time, what’s happening in the way we tell a story or we interpret a story is we’re constantly labeling it. Our brain is wired to label things as good, bad, right, and wrong, and that’s the place where we’re experiencing narrative collapse, um, in our society and in any organization. Let’s go back to the politician, the former president of the

United States that you talked about. Let’s keep the judgment out of the conversation; just look at Trump as a brand. Yes, let’s, so we don’t get half the country super angry at us one way or the other. Okay? Yeah, one thing that Trump has done is he’s understood that it’s better to be a flawed person and be real as who you are than it is to be a perfect fake person, and he’s understood that, and maybe instinctively or just it’s the way he’s always been. It becomes this paradox, as far as I’m concerned, that he’s

the most relatable, unrelatable person. You know, I’m not a billionaire; I wasn’t raised by billionaires; I didn’t grow up with gold-gilded toilets and faucets. So, and he has his private jets; he’s divorced and marries models, and owns pageants and buildings. How is that relatable? But the everyday person, the person on the farm, the person living in the Midwest, even people on the coast are saying, like, I get that guy. I might not like all parts of him, but at least he’s not fake. And here’s my observation of the left: they’re so worried about what everybody

thinks and pandering to one group or the other that they’re, in the same way, speaking out of both sides of their mouth. Like, can you just be real? If you’re angry about something, just say I’m angry. If something’s distasteful, just say that; at least then we know where you stand. And in this kind of hyper-analyz media culture that we live in, no one is going to say something, and the person that does is like a breath of fresh air. So we can take this back; we can take this all the way back to people who

are running a business. If you’re a mom-and-pop and you’re running a bakery, if you’re running a pizza parlor, whatever it is that you’re doing, or running a creative service agency, if you have no story, you just—you’re kind of interchangeable. And that is the definition of a commodity, and we struggle with that. Right? So there’s just watches: it’s the Rolex, right? Or there’s a Timex, or there’s a Casio, and there’s a G-Shock, or whatever it is, and we all have different stories, or the narrative about those watches are different. So we’re willing to pay more or

less because of that story. And so we have to understand that if you don’t have character—if you’re just a generic cardboard box personality—then you’re going to then face whatever consequences that come with, and it’s—you’re going to be, “Oh, well, we didn’t get you on this job; we’ll just get the next person,” because there’s nothing unique about you. Creative people struggle with this tremendously, and I would love for you to speak to this. Here’s what they struggle with: isn’t it about the quality of the work? Shouldn’t it just be about that? Like they think it’s objective,

but it’s clearly subjective that my work is better than John’s or Mary’s. But Mary has, like, a million followers; she’s speaking on every stage, presumably getting tens of thousands of dollars more, and I can’t scrape two nickels together. What's the problem? Help me understand that, Michael. Look, I, I, I have my own version of it as well, because I'm, you know, I'm obsessed with my craft. At the end of the day, our customers—the people we're serving—they want to know that there's competence, that there's a process, and that there are proven outcomes. They want something that

they can trust. But most of our customers, and those we serve, do not want to know how we make the sausage. They don't give a damn about the craft. And we—you know, this is my challenge because I'm a storyteller and philosopher. I can geek out; I can split hairs about the ontological rhetorical structure and framing of something. At the end of the day, people just want to know, like, what does it do, and does it work? Is it going to do the thing that we want? And okay, well, does it make us feel good? Does

it inspire and motivate? Okay, great, let's go. So I think it's this obsession with craft. The thing that—I think part of the challenge that you're speaking to is that when you're starting out, the price of admission is learning craft. You have to build technical competence—functional skills. Whether it's, "Oh, I'm good at Adobe Photoshop," or, "Oh, hey, no, actually, I know how to code," whatever those things are. And I see this happening: we don’t realize this, but as you progress in your career, you’re going to be less and less involved in the technical craft of the

work. You know, in the world of tech, it’s like you become less and less a product manager and more and more a people manager. Your success in your career trajectory is more and more reliant on your ability to persuade, influence, motivate, inspire, make a business case, and negotiate conflict—all those things that are more about soft skills and relational skills. It’s all what I call narrative intelligence. But it’s a hard shift to make when our identity is rooted in technical competency. Okay, I need to ask you this question. Yeah, and then I have to follow up

on the tease that you shared with me, like, in our previous conversation or call. Okay, so let's go here, and then I want to save room for this last one, which is a big one. So the question I have for you is this: talk to me about positioning, differentiation, and X Factor, and how we can apply that in our business. Those are three really big words: positioning, X Factor, and differentiation. What do you mean? Tell me more about this. Yeah, we’ve been talking about this, right? Frankly, we are on an accelerated track right now because

of what has happened with generative AI. We are going to increasingly see more and more commodification across all creative industries. So if you're worried about that race to the bottom of commodification, the only way forward for all of us is to seek and find higher grounds—that’s positioning, differentiation, and X Factor. The most powerful way to unlock X Factor—the only thing that nobody can compete against—is your story. It’s like your own unique snowflake, and the way to unlock and tell that story is to find something that's at the intersections that speaks to something that's ineffable. I'm

going to give you an example of this. For everyone—this is again a very tech example—we were working with a venture-backed startup that’s in the developer space, working with developers all around like how you manage your code at scale. Really super, super geeky stuff. They had just raised their next big round of funding, and they were having a hard time with the narrative. They were all about "developer first" street cred, so they were talking about how this product sliced, diced, and chopped; you could do it for breakfast, you could do it for dinner. They were lost

in the features and the functionality. What they needed was more of the Enterprise B2B positioning—how do we sell this to a CTO, a CIO, the executive decision-maker? What we found there was like a step ladder from aspirational value, emotional value, and functional value. It was moving up the ladder. Long story short, what we got to was a story around developer happiness. Because developers that were using their tool, when they started to use it, they couldn't live without it. Developer happiness was this intangible, ineffable thing that they could actually use to position and differentiate themselves against

GitHub and some of the other folks that were encroaching on their territory. It's fascinating! Long story short on this is that the executive team loved it, but they didn’t have the conviction to own it. They went back to some of the generic things like "developer velocity" and "developer success." But if they had actually gone and claimed "developer happiness," that would have been this X Factor thing, which was actually—by the way—showed up in the research talking to the customers and the users. But the conviction wasn’t there at the leadership level to live and own, and to

really, really live into that larger narrative. Okay, the challenge I have for you is this, please. And hopefully we can do this, and if not, we'll continue on the conversation some other time. Way last week, you asked me this question as we were kind of wrapping up our conversation, or whenever we had that conversation. You said, "Chris, give me 10 minutes or 15 minutes, and I'll help you sharpen your narrative because I know you're preparing for a talk." Yes, I've since gone on to do the talk; everything worked out great. I just want to see

you do some of your magic. Yes? Is that possible to do in like a 15-minute window where you demonstrate your skills a little bit? Okay, yes. So what do we do? How do we set this up so it's like a home run for you? I can walk everybody through our signature three-step narrative framework, but to really bring it to light, I would love to workshop with you something that has stakes — something that's meaningful to you where you feel a little bit stuck or like you haven't quite got the story straight. The thing that I'm

getting close to figuring out is this new Mastermind thing that I'm doing called Brand Lab, and it's a big pivot for me because we've historically served creative people and taught them business skills. Then I realized that just at the other side of the coin is to teach creativity to business people. So, in that way, we might unlock something beautiful and wonderful: there are all these frustrated creative people who have lived that kind of left-brain life. I wrote this line: "Helping left brainers think right — the art of business and the business of art." That's what

we're trying to do inside the Brand Lab. So there's the Brand Lab, and what I want to do is help them find their voice — their two-word brand — in order to succinctly communicate who they are in the world, tell their origin story (there's some overlap here, obviously), and be able to use that in showing up in the world as a real person, with strengths and weaknesses, and not to run away from it. Because I think we're so pre-programmed to just want to fit in and be like everybody else; it's such a strong instinct, and

I have to break them from that. Okay, so I want to make sure I get this right and that we're all tracking along. This is about the Brand Lab? Yes, and historically it was about helping creatives develop their business skills. Yes? But if I understood correctly, you're now evolving this to help business people unlock their creativity skills. Yes? Great! Okay, so this is a great example for everyone that all narratives are ultimately built and rooted in polarity. There are opposing forces in some form: this is, you know, rags to riches; you know, get the girl,

lose the girl — there's always this kind of conflict. So what you're doing is flipping the script, which is a great setup. But now what we need to figure out is — I want to understand now, for this new audience, what's the thing that's standing in the way of you putting out this new story in the world? I don't know. We've launched; it's brand new. Yep, there's some resistance from my creative community who feel like, "Oh, you're just leaving us behind, Chris!" And then there are these business people who question, "What does creativity really do

for my business? What are the X's and O's on this thing?" So that's a hat trick we're going to have to solve. Okay, so something really important for everyone listening: the moment one tells the new story, right? So, yes, Chris, you've put forward this new story of "We're going to help business people become more creative, right? Unlock their creative skills." Anybody who lives in the old story, which was helping creatives build their business skills, people who are in the old story are likely to feel wrong, bad, judged, stupid, or defensive. And so now that the

art and science of this is how can we tell the story of the new without making people in the old story feel left behind or that they're not good enough? Right? Does that resonate? Yes, so far? Yes? Okay, great! But let me clarify something for a moment: where does this community of creatives you’re teaching business skills fit in the new story? They don’t — not yet. How they fit in the new story is this: the way that I'm positioning it is I come from this world of creative, and that's the place I've played in for

over two decades — coming on three decades now. Yep, when I talk to the business people, once they figure out who they're supposed to be in the world and they have clarity around that, they’re going to need creative people to help them. That's how we bridge these two worlds because the creatives need clients to work with, and the business people need creatives to execute the plan. So I'm going to build that bridge. Just to clarify something, though, because I've seen this new platform that you've put out, and a lot of this has to do with

like the different stage of maturity that a business is at — yes? Right? Um, you're still talking about though businesses that are in the creative industries for Brand Lab? Yeah, no, I'm talking about like mortgage brokers, lawyers — people that you would not think are creative. Wow, really? Okay. Finance, realtors — they self-admittedly say, "I'm not a creative person." I'm like, "Well, I don't think that's..." True. If we Zoom back out a little bit, kind of widen the aperture, the way that you have built and constructed this narrative creates a duality that is "Us Versus

Them"—of like, this is who we used to serve and what mattered to us, but now this is who we serve and who matters to us. It feels like a binary trade-off, right? It's kind of like, "Plus on this, but it's going to be like we're going to lose this." So now the question becomes: Is there an even bigger narrative that we could find and tell, one that serves as a larger tent or umbrella that everybody can fit underneath? I think there is. I told the story, and it sounds like it's the binary trade-off, but it's

not in reality because all the programs that serve creative people are still there. Yeah, and it's my intention—I’ve communicated this to the people who want to know—I intend to use the new source of revenue to help bolster up some of the creative stuff. One of the things I’d love to do, like I envision myself a little bit of a Robin Hood—steal from the rich to give to the poor. The rich, in my mind, are like corporations, right? The ones who want to sponsor communities like ours so that it advertises the cost of courses down, making

it super affordable to anyone in the world. Or maybe they want to grant scholarships to these people. It's a long road to get there, and in the meantime, what I have to do is finance other kinds of creative courses. The only way I can do that is to go to the people who want to spend the money, who have no issues with spending the money, and the impact that's created with them will be an exponential return, an x-fold return. So it's not going to matter to them. Yeah, then we can use those resources to build

and create more programs for creative people, and so the bridge or gap between the two is going to start to close. Okay, so what you're describing is the way we all rationalize when we're trying to make a strategic change. I just went through a business model pivot myself, from running a seven-figure consulting business to now being in the courses, coaching, and community business, and it's been a bloody painful recalibration. I can get all deep, like you're in the weeds of the function—we're moving the Lego blocks to here, and this is how this works, and so

on—and that's where we all naturally go. I want to move upstream to aspiration and emotion. The thing I want to talk to you about is, let's come back to your namesake, "The Future," because that is a badass name. That's like the torch that you carry, right? That has been the gathering force that brings people together. So what is it about the name "The Future" that is so important to you, and how is that baked into not only everything you've done, but everything you want to do and create in terms of how you serve the world

and how people benefit from this work? Well, the name and the meaning is about looking into the horizon, being able to dream beyond what you can see, to peer into the night, to know that dawn is coming, and to be optimistic—not to have foresight, but to kind of anticipate what is to come and to always adapt and evolve. We often end our video podcasts or video episodes by saying, "You're not defined by the past; the future is what you make it." It's a rallying cry to say, you know what? No matter what circumstances you started

out in life, which you cannot control, where you go from today into tomorrow is entirely up to you. Where is that in your current messaging and sort of new positioning? It's only in spoken word, or like when I speak to people, because what I would say to you—like, when I hear that—that to me is a timeless truth that's baked in the DNA of your work. That is, to your point, a rallying cry that's unifying and transcends the boundaries and the differences. While yes, you might have some new ideal customer profile, certain personas, and some of

this kind of funnel-related things—about the business side of it—this distinction of business and creative, this narrative about the future, and the future is what you make it, and we can dream beyond what we can see, and this invitation to adapt and evolve in this moment—which is such an inflection point moment in our economy and in our society—that's the Yeah, let's go! That transcends any perceived differences. How does that come up for you as I reflect that back to you? How do you respond to that, thinking about elevating more of this core DNA about the future

in your namesake? I like what you're reflecting back to me. When we first started to teach, we tried to get people to understand this concept, and it's a very popular idea: Wouldn't it be great if, as creatives, we were invited to the table where the decisions are made? So we have to instill within you all these business skills; we have to bring the business world to you. But there was no guarantee… That you would get to that table; it was just an idea. The designer should be there at the front, not at the back, not

just to be an order taker. But I also see it now as, as I'm talking to the business people who need this, well, now I'm at the table. Yep, I can open this door and invite you in, and so now it's the two parts to the puzzle, right? Like, we can get these two things to come together faster, in my opinion. Time will tell if that's true, where I'm actually at that table where those people are making those decisions. Now I understand how they work and what they want, and I'm going to invite you to

come in, and hopefully we just accelerate that process. Is it too far of a leap to say you're ultimately like building a platform or marketplace for businesses to connect with creatives and creatives to connect with businesses? It's not too far a leap; I don't want to say that word just yet, but yes, I think you were reading what I'm sending out, which is they need creative services. My creative people need businesses to transform it. It ideally is a match made in heaven, right? Versus slinging it out on Upwork or totally Fiverr, which is a bloodbath.

Yep! Okay, so how are we doing on time? Because I want to walk you through one more thing. If we have the time for it, let's do it. Okay, all right, so we've staked out a lot of cool territory. I want to walk you through right now the SFB narrative method, which is: people have to see it and they have to feel it in order to believe it. Okay, so we've been staking out the territory. We've kind of found some interesting vectors and so on. The first thing with "see it"—let's talk about how the world

has changed and what is now possible that wasn't possible one year ago or three years ago. And this is obviously in the context of the audience you want to serve, right? So what's changing in the world and what's now possible that wasn't before? Well, the biggest thing that's changed in the world is due to the pandemic—so remote work. The idea that we can actually work with people that aren't in our city—there was a lot of resistance behind that. Now it's like it's just a normal thing. We also now have a lot of freedom to live

and work in places that are not connected to be asynchronous in how we collaborate and how we produce things. So the future’s been there for years, and now the world just woke up. Like, oh, we have to do Zoom calls; we have to teach online, and we can telecommute in ways that we thought we always could but didn’t, and now we can. Some other things have come up. I'm not saying the last couple of years, but it seems to be on the upward trend, which is business fascination with design and design thinking. That’s super hot,

right? Stanford has the D School for design for entrepreneurs. It's like we're just a little late to that party; they've already known this. In each and every single one of us, regardless of what suit you put on, there's a creative child waiting to play. And that's me saying, hey, we're not different; we're the same—just allow me to help them see that in themselves, and we're all going to play together. Okay, so I'm hearing the pandemic changed a lot; it's broken down certain boundaries or limitations. And, you know, with that, I really loved a phrase that

you said, which is: the future is here. I would really elevate that phrase and explore what does that really mean and look like? What future is here? What is it we can do now that we couldn't before? Widen that spectrum across multiple vectors: the technological forces, the economic forces, and the cultural forces that basically make the future that you see a self-fulfilling prophecy—it's inevitable. This thing that we thought, well, maybe—no, no, no—it’s like, uh, William Gibson once said, "The future already exists; it's just not widely distributed." Right? So celebrate that! And I think, frankly, a

lot of the ways that AI is already fundamentally disrupting creative industries needs to be a part of this as well. And being able to position and elevate the optimistic perspective amidst the sandwich of suck, right? I know it's scary, and there's a lot of reasons to be upset and frustrated. But resistance is futile; it's here! You can't put this Pandora back in a box. So the question is, how are you going to adapt to this? And that's where, frankly, there's this intersection: both business people and creative people are both like—they need each other as we

go forward. Okay, so we're talking about—we started with "see it," which is the context for change. The world has changed, and because the world has changed, we need a new story to reflect that new world. The secret is, we have to help people see how change equals new possibilities and opportunities, right? Because most people think of change as just constraint, loss, fight, flight, freeze, defensiveness—like fight back against it. So we need to tell a love story about the future, right? And you've started to stake that out. I think there's probably even more dimensions to that

to, like, really round that out, full 360. So that's one—that's the "see." It’s okay, boom! So, that’s the big zoom out: help people see. Now we’re going to zoom in. We now need to look at the field, which is: who’s at the center of the story? What do they want, and what gets in their way? This is a challenge—deciding what character, what central character, we’re going to put in at the middle, because that affects the perspective or point of view by which this entire narrative gets built. The easy answer, by the way—the pat answer—is you

make the customer the hero of the story. You put them at the center. But sometimes, it’s not so clear who the customer is. Or, you know, we have a B2C to B2B story, right? Or we have, like, “Oh, I’m working inside a company, and I have these internal customers and clients”—and, like, all these examples get convoluted. But who do you think is at the center of your story? If you had to pick one central character, kind of a symbol that would speak to both business people and creatives, well, that’s a tough one. We serve such

a diverse group of people, yeah. Um, what’s unifying about, like, people? Like, back to think back to your namesake. Okay, the thing that unifies us is we’re all creatives. We express it a little bit differently—how we serve people. It’s different, but it's all the same DNA. The reason why it was such a surprise to me that business people would want to explore creativity was because I just had a preconception like, “This is how all business people think,” and it turns out I was very wrong, at least with this group that I’m learning a lot about.

It’s so fulfilling for me to encourage that creativity to flourish. It’s like a field of flowers waiting to blossom. When I see, well, let’s just call it a suit, so to speak, and say, “Oh, I have these ideas, Chris,” I’m like, “Those are good ideas! I never saw myself that way, and you’re giving me permission to do this.” And, hey, welcome to the club, fam! It’s actually not two people; it’s just one kind of person. So, what I’m hearing in that is there’s some sort of central character, this universal persona or identity, which is: I

have ideas about what’s possible, about what we could do, what we could build, what we could create that would make things better for others or that would help fulfill a larger promise. There’s something in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah! And so, if we think of—you know, obviously we could spend more time unpacking this—but if we think of that then as a central character, what is it that that character wants, and what gets in their way? What’s the desire and what’s the dilemma? So, let’s start with desire. What do they want? I think this is a universal

narrative. I think we all want to be aligned with our purpose, and when we’re out of alignment, we know instinctively something’s wrong. But in terms of our goals, we’re not hitting our goals; we’re not meeting our health goals; we’re not meeting our relationship goals. It’s something I’ve been able to experience in the people that I see who are successful in all dimensions—spiritually, in their relationships, in their business—they are really aligned. So I have this slide that I share with people, and it’s like a recycle symbol, but it’s off-kilter, so it looks a little bit weird.

It’s not connecting, and what I want them to do is in their mind put the parts together. So for me, just to relate it: I used to make commercials and music videos. It gave me a financial reward, but something was missing. Then, when I taught, it gave me a reward for my soul, but something else was missing. And when I ran my business, like, the analytical part of my brain was like, “I’m very happy.” It isn’t until I put all these three things together—the desire to teach, business, and creativity, and video production—that when it comes

together in a really neat story, then I find my bliss. And now that broken, fragmented triangle is now just solid. One of the things that I love about you and I love about everything I’ve known about your work in the future is you have a real pragmatic sense of how do you make things work. There’s something really interesting about that, which is there’s something—actually, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Landmark Forum, but I recently experienced their work, which is pretty powerful, life-changing work. It’s all about ontology—the stories that we tell ourselves. There’s one thing

from one of the sessions I took away that speaks to the heart of this, which is the word integrity. So, we often use that word and we weaponize it. We turn integrity into this moral judgment where we make people wrong or it’s like an attack. Integrity, from a landmark perspective, is simply—is this working or not working? That’s it! And if it’s not working, what do we need to do in order to make it work? It’s value-neutral; there’s zero judgment to it. I found that to be an incredible, liberating way of looking at integrity, and I

bring this up because my sense is you’re really—like, you’re someone who that’s part of your character: you focus on the engineering of how do we make something work in a manner that honors the creative process and also honors the business process? So you talked about... What it is that that that that that people want is to kind of is the sense of purpose. Okay, but there's a dilemma. There's something—what's the obstacle that stands in the way of being able to live into purpose, whether you're a creative or a business person? I think it's, uh, integration.

So creative people feel the conflict in that, "Oh, I don't want to deal with business numbers. I don't want to talk about finance; it cheapens it. It hollows me out." And then on the business side, it's like, "Oh, I'm not a creative person. I don't have that gene. I don't have that spark or the eye for designing creativity." And so they can't integrate these fractured halves or more than two parts, however many fragments there are. They can't integrate. And the story that I love to tell, because I'm just a dork or nerd, is I love

comic books, and my favorite character is the Incredible Hulk. It's not for what people think. It's like the Hulk is, um, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a more popular form. Dr. Bruce Banner is the most brilliant scientist in the world; he's level seven intellect—one of the five smartest people on the planet in the Marvel Universe. He's super unemotional. He's fragile. He's weak. He's been abused by his father; he has strained relationships because he just can't tell people how he feels. Some people can relate to that. But when he gets angry, he is pure emotion

turned into rage. And something I read about the Hulk recently is that the Hulk has unlimited power. The angrier he gets, the more powerful he becomes. So, if he reaches a certain state of anger, he cannot be defeated by anyone—not by gods, not by anybody. So if you want to take him down, you've got to take him down quick. These two people—one person—it's like this multiple personality disorder, and they can't live in harmony. Dr. Banner is fearful that the Hulk will explode and destroy towns and ruin lives. The Hulk is always belittling puny Banner because

he's his weak point. Banner thinks too much. Banner trusts too many people. So somewhere in the storyline, Dr. Bruce Banner and the Hulk learn to accept each other, and they become Professor Hulk. So then he has most of the strength of the Hulk and the intellect of Bruce Banner. His emotions and his logic are in order, and he becomes the god among men. Now he's no longer hunted; he's no longer a threat to anybody because he’s in complete control. They come together in harmony. It's why he's my favorite character. Wow! I've never had the Hulk

broken down like that for me, and what I find fascinating about this description is that you're speaking to the inherent, like, the inner conflict, right? Which is, by the way, what I think is the next level narrative. So, like, classical storytelling is hero, victim, villain—it's us versus them, which is, you know, heroes, okay great, but who wants to be the victim or the villain, right? There's an inherent nature to that framework that actually does not scale for the world that we're in right now, which is worldviews and value systems colliding, right? So you're speaking to

something new and different here, and that inner conflict and the challenge that we all face is that, you know, in the world of business, if you're talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. You know that truism. And this is one of my biggest Achilles' heels because I'm kind of like you—into, to a fault—like, I'm like, "Come to Jesus, baby! This is for everyone!" Right? This is, you know, the Great Awakening. Like, storytelling is our birthright. But there's this fine line we have to walk of, "Okay, how do we speak to something universal while still

making it relatable to the various different people we want to serve?" Because we're all walking around with our identity hats on. So, you know, I would continue to look at this dynamic of the central character and this tension between what they want and what gets in the way—yes, purpose—and then yes, this tension, as you mentioned. But I would say there's something in there around permission; like if you talk to a creative about business or a business about creative, everybody has these considerations—the "yes, buts," the "yes, buts." "But I don't know this. I don't speak that

language. I've never been good at that." There are all of these qualifications or considerations that, like, take people out. And there’s something for you—like, your work is actually about getting people to say yes to themselves, say yes to their dreams, and say yes to their bigger future. And I think your gift, too, is making people feel safe to actually widen the aperture of who they are and what they want and what they want to build and create. And there's something in that territory to me that is incredible—like a tent revival—like, "Come on down to the

party!" Yes! Exactly! So much of the times that we're in right now and what we're going to see with the disruptions of technology, especially because of AI, is this evolutionary moment where we have to actually embrace the paradox. You know, you trying to keep things in a pretty little box—the boxes are disintegrating! Like, to your point, what we need... To do is reintegrate like we need to reclaim the parts of ourself that we've kind of put on a shelf or the things that we thought weren't who we are. We need to widen the dynamic range,

right? And, as you know, the journey of leadership—being a good leader is actually being good at being outside your comfort zone on a more frequent basis. That's basically what leadership is: being really good at being uncomfortable, doing something you've never done before, and making that your new normal. It’s the same thing that the Armed Forces do, Special Forces, you know—heart rate variability, stress response; it's like the ability to be calm and present amidst everything being upside down. There's something about the dojo mindset that is clearly deeply embedded in your work, helping people widen that dynamic

range. All right, so I know we could continue on this forever. I want one last piece to at least stick the landing for you. We zoomed out to see how the world is changing, the new possibilities and opportunities that come with that. Right, that was the zoom out. Then we zoomed in; we really looked at who's at the center of the story. We need someone that we can empathize with and identify with, and we looked at the choice to make there in a way that could be more unifying as opposed to repelling, in a way

that addresses this paradox right now, because you're repositioning yourself in the market of a very different market. You want to serve or widen to serve multiple markets, and how can you move into the new without abandoning the old? So, we've staked out some of that. Now, the third piece to this is the belief—this is the evidence of truth. What can we point to that will validate and legitimize the promise that you're selling—this new future of what you're building and what you're inviting people into? What can you point to that’s like, “Oh, business people becoming more

creative, creative people becoming more business-like”? Yeah, duh, so obvious to you. It’s possible! What would you point to? What are the facts, the evidence, the proof that supports this promise that you’re selling, which is a really inspiring and appealing promise? Well, I think there’s plenty of evidence that exists already. I mentioned before the D School of Design exists in Stanford’s business school. They’re no dummies. I wouldn’t bet against Stanford, and they’ve been doing this for a period of time. You can look at IBM’s acquisition of companies that have design thinking in their name or something—they’re

just gobbling up companies like this. The left-brainers are seeing the value that design has, and Apple is probably one of the most successful companies that have that strong integration of design, design thinking, and user experience design. They lead, and it always boggles my mind that they’ve been doing this for decades, yet the second or third place companies can’t seem to match all the quality, the components that they’ve been able to capture so effortlessly from product to product. I’m scratching my head. Marty Numar writes about this and cites numerous studies about how S&P companies that have

integration of innovation and design thinking perform in the market itself—they have an X percent boost just because they spend enough money on R&D or design-led thinking. So, it’s already there. They’re just at the tip of the spear, or not enough people are recognizing that just yet. It’s business as usual. I love that you’re absolutely right, and I’ve tracked that evolution as well. Here’s one interesting wrinkle in all of this, Chris: inside all the biggest tech companies on the planet right now, in the last six months, it’s fascinating. Not only the big tech companies, but also

Fortune 500s, have all decimated their central design organizations. There’s this really weird thing that's going on right now. So, you know, UX research has been decimated, but also just design as a function has gotten decimated. I’ve talked to a lot of friends who are, you know, VPs and leaders in those organizations, and a big part of it has to do with this earlier conversation we had, which is that design as a profession is too obsessed with craft and not functional or fluent enough in making the business case, being able to translate their work to the

executive boardroom. They need to really make the value propositions and help people understand, especially now in an environment where, you know, the cost efficiencies of AI—many companies are kind of going, “Well, yeah, we’re going to start to automate more of this and we’re going to start to outsource more of this.” So, it’s an interesting—it’s a little bit of a step back, but I think the fundamental thesis is spot on. Ultimately, AI disruption, the more and more things get automated and outsourced, basically what generative AI will do is it will make us better storytellers, better philosophers,

better creatives, and better ethicists for the very simple forcing function that it demands us to. Because if the machines are doing X, then what the heck is our role and job? It’s a fundamental existential thing, and that’s where design and creatives, at its essence and its DNA, is about asking those questions, about looking at the... inherent relationship between things, and how do we strengthen and improve those relationships? A couple of things I want to say to that: yeah, I think you're right. When we're getting into a really tough economy and things are not going well

for a lot of companies—the companies that you think have more money than God—when they're laying off people and shutting down departments, they're withdrawing from cities and offices. There are lots of financial problems going on. The first thing they do is they slaughter what they feel is unnecessary, which is all the creative people. You're also right in your assessment; a lot of designers who are in business roles don't fully embrace the responsibility that comes with making those hard decisions that are traditionally for business types. But I think if we want to create a leader, a visionary

of the future, then business and design should not be taught in two different schools, on two different campuses, by different instructors. They should be taught in an integrated way that’s seamless with each other. So, when I wrote the curriculum of the future, if you will, it had business classes, it had negotiations, and it had design and design principles, and they're all integrated. Because why are we talking about this as two separate languages? It's really one language, and hopefully, I'm the guy who's beating the drum and building a parade around this of more than just one.

But I want to point out two things here, or maybe at least one thing: the creator economy. We seem to be ushering in a new era that is an offshoot of the information economy, where we can see people like Logan Paul getting together with Deji and forming some kind of collaboration to create one of the fastest-growing sports drink companies that is going to be worth more than a billion dollars. Here’s a guy who's fallen off the creative wagon a couple of times himself but has been able to resurrect and revive his career and his life

into becoming a potential billionaire. Then you have Mr. Beast, who has literally offered a billion dollars for his companies, and he turned them down because he said it was undervalued. I don't think he's dreaming here. And so there's a whole new paradigm where I don't know how many people graduate from business school thinking, "I have a roadmap in 10 years on how to become a billionaire," yet there are people in the creative space—maybe as far as like high school education in terms of their formal education—who are now on that path today. So, I think it's

a case for both: business people understanding the need for creativity and innovation, and creatives who can play in these open fields and just dominate and crush. Lastly, to your point about AI: I think the future—since AI can do a lot of what it is that humans are doing today—will come down to this. I'll just put it out there and let's get your temperature on this. The winners of the future, in an AI-enabled future, will be the ones who have really good taste. They understand what good writing looks like, how it reads, how it flows. They

understand what good music sounds like and what is a good combination or genre of mashing things. They know what aesthetically is pleasing, elevated, and has good taste. Because we can see you can pump out a thousand iterations of images really quickly, but are they any good? Do you know that that's good, or is that the machine telling you it's good? So, the curators, the tastemakers, will be the ones who will be at the tip of that AI revolution. I love what you're saying, Chris, and I do very much agree. The way I've described this is:

what generative AI has done is it’s a forking moment in human evolution. As part of that, now knowledge is dead and wisdom is queen. Wisdom, in one respect, is discernment, and that's what I hear as a synonym as you talk about taste-making. It's about being able to make conscious, effective choices—to know, again, like a good story, it's an exercise in choice-making. What matters most versus what belongs on the cutting room floor? The ability to cut through the signal versus noise and to cut through that noise to have a really strong signal that other people identify

with and resonate with. There's something else that you said that I think is a really important point for us to reinforce, which is you talked about one language. My number one career advice I give to everybody is: learn the language of the world you want to be a part of. Right? When you speak that language, you belong in that world; you have a seat at the table. Literally, language fluency is the path to agency, and everything is language. I've got a trainer at the gym I work with, and I was asking him, “Hey, so how

many languages do you speak?” because we were talking about this. He goes, “Oh yeah, well, you know I speak two languages: I speak English and Spanish.” I was like, “Yeah, no, no, no, but widen it for me. Like, what are the other languages that you speak?” Right? Do you speak the language of soccer? He’s a former professional soccer player. He’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I speak the language of soccer.” I’m like, “Okay, great! Well, do you speak the language of functional kinesiology?” He’s like, “Oh, well, yeah, actually that’s a whole other.” And he started to

realize like every craft, every domain, every... "Sort of area right is actually just a language, and that's one of the ways we can bridge this thing of like, 'Oh no, that's not me.' We tend to collapse down to identity, right? Finance is just a language, right? Uh, graphic design is just a language. But even within design, there's then like how many different dialects? There's a difference between UX design, versus, you know, print design, versus, uh, you know, web design, so on and so on and so on, right? But language — um, the thing that excites

me most with generative AI is that words are the new code. We've literally reached this new place at a societal level. There are three of the most important scientific breakthrough revolutions in the last 100 years. One was genetic biological code, DNA, right? The second was binary computational code, zeros and ones. And now we're ushering in this new age where words, semantics, are the new code. So that's my biggest advice to everybody right now: not only learn the language of the worlds you want to be a part of, but learn language. These are the fundamental building

blocks, and the more you develop them... One of the Godfathers of the AI movement, um, his name is Patrick Winston, who used to run MIT's AI lab, he says, um, the three most important fundamental skills of the future are, um, an ability to write, an ability to speak, and an ability to convey your ideas in that order, right? This is from one of the Godfathers of artificial intelligence. Like, we have to build our semantic fluency, work with language, and then ultimately this leads up to narrative intelligence, or that storytelling is the universal source code, right?

Storytelling is... it’s in every religion. It’s in every part of culture. It’s just literally how we make sense and meaning of things. And I think we're all going to become better storytellers again by the simple notion that we have to, um, because we're all going to have to make sense and meaning of what is exponential change. You know, the more we can find the opportunities and the possibilities, basically tell a love story about the future, um, that’s going to lift us up and then lift up the people who are around us. Michael Cris, that's been

a really meaty intellectual conversation. There are some words here that our audience is probably looking up, and I include myself in there, and my head hurts in the best possible way. I thought we’d do something a little funny as we wrap up today. Please! Okay. And yeah, we're just giving people a taste of totally what they can experience within your ecosystem. So before I do the funny bit to end it, how can people find out more about you and the programs that you're running? I appreciate that. So, um, everybody can find me online at storiedin.com.

Um, we're in the process of refacing a lot of stuff, so probably the best way to kind of plug into our ecosystem is one, check out my latest book, Story 10X: Turn the Impossible into the Inevitable. Um, you can find it on Amazon and on Audible and Kindle. But if you go to storiedin.com/story10x, you can download a sample of the book, 70 pages — it’s me, you'll get right into it all the things that we talked about, broken down. So that’s the best way to plug in. Um, we have a new flagship course called Narrative

Influence. It’s a five-week sprint method; we run that every three months. Um, and then lastly, connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s where I share the most content and musings. Um, Michael Margolis Story is where you’ll find me there. Wonderful! My guest has been Michael Margolis, and he's written the book Story 10X. It's a beautiful book; I can't wait to dig deeper into this. And if your brain is still possible, like, uh, still put together after our conversation today, I strongly encourage you to go visit him, check him out, see what’s going on under the hood

there, because I know we just scratched the surface. Now, there’s this bit that they used to do on radio with this show called Frosty, Heidi, and Frank. I don't know if you remember them if you listen to radio. Okay, anyways, they would do this thing at the end of the show. They would apologize, like, 'We’d like to apologize to everybody we've offended,' and they would get into the list. Now, while you're going, I wrote down some things. Yeah, so, okay, so I wrote down, 'Okay, we’d like to apologize to sausage factories, to researchers, to politicians,

to the right, to the left, to AI itself — and anybody else that you could think of.' Michael: Yes! Oh man, well, I wanna—I want to apologize to Chris. I want to apologize to Chris’s mom and dad. Um, I wanna apologize to everybody who believes in Trump and everybody who hates Trump. Um, I want to apologize to the Zippo company and to Pawn Stars. Uh, I want to apologize, um, let’s see, who else do we need to apologize... I need to apologize—I need to apologize to chocolate makers around the world. Um, and, um, I need

to apologize to all of our listeners for indulging me in my brain-stretching, heart-expanding discourse. Um, thanks for going along for the ride. Um, I come in peace. Wonderful, and I’d like to make the final apology to anyone who’s made it this deep into the episode who hasn't, like, veered off the road. And there’s this expression: the expression is, 'A human mind, once expanded, does not shrink back to its original shape.'" I hope your mind is expanded today. Everybody, just remember one thing: you're not defined by your past; the future is what you make it.